Mr. Weiss turns that ever useful Straussian device of packing an essay full to the brim with the argumentatively useful and the tangential, in equal measure, or even what might be politically useful information, to the business of obfuscation rather than clarification. Although Mr. Weiss is probably a third or fourth hand practitioner of that strategy. Could he have been a student of Harvey Mansfield? Except that in the literary reminiscence that rambling collection of associations is the essence of such a tribute. Not to forget that Mr. Weiss is well connected in the world of letters as well as politics: Conquest and Hitchens were his associates. And Henry Jackson and Thatcher were his teachers/masters: the congruence of Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberals defines the dismal political present, that also defines Mr. Weiss’ politics. The Old Cold War and the New Cold War have one commonality the Soviet Union/Russia: how convenient a starting point for the essay than the death of Mr. Conquest as an opportunity to revive those ghosts of the Old Cold War as a useful backdrop to the New Cold War?
Political Observer
StephenKMackSD's Blog 