From the New Criterion blog:
Punitive liberalism
by Roger Kimball
It has long been recognized that liberalism and feelings of guilt go together as predictably as tea and crumpets. In the title essay of his remarkable book The Chatham House Version, Elie Kedourie criticizes the anti-Western bias of Arnold Toynbee's multi-volume A Study of History. ("In my eyes," Toynbee wrote in his concluding volume, "the west is a perpetual aggressor.") Kedourie points out that behind Toynbee's impressive erudition ("the far-fetched analogies, the obscure references, the succession of latinate, polysyllabic words") one discerns "the shrill and clamant voice of English radicalism, thrilling with self-accusatory and joyful lamentation. Nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa: we have invaded, we have conquered, we have dominated, we have exploited."
One finds the same emotional compact among liberals in this country: a conviction of superior virtue punctuated by declarations of unappeasable guilt. Whose guilt? Ours--or, to be more precise--yours: all you who have not yet fully acknowledged the miserable condition of Western society, especially the more affluent purlieus of Western society, and above all those parts of affluent Western society that happen to be white, male, and Christian.
This phenomenon, though long recognized, has not been properly named--not, at any rate, until now. In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, James Piereson does us the service of finally naming this beast: "punitive liberalism."
In an article called Punitive Liberalism: What Reagan vanquished, Piereson describes the way Ronald Reagan provided an antidote to the poison of liberal guilt that had circulated through the body politic since the 1960s.
From the time of John Kennedy's assassination in 1963 to Jimmy Carter's election in 1976, the Democratic party was gradually taken over by a bizarre doctrine that might be called Punitive Liberalism. According to this doctrine, America had been responsible for numerous crimes and misdeeds through its history for which it deserved punishment and chastisement. White Americans had enslaved blacks and committed genocide against Native Americans. They had oppressed women and tyrannized minority groups, such as the Japanese who had been interned in camps during World War II. They had been harsh and unfeeling toward the poor. By our greed, we had despoiled the environment and were consuming a disproportionate share of the world's wealth and resources. We had coddled dictators abroad and violated human rights out of our irrational fear of communism.
Piereson's great insight is to stress the punitive, the chastising side of this orgy of guilt. Liberals come telling us they are making a better world; they omit to mention that what they mean by "a better world" is a world that is distinctly worse for certain groups, in particular groups that liberals decided had hitherto been unfairly privileged.
"The punitive aspects of this doctrine," Piereson writes,
were made especially plain in debates over the liberals' favored policies. If one asked whether it was really fair to impose employment quotas for women and minorities, one often heard the answer, "White men imposed quotas on us, and now we're going to do the same to them!" Was busing of school children really an effective means of improving educational opportunities for blacks? A parallel answer was often given: "Whites bused blacks to enforce segregation, and now they deserve to get a taste of their own medicine!" Do we really strengthen our own security by undercutting allied governments in the name of human rights, particularly when they are replaced by openly hostile regimes (as in Iran and Nicaragua)? "This"--the answer was--"is the price we have to pay for coddling dictators." And so it went. Whenever the arguments were pressed, one discovered a punitive motive behind most of their policies.
It was, as Piereson notes, one of Reagan's great achievements to overcome, at least temporarily, the emotional mandate of punitive liberalism. Piereson quotes from Reagan's speech at the Republican Convention of 1980: "My fellow citizens," Reagan said, "I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves." What a breath of fresh air, especially after four years of Jimmy "Mr. Malaise" Carter!
The question that confronts us now is what reservoirs of confidence we still can draw upon. Did Reagan really "vanquish" punitive liberalism, or did he merely rebuff it momentarily? It seems pretty clear that "we have scotched the snake, not killed it." But at least now we know what we are fighting. Punitive Liberalism is alive and well in the Democratic Party, at The New York Times, in our courts and universities. It would be nice if another Ronald Reagan were to appear and remind us that we cannot move forward by moving backwards. Until then, we can be grateful for Piereson's attack on euphemism. The first step towards freedom is calling things by their real names. With the phrase "Punitive Liberalism," we at last have a truthful name for the toxic doctrine that would have us believe success is a form of failure.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Bush's State of the Union speech redeemed
BY MARK STEYN
Do you remember a year ago when the Democratic National Committee was putting out press releases headlined ''President Bush Deceives The American People"?
Yawn. What's new? But last summer the Bush Lie Of The Week was all to do with Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger. CNN and Co. replayed endlessly the critical 16 words from the president's 2003 State of the Union Address:
''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush ''misled every one of us,'' huffed Sen. John Kerry. ''It's beginning to sound like Watergate,'' said Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for the New York Times titled ''What I didn't find in Africa.''
Can you guess what he didn't find, dear reader? That's right, he didn't find a big package of uranium bearing the address label ''S. Hussein, Suite 27, the Saddam Hussein Centre for Armageddon Studies, Saddam Hussein Parkway, Baghdad.'' Ambassador Wilson said relax, he'd been to Niger, spent "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people,'' and there's nothing going on.
Well, on Wednesday in London, Lord Butler will publish his report into the quality of the intelligence on which rested Britain's case for going to war with Iraq. The report is said to be critical of some of Tony Blair's claims, supportive of others. And, among the latter, he says that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence. In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
As a gazillion e-mails a day shrieked from my in-box back then, ''BUSH LIED!!!!!!" So where exactly in that State of the Union observation is the lie?
Last summer, the comparatively minor matter of uranium from Niger was all over the front pages and the news shows. Do you think Butler's report will be? Do you think Terry McAuliffe and John Kerry and Howard Dean will be eating humble yellowcake?
In July last year, I wrote about the Bush Lie Of The Week in this space. The CIA had disowned the Niger story, and I pointed out that these were the same fellows who'd botched the Sudanese aspirin factory business, failed to spot 9/11 coming, etc., etc.
"So," I wrote, "if you're the president and the same intelligence bureaucrats who got all the above wrong say the Brits are way off the mark, there's nothing going on with Saddam and Africa, what do you do? Do you say, 'Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day'? Or, given what you've learnt about the state of your humint (human intelligence), is it likely they've got much of a clue about what's going on in French Africa? Isn't this one of those deals where the Brits and the shifty French (Niger's uranium operations are under the supervision of the French Atomic Energy Commission) are more plugged in?"
And so it's proved. The fact is almost every European intelligence service reckoned Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa. The only folks who didn't think so were the CIA.
Let's weigh their comparative interest in the story. The Financial Times revealed last week that one continental intelligence agency had had a uranium-smuggling operation involving Iraq under surveillance for three years. In return, the only primary investigation initiated by the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth was to send a narcissistic kook from a Saudi-funded think-tank on vacation for a week to sip mint tea with government stooges. He didn't even bother filing a written report, and the ''Bush spurned my advice!'' column he wrote for the Times reads like a bad travelogue: ''Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger river.'' After that, the great narcissist somehow managed to make himself the center of the story -- But hey, enough about Saddam's nuclear ambitions; let's talk about me.
