Sullivan vs. Hanson-Update x2
Lance on Aug 23 2007 at 3:43 am | Filed under: Lance's Page, Notes on the war
Welcome Instapundit readers. Take the time to stick around and learn how China has decided to regulate reincarnation; some distressing ways that some regulations destroy our ability to get the information we want and need; the difference between a vicious partisan and an honest opponent; lessons on declaring war; my own “Modest Proposal” to fight global warming, eliminate Moose farts and improve barbecue; Hugo Chavez and the Great Tuna Caper; let Joshua delight and infuriate with his daily News Brief, and wrap it up with the stupidest thing I have heard John Edwards say so far.
Oh, and if any of you, especially those with a military background, can help me find out how to confirm this information on Scott Beauchamp, please let me know.
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First read a man, who inspired me to get into blogging, and then read Hanson here.
Hanson is absolutely right about this:
Now he is angry that I, like dozens of others, referred to The New Republic’s Pvt. Scott Beauchamp as a fabulist that he is, and so tried to make the case that an opinion writer whose views he disagrees with is comparable to a war chronicler making up facts on ground around him as he goes along.
At most Sullivan can claim Hanson was wrong on Iraq, assuming his sneering criticisms were accurate. Personally, I read the quotes along the lines Hanson says he meant them. I don’t even think it is close between Sullivan’s claim of what he meant and what the text on the page actually says.
Hanson’s analysis may be a failure to many, but on this matter it is game, set, match for Hanson.
Sullivan has sadly deteriorated as his self righteousness overwhelms his talent. At his best he is inspiring, witty and deeply humane. Unfortunately he has become increasingly petty, slapdash in his judgments and accusations, sloppy in his reading and startlingly ungenerous to those he disagrees with. This is more appalling when we consider he saves his most vicious and unthinking attacks for people who hold views he once shared. As if he has a right to act as if holding to those views longer than he, means they deserve no respect, not even the minimal respect of having what they say accurately characterized. He was wrong on the war he now says, so others do not have the right to be wrong in his eyes now for the same reasons?
Sad.
Update: Thanks to Pajamas Media I have found a number of people who are commenting on this. My blog friend Eric Scheie at Classical values, Jeff Pyatt (who is unfair to Hanson), Mickey Kaus, Dean Barnett, Dougie Pundit, Nonpartypolitics and Confederate Yankee gives a nice recap of the whole Beauchamp affair.
Update x 2: The Shield of Achilles has some germane thoughts on Sullivan’s comparison of Bush and the events surrounding the collapse of the Weimar Republic.
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I too was once a fan of Andrew’s blog. It’s been said watching his decline. You’re spot on when you observe that “saves his most vicious and unthinking attacks for people who hold views he once shared.”
I often wonder why a once-thoughtful man who could see and understand both sides of an issue, reacts so viscerally to ideas he once defended so eloquently.
He was wrong on the war he now says, so others do not have the right to be wrong in his eyes now for the same reasons?
Well put.
I personally am not sure if we should stay in Iraq, because I suspect a sectarian war there is inevitable.
Nonetheless I must say, Sullivan is a pathetic clown. I don’t think he’s humane: he’s overly emotional, which makes him entertaining. But he’s not serious about anything – he’s a perpetual teenager. Why Hanson even bothered responding to me, I don’t know.
I’ve only been reading weblogs for six years or so, so I completely missed the sane Andrew Sullivan which so many bloggers wax nostalgic for. I have only ever witnessed the spectacle of the present-day noxious, faux-conservative, self-refuting windbag, and cannot for the life of me comprehend why anyone mentions his writings or his name. He articulates no significant political point of view–of any political movement with which he is momentarily aligned or even of his own fickle self over time. Does anyone even keep track of how many of his contradictory opinions have been summarily annihilated? He functions rhetorically as a living straw man, not even saying the things he actually says.
Is there honor in out-sparring a fart? If so, by all means carry on. If not, please stop soiling yourself by speaking his name. You can always re-engage him if and when he again makes sense.
