new american liberalism - don't be fooled.

Mr. Scruggs been up to his old tricks again. I notice, through MaxSpeaks, that he has created this amazing parody

Of course, I saw through this right away. A new liberalism group heralded by the New York Sun? With Marty Peretz and Michael Ledeen playing the aging but virile sons of old rancher Harry Truman? That’s the Harry that potters around and mutters about the a-bombs. “Warnt nuthin to me, Marty, a-droppin them firecrackers. Why, I had me a good old nap that day! Fucked Bess. I’m spry for my hundert thousand years of age. Like my pappy Lucifer!”

However, Mr. Scruggs has put a lot of work into this obvious sham. For instance, notice the care he has taken in compiling a faux editorial board composed of the kind of academic deadwood that is routinely hustled out to defend the latest atrocities perpetrated by the American Wehrmacht. I have to say, picking Russell Berman and Jeffrey Herf betrays the fine hand of the practiced satirist. Russell Berman, you’ll remember, is the man who has built an academic Marxist magazine, Telos, into a cult from which he preaches war against Iran when he isn’t publishing French racists. Telos was, of course, the journal that published the first translations of Nazi political “theologian” Schmitt . As for Jeffrey Herf, he is a TNR Book section reliable – a sort of handmedown Sidney Hooks type, if Sidney Hooks had suffered a lobotomy at a young age.

It is Scruggs best piece of work since he launched the bogus Washington Times owned, supposedly, by the Moonies. Luckily, LI is not so naïve that we’d fall for things like that. Oh, there are times that we fear that the parody is getting out of hand – for instance, when Scruggs created a cutout editor of the WTimes, one Francis B. Coombs Jr , he whimsically gave him a glaring white power past, and to add spice, he made up a wife for Coombs who is on the board of several white power groups. The point, of course, is to test the D.C. waters, and see who would continue to suck up to such obvious moral lepers, and whether they would be excused in general. Such is Scruggs cynical mindset. Imagine his surprise when all of D.C. universally shunned a paper owned by a cult and run by a Klansman knockoff. Not a single politician or public figure cooperates or writes for it, or even pays any attention to it whatsoever. Conservatives, who long ago refused to have anything to do with segregationists in Moonie clothing, have denounced the Wash Times – or would have. But Conservatives are practical jokers. Seeing that the paper was a parody, they’ve gone along and actually write for it and pretend like Coombs isn’t even there!

We suspect this time Scruggs has gone too far. New Liberalism, centered around the Euston Manifesto, with Peter Beinart all signed up? – we detect a heavy handedness, I’m afraid. Nobody is going to believe it. I mean, does someone like Beinart still have a career? Of course not. Common sense tells us that the people who advocated the invasion of Iraq, a great, avoidable stupidity, managed with maximum corruption to the miserable end of making Iraq even worse than it was under Saddam Hussein, are universally shunned in our capital, which is, when all is said and done, manned by hardworking patriots who, using the best information available, make choices that are best for this country, no matter what the cost to their own careers and reputations. That’s why poor Beinart was run out of town on a rail. Last I heard, he’s washing dishes in a diner in Wheeling West Virginia. However, being an intellectual sort, he has reviewed the many mistakes he’s made, and his complicity in the crime of the War, and has decided that he just isn’t really smart enough to figure out foreign policy. So he has turned his sights to trying to be the best damn dishwasher in Wheeling, West Virginia. It is truly a Hollywood story. He wants, supposedly, to work his way up to cook, and then, saving up his money, maybe one day start a diner of his own! Beinart, to be fair, is doing his best to make amends. In an interview with a Wheeling paper, he said that he realized, after a while, his total incompetence at understanding public policy. “If an auto mechanic doesn’t understand engines,” said Beinart, “he shouldn’t repair them.” Shifting around for something to do that would occupy his talents, he has discovered that he is pretty good at whipping up grits. Thus, his newfound ambition. He’s hoping to hire his friend Chris Hitchens, who has quit his various media positions, given the money he earned from them to charity, and has been trying to master 3 minute grits himself in Beinart’s trailer kitchen. ‘Chris is totally ashamed,’ Beinart says. “Do you know, he actually supported installing a known criminal and peculator as head of poor Iraq? Every day he bemoans his blindness and vanity.” Meanwhile, of course, in our capital, the militantly anti-war Democrats, proud to have opposed the war from the very beginning, adamant about never rolling over for a tyrannical hick of a president, see with eagle vision that sacrificing American military men to the imbecilic vanity of iniquitous old warmongers in D.C. is highly immoral, akin to colluding in murder, and not something they will put up with. What a Party! We are truly blessed. Our political system has never been healthier or more vibrant. So, sorry, this parody – excellent as it is in several respects! – is not going to fool anyone.