ANGELO M. CODEVILLA: Presumption of Authority The Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing
Clarke, Stefan Halper and Jonathan
BOOKS IN REVIEW thing unforgivably white. She came out in favor of Clarence Thomas in a This time it was Decca who exploded, concocting the were pleased with the verdict but thought he was...
...Rather than sailing against the popular winds, they have trimmed their sails...
...Jessica Mitford, for all her rebellious eccentricities, was just that: Honorable, in ways beyond her title...
...The friendship broke up when Angelou did someNew York Times op-ed, saying that the hysterics calling for his head should calm down and listen to his side of the story, if only because a black man who had come that far was too precious to sacrifice...
...From books, as well as from common sense, one might have learned that ideas are not necessarily reductive epiphenomena, that some are better representations of reality than others, and that some are actually, really, better than others...
...The Chinese must know it too...
...Here and there the book brushes up against reality: A tour of think tanks in Washington reveals that each has a point of view, and is not particularly eager to confront opposing ones...
...Simpson case...
...ant, nostalgic one in view of today’s approaching moral collapse, that the Hon...
...They described reality...
...Presumption of Authority MERICAFOREIGN has been a mess, mostly forever, because the wrong individuals have been making policy on behalf of a people congenitally vulnerable to “big ideas,” the first of different from and better than the rest of nations...
...This book, we read, was conceived over dinner in a thatched cottage near the University at Cambridge...
...Its “professionals” and “rational center” are the same folks who once claimed the same privileges calling themselves “owls” (as opposed to hawks and doves) and “the best and the brightest,” or simply “the wise men...
...Nowhere in this mountain of letters is there the slightest hint of lovers, lesbians, abortions, radical feminism, or any of the lubricious confusion our world takes for granted...
...As for “Manifest Destiny,” a little reading would have shown that, rather than an “enabling ” slogan or evidence of collective psychosis, it was a journalist’s description of what in fact was happening: In the 19th Deja Reviews: – Selections from National Review and The American Spectator Get the very best of Miss Florence King from both National Review and The American Spectator in our new book, Deja Reviews...
...BASIC B, 312 Reviewed by Angelo M. Codevilla hands will go into on-the-other-hand, all followed by a P.S...
...Perhaps if it had been conceived in the library, it might have been different...
...authors gauged their patrons’ or their own appetite is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a fellow of the ClareThe Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing By Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke OOKSPAGES, $26.95) BOOKS IN REVIEW for intellectual confrontation, they would find it just motivations are created equal...
...Whatever else she stood for, she was an old-fashioned girl who slept with only two men and was married to both of them...
...When John Winthrop as slim...
...So badly did the ship of state careen that the tional center,” best personified by Brent Scowcroft and his cohort from the first administration this to last, all must understand just how far beyond the American people—what with their mentality—is the business of foreign policy, and the professionals must vow never to be silenced again...
...It would be best for both sides if neither tried to upset this balance...
...Any attempt at transition between the blasts would be ludicrous, like playing a – Paul Greenberg, Introduction to JUNE 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 67...
...There is a fine literature on that subject, by guys with names like Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, Seward, and TR...
...People magazine waltz between artillery barrages...
...From the fact that the Bush II reduced complex matters to sound administration’s War on Terror and war in Iraq were ill conceived and incompetently bites, mostly supportive of popular executed, the book concludes that the au-passions...
...This led to catastrophe in Iraq and alienated America from the world...
...The lady knows nothing of mediocrity...
...They were not shilling a Big Idea...
...rule...
...cited Deuteronomy and Matthew in 1630, and when In fact, rather than a rational, positive discussion Ronald Reagan cited Winthrop and the tradition that of what good foreign policy might be, the book is a he represented, they were not engaging in propaganclaim of exclusive authority on behalf of a single position within the American political In think tanks and on TV they have spectrum...
...Which may be why any collection of her writings goes off like a fireworks display...
...Cozy...
...In another she said, “We welcomed the verdict as Benj [the sort of an Affirmative Action type of vote...
...She came out in favor of Clarence Thomas in a This time it was Decca who exploded, concocting the were pleased with the verdict but thought he was Treuhafts’ son] did, serves the cops right...
...The rest of its substantive discussion is on a much lower level...
...Please call 800.524.3469, visit www.spectator.org/DejaReviews, or mail a check to: The American Spectator, 1611 N. Kent Street, Ste...
...This is the acme of the book’s profundity...
...A thought: It also comes as a surprise, though a rather pleasA’S POLICY which is that America is it, because they believe in big ideas or presumably in God—have asserted their neocon helmsmen were discredited, enabling the “raBush (in which Stefan Halper served), to take back the wheel...
...But for this book...
...901, Arlington, VA 22209 Florence King All Over Again anew with these delightful selections of Miss King’s “To say that Florence King doesn’t suffer fools gladly is an understatement akin to suggesting that Fred Astaire could maneuver quite nicely on the dance floor...
...Brent Scowcroft’s “rational center” sure knows this, and wants to protect America from “big ideas” that would upset the balance...
...For just $24.95 (includes S&H) take a trip down memory lane, or begin the journey voluminous collection of essays from 1991-2002...
...Alas, the American people’s latest “big idea,” forcefully expanding democracy, has intimidated or corrupted too many professionals who know better, turning them into enablers of irrational passions...
...Now and again, however, the right people, whom the authors call interchangeably “the professionals” or “the rational center”—people who don’t believe in rightful authority over the American mob, and have done good...
...Redressing centuries of injustice in our law courts...
...They never used the word “exceptionalism...
...Deja Reviews This is a limited time offer...
...Indeed, not all da, rationalization, or oversimplification, any more than Moses had been...
...Americans believe this, and all that follows from God...
...Hence The last part of this disjointed tome says of China: “the present U.S.-China balber of parts, some of which are very much to our advantage while others form disturbing liabilities...
...ance is composed of a numThe reader will be shocked, shocked...
...This led to catastrophe in Iraq, thors and their friends have a natural right to and alienated America from the world...
...Moreover, as just about any immigrant will tell you, America is different...
...bizarre theory that “Maya has completely cast her lot with right-wing Republican blacks, all Bush toadies...
...But if the 66 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 2007 Angelo M. Codevilla mont Institute...
...But the book does not say how it knows that they know...
...In think tanks and on TV, they have reduced complex matters to sound bites, mostly supportive of popular passions...
...It goes without saying that Decca supported Jesse Jackson for president in 1984, but what boggles the mind is her take on the O.J...
...We probably guilty,” she wrote in one letter...
...almost as long as the letter itself...
...Hence we are told, without detail, that intelligence is a chancy business...
Vol. 40 • June 2007 • No. 5
