Dear mhaze,

A bit of a barren list I feel but let's go through them.

Victor Davies Hanson

Could have been a contender but has gotten more fruitloopier as time has passed.

Jordan Peterson.

Not sure he qualifies as conservative. He certainly expresses rightful frustration at some of the excesses of both left and right but he has somehow become the right's darling and I'm not sure he is comfortable with that at all.

Mark Steyn

Not a hope in hell. “The Serbs figured that out, as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em.” puts him firmly in the sensationalist and hardly decent.

Dennis Prager

Nope. Bit of a Jewish Uncle Tom I'm afraid. "Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress."

Peter Robinson

I will grant you Mr Robinson. He does perpetually seems to have his training wheels on and one seems to search for substance whenever I hear him speak, but he has enough to get a ticket, hardly in the league of a Buckley though.

Mark Levin

Nope. I remember some of his quite memorable attacks on Trump then he just went and shut up. Now it seems he is one of his biggest supporters. Calling Mueller “a complete fraud” shows how much he has drunk the coolaid.

Ben Shapiro

Absolutely not. The bloke is 4/5ths bluster and the rest surliness. Who can forget this exchange with a leading British conservative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VixqvOcK8E

Candace Owen

Not a hope in hell. The Christchurch shooter said she influenced him most of all. Her anti-Muslim rhetoric and her hazy notions of truth and decency rule her completely out.

SR, i think the times make it very hard for the kind of conservative you are looking for.

these are tough times for a number of reasons. Rise of China, islamic extremism, and relative economic decline for western naitons.

In a world of competing nations for resources, along with the ongoing struggle for the primacy of certain ideas, it tends to be the conservatives that say the comments that are controversial.

The left, though important, has always had it easier by focusing on all the good things that unite us.

Having said that, i have neve been interested in who is intellectual or smart. My interest is in articles that report and discuss the issues in a balanced way.

For myself, I always choose to research a topic rather than a author.

I have never met or read anyone that is across all of the issues, as there is no perfect analaysis in an imperfect world, only pieces of work that strive to be more comprehensive with their respective analysis.

I think every author can and should improve throughout their lives, assuming they retain their faculties

Paul & Chris,

" Like all governments the Soviets hid many things."
" most nations have some guilt on their hands"

The same sort of moral equivalency arguments. All governments lie and all lies are equal.
Well might I posit that lying about selling guns to Mexico isn't in the same league as lying about killing 40000 Polish prisoners.

Hiding the Washington Papers isn't the same as hiding the murder of 10 million Ukrainians; or 100 million Chinese peasants; or 7 million Soviet citizens; or the government sponsored Rape of Berlin.

Paul,

"Unless you can provide evidence, then mhaze,"
I keep giving you evidence and you keep pretending to not see it.

______________________________________________________________-

"Christopher Hitchens a conservative?"
He's dead. I thought we were talking about current voices. If not then: Hayek, Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Mills, Cicero, Thukydides; Hammurabi.

SR,

Googling 'criticisms of [insert name]' isn't quite valid research.
So you reject VDH but can't muster any arguments. Read any of his books? Books on the Peloponnian War? WW2? Trump? Thought not.

Or books by Steyn? because what you said about him there is as complete misunderstanding of his thinking as is possible to make,

and so on....typical SR.

mhaze,

yes, I agree with you.

IMO, there is simply no comparison between what the West has done, and what totalitarian rewgimes have done and would continue to do.

I merely acknowledge that no society is perfect

Dear mhaze,

Oh come on mate, who isn't a fan of Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge. Of of the many I have viewed over the years the conversation with Hitchens and Gingritch would have to be right up there among my favourites.

He has interviewed Victor Davies Hanson more than once but sitting through them is painful. VDH decries the impacts of globalisation yet it is his side of politics which drove it. Now that it is biting communities on the bum and he somehow lands on the 'global elites'. The reason being if he really acknowledged how much Corporate America make up that group then he would also have to acknowledge how much they fund the Republican party.

It just smacks of a kind of dishonesty that I don't see in a Chomsky or even a Hitchens and it taints some of the very good arguments he is capable of presenting.

And no I haven't read any of his books, have you? I'm not sure how his historical pieces make him a broad intellectual for the right but I have read pieces of his take on Trump and while there are worthy observations from him it often smacks of apologist moulding.

As to Robinson perhaps my exposure to him mainly as an interviewer means him coming off as lightweight and therefore I should take a deeper dive. But even then he isn't a Buckley by any measure.

Dear Chris Lewis,

Interesting. I'm afraid I want my intellectual assessments of issues to come from intellectuals and smart people. They don't always go together granted, but people who have taken the role of deeply examining an issue are far more interesting to me than pithy observations.

Someone like Hitchens managed to bring truths to many topics, mainly because his universal stash was rich and robust and he had the intelligence to articulate them.

There's quite a few comments along the lines that Trump "would not listen to the medical advice he was offered."

No examples mind you, just the assertion.

I've shown elsewhere today and in previous threads that, excluding the disaster that is occurring in New York City, the rest of the USA is doing remarkably well and better than many other parts of the world. I've asked before, if you want to blame Trump for the NYC debacle, why he can't be credited for the successes in the rest of the country. Even the crickets didn't respond.

Referring to that debacle in NYC, some of the things your preferred media probably hasn't told you. For example, NY instituted a rule that nursing homes were required to take in sick patients. We all know what happen at Newmarch House when one sick worker carried the virus. Imagine the mayhem that forcing those homes to take in viral patients caused.
Trump tried to help Cuomo by sending hospital ships to NY harbour. They remained unused. One nursing home begged to be allowed to send sick patients to the ships rather than take them in. They were forced to follow the rules instead. Its also clear that the subway was a major cause of infection. Even though less people were travelling, they reduced the services so that the trains remained crowded. And it was weeks into the crisis before they decided that giving the trains a clean every now and then might help!

Following the DNA strains of the virus, it now seems that 60% of all US cases originated in NY.

But NY is run by Democrats, so let's put the blame elsewhere.