A few weeks before 9/11, Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote a timely piece in the Atlantic Monthly on the woeful state of U.S. counter-terrorism intelligence in a CIA neutered by politically correct bureaucracy. Among Gerecht's many memorable quotes was this line from a young CIA man reflecting on an agency grown used to desk-bound life in Virginia: ''Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen.'' That's Niger in a nutshell: Diarrhea Central. Who'd want to be stationed there when they could be back at Langley monitoring the world's e-mail in an air-conditioned office?
But Niger is a 99.5 percent Sunni Muslim country with the world's second highest birth rate and a load of uranium. It's exactly the sort of place an intelligence agency in the war on terror ought to be keeping an eye on. And that doesn't mean sending Mint Tea Boy to write it up for the travel section.
That's the issue here: The CIA are tourists in the heart of darkness. This spring, the ever-complacent George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that it would take another half-decade to rebuild the clandestine service. So three years after 9/11 the CIA says it needs another five years. Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt had turned to Tenet to start up the OSS, the CIA's wartime predecessor. In 1942, he'd have told the president not to worry, he'd have it up and running by 1950.
Bush didn't LIE!!!! He was right, and the CIA were wrong. That doesn't mean they LIED!!!! either. Intelligence is never 100 percent. You make a judgment, and in this instance the judgments of the British and Europeans were right, and the judgment of the principal intelligence agency of the world's hyperpower was wrong. That should be a cause of great concern -- for all Americans.
National security shouldn't be a Republican/Democrat thing. But it's become one because, for too many Americans, when it's a choice between Bush and anybody else, they'll take anybody else. So, in ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' if it's a choice between Bush and Saddam, Michael Moore comes down on the side of the genocidal whacko and shows us lyrical slo-mo shots of kiddies flying kites in a Baathist utopia. In the Afghan war, if it's a choice between Bush and the women-enslaving gay-executing Taliban, Susan Sarandon and Co. side with the Taliban. And in the most exquisite reductio of this now universal rule, if it's a choice between Bush and the CIA, the left sides with the CIA.
There's one for the peace marches: Hey, hey, CIA/How many Bush lies did you expose today?
This isn't an anti-war movement. This is a movement in denial.
BY MARK STEYN
Do you remember a year ago when the Democratic National Committee was putting out press releases headlined ''President Bush Deceives The American People"?
Yawn. What's new? But last summer the Bush Lie Of The Week was all to do with Saddam trying to buy uranium from Niger. CNN and Co. replayed endlessly the critical 16 words from the president's 2003 State of the Union Address:
''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Sixteen words that could break a presidency! Bush ''misled every one of us,'' huffed Sen. John Kerry. ''It's beginning to sound like Watergate,'' said Howard Dean. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man the CIA sent to Africa to investigate, wrote a piece for the New York Times titled ''What I didn't find in Africa.''
Can you guess what he didn't find, dear reader? That's right, he didn't find a big package of uranium bearing the address label ''S. Hussein, Suite 27, the Saddam Hussein Centre for Armageddon Studies, Saddam Hussein Parkway, Baghdad.'' Ambassador Wilson said relax, he'd been to Niger, spent "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people,'' and there's nothing going on.
Well, on Wednesday in London, Lord Butler will publish his report into the quality of the intelligence on which rested Britain's case for going to war with Iraq. The report is said to be critical of some of Tony Blair's claims, supportive of others. And, among the latter, he says that the statements about Iraq and Niger are justified and supported by the intelligence. In other words, the British Government did learn that Saddam Hussein did seek significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
As a gazillion e-mails a day shrieked from my in-box back then, ''BUSH LIED!!!!!!" So where exactly in that State of the Union observation is the lie?
Last summer, the comparatively minor matter of uranium from Niger was all over the front pages and the news shows. Do you think Butler's report will be? Do you think Terry McAuliffe and John Kerry and Howard Dean will be eating humble yellowcake?
In July last year, I wrote about the Bush Lie Of The Week in this space. The CIA had disowned the Niger story, and I pointed out that these were the same fellows who'd botched the Sudanese aspirin factory business, failed to spot 9/11 coming, etc., etc.
"So," I wrote, "if you're the president and the same intelligence bureaucrats who got all the above wrong say the Brits are way off the mark, there's nothing going on with Saddam and Africa, what do you do? Do you say, 'Hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day'? Or, given what you've learnt about the state of your humint (human intelligence), is it likely they've got much of a clue about what's going on in French Africa? Isn't this one of those deals where the Brits and the shifty French (Niger's uranium operations are under the supervision of the French Atomic Energy Commission) are more plugged in?"
And so it's proved. The fact is almost every European intelligence service reckoned Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa. The only folks who didn't think so were the CIA.
Let's weigh their comparative interest in the story. The Financial Times revealed last week that one continental intelligence agency had had a uranium-smuggling operation involving Iraq under surveillance for three years. In return, the only primary investigation initiated by the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth was to send a narcissistic kook from a Saudi-funded think-tank on vacation for a week to sip mint tea with government stooges. He didn't even bother filing a written report, and the ''Bush spurned my advice!'' column he wrote for the Times reads like a bad travelogue: ''Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger river.'' After that, the great narcissist somehow managed to make himself the center of the story -- But hey, enough about Saddam's nuclear ambitions; let's talk about me.
A few weeks before 9/11, Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote a timely piece in the Atlantic Monthly on the woeful state of U.S. counter-terrorism intelligence in a CIA neutered by politically correct bureaucracy. Among Gerecht's many memorable quotes was this line from a young CIA man reflecting on an agency grown used to desk-bound life in Virginia: ''Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don't happen.'' That's Niger in a nutshell: Diarrhea Central. Who'd want to be stationed there when they could be back at Langley monitoring the world's e-mail in an air-conditioned office?
But Niger is a 99.5 percent Sunni Muslim country with the world's second highest birth rate and a load of uranium. It's exactly the sort of place an intelligence agency in the war on terror ought to be keeping an eye on. And that doesn't mean sending Mint Tea Boy to write it up for the travel section.
That's the issue here: The CIA are tourists in the heart of darkness. This spring, the ever-complacent George Tenet told the 9/11 Commission that it would take another half-decade to rebuild the clandestine service. So three years after 9/11 the CIA says it needs another five years. Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt had turned to Tenet to start up the OSS, the CIA's wartime predecessor. In 1942, he'd have told the president not to worry, he'd have it up and running by 1950.
Bush didn't LIE!!!! He was right, and the CIA were wrong. That doesn't mean they LIED!!!! either. Intelligence is never 100 percent. You make a judgment, and in this instance the judgments of the British and Europeans were right, and the judgment of the principal intelligence agency of the world's hyperpower was wrong. That should be a cause of great concern -- for all Americans.
National security shouldn't be a Republican/Democrat thing. But it's become one because, for too many Americans, when it's a choice between Bush and anybody else, they'll take anybody else. So, in ''Fahrenheit 9/11,'' if it's a choice between Bush and Saddam, Michael Moore comes down on the side of the genocidal whacko and shows us lyrical slo-mo shots of kiddies flying kites in a Baathist utopia. In the Afghan war, if it's a choice between Bush and the women-enslaving gay-executing Taliban, Susan Sarandon and Co. side with the Taliban. And in the most exquisite reductio of this now universal rule, if it's a choice between Bush and the CIA, the left sides with the CIA.
