Derb is the Word

I swear I don't get all my information from Andrew Sullivan, but I thought it worth highlighting his irritation at John Derbyshire's invocation of the zeks, particularly in light of my earlier comments. It is pretty stupid (Derbyshire's invocation, not Sullivan's irritation (let alone my ealier comments!)), and Derb does himself no favors by linking to a Wikipedia entry on the matter, in which we learn that "the working conditions at the BBK Camp were brutal. The mortality was about 20%. Still more became sick and disabled." There are many solid, perfectly reasonable libertarian objections to Obama's "America Serves" program, but its embarrassing for Derbyshire to carry on as though he'd never heard of Robert Conquest.

Shame, too, since he was doing so well earlier this week. The very day after the election, he was able to keep his head when all about him were losing theirs:

Not that our president-elect is going to roar through the U.S. economy nationalizing the means of production, distribution, and exchange. (The current administration has that well in hand, in any case.) Nor, I am pretty sure, will he incite a violent class war, with the losers hustled off to labor camps or driven into exile with the family jewelry sewn into their petticoats. We are long past the point where classical Marxism has any application. Obama can’t incite the workers to seize control of the factories: the factories are all in China. He can’t consolidate peasant small-holdings into communal farms, because there aren’t any peasant small-holdings; and if he tried anyway, no one would notice, farming being the occupation of less than half of one percent of us.

Derbyshire is one of the very few* National Review-affiliated writers worth checking in with now and again; he at least seems to understand why communism and socialism are different from the garden-variety 'redistribution' schemes favored by President-elect Obama, Senator McCain, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and every other significant figure in American government from WWII to the present day. He has an interest in science, knows how to recite poetry and is often very funny, sometimes even intentionally. He even once admitted an affection for MAD magazine! So I can't help but overlook the odd rhetorical overzealousness; I'd hate for the next four years of Obama-directed mash notes to be too well-mannered.

*Well, we can't forget Florence King, can we? And, uh, lets' see...Andrew Stuttaford has occasionally made sense in the past (I think I'm thinking about Andrew Stuttaford; its someone named Andrew, and it sure isn't Andrew McCarthy). David Frum has his moments, I guess. They may be others, but I can't be bothered to check right now...