Via Alex Massie, I notice that New Gingrich is saying really, really crazy things (again!). Basking in the warm embrace of the National Review staff that interviewed him, the former speaker sounds positively deranged. The interview itself, portentously titled 'Our Heritage,' contains lots of goodies:
--Gingrich says he has major concerns about American culture, and “the degree to which it is becoming an anti-religious culture.”
--“The modern Left is essentially proto-totalitarian,” says Gingrich.
--Obama, Gingrich adds, “is a radical in the sense that the victory of those values would mean the end of American civilization as we know it.”
--Looking to Afghanistan, Gingrich says, “the real underlying challenge is that this is a much bigger problem than people understand...The last few weeks have been worse than Chamberlain. This is Baldwin in 1935, just willfully blind because he didn’t want to tell the British people the truth because it would offend them.” If things are so dire, then where is America’s Churchill? “I don’t know, we’ll find out,” says Gingrich. “I hope that we can find one.”
Especially charming is the clear evidence that this sort of lunacy is warmly welcomed in the offices of National Review. Gingrich's rants are more bearable than the clubby back-and-forth that NR was kind enough to record for the reader:
In a meeting with NR staff, sipping a Diet Coke, Newt Gingrich reminded us that he’s a “historian by training.” Not that we needed the hint... Asked by one editor whether he’d be a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian should a time machine suddenly become available, Gingrich said, “I’d be a Hamiltonian on economics, and a Jeffersonian on politics.”
“You’d be a fusionist even then,” quipped Jay Nordlinger.
Gingrich laughed. Although he and his wife, Callista, had in theory come to NR to chat about the impressive new documentary they co-host...
The whole story is here.