On Politicized Youth

When Reagan was shot in 1981, I expressed some sort of relish at the fact. My parents told me in no uncertain words that political opposition did not entail relish at the death of political opponents. When Chernobyl had its meltdown in 1985, I again expressed some passing wish that the radiation would blow toward Kiev, on a worse-the-better theory that this would bring down the Soviet Union more quickly. (WIthywindle was a Baby Cold War Liberal, as you can tell by these twin gusts of childish ill will.) Again my parents chastised me for such gross inhumanity. I am very grateful to my father and mother, Anduin and Bruinen, for teaching me early that there is more to life than politics, that simple decency and humanity take priority.

My parents, of course, are liberals--rather good ones, in all senses of the term. And if I am at all a good conservative, it is because I was well raised by good liberals.

Liberals and their Children

I'm with Jonah Goldberg 100% on this one.

I think a big part of the reason I'm a conservative is because this sort of thing just gives me the willies. It would do so just as much if it were being done on the Right. And to the extent that things like this are being done on the Right, they bother me. But from my point of view, the contrast is pretty stark: sure, we have The O'Reilly Factor for Kids and Lynne Cheney's various children's books, but these types of texts are meant mainly to teach basic principles, not partisan fervor. Where is the Right's version of Obama sing-alongs? Where is the Right's version of this? I think it speaks well of conservatives that we tend not to indoctrinate our very youngest children in the secular equivalent of a religion.

I remember vividly a day in the summer of 2004 when Withywindle and I were strolling a street in an upscale neighborhood in New York City. We saw two little girls, the older one no more than 10 or 11, who were selling lemonade. As their hand-lettered sign proclaimed, and as they called out to us as we passed, the profits of their lemonade stand would go to the Kerry-Edwards campaign. It's hard for me to believe that their parents hadn't had a fairly large role in the idea for a partisan lemonade stand. And why not: grown-up liberals do the same kind of thing all the time.

I feel that such things are a spoliation of innocence. There should be some part of childhood, as much of childhood as possible, that is free from the fears and enmities of politics. But this is, sadly, a basically conservative viewpoint: most American conservatives feel that politics ought to be circumscribed, that politics is not the highest form of self-realization or the most important component of identity. Most liberals, I think, are much more comfortable with letting their politics define who they are -- and who their children are.

Doesn't it ever occur to some of them, though, that their desire to indoctrinate their children in their politics as early as possible reveals something a little scary about themselves?

Things Withywindle Likes, Part II: National Review Online I

Of course I go there to reinforce my biases, and to receive little stimuli of pleasure by rejecting contrary opinions. But aside from that, there are a number of writers there I am quite fond of. I will mention some of them, and their virtues.

* Rich Lowry. He is the voice of the conservative establishment. It's somewhat ironic, given how conservatives lambast the Washington establishment, but Lowry provides the same function for conservatives: he fuses all the points of view of the conservative coalition within him, and expresses the fusion lucidly, without (usually) alienating any component of the coalition. I suspect it is trickier to do this than it appears at first glance. I think you have genuinely to believe the consensus view--and not many conservatives do. Lowry is, therefore, perfect for his job as editor of the National Review, whose institutional function is to articulate the different strands of conservatism and produce a consensus from them. Lowry is also gimlet-eyed: he rarely if ever suffers from overconfidence or false illusions, as witness his casual comment recently that Palin was dreadful on the Couric Show. This was of most use on the national scene when he went to Iraq in the summer of 2006, I believe with William Kristol, and they returned to publish an op-ed saying that Iraq was truly being lost. He provided a gut-check, reality-check, for conservatives unwilling to believe any bad news from Iraq--and that was a national service.

* Ramesh Ponnoru. I am of course fond of him for being the McCainiac at the National Review. But he is also generally good at distinguishing what conservatives want from what is, or what Americans want. I still remember an article he wrote on how affirmative action is wrong, but constitutional--a compelling analysis, I thought. He generally is good on how conservatives need to recognize that most Americans don't share their goals, and also gimlet-eyed about the failures of Republican politicians. He cares about life issues--he wrote Party of Death--and I believe he is a traditional Catholic, but he's not a Johnny One-Note on either life or Catholicism; I admire his versatility.

* John Derbyshire. Everyone's favorite semi-paleocon, semi-Libertarian, callous pagan. I've admired him for different reasons over the years, but as of now: 1) I very much liked his novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream; 2) He is a fine essayist about his own life and feelings, a Montaigne of suburbia; 3) he is semi-libertarian and semi-paleocon while avoiding their most noxious myopias and bigotries, thus a better exponent of both ideologies than most; 4) He is self-aware enough to stop repeating himself--note how he has stopped discussing homosexuality the last few years; 5) Right now he is fighting the good fight for atheism and the Enlightenment at the National Review--a valuable contribution to the conservative coalition as it now stands.

To be continued.

Tonight We're Going To Party Like It's 1929

Eep.

A Small Tribute to Paul Newman

Since Paul Newman's death on Friday, I've heard a lot of people recalling his greatest and most memorable performances: Butch Cassidy, Cool Hand Luke, Fast Eddie Felson (from The Hustler). Over on the Contentions blog at Commentary commentators took note of his role as a Haganah fighter in Exodus, back when Hollywood was still unabashedly pro-Israel.

Somehow they never seem to mention my favorite Paul Newman movie, a movie which easily makes my top-ten list, a movie so good I can't help but watch it almost every time it's on TV.

For me, Paul Newman will always be Frank Galvin from The Verdict. For that 1982 role, Newman was nominated for best actor. He deserved to win, but the fix was in for Ben Kingsley in Gandhi. The movie was also nominated for best picture, best director (the amazing Sydney Lumet), best supporting actor (the incomparable James Mason), and best screenplay (the genius-who-was-not-yet-a-parody-of-himself David Mamet). The Verdict deserved to win them all, but the overrated Gandhi swept the field.

