1

This was a joke right?

2

Can't. Stop. Laughing!

3

Phew, I’m glad you finally got the memo!
Well done.

4

Hilarious! Nice poke against us paleos, but we're not all old geezers. :-)

5

Joe, You need to let Burke know that he is missing a potentially significant demographic segment in the "survivalists" up in Montana / Idaho. They're a little more volatile than the South Parkies, but they could be hired as security at the Republican convention.

6

Nice job. Well-written satire.

7

I used to be a subscriber to NRO, but I allowed it to expire and am now quite happy with Human Events--great Christian Conservative Weekly Magazine.

8

Joe, I like your blog pretty well, and read it a lot, but I don't know what's got this burr in your saddle about NRO. You will not find a better champion of social conservative values in America right now than NRO, except for strictly religious publications like World that will have little appeal outside of those who already hold to their religious beliefs. Who out there in the non-sectarian camp is a more consistent voice on abortion, marriage, and many other issues?

Lopez and Ponnuru basically agreed with you that running the Siepp piece wasn't a great idea, and yet you continue to go after them.

You have to know that Lopez' phrase "show a little leg" has nothing at all to do with sex or voyeurism, but is a metaphor for the diverse opinions that will widen the appeal of the magazine. Your response to her before and here show that you're either missing her point, or you're deliberately misrepresenting it.

Don't be a perfectionist. You don't get to define 'conservative', 'social conservative' or even 'Evangelical conservative' for the rest of us. NRO NEVER NEVER NEVER defended porn- they ran one article by someone else that did, and have run more than a few of their own that attack it. There's a difference between a blog run by one guy and a site that runs lots of different and varying articles. One will have uniformity of opinion and one won't. There's also a difference between a free blog run as a hobby and a for-profit business.

Ponnuru is right- we need to know who our friends and who our enemies are. And by going after them the way you have, you're more likely to exclude yourself from the conversation than affect the way NRO does business.

9

I can't read. Did he write anything about the neo-con evangelicals?

10

Hey Matt,

You’re post was the reason I added this tongue-in-cheek addition. I hope you won’t take it personally but I feel strongly about this issue and don’t plan to back down until I am shown that I’m in the wrong.

Joe, I like your blog pretty well, and read it a lot, but I don't know what's got this burr in your saddle about NRO. You will not find a better champion of social conservative values in America right now than NRO, except for strictly religious publications like World that will have little appeal outside of those who already hold to their religious beliefs. Who out there in the non-sectarian camp is a more consistent voice on abortion, marriage, and many other issues?

I don’t disagree. In fact, I love NRO. But truth is truth and sometimes you have to lay the smack down on allies as well as enemies. One of the main reasons conservatives aren’t taken as seriously as we should be is because we are overprotective of our own when they are wrong. Can you imagine if Howard Dean had made the statement that, “Anyone who calls Playboy pornography at this point is being willfully naïve.” The blogosphere would have exploded! Evangelical bloggers would have been all over it. But since it came from one of our “friends?” Not a peep.

Lopez and Ponnuru basically agreed with you that running the Siepp piece wasn't a great idea, and yet you continue to go after them.

I think you misread their statements. K-Lo said that she didn’t agree with the Siepp piece yet she still ran it. She never said that she shouldn’t have run it (she is, after all, the editor). If they want to admit that the article had no place being published in NRO then I will be glad to retract everything I said.

You have to know that Lopez' phrase "show a little leg" has nothing at all to do with sex or voyeurism, but is a metaphor for the diverse opinions that will widen the appeal of the magazine. Your response to her before and here show that you're either missing her point, or you're deliberately misrepresenting it.

Actually, I don’t think I’m doing either. I was simply making a facetious jab off her comment.

Don't be a perfectionist. You don't get to define 'conservative', 'social conservative' or even 'Evangelical conservative' for the rest of us.

A perfectionist? Are you serious? Come on, Matt. Answer me this. What has caused the ruin of more marriages: p*rn or homosexual unions? This isn’t some minor quibble I have with NRO. This is a slap in the face to women to claim that Playboy should be defended.

Let me offer up a challenge. I want to see anyone use conservative philosophical principles to defend the statements made in Siepp’s article. Either the term conservative can include anything or it has a limited meaning. I’ve never heard a logical reason why a defense of p*rn could be considered a conservative position so I’m open to hear the reasoning.

NRO NEVER NEVER NEVER defended porn- they ran one article by someone else that did, and have run more than a few of their own that attack it.

Jonah admitted that, “And, yes, it's reasonable to assume there's some kind of "endorsement" of that view.” You are making a claim for them that they themselves would disagree with.

There's a difference between a blog run by one guy and a site that runs lots of different and varying articles.

Yes, the difference is that that NRO has editors.

One will have uniformity of opinion and one won't.

I’m all for diversity of opinion. But NRO consistently keeps out opinions that they disagree with. Either they agree with Seipp or they don’t. They should make it clear where they stand.

There's also a difference between a free blog run as a hobby and a for-profit business.

I expect the same standards of quality from NRO as I would from a blog.

