But Not Like This
by Matt B. on February 8, 2010
In this National Review piece, author Mark Steyn portrays President Obama and his administration as a walled-in cult, in love with grandiose images of themselves and out of touch with both fiscal reality and the spirit of the country. Steyn’s diatribe slowly ratchets up the disrespect, culminating in a description of Obama as an “economically illiterate narcissist.”
As I read these words, I was bowled over by the profundity of Steyn’s contempt, the sheer personal mean-spiritedness of his prose. I don’t read the Review with any regularity, so I can’t speak to whether this is their standard tenor. And I’m no economist, so I’m in no position to evaluate the validity of Steyn’s economic arguments. But I do know what I felt, and I imagine it was something like what conservatives reading Maureen Dowd’s New York Times columns might have felt during the Bush years – alienation from my countrymen, sadness at the coarseness of our public dialogue, and outrage at the sheer schoolyard childishness with which the writer treats our most important national conversations.
We can do better. And if these live, televised conversations between the president and leading Republicans are any harbinger of things to come, we might be on our way.
But Not Like This
by Matt B. on February 8, 2010
In this National Review piece, author Mark Steyn portrays President Obama and his administration as a walled-in cult, in love with grandiose images of themselves and out of touch with both fiscal reality and the spirit of the country. Steyn’s diatribe slowly ratchets up the disrespect, culminating in a description of Obama as an “economically illiterate narcissist.”
As I read these words, I was bowled over by the profundity of Steyn’s contempt, the sheer personal mean-spiritedness of his prose. I don’t read the Review with any regularity, so I can’t speak to whether this is their standard tenor. And I’m no economist, so I’m in no position to evaluate the validity of Steyn’s economic arguments. But I do know what I felt, and I imagine it was something like what conservatives reading Maureen Dowd’s New York Times columns might have felt during the Bush years – alienation from my countrymen, sadness at the coarseness of our public dialogue, and outrage at the sheer schoolyard childishness with which the writer treats our most important national conversations.
We can do better. And if these live, televised conversations between the president and leading Republicans are any harbinger of things to come, we might be on our way.