THE FITZGERALD GRIFFIN FOUNDATION E-PACKAGE
                  "The Ornery Observer"
                     October 23, 2007


CALIGULA'S HORSE AND YOUNG POD
by Paul Gottfried

     The Roman emperor Caligula (A.D. 37-41), whom 
historians now seem to agree had something like 
postencephalitic syndrome, may have struck a blow for 
animal sensitivity when he pushed the Roman senate into 
recognizing his favorite horse as a god. For Roman 
historian Suetonius, however, such an act indicated the 
degradation of the old ruling families in the face of 
imperial tyranny. Caligula, who was the grandson of 
Augustus's wife Livia by an earlier marriage, was free to 
wreak destruction on the Roman nobles because they had 
already grown accustomed to military dictators. Despite 
his orgy of murders and rapes, Caligula continued to 
enjoy some measure of popular support until the military, 
which had grown tired of his excesses, ran him through 
with a sword in A.D. 41.

     This less than pleasant subject came to mind as I 
learned from a former graduate student that John 
Podhoretz had been named "editorial director" of 
COMMENTARY magazine. This event seems connected to 
another noteworthy one, the decision by the Heritage 
Foundation to invite as an honored guest and expert on 
anti-Semitism the Anti-Defamation League director, Abe 
Foxman. Although Foxman is a person with demonstrably 
more smarts than the awkward son of Norman and Midge, who 
has held a multitude of jobs that his parents obtained 
for him and has done most of them without distinction, he 
is also a vicious leftist bigot. When he is not simply 
fronting for AIPAC, Foxman is producing hysterical tracts 
on the Christian anti-Semitism of those who oppose gay 
marriage. His hatred of the Germans runs so deep that in 
1999 he tried to bully Metropolitan Books into canceling 
the publication of a work by two Jewish authors (one of 
whom was the hapless Norman Finkelstein) that challenged 
the deeply flawed book by Daniel Goldhagen presenting the 
Germans as an "eliminationist anti-Semitic people." 
Foxman is furthermore the celebrity who had raged against 
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST, insisting that this cinematic 
adaptation of parts of the Gospel narratives would 
unleash anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the United States. 
The fact that this did not occur did not occasion an 
apology from this Jewish counterpart of David Duke and Al 
Sharpton, but it may have contributed to his being 
invited to address the Heritage Foundation. Needless to 
say, such an invitation would never be extended to me or 
to Norman Finkelstein.

     This brings me back to Caligula and to the elevation 
of John to his new leadership position. To a student of 
Roman history, it would not seem remarkable that, given 
the deterioration of Roman republican government in the 
hundred years preceding his reign, Caligula would have 
been able to degrade Roman government even further. The 
stage had been set long before this madman came on the 
scene, with a series of social wars and the military rule 
of Pompey and Julius Caesar.

     So too it is not surprising that the postwar 
conservative movement, on whose fortunes I have just 
published a book, would have moved from relative 
seriousness and something looking like an American Right 
to its present pitiable state. The rot, which Joe Sobran 
portrayed graphically in his column last week, did not 
set in yesterday. It has been going on for decades. It 
can be seen in the decline of intelligence and character 
in the now misnamed "conservative movement" and in the 
waning of any nonleftist substance in what it preaches. 
(The resonant support by movement conservatives of the 
socially liberal, war-hungry Giuliani as a "conservative" 
presidential candidate is only one of the numerous signs 
of this trend.) But even the transformation of COMMENTARY 
magazine, which once published the brilliant essays of 
Elie Kedourie, Edward Schils, and other scholars of their 
stature, into a staple of neoconservative propaganda and, 
finally, a sinecure for the ne'er-do-well scions of 
neocon ruling dynasties, offers evidence of an ongoing 
debacle. The invitation to Foxman would not have been 
extended to someone the neocon masters of Heritage 
disapproved of, and its tendering may be an equally 
telling sign of where the movement once associated with 
Russell Kirk, Eric Voegelin, and Frank Meyer has gone.

     At this point I am willing to wager that if Norm and 
Midge recommended my pet basset, Murray, for an executive 
post at Heritage or an editorial slot at COMMENTARY, 
their wish would be immediately granted. I could also 
easily imagine that in the course of the following month, 
comments would appear in NATIONAL REVIEW and in the 
WEEKLY STANDARD praising Murray's appointment (he is 
after all photogenic) and scolding those who had dared to 
oppose it as (what else!) anti-Semites.

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Read this column on-line at 
"http://www.sobran.com/fgf/gottfried/2007/pgk071023.shtml".

Copyright (c) 2007 by the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation,
All rights reserved.

Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., is Raffensperger professor of 
Humanities at Elizabethtown College (PA) and a Guggenheim 
recipient. He is an adjunct scholar of the Mises 
Institute and the author of numerous articles and eight 
books including CONSERVATISM IN AMERICA: MAKING SENSE OF 
THE AMERICAN RIGHT (Palgrave-Macmillan, July 2007), THE 
STRANGE DEATH OF MARXISM: THE EUROPEAN LEFT IN THE NEW 
MILLENNIUM (University of Missouri Press, 2005), 
MULTICULTURALISM AND THE POLITICS OF GUILT: TOWARDS A 
SECULAR THEOCRACY (University of Missouri Press, 2002), 
and AFTER LIBERALISM: MASS DEMOCRACY IN THE MANAGERIAL 
STATE (Princeton University Press, 1999).

Contact the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation at 
FGF@vacoxmail.com to obtain permission to reprint this 
article.