Hitchens No Orwell

[Peter K.]

Nathan:
>The reality is that even the Right admits that a generation or two ago, a
>conservative intellectual was an oxymoron.  They spent decades very
>deliberately building up an infrastructure of training and institutions to
>create their cadres.  In fact, they modelled thmselves on earlier
>generations of leftwing activists and their intellectual institution
>building.
>
>I wish more leftwingers would copy the practices of the rightwing, which
>would actually be copying the left's best practices from the past in
>struggling for intellectual hegemony.

I've heard Rick Perlstein's new book on Barry Goldwater, "Before the Storm,"
is supposed to be good. William "Let's Teach China a Lesson She Shan't
Forget" Kristol wrote an interesting review of it for the New York Times
Book Review a week or so ago. Perlstein, a leftist, shows how grass-roots
Republicans responded to Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964 — not by
trying to install new party leaders, but by forming think tanks, training
activists, knocking on doors and electing true believers to local offices.

Peter