FWIW – I did too. Anyone who has a strong opinion and whines on end about a book they refuse to read like Andrew, doesn’t deserve a page view let alone respect, as far as I am concerned.
Here’s what I wrote about Sullivan the other day:
… I really should start reading him again. Apparently he’s given up on opinion blogging and has instead devoted himself to making fun of Andrew Sullivan.
Two recent entries stand out. In this one, he takes Victor Davis Hanson to task for changing his mind about the war! Another post links to spoof site which is part of a viral marketing campaign for the movie Shoot ‘Em Up…
He was always a tad excitable and prone to fly off the handle. I guess I was willing to forgive him when it was Islamist terrorism he was shouting about. It’s easy to see how someone could get so upset about something so awful. But lately, poor Andrew has become a parody of himself.
These days, Sullivan pretty consistently brings a knife to a gun fight; his writing is one, long, shrill, screeching emotional diatribe pretending to represent, oh, you know, ACTUAL THOUGHT.
It’s not hard to model:
* Sullivan’s opinion today is good, right & moral; so
* Disagreeing with Sullivan’s opinion today makes you bad, wrong and immoral.
Oh, and P.S.
* Sullivan can (and will) change his mind tomorrow, at which time he’ll denounce everyone who agreed with him yesterday.
I used to read Sullivan.
When 9/11 happened he was a champion of Afganastan and the war on terror.
Then …
“Bush” took sides on gay marriage.
Then …
It all changed. Sullivan changed. I don’t believe he saw the light on the WAR.
I belive he reacted in the way we see him react now.
Sometimes, it is that simple.
Rich
Sullivan couldn’t win a spitting match against Hanson,I think he’s once again upset that he’s irrelevant,unlike VDH
Bob
I’m a long time fan of Hanson’s writing, but I’ve never found his writing about the actual military situation in Iraq very insightful; early on when many hawks thought there were too few troops in Iraq, he consistently wrote in support of the Rumsfeld position. But hey, at least the guy is clearly on the side of trying to win this thing. Sullivan, on the other hand, pretends to be a conservative and a hawk but then bails on the war at the first sign of any difficulty. And he’s the worest sort of left-wing moralist. Hanson is way deeper – and a better writer.
Whatever,
As Hanson said, disagreeing with him is one thing, misrepresenting him is another. You may have a point about Hanson, I haven’t combed back to see if your characterization is fair, and I hate to rely too much on my memory.
Everybody,
I still have a soft spot for Sullivan, and there are times when I still enjoy his writing. In fact, I agree with him often, but he still disappoints me with the flaws in his rhetoric that I describe above far too often. Personally I think he needs to reflect. He is floundering, and rather than admit he isn’t sure about what to do he is lashing out at the people who in his mind have let him down rather than take a good hard look at the rather naive view he took going into the war. His disappointment is his own fault. He should have seen the significant probability of our struggles before we went in. Instead, it is primarily everybody else’s fault.
If he had been more realistic he might have not gone so out on a limb emotionally for the war, or not been so discouraged when it started going off the rails. Most wars do, you have to factor that in from the start. Neither he nor the administration did enough of that. That has made it a tougher fight and left more for Sullivan to try and divert attention from by focusing on people who made the same mistake (assuming for arguments sake the war is a mistake) as he did. Why he feels that it is okay to act superior to people who made the same error as he did is beyond me. One would think that would lead to a little moral humility, instead he covers with bluster, moral arrogance and vicious rhetoric.
Dan,
Great to have a visitor from Gay Patriot. You were one of the first blogs I put on my blogroll back when it was just little ol’ me.
And pretend he never said such to begin with.
Andrew is all feigned emotion and donation drives, Oparah’s political Frey
Gay Marriage. One issue wonder. Donations.
There’s no greater zealot than a convert.
Jim, I could not agree more. Reformed smokers often act the same way. Damn, I just realized you aren’t on my blogroll. Huge oversight.