There's one for the peace marches: Hey, hey, CIA/How many Bush lies did you expose today?
This isn't an anti-war movement. This is a movement in denial.
Frank Rich on F9/11's Impact
An oddly accurate portrayal of the F9/11 nonsense from Frank Rich:
"It has the potential of actually affecting the election, and if it does, it will change the world," the director Rob Reiner said of "Fahrenheit 9/11," echoing Eli Pariser of MoveOn, who said his members regarded the film as "the 'Star Wars'" of its genre. "We literally sold out Peoria, Illinois," bragged the movie's distributor after its opening weekend. So what? Illinois is a safe Democratic state already, and even Peoria is not particularly Republican: Bush-Cheney beat Gore-Lieberman by a mere 251 votes there in 2000, fewer than the 544 votes siphoned off by Moore's candidate at the time, Ralph Nader.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is, as we keep being told, the most successful non-IMAX documentary of all time. What that means is that its ticket sales are whipping the bejesus out of "Winged Migration" and "Spellbound." But by any other Hollywood standard this movie, while a bona fide surprise hit (especially in relation to its tiny budget), is not a blockbuster or must-see phenomenon (except to its core constituency).
The latest actual polls show the president with an approval rating below (in some cases well below) 50 percent. The election is both too far away and too close to call. And that's why a movie like "Fahrenheit 9/11," with its relatively narrow sampling, may be no more a reliable index to the mood of the country than the Literary Digest poll of 1936. It was so skewed by the demographics of its similarly self-selected participants that it gave Alf Landon a 14-point spread over F.D.R.
An oddly accurate portrayal of the F9/11 nonsense from Frank Rich:
"It has the potential of actually affecting the election, and if it does, it will change the world," the director Rob Reiner said of "Fahrenheit 9/11," echoing Eli Pariser of MoveOn, who said his members regarded the film as "the 'Star Wars'" of its genre. "We literally sold out Peoria, Illinois," bragged the movie's distributor after its opening weekend. So what? Illinois is a safe Democratic state already, and even Peoria is not particularly Republican: Bush-Cheney beat Gore-Lieberman by a mere 251 votes there in 2000, fewer than the 544 votes siphoned off by Moore's candidate at the time, Ralph Nader.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is, as we keep being told, the most successful non-IMAX documentary of all time. What that means is that its ticket sales are whipping the bejesus out of "Winged Migration" and "Spellbound." But by any other Hollywood standard this movie, while a bona fide surprise hit (especially in relation to its tiny budget), is not a blockbuster or must-see phenomenon (except to its core constituency).
The latest actual polls show the president with an approval rating below (in some cases well below) 50 percent. The election is both too far away and too close to call. And that's why a movie like "Fahrenheit 9/11," with its relatively narrow sampling, may be no more a reliable index to the mood of the country than the Literary Digest poll of 1936. It was so skewed by the demographics of its similarly self-selected participants that it gave Alf Landon a 14-point spread over F.D.R.
Thursday, July 08, 2004
The Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index
My choices (for today) indicated by asterisk*
Terry Teachout: If you had to choose:
1. Fred Astaire* or Gene Kelly?
2. The Great Gatsby* or The Sun Also Rises?
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington*?
4. Cats* or dogs?
5. Matisse* or Picasso?
6. Yeats or Eliot*?
7. Buster Keaton* or Charlie Chaplin?
8. Flannery O’Connor* or John Updike?
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca*?
10. Jackson Pollock* or Willem de Kooning?
11. The Who or the Stones*?
12. Philip Larkin* or Sylvia Plath?
13. Trollope or Dickens*?
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald*?
15. Dostoyevsky* or Tolstoy?
16. The Moviegoer* or The End of the Affair?
17. George Balanchine* or Martha Graham?
18. Hot dogs* or hamburgers?
19. Letterman* or Leno?
20. Wilco* or Cat Power?
21. Verdi or Wagner*?
22. Grace Kelly* or Marilyn Monroe?
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash*?
24. Kingsley* or Martin Amis?
25. Robert Mitchum* or Marlon Brando?
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp*?
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt*?
28. Tchaikovsky* or Chopin?
29. Red wine* or white?
30. Noël Coward* or Oscar Wilde?
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity*?
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev*?
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov* or Rudolf Nureyev?
34. Constable or Turner*?
35. The Searchers* or Rio Bravo?
36. Comedy or tragedy*?
37. Fall* or spring?
38. Manet or Monet*?
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons*?
40. Rodgers and Hart* or Gershwin and Gershwin?
41. Joseph Conrad* or Henry James?
42. Sunset or sunrise*?
43. Johnny Mercer* or Cole Porter?
44. Mac* or PC?
45. New York* or Los Angeles?
46. Partisan Review or Horizon*?
47. Stax or Motown*?
48. Van Gogh* or Gauguin?
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello*?
50. Reading a blog* or reading a magazine?
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier*?
52. Only the Lonely* or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers?
53. Chinatown* or Bonnie and Clyde?
54. Ghost World* or Election?
55. Minimalism* or conceptual art?
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny*?
57. Modernism* or postmodernism?
58. Batman* or Spider-Man?
59. Emmylou Harris* or Lucinda Williams?
60. Johnson* or Boswell?
61. Jane Austen* or Virginia Woolf?
62. The Honeymooners* or The Dick Van Dyke Show?
63. An Eames chair* or a Noguchi table?
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity*?
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni*?
66. Blue* or green?
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream* or As You Like It?
68. Ballet* or opera?
69. Film* or live theater?
70. Acoustic or electric*?
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo*?
72. Sargent or Whistler*?
73. V.S. Naipaul* or Milan Kundera?
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma*?
75. Sushi, yes or no*?
76. The New Yorker under Ross* or Shawn?
77. Tennessee Williams* or Edward Albee?
78. The Portrait of a Lady* or The Wings of the Dove?
79. Paul Taylor* or Merce Cunningham?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright* or Mies van der Rohe?
81. Diana Krall* or Norah Jones?
82. Watercolor* or pastel?
83. Bus or subway*?
84. Stravinsky* or Schoenberg?
85. Crunchy* or smooth peanut butter?
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser*?
87. Schubert or Mozart*?
88. The Fifties* or the Twenties?
89. Huckleberry Finn* or Moby-Dick?
90. Thomas Mann* or James Joyce?
91. Lester Young* or Coleman Hawkins?
92. Emily Dickinson* or Walt Whitman?
93. Abraham Lincoln* or Winston Churchill?
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann*?
95. Italian* or French cooking?
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord*?
97. Anchovies, yes or no*?
98. Short novels or long ones*?
99. Swing* or bebop?
100. "The Last Judgment*" or "The Last Supper"?
Close readers of "About Last Night" may already have guessed that I’d choose column A over column B in all cases—but some calls would be much closer than others, while others remain subject to change without notice....
How about you? What’s your Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index?
(If you answered all 100 questions, your TCCI is the number of answers from column A. If you left some of the questions blank because you weren't familiar with one or both of the possible answers, your TCCI is the number of column-A answers divided by the total number of questions that you answered.)
