Inquisitiveness

Trying to find out where Ralph Luker is coming from, by Googling I think I've come across references where he talks about growing up as Southern Republican before 1964. Therefore we are identical: people who grew up in places where there were no Republicans, where Republicanism was a far-off abstraction, populated by angels or devils, unlike the locals close to home, where Republicanism had no worldly power. (In my case, New York and academia.) (I suspect Ralph would have been less fond of Republicanism in the north in the 1940s and 1950s, actual exercising power. Most of those liberal Republicans bit their tongue about Joseph McCarthy, after all--surely something to outrage a young Luker, no?) Ralph's tragedy would seem to be that the locals he despised not only became Republicans but also took over the Republican party. I fancy I might be bitter too if the Sharptons, Cuomos, Spitzers, and Clintons became Republican and molded the party in their image. I also recollect an astute comment by John Derbyshire a while back: that if liberals romanticize blacks and third-worlders, conservative intellectuals, resident in liberal-land, romanticize white Americans and evangelical Protestants. I think he has a point. Certainly I must confess that my appreciation of conservatism is somewhat second-hand, unlived in. And my rejection of liberals and Democrats is also that of a former member of both categories. (Cold-war liberal, but still.) So I think I can empathize a great deal with Ralph. I suppose what I find a little difficult to understand is the freshness of his outrage. I'm not overwhelmingly fond of what the Democratic party and liberalism have become, I think they would destroy Western civilization if allowed to exercise power without restraint, and I can summon up some emotional intensity on the issue, but this isn't new. And Republicans--1964 was a long time ago, getting on toward a third of the length of the history of the Republican party. Perhaps it's time to move on to the Acceptance portion of the grieving process?

Readings, Miscellanea

*I've been benefitting from book recommendations by readers on this blog. I just started Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft, and I'll be getting the novel The Navigators in the mail soon. Also, I have Jeff Sypeck of Quid Plura's book, Becoming Charlemagne, on my to-read shelf. That's a general shout-out of Thank You to everyone who's been recommending books to me.

* Churchill in Marlborough writes admiringly of Marlborough's urge for a decisive attack against the French in Flanders, the central front of the war. I detect an irony--for all that Churchill learned how to act as wartime statesman from writing the life of his forebear, Churchill as war-leader flinched from the equivalent decisive attack, the cross-channel assault on France. I wonder if he had more sympathy for the parsimonious Dutch of Marlborough's day, afraid to hazard their one army on a frontal assault against France, when he had finished living through the Second World War?

* Action reveals character--and Nouri al Maliki [sp.?] has entirely surprised me with this attack on the Sadrist brigades. Was he always a resolute man, just waiting until he had gained sufficient strength? Is he a fool who has miscalculated his timing? Is he a small-minded Machiavellian, whacking his immediate rivals in hopes of gaining American support, and planning on betraying us as soon as possible? Did the Americans really push him to attack? What concatenation of circumstances, unknown to me or anyone in the general public, led to this decision to confront the Sadrists? So many questions, exposed by an unexpected action.

* The Royal Guardsmen, who did the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron songs, apparently came out with a new song in 2001 called "Snoopy vs. Osama." One of the lines is about Charlie fighting in a Bradley. While I approve of the patriotic sentiment, I find this somewhat peculiar.

Earth Hour

So Google (did I really need the link?) has "gone dark" in celebration of "Earth Hour." Meanwhile, the lights are actually being turned off in cities around the globe. What a perfect metaphor for our present Age of Endarkenment.

Okay, so I'm a global warming skeptic. The culture that's grown up around fears of CO2-driven "climate change" has all the hallmarks of faith -- specifically, bad faith -- masquerading as science: the total reliance on retrospective modeling and the almost complete failure of attempts at propsective prediction, the ad hominem attacks on critics and the shrill insistence that "the time for debate is over," the blatant confirmation bias in the reporting of climate news, the constant redefinition of metrics and parameters, the general acceptance of outright lies. Now, it's still possible that despite all this the global-warming folks are right, but almost everything I see and hear in the media about climate change sets off little warning buzzers in my head: this looks a lot like politics, not very much like science.

You could argue, of course, that "Earth Hour" doesn't have to be about preventing global warming: it can be about energy conservation. Fair enough, I suppose. But what exactly are we conserving, and to what end? How many extra decades or centuries of oil- and coal-dependence are we trying to buy ourselves? How long are we trying to put off the day when we need to seek other energy solutions? Surely we can't slow our consumption of fossil fuels to the point where nature's replenishment of these things equals our diminution of them?

At some point, if the March of Mankind is to continue, we must turn to our old and thus far unfailing ally, technology (the technology without whose endless string of successes the great mass of humanity would have no trust in name of science at all). At some point, we must open the door to the Necessity which is the mother of invention. We must accept the fact that our only hope, in the long- or medium-term is a new form of energy which can better sustain the limitless aspirations of our species.

Assuming, that is, that our species still has aspirations. Because as far as I can see, phenomena like Earth Hour reflect not so much a desire to safeguard the future of humanity as an attempt to control its present. If the mandarins of Climate Change were really worried about where Earth and its billions of inhabitants are headed, we would be far more preoccupied with the impact of things like genetic engineering, cyber-neuroscience, and nanotechnology, intellectual forces that have the potential either to obliterate life as we know it or to alter it beyond recognition. But it is precisely the Climate Change crowd who are horrified by any thought of regulating cloning, say, or stem-cell research. It's okay with the Left if humanity ceases to exist in its present form; it's not okay if polar bears are dying (which, by the way, they aren't) because of that bad old internal combustion engine and the wicked electrical grid.