Rich nailed it. I watched it happen too. And honestly, I can understand it. Bush never made a peep about any “defense of marriage” amendment until the run-up to the 2004 elections by which time Andrew had carried a lot of water for Bush. A lot of water.
Still, I quit reading him when I detected what I still consider to be genuine dishonesty in his arguments concerning torture. He did and still does deliberately conflate Iraq with Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib with Guantanamo, etc. in order to be able to claim that every member of the Bush administration is simultaneously a dullard and a sadist.
At his best, Sullivan is a fearless advocate and writer. Unfortunately it’s been a long time now since he’s visited that place.
yours/
peter.
Lance, I absoultely agree with your assessment and even quoted you at my blog.
For a little info on Sullivan’s slide, you can look here.
I guess what irks me the most is that he comments on so many matters (military, interrogations, war, etc) that he has no knowledge about. The man went straight from college to writing magazine articles. He has no real world work experience whatsoever to draw upon.
Andrew Sullivan = David Brock….
…Remember David Brock? Intrepid investigator for American Spectator turned intrepid investigator for Huffpo/Soros/Media Matters?
–furious
Andrew Sullivan’s defense of Beauchamp reminds me a lot of Moe the Bartender:
Kristol, Hansen, et al: Scott Thomas Beauchamp is a liar with deep psychological problems.
Sullivan: Hey, he may be a liar with deep psychological problems, but…what was that third thing you said again?
Notice the total lack of substance in your comments, Lance?
It doesn’t just mean “VDH was wrong on the war”. It means, “VDH supports any militarist policy a Republican Administration will put in front of them, lacking the ability to tell a successful policy from a failing one, as long as it involves US troops shooting at something.”
Well glasnost, accepting your characterization as true for the moment, does that excuse the total lack of substance in yours? Nor is that a fair characterization of VDH.
The main thing to remember about Andrew Sullivan is that he was a champion debater in college. If he is presenting his opponent’s argument wrongly, he is doing so quite deliberately. I do not think Sullivan ever deserves the benefit of the doubt on this.
People probably don’t remember, but one sidetrack the gay marriage debate went down was, if there are civil unions, should any two people get to have a civil union or should it only be for people who would get married if it were legal to do so? Some states prposed legislation that would allow civil unions, but added that civil unions would not be predicated on a sexual relationship–so two sisters, for example, could have a civil union, and that way tax returns and hospital visitation rights etc could be the same as for a married couple.
Sullivan presented these proposals as a) legalizing incest and b) forcing gay people to pretend that they are just roommates or buddies and the government would have to install cameras in their bedrooms to make sure they weren’t having sex. That these were conclusions were based on contradictory premises did not bother him in the slightest–he knew very well what he was doing when he presented them this way.
“Sullivan can (and will) change his mind tomorrow, at which time he’ll denounce everyone who agreed with him yesterday.”
Yes, except I would rephrase that as “…denounce everyone he agreed with yesterday” because I suspect that few serious people agree or disagree with Sullivan, in the sense that they don’t pay any attention to him except when he smears them.
“Andrew Sullivan is that he was a champion debater in college. If he is presenting his opponent’s argument wrongly, he is doing so quite deliberately”
Which reminds me of something (by VDH or another classicist) that I read some years ago: Many ancient Greeks were very suspicious of the Sophists because they trained people to persuasively argue any side of an issue. The Greeks worried that this would create citizens lacking in civic virtue. Perhaps Andy, with his willingness to say anything about those he disagrees with, is a case in point.
Hmmm, maybe. I would like to think better of him, but that just may be nostalgia. I’ll keep reading, and sometimes it still is worthwhile for me.
There is an ancient Greek aphorism “To argue well is the end of logic.” According to an essay I read many decades ago, in Greek, “end” has the double-meaning of “purpose” and “termination” and this ironic double meaning was something the Greeks were very conscious of. I am reminded of this when I read mendaciously articulate pundits like Sullivan.