Why do I think The Verdict is such a terrific movie? For starters it has, like all Lumet movies, a look that really works. It's set during a gritty Boston winter in dingy working-class apartments, corner bars, old government buildings, underfunded Catholic hospitals. You can almost smell the peeling paint and hear the complaints of the radiators. There's a very down-to-earth feel, a slightly depressing but solid reality that makes the viewer take Frank Galvin (Paul Newman's washed-up lawyer) and the other characters seriously as human beings.

Newman's acting helps a lot. He's utterly believable as a guy who's long since decided he's never going to be the person he wanted to be. And he's just as believable when he begins to decide, inch by faltering inch, that he's going to take one last shot at personal redemption. Mamet's writing helps a lot too: the case that becomes Galvin's last crusade isn't big or splashy or complicated. It's just a sad little lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Boston on behalf of a woman who went into a Catholic hospital for surgery and is still there, comatose, because the anesthetic caused her to choke on the contents of her stomach.

Nobody's motives are pure in this film, at least in the beginning. At first, Galvin just wants money. Later, he just wants personal vindication. The comatose woman's relatives just want to move away from Boston. The Church -- despite a few glimpses of conscience from the Archbishop -- just wants to get out with a minimum of cost and publicity. The well-heeled lawyer for the defense (James Mason) is utterly unscrupulous. Galvin's lover (Charlotte Rampling) is a woman with very little of herself left to give. The apparently idealistic doctor who gets Galvin into the case proves cowardly when it counts. The "expert witness" Galvin is forced to hire is an elderly, unqualified hack. The judge is a cynical machine politician. The only really uncorrupted person in the movie is Gavin's friend Morrissey, played by Jack Warden -- and he's pretty much a spent force himself.

But somehow, almost before the viewer has noticed, the rather dismal scenario blossoms, into a compelling drama of justice, of good and evil. For anyone reading this who hasn't seen the film, I won't give anything more away. Suffice it to say that a point comes in the story in which my pulse always begins to beat a little faster, when it suddenly becomes clear that all the shabbiness of the places and the characters and the situations is incidental, that the film isn't really about the case or the litigants or even Frank Galvin. It's about something much, much bigger. And the bigness of what it's about seems even bigger and more remarkable because the places and the characters are all so unremarkable and small.

At the heart of the plot is the idea of the law in all its ancient majesty, that perfect hope that glimmers behind all the imperfections of our institutions and our failed selves. Galvin's real redemption occurs when he realizes, along with the viewer, what the case is really all about. And the highlight of the movie, maybe the most riveting scene in any movie ever, is the scene where Gavin tries to explain his insight to the jury in his closing arguments. Certainly no courtroom speech in any movie is anywhere near as good. As written by Mamet and delivered by Newman, it's an awesome masterpiece. Some people find it brings tears to their eyes. It's virtually impossible to listen to it without having your attitude toward the legal system changed forever.

And after the closing arguments comes the verdict. If you've never seen the movie before, then I can safely say this: whatever you expect will happen, you're wrong. And I haven't given anything away. The climax of the film will be a surprise, and a satisfying one to boot.

A bit of film trivia: Mamet's initial draft of The Verdict didn't actually reveal the verdict. Lumet forced him to show the jury's decision, and Mamet came up with something better than anything the audience was likely to imagine.

A bit more film trivia: the role of Galvin was initially going to be played by Newman's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid co-star Robert Redford. This time it was Mamet who forced Lumet to change his decision. Redford is a talented actor, but he's no Paul Newman.

A few actors -- Cary Grant, Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Marlon Brando, Barbara Stanwyck -- are or have been as good as Newman. But I'm not sure any of them ever were as good (or, in the case of the living ones, ever will be as good) as Newman was in The Verdict.

Things Withywindle Likes, Part I

I plan this as a continuing series. I've mentioned this before--just saying what you don't like isn't enough, you need to say what you like, you admire, you enjoy--"need," just to be a person who isn't just eaten up by hatreds; "need," therefore to be at all politically persuasive. I am a conservative in good part because I do find conservatives more apt to love, and liberals more apt to hate--but, being an amiable man for the duration of this post, let's not stress this point too much.

So: I like history--which is often finding out about some person, in a different time and a different place, and finding out how strange and new and wonderful he is. I like the life of the mind--the play of ideas, of debate, of words. I like comic books, bright flowers, paintings by Vermeer, Camille Pissarro, and Edward Hopper. I like Americans--try to love them--despite, of course, not being a people person, getting easily annoyed by the actual people I run into on a daily basis, and generally being a querulous coot. But, yes, I like Americans--their goodness, their orneriness, their peculiarities, their failings, their ridiculousness--see my own orneriness, peculiarity, failing, and ridiculousness in them, and try to imitate their goodness. Maybe I should feel this way about humanity writ large, but I don't, and I don't want to. 300 million people, and all their ancestors and descendants, is quite a large enough number of people for me to like, to get to know, to care about.

I don't like people who don't like Americans. It just ticks me off. Americans who don't like Americans--Americans who are embarrassed about being American--guess which political and social persuasion I'm thinking of--also annoy me, though I do try to remember that self-hatred is a distinctive American trait, and one of the things to embrace if you're going to love Americans. But, yes, "I hate evangelicals" is a turn-off. "I hate blacks" too. "I hate New Yorkers" obviously doesn't thrill me. "I hate heartlanders"--mm, a definite minus. Loving American "ideals" without loving Americans doesn't thrill me. And, no, I can't just hate liberals, because they include my family and my friends, and professional colleagues I respect. Disagree, yes; hate, no.

