The Death of Arthur Schlesinger

With the death of Arthur Schlesinger, here -- with whom I became both a friend, though I won't pretend to be a close one, and enthusiastic admirer during his last decade -- we are, I'm afraid, going to read a lot of tributes from folks like David Brooks and William Kristol wherein they try to appropriate Arthur's life and work for some neocon argument or other, or, at the very least, take potshots at contemporary liberals. This is what neocons do when people die. They say their enemies secretly thought they were right. They tried it with Lionel Trilling, here. Norman Podhoretz once wrote an article for Harper's on why Orwell would have been a neocon, and it will happen with Arthur too. I didn't spend a lot of time on it this morning, but let's be clear about a few things. While Arthur was catholic in his social tastes -- a champion partygoer, in fact -- he had no more use for neocons than he did for commies. And he was particularly contemptuous of this president and the men who manipulate him.

Read the whole Altercation here.