In recent weeks the blogosphere, and this blog, have been abuzz about whether Andrew Sullivan is a conservative. I find that matter rather uninteresting — his beliefs are his beliefs whatever they’re labeled. A more pressing question for his readers is this: is Andrew Sullivan a circumspect, honest commentator?
As a longtime reader, and someone who thinks that Andrew Sullivan seems like a nice, well-intentioned person, I’d like to say yes. I’d like to think I can trust him to maintain some sense of perspective and integrity when blogging about topics I don’t know much about. But a post of his today saps my confidence, because it attacks Instapundit, a blog whose every post I’ve read going on four years now, so dishonestly or wrongheadedly — I can’t decide which — that I’m having trouble taking any Sullivan analysis on a matter I’m unfamiliar with on faith.
In the first part of the post, he quotes Glenn Greenwald describing Glenn Reynolds, AKA Instapundit. Sullivan says that Greenwald “gets it right” when he writes the following [emphasis added by me]:
…he has long ago dispensed with his libertarianism beyond the most cursory and decorative uses, and he has no meaningful differences with the most extreme elements of the Republican Malkin/Coulter right wing.
Reynolds’ transformation is illustrative of a broader and much more significant dynamic. There are no more vibrant libertarian components left of the Bush movement. Libertarians (in the small “l” sense of that word) have either abandoned the Bush-led Republicans based on the recognition - catalyzed by the Schiavo travesty - that there are no movements more antithetical to a restrained government than an unchecked Republican Party in its current composition. Or, like Reynolds, they have relinquished their libertarian impulses and beliefs completely as the price for being embraced as a full-fledged, unfailingly loyal member of the Bush-led Republican Party.
So we have three assertions here.
Let’s take them in turn:
1) Glenn Reynolds has abandoned libertarianism save its “most cursory and decorative uses.”
- An almost daily feature on Instapundit is “Porkbusters,” an effort to end pork-barrell spending and shrink the size of the federal government.
- Instapundit is the home of frequent posts lauding the 2nd Amendment, criticizing those who seek to infringe upon it, and touting the success of private citizens carrying guns for self-defense or to lower crime rates.
- Reynolds is a long-time supporter of gay marriage, a position he’s restated recently.
- He frequently critiques police abuses such as arresting people for videotaping the police, no knock raids, and gun confiscation (at home and abroad).
- In his recent book An Army of Davids and on his blog, Reynolds advocates private space exploration, opposes government bans on stem cell research, and opposes heavy-handed regulation of nano-technology research.
Nor is this list a comprehensive rendering of Reynold’s libertarian positions — I’ve just tackled the ones the sprung to mind first because he’s written about them so frequently that I’m able to recall them without refreshing my memory through tiresome research.
I’m certain beyond any doubt — as is the rest of the world — that Andrew Sullivan regards gay marriage as a substantial libertarian cause, neither cursory nor decorative. Meanwhile any reasonable person surely regards someone who agitates for less government spending, for gun rights, against police abuses, for private enterprise in traditionally government run arenas, and against government bans on stem cell research and nano-technology… as someone engaged in substantial libertarian causes.
Either Sullivan has lost all perspective, or he is being dishonest here.
2) Glenn Reynolds is indistinguishable from the “most extreme elements” of the “Republican/Coulter right wing.”
Actually, several positions I’ve just documented distinguish Glenn Reynolds from the “most extreme elements” of the “Republican/Coulter right-wing,” unless the right-wing of the Republican Party has suddenly changed its positions on, for example, gay marriage and stem cell research.
In fact, Reynolds is not only substantively different from “the most extreme elements” of the “Republican/Coulter right-wing,” he is tempermentally different too. That’s why his book has a title like An Army of Davids rather than a title like Treason, why Bloggingheads.TV luminary Bob Wright is suggesting that Coulter, not Reynolds, be excluded from polite company, why Reynolds is more restrained even when provoked than 99 percent of the blogosphere, why Reynolds has never advocated invading Muslim countries and converting their people to Christianity…
For heaven’s sake, a frequent signifier of Reynold’s displeasure is the word “Jeez“!
Meanwhile The New Republic, a magazine Sullivan is familiar with, is publishing articles declaring Ann Coulter the most hated woman in America. Apparently everyone but Greenwald and Sullivan are able to distinguish the two.