Later installments will include reviews of bloggers I like. But I will mention here Daniel Larison of Eunomia--that prolix Greek Orthodox, Old States Rights, paleocon we all know and love, who is rather good about how one ought to have a sense of nation that is one of kith and kin, not ideals, because the latter point of view leads too much to abstract hatred of one's own countrymen--yet whose blogging is very heavy on the outrage and ire, and very light on the milk of human kindness. He talks a good game, but I don't get any sense that he actually likes most of his fellow Americans. Anyway, he doesn't spend much time talking about it. The bloggers I like most talk more about what they like, less about what they hate.

Pizza Delivery, Just Now

Pizza Delivery Guy: Here's your order.

Withywindle: Where's the pizza?

Pizza Delivery Guy: What?

Withywindle: You brought the salad and the soda. Where's the 18 inch pizza?

Pizza Delivery Guy: I'll go get that for you.

What's the Matter with Earmarks?

During last night's debate, I often found myself mentally scripting the arguments I thought John McCain should have been making and wasn't. (Since I didn't find myself doing this for Obama, you could argue that Obama made fewer mistakes in argumentation, but it was McCain whom I wanted to see to win and I think his positions are basically more justifiable than Obama's.)

One of the points at which I think McCain dropped the ball was his discussion of earmarks, which he described as a "gateway drug" and something that "corrupts people." True enough, but I think he could and should have been more specific. For starters, he should have defined earmarks. He made it sound like they're more or less synonymous with "pork-barrel spending." They're not. The nature of an earmark is that the appropriation is never approved by the House or Senate apart from passage of the final bill that contains the earmark. The insertion of earmarks into big, complex pieces of legislation is an end-run around the legislative process.

I also couldn't believe McCain didn't say that earmarks are usually the price paid to legislators for supporting a bad bill they otherwise wouldn't support. They're payoffs, bribes of a sort. And they mean that a lot of wasteful or even counterproductive bills get passed. Even if you added up all the earmarks in the federal budget, the total still wouldn't fully reflect how much they've cost the taxpayer. The mere existence of earmarks is a sign that Congress isn't working the way it's supposed to. And for McCain, a full explanation of the evil of earmarks would have made the full negative significance of Obama's $932 million in requested earmarks a lot clearer.

Other areas where I thought McCain's answers should have been more detailed:

1. The Financial Crisis: I thought there were several missed opportunities here. Why didn't McCain explain the extent to which "regulation" and "oversight" were the source of the problem, the extent to which Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's close relationship with politicians were precisely what encouraged them to make such bad decisions? Usually "regulation" means not that business gets constrained but that government gets corrupted, and McCain should have made this clear.

On the financial crisis, McCain also could have been much more emphatic in pointing out how Democrats resisted the attempt to do something about the developing mortgage crisis, and how Obama in particular has close connections with some dubious players in this ugly drama. (I know his TV ads have already made this point, but it wouldn't have hurt to make it to Obama's face and see how he reacted.)

2. Government Spending: Jim Lehrer kept trying to get both candidates to indicate what aspects of their spending programs they would give up in the face of the financial crisis. Obama initially refused to answer, instead using the question as an opportunity to list all the sparkly new legislative initiatives he has planned for the American people. McCain gave a much more pertinent answer, talking about restraining government spending generally. When Lehrer reiterated his question for both candidates, and Obama again refused to be specific, McCain should have said something like: "Look: a basic difference between Senator Obama and me is that he wants to increase government spending and I want to cut it. I won't have to change my priorities in the face of this crisis as much as he will, because I saw the crisis coming and my program has always reflected the need to fix what's wrong with Washington's role in the economy."

3. Iraq: McCain could have explained again, with the standard neocon arguments about democracy, how the Iraq project is beneficial to the war on terror. (He also could have made the moral case: Saddam's hideous regime with its poison gas, human-sized meat grinders, rape rooms, etc.) McCain also should have briefly explained why timetables for withdrawal from an active theater of operations are such a bad idea. Finally, he should have noted that the U.S. government is, and has to be, capable of multitasking: the existence of war in Iraq doesn't have to mean that all other government business is paralyzed. If things are going badly in Afghanistan or the health care system isn't functioning properly, that's not really because U.S. troops are in Mesopotamia.

4. Iran: Why oh why won't Republicans be more specific about why meeting with foreign baddies without preconditions is such a dreadful idea? I think a lot of people understand the extent to which this would legitimize evil (a point Senator McCain did try to make) but they don't understand how high-level talks with our enemies create a whole set of beliefs and expectations that are inimical to U.S. interests: the expectation that future bad guys can expect the same treatment; the belief that once talks have opened any tough actions by the U.S. should be off the table; the belief that if a U.S. president doesn't cut a deal, no matter how lousy, he's failed.

Maybe explaining some of these positions in detail would like an insult to the American people's intelligence, but I don't think so. After all, Obama was on the same stage taking contrary positions.

Immediate Debate Reaction

1. McCain wasn't insane. A flash of temper most of the way through, but that's all. Quite reassuring after the last few weeks.

2. Probably a draw, when McCain wanted a clear victory. No major gaffes for either person.

3. I prefer McCain's character and policies; I liked him better. Don't know how the two struck the undecided voter.

4. Obama has the liberal intellectual affectation of giving native pronunciation to foreign words--not Cheelay and Neecahrahgwah this time, but Hahmahs, Hezbowlaah, Pahkeestahn. I wonder if this turned anybody off.

5. McCain is not the smoothest speaker in the world, but he is so infinitely better than Bush it isn't funny. Much as I admire Bush, it will be a relief to have president on speaking terms with spoken English--whoever wins.

6. McCain sounds like a gravelly old soldier; the voice is from central casting.

7. I watched part of the debate on bad-reception TV, part on good-reception computer. The candidates seemed like different people in the two formats. I wouldn't say one version worked better for either candidate, but the difference was striking.

First Impressions on the First Debate

My gut reactions, before I read any punditry:

Content: I thought both candidates landed some punches, and seemed to know their facts. Neither, however, seemed very good at gaining a decisive edge on any one issue, or at explaining any of their positions in such a way as to compel assent from voters who weren't already signed on to a particular point of view. No doubt the press will say that Obama won by doing a credible job, since foreign policy was presumed to be McCain's strong point. But McCain did manage, throughout the debate, to distinguish his record from that of Obama and refer viewers to information that undercuts some of Obama's positions -- obviously helpful to McCain.