Ponnuru is right- we need to know who our friends and who our enemies are. And by going after them the way you have, you're more likely to exclude yourself from the conversation than affect the way NRO does business.

If NRO wants to exclude me because I disagree with them that is their right. But I’m not going to sit at the back of the bus and shut up because my “powerful friends” don’t like what I have to say. And while I’m on my soapbox let me say that the silence from the evangelical side of the fence has been shameful. The Catholic bloggers have been all over this. They know that p*rn is destructive. They know there is nothing remotely “conservattive” about defending p*rn. They know what is right and wrong and they had the guts to speak out. We’re too afraid of not getting invited back to the party that we’re afraid to speak “truth to power.”

11

Ouch, Matt!

12

That reminds me...how was it again that WFB got away with all of the Playboy articles he wrote back in the Eighties?

Seriously...I'm sure that there must have been some NRO op/ed defending his publishing in girly mags. I'm just too young to remember the gist of the defense.

I DO remember his offense at the whole Ambercrotchie & Fitch catalogue thing last year, and I was wondering how Buckley made the distinction of 'implicitly endorsing' the one and eviscerating the other.

13

Brilliant, simply brilliant.

14

Tom Tomorrow once wrote, "Dinesh D'Souza, like many conservatives, writes as though he has heard of satire but never experienced first-hand."

It's good to know that not all conservatives suffer from that malady.

15

Joe,
I am not accusing you of being a perfectionist for having problems with pornography. It is good to be against pornography. I am.

The question is not whether or not pornography is acceptable, or whether defending it could by any stretch be called 'conservative'. But the point is, does a publication forever lose its conservative credentials by running one piece that you or I object to?

It's one thing for you to disagree with the piece. Nobody's telling you to sit down and shut up, that you're not allowed to criticize NR. But it's another thing when you state that because they strayed from your definition of 'social conservative' too far, and weren't willing to roll over to your criticism, that they no longer fit the definition of 'conservative', when in fact they're the strongest defenders of our principles they've got.

You said, "But truth is truth and sometimes you have to lay the smack down on allies as well as enemies." But you didn't lay the smack down on an ally- you declared them no longer an ally.

And you think we're overprotective of our own when they're wrong? Tell that to Trent Lott.

And if you re-read the article, there was nothing in it that said that Playboy was something you should read. What it said was that it was pretty mild now compared to a lot of other stuff out there, which I think is true. The other point of the article is basically that either you have a free society, in which things like Playboy have to be tolerated, or you don't have a free society in which you can get rid of the Playboys only at the expense of lots of other very restrictive policies as well. Now I think that's a false dichotomy, but it's not defending pornography. The conservative principles articulated there are that there is no perfect society; compromise has to be accepted; that you have to look not only at where you want to be but also where you have to go to get there; that we have to look not only at the immediate effect of our policies but also the unintended consequences; and that for all of these reasons it's better to tolerate Playboy than to try to restrict it and open up who knows what can of worms.

Now, all of this depends on the assumptions that pornography is harmless, basically, especially one that's just 'cheesecake' like Playboy. I believe that assumption to be false and very dangerous- we had to start somewhere, and the libertinism of those days, as mild as they might seem to us now, led us directly to the mess we're in today, and Playboy was just part and parcel of that whole thing. So there are some very wrong assumptions in the piece, and there are some very non-conservative principles being articulated, but there are some quite conservative principles being articulated at the same time. And so, NRO ran it, and provoked quite a lot of serious thinking about what it really means to be conservative, and I can't fault them for that.

So it's a lot more complex, I think, than just saying "NRO defends p*rn! NRO isn't conservative anymore!"

16

Matt,

NRO defended the piece on libertarian rather than conservative principles. In my opinion, social libertarianism is as incompatible with social conservatism are is social liberalism.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to stop reading NRO because of this one piece. The larger point I was trying to make is that NRO is testing the waters and seeing how far out on the libertarian edge they can get without us conservatives screaming.

Maybe my Paul Revere-act was a bit overdone. But I guarantee you that this is just the tip of the iceberg. NRO will continue to drift to the libertarian position if they think it will gain them an audience.

I will say that the real shame is that you are right. There are very few socially conservative magazines that are not religious. I'm not sure why that is since there is no lack of demand for such a publication.

17

Eh, I'm on the fence on this one... I'm one of those evangelicals that can read, and I still read NRO, but I was kinda thrown for a big loop by "I don't mind having my writing around a close up of a girl's rectum" or whatever it said. I'm not so down with the free society or theocracy arguments either.

18

> "so-called “South Park Republicans” (or, as they used to be called, “Republican Party Reptiles”). This demographic consists of 18-34 year old males who tend to read “laddie mags” like FHM, Stuff, and Maxim. Overall, they have libertarian tendencies but their aversion to both homosexuals and foreigners has presented us a potential recruiting opportunity."

Touche. You've put into words something that's been nagging me.

Same Kathryn Jean Lopez who regularly condemns anti-abortion Protestants for allowing contraception, who agreed to publish an NRO op-ed in defence of Playboy? At least that wasn't on the list the Anglican bishops approved at Lambeth in 1930.