Does Ezra Klein Use Information Technology for Evil?

Ezra Klein writes:

Ezra Klein: I have a Yahoo Tubes feed for Ponnuru, so I don't miss his writing amidst the clutter of The Corner...

This seems to me to be very strange--akin to "I get dead rodents delivered to my doorstep every morning by DHL."

There is a belief--in spite of his hanging out in the very, very bad neighborhood that is National Review--that Ramesh Ponnuru is a decent, smart person whom one can learn something by reading. Where does this belief come from? What has Ramesh Ponnuru ever written that people find worth reading for its own sake? And why has Ponnuru's reputation as a "decent" right-winger survived his approval of the dust jacket copy for his... remarkable book The Party of Death?

Is the Democratic Party the "Party of Death"? If you look at their agenda they are.

IT’S NOT JUST abortion-on-demand. It’s euthanasia, embryo destruction, even infanticide—-and a potentially deadly concern with "the quality of life" of disabled people. If you think these issues don’t concern you—guess again. The Party of Death could be roaring into the White House, as National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru shows, in the person of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In The Party of Death, Ponnuru details how left-wing radicals, using abortion as their lever, took over the Democratic Party-—and how they have used their power to corrupt our law and politics, abolish our fundamental right to life, and push the envelope in ever more dangerous directions. In The Party of Death, Ponnuru reveals:

• How Hillary Clinton could use the abortion issue (but not in the way you think) to become president
• Why the conventional wisdom about Roe v.Wade is a lie
• How the party of death-—a coalition of special interests ranging from Planned Parenthood to Hollywood-—came to own the Democratic Party
• How the mainstream media promotes the party of death
• Why Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and other leading liberals gave up being pro-life
• How liberals use animal rights to displace human rights
• The Democratic presidential candidate who said that infanticide is a mother’s "choice"
• How doctors-—and other health care professionals—-are being coerced, by law, into violating their consciences
• The ultrasound revolution: why there’s hope to stop the party of death

Ponnuru’s shocking exposé shows just how extreme the Party of Death has become as they seek to destroy every inconvenient life, demand fealty to their radical agenda, and punish anyone who defies them. But he also shows how the tide is turning, how the Party of Death can be defeated, and why its last victim might be the Democratic Party itself.

Comments

[NE1]

To be honest, I do this for Robin Hanson too.

[chris]

Duh: it's because he's a young hipster-type like the other Ezras/Yglesiases/Ackermans out there. It's a class thing.

[elliottg]

Of course some people are still reading Greg Mankiw and Arnold Kling so I'm not sure whether criticism is warranted.

[Sam Penrose]

As someone who has enjoyed your online writing since the days of the Apple Internet Users mailing list, I think you need to be careful with this line of reasoning -- that having encountered one book (or more) you find reprehensible, you should no longer listen to its author. Off the top of my head:

- the author may do other worthwhile work
- the author may do other bad work that is inadvertently instructive
- the author may do other bad work that is important by virtue of its audience
- the labeling of others as enemies can dispose us to self-righteousness, which leads to more labeling ...

WRT the specific statements of this jacket copy, it reads tonally like the average Glenn Greenwald post or, frankly, a few of yours:

- start with a core contested belief ("abortion is murder", "cutting taxes w/o cutting spending is a lie")
- define all the actions of those on the other side of the argument as if they secretly agreed with your interpretation and were cackling in glee at the opportunity to do what on some level they must KNOW is EVIL
- tie a diverse set of minor and major points into a single thesis whose emphasis is moral

Now ... I read you (and Greenwald) and I mostly ignore Ponnuru (and Mankiw!) so I'm voting for you with my clicks. But all of you as public voices are creatures of the Manichean American political system in which One Must Choose a Side. It's decent enough to give public honor to the other side's heretics, such as Bruce Bartlett, as a gesture against pure Us-vs-Them-ism. It's also fair enough to identify some figures, such as Donald Luskin, who are irredeemable buffoons, and others who, while sometimes on the side of the angels, are too slippery to trust (McCain, in some ways). But nothing you've said about (or quoted from) Ponnuru suggests that he's anything but a committed partisan with a weakness for the occasional over-the-top attack. And that's not a good enough reason in my view to define him as fundamentally of bad faith -- anymore than a willingness to honor the other side's heretics is enough to demonstrate your own good faith.

[Funkhauser]

Sam - sorry, I can't help identify one redeeming work by Ponnuru. Someone might.

Brad - let's not go around insulting Deutsche Post like this. One is a stable company; the other is swirling down the drain.

[Colin Danby]

Dunno, Sam: Is there any writer, no matter how vile, to which your initial four points could not apply?

Strikes me that when someone has reached for this kind of nuclear-level rhetoric ("seek to destroy every inconvenient life") and not just in a moment of pique but at book length, I'm within my rights to ignore them.

[pants]

As a proud member of the party of death i get dead embryos delivered to my doorstep every morning. Even better than rodents!

[Neil B]

Sam, would a responsible writer put out a formal book called "The Party of Death" with those kinds of charges? Brad can be mean here, but "everyone knows" you can be snarkier on a blog. Also, most of the criticism of say Republicans about being anti-science, lack of transparency, lack of respect for USC protections etc. are demonstrable.

