I still look at NR occasionally — out of nostalgia, having been addicted during the Niemeyer, Kuehneldt-Leddihn, and Sobran years… but, alas, you can’t go home again. Now big-bucks Bill is the best they can do.
Bill Bennett brings to mind Cardinal Newman’s valuable observation that applies to people writing about ethics (having taught the subject for many years myself) as it does to theologians: “Being a great theologian does not make you more holy. It only makes you more guilty when you sin.”
Anyway, today, Bill goes on and on about how ill-schooled Obama is — but lets slip his real reasons (maybe he’s actually writing his own stuff these days) for opposing him: Oil and Israel.
And what professional Catholic ethicist Bennett have to say about some possibly troubling moral issues — say, the millions of Christians in the Middle East who have been devastated, displaced, persecuted, and killed in Bush’s war?
Nothing. This Catholic champion of ethics writes 2800 words, but the word “Christian” is not among them. For the go-to man on virtue, Middle-Eastern Christians apparently don’t count if their presence obstructs the central ingredients of the neocon agenda. The rest, as Aquinas might say, is straw.
Bennett’s piece is apparently designed to replicate the “fear the Democrats” theme that brought victory to the GOP in 2000 and 2004. Nonetheless, I wonder whether John McCain will be comfortable with Bennett’s candid exposition of the ingredients of that rationale this time around, as the campaign grinds on.
6:54 am on June 24, 2008