.
posted by terryteachout @ Monday, July 5, 2004
My choices (for today) indicated by asterisk*
Terry Teachout: If you had to choose:
1. Fred Astaire* or Gene Kelly?
2. The Great Gatsby* or The Sun Also Rises?
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington*?
4. Cats* or dogs?
5. Matisse* or Picasso?
6. Yeats or Eliot*?
7. Buster Keaton* or Charlie Chaplin?
8. Flannery O’Connor* or John Updike?
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca*?
10. Jackson Pollock* or Willem de Kooning?
11. The Who or the Stones*?
12. Philip Larkin* or Sylvia Plath?
13. Trollope or Dickens*?
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald*?
15. Dostoyevsky* or Tolstoy?
16. The Moviegoer* or The End of the Affair?
17. George Balanchine* or Martha Graham?
18. Hot dogs* or hamburgers?
19. Letterman* or Leno?
20. Wilco* or Cat Power?
21. Verdi or Wagner*?
22. Grace Kelly* or Marilyn Monroe?
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash*?
24. Kingsley* or Martin Amis?
25. Robert Mitchum* or Marlon Brando?
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp*?
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt*?
28. Tchaikovsky* or Chopin?
29. Red wine* or white?
30. Noël Coward* or Oscar Wilde?
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity*?
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev*?
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov* or Rudolf Nureyev?
34. Constable or Turner*?
35. The Searchers* or Rio Bravo?
36. Comedy or tragedy*?
37. Fall* or spring?
38. Manet or Monet*?
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons*?
40. Rodgers and Hart* or Gershwin and Gershwin?
41. Joseph Conrad* or Henry James?
42. Sunset or sunrise*?
43. Johnny Mercer* or Cole Porter?
44. Mac* or PC?
45. New York* or Los Angeles?
46. Partisan Review or Horizon*?
47. Stax or Motown*?
48. Van Gogh* or Gauguin?
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello*?
50. Reading a blog* or reading a magazine?
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier*?
52. Only the Lonely* or Songs for Swingin’ Lovers?
53. Chinatown* or Bonnie and Clyde?
54. Ghost World* or Election?
55. Minimalism* or conceptual art?
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny*?
57. Modernism* or postmodernism?
58. Batman* or Spider-Man?
59. Emmylou Harris* or Lucinda Williams?
60. Johnson* or Boswell?
61. Jane Austen* or Virginia Woolf?
62. The Honeymooners* or The Dick Van Dyke Show?
63. An Eames chair* or a Noguchi table?
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity*?
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni*?
66. Blue* or green?
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream* or As You Like It?
68. Ballet* or opera?
69. Film* or live theater?
70. Acoustic or electric*?
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo*?
72. Sargent or Whistler*?
73. V.S. Naipaul* or Milan Kundera?
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma*?
75. Sushi, yes or no*?
76. The New Yorker under Ross* or Shawn?
77. Tennessee Williams* or Edward Albee?
78. The Portrait of a Lady* or The Wings of the Dove?
79. Paul Taylor* or Merce Cunningham?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright* or Mies van der Rohe?
81. Diana Krall* or Norah Jones?
82. Watercolor* or pastel?
83. Bus or subway*?
84. Stravinsky* or Schoenberg?
85. Crunchy* or smooth peanut butter?
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser*?
87. Schubert or Mozart*?
88. The Fifties* or the Twenties?
89. Huckleberry Finn* or Moby-Dick?
90. Thomas Mann* or James Joyce?
91. Lester Young* or Coleman Hawkins?
92. Emily Dickinson* or Walt Whitman?
93. Abraham Lincoln* or Winston Churchill?
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann*?
95. Italian* or French cooking?
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord*?
97. Anchovies, yes or no*?
98. Short novels or long ones*?
99. Swing* or bebop?
100. "The Last Judgment*" or "The Last Supper"?
Close readers of "About Last Night" may already have guessed that I’d choose column A over column B in all cases—but some calls would be much closer than others, while others remain subject to change without notice....
How about you? What’s your Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index?
(If you answered all 100 questions, your TCCI is the number of answers from column A. If you left some of the questions blank because you weren't familiar with one or both of the possible answers, your TCCI is the number of column-A answers divided by the total number of questions that you answered.)
.
posted by terryteachout @ Monday, July 5, 2004
Excellent piece on John Edwards by Coulter:
The Millworker's Son
By Ann Coulter
I guess with John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate, he really does want to stand up for all Americans, from those worth only $60 million to those worth in excess of $800 million.
In one of the many stratagems Democrats have developed to avoid telling people what they believe, all Edwards wants to talk about is his cracker-barrel humble origins story. We're supposed to swoon over his "life story," as the flacks say, which apparently consists of the amazing fact that ... his father was a millworker!
That's right up there with "Clinton's stepdad was a drunk" and "Ted Kennedy's dad was a womanizing bootlegger" on my inspirational life-stories meter. In fact, I'm immediately renouncing my university degrees and going to work for the post office just to give my future children a shot at having a "life story," should they decide to run for president someday.
What is so amazing about Edwards' father being a millworker? That's at least an honorable occupation – as opposed to being a trial lawyer. True, Edwards made more money than his father did. I assume strippers make more money than their alcoholic fathers who abandoned them did, too. This isn't a story of progress; it's a story of devolution.
Despite the overwrought claims of Edwards' dazzling legal skills, winning jury verdicts in personal injury cases has nothing to do with legal talent and everything to do with getting the right cases – unless "talent" is taken to mean "having absolutely no shame." Edwards specialized in babies with cerebral palsy whom he claimed would have been spared the affliction if only the doctors had immediately performed Caesarean sections.
As a result of such lawsuits, there are now more than four times as many Caesarean sections as there were in 1970. But curiously, there has been no change in the rate of babies born with cerebral palsy. As the New York Times reported: "Studies indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury long before labor begins." All those Caesareans have, however, increased the mother's risk of death, hemorrhage, infection, pulmonary embolism and Mendelson's syndrome.
In addition, the "little guys" Edwards claims to represent are having a lot more trouble finding doctors to deliver their babies these days as obstetricians leave the practice rather than pay malpractice insurance in excess of $100,000 a year.
In one of Edwards' silver-tongued arguments to the jury on behalf of a girl born with cerebral palsy, he claimed he was channeling the unborn baby girl, Jennifer Campbell, who was speaking to the jurors through him:
"She said at 3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing OK.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.'"
She's saying, "My lawyer needs a new Jaguar ... "
"She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."
Well, tell her to pipe down, would you? I'm trying to hear the evidence in a malpractice lawsuit.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, one must have a heart of stone to read this without laughing. What is this guy, a tent-show preacher? An off-the-strip Las Vegas lounge psychic couldn't get away with this routine.
Is Edwards able to channel any children right before an abortionist's fork is plunged into their tiny skulls? Why can't he hear those babies saying, "Let me live! Stop spraying this saline solution all over me!" Edwards must experience interference in channeling the voices of babies about to be aborted. Their liberal mothers' hands seem to muffle those voices.
