I can't read Victor Davis Hanson's mind, but...
...I also can't help but think that with this broad defense of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he is also rebuking fellow NRO writer John Derbyshire for this crap from earlier in the week. It's entirely possible, of course, that Hanson didn't even read Derbyshire's piece, but I get the impression that he did. Hanson, of late, has no problem identifying the naysayers among the "global elite," who resist all that is American in origin, and everything that is Bush. Today he writes more generally, suggesting to me that he is, as a gentleman and a scholar, addressing the in-house embarrassment at NRO that Derbyshire has become.
Needless to say, Hanson does more clear thinking about these issues before breakfast each morning than Derbyshire will get done in his entire life. My view is that NRO doesn't need its own counterpart to the inane superficiality of Maureen Dowd at The New York Times. My editorial mind has always been more patient than my writer mind, but not this week. If I had been in Rich Lowry's shoes, Derbyshire would have returned to his desk to find it all cleaned out with a note that read: "Your stuff is in a cardboard box in the hallway. Get out."
Needless to say, Hanson does more clear thinking about these issues before breakfast each morning than Derbyshire will get done in his entire life. My view is that NRO doesn't need its own counterpart to the inane superficiality of Maureen Dowd at The New York Times. My editorial mind has always been more patient than my writer mind, but not this week. If I had been in Rich Lowry's shoes, Derbyshire would have returned to his desk to find it all cleaned out with a note that read: "Your stuff is in a cardboard box in the hallway. Get out."
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