[Sam Penrose]

Colin:

I chose those points because Ezra Klein and I believe Yglesias ("Ramesh Ponnuru's probably the smartest totally orthodox conservative") see R.P. as someone of whom the first three points are not incidentally but particularly true, and Brad admires both E.K. and M.Y. (The fourth point belongs in a separate paragraph, one I didn't get around to writing.)

Your second statement does not contradict me: of course you have the "right" to ignore him; I was questioning Brad's assertion that all of us *should* ignore him, that we "can['t] learn something by reading [him]."

(I was further suggesting that Brad (not necessarily you) might find particular value in reading him as a sort of mirror-image: a clearly clueful, often vociferous partisan whose partisanship has an opposite charge to Brad's.)

[Colin Danby]

So what's the answer to "What has Ramesh Ponnuru ever written that people find worth reading for its own sake?"

[Zephyrus]

Colin:

He did an article a couple years back that pretty much showed that the Republican Party is absolutely farked due to its position on immigration. I remember thinking it was pretty good.

[sd]

I think its a little uncharitable to judge a first-time author based on what is on the dust jacket of his book. The actual writing is POD is much more measured and sober than the jacket copy. It is not at all uncommon for a semi-wonky writer to write a book of substance and sell it to a publisher, and then to find that the publisher feels better about the market prospects of a hate screed than a substantative work, and so markets it as such.

Ponnuru, in his media appearences after POD was published, seemed downright uncomfortable with the marketing of his book. I saw several interviews in which he tried desperately to move the conversation off of the partisan and confrontational angle to a more serious discussion of the nuances of his argument.

You could argue that he should have had the foresight or the guts to push for a deal that gave him more creative control over the packagaing of his work, but ask yourself if you would have had that foresight or courage when you published your first major work.

[piotr]

"the actual writing in POD is much more measured and sober..."

The guy is a fanatic, idiot or a whore. Each aspect can be calibrated, but there is some irreducible offense here: to the
degree that he is not an idiot he must be a whore.

Basically, the basic premise of the book in question is that we should disregard all the differences in social, environmental, economic etc. policies between two parties, and settle on one profound difference: one party is EVIL, the other is not. And there is a short and simple proof of that evilitry: support of reproductive freedom,

You can then combine sophistry, shoddy scholarship, fanaticism etc. in different proportions in advancing the premise, but to me, it is like choosing if your water supply should be laced with heavy metals, dioxine or fecal matter.

[sd]

piotr here accuses someone of being a fanatic by calling him a "fanatic, idiot or a whore." The irony is rolling down like floodwaters.

[piotr]

I claim that one can try to measure to what degree Ponnuru is a fanatic and/or and idiot (meaning, sincerely believing that he opposes hordes of tanathophilic liberals) and to what degree he is a whore, mendatiously making crap. Let me illustrate the point.

A supportive reader writes in the review at amazon.com "Can support abortion pry open the door for euthanasia, infanticide Mr. Ponnuru points out that in Holland almost 10% of infants never leave the delivery b/c of infanticides, and that a fifth take place without parental notification or consent." Grim stuff indeed. Especially if we consider the fact that American Democract slavishly endorse everything Dutch. Yet, are EVEN THE DUTCH so evil? This is what a Dutch opponent of the "infanticide" wrote: "Of the 200,000 children born in the Netherlands every year, about 1,000 die in the first year of life. For approximately 600 of these infants, death is preceded by a medical decision regarding the end of life.

Dr. Joop Stolk of Free University in Amsterdam tells Jonathan Imbody, senior policy analyst of the Christian Medical Association, how the Dutch courts would not intervene to save the life of a Down syndrome child whose parents and doctors refused an easy life-saving surgery to reverse a minor bowel obstruction. The child eventually starved to death."

So 3 passive medical decisions per 1000 infants (number due to a Dutch Christian conservative) is transformed into "10% of infants that never leave the delivery", and this is further transformed into a central plank of American Democratic Party.

Accidentally, I still do not know if it is acceptable, to moral sensibilities of people like Ponnuru, to "refuse an easy life-saving surgery" do to the lack of funds by the patient? As far as I can tell, denial of medical treatment is not regarded as murder in those cases. But when it is convenient, by all means, then the incidence of the practice is based on least favorable report, then multiplies by 30, then transported to America etc. Then it circulates in wingnut press and makes a good book chapter.

Now, a quiz on morality: how to morally judge an operation of multiplying by 30, as a step in achieving a hyperbole?

An inadvertent mistake, due to ignorance of social reality and innumeracy (the resulting 10% is preposterous), in my opinion, that would be idiocy

no sloppiness is wrong if the cause is good! in my opinion, fanaticism

it is hard slog to find enough material for the book, and some bloody pieces are needed for the book to sell, I would chalk that as whoring.

On a related note, in Polish "ponury" means "grim, sullen, sinister, cheerless, morose." while in
Slovak "bleak, dismal, gloomy, sombre."

[AlanW]

Don't know if anyone's still following this thread, but I think it's easy for liberals to glom onto commentators from the opposite party that attack their own side's orthodoxy (eg Douthat). But, if you want to really understand the thinking and direction of the other party, it's important to read conservatives that are true believers, but not disingenous or deluded. That's a pretty small pool, and Ponnuru is one of the most thoughtful fish swimming in it.