I have tears streaming down my face:
I might add that it was strange arriving at Harvard to discover that the only non-left-liberals in the faculty were Straussians. The concept of a conservatism that was not dogmatic, that did not rest on eternal truths to be found in Plato and Aristotle but on the prudential management of contingent liberal societies … well, I realized I had left it all behind in Britain. I just had my Oakeshott in the Widener library for succor.
Drink, bitches.
Southern Beale
Umm … WTF? Haven’t heard anything about this…
Baud
@Southern Beale:
The Winklevii can sympathize.
satanicpanic
Other than Sully is a clown, what lesson does Sully want us to take away from this?
David in NY
Just. Stop. Reading. Him.
Please.
AA+ Bonds
So is Mallard Fillmore working for Obama 2012 now or what
AA+ Bonds
@satanicpanic:
American conservatives are like oh doh ee oh doh oh, and British conservatives are like *turns into The Thinker*
Joseph P.
Listen to David in NY. Just stop reading him. Sully is not a real blog anyhow—he doesn’t allow public comments.
trollhattan
I think instead of “succor” Andy could use moar cowbell.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Reading that made me physically ill. Wow.
joes527
I’m confused. How did DougJ get his over-the-top troll post on Sully’s front page?
AA+ Bonds
I honestly would probably disallow comments or shunt them to a discussion forum so my glorious words would appear without the naysaying of my detractors
were I Andrew Sullivan
Trentrunner
Andrew Sullivan is a cunty git.
geg6
John, I read that earlier and just about fell out of my office chair laughing. And don’t you love how he first links approvingly to a scathing critique of, not only the ideas but the intellectual ability of, Strauss and then goes on to laud Strauss for those very things. Not the most consistent or organized thinker, our Sully.
Comrade Mary
This isn’t something I have to look up in the Urban Dictionary, is it?
gex
Thus demonstrating that he’s so full of shit AND so whiny that he fits right in with the best of American conservatives after all.
Ash Can
Zzzzzzzz…
russell
numerology?
PeakVT
Slow news day, isn’t it?
Tickraw
Hate to step on the toes of a Sully thread, but apparently one of the clowns in Arizona decided to jump out of the clown car (via TPM).
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/ken_bennett_apologizes_obama_birther_hawaii_arizona.php
Bizono
Holy fucking shit, what does any of that even mean?
Hill Dweller
@Tickraw: He is Willard’s AZ campaign co-chair…
jlow
2 Girls One Cup of Oakeshott
geg6
OT, but I just want to thank Tbogg and the Balloon Juice commentariat for the most fun I’ve had on the Interwebz since the day the helicopters were definitely not laughing. Oh, and of course, I must thank George Tierney, Jr. of Greenville, SC. Also too.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
He’s become self-parody, and not even good self-parody, just the tired, half-assed latter-day SNL kind that makes you reach for the remote while wondering if there’s one more cold beer in the fridge.
DonkeyKong
Succor? That just sounds dirty.
Alexandra
New strapline for top banner, please.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
There isn’t. The choice is usually switch to tequila or go to bed.
Jade Jordan
Andrew Sullivan has a special kind of brain cancer that eats all the sane brain cells and leaves nothing but da crazy.
jl
Aristophanian smut jokes are timeless and reveal eternal truths about the human condition.
The fart jokes too.
I recommend that our precious youth throw out the Plato: boring.
gex
@Tickraw: Mighty white of him to allow Obama to be on the ballot if he follows the procedures that the white candidates use.
beltane
@DonkeyKong: Oakeshott in the Widener Library also sounds dirty.
dmsilev
Is that real-Sullivan, or is it some troll who hacked in and is spoofing Sullivan?
Or is there even a difference anymore?
Davis X. Machina
@Bizono: That Refrigerator Poetry Magnets has come out with a special First Things/New Oxford Review limited edition?
Villago Delenda Est
John Stuart Mill:
Sully is in the latter group. He demonstrates that again and again.
dmsilev
@Tickraw: I assume the 15,000-person petition requesting that he investigate whether Romney is a unicorn had something to do with him backing off.
Of course, we all know that that petition was just a cover to hide Romney’s true cyborg nature, but still.
