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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (49148)	5/23/1999 12:34:00 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 67261

Hey, you guys are confusing me! :-) Neocon, I'm pretty sure you are a member of SI. You need to email Jill and find out what your user name and password are. The reason I feel this way, besides what Jill said, is because I can read your profile and you don't have a little (coffee shop) emblem next to your name. I believe all the Go2net people have this. Michael

To: Neocon who wrote (49148)	5/23/1999 9:16:00 AM
From: neocom	Respond to of 67261

Speaking of names, you wouldn't recognize this bit of turgid pap, would you? Strangely, the author doesn't seem to appear anyway else in print, besides this letter to the editor, though maybe he writes for the kind of organs that don't get indexed. The ironies surrounding your recent symposium abound. Writing in National Review two years ago, Father Richard John Neuhaus objected to The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and the late Richard J. Herrnstein on the grounds that some matters are best passed over in silence. Now, some of those who defended The Bell Curve have come down hard on Neuhaus for providing a public forum for delicate matters. The natural-law tradition offers a secular, philosophical perspective that happens to have been most fully developed among Roman Catholics. It is not a theological doctrine, except in the attenuated sense that it may require a certain metaphysical perspective, namely, that there is an order to the cosmos that implies a teleology of human development and activity. From such a perspective, it is possible to derive norms through which we may judge the propriety of human actions, including those of government. In other words, when we apply the natural-law tradition, precisely what we do is judge regimes and laws. Why, then, the scandal? It may be objected that the tone of the symposium in First Things was alarmist. I myself, a neoconservative of the younger generation, dislike and disagree with "doom-and-gloom" conservatism. But I have another concern. The conservative coalition is not indestructible. As it stands, neoconservatives and Buchananites can barely manage civility. It is not helpful for prominent neoconservatives to anathematize those who only recently were their friends. That style of argument smacks of political correctness and the enforcement of discipline rather than principled disagreement. Indeed, it seems to me that we must generally guard against a style of cultural criticism which is too eager to react, and instead affirm the value of reflection and the appreciation of nuance. Of course, critics must criticize, but censoriousness is no substitute for careful analysis and reasoned response.