Style: This was the interesting part. McCain seemed determined to rise above Obama, while Obama started the debate seeming determined to condescend to McCain. By the end of the debate, it was Obama who seemed frustrated: fake laughter, attempts to interrupt, etc. Obama even gave up calling McCain "John," and switched to "Senator McCain." Whether McCain, who seemed determined to avoid looking at Obama, came off as too chilly and aloof, I can't say. I don't think so, though. He kept an even tone, and seemed respectful albeit critical, whereas Obama's behavior early in the debate seemed designed to communicate a studied disrespect. Again, I'm sure the media will try to make McCain's repetition of "Senator Obama doesn't understand...." into something reprehensible. But watching the debate, I thought McCain's attempt to cast himself as the elder statesman who shouldn't have to put up with Obama's bullshit was surprisingly successful.

I'm Beginning To Have Doubts About McCain

All these Immelmans are upsetting my stomach.

"--The World As We Know It"; or, Fiscal Phlogiston

There's a Howard Waldrop short story, "--The World As We Know It"--alternate history--what if phlogiston really existed?--phlogiston is set on fire a little west of Philadelphia circa 1790 or so, in a too-successful scientific experiment, and a sheet of fire immediately appears from pole to pole, burning up all the air, and spreading westward as the world turns. Twenty-four hours later, our heroes await the return of the sheet of fire across the Atlantic. The last line of the story is "It's the end of--" and so back to the title.

I was reminded of this by John Podhoretz's latest post at the Commentary blog:

If a deal isn’t reached by Sunday night, and a bill isn’t signed into law by Sunday night, it is likely we will wake up Monday morning to a market meltdown overseas of a sort the world has never seen — and then we will just wait, mute, until the American markets open.

Fiscal phlogiston.

Things You Learn Surfing The Web During Lunch

John Podhoretz, over at the Commentary blog:

It used to be axiomatic that it made no sense to spend a huge amount of effort in the midst of the World Series, because voters simply wouldn’t be paying enough attention. That was before baseball ceased to matter all that much. (Imagine, now, that Super Bowl Week took place during a presidential campaign and you can get a better sense of what I’m talking about.)

This makes perfect sense. I had no idea.

O'Neill on the Financial Crisis

It seems that Paul O'Neill thinks the bailout plan is a mistake. All-star or not, who cares what some temperamental outfielder thinks about the economy? Maybe he should offer to donate some of the savings from his no-doubt-generous Yankee salary.

What?

Oh.

(I know it's not Dan Aykroyd as James Kilpatrick, but it's close.)

American Paranoia

Listening to Coast-to-Coast late the other night, the viewers got to unload their own conspiracy theories. One of them said something about how The Jews Control Everything. The host interrupted him at the first convenient moment, and then, for the first time on the show, actually disagreed with something a caller or an interviewee said: No, no, it's not an ethnic thing, the conspiracy of businessmen that controls the economy has nothing to do with race.

I understand there are limits to what you can say on the radio, for fear of being yanked off. I understand that it pays not to limit your potential audience of Conspiracy Theorists. And Coast-to-Coast has a distinct Paulite fringe, with repeated mutterings about Israel. But this is a repeated element on the show: No, the conspiracy doesn't aid one particular political party; They control both parties. (Said host even mentioned Obama-related scandals, though there is also an Obama tilt to the show.) Yes, the Catholic Church and the Illuminati are part of the vast conspiracy, but the current Pope means well, and may even be trying to warn people about the conspiracy. Etc.

In other words, American Paranoia: we believe in UFOs, angels, communicating gemstones, Economic Conspiracies by the dozen, Black Helicopters, every conspiracy theory under the sun, but we don't discriminate by race, creed, or sexual orientation, and none of these conspiracies have anything to do with any actual group of people on the earth. This is peculiar: as FLG wisely noted once, conspiracy theorists generally get around to raving about The Jews, The Jews; and the general tenor is to blame somebody or another--the Masons, the Catholics, the what have you. But it is wonderfully peculiar, delightful, enheartening. What other country would try to have nondiscriminatory paranoia? And maybe even achieve it to some extent?

Brilliant Parody

Pretty good, anyway.

European Finances

What would Europe do if they hit a credit crunch as big as ours? We have one Congress to write a trillion dollar check. Who underwrites the European Central Bank? Would they have to get all the different national legislatures on board? How would the European stockmarkets react to the process of trying to get every legislature on board? And is there any chance at all such a credit crunch could hit Europe?

Clinton, Hanson, and the Nature of Political Commitment

Just for the record, I haven't stopped hating Bill Clinton.

But sometimes you have to admire the suppleness of the man's mind and the clarity of his exposition. Of course, the reason he's justifying women's votes for Palin is so that he can subtly undercut Obama, but I think he's incidentally making a deep and important point here -- and making it as well as I've ever heard it made. So well, in fact, that the liberal ladies of The View seem to know it's irrefutable.

There's also an answer here, I think, to something Robin Hanson recently posted at the Overcoming Bias blog. Hanson suggests that "Politics isn't about Policy;" instead, politics is about status:

High school students are easily engaged to elect class presidents, even though they have little idea what if any policies a class president might influence. Instead such elections are usually described as "popularity contests." That is, theses elections are about which school social factions are to have higher social status. If a jock wins, jocks have higher status. If your girlfriend's brother wins, you have higher status, etc. And the fact that you have a vote says that others should take you into account when forming coalitions - you are somebody.