And may we ask what the pre-born Jennifer Campbell thinks about war with Iraq? North Korea? Marginal tax rates? If Miss Cleo here is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, I think the voters are entitled to know that.
While making himself fabulously rich by taking a one-third cut of his multimillion-dollar verdicts coaxed out of juries with junk science and maudlin performances, Edwards has the audacity to claim, "I was more than just their lawyer; I cared about them. Their cause was my cause."
If he cared so deeply, how about keeping just 10 percent of the multimillion-dollar jury awards, rather than a third? In fact, as long as these Democrats are so eager to raise the taxes of "the rich," how about a 90 percent tax on contingency fees?
For someone who didn't care about the money, it's interesting that Edwards avoided cases in which the baby died during delivery. Evidently, jury awards average only about $500,000 when the babies die, and there is no disabled child to parade before the jury.
Edwards was one of the leading opponents of a bill in the North Carolina Legislature that would have established a fund for all babies born with cerebral palsy. So instead of all disabled babies in North Carolina being compensated equitably, only a few will win the jury lottery – one-third of which will go to trial lawyers like Edwards, who insists he doesn't care about the money.
Despite the now-disproved junk science theory about C-sections preventing cerebral palsy that Edwards peddled in the channeling case, the jury awarded Edwards' client a record-breaking $6.5 million. This is the essence of the modern Democratic Party, polished to perfection by Bill Clinton: They are willing to insult the intelligence of 49 percent of the people if they think they can fool 51 percent of the people.
So while Michael Moore, Al Franken, George Soros, Crazy Al Gore and the rest of the characters from the climactic devil-worshipping scene in "Rosemary's Baby" provide the muscle for the Kerry campaign, Kerry picks a pretty-boy milquetoast as his running mate, narrowly edging out a puppy for the spot. Just don't ask the Democrats what they believe. Edwards' father was a millworker, and that's all you need to know.
The Millworker's Son
By Ann Coulter
I guess with John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate, he really does want to stand up for all Americans, from those worth only $60 million to those worth in excess of $800 million.
In one of the many stratagems Democrats have developed to avoid telling people what they believe, all Edwards wants to talk about is his cracker-barrel humble origins story. We're supposed to swoon over his "life story," as the flacks say, which apparently consists of the amazing fact that ... his father was a millworker!
That's right up there with "Clinton's stepdad was a drunk" and "Ted Kennedy's dad was a womanizing bootlegger" on my inspirational life-stories meter. In fact, I'm immediately renouncing my university degrees and going to work for the post office just to give my future children a shot at having a "life story," should they decide to run for president someday.
What is so amazing about Edwards' father being a millworker? That's at least an honorable occupation – as opposed to being a trial lawyer. True, Edwards made more money than his father did. I assume strippers make more money than their alcoholic fathers who abandoned them did, too. This isn't a story of progress; it's a story of devolution.
Despite the overwrought claims of Edwards' dazzling legal skills, winning jury verdicts in personal injury cases has nothing to do with legal talent and everything to do with getting the right cases – unless "talent" is taken to mean "having absolutely no shame." Edwards specialized in babies with cerebral palsy whom he claimed would have been spared the affliction if only the doctors had immediately performed Caesarean sections.
As a result of such lawsuits, there are now more than four times as many Caesarean sections as there were in 1970. But curiously, there has been no change in the rate of babies born with cerebral palsy. As the New York Times reported: "Studies indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury long before labor begins." All those Caesareans have, however, increased the mother's risk of death, hemorrhage, infection, pulmonary embolism and Mendelson's syndrome.
In addition, the "little guys" Edwards claims to represent are having a lot more trouble finding doctors to deliver their babies these days as obstetricians leave the practice rather than pay malpractice insurance in excess of $100,000 a year.
In one of Edwards' silver-tongued arguments to the jury on behalf of a girl born with cerebral palsy, he claimed he was channeling the unborn baby girl, Jennifer Campbell, who was speaking to the jurors through him:
"She said at 3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing OK.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.'"
She's saying, "My lawyer needs a new Jaguar ... "
"She speaks to you through me and I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."
Well, tell her to pipe down, would you? I'm trying to hear the evidence in a malpractice lawsuit.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, one must have a heart of stone to read this without laughing. What is this guy, a tent-show preacher? An off-the-strip Las Vegas lounge psychic couldn't get away with this routine.
Is Edwards able to channel any children right before an abortionist's fork is plunged into their tiny skulls? Why can't he hear those babies saying, "Let me live! Stop spraying this saline solution all over me!" Edwards must experience interference in channeling the voices of babies about to be aborted. Their liberal mothers' hands seem to muffle those voices.
And may we ask what the pre-born Jennifer Campbell thinks about war with Iraq? North Korea? Marginal tax rates? If Miss Cleo here is going to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, I think the voters are entitled to know that.
While making himself fabulously rich by taking a one-third cut of his multimillion-dollar verdicts coaxed out of juries with junk science and maudlin performances, Edwards has the audacity to claim, "I was more than just their lawyer; I cared about them. Their cause was my cause."
If he cared so deeply, how about keeping just 10 percent of the multimillion-dollar jury awards, rather than a third? In fact, as long as these Democrats are so eager to raise the taxes of "the rich," how about a 90 percent tax on contingency fees?
For someone who didn't care about the money, it's interesting that Edwards avoided cases in which the baby died during delivery. Evidently, jury awards average only about $500,000 when the babies die, and there is no disabled child to parade before the jury.
Edwards was one of the leading opponents of a bill in the North Carolina Legislature that would have established a fund for all babies born with cerebral palsy. So instead of all disabled babies in North Carolina being compensated equitably, only a few will win the jury lottery – one-third of which will go to trial lawyers like Edwards, who insists he doesn't care about the money.
Despite the now-disproved junk science theory about C-sections preventing cerebral palsy that Edwards peddled in the channeling case, the jury awarded Edwards' client a record-breaking $6.5 million. This is the essence of the modern Democratic Party, polished to perfection by Bill Clinton: They are willing to insult the intelligence of 49 percent of the people if they think they can fool 51 percent of the people.
So while Michael Moore, Al Franken, George Soros, Crazy Al Gore and the rest of the characters from the climactic devil-worshipping scene in "Rosemary's Baby" provide the muscle for the Kerry campaign, Kerry picks a pretty-boy milquetoast as his running mate, narrowly edging out a puppy for the spot. Just don't ask the Democrats what they believe. Edwards' father was a millworker, and that's all you need to know.
Monday, July 05, 2004
From the UK Telegraph:
The hawks have only themselves to blame for Michael Moore's success
By Matthew d'Ancona
The morning after I saw Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, I visited my local book shop to inspect the titles it stocked by the director himself and by other writers implacably hostile to George W Bush. On the counter was a pile of Moore's most recent bestseller, Dude, Where's My Country?. And his 2001 polemic, Stupid White Men, which has sold 350,000 copies in Britain alone, was also prominently displayed.
