National Review, founded by Bill Buckley in 1955, has been a stumbling block to neo-progressive Democrats for nearly seven decades. The mission of the magazine, Buckley announced at its founding, was to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
Jack Fowler, now running for City Clerk in Milford,
Connecticut, has been associated with the magazine for more than three decades
and served for a time as its publisher.
Fowler, along with Buckley and
other non-far-right conservatives at National Review, cannot reasonably be
accused of either anti-Semitism or unflinching support of former President
Donald Trump.
Before he threw his hat in the presidential ring, Buckley
characterized Trump as a “vulgarian,” and National Review took some kicks in
the stomach for having devoted a whole issue of the magazine to a political
polemic titled “Never
Trump.”
In 1992, Buckley published what some consider the best view
of modern anti-Semitism, In
Search of Anti-Semitism.
John O’Sullivan, then publisher of National Review,
characterized the book this way: “It is not a history of anti-Semitism, nor a
social-psychological definition of anti-Semitism, not a survey of anti-Semitism
in the world today.” The book is rather “an examination of how anti-Semitism is
treated when it appears, or is alleged to appear, in the limited but
influential milieu in which he [Buckley] happens to live: opinion magazines, op-ed pages,
syndicated columns, television talk shows [emphasis mine].”
The book may be considered especially relevant considering
the current pro-Hamas protests, some of them patently anti-Semitic, among
leftist outposts in ivy-league fever swamps, opinion magazines, op-ed pages,
syndicated columns and television talk shows.
“The election for Milford city clerk,” a Hartford paper reports, “is
traditionally a low-key, overlooked local contest for a job that includes
approving items like marriage and dog licenses. But the campaign this year has
exploded into charges and countercharges as Democrats are blasting Republican
Jack Fowler for a series of controversial posts on a variety of subjects dating
back to 2012.”
Opposition researchers likely associated with Connecticut’s mud-throwing
Democrat Party have unearthed “a series of controversial tweets by Fowler that
date back more than a decade and involve sharply criticizing another Milford
Republican and making references to Jews.”
The tweet in question “written by Fowler, which came to
light recently when retweeted to nearly 44,000 followers by Connecticut
Democrats, states “Jewrack Jewbama. Jew Biden. Nancy Jewlosi. Hebrewllary
Clinton. Yeah, you’re right now that I think about it.”
Fowler, the paper observes, “admits writing the posts but
says they were either sarcastic, done in jest or responding to news events of
the day that cannot be understood properly without knowing the original tweets
that caused the response… Fowler says he was responding to another post, which
has since been deleted, that had criticized National Review, which is a staunch
defender of Israel. In addition, Fowler released a series of pro-Israel tweets
that he wrote, along with three articles that he authored for the magazine on
anti-Semitism.”
Defending himself from a charge of anti-Semitism, Fowler
answered, “There is no question where I stand thoroughly, very publicly,
repeatedly, voluminously over the years [on Israel]. To be accused to being
anti-Semitic is reprehensible, especially by people who know it’s not true. … People
who know me in Milford know this is B.S. This is the age we live in. It’s not
to win an election. It’s to destroy the reputation of somebody.”
Given the prevailing circumstances in the hot war between
Israel and Hamas, every rhetorician on planet earth would acknowledge that, if
you are defending yourself against an unwarranted charge of anti-Semitism, you
are losing the argument. Quite like a poisonous false charge of racism, the
mere making of the charge itself is certain proof of culpability.
Fowler’s statement, even if made in jest, said Democrat
Party leader Nancy DiNardo is “inappropriate.” But it is seemingly appropriate
to tat political opponents with anti-Semitism. Such ideological tattoos do not
easily wear away, even if they are demonstrably false.
DiNardo, applying her pitch-brush more broadly, continued “I
think it points to how bad the Republican Party is getting. They’re going to be
extremists at every single level. It’s just not what the Connecticut voters
stand for… He was the publisher of an ultraconservative, far-right magazine. Of
all the candidates that the Republicans could have picked in Milford, and they
picked him? That’s shocking to me. He’s not a good candidate to be running for
this position.”
The easily shocked DiNardo very likely has never leafed
through the non-far-right, non-ultraconservative National Review. She certainly has never read Buckley’s In Search of Anti-Semitism.
We have here reached a point –of no return? – in which
ideologically polluted charges need not be proven before they are unjustly
launched against political foes simply to win elections.
When Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass rebukes Humpty Dumpty for having used the
same word to mean opposite things, Humpty Dumpty replies imperiously that the
word he is using means exactly what he “chooses it to mean, neither more nor
less. The only question is – who rules.”
In Connecticut, Democrats rule.
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