It's not that I'm opposed to conservation. I recycle; I abhor littering. Self-restraint, the Greek sophrosyne, is a great virtue. But the Greeks were smart enough to understand that sophrosyne is a virtue that one can only practice with regard to oneself. Attempt to force sophrosyne on a whole society, or a whole planet, and you've thereby lost it. By the same token, you can't achieve progress by trying to keep a tight lid on the human desires (for things like light and air conditioning) that lead to progress in the first place. Instead of turning off the lights, shouldn't we pour funds into research on fusion, perfect wind and solar technology, and otherwise seek a way forward instead of...whatever non-direction shutting off the lights takes us in?

As some commentators here point out, North Korea must seem like a paradise to the people behind Earth Hour. Meanwhile, across the border from North Korea is China, which is building a new coal-fired power plant every couple of weeks, each big enough to power a small city. China's GDP growth for the last several years has hovered around 10% -- implying a doubling of their economy every seven or eight years. Ironically, China has thoroughly assimilated the Western spirit of headlong economic and technological progress while many in the West -- the original dynamic civilization -- are increasingly obsessed with the possible costs of progress. Have we forgotten the lesson, learned again and again against the objections of naysayers, that human technological progress tends to discover its own resources?

Excelsior.

McCain, Obama, Clinton

As I've made clear here before, I'm not a McCain enthusiast. Should he be elected president, I expect his tenure to be in many respects a policy disaster from my point of view. But my personal sympathy for McCain, and my antipathy toward his two possible opponents, has increased significantly in the last couple of weeks. I can't help but notice that Obama and Clinton have make missteps in their primary campaign by lying, while McCain by contrast has gotten in trouble for telling the truth.

Every time I hear Obama, Clinton, or one of the supporters of either, go after McCain for his "hundred years" Iraq comment, or his admission that he doesn't know as much about the economy as he ought to, I find myself gritting my teeth. Clinton has just been caught out in the latest of a long, long series of untruths great and small that she must have known were untrue in virtually every case. Obama, meanwhile, has been havering and shilly-shallying about his relationship to Trinity United Church of Christ and its odious former pastor, all with the same fraudulent air of injured righteousness that reminds me of...well, of the last three Democratic candidates for president.

Of course neither of these people would ever say there was anything imperfect in their grasp of economics -- more likely, Clinton would claim that Robert Rubin and Laura d'Andrea Tyson were in the habit of anxiously seeking her advice, while Obama would insinuate that the only reason he hasn't yet shared his deep macroeconomic wisdom with the American people is because he still needs to finish laying out his two-point plan for (1) hope and (2) change.

It's even more galling when, in the course of attacking McCain for what actually was straight talk, Clinton and Obama misrepresent what he said. He didn't say, "I'm a senile half-wit who can't even correctly pronounce the word ecomony." He said he didn't understand economics as well as he should; I found that frankly refreshing. He didn't say that America should fight a bloody hundred-years' war in Iraq. He said that U.S. troops could stay in a pacified Iraq over the long term, just as our forces have done in places like Germany and Korea. In a sane politics, it would be Clinton's and Obama's distortions of McCain's statements that would be damaging, not the statements themselves.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer opens a can of truth on the "hundred years" canard,

Repudiation of Names

Ralph Luker wrote in a blog comment, "I don't repudiate ... my white grandfather, who was named for Nathan Bedford Forrest."

I find the history of names fascinating--their historical significance, their associations and affirmations, the question of whether repudiations should include names. I will mention briefly that the African-American ambivalence about English names--sharing last names with their former masters, the use of English names at all--clearly touches on this issue. "Thurgood Marshall" is a wonderfully English name--now forever associated with African-Americans. Is it a name to prize, or one to reject, if you are black? What are Marshall's grandchildren called? -- clearly, the last two generations of African Americans have shifted emphasis away from English names, though by no means entirely rejected them. I don't think there is an obvious answer for the ethical conundrum posed by names--but it obviously is an issue.

Other naming patterns that fascinate me: English literary figures among American Jews -- Spenser, Milton, Sidney, Irving. Classical literary figures among American Southerners--Virgil, Homer, Horace. The rise and fall of Old Testament naming patterns among English Puritans and their descendants--and even spreading beyond New England, to such people as Abraham Lincoln and, yes, Nathan Bedford Forrest. The gradual decline of Wacky Germanic names as the medieval centuries progress. (Bardolf, Hrotswitha, Hincmar, etc.)

Conservative Principles

Ralph Luker writes in a recent blog comment

[Kmiec] understands that in single-minded pursuit of the administration's objectives, Bush/Cheney have abandoned essential conservative values like restraint and reserved power: restraint in foreign policy and restraint in federal spending. It would have been inconceivable to Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Taft, or Barry Goldwater that it is a smart thing to put American taxpayers in debt to the Chinese government in order to pay for a $3 trillion war of choice and to run roughshod over a constitutional interpretation of executive authority.

Assume, of course, that I don't accept all the stipulated facts and analyses above. I want to concentrate on the phrase "essential conservative values." This is a somewhat peculiar phrase. What are essential conservative values? Who gets to define them? It seems to me more to the point that there are multiple conservative ideals, co-existing in tension one another, which play out with different weights in different circumstances, and never with an exact agreement among conservatives about how conservative ideals ought to be enacted. Ralph (if I may) is engaging in a rather familiar sort of Gotcha--taking one conservative ideal as The Conservative Ideal, and insisting that it must be applied in all circumstances, without a sense of competing ideals.

