For the record, prior to submitting this here for publication I showed it to two friends who are themselves published, and one of some renown in these circles, and they both complemented me on it.

I don’t deny that part of the intent was to “scold.” Shame is more accurate. It gets a bit tiresome having people who want to “slow the rate of growth” of this or that unconstitutional program claiming the mantle of conservatism. But I find it remarkably self-unaware that in your obviously mean-spirited replies I am faulted for my hostility and scolding. Pot meet kettle.

You are clearly asking for more than can be accomplished in an essay of this length. In an essay of this length the author obviously has to assert certain things and assume the audience is intelligent enough to fill in the blanks. For example, if I said that Obama’s healthcare plan is bad because it is socialistic, would it be necessary to start at square one and make an exhaustive case for why socialism is bad? I’m not sure how anyone could ever write anything with that burden. Likewise, if I “scold” mainstream conservatives for voting for pro-amnesty, bailout shill McCain instead of Baldwin or Barr is it really necessary to also defend the reasonableness of third party voting? That is at least another article, easily a treatise, and even a book. If I criticize mainstream conservatives for their support of interventionist foreign policy is it really necessary for me to rehash that debate about which an untold amount of ink and bandwidth have already been spilt? Or is the generally politically well-informed readership of IC going to read “unnecessary war of aggression” and think, “Oh. He must be one of those Ron Paul style non-interventionists.”

The laundry list of names and organizations at the end was an attempt to name drop and link to people who I think mainstream conservatives would benefit from knowing of and hopefully studying. (Phil “Living and Breathing Constitution” Jackson would surely benefit from reading Gutzman’s Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution.)

Otherwise, my point was I think quite clear. The RightOnline Conference billed itself as the right’s answer to the NetRoots Nation Convention. It wasn’t. Or if it was an attempted “answer” it certainly wasn’t a mirror image opposite. A group of mainstream GOP centrics who gave Toomey a standing ovation even after he said he would vote for Sotomayor is not the right’s equal and opposite answer to a group that booed Hillary for ideological infidelity.

(Although the deference given to Obama by these “anti-war” activists despite his stay the course plan in Iraq and his escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan may mean that I am giving the NetRoots more credit than they deserve. They too may just be a bunch of Democrat party apologists, in which case Erick Erickson would be their polar opposite.)

You complain of my critique, “I didn’t say answering questions raised by the essay misses the point of the essay. His criticism was that I hadn’t adequately dealt with his objections in the essay itself. (I guess I was supposed to have a crystal ball to foresee them all beforehand.)”

First, let’s put to rest what I did or did not ‘get’ from your article was about. The substance of your article was a) the RightOnline Conference suffers from a lack of “inspirational” speakers and relevance, b) the so-called ‘alternative-right is under-represented at the event, and c) pandered to your preferred audience (the ‘alternative-right’, by scoring as many hits as possible on ideologically-weak mainstream conservatives). Point-a is purely subjective, point-b needs greater proof (i.e., tell us why that is relevant to the outcome of the event, though it is probably irrelevant to the event-organizers as likely to produce a negative outcome; e.g., event purpose squandered in squabbling over movement direction and ‘purity’), and point-c was, as you say, tossed in for a different audience (in which case, you ought to have revised it for this audience, else kept it to that other microcosm). If you feel I missed any import points, feel free to clarify what they were. I realize there were others, but these are what I took away as your main ones.

My criticism was never that you hadn’t “adequately dealt with [my] objections” beforehand. My criticisms were a) you hadn’t adequately dealt with your own subject matter (i.e., haven’t really told us that much about the event or why it is important, when & where, &c … basic reportage 101), b) hadn’t bothered researching claims you make, c) spent most of the article maligning your audience to no purpose, d) regularly misrepresent your own brand of conservatism as the only kind valid, e) favor emotion over reason in making arguments, f) expect others to fill in gaps for you, and g) your writing is unacceptably sloppy in an age of convenient research and proofing tools (What Hemingway wouldn’t have given for a laptop running MS Word!). It doesn’t take a “crystal ball” to review your own stuff before posting with an eye toward who reads it, eliminating unnecessarily counterproductive barbs, verifying you have provided sufficient background, fact checking so it doesn’t fall like a house of cards at the first push, and is generally readable without your meaning requiring careful parsing every third sentence. And, break up those long sentences into easily digested ones.

