Good article. Even as a right-leaning Jew, I find this book annoying and lacking in nuance. The truth of the matter is that almost all of our Jewish intellectual heroes come from the left. Freud, Marx, BHL, Arendt, Benjamin, Howe, Dissent, Partisan Review, etc. are all far more compatible with leftist politics. What bothers me about Podhoretz is his blindness to the fact that the only way young Jewish intellectuals are going to go rightward is if they gather around some sort of Jewish conservative genius. And I am sorry, but Cynthia Ozick, Public Interest, Milton Friedman, and Himmelfarb do not fit that role. The closest thing I can think of is Leo Strauss, who probably does not count as a conservative and does not have such a good reputation in these quarters. American conservatism needs geniuses if it wants to create a viable culture and Podhoretz is not a genius.

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