The Volokh Conspiracy

In other words, folks at the Times think conservatives are basically from outer space, but Kristol and Brooks seem "familiar" enough to be almost human.

IF the Times is going to have more than one nonliberal columnist, I don't see the point of having two with virtually identical views and backgrounds. Brooks even used to write for Kristol's Weekly Standard, if I remember correctly. It would have made more sense to get a nonliberal very different from Brooks, such as a libertarian or traditionalist.

Someone like William Kristol who dismisses
legitimate concerns about immigration, lack of assimilation
and overall population growth as "Yahoos" is hard
to describe as a conservative. See his editorial
"Y is for Yahoo," which could have been written
for the Nation.

http://tinyurl.com/322z9r


I hardly consider those who believe in limiting legal immigration to "only" 1 million per year and ending illegal
entry to be "anti-immigration."

Meant to say

"Someone like William Kristol who dismisses those with
legitimate concerns about immigration, lack of assimilation
and overall population growth as "Yahoos" is hard
to describe as a conservative."

sbron,

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work to come up with single issues -- or single statements about single issues -- on which a person's position either includes or excludes him from being labeled a conservative.

Except that immigration is not just about immigration --
it is about whether a nation is defined by borders and a common set of values, or if it is just a multicultural
free trade zone. The question is also whether
we believe Americans are self-sufficient, hardworking and intelligent people who we should invest in, or are
ignorant lazy xenophobes who can only be saved by mass immigration.

For these reasons and more immigration is the most
important conservative/right versus liberal/left issue
at hand.

One would think that the NYT could have found a conservative pundit who has been (at least) occasionally right in his or her predictions. Bill Kristol has extremely low credibility. Perhaps name recognition and a lively, glib manner are seen as more important criteria for hiring a columnist.

Sbron writes:

The question is also whether
we believe Americans are self-sufficient, hardworking and intelligent people who we should invest in, or are
ignorant lazy xenophobes who can only be saved by mass immigration.

Funny, my instincts are to see it in exactly the opposite way. You could say the question is whether we believe in the American dream, in which people come from other shores ready to work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps Horatio Alger style, or whether we need big government protectionism to artificially limit the supply of labor. From that perspective, the pro-immigration view is the conservative one, and the anti-immigration view is the liberal one. Of course, that's not the only way to look at it, but that's the point: there is no one "conservative" view.

From that perspective, the pro-immigration view is the conservative one, and the anti-immigration view is the liberal one. Of course, that's not the only way to look at it, but that's the point: there is no one "conservative" view.

Certainly, if one discounts the desires of most of the politicians currently wearing the 'conservative' mantle and only looks to certain classical definitions. And I realize you hedged on that point, and that's entirely fair.

But the fact remains that anti-immigration sentiment is mostly constrained to what is currently considered the more right of center members of the more right of center party in the U.S. I wish more folks (from both sides) would make this a debate instead of triangulation, but there we have it. And yes, it is shameless triangulation - Look at Rudy.

I'm not going to get in to NAFTA and the odd reversal of Democratic priorities that went in to that, because it is late and that's a topic sufficiently interesting to warrant more time than I want to put it to it here. Suffice to say that I think a leading indicator of what the other team will do is pretty evident in what the last team has success supporting. There's a game theory/economic aspect to it that has little to do with ideology.

-- A libertarian voting Democrat this year.

if I absolutely had to talk to a conservative Republican

The NY Times did not have to hire a conservative at all. And in my view, it shouldn't have. I don't believe in affirmative action for conservatives.

It's the Times: that page has a long tradition of virtually identical views.

As Radley Balko writes:

A pretty uninspiring choice. It means the Times op-ed page will be well-represented by big government liberals (Krugman, Herbert), big government moderates (Friedman, Kristof), and big government conservatives (Brooks, Kristol). I do believe that just about covers the full range of acceptable political opinion, doesn't it?