Understand, I don’t go ‘gunning’ for every ‘alternative viewpoint’ writer who posts here, nor am I trying to shut you down. To the contrary, I want you to make your case, but make it better than you did here. I am open to well-presented arguments, but was, in this instance, put off both by your clear hostility (candor?) and sloppy presentation (suggesting we aren’t worth the effort it takes to ‘speak to’ rather than scold). If the latter is true, you posted here solely to aggravate; hardly worthy of the praise you think is your due. If I did not address your points in my first response to you, it was only because they are no more than unsubstantiated declarations that could easily have been kept to a paragraph or two; hardly profound stuff. The rest was filler and spleen, with not enough ‘there’ there to parse. Of course, there is nothing wrong with filler if it is entertaining (this wasn’t). Put yourself in your audience’s position and ask questions about your assertions they will certainly want answered. That will easily provide all the filler you need and then some, and you won’t even have to resort to those nasty barbs to juice things up! Keep trying, though, and do work on the style problems.

Dan won’t answer Bob’s questions, because it will involve too much time and too many words to do so.

The Empty Suit Tally now stands at 2 days, 7 comments and 833 words to say this.

Of course the irony of this is lost on Dan, who could have used this time to actually respond to questions raised about his essay instead of continuing to tell us he can’t answer the questions because it will take too much time and involve too many words to do so.

We’re coming up on 3 days, 8 comments and closing in on 1000 words for Dan to say that he doesn’t have the time to answer Bob and any answer would involve too many words.

I think we’ll reach this mark by Thursday. Only 8 months and about 20,000 words to go to break his old record.

So now you are counting my words? That’s just weird. How did you ever get along these past several months without me to obsess over?

By the way, it’s an interesting dodge to say that you won’t answer a question raised about your essay because you didn’t anticipate the question when you wrote the essay. So instead of addressing the points Bob raised, you’ll just ignore them because it would take too long and too many words to respond.

For those keeping count, Dan has now taken 6 comments, over 2 days, involving 809 words to tell us that he doesn’t have the time to answer any of Bob’s criticisms.

For those of you into “classical” definitions, this is the classic definition of an empty suit.

Do I have to spoon feed you everything?

Dan will now spend the next 20 comments and 10,000 words telling us why he hasn’t got the time to respond to Bob because it will take too much time and involve too many words.

You’ve got to wonder about someone who put forth an idea, and then won’t answer questions about the idea he puts forward. But I guess it is understandable if someone thinks that answering questions raised about one’s essay misses the point of the essay; Pat and Wally’s columns notwithstanding, who tend to be on a different level than us poor slugs here at the IC who write columns expecting debate, and are prepared to defend what we’ve written.

Still, it is an interesting approach, and I’ll keep in mind for the next essay I write. “I’m not gonna answer your questions because Walter Williams won’t”.

I didn’t respond point by point to Bob because I haven’t got the time, and I think he somewhat misses the point of this sort of essay, which is not to explain every point in exhaustive detail. To do so would make it something other than what it is, a 1000 to 2000 word column? Does every Pat Buchanan or Walter Williams or whoever column meet his criteria?

To be honest, the essay was initially intended for a different audience which would have been the choir. IC isn’t exactly the choir, but I suspect the regular readers here are familiar enough with where I am coming from to understand this for the exercise in preaching to the choir that it obviously is.

I don’t have time to deal with all of Bob’s objections. He essentially wants me to rehash hours and hours of debate here at IC. I do want to clarify on thing, however. I wasn’t suggesting that Paul Gottfried is the preeminent scholar that the conservative movement has produced, although he is near the top. I was suggesting that he is the preeminent scholar “of the movement” itself, meaning someone chronicling and explaining the movement. Quite honestly, he doesn’t really have much competition here. Nash would be the only other possibility. But Nash, IMO, more retells the history of the movement relatively objectively. Nothing wrong with that, but Gottfried looks at the movement more philosophically and examines its shortcomings. This is why I suggested he would be a good person to “give us his insights into why the movement has been such an unmitigated failure at actually conserving anything.”