Conservative intellectual honesty's price: Continued

David Frum, who lost his job at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) after his “Waterloo” analysis, clarifies the report that he said AEI scholars were being muzzled if they agreed too much with Obamacare. Frum wrote:

Did AEI muzzle healthcare scholars? I fear that in reproducing in print a private conversation from some months ago, Bruce Bartlett made a transmission error. I did not report as fact that scholars were laboring under any restrictions. What I did say was that AEI was punching way below its weight in the healthcare debate. I wondered, not alleged, wondered, whether AEI scholars were constrained by fear of saying something that might get them into trouble. To repeat: this was something I asked many months ago in private conversation, not something I allege today in public debate.

Well and obliquely said.

Bruce Bartlett then issued his correction. With elaboration. Summary: There's a compelling "circumstantial case" for the muzzling, and AEI has demeaned itself by letting Frum go.

Conservative intellectual honesty's price: Part II

Just as David Frum was fired for his "Waterloo" analysis of the Republican health reform loss, Bruce Bartlett was fired by National Center for Policy Analysis in 2005 when he shared with them the manuscript of his book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

Bartlett reflected Thursday on the scope of the scope of the intellectual dishonesty involved in Frum's dismissal.

The takeaway:

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia, if it hasn't already.

Indeed, some Religious Right minds have already descended into doleful echolalia.

Conservative intellectual honesty's sometime price

Sometimes, politics is a religion, and heretics are punished, even when they're right. Former Bush speech writer David Frum laid out in a few words the cause and effect of the Republican health reform loss, and three days afterward, "was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday."