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| Andrew Sullivan: Another Story |
| 2005-02-05 |
| I keep posting these emails not simply because they obviously make me feel that four and a half years of daily work was well worth it, but because they give me hope in general about the future of discourse in this country. Here's one that is also testimony to what blogs have been able to do in dislodging some settled prejudices: As I read the letter you posted today ("One more" February 3) I decided that I, too, must tell you about the difference your writing has made in my life. I hope I'm not too late--I've been thinking about writing to you for over a year, but I always talked myself out of it. Today I find myself compelled to tell you my own humble story. While I was raised in a fairly conservative family, I came of age during the '60s. I met my husband while we were both campaigning for Eugene McCarthy for president. We were married the week of the Democratic convention in Chicago. I changed from being oblivious about politics to being a serious left-wing, anti-war, Republican-hating straight party-line Democrat. I believed every word that Noam Chomsky wrote. It was all so simple: Republicans wore black hats; Democrats wore white hats. All of my friends believed unquestioningly that peace, love, agnosticism, secularism, enlarged federal programs, and reduced military budgets would save the world form the evil American empire. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #10 For me the key was not one person's blog (I started from the Wall Street Journal's site), but the links to other sites. And from there outward. After 9/11 the things I read on the conservative sites better fit the reality I was reading about in various non-U.S. newspapers (Arab News, Lebanon Daily Star, Jerusalem Post, Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung -- which was slow reading for me! -- etc) than what I was reading in the New York Times and hearing on NPR. It gave me something to do while waiting to see if Mr. Wife would ever be able to come home from Switzerland, where he'd landed 9/9/01. Am I still as idealistic as before? Don't bother to answer, we all know :-) But I've discovered that those who call themselves Liberal are not the white-hatted ones they told me they were. Like Churchill, it is not I that moved, but the Party. And despite Mr. Sullivan's rejection of the whole anti-gay marriage thing, he spoke clearly of conservatism to that new audience when it counted, after 9/11. Those people, like the reader in the article, had already made the conversion when he went wobbly, and nothing he or the Democratic Party tries now is likely to change that. He did a great deal of good when it was needed, and I think very little harm afterward. I wonder if it is this realization that drives him to blogging hiatus... |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-02-05 11:03:40 PM |
| #9 I've had my moments of utter disgust when reading Andrew's hysterical panic. However, I don't think conservatives should waste their time scorning him for his 'betrayal.' There have been many bad news days, so many setbacks and tragedies. On those days, one must steel one's resolve, knowing that this is the nature of the world, how sh#t happens. Watching Sullivan lose his nerve and embrace Kerry and defeatism was an ugly sight and I wont forget it. But ultimately we must remember that he is not the enemy and we shouldn't waste time excoriating him, or the other pathetic Democrat Hawks like Tom Friedman - annoying as they are. They are still in favor of Iraqi democracy and fighting to save Western Civ. from the barbarian hordes (inside and out), even if they have a distorted view about what it will take to do it. He has a big audience and reaches people like me when I was younger, i.e. potential conservative who have simply never been exposed to conservative views, except as ugly caracitures to be used as objects of derision in the Leftist morality play. There are so many people with views far more worse than Sullivan's. |
| Posted by: Prince Abdullah 2005-02-05 7:36:34 PM |
| #8 From your keyboard to G*d's ear, Dave D. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-02-05 5:41:44 PM |
| #7 "...From that day forward, I started to read intelligent conservative writers to try and understand a world-view totally unlike anything I had learned in my politically correct ’60s college education." I think this has been happening much, MUCH more than the Democrats figured on. By taking absurd positions with regard to the WoT, the Dems made a lot of people extremely uncomfortable; and those people started looking elsewhere for information and opinion. Some started liking what they heard from the conservative side. And some started asking, "if the Democrats have been bullshitting me about the war, what else have they been bullshitting me about?" And for some of those people, the answer has been, "damned near everything." My own transformation occurred a long time ago, back during the Clinton years, and was not as extreme a transformation as this woman's; but I know the process. The Dems are in a heap of trouble, I think, for they've only just begun to pay for their mindless, reactionary opposition to everything Bush does. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2005-02-05 4:51:09 PM |
| #6 Sullivan went wobbly when the going got tough. I reserve a special contempt for him. |
| Posted by: Zpaz 2005-02-05 4:35:56 PM |
| #5 "she is blinded by the magnificence of Sullivan's brilliance" Lol - but not nearly as much as Andy himself. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-02-05 4:33:09 PM |
| #4 Sullivan doesn't do it for me either, but on the Internet there is room for a lot of voices and he is clearly reaching some people. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-02-05 4:23:30 PM |
| #3 Sullivan zigged when he shoulda zagged. I am happy for this writer that she found solace with conservatism, and I am torn she credits Sullivan for that, but I believe also she is blinded by the mangificence of Sullivan's brilliance. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-02-05 1:30:29 PM |
| #2 Sorry, Sully --- fanmail notwithstanding, I still think you're an egocentric ripoff artist. But then, the little peepuls who donated to your comfortable vacation fund weren't too smart so perhaps it's a fair market exchange. |
| Posted by: too true 2005-02-05 1:00:41 PM |
| #1 Depends on her answer to the only important question. |
| Posted by: Bruce 2005-02-05 12:55:47 PM |