Larison Converted to Islam?

[Ed. note: This is a fascinating post to me because The Man from K Street had either read this or had put the pieces together regading Larison and Islam. The earlier comment he made to Dreher's blog was deleted, but Silicon Valley Steve preserved it and re-posted it in my blog on June 6, 2007. MfKS's comment was dated April 16, 2007:

I make no secret of my opinion of Larison. I think he's one of many C-list academic paleocons I've known: angry, pedantic, as terrified of female sexuality as any Wahabbi imam, self-important, and waiting for a societal collapse that will never happen. In five years he'll be an untenured hanger-on at some jerkwater college, a perpetual bachelor, and no one will give two seconds to his ramblings online or off.

His blog helps me see neo-Agrarianism/"Cruchiness" as the ideology of the loser. But your posts of the past couple days make it look like the creed of the coward as well. I'd love to be moved away from that sense, but the fact that I fully expect you to delete this post only underscores that.]

First Comment

If you are ~18, hopelessly nerdy, internally conflicted about yourself, looking for history's "strong horse", and terrified by female sexuality (or at least by even the subtle expression of it), Islam offers a welcome prospect of certainty and reassurance, and a worldview that nicely dovetails with your inner angst. In western nations, this means conversion to a 'restrained' sort of Sunni (or better yet, Sufi) profession of the kind that we *want* most born Muslims in the West to adhere to. See Larison and Stephen Schwartz for examples of this. The problem of course is that in societies that are already Muslim, only radical Islam offers the kind of counter-cultural refuge that certain uncertain young men seek.

Posted by: The Man From K Street January 24, 2008 6:21 PM

Second Comment

I admire them, very much. I could never embrace their way, being a staunch Trinitarian. But I prefer their company and conversation to that of any denizen of Wall or K street, any day. Austerity's forever preferable to vapidity, after all.

This reminds me of another more-papal-than-the-pope paleocon, Lawrence Auster, who was scandalized at the anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon in 2005...because sexy! Arab women! with boobs! were so prominent in them. Such decadence that he could come to sympathize with the Hezbollah POV against our western depravity.

But it's an old meme. There is a persistent topos in Islamic writing about the West regarding the babeliciousness of our self-reliant devil-whores, dating back to at least Crusader times.

Posted by: The Man From K Street January 24, 2008 10:01 PM

Third Comment

Sometimes I really wonder if Rod and other comboxers here have actually read Qutb, rather than read second-hand what others say he wrote. There's a nice excerpt of The America Which I Saw (Amrika Min Al Dakhil) in From the Outer World, Harvard University Press.

There is a lot about materialism, violence, attitudes towards death, lack of the spiritual in American churches, lack of art, lack of taste in food and clothing...say, does this sound at all familiar? Half the time he reads like a chapter from Crunchy Cons (the book, not the blog)!

But not really a whole lot about sex--that vice was far down his list. Some obvious misreadings -- you really have to wonder how anyone living in small town Colorado in 1950 could deduce that homosexuality was about to subvert the Western world -- and there is one sentence where it's obvious that he spent a little too much time studying the female student body: "in the glances of their eyes, their thirsty lips and bodies, the swelling breast, the plump thigh, the fat posterior, the smooth leg left entirely unconcealed." Although it should be pointed out that Qutb never married, and there is a school of thought that believes he was homosexual in orientation if not in practice (not that Islam is all that persnickety about the distinction).

But mainly, Qutb's work on us is about how materialistic and shallow and uncultured Americans are. I have no trouble believing that Larison and other, ahem, genius/freaks, could find in it, and much else besides in Islamic literature, ideas to confirm their inner convictions.

Posted by: The Man From K Street January 25, 2008 7:58 AM

Context.

On Ron Paul Paleo Support

Cry not for Larison. Behind many a paleo's affected Tory elevated sentiments, there are a lot of dark, pug-ugly psychoses lurking about. Sooner or later they slip up, like Sam Francis or Joe Sobran, and let them break through to the surface. The greater frequency of blogging as opposed to print journalism means this can be expected to happen earlier in a career rather than hidden for decades, since there are more opportunities for 'inadvertent honesty'...

Source.

The first chill wind interrupting the fun

Rod Dreher: "Bottom line: the Louisiana vote was about Louisiana, not national politics."

Perhaps. And that is certainly the way things might look from the DMN newsroom. Among professional Democrats around K Street, though, the Jindal win, combined with Niki Tsongas barely squeaking by in the special election for a supposedly "safe" House seat in Massachusetts and the fact that, damn it, things are going better in Iraq, are creating the first chill wind interrupting the fun. There is no panic yet, but certainly there is a growing realization that 2008 is by no means going to be the slam-dunk that they thought it would be as late as a month ago.

Context.

As with everything, caveat emptor.

Neither the MSNBC piece's author, nor any of the commenters so far, has been able to mention the 800 lb. gorilla in the room: a sizable number of those workmen who provided the labor army to construct the McMansions now falling apart were illegal aliens. Ask a contractor you trust to be honest about it and you'll hear about how, in the rush to cut costs and get these new developments up and running in double-quick time, they resorted to hiring Guatemalan and Mexican peasants who knew as much going into the job about putting up drywall or laying down floors as Lindsay Lohan. Some of them perhaps got enough on the job experience to have eventually learned, so if you are considering buying one of these places in "Chesterfield Oaks" or somesuch, snap up one of the last ones completed, not the initial models. But the contractors who've spoken have said in most cases, the seasonal labor employed to build the various Tollbrothersburgs were finally paid off only marginally more skilled than when they started. As with everything, caveat emptor.