3) Glenn Reynolds is an “unfailingly loyal member of the Bush-led Republican Party.”
Again, evidence cited thus far destroys this assertion, but let’s fire some bullets into its corpse for good measure. Here are some recent Reynolds quotes about the “Bush-led Republican Party”:
- AN ABSTINENCE-ONLY bait-and-switch from the Bush Administration? Jeez. Not that the “official” version wasn’t lame enough to begin with. (link)
- JIM GERAGHTY thinks that post-tipping-point politics are going to be ugly, and agrees with me that the Bush Administration’s limp response to the Cartoon Wars is part of the reason. (link)
- So we were doing a podcast interview with Ken Mehlman, and he was responding gamely to pressing questions on the Bush Administration’s problems, but we kept losing the connection. (link)
- DeLay is under investigation on charges of campaign finance violations, but I’m happy to see him leave for other reasons: He was the architect of the Republicans’ “K Street strategy” - a program of incorporating lobbyists and interest groups into the process of governance - that has been disastrous for Republican ideals… I don’t have much hope that DeLay’s departure will do much tug the GOP back toward its principles, but it can’t hurt.(link)- INDEED: [Reynold’s approvingly quotes another writer] Bush and the Republican Congress have had a difficult time selling themselves to the public because their policies have not been appealing. They have adhered to a philosophy, big-government conservatism, that has finally alienated nearly everyone. The War on Terror delayed the effects of this alienation for several years, but ultimately the Bush administration’s errors and Congress’s addiction to big spending — which was based on this big-government conservative philosophy — alienated both those outside the party, first, and then a great proportion of Republicans themselves. . . .(link)
- AN EXTENSIVE, AND MOSTLY RIGHT look at the Bush Administration’s political problems.(link)
Those aren’t carefully cherry-picked Reynolds quotes, just the first things I found when I searched “Bush Administration” on Instapundit and glanced at the entries on the top fifth of the page (one example from the Guardian excepted). But they’re more than enough to conclusively demonstrate that Reynolds isn’t “an unfailingly loyal member” of the “Bush-led Republican Party.”
Although Porkbusters is enough to know that.
Again, Sullivan and Greenwald are either being dishonest or lacking any sense of perspective.
Finally, let’s examine the conclusion that Andrew Sullivan tacks on to the end of his post disparaging Instapundit:
I don’t think of Reynolds as a political animal. He has independent integrity.
Note that if Sullivan thinks Reynolds has independent integrity, it makes no sense for Sullivan to say Greenwald “gets it right” when he describes Reynolds as “an unfailingly loyal” supporter of the Bush-led Republicans.
But when push came to shove, Reynolds never challenged in any serious way the abuses of power in this administration nor the extremism of the Malkinesque blogosphere.
In fact, Reynolds routinely challenged Bush on all sorts of libertarian grounds. He just didn’t put as much emphasis on the particular libertarian grounds — prisoner abuse and torture — that Sullivan finds most important. Note that Reynolds opposes torture and prisoner abuse. He simply didn’t emphasize them as much as Sullivan.
Of course, Sullivan didn’t emphasize the Darfur genocide, or democracy movements in Lebanon and the Ukraine, or the New Orleans gun confiscation, or any number of other libertarian issues as much as Reynolds. When push came to shove, that is.
Sullivan concludes as follows:
When a libertarian finds any excuses to ignore or minimize government-sponsored illegality and torture, then he has truly ceased to be a libertarian in any profound sense. If my opinion weren’t so high of his abilities, my disappointment wouldn’t be so deep.
Whatever its merits — and nevermind the accuracy of the implicit assumption that Reynolds finds “any excuse to minimize… illegality and torture, which I don’t think is true — this is the closest Sullivan comes to an honest argument. I suppose to really address the argument I’d have to slog through old Instapundit posts looking for evidence of Instapundit minimizing torture (a quick search demonstrates that he hasn’t ignored it). Without time to do the research, I’ll neither defend nor condemn Instapundit.
Of course, I could just trust Sullivan’s characterization, but given his track record so far in this post I’m somehow uninclined to take his word for it… or anything else I’m unfamiliar with, for that matter.
Posted by conor friedersdorf in Uncategorized