The disgust is only the beginning

[elfs]

Once upon a time, I read National Review. Writers like John Derbyshire and Victor Davis Hanson were, a few years ago, interesting, fresh with new ideas, and startlingly intellectual. Hanson has since devolved into a cheerleader for the President because he can't imagine an alternative, and Derbyshire recently shot himself in the foot by referring to the victims of Virginia Tech as "cowards" for refusing to take on an armed assailant all by themselves.

And then I am reminded that the senior editor at National Review once said that the goverment should mandate that every positive HIV diagnosis in this country should come with a tattoo warning for potential sex partners, preferably on the buttocks. I wondered what should be written there. "Abandon every hope, ye who enter?"

But an entry today by Thomas Sowell reveals the vicious mindlessness to which they have descended:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

That's all you need to read. Really. Go ahead and "enjoy" the rest of the article, but really, that encompasses the whole of his thought.

Comments

[solarbird]

I didn't say Bush administration, though they have been making the same arguments in slightly different language - specifically that the executive branch cannot be constrained by Congress or its tools, which is to say, law - but the Bush movement, which is the power currently led by Mr. Bush, but soon to be led by someone else now that Mr. Bush has exhausted his usefulness.

And I further don't think that calls for dictatorship have to come from the chief executive to be horrifying. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board (which is actually separate from the rest of the paper, which is fine; the news sections are quite good) which publishes the OpinionJournal pages form one of the major voices of the neoconservative movement, and, to a lessor degree, the conservative movement. This movement has dominated American politics for the six years previous to the last round of elections. That major voice is now calling for dictatorship. That's bad.