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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Tamar Jacoby's late ex-husband / heroin junkie / neocon extraordinaire"

13 Comments -

1 – 13 of 13
Blogger Ron Guhname said...

At least in the short-term, the socially and politically gifted influence events much more than the intellectually gifted.

6/20/07, 3:36 PM

Anonymous SFG said...

Cyberspace didn't exist back then. Of course access to powerful people is more important than anything else; were things any different in the time of the Medici? The value of the Internet is as a way for commoners to network and challenge their overlords, like in the grassroots immigration campaign (or the Dean netroots on the left). It's not as powerful as a few drinks with President Bush, but he's not going drinking with us anyway, now is he?

6/20/07, 3:47 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What stands out in this bit is not the Jewish background of Jacoby's late ex-husband. But his CLASS.

Room-mate of a Kennedy? Connected to Moynihan, the Murdochs, etc?

There has been a fairly ugly search for "neo-cons" i.e. the old hunt for "Jewish" conspiracies. When staring everyone in the face in this article is CLASS.

Class as epitomized by polite, New York upper-crust society from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, with aristos and networks and connections. All having the same sort of Teddy Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson-Franklin Delano-Roosevelt-JFK "neo-con" liberal conservatism noblesse oblige.

Think about it. All came from money or moneyed intellectual backgrounds (or at least the pretense to intellectual activity much like courtly poems and such in the late Middle Ages). All were part of a hereditary, networked elite in a fairly populist, socially and physically mobile society. All had to reconcile their aristo background with populist longings.

Hence, neo-con ideology. Harnessing populist idealism (all people are like us, can be made like us, can fit in with us) with aristo leadership (we aristos can make that happen).

You can draw a straight line from Teddy Roosevelt to GWB. Same backgrounds, same ideologies, same melding of faux populism to aristo leadership.

The corollary to this is that the aristo leadership itself is not capable of carrying itself much further, dissipating itself into drugs or other issues. We've had a century of aristo leadership and it seems we are due for a big dose of Andy Jackson fairly soon.

6/20/07, 4:15 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

There seems to be an inbred class-based system that determines who gets to write for major newspapers, no?

6/20/07, 4:39 PM

Anonymous Russell said...

Anon 4:15,

His abilities to influence may have been because of class connections, but it seems quite clear that at least a large segment of his beliefs about immigration were indeed formed by his Jewish experience, namely, that immigration to America saved his parents' lives. Unrealistic Ellis Island nostalgia is depressingly common amongst influential Jews today. Nothing about blue blood class consciousness there.

6/20/07, 6:05 PM

Blogger Luke said...

It is apparent that the guy had a kind of intimate-charm-charisma-sympathy that drew people to him, in addition to everything else. He was specially lovable and human somehow. Even Lawrence Auster weeps for him (and curses you, Steve, for being disrespectful).

Those class comments are still pretty acute though. First it was the Wasps, now it is the . . . Jasps? Circulation of elites Pareto called it (even though I can't stand him).

6/20/07, 9:46 PM

Blogger Vol-in-Law said...

My wife explained the tv show 'Law & Order' to me as being about the replacement of one elite by another - the destruction of New York's old WASP elite by a new Jewish elite, assisted by Catholic footsoldiers (not that my wife really objected to this, she's WASP but strongly pro-Jewish). This was exemplified by the many many episodes where DA Adam Schiff turns on and destroys some old WASP elite family with whom he's been friends for decades, but L&O's villains are almost always WASPs.
We live in the UK though and haven't seen many Fred Thompson era eps, don't know if Dick Wolf changed the tone at all for the new DA character. -ViL

6/21/07, 12:30 PM

Blogger Vol-in-Law said...

Lawrence Auster has been attacking Steve Sailer a lot over this article, calling him an 'amoral paleocon', which I find odd - Auster's concern for religion and religiosity seems much more paleo to me than Sailer's concern for empirical reality. One reason Sailer is morally degenerate, according to Auster, is his refusal to take seriously the Iranian threat to Israel, and a snarky comment from Sailer to the effect that America shouldn't care about the Iranian threat to Israel because Israel isn't America. According to Auster, this means Sailer hates Israel. Hmm. Personally I support Israel, but I'm aware that it's a largely irrational, "which football team" sort of support. I can't imagine an Iranian-American commentator saying that Sailer hated Iran because he didn't support Iran in its conflict with Israel, but that seems to be the standard that's applied.

6/21/07, 12:37 PM

Anonymous fwood1 said...

I believe Auster is a former Jew who converted to Christianity (Episcopal?). However, considering his strong philo-semitism, I don't understand why he bothered to make the switch.

6/21/07, 1:13 PM

Anonymous David Davenport said...

You can draw a straight line from Teddy Roosevelt to GWB. Same backgrounds, same ideologies, same melding of faux populism to aristo leadership.

But T.R. was tough on immigration, not just illegal immigration.

Furthermore, it may be incorrect to say Teddy R. was a false Populist. He certainly didn't talk like one. There are some recordings of Teddy Roosevelt speaking ( made on Edison cylinders?). His accent is mid-Atlantic, almost English. Roosevelt I didn't affect a phoney Bubba acccent.

And the later Teddy Roosevelt differs from Chimpy MacBush Satan Jr. on issues such as trade protectionism ( "Thank God I am not a free trader"), anti-trust enforcement, and environmental conservation.

Yes, T.R. hyped a jingoistic war in 1898, but Rossevelt personally led a charge in that war, in the most literal sense. He didn't just make a celebrity appearance on an aircraft carrier in mid-ocean.

Sorry, but I don't think that George Jr. is a Teddy Roosevelt guy. Instead, one might liken the Bush/Cheney/Rove/swishy Lindsey Graham cabal to antebellum Democrats.

6/21/07, 2:09 PM

Anonymous Russell said...

fwood,

That's an amazingly obtuse statement. Presumably he did that because he came to believe that Jesus was the son of God. That would be pretty obvious, wouldn't it? Unless you think of religion as merely a matter of tribalism.

6/21/07, 2:57 PM

Anonymous Riot Nrrd said...


That's an amazingly obtuse statement. Presumably he did that because he came to believe that Jesus was the son of God. That would be pretty obvious, wouldn't it? Unless you think of religion as merely a matter of tribalism.



One is reminded of the beer-bellied biker accosted by a tiny, old woman-no one else would have dared- who said, "If that gut was on a woman. I'd say she was pregnant".

Without missing a beat, the biker informed her, "It was, and she is."

6/29/07, 6:14 PM

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5/13/14, 7:04 PM

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