Let me provide a counter-example. Gay rights are a Liberal Ideal. Using Government to support Gay Rights is a Liberal Ideal. Gay Rights are Human Rights. Liberals therefore ought to support armed intervention around the world to enforce Gay Rights in every country where they are violated, and any liberal who doesn't do this is Hypocritical and Callous.

This is, bluntly, nonsense. Now, I do think liberals who don't acknowledge a sadness and a tension when the US fails to enforce gay rights, who refuse to recognize the preventable suffering of gays abroad, are being hypocritical and callous. But there are some sensible analyses which perfectly justify such a position. To wit: the advancement of gay rights in the US is part of a partisan political coalition, the advancement of which depends on the restraint of US military adventures abroad. The long-term advancement of gay rights in the US, and indeed abroad, depends upon US military restraint in the present moment. Most to the point, there are multiple liberal ideals, including the respect of the sovereign rights of (odious) states, and respect for (odious) foreign cultures, many of which will on occasion militate against the advancement of gay rights. Liberalism is a complex balance of values.

So of course is liberal democracy. So of course is conservatism. Conservatives value, among other things, a strong defense, the rights of the individual, national security, strong warmaking powers, social conservatism, libertarianism, states rights, the traditional family, the free market economy, etc., etc. A number of these ideals are in necessary tension with one another, just as liberals' ideals are in necessary tension with one another, just as most everybody save the most unhinged of monomaniacs rarely follow the categorical imperative of one and one ideal only in all circumstances.

Now, this does lead to a certain malleability of political practice among conservatives--just as it does among liberals. Talk of multiple ideals and the exigency of circumstances long enough, and you can justify anything. What can I say? Mostly, people aren't completely unhinged from any value in their policies; fuzziness and tension isn't the same thing as unscrupulous opportunism.

As for the particular accusation against the Bush administration ... as I say, I don't particularly buy the bill of goods. But it touches on a truth: the state must be strong to defend against foreign enemies; war is the health of the state; the conservative values of national defense and limited government power are in essential tension with one another. The tension is worse when the foreign enemy is not a tank brigade far away, but an infiltrating terrorist within; state power must therefore be exercised within the nation, among the citizenry. Accept, as I do, that everything the Bush administration has done was both legal and just; the precedent of the exercise of state power still has dangerous consequences. (So, of course, would have been the precedent of a lack of exercise of state power against a terrorist threat.) Some conservatives judge the Bush policy woefully misguided--see in particular the libertarians. Others support it fairly uncritically--see the neoconservative strain. The stance I would take--and many other conservatives--is that Bush et al have balanced the various conservative values reasonably in response to a foreign threat, but that one should continue to scrutinize all such policies, especially in light of changing events, and always be aware that there is a tension between security and liberty.

An the Bush administration itself has clearly kept the value of liberty in mind as they pursue a policy of security. Put aside for one moment the various internal debates on the Patriot Act, etc., any of which reveal an administration neither monolithic in its views nor monomaniacal in its aims. The most important act of the Bush administration has been to preserve the peace-time economy--not to gear up for war, as in the World Wars, or even to return to the Cold War level of state intervention in the economy. The spread of the state into the economy, now as always, is the worst threat to liberty; this the Bush administration has avoided. Indeed, it has avoided it so thoroughly, that we have been fighting a war with an underfunded military. This, for me, demonstrates that the Bush administration has erred too far on the side of liberty in this war, not the reverse.

Tonal Politics

In Raymond Briggs' memoir of his London-working-class parents' lives, Ethel and Ernest, he depicts a moment in the 1930s when they are listening to a Nazi party rally on the radio, and hear the massed Sieg Heils. Ernest says, in a tone of bemusement and quiet alarm, "Lord, they're barmy!" It captures a very important moment--ordinary Englishmen realizing, not so much from what is said, but how it's said, that something is deeply wrong in Germany.

This, I think, is a good part of why talk radio playing Jeremiah Wright over and over again matters. Many Americans (albeit not enough) also react badly to demented tones. Listening to Pat Buchanan on prime-time in 1992 did a good deal to turn the middle of the country away from the Republicans in 1992, I believe as much for how he talked as for what he said. Simply the sound of Wright, I think, does something similar--which is why the clip was played so much. There is not, I think, going to be complicated exegesis of the genre characteristics of the Black Sermon, with its roots in the ars praedicandi, the Evangelical Anglo-American sermon, and the African oral tradition--just a thought that Wright is Barmy, and that anyone who doesn't have the same reaction is a bit Barmy too.

Bad Time for Obama to have a Conversation on Race

Here are some of the stories I've been hearing, while caring for Shirebourn: Kwame Kilpatrick under pressure to resign for sex scandal, illegal favors for mistress. David Patterson admits adultery, cocaine and marijuana use, possible use of state funds for love nest. Sharpe James corruption trial continues. Deval Patrick fails to get pet legislative project enacted. Jeremiah Wright not only has insane ideas but also sounds demented. The soundbite on talk radio for a minister to denounce Obama, one James David Manning, sounds even more demented.

Guess what all these stories have in common?

Some of this is getting emphasized by the talk-radio hosts with obvious partisan and anti-Obama purpose. Some is simply coincidental bad timing. (See also, Disaster for Republicans, 2006 elections, Mark Foley.) The end result, I think, will be, for Obama, a most unfortunate series of associations in white voters' minds, when told that now is the time to have a Conversation on Race, and that Obama cannot disassociate himself from the African-American Community.

Inspiration for the Handicapped

"Hi! I'm David Patterson. Although legally blind, I have been able to commit adultery, use state funds for my love nest, and snort cocaine. And that's not all! Tune in next week to find out what else I've been able to do! And please consider me as an inspiration to all the handicapped. Differently abled. Whatever."

