Today From the Asylum
By Shorter Verbatim Michael Ledeen: “Washington diplomats have steadfastly refused to see the Iranian regime for what it is: a relentless enemy that seeks to dominate or destroy us.” Um, I’d have to say it’s not doing much of a job. Although since their public officials are capable of asserting power from beyond the grave, maybe they’re capable of anything!
Just to frighten you a bit, I’ll cite this passage from Supreme Discomfort:
…But then one night in February 2001, Bailey was channel surfing and caught [Clarence] Thomas on C-SPAN givng the keynote Francis Boyer lecture at the American Enterprise Institutes’s annual black tie dinner.
[…]
Thomas extolled the work of leading right-wing intellectuals — Gertrude Himmelfarb, Michael Novak, Michael Ledeen — and seemed to remove his judicial robe for the night and take up arms as a conservative movement combatant.
A guy who thinks it’s a serious possibility that Iran could militarily “dominate” the United States isn’t just some crank with a blog on a fourteenth-rate internet media outfit, but is an actual Respected Conservative Intellectual. It tells you all you need to know about the contemporary American conservative movement.