Newt Gingrich is worried:
Newt Gingrich will deliver a major national security address at the conservative American Enterprise Institute on Thursday in which he will reprimand the Obama administration's "willful blindness" to the threat of extremist Islam...Gingrich "will warn," according to a synopsis of the event, "that now is the time to awaken from self-deception about the nature of our enemies and rebuild a bipartisan commitment, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to defend America."
Justin Logan thinks Gingrich is in hock to Carl Schmitt. I'd add another unhelpful influence: Winston Churchill. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Churchill. But just as neoconservatives have a tendency to view every threat through the prism of the 1930s there is also a burning desire on the part of certain politicians to be seen as the contemporary Churchill - the leader who saw and spoke out against the dangers that others didn't see or were too scared to face. This has produced a largely pernicious impact on the public debate, leading to an atmosphere of alarmism where what's required is calm rationality. As Login notes, Gingrich has suggested that the Jewish people are poised to suffer a second Holocaust yet doesn't seem too energized by this belief.
(AP Photo)
