Epstein and Hadar in AmCon

Two articles you don’t want to miss from the current American Conservative. Leon Hadar demonstrates just how out of touch with reality the Neocons are. Their “Chalabi” for Iran is, I’m not making this up, the son of Shah Pahlavi. “Michael Ledeen has described Pahlavi as ‘widely admired inside Iran, despite his refreshing lack of avidity for power or wealth,’…” Don’t they remember the hostage crisis? The Iranians being a bit bitter over the whole Shah thing? Hello!?

Marcus Epstein contributes a really outstanding, and discouraging, account of the latest CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference). I’ve been sheltered from a lot of this having been involved with the outstanding Washington University conservative and libertarian students. But listen to Epstein’s depressingly accurate rendition of the rising generation:

…most college students, who came of age as conservatives in the post-9/11 world, identify conservatism as support for the war in Iraq and President Bush. Russell Kirk, Ludwig von Mises, and Richard Weaver, if they have even heard of them, are seen as thoughtful but irrelevant—and certainly not as fun as having David Horowitz and Ann Coulter tell you how to accuse your professors of treason.

I was most personally angered by the ill treatment given John Basil Utley, whom I’ve gotten to chat with a bit at a couple Mises Institute events. Let me just say that the ignorant punks who “cough[ed] obscenities about him as he spoke” aren’t worthy to tie his shoes.

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7:38 pm on April 17, 2005