Civics teachers talk as if politics is about policy, that politics is our system for choosing policies to deal with common problems. But as Tyler Cowen suggests, real politics seems to be more about who will be our leaders, and what coalitions will rise or fall in status as a result. Election media coverage focuses on characterizing the candidates themselves - their personalities, styles, friends, beliefs, etc. You might say this is because character is a cheap clue to the policies candidates would adopt, but I don't buy it.

The obvious interpretation seems more believable - as with high school class presidents, we care about policies mainly as clues to candidate character and affiliations. And to the extend we consider policies not tied to particular candidates, we mainly care about how policies will effect which kinds of people will be respected how much.

For example, we want nationalized medicine so poor sick folks will feel cared for, military actions so foreigners will treat us with respect, business deregulation as a sign of respect for hardworking businessfolk, official gay marriage as a sign we accept gays, and so on.

How well this all seems to apply to the present election, with its identity politics of race and sex and class and age and religion and region and veteran status...and on and on, long into the wee hours of a Wednesday morning in a not-too-distant November. But Clinton has an excellent point: there's no reason for politics not to be about status or identity in some ultimate sense. What else should it be about, after all?

Where Clinton is wrong, I think, is when he claims that no one's voting behavior can be criticized as irrational.* We just need to be very circumspect about how and why we make such a criticism. Because every vote has a myriad of consequences. It may feel good now to vote for a black man or a woman from a small town, but will that vote really advance the interests I seek to advance? If a vote for Obama means that Iran will probably get The Bomb, should I really vote for him because he's black? If a vote for McCain means that abortion rights will cease to be protected by the Supreme Court, should I really vote for him because his running mate is a Christian from down-to-earth Wasilla?

The trick, for the civics teachers out there, should be to try to get people to think in terms of their long-term, as opposed to short-term interests and to be capable of making and listening to arguments on that basis.

*Down, Withywindle!

Gay Nineties

I was watching an I Love Lucy episode where the Mertzes put on a Gay Nineties review ... and it occurred to me that I couldn't put on a Gay Nineties review for my life. I don't know the typical sound of the decade--the ensemble, of all the different genres. My sense of American popular music, admittedly loose at best, peters out somewhere in the 1910s, and it is very, very fragmentary that far back. And what of the 1880s? 1870s? I've done a quick search on Amazon to see if there are even collections of 1880s songs--there don't seem to be. I've found reference to some 1890s compilations, by Archaeophone Records--original recordings, not someone modern doing the old songs. Nothing for the 1880s, or farther back. Now, I know there are barbership recordings, Stephen Foster, etc., but am I right in thinking that the musical memory of late nineteenth century popular music has basically disappeared? I think it has. Two theories: 1) the moving finger of time, etc., and people are hard-pressed to care about popular music more than 60 years back, if at all; and 2) a lot of popular songs back then were minstrel songs, and unsingable now for political reasons.

Well, Well, Well

I can't say that the Jawa Report's revelations of skulduggery by Obama supporters seem likely to me to produce any legal impact, or even, given a media so closely aligned with the Democrats, to make much of an impact on the presidential race at all. This does not appear to be the forged TANG documents from 2004 that were supposed to usher John Kerry into the White House (but instead ushered Dan Rather into oblivion).

It does, however, remind us all once again of just how sneaky and petty some members of the political left tend to be. If Rusty at Jawa is right, then a lot of important people -- people with money, yachts, corporations, and big-time connections in politics and business -- went to a lot of effort to try to spread a few nasty little lies in a rather sleazy and shady way. Can you imagine them (these millionaires, these sons or sons-in-law of politicians) checking regularly on their doubly dishonest "grassroots" YouTube videos, creating fake accounts to comment on them approvingly and forward them to folks at other web sites? Can you imagine them rushing to delete those fake accounts and pull down the lying videos as soon as their identities were disclosed? Can you imagine them clicking over to Wikipedia, to try to scrub the Axelrod entry of references to his history of "astroturfing"?

Isn't it all just a little...disgusting? What kinds of humans are these?

Withywindle, You Ignorant Slut

Why doesn't Alpheus ever write a blog-post that starts like that? I think our readership would rise enormously if we started trash-talking each other. But, you know, like PhDs. I imagine Alpheus eviscerating me in dactylic hexameters; I would respond in a series of limericks. For amusement, I could post occasionally as Alpheus, and he as Withywindle.

In fact, maybe he is right now.

On Students

In my first class, the students stare at me with dull hostility and say nothing. In the second, they take notes and speak occasionally. The second is much more pleasant.

Phoebe's latest post discusses class evaluations; my own, perhaps justly, are mixed. As to what sort of students, by socio-economic-cultural category, like me best? Dunno. I will say, as a very rough approximation, that male students tend to speak up more, but that the brightest and most articulate students are more often female.

No student has made a pass at me, thank God.

On Bipartisanship

Now we know what it takes to evoke bipartisanship in our elected leaders: a trillion-dollar heart attack on Wall Street. Suddenly, virtually everyone in both parties is on both sides, and when Paulson says "Here's the bill," everyone says "Yessir." It's nice to think there is a fundamental political consensus uniting the body politic. And given how grave the threat has to be before it appears, maybe it's just as well we don't see bipartisanship more often? Shows times are going well. On this theory, the Iraq War actually doesn't matter that much: if it were a matter of truly vital importance, there'd be a consensus about it, one way or the other.

Pietre Dure

The Metropolitan Museum has an exhibit, just closing, of "Pietre Dure"--hard-stone decorative arts from ca. 1500 to ca. 1850 in Europe. I.e., jasper, agate, ebony, malachite, etc., used first for geometric patterns, than portraits of leaves, flowers, birds, then portraits, landscapes, even a map of France! Very pretty. Introduces me to an art form, the way my visits to the glass and ceramics museums did earlier this year.