In the same genre, though not by Moore, the shop offered such gems as The Bush-Hater's Handbook, Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, Ugly Americans, What's Wrong with America?, and Amerika Psycho: Behind Uncle Sam's Mask of Sanity. According to the assistant who served me, there are now so many of these instant America-bashing books that the store simply cannot stock them all. When I told her that Moore's new film was compelling cinema and had to be seen, whether or not you agreed with its politics, she snorted with derision: "You just wonder how many people in the States will get to see it, since they live in a country under censorship."
Now, one angry bookseller does not a political trend make. But when you bear in mind that Stupid White Men has already sold more than three million copies worldwide and that Fahrenheit 9/11 took $24 million at the US box office last weekend - the first documentary ever to top the American film charts in its opening days - it becomes less easy to dismiss the fat man in the baseball cap as a marginal figure. Indeed, it looks to me as though Michael Moore is pretty much at the centre of things these days. The subculture has invaded the mainstream: it is an army of occupation.
As I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 - a ferocious attack on Bush's record since September 11 and a clarion-call for "regime change" in Washington - it struck me that Michael Moore's critics are missing the point by directing their wrath at the dodgy detail of his work. Certainly, some scenes in the film are downright offensive. In particular, the slow-motion images of an allegedly idyllic Iraq before last year's liberation campaign - children smiling, kites flying - are an insult to the one million or more Iraqis who died as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's policies.
Other sequences are plain daft. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Moore insinuates, was the result of a wicked plot by big business to build a natural gas pipeline across that benighted country - in spite of the fact that the pipeline scheme was ditched in 1998. As part of its bid to portray the Bush family as hopelessly beholden to the Saudis, the film also claims that the White House improperly authorised the flights from America of bin Laden family members immediately after the September 11 attacks. But guess what? The flights were personally cleared by none other than Richard A Clarke, Mr Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, who has since written his own book attacking the President's wartime record and has consequently become something of a hero to the Moore-istas.
Yet the forensic demolition of Fahrenheit 9/11 which has already been carried out in the American press has apparently done nothing to diminish Moore's appeal or his popularity around the world. He has himself said that the film is not meant to be fair. Nor is it aimed principally at the liberal elite, however much they may endorse its conclusions: Fahrenheit 9/11 is a movie for viewers reared on MTV and video games, not on arthouse cinema. This is popcorn politics, militancy for the multiplexes. And, as such, it is extremely successful. Moore uses all the techniques of modern mass entertainment with supreme skill: comic intercutting, brilliantly-selected music, shocking images of civilian casualties, a laconic voiceover interspersed with scenes of untrammelled emotion. I confess that I found it gripping.
Unlike Moore, I supported the destruction of the Taliban regime and the liberation of Iraq. But I also have to acknowledge the aplomb of his campaign, and the cunning of his strategy. He has not only touched a nerve; he has filled a vacuum. He has identified the feebleness of the campaign to persuade the public that the war on terror is necessary and exploited that weakness to the hilt.
In the process, he has done much to nurture the delusion that the war is simply the folly of a deranged President and his greedy acolytes, rather than a deeply-rooted global crisis and the defining challenge of our time. At precisely the moment that the horizons of Western electorates should be broadening, they are narrowing dangerously. The debate has grown perilously introspective: on both sides of the Atlantic, the war on terror is in danger of becoming just another sub-category of domestic politics.
Moore is the most powerful spokesman of the myth that gripped the Spanish people when they elected Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as their Prime Minister in the wake of the Madrid bombing: namely, that if we oust specific politicians from office - replace Bush with Kerry, Blair with Brown - the Islamic fundamentalists will leave us alone. It is, of course, psychologically reassuring for voters to be told that they have this power, that there is something quick and clean they can do about their collective predicament. But it is also a fantasy. The theocratic guerrillas of al-Qaeda and its associates who, it emerged last week, were planning to bomb a British primary school in Madrid and, on Friday, promised fresh attacks in Europe, will not be appeased by any number of political scalps. Their ambitions for the world are much greater and more terrifying.
But who can blame Michael Moore for seizing his chance? No war in modern history has been as badly sold to the public as this one. In private, the Prime Minister admits to colleagues that, in this respect, "I have failed". No Western politician, including Mr Blair, has succesfully produced a political narrative which transcends the old methods of spin developed in the 1990s and explains why the war on terror is a completely new kind of struggle.
Indeed, the problem with the American "neocons" - Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - is that they are not "neo" enough. They use old Cold War language to describe an utterly modern conflict. This war may well, for a start, be longer than the great struggle of the second half of the last century. It is certainly more complex: the triple, interlocked threat of weapons of mass destruction, global terrorist groups and rogue states is much more difficult to explain than the monolithic danger which was represented by the Soviet bloc and its ideology. And, to be prosecuted successfully, the war on terror will require durable public faith in politicians and the intelligence services that inform them: the very trust which has taken such a terrible beating before, during and after the Iraqi conflict. The anti-war lobby has the slick movies of Michael Moore. And what do we hawks have? The sickening images of Abu Ghraib, that's what.
This is why it isn't enough to say that Moore manipulates the facts, or that he is a charlatan, or that his arguments are glib. The reality is that his methods are working, and working for a reason. He is the grizzled face of a culture in denial, the contrarian voice of the millions who would rather hate Dubya than confront the awesome threat that stalks our age. His success is an urgent warning to those who support the war, who grasp its importance, to raise their game, and fast. Nitpicking is not the answer. It's the big issues that count. And it's there that Michael Moore has no answers. If he is so visionary, why is his objective - to run Bush out of the White House - so parochial? What would he do about the new horrors of our time? Dude, where's your sense of history?
The hawks have only themselves to blame for Michael Moore's success
By Matthew d'Ancona
The morning after I saw Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, I visited my local book shop to inspect the titles it stocked by the director himself and by other writers implacably hostile to George W Bush. On the counter was a pile of Moore's most recent bestseller, Dude, Where's My Country?. And his 2001 polemic, Stupid White Men, which has sold 350,000 copies in Britain alone, was also prominently displayed.
In the same genre, though not by Moore, the shop offered such gems as The Bush-Hater's Handbook, Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, Ugly Americans, What's Wrong with America?, and Amerika Psycho: Behind Uncle Sam's Mask of Sanity. According to the assistant who served me, there are now so many of these instant America-bashing books that the store simply cannot stock them all. When I told her that Moore's new film was compelling cinema and had to be seen, whether or not you agreed with its politics, she snorted with derision: "You just wonder how many people in the States will get to see it, since they live in a country under censorship."
Now, one angry bookseller does not a political trend make. But when you bear in mind that Stupid White Men has already sold more than three million copies worldwide and that Fahrenheit 9/11 took $24 million at the US box office last weekend - the first documentary ever to top the American film charts in its opening days - it becomes less easy to dismiss the fat man in the baseball cap as a marginal figure. Indeed, it looks to me as though Michael Moore is pretty much at the centre of things these days. The subculture has invaded the mainstream: it is an army of occupation.
As I watched Fahrenheit 9/11 - a ferocious attack on Bush's record since September 11 and a clarion-call for "regime change" in Washington - it struck me that Michael Moore's critics are missing the point by directing their wrath at the dodgy detail of his work. Certainly, some scenes in the film are downright offensive. In particular, the slow-motion images of an allegedly idyllic Iraq before last year's liberation campaign - children smiling, kites flying - are an insult to the one million or more Iraqis who died as a consequence of Saddam Hussein's policies.
