David Frum

Former Bush speechwriter David “axis of evil” Frum’s name is well known and widely despised among liberals. What is perhaps a little less well known is that he is not exactly well liked these days in conservative circles either. For what it’s worth, I have come to admire his intellectual honesty that led him to write, among other things, the following about present-day conservative media and conservative thinking:

“Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama—whatever his policy ­errors—is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action ­phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) ‘the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.'”

There is only one observation I’d add to Frum’s comments. The people he speaks of… they’re not “conservatives”. They abandoned conservative ideals when they jumped on the radical right-wing agenda of the tea party movement or started parroting the radical right-wing trash coming from talk show hosts like Limbaugh.