Yutsano
What. The. Hell. Did. I. Just. Read?? And he gets PAID for this dreck? I’m soooo in the wrong business.
Villago Delenda Est
@joes527:
OK, thread won. Go home, everyone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tickraw:
The only apology the people of Arizona should entertain from this idiot is a Captain Needa apology.
Davis X. Machina
@jl: For Aristophanic farts, and much else besides, the estimable Michael Gilleland, proprietor of the Laudator Temporis Acti blog, is your only man.
Sullivan Hyde
1. Majority of Harvard faculty are liberals of the emphatically non-left species.
2. Don’t believe there was ever more than one tenured Straussian (Harvey Mansfield) and that is a remarkably charitable summation of his views.
“Fancy ways to say ‘ni**er’ and ‘get back in the kitchen bi***es'” would be a more accurate summation of Mansfield’s crazy-ass politics.
(Ol’ Harvey was of course the dissertation advisor to not only Sully, but also Bill Kristol and Alan Keyes.)
Jay in Oregon
@Alexandra:
I must concur.
Southern Beale
@Baud:
But Andrew fucking BREITBART???
Just Some Fuckhead
Sullivan would do well to alternate his Oakeshott binges with a dram of Burkean humility.
Donut
@geg6:
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the reason why his so-called blog is a fucking mess is because he acts like he’s still a fucking magazine editor. His interns draft all his online shit, and then he edits. As a consequence, these online shit-stains make no fucking sense, because they are written by committee. Sullivan is a waste of time, but I guess I’m glad John, et al read him, so I don’t have to. I can just mock from afar.
Omnes Omnibus
I think this might be the key to Sully’s online popularity.
beltane
@Just Some Fuckhead: But wait, isn’t that supposed to be Hayekian modesty and Burkean bells?
Andrew Sullivan is a case study in why conservatives should never, ever be allowed to smoke pot. They are far more tolerable when drunk and passed out on the sidewalk than while spouting pseudo-intellectual stupidity.
Baud
@Southern Beale: You can’t trust anybody who doesn’t regularly post on Balloon Juice.
RealityCzech
Is this an obscure reference to the British version of Clue?
“I’ll say that Oakeshott did it in the Widener library with the succor.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Can you trust those who do regularly post on Balloon Juice? You might just have made a trust no one argument.
Just Some Fuckhead
@beltane: I’ve written extensively on the Burke-Strauss-Oakeshott Trinity of Conservatism.
Hayek is a mere mortal.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@beltane: And they’re easier to hit with your
left-wing death squadcar, too.@Omnes Omnibus: Even tequila can’t make me able to read Sullivan at this point. I’d be too drunk to focus my eyes long before my standards for mindless entertainment dipped that low.
SamR
@joes527: Banner day for him.
satanicpanic
@Omnes Omnibus: I wouldn’t trust us
quannlace
What….what??
At first I thought this was a snippet from ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
“That means…
–one tiny atom in my fingernail could be–
–Could be one little…
tiny universe.
Could l buy some pot from you?”
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: I trust you people with my life…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
Yes, the earlier post by Frenchie on Sullivan had me scratching my head, wondering “Who the fuck cares?”
At this point, anyone who isn’t pointing and laughing at Sully hasn’t been paying attention.
Violet
Can someone please arrange a debate between Andrew Sullivan and George Tierney, Jr. of Greenville, SC. Cage match style, please.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
this is why i only have true respect for fugazi
straightedge, mammalian females
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: See above.
Amir Khalid
@Tickraw:
Note the “if” in the apology. He’s not sorry he did it, he’s sorry that people were pointing and laughing.
@Yutsano:
You do not have the talent required to write like Andrew Sullivan. You are numerate, not intellectually full of shit, and not blind to other people’s interest. You are, of course, much better off without those talents of his.
(How goes the recovery?)
Riilism
Oakeshott, it’s what’s for succor…
sparrow
Excuse me for being apparently ignorant, but what the hell is a non-left liberal?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: But if I don’t trust you, how can I trust your advice not to trust you?
Villago Delenda Est
@sparrow:
You might as well ask what a left-liberal is.
Not that the sack of steaming bullshit that is Andrew Sullivan could give you a coherent answer, mind you.