Other sequences are plain daft. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Moore insinuates, was the result of a wicked plot by big business to build a natural gas pipeline across that benighted country - in spite of the fact that the pipeline scheme was ditched in 1998. As part of its bid to portray the Bush family as hopelessly beholden to the Saudis, the film also claims that the White House improperly authorised the flights from America of bin Laden family members immediately after the September 11 attacks. But guess what? The flights were personally cleared by none other than Richard A Clarke, Mr Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, who has since written his own book attacking the President's wartime record and has consequently become something of a hero to the Moore-istas.
Yet the forensic demolition of Fahrenheit 9/11 which has already been carried out in the American press has apparently done nothing to diminish Moore's appeal or his popularity around the world. He has himself said that the film is not meant to be fair. Nor is it aimed principally at the liberal elite, however much they may endorse its conclusions: Fahrenheit 9/11 is a movie for viewers reared on MTV and video games, not on arthouse cinema. This is popcorn politics, militancy for the multiplexes. And, as such, it is extremely successful. Moore uses all the techniques of modern mass entertainment with supreme skill: comic intercutting, brilliantly-selected music, shocking images of civilian casualties, a laconic voiceover interspersed with scenes of untrammelled emotion. I confess that I found it gripping.
Unlike Moore, I supported the destruction of the Taliban regime and the liberation of Iraq. But I also have to acknowledge the aplomb of his campaign, and the cunning of his strategy. He has not only touched a nerve; he has filled a vacuum. He has identified the feebleness of the campaign to persuade the public that the war on terror is necessary and exploited that weakness to the hilt.
In the process, he has done much to nurture the delusion that the war is simply the folly of a deranged President and his greedy acolytes, rather than a deeply-rooted global crisis and the defining challenge of our time. At precisely the moment that the horizons of Western electorates should be broadening, they are narrowing dangerously. The debate has grown perilously introspective: on both sides of the Atlantic, the war on terror is in danger of becoming just another sub-category of domestic politics.
Moore is the most powerful spokesman of the myth that gripped the Spanish people when they elected Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as their Prime Minister in the wake of the Madrid bombing: namely, that if we oust specific politicians from office - replace Bush with Kerry, Blair with Brown - the Islamic fundamentalists will leave us alone. It is, of course, psychologically reassuring for voters to be told that they have this power, that there is something quick and clean they can do about their collective predicament. But it is also a fantasy. The theocratic guerrillas of al-Qaeda and its associates who, it emerged last week, were planning to bomb a British primary school in Madrid and, on Friday, promised fresh attacks in Europe, will not be appeased by any number of political scalps. Their ambitions for the world are much greater and more terrifying.
But who can blame Michael Moore for seizing his chance? No war in modern history has been as badly sold to the public as this one. In private, the Prime Minister admits to colleagues that, in this respect, "I have failed". No Western politician, including Mr Blair, has succesfully produced a political narrative which transcends the old methods of spin developed in the 1990s and explains why the war on terror is a completely new kind of struggle.
Indeed, the problem with the American "neocons" - Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - is that they are not "neo" enough. They use old Cold War language to describe an utterly modern conflict. This war may well, for a start, be longer than the great struggle of the second half of the last century. It is certainly more complex: the triple, interlocked threat of weapons of mass destruction, global terrorist groups and rogue states is much more difficult to explain than the monolithic danger which was represented by the Soviet bloc and its ideology. And, to be prosecuted successfully, the war on terror will require durable public faith in politicians and the intelligence services that inform them: the very trust which has taken such a terrible beating before, during and after the Iraqi conflict. The anti-war lobby has the slick movies of Michael Moore. And what do we hawks have? The sickening images of Abu Ghraib, that's what.
This is why it isn't enough to say that Moore manipulates the facts, or that he is a charlatan, or that his arguments are glib. The reality is that his methods are working, and working for a reason. He is the grizzled face of a culture in denial, the contrarian voice of the millions who would rather hate Dubya than confront the awesome threat that stalks our age. His success is an urgent warning to those who support the war, who grasp its importance, to raise their game, and fast. Nitpicking is not the answer. It's the big issues that count. And it's there that Michael Moore has no answers. If he is so visionary, why is his objective - to run Bush out of the White House - so parochial? What would he do about the new horrors of our time? Dude, where's your sense of history?
Sunday, July 04, 2004
July 4, 2004
The Patriot's Act
Fourth is a time to celebrate, educate -- but not debate
By Jonah Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg is editor at large of National Review Online.
WASHINGTON — "It is certainly rather a curious thing, that after more than eighty years of national existence, we should have hit upon no better way of celebrating the birth-day of our nation than by a clumsy imitation of the old Roman saturnalia," a New York Times editorial complained in 1859. "By one of the most whimsical freaks imaginable," griped the editors, "the burning of powder has become the one significant ceremony of the national patriotism in keeping its highest Saint's day."
What the New York Times proposed instead of joyous fireworks and trivial speeches was a somber ceremony, the "stateliest holiday ever known to any people,"one that would serve as a "powerful agency in behalf of the civilization of America" and promote "the crystallization of the American nationality." "That we need the influences of such days so kept is sadly plain. The tendency of our people in late years has been centrifugal rather than centripetal."
I bring this up for two reasons. First, it should remind those who grumble about the disuniting of America that such complaints are hardly new and that those who are nostalgic for days of national unity had better be sure they know what they're talking about. Second, just because such complaints are hardly new hardly means they're wrong. Just two years after the Times bemoaned the "centrifugal" tendencies of the American people, the American nation did, in fact, rip apart.
Of course, no one thinks America is on the verge of a civil war, the shrieking from partisans notwithstanding. America may be evenly — even passionately — divided, but it is not so deeply divided that we will be taking up arms against each other any time soon.
Nevertheless, patriotism and the way we celebrate it on the Fourth of July is something worth considering anew. For a significant chunk of the 20th century, the left reviled patriotism and liberals took it for granted. From the 1930s to the 1960s, leftists bought into a hodgepodge of Marxist, radical and just plain anti-American doctrines, which held that patriotism was no different than nationalism, racism, jingoism, know-nothingism and other distractions from international class consciousness. And liberals seemed to think of patriotism the way Episcopalians think about religion — it's a good thing, but don't talk about it much because it's also slightly embarrassing. After all, if one is truly cosmopolitan, and therefore a citizen of the world, loyalty to any one place seems inappropriate.
Meanwhile — sometimes out of angry reaction to America-bashing, sometimes out of political opportunism and sometimes simply because no one else would bother — conservatives claimed patriotism as the exclusive province of the right. In our defense, we conservatives believe in, well, conserving. And if upholding the goodness and nobility of the American experiment when others will not isn't conservative, I don't know what is.
The high-water mark of this polarization was probably the 1988 presidential election, in which the senior George Bush wrapped himself in the flag, while Michael Dukakis seemed to consider patriotism a lower priority than agricultural subsidies. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton recognized that patriotic people take voting a bit more seriously than unpatriotic people and focused his campaign accordingly. Today's candidates assert their patriotism daily, with John F. Kerry insisting that if you question his votes, his past positions or perhaps even his haircut you are questioning his patriotism.