Context.

Isn't it obvious?

Isn't it obvious? Ross has carefully crafted his comments on l'affaire Beauchamps because he's gunning for the TNR editorship after they can Foer. He can't afford to bash that rag too much, and yet can't very well look to be leaping to Foer's defense if he has any hope of being brought in to be the housecleaning white knight in the wake of the scandal.

Ross would be perfect: he's young (the average age of a new TNR editor-in-chief has been around 29 or 30 for some time now), he's been very adeptly playing the role of The Thoughtful Conservative Who Badly Wants To Be Liked By Liberals (a schtick pioneered by David Brooks and Christopher Caldwell), and he's ready for a promotion.

Context.

Changes to the American Language

Let me put the question to the room: How do you think the Iraq War experience will change the American language?

"Redeploy" has already become a euphemism for "retreat"

"I support the troops" now is code for "I don't support the mission"

"Meatgrinder" now refers to four-year campaigns with under 10% of the Allied casualty total of one Western Front battle (Passchendaele), with consequent adjustment in western resolve levels.

Context.

Try this counterfactual

Try this counterfactual: suppose Britain had acquiesced in say, 1775, to allowing for North American representation in Parliament. Then what reason can Whitehall give for denying additional parliamentary representation to British sugar planters in the West Indies?

Historically these planters (and their investors back in Bristol, etc.) were richer than anyone else in the 18th century. They didn't see any need to agitate for representation--they simply BOUGHT OFF MPs from British constituencies, rotten or not. But give them elected MPs in addition to those from the royal colonies of the Carolinas, Virginia, etc., and you create a large, well-funded pro-slavery bloc that I could easily see dragging out the abolition of the slave trade for a long time past 1833, and the continuation of colonial slavery for years beyond that.

Context.

Fair point, I apologize. Still...

Mr. K, the reason that fbc and I both cited bar association work is that, in your initial post, you say you have never met a paleo who is "a member of a local professional organization." To then say how unimpressed you are with bar association work is pure unadulterated goal-post shifting. Color me unimpressed.

Fair point, I apologize. Still, the spirit of mentioning professional associations was meant to imply something of a true give-and-take guild, where the members are constantly refining standards of quality, weeding out the bad apples, and driving the profession's evolution. Something I think we can all agree bar associations have generally failed to accomplish in the past few decades.

What pro-paleo lawyerly professional activity outside the billable hours would I be impressed with? Organizing and chartering an Inn of Court. Working with a diocesan chancellor (or his/her Protestant or Orthodox equivalent) to build a diocesan legal network that would be a pro bono machine equal to any secular counterpart in your area. Establishing a local version of the Becket Fund. Working with the county and state GOP general counsels to lead the deployment of teams of polling place watchers and recount observers, and organizing seminars on election law to train them.

Context.

As an admitted attorney myself, color me deeply unimpressed.

Paleocon here...member of multiple bar associations from the ABA on the national level to my local county bar association, where I serve on the courthouse committee

As an admitted attorney myself, color me deeply unimpressed. Harriet Miers tried to spin the same sow's ear into a judicial silk purse, but while some non-lawyers may believe that bar association schmoozing (in between hustling for speeding ticket cases and getting the monthly cut from the mortgage broker who shares your office building) makes one a real man of the polis, there are others who know better.

Coached kindergarten YMCA flag football team to unbeaten 13-0 season.

Congratulations, seriously. Plus you put yourself in a position where there were plenty of potential clients if one of the little tykes got hurt.

20 years as a Republican volunteer to various local, state and national campaigns. Volunteering, contributing, active Republican (til George W. Bush, that is.) Precinct captain, delegate to state Republican convention.

Twenty years of activism and you finished as precinct captain? With one state convention thrown in as a sop? That's kind of sad, actually. I can understand your disillusionment with the GOP. You'll be happier in your state Reform Party organization.

pure unadulterated bullsh*t

I guess the asterix is what paleos mean by "striving for a culture of virtue."

Context.

I almost did, but realized that the usual objections would be made.

You could probably add joined the Army to that list.

I almost did, but realized that the usual objections would be made. Some variation of "well, not to imply that I don't have the highest regard for our dedicated men and women in uniform (etc. etc.) but the armed forces aren't a good example of an organic community...and in answering to federal authority, it's part of Leviathan, etc. etc."

Plus there's that whole going into harm's way hurdle.

Paleos: okay, you say you believe in being part of a community of free men that take responsibility for their own defense, but you don't want to join the National Guard?

Fine, then join the State Guard. (Rod: and Daniel: ) No foreign deployments to worry about.

Or join the Civil Air Patrol. Or the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Be an adult leader of Naval Sea Cadets, or, if you live in AK, OH, NY, or NJ, join the state Naval Militia. Study and get an amateur radio license and join a civil defense RACES/ARES network. Heck, learn to shoot in a club affiliated with the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

There are a million ways to make a worthwhile contribution without having to worry that you are a 21st century Kantorek (Paul Bäumer's teacher).

But in my experience most paleocons aren't "joiners." Neither are libertarians, but the point is that neither position absolves one from the responsibility of being part of organizations for the common good--if anything the positions give a greater responsibility to someone to make themselves of service, since they so loudly want the federal leviathan to not assume duties that they should shoulder themselves.

Context.