Sociable Babies

Shirebourn is happier in company than alone. This precedes, so far as I can tell, any coherent thought--not cogito, ergo sum, much less a Heideggerian fear of death. Happiness in company comes before thought or fear--how's that for a philosophical parable?--one which supports a sociable, rhetorical view of life.

From A.E. Housman

Easter Hymn

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

Turning on Obama

The more I think about the business of Obama and Jeremiah Wright, the more I think it boils down to this: Obama and his supporters are asking us to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who doesn't seem to extend that courtesy to anyone else, including the grandmother who raised him.

In retrospect, the implied tu quoque, Whitey in Obama's speech last week may turn out to be his biggest mistake ever. Obama could have pointed out, justly, that Wright's incendiarism arises from a history of black oppression; that the black experience in America is sadly inseparable from anger and fear; that despite his own relatively privileged background there were ways in which Wright's more inflammatory rhetoric struck a personal chord. While particular commentators hostile to Obama might have carped at such statements, I think most of America -- including people like me -- would have responded positively. And everything he said would have had the merit of being true.

Even if Obama had criticized White America in general terms and noted that a history of bigtory, and the presence of bigots among us still, provide the fuel for Wright's fires, that would probably have been okay with white voters. Most of us (including us Republicans) wanted to forgive Obama for belonging to Wright's church. Most of us want to forgive blacks in general when they overstate the degree of their persecution, even when such overstatement assumes paranoic dimensions. After all, isn't it human nature to magnify one's grievances?

But Obama didn't stick with exculpating Wright or rebuking America's history of racism. He couldn't seem to resist justifying Wright (and his own association with him) in terms of the putative prejudices and statements of specific white people, including Geraldine Ferraro and grandma. Later, in a radio interview, he explained his swipe at the woman who raised him by saying that grandma is "a typical white person." And this, for "typical white people," is precisely where Obama becomes intolerable. Whites are eager to forgive, but they're not at all eager not to be forgiven.

Just as individual blacks don't like to be made the recipient of animus toward blacks in general, individual whites don't much like the idea that blacks might feel entitled to treat any one of them as if he or she bore the whole guilt not only of slavery but of all the lesser indignities that blacks have suffered over the years. Certainly whites don't like the idea that there ia nothing they can do -- including, apparently, being a devoted grandmother! -- to ever receive the benefit of the doubt if they should happen to be scared, once in a while, of someone on the street who may have been genuinely threatening.

Much of the appeal of Obama's campaign for whites, prior to his speech in Philadelphia, was the fact that -- virtually alone among black Democrats of recent years -- he didn't seem to regard whites as basically deserving of disrespect or constantly in need of lectures about their fundamental sinfulness. Obama had even banked enough goodwill on this score that he could surely have gotten away with a fairly strong lecture about America's troubled history on racial matters by way of exculpating his association with Wright.

So much the more mysterious, then, that he made the strategic error of displaying such intolerance toward Ferraro's little peccadillo -- or revealing that he remembered, and clearly resented unduly, some remark or remarks his that his grandmother made decades ago.

Sententiae falsae in se

There are some statements in the English language that, when uttered, are always lies. Ironically, "I'm only being honest" is one of the most common of these, but there are others: "You're the only one in the world for me," "I don't judge people by how they look," "I could never kill anyone," etc., etc.

I'm always looking to add to my stock of such statements, and at a faculty dinner the other night, I heard a true gem, a sentence which began, "There was a great Maureen Dowd column in the Times yesterday...."

If I had tenure, I would have interrupted and said: "No, there wasn't."

American Regionalism

More. The Puritan/Scots-Irish divide continues! You want diversity? Check out the variations of culture between English settlers.

Soundtrack for an Obama-Wright Montage

This is where the party ends
I can't stand here wondering how you
Can stand by your racist friend
This is where the party ends
I can't stand here wondering how you
Can stand by your racist friend

Academic Hell

Indexing.

Never write a book about abstract concepts, each of which modify each other.

"Does this go under adjectival nouning, or under nounal adjectives? Or is it noun, adjective? Nounicity? All of the above."

Argh.

Obama: Hermeneutical Problems

As I said, a good speech; as the folks in the National Review say, with deep slipperiness. Let me try one more take on it:

Obama is presenting this as a problem of hermeneutics--a question of understanding, which leads us to productive action. We are taken to understand American history, and Wright in particular, as the grounds for our action in the present. Obama is himself a phronimos, expert in understanding, therefore able to act wisely. Our own wisdom consists of similar understanding, the vote that will enable Obama to act wisely.

But ... Obama presents his attendance at Wright's church as an act of understanding, not an act to be understood. (The two go together, but assume for the moment they can be analyzed as separate.) Or, to be more precise, his act of attendance relates to the anodyne part of Wright's ministry; his understanding relates to the evil part. And his understanding of the evil part of Wright's ministry is comparable to, say, my understanding of my slaveholding ancestors, or my understanding of the Black Panthers, for whom I take responsibility as an American, and who form the tradition from which I act.

But this is a misleading conflation of different hermeneutical acts. Understanding is a foundation for my own actions and endorsements. I must acknowledge slaveholders as part of my tradition, my America--but I don't therefore get a pass if I attend a slaveholding church. I cannot disown my slaveholding ancestors, but I can separate myself rigorously from current slaveholding, and from any institution that lends aid and comfort to slaveholding. Indeed, it is precisely because I don't disown myself from my past that I have a special responsibility to do so. I "own" my heritage precisely by the act of condemnation and rejection, by disassociating myself from any institution that continues to associate itself with such evil. And if I do not do so, this is an act susceptible to other people's hermeneutical understanding.