Given Kristol's label of a neoconservative and his staunch and unwavering support for the War on Terror in Iraq, this is a surprising choice. Brooks never struck me as an ideologue, whereas Kristol's policy positions seem more dogmatic yet are well-reasoned and researched.

I guess the NYT is throwing me the proverbial bone (or small biscuit).

I don't see Kristol as much like Brooks. Brooks is only marginally conservative, in a political sense. He commonly writes against Republican orthodoxy. Kristol is Republican orthodoxy.

Only if you ignore all Republican orthodoxy preceding the year 2001.

It would be interesting to hear concrete suggestions of alternatives to Kristol.

The Times and Kristol have a record of poor relations. Kristol has said that the Times is "irredeemable" or to that effect. And the Times once referred to Kristol as "Dan Quayle's brain."

Maybe the Times hires these writers because Kristol and Brooks are, to the libertarian leaner who is on the fence about some lib-v-con issues, the least sympathetic and confirm the worst of the Times' stereotypes about anyone who disagrees with itds editors.

...maybe he's just trying to conserve the power of the current elite?

BINGO!

Anyway, my take is that the Times hired Kristol for the same reason they hired Tierney - because he's so laughably and consistently wrong that he serves as a buffoonish cartoon version of a conservative. Sort of like the NR giving Ward Churchill a column - the guys serves as his own best rebuttal.

Which, of course, begs the question of why they did the same thing with Dowd....

So which conservative commentators are not brain dead tools of the establishment these days? Buchanan?

George Will -- probably the most prominent conservative commentator in the country.

George Will -- probably the most prominent conservative commentator in the country.

Oh please... he is just another harmless Establishment pet "conservative".

I just wish they would hire ANYONE from outside the urban thinking conservatives or liberals(or progressive as the new word which is much more degratory). How about the rest of the COUNTRY? I am tired of the so-called paper of record. Sure.

I guess I'm disappointed that the NYT didn't go for the gusto - Kristol is fine, but he's pretty similar to Brooks - what would have been exciting would have been, say, Mark Steyn. Jeeze, that might have caused too many NYT readers to choke on their donuts.

David,

Your ability to play the poor persecuted conservative is truly unparalleled. Clearly, the NYT's decision to give Kristol an op-ed column is more evidence of the big bad MSM's prejudice against the right wing.

George Will -- probably the most prominent conservative commentator in the country.

Exactly. It's a pretty short list.

Guest101 writes:

David, Your ability to play the poor persecuted conservative is truly unparalleled. Clearly, the NYT's decision to give Kristol an op-ed column is more evidence of the big bad MSM's prejudice against the right wing.

What a puzzling comment. As I read David's post, he doesn't claim any persecution. Rather, he is suggesting that the liberals who run the New York Times have a very limited understanding of "the other side," and have made a choice by picking someone who appears worthy based on elite credentials rather than excellence or diversity of opinion. Whether that is right or wrong, I don't see what it has to do with "prejudice against the right wing".

Given the performance of its stock in the last five years, I'd say this is an act of desperation: now they have TWO conservatives on staff. No doubt Putz Sulzberger and staff are earnestly asking themselves, "What more could a great newspaper do?"

If they really wanted to bring in readers and excite the current ones, they would have gone with someone like Neal Boortz or Rush Limbaugh, but the Times and other big mainstream media would rather continue their slow march to extinction than make any real changes to balance their point of views.

Ilya and OK like many others make statements about anti-immigration thought without distinguishing between anti-ILLEGAL immigration and anti-immigration. Conservatives don't disagree with the past mostly LEGAL immigration that brought people in through places like Ellis Island and encouraged cultural assimilation as soon as possible.

Current boneheaded laws and practices are for an invasion of ILLEGAL immigrants who are encouraged NOT to be assimilated into the USA culture. It is the lack of control of our borders (which equals the loss of sovereignty for the country) combined with a death of the melting-pot theory of assimilation (that produced the great things to come out of past LEGAL waves of immigration) to which conservatives AND ABOUT 70 TO 80 PERCENT OF THE COUNTRY AS A WHOLE are very much against.

