Michael Lind: Portrait of the Autist

...Many of us saw the Buchanan speech as a slightly more aggressive version of frequently expressed, though not universally accepted, conservative ideas...

...a 10,000-line epic poem to be published next year by Houghton Mifflin...

...Serenity does not come easily to men who are aware of their own towering genius (look at Ezra Pound), and in the memoir sections of Up From Conservatism Lind makes clear that his life has been a painful quest for intellectual honesty...

...What Lind really needs is a magazine all his own...

...25) XVI...

...Lind appears to realize in retrospect that two of the loci of evil in America are the two men who gave him his early jobs, William F. Buckley, Jr...

...The religious Right was started, Lind asserts, with seed money from the Republican party and is now the dominant part of the conservative movement, which is itself “disproportionately staffed by immigrants and subsidized by foreign interests...

...Now, it so happens that I held a similar slot at NR a year or two before...

...One of their goals, he says, was to revive eugenics theory...

...It was there that he watched the 1992 Republican convention, a pivotal moment in intellectual history...

...The plot spans the range of Washington life, from elite society— private parties, inaugural balls—to crack-gang hangouts...

...Public dissent on matters of concern to the U.S...

...It seems worth mentioning, in closing, that Lind’s forthcoming Powertown represents another burst of personal growth...

...That’s not prolific, a critic once joked about another author, that’s incontinent...

...What’s important is velocity...

...Then Lind accepted a job at National Review...

...19-20) VIII...

...22) XII...

...End of Ideology Thesis (p...

...At one point, Lind criticizes Nathan Glazer, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and others for writing on subjects such as administration and foreign policy on which he says they have no expertise...

...Until The Lind and I comes into being, or until he finally accepts his proper role as a latenight talk-show host, we will have to be content with more sporadic signposts of his flowering talent...

...He is the Niagara Falls of the profession, a great big unstoppable torrent of words...

...But it’s not really fair to scrutinize Lind’s assertions, because his writing is not really about argument and evidence...

...Rise of New Left Activists (p...

...Somebody else got shot...

...17) IV...

...15) II...

...The most he could do to advance the cause of the New Deal and Great Society in those years was to publish op-eds trashing ideas like the Citizens Corps, a national service plan put forward by Sen...

...What’s important is velocity...

...Achievements of the New Deal (pp...

...As Pat Buchanan spoke to this convention, Lind was shocked to discover that American conservatives were not in fact the heirs to Lyndon Johnson and Gary Hart, but were, astonishingly, conservatives...

...But remember that Lind operates in his own world, elevated from ours...

...A year after that, he accepted some sort of mysterious role at the New Yorker...

...Lind’s prose has the two-in-the-morning feel of a solitary figure typing away furiously by the light of a single bulb...

...26) The most welcome sentence in this book reads: “There are two issues I do not address in this book...

...16) III...

...One minute you’re reading Lind’s analysis of OECD figures on income inequality, the next he’s spinning his theory of constitutional jurisprudence...

...Lawd a’mercy.’” And so Up From Conservatism is aptly named, for that is what we can expect from Lind, that he will ever ascend, up, up, up...

...Orders come down from a series of secret summits: “The Party line tended to be adopted at periodic ‘conservative summits,’ the private meetings once a year or so between conservative editors like [Irving] Kristol, [Norman] Podhoretz and [William F.] Buckley, occasional journalists like Charles Krauthammer, Republican politicians and foundation executives...

...Overclass Revolution, Triumph of Wealthy (p...

...But his talents were put to poor use there...

...He has written a novel called Powertown to be published in September...

...Analysis of 1992 Election Results (p...

...21-22) X. Problems with Civil Rights Movement (p...

...But obviously Lind by his very presence elevated the job status and saw deeper...

...Now when I left NR at age 23, I felt lucky to get any job...

...and his new book, Up From Conservatism, a history of American conservatism, a history of American liberalism, a statement of the Lindian political creed, a memoir (he is now 34), an expos...

...The central chapter of Up From Conservatism asserts that American conservatism is in fact an immense conspiracy: “What passes for intellectual conservatism is little more than the subsidized propaganda wing of the Republican Party...

...When I held it, the job was your basic entry-level position for kids just out of school, generously offered and gratefully accepted...

...Conspiracy nuts will be impressed by Lind’s account, but he will lose many of those who stop to wonder at his lifelong habit of taking checks from the nefarious network...

...Analysis of 1948 Presidential Campaign (pp...