Obama cannot disown Wright. He must own him by rejecting him, by leaving his church, by apologizing for his membership in such a church. His recognition of Wright's complex humanity does not cut against this decision--all evil people have complex humanity in them. Our understanding of complexity produces, and should produce, simple actions.

Obama, for example, is a complex man. And understanding his actions and choices, we simply should not vote for him.

Pretty Good Obama Speech

Indeed, he can do speeches. Now, I generally endorse the various critiques you can find over at the National Review. But he does give a good stab at puncturing that idea that you can Obama-tize the eschaton, And while he does the let's-historicize-Wright move, he does try not to do it from an ahistorical perspective--explicitly, the enactment of his political program (a subtle distinction from the election of Obama to the presidency) is advocated as the proper historical reaction to Wright's historical words and deeds. Based on the speech alone, I'd say he defuses the critique that he is an immanentizer--reduces the level of disagreement to one of policy.

Now, I think this does undercut other parts of his campaign--which have been more immanentizing, character-driven, using those to trump Clinton and McCain's policy superiorities. But one does need to take appearances seriously, I keep on saying, and this is an impressive appearance.

If Obama were running for president of Black America, this would be wonderful. But the benefits Obama's rhetoric would bring to black America (and, to a much lesser extent, white America) don't make up for the disaster his policies would inflict on America and the world.

I trust McCain can make that point.

"God Damn America"

Everything else, I think, could be explained away. That line won't be forgotten.

Lyrics for the Bear-Stearns Bailout

The more things change.

Withywindle Against Common Sense

Well, somebody has to be.

Commonplace Book: Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method:

In fact the denigration of authority is not the only prejudice of the enlightenment. For, within the enlightenment, the very concept of authority becomes deformed. On the basis of its concept of reason and freedom, the concept of authority could be seen as diametrically opposed to reason and freedom: to be, in fact, blind obedience. This is the meaning that we know, from the usage of their critics, within modern dictatorships.
But this is not the essence of authority. It is true that it is primarily persons that have authority; but the authority of persons is based ultimately, not on the subjection and abdication of reason, but on recognition and knowledge—knowledge, namely, that the other is superior to oneself in judgment and insight and that for this reason his judgment takes precedence, ie that it has priority over one’s own. This is connected with the fact that authority cannot actually be bestowed, but is acquired and must be acquired, if someone is to lay claim to it. It rests on recognition and hence on an act of reason itself which, aware of its own limitations, accepts that others have better understanding. Authority in this sense, properly understood, has nothing to do with blind obedience to a command. Indeed, authority has nothing to do with obedience, but rather with knowledge.

Philosophy is the Foundation?

Peggy Noonan's column on John McCain wants him to get serious:

"In the most successful political careers there is a purpose, a guiding philosophy. Not an ideology—ideology is something imposed from above, something abstract dreamed up by an intellectual. Philosophy isn't imposed from above, it bubbles up from the ground, from life. .... Philosophy is the foundation."

This is somewhat incoherent. Philosophy if foundational must be to some degree abstract, imposing on human life; if bubbling up from life, it is -- well, I would say rhetoric, character, the life is the foundation of the philosophy, to the extent one can speak of foundations at all, rather than the reverse. And what precisely is wrong with being a maverick reacting to large majorities seeking to impose their will? Let us grant that to make a fetish of being a maverick is a self-loving perversion, but the instinct to square yourself off against large forces is--well, conservative, American, a pleasing suspicion of power chanting in unison.

I certainly grant that McCain should seek a rhetorical, thematic unity to articulate his character. But this is different from saying he needs a foundational philosophy. Russell Kirk, bless his Michigander heart, I trust would snort at Noonan's sophomoric effusion.

Prostitution and Virtu

I previously objected to prostitution on the grounds that it obtruded commerce into sex. I should be more precise: the common objection to money is that money is alienating of emotional connection--put another way, that it substitutes an instrumental rationality (money) for a practical, moral rationality. But I think of money as embodying a practical and moral rationality as well--commerce is not disassociated from emotions, morals. What then is the problem? I would put it that it varies the sort of practical reason one uses--that commerce embodies an amoral prudence, and substitutes it for the moral prudence of non-monetary relations. Prostitution, that is, is indeed about losing virtue, and replacing it with virtu. Now, we keep in mind that a great deal of sex does indeed disguise a monetary relation--but the point is that it is disguised, an appearance of virtue, that itself promotes virtue. Prostitution exposes the Machiavellian truth, that sex can be nothing more than virtu. Therefore, we must stigmatize the blatant appearance of the truth, to support the appearance. As political creatures, moreover, our stigma ought to express itself in the law of the polis--prostitution not merely to be shamed by society, but criminalized by the state. We can't aspire to virtue unless appearances are maintained.

Separated at Birth

Anthony Grafton and Pietro Aretino.

Military Rewards

Reading Marlborough, I am reminded of the enormous fiscal rewards historically given to successful generals--and the reasonable rewards often given to mid-level officers, usually by allowing them graft by the rasherful. Which reminds me of our current system: retire from the military, go to work for a weapons company of some sort, use your contacts to justify your salary. Or parachute into some sort of company on the basis of your character, and make a pile of dough. There are inefficiences in this system, to be sure, but is it so bad? Our military men need some financial reward, and the government doesn't seem to be in the mood to pay them very well on active-duty. Is there a better way available?

Dungeon Phronesis

Gary Gygax also distinguished between Intelligence and Wisdom. A Twelfth-Level Phronimos, yes?