El Obama Prudente

Prudence originally meant the ability to choose to do the proper thing in the world of contingent particulars--and could be quite heroic and daring. Later, particularly as it came to be applied to the economic sphere rather than to politics and the military realm, it came to mean caution, slowness to act, a mean, lesser virtue, worthy, as Adam Smith said, of but "cold esteem." The meanings overlapped: Philip of Spain was "El Rey Prudente"--and he rather thought that caution conduced to best action. But the means, though generally useful, can become habitual--and if one should be cautious as a rule, the truly prudent man knows when daring is necessary.

Obama's prudence does seem to be that of Philip--caution, slowness to act, habitual, and perhaps inappropriate in emergency. So taking his time to respond to the invasion of Georgia, to the stockmarket crisis, he was characteristically cautious, at moments where it might have been inappropriate. McCain reacted immediately--in neither case did he necessarily say the right thing (I rather think not), but he preferred to act than to do nothing. Gambling on his success at applying the higher, heroic prudence.

We hear a good deal about how Obama is like Bush, and I think this applies too. Bush has characteristically taken a while to respond to crises: immediately after 9-11, after the typhoon in the Indian Ocean, after Katrina. In all these cases, I could see the argument for prudent hesitation; in all these cases he was criticized; I see reasonable arguments on both sides. But this prudent hesitation I think does link him to Obama. Bush has been resolute, indeed tenacious, but not impetuous. I imagine Obama could be much the same.

And which is better? Well, it does indeed depend on circumstances. For another early-modern example: Elizabeth of England, Gloriana, only really acted hastily once in her career (simplifying ... ), when she authorized an English intervention in Scotland in 1560. Quite effective; made Scotland permanently Protestant, permanently allied with England, permanently detached from the French Auld Alliance. After that she preferred to hoard her money, keep England out of war, do nothing whenever possible. Generally good strategy: it meant England was well-rested when it finally went to war with Spain in 1585, and had some reserves of strength to fight the greatest power of the age. But this also meant that late in her career Elizabeth refused to send any troops to Ireland while discontent bubbled up in the early 1590s, and so it span out of control into full-blown rebellion, the Nine Years War, which had to be put down at a horrendous cost of blood and treasure--much more than if she had been less cheeseparing earlier. But it was the same prudent character all along, generally for the good, but occasionally for serious ill.

Which is to say, both Obama and McCain aspire to prudence, but with different definitions and different emphases. I do think there is an argument to be made that if McCain will preserve more of Bush's policies, Obama is the truer inheritor of Bush's character and Bush's prudence. All very interesting.

Hat-Tip To Gowanus

Palin quote:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/09/energy-expertis.html

Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It's got to flow into our domestic markets first.

William Carlos Williams parody comment:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/09/energy-expertis.html#comment-131307610

I have flagged
the molecules
that were in
Alaska

and which
you were probably
saving
for Canada

Forgive me
they were fungible
so sweet
and so cold

Character, Authenticity, Small Towns

More on Sarah Palin, and whether praising small towns somehow excludes big cities:

Long-time readers will know how big I am on character and tradition, both of them in the rhetoric-prudence bundle of concepts. There's some stuff to tease out--cribbing madly from Hans-Georg Gadamer--in what links them. Character is, among other things, the prejudices one brings to one's knowledge of the world, the necessary assumptions that characterize the knowing process, and (as experience) in turn the product of one's previous assimilations of knowledge. Tradition is the plural of character--the collective assumptions that form our common prejudices, that constitute us as members of a nation, a religion, a what have you. Reflexively, individual character in turn forms the ever-changing tradition.

Individual characters are, therefore, part of a tradition--one may even say characteristic of traditions. It is legitimate to say that a particular individual's character is characteristic of the national tradition--Palin's small-town character, for example. But let us be precise: it should not be an assertion, but an argument--an argument validated in the last analysis by the judgment of the people writ large, in the political sphere by their ballots. This argument is being made more explicitly in the Palin case, but the structure of the event is the same in all elections: the ballot registers, among other things, a judgment as to the argument of which politician has a character more characteristic of the tradition, of the prejudicial mode of knowledge which voters bring to bear in their political judgments. As tradition is an endless, accreting argument, so such judgments are always provisional; as the character of the national tradition changes, so too will the individual character of the politician who wins their suffrages.

Such judgments are necessarily invidious--but not pernicious, so long as their provisional nature is retained. It's our old enemy, the immanentized eschaton, that presents problems. What if we seek in character more than a provisional validation? What if we seek some authenticity, some sincerity, that can bring us a salvation in politics? A divine character, who can fix and make certain and unchanging the tradition, our politics, the nation itself? A Heideggerian character, a Fuhrer resolute unto death? That's a destruction of the proper instability of character and tradition.

The cult of Obama is one problem here. So too is a cult of Palin. There is a divinity doth hedge a king--but mere politicians in a republic are not to be regarded as sacred. We may admire, but not worship, their character.

But if we should have no cults, and if national tradition can change, that renders national tradition at any single moment no less prescriptive. At every moment, there is a collective national tradition, assembled by constant argument and judgment, indeed constituted by who chooses to argue with one another, and there is a constant judgment that some Americans are more characteristic of the tradition than others--indeed, such a judgment is essential to the political process. Such invidious judgments are necessary for the operation of politics, for the operation of tradition, for the creation of new traditions; eliminate such judgments, collective and coercive, and the tradition dissolves into unconnected individuals. We do judge, and must judge, each American's character as more or less characteristic of the national character; we should recognize the power of traditional judgments of what constitutes American national character, for they have inescapably formed our own prejudices; but our judgments must be provisional in the last analysis, and they are arguments we must continue to make ourselves.

