One man’s despair is another man’s hope
February 5, 2008 – 12:40 am by JohnJohn Derbyshire is great. I’m glad the staff of National Review hasn’t figured this out and fired him yet. In what I think was his official endorsement of Ron Paul, he quoted Paul Johnson from his book Modern Times: “Like FDR, he [i.e. John F. Kennedy] turned Washington into a city of hope; that is to say, a place where middle-class intellectuals flocked for employment.” Then he said,
What I am seeking is an anti-JFK—a candidate who will transform our nation’s capital from a city of hope for middle-class intellectuals, into a city of despair for them. The despair of those intellectuals, I am increasingly convinced, is the hope of our nation. Looking at all but one of the Republican candidates (and, it goes without saying, all but none of the Democratic ones) I see nothing in prospect but a new draft of office-seeking intellectuals, primed and eager to bring us new expansions of federal power, new pointless wars, new million-strong reinforcements for the Reconquista, new thousand-page tax loopholes, new inducements for idleness and crime, new humiliations for the saps who follow rules and obey laws.