A Dog's Life

Today at the airport I saw several policemen training drug-sniffing dogs. "Here, boy! Here, boy!" they said, and policemen and dogs raced happily around the airport lounge.

Last winter, I saw a drug-sniffing dog leave the train I was on, go out into the snowy field, turn on his back, and frolic in the snow.

If I were to become a policemen, I'd see if I could get assigned to a canine unit. Is there more fun in police work?

Obama Demands Obama Resign from Campaign

Sen. Obama today demanded that Sen. Obama resign from the Obama presidential campaign. "It's disgraceful," said Senator Obama. "Obama has said that Obama has a Kenyan father. In fact, Obama has written an entire book on the subject. Also, he has referred to Obama's middle name "Hussein" on multiple occasions. Such blatant racism cannot be condoned." Sen. Obama had no comment about Sen. Obama's comments.

Sen. Clinton said, "Speaking as a woman satisfying the demands of ninety-year-old suffragists, someone who herself embodies change, but who does not think gender has anything to do with my candidacy for president, I deplore Sen. Obama's comments about Sen. Obama. The sooner that Sen. Obama stops talking about Sen. Obama, the better."

Spitzer's Valediction

I just saw the tape. It almost made me gag. (Which, come to think of it, may have been one of the "unsafe extras" referenced in the government's complaint....)

Specifically, I found the following especially gag-worthy:

• "From those to whom much is given, much is expected." Oh yes, Eliot. The standards were set so very, very high. You are Spiderman.
• "My private failings." Spitzer used the word "private" at least twice. Unless there was an s-apostrophe at the end of the word that I didn't hear, "private" just isn't appropriate to describe a violation of the law, and the former hard-driving AG knows it.
• Finally, Spitzer's declaration that he had to hold himself to his own high standards. Again with the high standards. For God's sake, it's not like he fell short of the lofty commandments in Rudyard Kipling's If ("If you can keep your hands off high-priced hookers....") More critically, it's not like Spitzer chose to leap from his own "private" Tarpeian Rock. The Republicans in the New York legislature had made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

I guess I should make it clear that I don't regard Spitzer's failings as especially bad. They're not. In my opinion, they fall somewhere below financial misconduct and above plagiarism in the scale of politicians' sins. But the man should be at least a little ashamed. It's the shamelessness of the whole episode which is so grating. Politicians are often accused of hypocrisy, often without due regard for the meaning of the word. Spitzer is one of the closest things I've seen in public life to an unmistakeable hypocrite.

Troll Identified

It's someone who posts under the name "Mullah Cimoc." Please ignore.

Letterman Demands That Spitzer Quit

Now, I think that Spitzer should quit. But Letterman is--what? A comedian. He demands that Spitzer quit? He should not take himself so seriously.

Really, we need more contempt for our entertainers. They forget their places.

For Some Reason, I'm Reminded of the Fact...

...that The Emperor's Club is a really underrated movie about a classics teacher.

Dear Karl Marx

Dear Karl,

George McCarthy writes in Marx and the Ancients, p. 58, that "The conventional wisdom and traditional interpretations in this area have been that Marx’s use of the term ‘praxis’ represents a 180-degree turn away from the Aristotelian use. Dearest Karl, is it possible that this is conventional wisdom because you did completely misuse a technical term in Greek philosophy? Even worse, did you begin by using it in the traditional way, then switch your use of the term partway through your career without making an explicit note of the fact? Karl, bubbele, this is not helpful. You might confuse people.

Love and kisses, Withywindle

Consumer Safety Imperialism

On the radio: Senator Chuck Schumer wants American consumer safety bureaucrats posted abroad. America imports many of its drugs from foreign countries, and we need to check their safety by having our officials on the spot.

Does he realize that foreigners might take this to be obnoxious American imperialism? (Although, I grant, probably less annoying than a landing by the Marines.) Does he realize that they would have a point? -- or does he plan to make it all pleasingly mutual by allowing the Canadians and the Europeans post their bureaucrats in America as well? Does he actually think about issues of sovereignty when he makes such suggestions? Or realize how unprecedented would be this intrusion of the American bureaucracy into the economy of foreign countries?

(By the by, there are American customs agents in the major airports in Canada, so you can get all that time-consuming stuff out of the way up there. They live for five-year posts in Montreal, Toronto, etc. Little American enclaves in the middle of Canada--is this something the Canadians want, or something to which they acquiesce?)

I'm not dead set against Schumer's proposal--all our imports from the Poisonous Toy Company of China, and so on, indicate a need for some increased policing of foreign goods. But I worry that Schumer et al are oblivious of just how major a projection of American power such proposals imply, and the backlashes they might arouse.

SNL, Funny Again

The Three A. M. Phone Call.

On the Resort to JSTOR

Twice in recent posts I've resorted to JSTOR, EBSCO, etc., to provide citations for my assertions. I am uncertain about the etiquette of this. Obviously, this is very academic--footnote! But is it appropriate for blogging? I should explain that when I do so, it's generally because I've just made an assertion based on some book(s) I've read a year ago, five years ago, fifteen years ago--and then I'm challenged by someone with great knowledge on the subject (see, ethnic cleansing as it applies to Ireland), and all I have to respond is "I read it somewhere a long time ago." Which is vaguely unsatisfying--so, off I go to JSTOR to see if someone else has said the same thing and made it past peer-review. But the question is, does this resort tend to end conversations or to enable them to continue? The point of such citation is, as in academic contexts, to get beyond the mutual assertion of "I think so"--but, in blogging, it may come across as an attempt to be an Unanswerable Authority, Relying on Credentials. Which I don't intend--I prefer conversations to continue. Should I resort to this JSTOR technique less? I don't know. Anyway, this is an advertisement that the technique is not meant to claim silencing Authority.

