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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Mark Levin and Jim Manzi

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  April 22nd, 2010 at 05:52 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I have no clue who Jim Manzi is and after today I hope to go back to having no clue who he is.

As Hogan noted this morning, the guy apparently went to National Review Online and attacked National Review’s most successful author, Mark Levin.

Now Mark does not need me or anyone else to defend him from the cocktail conservative brigade of the Trig Palin School of Investigative Journalism1, but we all should. He did fine work in his book and it is disappointing to see National Review allow such a hit on their site — particularly when so many who post there have in the past had to get someone to sign off on their posts.

It makes you wonder who was asleep at the switch or, if there was no one asleep at the switch, who let it happen.

In any event, I don’t need to defend Mark though I choose to. But Mark has defended himself whereby defending himself means gutting, dicing, and mincing up this Manzi guy.

  1. There are a few liberals out there accusing me of attacking Trig Palin. These same liberals love Andrew Sullivan. That is the relevant point. All the people attacking guys like Mark Levin and me seem to think Andrew Sullivan is a wonderful, decent, and fine individual. They ignore that for over a year the man has been a one trick pony in his investigation and reporting on the real identity of Trig Palin’s mother — a disgusting stunt that he continues to this day.
    ?
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COMMENTS

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  • RedBeard

    Manzi’s hit piece – raving, angry, and irrational

    Levin’s reply – concise, reasoned, and rational

    Now, which presentation belongs in a place like NRO, and which doesn’t?

    I hope this was a slip-up by the editors, and not a bellwether of things to come.

  • INC

    the Trig Palin School of Investigative Journalism

    and why in the world would you use such a description?

  • leftylurker

    nt

  • Doc Holliday

    experiences an epistemic closure.

  • RedBeard
  • leftylurker

    No. I have standards. =) I won’t waste electrons reading that stuff.

  • RedBeard

    Sullivan is, well, to put it kindly, at least a half a bubble off plumb.

  • INC

    Sullivan is so irrelevant to my world that I did not even think of him, and I was reading the post as written.

    I think it could have been phrased better.

  • dfvazan

    An embarassing (for the magazine) debacle occurred a few months back in The Weekly Standard when some tool attempted to review Levin’s book. How do these freaks sneak into what should be conservative bastions? These pseudo-conservatives need to be properly purged.

  • bk
  • http://xmmlbchat.blogspot.com katesmith

    I have no respect for National Review. Showcasing Manzi was about more than Manzi vs Levin. It was unnecessary at best, timed for maximum harm against conservatives, and highlighted a positive view for global warming–which is the biggest crime against humanity in history. The worst possible thing a right of center publication–or a sane person for that matter– could do is defend that movement in any way. The criminalization of US citizens and their owing billions in reparations for use of CO2 is not a topic for opinion, it is a life and death issue that must be stopped. Additionally, discussion of this massive fraud on both sides has wasted a generation of time and effort. David Rockefeller and Soros must be grinning over cocktails right now.

  • Scope

    is trying to be fair and balanced. They allow propaganda to be printed because, well it’s fair and balanced. They allow marxist/communist views there, because it is fair and balanced. We have come to this point, in this country, it is fair to give the Progressivists the same air time as those that fought against this tyranny for all of our history. Take a listen to Fred Barnes and tell me he is not bending over backwards to be “fair.”

  • Scope

    The biggest money movers and shakers are now in control of the US. Obama is only their mouthpiece.

  • jenniferjmilleresq

    the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation (which once supported the individual health care mandate and just now renounced it). I attended a local Federalist Society CLE with the Cato Institute’s Supreme Court expert right before Obama’s first nomination was announced. I remember him talking about Obama likely picking Cass Sunstein with absolutely no emotion or seeming care. My general impression was that he hung with a lot of liberals in the bubble and happened to have a job at Cato. Overwhelming cynicism and condescension oozes from them. That’s why we need some mini think-tanks and more info outlets like Redstate that are outside the bubble.

  • roscopico

    …And I still keep the printed offense right where it belongs (near my toilet) though I’ve not needed to use it yet. Why oh why, Weekly Standard, do you not print on softer paper?

    Peter Berkowitz, if I am not mistaken, was the author of the claptrap WS review of Liberty and Tyranny. Its “review” sought to make a case for “moderation”, which seems quite rational based on the astounding success of Neville “Peace in our time” Chamberlain.

    Moderation?

    I’ve never seen this “Peter Berkowitz”, so I assume he is a David Frum pseudonym.

    Dr. Levin is an intellectual titan, and may G-d bless his soul.

  • E Pluribus Unum
  • http://www.veronicaestrada.com/ Veronica Estrada

    ks, post your stuff!

  • http://www.veronicaestrada.com/ Veronica Estrada
  • http://traversable.blogspot.com/ revprez

    1. Manzi and Levin are big boys, and certainly big enough to call each other out when the other’s wrong.

    2. I don’t buy Manzi’s larger argument about epistemic closure, largely because he chucks it pretty quickly as he dives into a very real problem in conservative writing–a talent for grasping the weakest arguments against global warming alarmism. You need men like Manzi (or Yuval Levin, or that matter); we ourselves in the fight against cap-and-trade if we’re perceived as leaning on any reed; no matter how weak.

    3. Mark Levin’s a great advocate for the conservative ethic. He’s a piss poor debater on matters in the scientific and engineering sphere. That’s not a knock against the man, just a fact–the percentage of commentators of any stripe who can speak with even passing knowledge in these areas is probably in the low single digits. It seems to me the best way to do away with Jim Manzi’s epistemic closure accusation is…well…not to feed into it by defending to the hilt the most flawed and fragile arguments against Eco-Statism–especially those that flub the science side of things–simply to defend a fellow conservative.

  • mnestheus

    in 1955 , WFB founded a soi disant ” journal of fact and opinion” called National Review,

    Having deposed his son , it has developed an increasing preference for disinformation propagated by talk radio hacks over mere scientific facts.

    The majority of the entries here suggest that you don’t have to understand the words’ epistemic closure to embrace what they signify.

    Which means Mr. Erikson has done a very bad thing– giving practitioners of literary theory a real world example to point to.