The Deserter

Fairport Convention's classic album, Liege and Lief, has a song I've always loved--"The Deserter":

As I was a-walking down Radcliffe highway
A recruiting party came a-beating my way
They enlisted me and treated me till I did not know
And to the Queen's barracks they forced me to go

When first I deserted, I thought myself free
Until my cruel comrade informed against me
I was quickly followed after and brought back with speed
I was handcuffed and guarded, heavy irons put on me

Court martial, court martial, they held upon me
And the sentence passed upon me, three hundred and three
May the Lord have mercy on them for their sad cruelty
For now the Queen's duty lies heavy on me

When next I deserted, I thought myself free
Until my cruel sweetheart informed against me
I was quickly followed after and brought back with speed
I was handcuffed and guarded, heavy irons put on me

Court martial, court martial, then quickly was got
And the sentence passed upon me, that I was to be shot
May the Lord have mercy on them for their sad cruelty
For now the Queen's duty lies heavy on me

Then up rode Prince Albert in his carriage and six
Saying "Where is that young man whose coffin is fixed?
Set him free from his irons and let him go free
For he'll make a good soldier for his Queen and country."

This speaks, among other things, to my post on wounds. To rephrase Alpheus: we wounded men need grace, divine and human.

Good Judgment

Peter Wallison, quoted by David Frum over at NRO:

However, a very small number of lawmakers saw this problem for what it was, and were willing to stand up to the power of Fannie and Freddie—and I am proud to say that John McCain was one of them. In 2005, he joined a small group of Republican Senators to cosponsor the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, the strongest legislation introduced up to that time to control Fannie and Freddie. In a statement, he noted that “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market…If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie and Freddie pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

Impressive.

Earmarks, Media Bias

Various pundits seem to think it's silly to care so much about earmarks and media bias. Not sure I agree. Sure, earmarks are the icing on the cake--but if you can't even get rid of earmarks, is there any chance you can do anything more serious in the way of fiscal tightening? And the lack of visibility, hence accountability, does corrode democratic governance. I'd take earmark reform seriously. And media bias--various people on the left--Timothy Burke, I mean you--argue that the Bush administration interrupted the free flow of information, thus making democratic governance impossible. Set aside the validity of the example for a moment; systemic media bias also interrupts the free flow of information, making democratic governance impossible. Anger at the media is quite appropriate; punishing the media, by voting against their favored candidates, is a tactic that might even force some self-reflection and change in the media in the long run. So, yes, rah the campaign against earmarks and media bias. Basically sensible.

Lowry, Palin

Speaking of people appointed young and inexperienced ... Rich Lowry got made editor of the National Review in 1997, age 29; something which caused some grousing at the time I think. It's been a good choice. I used to think Lowry bland; now I see him as having the virtues of consensus conservatism, along with a dispassionate eye (notably Iraq in 2006) that keeps him from pollyannaishness, hack-partisanship, etc. He's a valuable voice. Now, I don't quite recollect what he was like in 1998, since I wasn't reading him then--doubtless not as good. And of course, Editor is not as high-risk as President. (Though it would not be good for America for the editor of the National Review to flame and burn.) Still, interesting to think of the comparison. I wonder if Lowry does? He hasn't said anything himself--probably it would be too self-regarding, so he shouldn't--but I'd be fascinated to know if he does have particular sympathy for Palin.

On My Ignorance

Financial crisis ... subprime derivatives ... regulatory questions ... bankruptcies ... of all this, I am no expert. Ragingly ignorant, actually. I've taken my intro-economics courses; I can talk to you about economic trends in British history--but I could not begin to discuss the issues involved in this case knowledgeably. There should have been more regulation! No, nobody could have foreseen this! Ah, experts--they quarrel, and how should I know? The real supposed experts are the idiots in the banks who invested all this money and lost their shirts; if they got it wrong, why should I particularly believe anyone else when they babble about the right thing to do? All I can say is that this Paulson fellow seems to be walking the tightrope so far, the economy hasn't collapsed so far, and maybe he deserves some credit--and Bush too, for appointing him.

So, when I talk about how people do better at judging character than engaging in logical analysis, that limited information means you have to make gut choices of trust in other people--by "people" I mean "especially including Withywindle". There's enormous amounts I don't know about the world, I'd be a fool to pretend to even minimal knowledge about stuff like these financial crises, and I doubt I'm going to get up to speed any time soon. So, count me among the ignorant, who judge on character because we can't remotely judge the issues ourselves. And no particular guilt: my God, imagine how much time I'd have had to spend bored to tears to be able to judge knowledgeably about subprime derivatives! Much better to read my Ultimate Spiderman comic books and simply say, "That Paulson--seems to be doing about as well as can be expected. I wonder how long until Doctor Octopus returns?"

On Wounds

It is a comforting thought that we receive compensations for our wounds. This, I think, is the myth of the wound of Philoctetes--a strength balances the weakness, a justice of the gods balances the scales. So the last on earth are first in heaven; the lame have strong arms; the blind hear well. This works for matters of the spirit on earth as well: Homer and Milton trade one vision for another; the victimized of all sorts are ennobled somehow by their suffering; strength of spirit replaces strength of body.

It is a false thought. At any rate, not one universally true. Sometimes our wounds just diminish us. The crippled are simply crippled. A drunken artist--see Pollock, with Ed Harris in the title role--is not a greater artist for his drinking, just incapable of producing art while sodden. Victims are sometimes made bitter, not noble, by their suffering--whether whole nations, or just the childhood victims of playground bullies. Illness and old age embitter; they only rarely promote wisdom.

McCain's story of his torture in Vietnam is one version of this; his wounds made him a wiser, nobler man. Alpheus noted in comments that this fits into an evangelical trope of redemption; I agree, and note further it fits into this comforting story of recompense. Perhaps McCain is a better man because of his wounds, but it isn't a necessary result. If he is a better man, he deserves individual credit for inventing virtue from the subject matter of wounds; the virtue does not follow automatically.

Some conservative politics follow from this thought. There are wounds of lack of education, of poverty, of subjection to tyranny, for which there is no recompense; if you are not fit to exercise liberty, it is an irreparable wound. (Jonah Goldberg and John Derbyshire hold variants of this point of view.) I can't deny their premises, but I don't follow their conclusions. I suppose I would say we are all wounded--that humanity itself is a wound, an irreparable deprivation--and that if we can still usefully discriminate among human beings as to the extent of our injured souls, our nature as hurt men makes for a sufficient common ground on which to base democratic politics. But we only have the existence of wounds in common; their nature, their extent, are individual, and many of us will die more hurt than our fellows, and lesser than our fellows because of our hurt.