Reinforcing my Pet Beliefs

This article supports my belief that the old cultural patterns of America persist--that the settlement patterns from different regions of England still matter today. Obama represents Greater New England; yeah, I go with that. Reminds me, of course, that Greater New England conquered the country with a Kentucky-born Illinoisan (see Civil War; see Republican Party; see Radical Reconstruction), and imposed its will most thoroughly a century later under a Texan (see Civil Rights, Great Society). Greater New England normally needs a partner to win, and ideally a non-New-England leader. Frankly, I'm not sure either Obama or Clinton is quite un-Greater-New-Englandy enough. But perhaps I'm just whistling Dixie.

Obama, Ethos

Obama's arguments are to an extraordinary extent those of ethos--his character is the argument. And indeed, this is rather like Bush--indeed, a supercharged version of them. Note of course the danger: once Bush's character was seen as lacking, in 2005, his support tanked, never to recover. Obama could suffer this to an even greater extent, either as candidate or as president.

On Ethnic Cleansings

This is a subject in which I have some interest. I occasionally think of writing a survey on The Expansion of Europe, which would emphasize the complex combination of assimilation, extermination, and expulsion that has characterized Europe's expansion since the Dark Ages. Re the recent comments exchange with J. Otto Pohl, one problem I have with his thesis is that he does not pay sufficient attention to the precedents of ethnic cleansing in European history--to speak nothing of all of human history! It ain't just a Soviet technique, though they were pretty good at it. Some particular ethnic cleansings I find of note.

* The Czech expulsion of the Sudeten Germans after 1945. This is, of course, the ethnic cleansing I find the most justifiable--indeed, admirable and moral. To recapitulate: the Sudeten Germans voted en masse for the political party that eagerly co-operated in first the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and then its conquest and subjugation by Germany in 1939. A great many "blameless" Germans were expelled from Eastern Europe after 1945--but the Sudetens, as a nation, had exercised their democratic will to destroy the Czech one. (Mutual provocations preceded this action, but the Sudetens made this decision.) The Czech nation, in turn, determined that the Sudeten one could no longer be tolerated within Czech borders, and that the Germans must go. This decision received the stamp of approval--of morality--from all the Allies, as both justice in itself, and the necessary means to prevent future German revanchism, and this decision has never been repudiated.

Now, what I find most interesting about this is that it was not just the Czech nation, but the democratic Czech nation that made this decision. The Poles, for example, also expelled the Germans from east of the Oder-Niesse line, by what I take to be a genuine expression of Polish national will, but the means was by the Soviet puppet government. The Czechs, on the other hand, did this under the resurrected democratic government--and the process continued for long enough (I think until 1947) that it received the stamp of approval of several elections, in each of which non-Communist parties dominated the government. (Although I recollect that the democratically-elected Communist party was part of the governing coalition.) This was not a dictatorial ethnic cleansing, but a democratic one.

There are complications. The nineteenth-century Czech intellectuals who formulated the ideology of Czech nationalism borrowed from the Germans a volkisch sense of nation that many historians see as distinct from the citoyen sense of nation west of the Rhine, and which lends itself to policies of ethnic cleansing. The democratic Socialist tradition in Czechia probably reinforced the tendency to look at people as collectivities rather than individuals. The Czechs also had--says Derek Sayers' The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History, an excellent book, and probably other things I've read over the years but forgotten the names of the authors and the books--a pre-existing national sentiment that was narrow and defensive--we're a nash, a nashi--particularly defensive because so many individual Czechs over the centuries had "gone German"--intermarried, assimilated, become German and abandoned their Czechness. (Many of the Sudetens, in one of the usual ironies, presumably had some admixture of Czech ancestry.) These national attitudes, as well as the specific circumstances of 1945, played into the democratic decision to expel the Sudetens.

I find the Czech example of 1945-47 the most relevant one for Israel in 1948, not the Soviets, Nazis, etc. On the one hand, both Czechs and Israelis faced neighbors who aimed at the extermination of their nations. On the other hand, both inherited a complex of nineteenth-century German ideas of nationality, a democratic Socialist coloring to their party politics, and a pre-existing national sentiment that was narrow and defensive not least because so many individual members of the nation assimilated into other nations. If comparison is to be made, this is the one I would make.

* Karel Berkhoff's Harvest of Despair, a history of Ukraine under the Nazis, brings to light the Ukrainian ethnic cleansing of the Poles from western Ukraine in 1943-45, taking opportunity of the chaos as the Germans and Russians fought each other. While Berkhoff attributes some of this action to the brutalizing example of both Soviets and (especially) Nazis, what is fascinating is how this was an ethnic cleansing remarkably independent of ideology. The Ukrainians do seem to have had something like this thought process: "The Nazis have conquered us today, the Soviets will conquer us tomorrow, but what really matters is who occupies the land. If we get rid of the Poles now, the land will be Ukrainian someday." And they were right--it is.

* The Finns of Karelia committed auto-ethnic-cleansing in 1940. That is, they abandoned the territory en masse rather than stay once the territory was conquered by the Soviets. The Soviets would have preferred them to stay. (And would have murdered some large portion of them soon enough, but still.) A curious episode.

* More than a million Japanese were expelled from Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan in 1945--the ones in Taiwan must have included Japanese who had been there from not long after 1895. One part of the story is that the relatively equitable land distribution, hence democratic potentialities, in Korea and Taiwan is due to the fact that most landowners were Japanese, hence their lands could be redistributed once they were expelled. But this isn't, to my knowledge, discussed as an example of ethnic cleansing. It probably should be.