...My political views have scarcely changed since college...

...But as he makes clear, Lind was on a mission to expound his New Deal/Great Society principles...

...business elite is not tolerated...

...And in that tiny section, relying on such sources as the New York Times Week in Review section, he asserts to his satisfaction that Republican economic ideas are not only completely wrong, but willfully wrong, a hoax...

...But Lind rises above such cheap shots by virtue of his grand and solitary fury...

...Up From Conservatism is published by the Free Press, the same house that has made its name publishing Irving Kristol, Ralph Reed, and David Brock...

...Lind writes that since childhood he has ranked Lyndon Johnson among the greatest of American presidents and that the “New Deal liberals, between FDR and Johnson, were responsible for most of what is worthwhile about contemporary America...

...In the mideighties, Lind asserts, “the Republican Party under Reagan appeared to be mellowing and moving to the center,” and so it seemed likely to Lind that conservatism would evolve along Great Society lines...

...That is to say, Michael Lind...

...who has constructed an entire world inside his head, with himself as the main player and the rest of his virtual reality peopled by abstract threats like “the national business class” and menaces like “wave after wave of right wing terrorism...

...23-25) XIV...

...22) XI...

...The first paragraph of that work announces the emergence of high literary style: “The eagle slants...

...And so having broken with his past, Lind stands alone, with nothing to protect him from the conservative ?ber-plot but his role at the New Yorker, his contributions to the New York Review of Books, and his various book contracts...

...Postwar Productivity Gains Declined Post-1973, Wage Stagnation (pp...

...Henry Wallace to George Wallace—History of Democratic Party (pp...

...But Lind, seeing things others don’t, heaps obloquy on the two, especially Kristol...

...That is where the scourge of the Overclass, the man who despises Manhattanites with their nannies, now finds himself—working for Tina Brown...

...To convey some sense of Lind’s frantic pace, I include an outline of the topics covered in this book on pages 15 through 26 (in a Michael Lind outline, there are no supporting points): I. Republican Realignment in 1994 (p...

...23-24) XIII...

...Though to be fair, his criticism of his former employer is not as great as that directed toward the South, the region where he grew up...

...He decided to join the staff of the Heritage Foundation as a “fellow” (he says...

...For who else in American life would feel himself qualified to write, on a weekly basis, editorials on political matters, think-pieces on intellectual history, poems for the literary section, short stories, reviews, satires, and, it seems only fitting, letters to the editor appraising his own work...

...Lind is vicious about Rupert Murdoch, the backer of this magazine, but Lind’s novel, for which he reportedly received a $100,000 advance, is being published by HarperCollins, Murdoch’s publishing house...

...It suggests a person who thinks alone, who comes up with brilliant insights but is unaware that hundreds before have had the same insights...

...Other writers of the Left—those who have actually researched their subject, like E.J...

...Many of us, lacking Lind’s insight, were unaware of this at the time...

...The writing suggests a person who thinks alone, who comes up with brilliant insights but is unaware that hundreds before have had the same insights...

...Others would see these men as unlikely villains, since they have done so much to advance the thinking and careers of so many, since Buckley is legendary for his friendships, since Kristol is equally legendary for his geniality...

...Survey of Global Trends in World’s Democracies (pp...

...Rise of Southern Republicans (p...

...To William F. Buckley, Jr., of course...

...But carrying it all along is a fascinating energy, spellbinding hatreds, and the endless flow of words pouring one upon the other...

...18-19) VI...

...25) XV...

...it’s never necessary to address counterevidence in Lind’s hermetically sealed universe...

...17) V. History of American Electoral Swings 1800-1951 (pp...

...His goal, he writes, has been always to support the forces most likely “to return to the tradition of the great age of midcentury liberalism of 1932-68...

...To defend that point in the world the rest of us live in, he would have to explain away the fact that Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan did not win the Republican nomination, and that William Safire and George Will seem to have greater standing in conservative circles than the members of the Michigan Militia...

...The opposition to abortion, for example, “was dictated by the religious right to the Republican party, which in turn dictated it to conservative scholars and journalists, via a few editors and program officers...

...Since, at age 33, he published in The Next American Nation his Grand Theory of American history, culture, and politics, his output has been unceasing—countless articles and book reviews (on subjects ranging from the flaws in the American jury system to the history of American Indians to the situation in China...

...The dialogue demonstrates how Lind has mastered the African-American argot: “‘Oh, lawdy,’ says Velma...