Says the "Dog"

Setting aside the question of whether the Times is, in fact, a liberal publication (as so many seem to believe), are there any "conservative" national publications that make a point of hiring a "liberal" to offer opinions?

Whether that is right or wrong, I don't see what it has to do with "prejudice against the right wing".

As I read David Bernstein, it does seem that this post is all about "prejudice against the right wing."

Again, I quote:

I can't help but think that the Times' editors' thought process is something like this: if I absolutely had to talk to a conservative Republican at a cocktail party, who would it be? (bold added)

Apparently, this horrendous hiring of Kristol would not have happened, but for "prejudice against the right wing."

If liberals who dominate the NY Times op-ed could actually stomach conservatives, they would understand the true and masterful intellectual wonders they offer, and choose more broadly from a variety of fine specimens so as to fully display the majestic diversity of thought that exists on the conservative side.

Guest 101 might be onto something. Maybe Bernstein has a persecution complex. Has it occurred to Bernstein the reason that the NY Times does not choose "conservatives" more like him (I personally do not believe he is really a conservative) is that he (and those who think like him) are so far outside of mainstream conservatism? For the same reason, the NY Times op-ed does not have any columns written by communists.

Not every fringe group is going to be represented in the NY Times op-ed page. That is not a function of persecution. That is a function of reader interest and word limits.

r78

You ask:

"are there any 'conservative' national publications that make a point of hiring a 'liberal' to offer opinions?”

You're missing the point, either ingenuously or disingenuously: The NYT pretends to be "The Paper of Record".

None of us on the Right or in the Center, I would assume, have any problem with, say, opinion journals, such as The Nation or TNR, being Loony Left, Liberal, or the Mirror Image of The National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, or First Things.

And, try Fox News, esp. Brit Hume's news. He always has at least two liberals on his three-person panel. Actually, I can't stand some Fox News shows where they present a GOP operative vs. a Dem operative. It's balanced &fair, but uninformative. The NYT is unbalanced, unfair, &uninformative!

The Times also could have been driven by wanting to hire a conservative whose opinion matters. I say this with sadness as a I believe in small government conservatism. However, when your party throws the touchdown to win the homecoming football game and then leaves you to make out with another girl, you cannot very well complain when people assume that the other girl is the one who matters to him. Kristol and his ilk run the party right now - if you are not happy about it, wrest the bloody thing back from him. If the government today was half the size it was before the Republicans came into power, then I assume that the Times would be giving a small government a call. As it is, you cannot complain that they do not represent what has become little more than a fringe ideology in the party any more than interest groups on the left would complain that the Times' writers do not represent the diversity of their opinions.

"Indeed, an awful lot of labor folks would agree with the "conservative" immigration position sbron describes."



So would the majority of the American people, of all political stripes.

Our self-sufficiency, relative hard work, and intelligence are in large part due to past immigration.

This is a tautology if "past" is defined broadly enough. Say, 1770 onwards. It's not very obvious that it is true if we pick a later point in time, e.g. 1960. Or 1930. Or 1900.


And future immigration can keep the process going.


Again, the word "can" here covers a multitude of possibilities. But present immigration is most certainly not contributing to "self-sufficiency, relative hard work, and intelligence" in the population in general.

Steyn. Indeed. But when's the last time the NYT had a Baptist on its staff, one lacking gothic liberal manners and forms of contrition? But it would have been the worthiest of choices. Kristol is fine though.

Beings from outer space are not necessarily subhuman, they are just as likely to be "superhuman" or just ahuman. But they sure are strange.

Professor B: Shortly after Brooks started writing his column, I asked him how he was chosen. He said that Gail Collins told him he would offend NYT readers the least of any conservative they could name. Thus there's some evidence evidence to back up your hunch. ("I can't help but think that the Times' editors' thought process is something like this: if I absolutely had to talk to a conservative Republican at a cocktail party, who would it be?")

Now KRISTOL? Totally different matter . . .

But Mark Steyn would have been more interesting.