Although I think it's absurd to argue that questioning a candidate's positions is the same as questioning his patriotism, it's all to the good that Democrats are fighting Republicans for the mantle of who's more patriotic. Indeed, something similar has been taking place on the academic left. Even the left's dashboard saint, Ralph Nader, can speak eloquently about the grand patriotic tradition of citizen activism that stems from the American founding.
What the left is slowly discovering — or rediscovering — is the difference between patriotism and nationalism. A nationalist gives his undying devotion to a people. A patriot gives his devotion to an ideal. " 'My country right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case," the essayist G.K. Chesterton observed. "It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' " Although we can debate how much of an atrocity the abuses at Abu Ghraib were, one reassuring sign was the near unanimity of opinion here at home that such acts were "un-American." In the past, the left was so contemptuous of what America stood for that the idea of something being un-American would have been considered a badge of honor.
The change is a healthy sign. If we reject the notion that America represents an ideal, we reject the notion that we should strive for that ideal. Leftists delude themselves if they believe that "internationalism," the United Nations or any other version of what Alfred Tennyson called "the Parliament of Man" can substitute for love of country. Indeed, the tittering one hears from the cosmopolitans about the innate goodness of America misses an important point: If we do not teach that Americans are good, we also diminish or demean the belief that we should be good because we are Americans.
Without the ideal, there is no shame in failing to attain it. People will love their country because it is natural to do so. The trick is to hone how we show that love. Good parents love their children unconditionally, as good patriots love their country. But neither parent nor patriot is forced by affection to support every bad decision that loved ones make or to withhold expressions of disappointment.
I am not, like the New York Times of 1859, opposed to hot dogs and fireworks. But I think its editors had a point in pushing for a celebration that acknowledged the sanctity of Independence Day. I say let the kids have their fun but make sure they understand that we are not celebrating for celebration's sake. We are celebrating the birthday of a great gift to mankind. The rest of the year can be for debating how we can live by the ideals enshrined in our nation's founding, but the Fourth of July is for teaching kids — and adults — to love their country. After all, patriots are not born; they are made.
The Patriot's Act
Fourth is a time to celebrate, educate -- but not debate
By Jonah Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg is editor at large of National Review Online.
WASHINGTON — "It is certainly rather a curious thing, that after more than eighty years of national existence, we should have hit upon no better way of celebrating the birth-day of our nation than by a clumsy imitation of the old Roman saturnalia," a New York Times editorial complained in 1859. "By one of the most whimsical freaks imaginable," griped the editors, "the burning of powder has become the one significant ceremony of the national patriotism in keeping its highest Saint's day."
What the New York Times proposed instead of joyous fireworks and trivial speeches was a somber ceremony, the "stateliest holiday ever known to any people,"one that would serve as a "powerful agency in behalf of the civilization of America" and promote "the crystallization of the American nationality." "That we need the influences of such days so kept is sadly plain. The tendency of our people in late years has been centrifugal rather than centripetal."
I bring this up for two reasons. First, it should remind those who grumble about the disuniting of America that such complaints are hardly new and that those who are nostalgic for days of national unity had better be sure they know what they're talking about. Second, just because such complaints are hardly new hardly means they're wrong. Just two years after the Times bemoaned the "centrifugal" tendencies of the American people, the American nation did, in fact, rip apart.
Of course, no one thinks America is on the verge of a civil war, the shrieking from partisans notwithstanding. America may be evenly — even passionately — divided, but it is not so deeply divided that we will be taking up arms against each other any time soon.
Nevertheless, patriotism and the way we celebrate it on the Fourth of July is something worth considering anew. For a significant chunk of the 20th century, the left reviled patriotism and liberals took it for granted. From the 1930s to the 1960s, leftists bought into a hodgepodge of Marxist, radical and just plain anti-American doctrines, which held that patriotism was no different than nationalism, racism, jingoism, know-nothingism and other distractions from international class consciousness. And liberals seemed to think of patriotism the way Episcopalians think about religion — it's a good thing, but don't talk about it much because it's also slightly embarrassing. After all, if one is truly cosmopolitan, and therefore a citizen of the world, loyalty to any one place seems inappropriate.
Meanwhile — sometimes out of angry reaction to America-bashing, sometimes out of political opportunism and sometimes simply because no one else would bother — conservatives claimed patriotism as the exclusive province of the right. In our defense, we conservatives believe in, well, conserving. And if upholding the goodness and nobility of the American experiment when others will not isn't conservative, I don't know what is.
The high-water mark of this polarization was probably the 1988 presidential election, in which the senior George Bush wrapped himself in the flag, while Michael Dukakis seemed to consider patriotism a lower priority than agricultural subsidies. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton recognized that patriotic people take voting a bit more seriously than unpatriotic people and focused his campaign accordingly. Today's candidates assert their patriotism daily, with John F. Kerry insisting that if you question his votes, his past positions or perhaps even his haircut you are questioning his patriotism.
Although I think it's absurd to argue that questioning a candidate's positions is the same as questioning his patriotism, it's all to the good that Democrats are fighting Republicans for the mantle of who's more patriotic. Indeed, something similar has been taking place on the academic left. Even the left's dashboard saint, Ralph Nader, can speak eloquently about the grand patriotic tradition of citizen activism that stems from the American founding.
What the left is slowly discovering — or rediscovering — is the difference between patriotism and nationalism. A nationalist gives his undying devotion to a people. A patriot gives his devotion to an ideal. " 'My country right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case," the essayist G.K. Chesterton observed. "It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' " Although we can debate how much of an atrocity the abuses at Abu Ghraib were, one reassuring sign was the near unanimity of opinion here at home that such acts were "un-American." In the past, the left was so contemptuous of what America stood for that the idea of something being un-American would have been considered a badge of honor.
The change is a healthy sign. If we reject the notion that America represents an ideal, we reject the notion that we should strive for that ideal. Leftists delude themselves if they believe that "internationalism," the United Nations or any other version of what Alfred Tennyson called "the Parliament of Man" can substitute for love of country. Indeed, the tittering one hears from the cosmopolitans about the innate goodness of America misses an important point: If we do not teach that Americans are good, we also diminish or demean the belief that we should be good because we are Americans.
Without the ideal, there is no shame in failing to attain it. People will love their country because it is natural to do so. The trick is to hone how we show that love. Good parents love their children unconditionally, as good patriots love their country. But neither parent nor patriot is forced by affection to support every bad decision that loved ones make or to withhold expressions of disappointment.
I am not, like the New York Times of 1859, opposed to hot dogs and fireworks. But I think its editors had a point in pushing for a celebration that acknowledged the sanctity of Independence Day. I say let the kids have their fun but make sure they understand that we are not celebrating for celebration's sake. We are celebrating the birthday of a great gift to mankind. The rest of the year can be for debating how we can live by the ideals enshrined in our nation's founding, but the Fourth of July is for teaching kids — and adults — to love their country. After all, patriots are not born; they are made.
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