Apparently the neocons are about to learn that they were just another short-term vessel for the Israel First, Last, and Always activists; as David Goldberg not only disavows neoconservatism, but also Bill Kristol.
No one in the conservative Commentariat has beaten up on poor Bill Kristol more than I during the past dozen years. I read David Horowitz’ excoriation of Kristol as a “renegade Jew” with chagrin; I respect David Horowitz — and have spoken at his conferences on several occasions — and I reviewed admiringly his book A Point in Time.
But his choice of words was churlish. Kristol devotes considerable time to Jewish causes and genuinely identifies as a Jew, although his level of religious observance is low (as is David’s). Kristol certainly doesn’t think that he has reneged on his Jewish identity. But he is so absorbed in the cultish self-adoration of the neo-conservative clique, and so insecure about the perception of his manifold policy blunders (for example, his naive endorsement of the Arab Spring as near-equivalent to the American Founding), that his judgment of late has been dreadful. His third-party proposal will go nowhere.
Kristol makes the mistake of thinking that he still matters. The neo-conservatives enforced party discipline in the media and foundations they control with the same inquisitorial zeal that the Left applies to the persecution of conservatives at American universities. They crushed dissent ruthlessly, and declared anathema upon anyone who questioned them.
Now the American people have vomited them out. No candidate who took ownership of the Bush Freedom Agenda got past first base in the Republican primaries.
He’s right to say that Kristol’s sore loser third-party talk will go nowhere. Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, and Reince Priebus have made it clear that despite their reservations about him, Donald Trump will be the uncontested representative of the Red Faction. However, despite his endorsement of Donald Trump in preference to Hillary Clinton, Goldberg clearly can’t be trusted to give a damn about Americans or the American national interest.
In addition to floating a trial balloon about the possibility of the Learned Elders of Wye jumping for what he, and they, have proposed as the safe harbor of China from the future wreckage of the USA, Spengler makes it very clear why he prefers Trump to Clinton.
- The Clintons are a criminal enterprise
- “Trump is more pro-Israel, and that’s a key issue for me.”
You don’t say. Goldberg appears to be getting increasingly delusional of late, as his explanation of why that’s a key issue for him.
“Israel is not only America’s key ally in a dodgy part of the world, but the cornerstone on which the edifice of the American republic was founded in the first place. In a July 2015 essay for the Jewish media, I asked, “Will Israel Save America?” The destiny of Americans — the “almost chosen people,” in Lincoln’s words — is bound up with the destiny of Israel.”
Fascinating, is it not? Goldberg would have us believe that the United States was NOT founded as a Christian, Anglo-American nation on the basis of the Rights of Englishmen, but was instead a proposition republic founded on the cornerstone of Israel. Still think this lunatic has ANY interest whatsoever in anything you recognize as your country, or even Western civilization?
It reminds me of an old Greek saying: whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
It isn’t only Kristol who has made the mistake of thinking he still matters. It is clear that the Alt Right, with its total lack of interest in granting even a modicum of respectability to Holocaustianity and cuckservatism, is driving Israel Firsters like Kristol and Goldberg and Shapiro around the bend. They simply don’t know what to do when pointing-and-shrieking “ANTI-SEMITE” and “Muh Holocaust” and “my granddaddy couldn’t join the golf club” is met with a totally indifferent shrug. We don’t care. Not even a little bit. The existential crisis of the nation is a considerably more important matter than the dramatic histrionics of a lesser minority.
Now, the United States should maintain friendly relations with Israel; it behooves any country to be on the best terms it can be with a nuclear power. And Israel would be a very useful ally in the great clash of Christian and Islamic civilizations, or it least it will be if it ever stops trying to convince, persuade and manipulate Americans into fighting its wars for it, as it should for both its own sake and America’s.
But Israel is not the cornerstone of America and its national priorities are neither primary, secondary, nor even tertiary for Americans.
Nevertheless, Goldberg’s dismissive condemnation of neoconservatism and his recognition that it no longer has any hold on Americans is a welcome indication that things have truly changed, and that Fukuyama’s insane neo-Marxian vision of the worker’s paradise as liberal representative democracy is dead.