The Weekly Standard’s David Skinner puts a worldclass whompin‘ on Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, who in a series of recent essays has located American culpability for the September 11th attacks in everything from Nieman Marcus to Steven Spielberg to …well, potholes. Skinner deftly distills the position taken up by many in the intelligensia — of whom Lapham is but a prominently placed and particularly squeaky representative — and then dismisses it with aplomb:

His problem with America, as near as I can tell from the straw-man he builds, is that our country harbors people who don’t like government, people who do like capitalism, people who believe economics is more important than politics, and people who believe that history has come to an end.

In his mind, America is the Cato Institute drunk on ’90s economic euphoria and the writings of Francis Fukuyama. The problem is that this description fits almost no one.

I recently bought a subscription to Harper’s (I read it for the pictures, I swear!); thankfully, I also subscribe to The Weekly Standard.

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