Unqualified Offerings

Kristol Contest

23 Responses to “Kristol Contest”

1. Comment by AlanSmithee —
   February 18, 2008 @ 11:57 am

   “Kristol invoking Orwell is, like, totally bogus.”

2. Comment by Thoreau —
   February 18, 2008 @ 12:10 pm

   “Kristol invoking Orwell is, like, totally bogus double plus ungood.”

   Learn thy Newspeak. For Big Brother’s sake, a committee put a lot of work into the latest edition!

3. Comment by Rob —
   February 18, 2008 @ 12:11 pm

   Kristol invoking Orwell is like Jonah Goldberg writing a book.

4. Comment by bjd —
   February 18, 2008 @ 12:12 pm

   Pinochet embracing Keynes.

5. Comment by dhex —
   February 18, 2008 @ 12:13 pm

   …is like michael jackson opening a day care center.

   you can’t help but feel there’s an ulterior motive at play.

6. Comment by Derek Copold —
   February 18, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

   This actually isn’t the worst use of Orwell. Kristol at least gets the gist of Orwell’s critique of Kipling right, but applies in a bad cause.

   The worst case I saw was the late Michael Kelly’s using Orwell criticism of pacifists in WWII, where Orwell called them “objectively” pro-Nazi. Along the same lines, Kelly wrote that those of us opposing the Iraq War were “objectively” pro-Hussein. Chris Hitchens continues to use this logic to this day, as a matter of fact.

   Interestly, Orwell would later recant his point about the pacifists. He still thought they were wrong, but felt it wrong to call them pro-fascist. However, Kelly showed no sign of knowing this, or even wanting to know it.

7. Comment by Mona —
   February 18, 2008 @ 1:16 pm

   This actually isn’t the worst use of Orwell. Kristol at least gets the gist of Orwell’s critique of Kipling right, but applies in a bad cause.

   Fine. But the idea of Bill Kristol purchasing a collection of Orwell essays could only be for its use as an instruction manual to implement the nefarious things Orwell described and dissected, such as the propagandizing in Kristol’s NYT column.

8. Comment by WalterBoswell —
   February 18, 2008 @ 1:20 pm

   Kristol invoking Orwell is like the Ministry of Love.

9. Comment by Avram —
   February 18, 2008 @ 1:20 pm

   Orwell also wrote that “The energy that actually shapes the world springs from [...] racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, [and] love of
   war”. Or, as Jim has stated it, It’s a Red-State World. If Kristol and his like actually understood this, they’d think better of their plan for global conquest in the name of capitalist pseudo-democracy.

10. Comment by Derek Copold —
    February 18, 2008 @ 1:38 pm

    But the idea of Bill Kristol purchasing a collection of Orwell essays could only be for its use as an instruction manual…

    I got no love for Billy the K.

11. Comment by Jennifer —
    February 18, 2008 @ 2:04 pm

    “Kristol invoking Orwell is like Hitler invoking kindness to the Jews.”

    Piss off, Godwin.

12. Comment by The Dude —
    February 18, 2008 @ 2:05 pm

    …, your opinion, man.

13. Comment by Luke —
    February 18, 2008 @ 5:17 pm

    Kristol invoking Orwell is like someone we’ve been warned about invoking the guy who warned us about him.

    Or, for short, it’s like GM CEO Roger Smith invoking Michael Moore (or maybe Nixon invoking Deep Throat).

14. Comment by srv —
    February 18, 2008 @ 6:36 pm

    Kristol invoking Orwell is like Bush invoking Graham Greene at a VFW Convention.

    Oh, wait. He did that.

    It’s like they’re trying to be funny at a whole ‘nother level…

15. Comment by Decline and Fall —
    February 18, 2008 @ 10:39 pm

    Kristol invoking Orwell is like Alberto Gonzalez invoking the Constitution.

    Or Michael Corleone kissing Fredo.

    It’s not affection, it’s affectation, and the result is attempted murder.

16. Comment by John Spragge —
    February 18, 2008 @ 11:30 pm

    I’d call this the most ironic use of Orwell. Consider Orwell’s definitive work:

    “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.”

    The irony of using Orwell, of all writers, to justify a program of surveillance unrestrained by law, goes way over the top. Of course, the agenda of the conservatives goes beyond mere surveillance; it includes the use of advanced techniques of data mining to discover “patterns” that can reveal what we think, which information can serve as the basis for a criminal prosecution under the “violent radicalisation” sections of the law some conservatives want.

    There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.

    Of course, the idea of a retroactive civil immunity provision, taking the right of redress from citizens who had their rights under the law violated runs counter to a specific constitutional provision (article I part 9), but Orwell anticipated that as well, understanding what a state with no law, only power, really means:
    

    The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.

    When George Orwell wrote about the sense of responsibility shown by a party in power, I doubt he really had Big Brother in mind.

17. Comment by Glaivester —
    February 18, 2008 @ 11:39 pm

    Thought on Kipling and the white man’s burden, particularly as it relates to foreign adventurism:

    “We’ve taken up the white man’s burden,
    Of ebony and brown.
    Now kindly tell us, Rudyard,
    How we may put it down.”

18. Comment by Mona —
    February 18, 2008 @ 11:59 pm

    Kristol is either ignorant of, or chooses to ignore, the world-changing view Kipling had when he lost his son to the irrational, incomprable carnage of WWI:

    THESE were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight.
    We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter.
    The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another’s hereafter.
    Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it. That is our right.
    But who shall return us the children ?

    At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences,
    And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us,
    The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us—
    Their bodies were all our defense while we wrought our defenses.

    They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us,
    Those hours which we had not made good when the judgment o’ercame us.
    They believed us and perished for it. Our statecraft, our learning
    Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning
    Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour—
    Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her.

    Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them.
    The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption
    Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption,
    Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marvelling, closed on them.

    That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given
    To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven—
    By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled on the wires—
    To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes—to be cindered by fires—
    To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
    From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
    But who shall return us our children ?

    Let us see Kristol address that Kipling piece.

19. Comment by ajay —
    February 19, 2008 @ 6:11 am

    18: Mona, good one, but I would have picked his “Epitaph for a Statesman”:

    I could not dig; I dared not rob;
    Therefore I lied to please the mob.
    Now all my lies are proved untrue
    And I must face the men I slew.
    What lies will serve me here among
    Mine angry and defrauded young?

20. Comment by joe —
    February 19, 2008 @ 9:48 am

    …is like Mussolinin invoking Jefferson.

    Ezra Pound once wrote a book called “Mussolini and/or Jefferson.”

    That guy was nuts!

21. Comment by John Spragge —
    February 19, 2008 @ 11:32 am

    Given Kipling’s misgivings about the unbridled use of power, and especially these lines from the poem Recessional:

    For heathen heart that puts her trust
    In reeking tube and iron shard—
    All valiant dust that builds on dust,
    And guarding calls not Thee to guard—
    For frantic boast and foolish word,
    Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

    Kristol quoting Orwell on Kipling has a special multi-layered irony to it, and I don’t really know if a good metaphor exists. Orwell famously wrote
    

    One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: No ordinary man could be such a fool.

    However, Kristol’s viewpoint has a transcendental cluelessness about it that I don’t think Orwell anticipated.

    Note that I give Kristol credit for simple ignorance and failure to follow his line of thought farther than a sentence. Alternatively, I could assume Kristol’s writing reflects a profound contempt for his readers.)

22. Comment by ed —
    February 19, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

    Bill Kristol invoking Orwell is like Peter Lorre’s bastard spawn invoking Orwell.

23. Comment by bobbo —
    February 20, 2008 @ 7:12 pm

    rain on your wedding day. Isn’t that ironic?

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