Don’t expect the media to make a big deal of it. He was the wrong kind of dissenter, being too American for Europe. The fact that he never won a Peace Prize, while Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama did, says something very fundamental about the corruption and uselessness of that once-honorable achievement. I’d also note (to cite a tweet) that he’s an example of the ancient dictum (that I just made up) that a country can do a lot worse than having a dissident playwright as a president. Mamet, 2012!
[Monday morning update]
More thoughts (from a couple years ago) from Bruce Bawer. And here’s a roundup over at National Review Online.
On Fox News Sunday, Romney just attacked Newt again on lunar colonies. This is getting very annoying. Someone in Romney’s campaign or the man himself decided that bashing space is a good weapon against Gingrich. Newt should make him pay for it with a speech on the subject. I suppose I should be happy that he’s at least made it a campaign issue. It usually isn’t.
I first recall being impressed with him in the nineties, in his fearless willingness to take on the lies of the Clintons. He was devastating, to anyone who paid attention.
Thoughts on the idiocy at the Obama Defense department:
It reflects the Obama philosophy that we cannot even hint that an interpretation of Islam — drawn literally from Islamic scriptures — is the force motivating our enemies. Even though this is unquestionably true, to say so, to acknowledge it in any way, would mean, according to administration thinking, that we are at war with Islam itself — with all 1.4 billion Muslims, including the hundreds of millions who do not subscribe to this interpretation. Unwilling to entertain the possibility that the enemy has a coherent, knowable doctrine — which is a powerful catalyst precisely because it draws credibly (not inarguably but credibly) on scripture — we have forfeited the natural right to defend ourselves and the troops who make it possible for us to live freely.
This is criminal recklessness. It is idiocy beyond description, so I should just stop trying to describe it. Watch it in all its jaw-dropping ignominy.
You can’t win a war when you pretend that you’re not in one.