Villago Delenda Est
@sparrow:
You might as well ask what a left-liberal is.
Not that the sack of steaming bullshit that is Andrew Sullivan could give you a coherent answer, mind you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@sparrow:
According to Jonah Goldberg: Hitler.
Sullivan Hyde
“Excuse me for being apparently ignorant, but
what the hell is a non-left liberal?”
Alan Dershowitz, for starters.
Villago Delenda Est
@sparrow:
You might as well ask what a left-liberal is.
Not that the sack of steaming bullshit that is Andrew Sullivan could give you a coherent answer, mind you.
replicnt6
@Riilism: Brilliant. I’m glad we didn’t call it a day after the wonderful @joes527.
beltane
I always think of the MoU as being the consummate non-left liberal aka morons.
Felinious Wench
And I’m headed out to have my Cuervo Shot in the Local Pub for succor.
Wench, -1
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: I’m recovering but slowly. The problem with spinal operations is that they basically have to move a whole bunch of muscle out of the way in order to gain access to the area. And that heals slow. But I’ve been spoiled with the attention of two puppehs and my mom taking care of everything. It’s only one week after the operation, there are no miracle heals here.
jim filyaw
if this doesn’t blow the bell off his ‘poseur alert’, he really ought to check the damned wiring.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: My plan is fiendish in its intricacies.
Raven
@Yutsano: Yup, it takes time. Go slow and do what they tell you to do. I’m livin proof.
phantomist
The only book in my Widener library is ‘My Pet Goetse’.
Raven
@Yutsano: Remind me, cervical, thoracic, lumbar?
Omnes Omnibus
@phantomist: ::shudder::
hilzoy
Feh. I was in grad school at Harvard at the same time as Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan and I were TAs together in Michael Sandel’s course on Justice. (He does not remember this.) I will be charitable and assume that by “non-left-liberals” he does not mean “people who were liberal, i.e. on the left, but not on the Left”, which describes a whole lot of Harvard faculty members, but “liberals in some classical, Millian sense who were not on the left, i.e., who were conservative.”
It’s still completely wrong to say that no one was any kind of conservative who wasn’t a Straussian. Maybe this was true of the Government Dept. — I don’t know — but it surely wasn’t true of the university as a whole. If he had to snuggle up to his copy of Oakeshott for warmth, that just shows that he should have gotten out more.
Omnes Omnibus
@hilzoy:
In that case, isn’t he effectively dividing the faculty into hardcore leftists and Straussians? Richard Neustadt and Shirley Williams were both on the Government faculty during the time period that Sullivan would have been there. I have pretty much disproved his thesis right here.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
It was Oakeshott. In the Widener Library. With the candlestick.
arguingwithsignposts
@Riilism: ok, that’s LOL worthy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Burke. In the Kennedy School. With a lead pipe.
Odie Hugh Manatee
OT: Howard Fineman says that Latino support for Republicans is down to… wait for it… … 27%!
arguingwithsignposts
@Yutsano:
are spinal operations. FTFY.
Heal soon, bro.
FlipYrWhig
There’s no way getting succor from Oakeshott in Widener isn’t some special Harvard version of a glory hole.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t know anything about that. I went to a small liberal arts college in the Midwest and I never thought anything like this would happen to me…
arguingwithsignposts
@FlipYrWhig:
O_o
mainmati
@Joseph P.: Exactly, he’s not a blog; he’s a monologue.
Pseudonym
@hilzoy: I read it as “people who were not left-liberals,” i.e. “non” modifies “left-liberal” and not just “left.”
Yutsano
@Raven: Lumbar. Way down there.
@arguingwithsignposts: I’m now quite perturbed with my mother. She wanted me to put on a show for my aunt since I’m walking better than I was in the hospital. I steadfastly refused. I’m not a fucking sideshow dammit!!
I’m getting there, it just takes a looong time. But that’s why I got six weeks off work. :)
Freddie deBoer
@AA+ Bonds: I LOL’d.
Pseudonym
I’ve heard people call their partners by many different names, but this is the first time I’ve seen one referred to as “my Oakeshott in the Widener library.” Whoever he really was, I hope he used protection.
Felinious Wench
@Omnes Omnibus:
The perfect beginning to a Penthouse Letter…
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@hilzoy:
What year did you TA it? All my freshmen year friends were in it in 1987.
