Tom Cotton: “I am sad to share that Norman Podhoretz, a towering figure of American letters and politics, passed away last night. Not…”

“I am sad to share that Norman Podhoretz, a towering figure of American letters and politics, passed away last night. Not many men change the course of history. Those who do usually do it through their actions, like GEN Ulysses Grant's brilliant military campaigns in the Civil War. Fewer still do it with a combination of words and actions like Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps rarest of all are men like Norman Podhoretz, who changed history with mere words--and what words they were. Norman was not only the longtime legendary editor and soul of Commentary Magazine but also a prolific author of a dozen books, hundreds of essays, articles and columns and no telling how many speeches. He could turn out 10,000 words of elegant, sparkling, cogent prose, seemingly, at a moment's notice while identifying for his readers the deeper meaning of the day's news. Norman was an original neoconservative and proud to be so. These days, some historically illiterate podcasters and so-called influencers use the term 'neocon' as an all-purpose slur for anything they don't like. But the neocons were just that, new conservatives, a collection of anticommunist liberals between World War II and the Vietnam war who were, as the saying goes, mugged by reality--in this case, the reality of the New Left's turn against America. Norman followed this path and blazed it for others.”