Culture file: ‘First Man’ Is Patriotic After All

Conservatives criticized the movie “First Man,” about the American moon landing in 1969, for not showing the planting of the American flag. But, says Kyle Smith at National Review, the film is far from unpatriotic. It’s just that its “focus is simply elsewhere, with overlooked aspects of the mission,” giving the audience “fresh, contrarian approaches to familiar material.” But while its tone is different from 1983’s “The Right Stuff,” it’s no less admiring of the American breakthrough: “Moments of triumph, for instance, are not so much celebrated as consecrated, with a stillness and wonder that is equally applicable considering the scale of achievement, and instead of stirring, martial music the score is angular, weird, conveying the unprecedented nature of what is happening.”

From the right: Defining Moment of US Politics

Brett Kavanaugh’s “defiant September 27 statement denying the charges leveled against him” was the defining speech of our time,” claims Christopher Caldwell at The Weekly Standard. That’s because once he successfully framed it as a Democratic attempt at character-assassination instead of a truth-seeking inquiry, it became clear that “splitting the difference [between his account and his accuser’s] could no longer be passed off as moderation.” In so doing, Kavanaugh exposed the true divide: Democrats now see the country as defined only by a common set of Supreme Court-enforced values — their values. And “the person who does not share what elites ‘know’ to be the country’s values is not really a member of the national community and is not deserving of its basic protections.”

History lesson: Madness To Erase Churchill

Retired US Navy Cap. Scott Kelly tweeted Winston Churchill’s counsel of magnanimity in victory. He was flooded with angry responses and apologized for quoting one of the saviors of Western civilization because of Sir Winston’s less-ennobling views. At Commentary, Noah Rothman skewers “an absurd form of pseudo-academic reductionism” that “has become the preferred means by which we ‘interrogate’ Western (and only Western) history.” Forget “discretion, compartmentalization, and basic good sense” when assessing history: “Nuance is for the naïve.” Churchill was surely not without sins, says Rothman. But “in a sane society, we would weigh these offenses against propriety against his accomplishments, foremost among them being the resolve he exhibited and inculcated in his countrymen in the face of the Nazi onslaught.”

Conservative take: Never Trumpism Is Officially Dead

The Kavanaugh fight killed the Never Trump movement, argues Matt Lewis at the Daily Beast, because many adherents realized they either had to get with the party — or leave it: “Had the Never Trumpers stuck together (perhaps coalescing behind a Ben Sasse 2020 primary run), they could have at least sent a message (if not a president) to Washington. Instead, the coalition splintered.” Truth is, such a splintering was inevitable, Lewis avers, because Never Trump “never had a leader or a proactive vision.” Indeed, it turns out that the “kind of people who are contrarian enough to stand up to their own party’s nominee were, perhaps, not likely to agree on anything.” All of which means “Trump can expect to face little (or no) opposition on his way to the GOP nomination” in 2020.

Foreign desk: Is China or Russia Our Main Adversary?

One key divide in American politics today, suggests Reihan Salam at The Atlantic, is about which country the right and left see as an “orienting enemy” against which to arrange our foreign policy: China or Russia. Liberals see that enemy as Russia, fearing “the deftness with which its operatives act in connivance with illiberal elements in the world’s diverse market democracies to undermine them from within.” Conservatives, especially nationalist ones, “see rising Chinese power as the far graver threat to American interests.” Policywise, that means liberals would counter Russia by redoubling the US “commitment to cosmopolitan liberalism, including a commitment to free and open trade.” Countering China, however, would mean reversing or reducing “America’s growing dependence on China’s manufacturing base, and the threat this poses to the country’s war-fighting capabilities.”

— Compiled by Seth Mandel