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amazing. Of course there were the typi- and watching your education slip ing conservatism. They are admittedly
cal anti-Americanbrats calling Bill and through your,fingers,you tend to-bea lit- few-I would estimate that only 12 per-
Scott stupidwhite men and uneducat- tle more pragmatic. The same goes for cent of our readers would dare call them-
ed academics raving about the lack of affirmative action. Who was laughing selves conservatives-but that is at least
liberals in the debate, but, more than the loudest when Jayson Blair was twice what it was five years ago. Finally,
ever, there were young people respond- exposed? The journalism students who the dumb communitys days are num-
ing with favor to a predominantly right- were forced to intern for us because bered. They are slowly but surely being
wing discussion. They lashed out at our they couldnt get paying jobs in the replaced with a new breed of kid that
liberal readers, Whats with all the mainstream press. isntafraid to embrace conservatism.Im
peace and love crap? You sound like a These kids, the New Conservatives, not saying I had anything to do with this
bunch of pathetic hippies. dont have the luxury of idealism that newborn counterculture, but I do have
This wasnt a group of already estab- even the youth of the 1980shad. Due to this strange compulsion to start handing
lished conservative kids making a the overwhelmingglut of information on out cigars to all my friends. W
cameo on our Web site and our maga- the Internet and an unprecedented bar-
zines letters page just to bash liberals. rage of marketing, these young people GavinMcInnes the colfounder of VICE,
These were a new group of kids sick of are more aware and more cynical than a youth culture brand that was found-
how intellectually lazy (to quote the any generation that came before. W i W ed ,inMontreal and is now based in
Hipublicans) the Left had become. They this group, more and more are embrac- Netu York City.
werent necessarily for invading Iraq.
Theyjust wanted to discuss the pros and
cons in a rational and calm forum, with-
out the liberal hyperbole of their peers. I
felt like Dr. Frankenstein-Its alive!
ITS rn!
Throm to the Lions
And it wasntjust VICESreadership.
Suddenly it had become fashionable to NLzdeast Christians are more endangered than ever.
link liberalism with weakness and con-
servatism with honesty. Underground By Daniel McCarthy
film iconoclast Vincent Gallo (Buffalo
66,Palookaville,Goodfellas)is now
quoting Nixon and Reagan as if they THROUGHOUT T H E HOME are under- one of Husseins palaces, in what was
were Wordsworth and Yeats. Fashion stated pieces of Christian iconography: eviclently a childs room, was an Advent
photographer Terry Richardson (Gucci, a small portrait of Christ, a Virgin Mary calendar. Far from being persecuted,
Sisley,Levis) is showingup at conserva- figurine in the kitchen and a wallet-sized Christianityin Husseins Iraq was a visi-
tive book launchesand publicly trashing photo of an Eastern Orthodox priest ble presence even within the dictators
Clinton. Even high-school students are attached to a mirror in the bedroom. own household.
getting in on the act, like the southern The words are Jonathan Finers,writ- Iraqs Christians have been less than
Californian artist collective called Sofia ing on the front page of the Washington visible to the American public. Indeed,
that made t-shirts and panties with the Post, and the description is of a resi- Christian minorities everywhere in the
illegal-immigrant-crossinglogo on them. dence in Baghdad that once belonged to Middle East have received little attention
You wouldnt have seen anything like the deposed Iraqi regimes most famous from the public and the press, while U.S.
this five years ago, but now it seems that Christian, deputy prime minister Tariq policymakers have acted with indiffer-
the reality of theboomersliberalism is Aziz. That Aziz, a member of Saddam ence to fate of the regions Christians.
slowly startingto affect the livelihood of Husseinsinner circle, was a Christian, Israel, conronted with suicide bombers
Generation X. The joy of mass immigra- and apparently a serious one, gives and hostile nations near and far, has
tion is easy to talk about when you live some suggestion of the place Christiani- garnered considerable sympathy and
in the suburbs and benefit from cheap ty had in pre-liberation Iraq. But some- support from Americans,and from evan-
housecleaning, but when you are going thing else that Finer reports may give an gelical Christians most of all. But the
to schools that are 50 percent Spanish even better picture: sitting on a desk in Midtile Eastsown Christians, faced with
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