There are few things in this gray world that can make the editorial positions of the New York Times appear reasonable. The Nation magazine is one of those few things. For umpteen years, this drumbeater for Stalinism* has been beating the drum for "progressive" causes around the world.

And what a world it is. For when you open the pages of The Nation, you stumble into a fifth dimension in which up is down, in is out, Che and Fidel are heroes, Walter Duranty is a journalist, Howard Zinn an historian, America the Great Satan, Ralph Nader a presidential candidate, queer studies a legitimate academic pursuit, and Stalin was only misunderstood. This magazine is really something. Its rhetoric is so overheated as to make the American Spectator look phlegmatic. And while among its self-proclaimed missions include the revelation of the hypocrisies in the middle and (especially) on the right, this magazine commits so many errors of omission and commission as to remove any credibility it might have as a critic of mainstream American policy.

An issue of The Nation begins with a few letters written by earnest if ignorant leftists on various navel-gazing subjects. Sometimes the letters are written in English. A few pages of editorials follow. A typical example is a rant in memory of the "antiwar" movement, the "finest" American behavior during the Vietnam War. While this libel against the heroism of a generation of Americans who labored to keep an impoverished nation free goes unnoticed by its feverish author, said author concludes with another libel against America with the claim that we have forgotten our pledge to rebuild the country "it destroyed". Such allegations would have more force if the author reminded his readers that when the North violated the Hanoi Accords and invaded the South in 1975 (leading to the subsequent execution of 65,000 South Vietnamese), any obligation we might have had vanished.

Another editorial complains that the prolife movement is using litigation to put abortion clinics out of business. Given that this tactic has been employed by the antilife forces with The Nation's approval to put prolife organizations out of business, one wonders what the problem is. But why preserve your integrity when you would rather make a point?

Columns by a number of radical leftists then follow, including Alexander Cockburn, Katha Pollit, and Eric Alterman, one of whose choice remarks includes "If there was any justice in the world, Hillary's 'terrorist' friends would blow up Republican [party] headquarters while we were still on the phone, so I could enjoy the explosion." Shades of Alec Baldwin. Not even the occasionally sensible Christopher Hitchens is immune from stupidity, his claim that he did not read of a single conservative calling for Buchanan's withdrawal from the presidential race being palpably but predictably incorrect, given that Hitchens doesn't appear to read the conservative press.

There are also a number of lengthier articles on topics of interest to the chittering left: Nader's presidential hopes, "the legacy of Seattle", etc. This is largely self-congratulatory bilge that is of no interest to the intelligent reader. Finally, there are a number of even-lengthier reviews of books that are on every educated American's reading list, the well-known Baumgardner and Richards "Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and Future" being one that you are sure to want to find in your Christmas stocking.

You probably get the idea that I don’t like this magazine. You're right: I don't. And one of the reasons is that for decades, this beacon of leftist light was a strong supporter of communism in general and Stalinism in particular. For these people, the anti-anti-communists remain heroes and those who "stood up" to McCarthyism in the 50's are saints. Ignored in this sewage is the fact, known for decades and again confirmed by the Venona Papers, that the Soviet Union actively financed the American Communist Party and its front organizations and that treason was rampant among the its members and its fellow travelers.

One can go on. A recent book review on womyn's studies delivers the old canard that the fact that women only earn 74 cents for every dollar earned by men is continued evidence of sex discrimination. This is the sort of slop that the NOW has bleated for years, dismissing the fact that the comparison is impermissible because it compares dissimilar populations with entirely different preferences, labor participation rates, ages, etc., a problem that even the lowbrow USA Today is aware of. But The Nation consistently prefers rhetoric to honesty.

Unfair, uninformed, and bigoted as it is, The Nation does serve its country in an extremely important capacity: It is an almost infallible negative barometer. One need merely learn of The Nation's position on an issue and take the opposite in the safe hope that one will be correct. It's not so hard.

Read The Nation. Then vote Republican.

buffoonery’s magazine and newspaper reviews:

Wall Street Journal
Commentary
The Economist
National Review
The Nation
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Sun-Times
First Things
The American Spectator
The New Republic
Guitar World
Guitar World Acoustic
Guitar One
Guitar Player



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*For those of you who have the temerity to doubt me, see, e.g., Klerh, et al “The Soviet World of American Communism,” Yale (1998), at pp. 301, 305; Tucker, R.C., “Stalin in Power”, W.W. Norton & Co. (1990), at 191; and Conquest, R., “Reflections on a Ravaged Century”, at 123. Helping to cover up the Great Famine and supporting some of the show trials strikes me as being a drumbeater.

Recommended: No