This being a new blog, I thought it might be fun, now and then, to have something really just batshit crazy. As it turns out, one needn’t step outside accepted American political discourse to achieve that.
Case in point: John Derbyshire of the National Review. From a recent talk radio chat, in his own words:
DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.
COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?
DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?
COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.
DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].
COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.
DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.
Now I’ve never even heard of the guy–guess I let my NR subscription lapse–but surely this is going just a tad far. No? Apparently he has an entire book chapter to that effect forthecoming, so perhaps it’s no surprise that when offered the chance to, ah, add a little nuance to his view later in the interview he didn’t. (We should be relieved all round that he remains opposed to slavery.)
Credit, I guess, for having the guts to make conservatism uncool yet again just as the movement was starting to get its game back. Is there a prefix that implies something older than ‘paleo’? Seems to me this makes paleaconservatism look cutting edge.