Under Discussion: Why Are Jews Liberals? By Norman Podhoretz. Doubleday (2009), 337 pages.

Norman Podhoretz has provided us with a remarkable case study of monomania. The question that the title of his book poses needs to be expanded if the author's meaning is to emerge, and it is only then that one can grasp the author's fixation. What Podhoretz wishes to know is why American Jews vote in overwhelming numbers for leftwing Democrats, when in his view it goes against their interests to do so.

If this is what Podhoretz means, a further question at once arises. Why does he think that it is contrary to Jewish interests to support liberal Democrats? At first, the answer appears to be that it's detrimental to the economic welfare of Jews for them to act in this way:

Much as has been said of me, I know Larry Auster, he's very intelligent, and I respect him. I read his blog just about every day and find him an engaging presence in person. And I hope he takes the following criticism in the constructive spirit in which it is written.

I often get the sense that Larry has turned himself into a kind of Ayn Rand of the paleo Right. So often, do I see him expelling others from the circle of "conservatism" -- to the point that the only conservatives left are himself and a handful of intimates -- inflating a single issue or difference of opinion into an existential Either/Or, and proclaiming the absolute consistency of his philosophy (while in actuality it's full of the elisions and willed forgetting characteristic of an ideology.)¹

His recent comments on AltRight follow this trend...

L. Paul Bremer, former head of the US Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, popped up for an interview recently. Bremer (His nickname "Jerry" is much too bland. Victorian custom might accord our hero the moniker of "Baghdad.") had nothing to say about the bang-up job he did in managing the occupation of Iraq from 2003-2004. But as a former ambassador to the Netherlands, he did elect to share his wisdom on the subject of Islam in Europe.

Bremer is a Neoconservative, in case his position in Baghdad didn't clue you in. As such, he purports to defend the heritage of the West while maintaining a worldview and positions that only work to undermine it.

Ukraine's announcement that it will pass a law that will bar the country from joining NATO has been greeted with barely concealed relief in Moscow, Paris, Berlin and Rome. It is also good news for the security interests of the United States. The time has come not only to give up on NATO expansion, but also to abolish the Alliance altogether.

Encouraging an impoverished, practically defenseless nation such as Ukraine to join a military alliance directed against the superpower next door, thereby stretching a nuclear tripwire between them, had never been a sound strategy. Article V of the NATO Charter states that an attack on one is an attack on all, and offers automatic guarantee of aid to an ally in distress. The U.S. would supposedly provide its protective cover to a new client, right in Russia's geopolitical backyard, in an area that had never been deemed vital to America's security interests.

From the realist perspective, accepting Ukraine into NATO would mean one of two things: either the United States is serious that it would risk a thermonuclear war for the sake of, say, the status of Sebastopol, which is insane; or the United States is not serious, which would be frivolous and dangerous.

Bebe of Conservative Heritage Times sums it up:

The U.S. appears to be gearing up for it...

FrumForum's latest attack on me and AlternativeRight, "Richard Spencer's Nordic Supermen," is notable in that its author, Alex Knepper, has moved beyond the ho-hum "guilt by association" accusations we've come to expect from such people. Earlier he had attempted "guilt by dramatization" and now has tried the exceedingly difficult "guilt by the recounting of an anecdote that reminds the author of the person he's trying to smear." Bold! Knepper's article makes SPLC tactics seem tame and boring in comparison.

The young Alex speaks of his fascination with the esoteric and the fringe, and tells a tale about how he attended a Nordic Pride festival (where, we're not told) and met some Odinists. These rough-and-tumble folks, who wore Thor's Hammers, discussed kith, kin, and bloodlines, and talked about rearing warriors, clearly offended Alex's delicate sensibilities. Alex hints that they're anti-Semitic, but the portrait he paints doesn't lead me to believe that these people have done anything wrong. Our world is full of groups that desire a sense of roots and "Us-ness" -- for proof, Alex might try to join the National Council of La Raza.

I don't have any problem with Pagans, but these people are supposed to be my Nordic Supermen? Really? For nowhere in the article does Alex claim that, say, I was there, that I'm a member of their group, that I even know any of these people, etc. etc. etc.

For further evidence (as if it were needed) of my Nordic supremacy, Alex cites the title of an AltRight article ... by Robert Weissberg, the good-natured, Manhattan-dwelling cosmopolitan who, I'm afraid, is about as far from "Odinic" as you can get.

Richard Spencer is right when he says that he couldn't think of any significant issue that the Alternative Right and the established conservative movement would hold in common. What he might have added is that he couldn't think of any significant issue over which the conservative movement and the GOP would disagree; or any major issue on which the Alternative Right and the GOP would agree. There is equal truth in all of these statements.

The conservative movement and the GOP have virtually merged, a situation that is underscored by the likelihood that the designated successor to Edwin Feulner as head of the Heritage Foundation will be the wife of Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Beltway conservative foundations work for Republican administrations almost exclusively, and they do so when the GOP is in power or else when it is trying to take over the presidency and/or Congress.