Podhoretz, Left To Right

 https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/present-at-the-creation-2/

Podhoretz is yet another well educated super intelligent Jewish American. I have a pro-Jewish prejudice, especially after working with super intelligent and diligent Jews from IBM's Haifa location. 

Smart is not always wise ... wisdom normally takes making and admitting to mistakes. Intelligence has a tendency to give one more opportunity to do this, and Norman Podhoretz (NP) is a great example. In the early 60's he was one of the founders of the "new left". One with standards of intellectual seriousness.  

Yes. At the time. I was editor of Commentary, and I rejected articles that were ideologically okay but callow. The most notable example was Tom Hayden’s manifesto, which was the founding document of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. Hayden submitted the “Port Huron Statement” to me, and I turned it down. And some people, including many of my friends, said, “Are you crazy?” And I replied, “It’s not intellectually up to par.” And they said, “Well, what difference does that make?” Well, it made a difference to me, and still does. So there was a limit to my commitment to that movement, but I was committed to it.

Like the Democratic Party leaving Reagan (vs him leaving it), the New Left left  NP, 

... at some point that analysis and that agenda changed dramatically—let’s say, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael. Or from David Riesman to Saul Alinsky. Maybe it was 1972, with the bombing of Hanoi, or perhaps earlier when the whole movement turned and said this country was not bad just because it wasn’t fulfilling its own ideals. In fact, it didn’t have such ideals. Those ideals were fake.

Alinsky is a name that shows up quite a bit if you start looking into how the Swamp came to be. Both Hillary Clinton and Obama were heavily influenced by him.  

NP understood and understands that America is in grave peril ... it is led by leaders that hate it. He understood and understands that Trump is a very imperfect vessel of saving America, and often compares him with the imperfect vessel King David. 

In 2019, you told the CRB’s readers that Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was “a kind of miracle,” and you called him “an unworthy vessel chosen by God to save us from the evil on the Left.” And you finished that passage by remarking, “If he doesn’t win in 2020, I would despair of the future.” Now it’s 2022. Trump didn’t win. Are you despairing?

He has this to say about the Founders ... 

They created a system whereby more freedom and more prosperity have been accorded to more people—including blacks—than by any civilization known to human history. That achievement is what puts us up there with Athens and Elizabethan England. That’s why I don’t hesitate to use the word “evil” in talking about the ideas and the people promulgating them who are trying their best to tear that precious system down. The last chapter of My Love Affair with America is called “Dayenu American-style.” Dayenu means “it would have sufficed.” It’s a Hebrew term and at the Passover Seder, there is a whole litany of gratitude to God: If God had only done this, it would have been enough. If he had only done this, it would have been enough. Dayenu, dayenu. So I have a whole series of dayenus about why I love this country so much. So this is where I stand. We all have to face the fact that we are at war, albeit a cold civil war, and that this moment is not just an ordinary political disagreement in which we can be bipartisan, etc., etc. All that, that’s gone. God bless America is all I can say. Amen.

America used to be "dayenu" ... "good enough", which can always be improved upon. The left no longer wants to fix it, it wants to burn it down, and given especially the  "matches" of voter fraud, they may well succeed. 

As I say incessantly, the left and the Democratic Party in particular are completely inconsistent.

I have to say that I am perfectly prepared to believe that the 2020 election may have been stolen. Yet the outraged reaction to anyone who says that or believes that has been absolutely astounding. Because think of Stacey Abrams, whom I regard as a nothing and a no one, lost her bid for the governorship of Georgia by something like 50,000 votes. And to this day, she has refused to concede, and for that refusal she was turned into a hero of the Democratic Party. So, the idea that it’s shocking beyond belief to cast some doubt on the 2020 presidential election is utterly demented. Anyway, the Democratic Party spent two and a half years and 20 billion dollars or whatever it was, trying to prove not just that Trump had stolen the 2016 election, but that he was actually a Russian agent, that is to say a traitor.

How does one negotiate in this conflict?