December 16, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Mirror Mirror on The Wall
Orrin Judd thinks conservatives risk lazy overconfidence and intellectual decline.
....conservatives of D'Souza's age--which is mine, and I've been watching them since we were in college--are generationally in the same position as liberals of (Lionel) Trilling's or Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s.Imagine that.
UPDATE: These are not Orrin's words, as noted in the comments, but those of George Packer in The Nation in a lengthy excerpt. In any event, tt was the extraordinary possibility of comparing D'Souza to Schlesinger Jr. that struck me, as well as the continuing meme of strong ideological movements needing deep intellectual opposition to avoid "triumphalism".
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at December 16, 2002 5:53 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>The citation is actually from an excerpted column that Judd is reviewing; his own comments are below in un-blockquoted text. The 'mine', 'I' and 'we' of the text refer to George Packer of the Nation, not Judd.
And while Judd concedes that such overconfidence is a risk, I don't think he credits that risk with the same urgency as Packer.
Posted by: Dave Mader on December 16, 2002 9:09 AMComments are Closed.