[lbo-talk] neocon schism!

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Tue Mar 15 19:54:55 PST 2005


Brad DeLong wrote:
>>
>>[T]the most conspicuous of the neo-conservatives is President
>>Lawrence Summers of Harvard....
>
>Is Norman Birnbaum a professional idiot?

This is what Birnbaum wrote:

"...They denounced those likely to criticize them as unmodern, weak and deficient in loyalty to our country. When all else failed (or their own divided allegiances were questioned) they resorted to the sordid charge of anti-Semitism.

In this sense, the most conspicuous of the neo-conservatives is President Lawrence Summers of Harvard. He is an economist with little apparent talent for historical or moral reflectiveness, more at home with numbers than human beings. His first serious quarrel at Harvard was with Cornell West, and the explanation for it is to be found in his response to questions raised by his professors and students about the university's investments in Israel. To question the moral probity of the state of Israel, he declared, was the objective equivalent of anti-Semitism. A Jewish president of Harvard opened his term by attacking a black scholar..."

Mr. DeLong has a perfect right to his own definition of the word "neoconservative." What is reprehensible is his misrepresenting Birnbaum by leaving out the introductory phrase "in this sense" without admitting to the ellision and then insulting Birnbaum for using the word not in *his* preferred sense but in a sense that Birnbaum has carefully defined and which is quite fitting in regard to President Summers.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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