Funny---and sad, considering what
was once a truly great newspaper---that the
New York Times deigned to publish an op-ed essay with which enough of its own editorial staffers would disagree, and the moment it did, the wokes on the paper's staff jerked the
Times's leash and the
Times heeled.
Now, I don't agree with Cotton, either---helping to quell domestic unrest is the National Guard's business when called upon by state governors (as 23, to my knowledge, have, thus far); the full-time military's business and expertise is, as the
Wall Street Journal tried to remind people, "trained for combat against a foreign enemy, not for riot control against Americans. The risk of mistakes would be high, and [President] Trump would be blamed for any bloodshed from civilian clashes with troops."
But the
Times wasn't wrong to publish Cotton's essay. (
The Federalist's headline is a little misleading; say what you will about the
Times but its op-ed page hasn't always been shy about publishing "Republican" views whatever the page's overseers think of those views, even if they take the stance---a worthy enough stance---that it's a smart idea to know what your opposition thinks.) The guardians of the paper's op-ed page don't have to agree with a particular viewpoint in order to let it be held up in plain sight and judged on its own argument and merit. Cowering at practically the split second the paper's woke contingency jerked its leash leaves the
Times with a far worse look than it had already, before the op-ed page consented to publish Cotton's essay.
It seems ages ago, now, but what Frank Chodorov once wrote about the leaders of the Communist Party USA on trial under the Smith Act still holds:
The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas . . . espouse[d] but the power they aspire to. Let them rant their heads off---that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe---but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right.*
In Cotton's case that might be a little too late, since he
is an incumbent U.S. Senator with a certain degree of influence, but Chodorov's postulate, in whatever form it might be translated now, might have been the
Times's better response to the wokes on staff . . . and to its readers.
* - From "How to Curb the Commies," published originally in analysis, May 1949; republished in Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (LibertyPress, 1980).
