At Michigan, a different tune from conservatives:
TMD: Do you have a vision for the Review?
JDD: I definitely have a vision for the Review. I think that in the past, our paper has been led by people who maybe are upset with BAMN, or simply didn’t like affirmative action – basically, people who formed their political agenda in response to what others did. I don’t feel like that’s the case anymore because affirmative action is not this big boogeyman that we have to argue against anymore — I actually personally support affirmative action. I haven’t polled my edit board to see how they feel. But I think that if you sum up the Review in one sentence, this is not your older brother’s Michigan Review or your father’s Michigan Review. We’re not afraid of liberals, we don’t think that they’re these evil people, we don’t think that all professors are tenured radicals. I want the Review to be known as the intellectual capital of conservatism on this campus. I want to bring us back to the point where people can pick us up and read us and think about something differently than they did before they picked us up.
I’m not trying to create converts or anything like that. I just want to get you thinking. And I think the Review is going to be more of a paper that makes people think this year than we have in the past.
Ironically, I always thought JDD was too intelligent to be on the staff of the review, we’ll see how it turns out.
Dumi, talk about stereotyping. Nice hypocrisy there.
There are bright conservatives, there are bright liberals, and there are idiots on both sides as well. Sorry to spoil your generalizations.
By the way, JDD is an asset to the Review, there is nothing wrong or unusual with the review taking a different direction, even though I disagree with its editor on one or two issues, it proves that the conservative movement is open divergent opinions and there is no litmus test. I can’t say that of the Dem Party though – for example, a person expressing a negative opinion of race preferences would be excluded from any leadership position in the Dem. Party.
Chetly,
Unfortunately, my comment was more about the (lack of) quality of the Review writers, not as much about his ideological position. I think he thinks through things better than other Review writers, gives things a more fair shake, and writes with more clarity. I agree he’s an assett to the review, which I’ve personally expressed to him, he’s one of the few authors there that I read and see that there was thought and time put in. I don’t agree with him alot, but I appreciate his inquiries. Lastly, exclusion from leadership positions in party politics is also different than discussing a college newspaper’s leadership.
I don’t think the two things are quite so different, especially considering that the Review is not an “objective” or purported-to-be “neutral” paper. Its point, like the NR or Nation, is to be more like a political magazine. I argue that the Republican Party is currently the party of inclusion, and the Democrats are exclusive – and that this role reversal (the Repubs were exclusive before taking over the House) is both a symptom and cause of their relative recent electoral successes and failures. It is natural to extend this openness to the college ideological newspapers, which are the vanguard of new thought. Seeing an open Review is a reflection of the larger trend.
Regardless, even though there are no “litmus tests” and James diverges on the race issue, there’s a reason he’s with the Review. It’s because he agrees with “modern conservatives” (the coalition, not the pigeonhole) more often than not.