The Perpetual Three-Dot Column
The Perpetual Three-Dot Column
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by Jesse Walker

Saturday, August 06, 2016
WE PAUSE FOR A VERY BELATED CORRECTION: Way back in 1995,
reviewing Christina Hoff Sommers' book Who Stole Feminism? for Liberty magazine, I produced this passage about Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican convention:
At one point, turning his fire on the environmental movement, Buchanan related the story of a woman he'd met who had lost her job because of environmental regulations. Left-liberals watching the speech on TV were probably too busy seeing red to notice that the most right-wing candidate for the Republican nomination had just complained that a woman had lost her job.
Needless to say, I wasn't arguing that Pat Buchanan was a feminist—just that feminism had clearly won a significant battle if even the most socially conservative candidate in the race wasn't batting an eye about a woman working outside the home. I was right about that, but I was wrong in my description of the speech: Buchanan did not specify that the woman had lost her job because of environmental regulations. He mentioned the jobless woman, and then he went on, right afterward, to say some other people's livelihoods had been threatened by environmental regulations. My memory had conflated the two paragraphs.

Twenty-one years later, I decided to bring up that Buchanan speech again in a blog post at Reason. This time, it being 2016 rather than 1995, I Googled the text rather than relying on my memory. And then I noticed my mistake; and now I confess my error.


posted by Jesse 5:40 PM
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