Hanging out in the sacrifice zone

I’ve been visiting FrumForum lately – partly because bob mentioned that he first visited this site after following my commenting name-link from there to here, partly because our occasional visitor and old friend strangelet (as “quell”) can be found there violating decorum, as well as punctuation, in her inimitable way.

Another reason I like to go Frumming is that I find Mr. Frum wrong in a right way – not an agreeable way, but in the manner of a kind of limiting political function defining the “inside” boundaries of “the Right” on our contemporary political spectrum.  For instance, Frum will take any opportunity to remind us that he opposes Obama – thus his rather trivial and brief little post today:  “The Next Time Obama Blames Bush….” Frum may be aware that many True Conservatives still think he despised Palin so much he endorsed Obama in ’08.  And Frum has found his own, less obviously xenophobic way to attack the Park51 project, though, as his commenters point out, his use of the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque” already firmly places him, or his aspirations, politically (and culturally).

Unlike, say, Andrew Sullivan, Frum still wants to be included somewhere in the current Republican coalition, and that goal seems to require him, among other things, to find ways to bash Obama and bash Muslims, just less crudely than a wanna-be Tea Party hero would.  In this vein, it’s interesting how much further to the left FF’s comment threads are compared to F himself, or at least to how F seems compelled to position himself. In its own way this tendency seems characteristic of  our peculiar political-cultural moment, as those of us not wholly committed to either of the two big teams struggle to colonize the sacrifice zone between (and around) Far Right and Repudiated Left.

14 comments on “Hanging out in the sacrifice zone

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  1. I haven’t been over at FF for quite a while. What I had found interesting after O’s election was FF as a representative theater of the war between the Far Right and the FarFar Right. Once the FFR prevailed in real life, if not FF, the whole thing seemed kinda repetitive.

    Frum is before everything else, a neo con. So there’s no real place for him anywhere other than the Repubs.

    I think the lefter than F character of the comments is because the FFR contingent disliked F for not kicking the RINOs and dems off the blog, so I’m guessing a lot of FFR just stoppped commenting or went somewhere more satisfying.

  2. Well he did grudgingly endorse McCain in the end, he is still embarassed
    that Palin agreed with him on the Afghan question, the comment section has been flooded by Nazgul’s and uruk hai, the Far Right have
    checked out of regular politics, Bob,

  3. bob wrote:

    Frum is before everything else, a neo con.

    Yes, that becomes more clear. He’s the peculiar intersection of NeoCon and Brooks-Salam-Friedersdorf centrist/progressive conservatism – pre-emptive war as another social program we can’t quite do without.

  4. @ miguel cervantes:

    the Far Right have
    checked out of regular politics, Bob,

    I’m guessing you mean the FarFar Right, but in any case I’m also guessing our respective definitions differ by a couple of degrees ie what you think of as the center I think of at least the Far Right, possibly the FFR.

    In any any case, “regular politics”?. Another defintional question. Clearly they are involved in elections, having just had considerable success.

  5. @ bob:

    Am I far right or far far right for believing that the Fedal guvmint shouldn’t be doing anything not plainly listed in black and white in the Constitution and its Amendments?

    Aside from printing and mailing my monthly SSN check of course.

  6. The Paulists had some success, with Rand Paul, the Dauphin, who shares some of the distaste of empire building, that Highlander has rediscovered, an odd interpretation of hegemony, of a ‘The Tail that
    wagged the Dog”

  7. @ fuster:

    That’s covered under article 1:28

    . . . fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

  8. @ bob:

    I’m feeling gracious and generous. Everybody else eligible should collect until it is impossible for whoever ends up with custody of my body to hide from the feds the fact that I am no longer eligible to collect.

  9. Sully wrote:

    Am I far right or far far right for believing that the Fedal guvmint shouldn’t be doing anything not plainly listed in black and white in the Constitution and its Amendments?

    You may be far right, but in a very conventional way, for believing that there is such a thing as “plainly listed in black and white” in the Constitution or any other document. It’s always a matter of interpretation, as any Framers who had any doubts about the question were soon apprised by the Supreme Court, when it explained, in one of its first decisions, that Congress could not be restrained by a wishful Natural Rights reading of their handiwork.

  10. A Valiant try to impart wisdom over there,Colin, but David has clearly lost control of the comment section.

    Herr Gosch, you were enough of an polliwog, back in the late 70s, to know that’s just a bunch of scargot

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