Omnes Omnibus
@Felinious Wench: I have no idea what you are talking about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano:
I am sure your mother meant for you to be the main attraction. Now, dance for her, monkey man!
Citizen_X
How would we ever stop?
AA+ Bonds
Why aren’t schoolchildren in the United States forced to read at least part of New English Canaan
That’s what I want to know
This would maybe teach them to say shut the fuck up to the people Andrew Sullivan criticizes, and then turn around and say shut the fuck up to Andrew Sullivan
AA+ Bonds
@hilzoy:
Jesus, he’d better not
Anyone catch if he started squealing when Friedman (insanely) cited Sandel
Mark S.
I love how there are different schools of IGMFU.
Yutsano
@Mark S.: “Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.”
– Blaise Pascal
AA+ Bonds
No offense but from the comments here it sounds like it was a terrible time to be at Kennedy, with Sullivan as a cause instead of a victim
It always came across as a little less of a silver spoon prep academy when I was visiting
AA+ Bonds
I mean Christ
yes insofar as they believed that CIA/FBI/MI5/MI6 were the fabled MEN OF FUCKIN GOLD
I take it this is probably the part that appealed to Sullivan, big manly barebacks carving out the fifth column or w/e, it’s so much “fun” to goose step
The difference between the British and the Dutch can be summed up for me like this: Andrew Sullivan writes for the Internet instead of running the BNP, while Geert Wilders walks around with bodyguards
AA+ Bonds
Clearly the school needed to be, like, 50% Marxist to keep Sullivan from getting “bored”
Riilism
@replicnt6: @arguingwithsignposts: I defer to Sully’s superior humor skills (intentional or un)….
Mark S.
I read the article Sully linked to and Strauss sounds even more insane than the last time I read a book review about him:
TG Chicago
First of all, thank you Cole. That was very amusing. Also:
@Alexandra:
YES
danielx
No Hayekian modesty on display here, nosiree. After reading that drivel, I’m left to wonder whether there’s a picture of Andrew Sullivan above “pretentious twit” in the dictionary.
BruceJ
Come now, Oakeshott is a standard reference point, and everyone’s library should have his masterwork “The Archeology of Weapons: Arms and Armour from Prehistory to the Age of Chivalry” in their library, it’s the standard reference for sword construction and style.
El Cid
Conservative writers gain infinite degrees of complexity when encountered in really nice books, maybe leather bound and really old, and experienced in really historic and insider-beloved libraries of ultra-elite institutions.
There’s probably writing and stuff, inside the books, but that’s not the important part. It’s knowing where to see those books and having the ability to access those places which count.
hilzoy
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity: DougJ: I think I was ’85. Fall semester ’87 I think I was teaching Rawls’ Kant’s moral theory class.
AA+ Bonds
@Mark S.:
This is non-coincidentally the line of thought behind all Republican political funding back home in NC right now
slag
Oh god. My eyes! I’m blind! Blind!
Also, too, the British version of Clue would be Cluedo, I believe.
KS in MA
@Villago Delenda Est: I know the repeated posts aren’t your fault, but I’m suddenly thinking of Leslie Nielsen appearing repeatedly in the cockpit with “I just want to say Good luck. We’re all counting on you.”
KS in MA
@beltane: I wish he would smoke more pot and write less.
Villago Delenda Est
@KS in MA:
Yup, I LOL’d.
asiangrrlMN
@Omnes Omnibus: Dance, motherfucker, dance!
@Yutsano: As OO said, you’re the main attraction, bay-beee! Take it easy and continue to heal.
Riilism
Upon further examination, I call shenanegans on Cole. Clearly that quote has been edited and is now missing several “verily’s”, a “forsooth” and a “lo”….
Bob2
Well, at the time, he was still so far in the closet that Oakeshott was the only man available I guess.
That nasty non-left-liberal campus! Where could you find rough trade on a college campus like that anyway?!
The STACKS.
Sully self-awareness level alert: Orange
Riilism
I’m assuming Andrwoo titled his post, “Beware the Straussian, my friend,…”….
jake the snake
@jlow:
You either win the internets for the day, or you lose forever.