* Decolonialization should probably be considered as ethnic cleansing en masse. This is a little murky, since so many colonials and subaltern elites left rather than subject themselves to rule by the colonized--but they had, perhaps, a rather good idea that they would be slaughtered if they stayed. We should include as examples the flight of the pied noirs from Algeria, the Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique, the Anglo-Irish from the Irish Free State, the removal of both Europeans and Asians from Kenya and Uganda, and the attrition of Greeks, Copts, and Jews from Egypt. (Possibly the flight of the Anglophones from Quebec, but that's a marginal case.) Looking backwards, that first racial revolution, Haiti, involved the ethnic cleansing of the French (and a significant number of the mulattos), and the American Revolution involved the expulsion of 100-150K Tories--enough of whom became Canadians that what started as a political decision has had national consequences.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ethnic cleansings in history. The series by which Americans possessed themselves of the United States is notable. But they're each, I think, worthy of note.

Philhellene, Righteous Among the Gentiles

I rather appreciate people in both these categories, probably because I aspire to membership in them. Which is to say: Athens and Jerusalem are all well and good, but I'm not sure I count as a wholehearted Athenian or Israelite myself. I appreciate Greek thought and virtues--I have now been studying professionally how some of them played out over the last few millennia--but I'm pretty sure I'm not very Greek in my own thoughts or life. Alpheus, I think, is more so. I am--what?--a descendant of Jews and various Celtic and Germanic tribesmen of the northern mists, appreciating Hellas from afar, but neither quite willing or capable to become fully Greek myself. And as a Jew--I wish well to the secular Zion in Israel, and, with more mixed feelings, to those Jews who keep to every jot and tittle of the Law, as my ancestors have not for some generations, but I have no wish to join fully with either strain of Jewry. Likewise, my appreciation for Revelation, Jewish or Christian, is not that of a believer. I suppose I should say I aspire to be Righteous-Among-The-Fallen-Away, but the essential point is that my appreciation of Jerusalem, as my appreciation of Athens, is from a distance.

Some part of my Americanness has this off-centered point of view as well. Shall we say this is one of the characteristic immigrant attitudes? But I am a New York City academic, the child of the same, and my appreciation of America is partly that of an observer, rather than of a full participant. I like to think I am more genuinely an American than either a Jew or an Athenian--but if I have to think about it, I suppose there is some distance here too.

So, I am caught between the desire to melt myself into some transcendent community and--the desire not to. There are some joys to being off-centered, to appreciating a community without succumbing to the particular immodesty of joining it. (But note the usual irony: I am at home among the off-centered, and appreciate their virtues--so long modesty!) But joy mixed with wistfulness; it would be nice to be fully something.

Of course, there is more to life than Athens, Jerusalem, America. I could be an ... academic? A writer? A father and family man? More masks.

A sophomoric effusion, I suppose. The sort of thing you're supposed to get off your chest while you're in college. Ah, well, I didn't have a blog then; I'm catching up for lost time. Soon you'll get the post where I wonder what I do with my life after I graduate.

Hillary

Just to wander away from the indictment of nations ... Goldberry is very happy that Hillary won Ohio, and may win Texas. I confess I do admire Hillary more, for the pluck she has displayed in adverse circumstances. There is some steel in her spine. And sticking her thumb in the eye of all those media vultures urging her to end her campaign is also nice.

What an extraordinary election season! This is what politics and history should be! The unexpected, the contingent, the play of character on events! Not that 2000 and 2004 were bad, but those were two-man dramas.

Gaza

Some anonymous poster, in a comment I deleted, decided that my discussion of birth presents was a good occasion to wish for Shirebourn "what the so-called Chosen People have wreaked on the children of Gaza," or some such line.

That was sweet and apropos.

Doubtless I shouldn't respond to trolls.

As it so happens, I regret that the genocidal savages of Gaza have decided to set up rocket launchers aimed at Israel from their children's nurseries. The Palestinian nation--a nation of bloody criminals--is responsible for the death of every Palestinian in this war, as it is responsible for the death of every Israeli. I will be glad when the Palestinians give up their war to annihilate Israel, and so cease to incur responsibility for their children's deaths. Meanwhile, I hold for Israel as I hold for America, that it should hold the life of one of its citizens more precious than a million of its enemies, and not refrain from any needful action in self-defense.

And I should say that at this late date I have lost all sympathy for the Palestinians, those gleeful butchers. By their evil do they bring sorrow to themselves? The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Rattling Good Yams

Goldberry: Did you write "rattling good yams"?

Withywindle: (Looks at Word file.) Yarns. Rattling good yarns.

But I think yams should be rattling good! Also cauliflower, beets, and rutabaga.

Birth Presents

Shirebourn has received a very large number of presents from family and friends. I am flabbergasted--it seems this is customary. How have I been so oblivious? Well, let's see, my parents must have given presents to various of my cousins when they had kids, while I was growing up ... and I never paid attention ... and, um, I've only given one present to a friend for his kid, and that was because I was already married and Goldberry knew what to do. And suddenly we're deluged with booties, Boynton books, onesies, woolen sweaters, etc.! OK, from now on I know what to do ... am I unusually clueless? So stingy that my ears curled up when people talked about when you're supposed to send presents? Are Upper West Siders more kleinlich than people Out There, Beyond the Neighborhood? Or are there other people out there who didn't realize they were supposed to give until they were given?

P.S. To those of you who know me: No, I'm not cadging for more presents for Shirebourn!