'Like the good guys winning a shoot out'

James writes:

Sorry if I'm riding a little high today. Over at the Social Affairs Unit blog, published out of London, Christie Davies has written a stellar review of The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent, the anthology I edited with Stefan Beck.

The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent is the inspiring story of a conservative student journal that took on the oppressive left-liberal administration at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, an American Ivy League University founded in 1769, and won. It is a very American story, rather like the good guys winning a shoot out in a western. It couldn't happen in supine Britain because we lack America's free institutions, confidence in private initiative and willingness to fight. Once upon a time we had all these good qualities but now we are hollowed out.

You can catch the entire review here. Christie well captures the spirit of the newspaper. It's a quirky publication. Dara and I just spent the weekend in Hanover, New Hampshire and had dinner with the Review's 40 or so undergraduate editors and staffers--plus a certain Jeffrey Hart. I am pleased to report that the newspaper is thriving. (You can check out the Review's website here). Love it or hate it, the newspaper remains strong after over 25 years. You've got to respect that. (And I think it's even earned Dara's respect.)

One of the surprises of the evening came out of a conversation I had with Professor Hart, Dartmouth's most famous conservative academic. It's well known to readers of this weblog that Hart has fallen out with the Bush administration and the evangelical wing of the conservative movement. If you haven't done so already, you can read my profile of Hart from the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

Anyway, the big surprise of the evening came out of Hart's comments on the presidential primaries. Who would Hart be supporting in 2008, I wondered? McCain (whom he backed in 2000)? Giuliani, perhaps? No, the answer is Obama, followed by Edwards. In fact, Hart says he will support any Democrat candidate who has the ability to unseat a Republican. That also goes for the Senate and House. Even if (birthday boy) Abraham Lincoln were running, Hart says, he's voting Democrat until Republicans dissociate themselves from their evangelical base.

Strong words from a one-time speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan.

Down with Boomer Humor

James writes (cross-post with The New Criterion):

I attended a lunch talk today sponsored by a libertarian non-profit think tank. The guest speaker was the boomer humorist P. J. O'Rourke. I must say, he wasn't all that good. The subject of the talk was O'Rourke's new book on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. I thought that the conclusion of this book review from the Baltimore Sun pretty much summed up my own feelings about the performance:

O'Rourke's book is a peculiar kind of satire. By turns smart-alecky and oracular, it gives readers something to do instead of thinking. O'Rourke professes to share Smith's skepticism about all-encompassing systems, but he applies the economic theories of The Wealth of Nations indiscriminately, indifferent to the changing realities of a post-industrial age of information. Laughs aside, O'Rourke's "Cliff's Notes" to Adam Smith are an abridgment to nowhere.

Am I the only one who thinks that the Rolling Stone-National Lampoon literary style of over-enthusiastic, underwhelming libertarianism hasn't aged well? I had the same feeling when reading The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie by Chris Miller, another National Lampooner. In Miller's case, the thought of a writer who is eligible for the AAPR discount basing his literary career on copping a feel 50 years ago stuck me as rather sad and pathetic. Here the stories were more lecherous than charming (unlike the movie Animal House, which for many reasons remains a masterpiece).

O'Rourke can't bank on his youth any longer either, and his sort of hip out-of-it-ness strikes me as flat. O'Rourke prides himself on still using a typewriter. I find it more lazy than charming when culture writers choose not to use the internet. Appealing to what he perceived to be our own sloth, at his luncheon talk, O'Rourke promised to read The Wealth of Nations "so you don't have to." By the end of the event, after a three course feeding of sweetened half-observations, I came to wonder if O'Rourke had read The Wealth of Nations himself.

Compared to the boomer humorist typing away on his Selectric II, I'll take Wikipedia any day.

As an aside, if you are looking for a truly stimulating non-profit program of talks and events, with speakers ranging from Mark Steyn to David Pryce-Jones to Andrew Roberts (who is coming up next month), look no further than The Friends of The New Criterion.

James's best books of 2006