...This body of work too is modestly omitted from Up From Conservatism...

...He writes in this book that in the mid-eighties he especially admired Gary Hart...

...The speech, he says, “produced an exodus of leading young intellectuals formerly associated with the neoconservative right...

...But in Lind’s hermetically sealed universe, it’s never necessary to address counter-evidence and complexity...

...It hungers through space, its talons unknotting, its wingspan ragged as a saw blade...

...Shortly thereafter, he went to work for Harper’s...

...The apparatus works in tandem, Lind says, with its “covert, paramilitary terrorist factions,” including abortion-clinic bombers, the “sons of Gestapo,” and David Koresh...

...But Lind sees a vast apparatus that rigidly controls thought and opinion...

...With Buckley’s support, Lind was able to edit a conservative magazine called Scrutiny while a graduate student at Yale , which may seem an odd way to champion what Lind depicts as his unswerving pursuit of Humphrey/Johnson policies...

...I did not detect a flowering of Great Society liberalism at the magazine...

...Lind moved on, as his intellectual quest took him to job after job, to the State Department and then to the National Interest, the foreign policy magazine published by Irving Kristol...

...Sam Nunn and Rep...

...Faster than most people can think, faster than anybody can research, Michael Lind produces a thundering flow of critique, condemnation, and opinion...

...Not a Two-Party System— Samuel Lubell Thesis (p...

...who isn’t accustomed to testing his more outlandish concepts in normal conversation...

...This ruthlessly efficient apparatus, Lind claims, is two decades old: “The modern conservative brain trust originated in a scheme hatched in the 1970s by William E. Simon, Irving Kristol and others...

...20-21) IX...

...Party Switching Since 1994 (p...

...Others might have written a long book on, say, the Republican economic platform—going back to Friedman and Stigler, Buchanan, Mundell, and Feldstein—but Lind spits out the whole subject in just three pages...

...And no dissent...

...The novel is Lind’s attempt to achieve a Disraeli-like intimacy with the high and the low...

...it’s all about momentum, a constant and dizzying flow of certitudes...

...The most important of these meetings, Lind claims, is the Council on National Policy: “The membership roster of this secretive organization, which does not allow the press to attend its meetings, shows the degree to which mainstream Republicanism blends imperceptibly into far-right extremism...

...18) VII...

...So where did the young writer, fresh out of college, go in search of the heir to Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson...

...What we now know as the religious Right, Lind continues, was also created at about the same time: “Today’s religious right, far from being a spontaneous rebellion on the part of people of faith, as Christian coalition leaders Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed would have it, was engineered from above by Howard Phillips, a Jew, and Richard Viguerie, a Catholic, and other grass-roots activists in the 1970s...

...The writing has a brittle intensity that can be strangely hypnotic for people in that middle-ofthenight mood...

...Influence of Jews on American Left (p...

...In one chapter entitled “Three Conservative Hoaxes,” Lind tackles conservative economics, education reform, and welfare reform, throws in the Strategic Defense Initiative, healthcare reform, and FDA reform, and gets in a few words about eugenics (a recurring obsession) besides...

...A bit after that, to the New Republic...

...Lind modestly omits any mention of Scrutiny in his brief recounting of his Yale days...

...The mechanism that makes possible such total control is laid out by Lind: “Republican politicians would adopt a position, in response to pressure from this or that constituency— corporations seeking bigger depreciation allowances, the anti-abortion movement, the NRA—and the intellectuals would undertake to provide scholarly sounding rationalizations for the conservative Republican line...

...While he formerly worked at conservative institutions and now works at liberal ones, he says, “my political journey has been far less dramatic than a switch from left to right...

...Up From Conservatism careens from issue to issue...

...Those with a Lindian frame of mind will begin to wonder if Lind himself isn’t a careful creation of the conservative mafia meant to discredit those who are really out to expose the right-wing beast...

...of a dirty conspiracy at the heart of American politics, a survey of recent electoral history, a critique of various political philosophies, and a scathing attack on his many political enemies, real and imagined...

...and Irving Kristol...

...Today,” he opines, “the right is defined by Robertson, Buchanan, and the militia movements...

...So where did he go to work in search of promoting these liberal ideas updated by Hart...

...Dionne and John Judis—argue that conservatism is actually fractured and that it may well break apart...

...Dave McCurdy...

...But by the time Lind took over, it seems, it had become a major position from which it was possible to view the very inner workings of the conservative elite...