Beyondism, Again

Over at National Review , Kevin D. Williamson has a nice posting writes about William Saletan’s latest piece in Slate :

Beyond the non-obvious argument that Bush’s “fatal flaw” was that he was too much of an abstract thinker (!), Saletan here is, forgive the hackneyed expression, engaged in what appears to be an act of self-parody: a liberal guy, writing a paean to bipartisan open-mindedness, can find almost nothing to criticize other than the (tendentiously described, if not outright mischaracterized) intellectual shortcomings of those who hold opinions other than his own.

This pattern, of course, is well established—and follows my long-held Rule of Beyondism: Whenever anyone says “We Need to Get Beyond Left/Right Divisions,” they’re always selling one side of those divisions—usually the Left.