We conservative academics tell ourselves that our professional wounds have recompense. This may not be so.

Dicing and Splicing

Here's something I don't quite understand: why do conservatives go into hostile television venues without some kind of stipulations about how -- or how much -- an interview can be edited for broadcast?

It's now emerging that, on top of Charlie Gibson's uncharacteristically tough questions and contemptuous style, ABC News performed some rather dubious feats of editing whose aim seems to have been to cast Palin in a bad light. It wasn't just a matter of striking some questions while keeping others. ABC cut out words in the middle of sentences and occasionally concealed the fact that a whole series of exchanges between Palin and Gibson had intervened between a question and its "answer."

This is far from the first time we've seen something like this. To take one example, when Jonah Goldberg went on The Daily Show to tout his book Liberal Fascism, the interview was edited almost to the point of incoherence, Goldberg reportedly had held his own against John Stewart's snideness and the only way to properly obscure that fact was to butcher the tape -- do they still use tape? -- so badly as to be positively disorienting.

I understand that conservatives, faced with a hostile media, sometimes have to make compromises and sacrifices to get their message heard at all. But would it seem unreasonable to insist, say, that edits on individual sentences or continuous answers of less than a minute in length should not be permissible?

Heck, why not just insist on live interviews in the first place? Do conservative political strategists appreciate the fact that they can be preemptively spinning the interview while the ideological editors are busy at work?

McCain and the Machines that Go Ping

Speaking of McCain and high technology--a 1960s fighter jet is a pretty amazing piece of work. I am not an Expert, but I suspect some of that technology is still cutting edge in its field. And isn't an awful lot of modern computer technology about trying to get gamers a vague shadow of the sensation of what it's like to be a real fighter pilot?

Throwing out the First Pitch

Cited on NRO:

McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. Friends marvel at McCain's encyclopedic knowledge of sports. He's an avid fan - Ted Williams is his hero - but he can't raise his arm above his shoulder to throw a baseball.

If and when, how is he going to throw out the first pitch of the season? An underhand lob? Some more moving substitute?

Lowland Clearances

Reihan at American Scene mentions a fascinating profile of one Edward Glaeser, who does indeed sound very interesting. I note one paragraph in particular:

Late last year, Glaeser wrote a controversial article that made a case against rebuilding New Orleans. He has since become an intellectual leader to a tiny, unsentimental, let's-not-rebuild-the-city faction. "There's some small core of the city that should be there," he says, "but the city itself has been in decline for 50 years and in relative decline for 150 years relative to the U.S. population as a whole. It's not a great spot to have a city; it's incredibly expensive to build the infrastructure to keep it there. You can't possibly argue that New Orleans has been doing a good job of taking care of its poor residents, either economically or socially. And surely some of the residents are better off by being given checks and being allowed to move elsewhere." Glaeser admits that many critics have responded to his views with shock, asserting that he is unfairly attacking the city at a moment of terrible vulnerability. "No one has accused me of hating the poor or being racist," he says. "But I have been accused of not having a heart."

Everything relates to British History ... I've just been reading a book I assigned, Eric Richards The Highland Clearances, talking about the mass eviction of Gaelic peasants from the Highlands, ca. 1770-1850, which somewhat endorses the rationale of the evictors: there was no economy to support the peasantry, it was terribly overcrowded, the only solution was emigration, by force if necessary. The language of the Scottish landlords finds a remarkable echo in Glaeser's talk of New Orleans.

Glaeser also explains why people still live in Detroit (!):

"Thousands of poor come to Detroit each year and live in places that are cheaper than any other place to live in part because they've got durable housing still around," Glaeser says. The net population of Detroit usually decreases each year, in other words, but the city still attracts plenty of people drawn by its extreme affordability.

Another Scottish echo: the evictors tore down, burned down, the Scottish peasants' homes, to make sure they didn't stay and squat. Only getting rid of the houses got rid of the people.

Moral: The more you read current events, the more you will know about British history. This is the best single justification for keeping up with current events.

Anniversary

I went past the World Trade Center site today. I saw people with "9/11 Truth Now" t-shirts on. I cannot describe the gut-wrenching upset and anger I felt.

The Importance of Quantity

Over the years, I've gotten more and more interested in the way people think and the sorts of intellectual mistakes that keep us arguing fruitlessly with one another and unable to secure our mental grip on the world in which we live.

Recently, I've become convinced that one of the most pervasive problems in high-level discourse (about things like politics, for example) is the failure of people to think and express themselves in quantitative terms. It's common to overhear people disagreeing about some blanket assertion like "Americans are racist" without either party ever making any of the conversational moves that would begin to clarify what must be the points at issue -- namely, what proportion of Americans are racist and just how racist are they?

Instead, such a conversation may circle around and around, with each side tossing out more or less irrelevant observations and anecdotal data. No one is ever going to get anywhere that way. Even introducing a word like "most" into the discussion ("are most Americans racist?") would often be a huge step forward. Although the participants in the conversation might continue to find themselves on opposite sides of the question, their thoughts about the topic under discussion would likely become clearer to one another as well as to themselves.

Another way in which many high-level discussions about controversial topics could benefit from the introduction of quantity would be for the participants to seek to evaluate the probabilities that their various assertions and expectations are right.

Am I 75% sure of what I'm saying? Am I only 25% sure? How much do my interlocutor and I differ about the likelihood that a particular statement is true? If we discover that we assign very different probabilities to some statement, then we can begin the useful process of figuring out why.

Of course, all this assumes that discussions are honest attempts to seek the truth by people of good will.

A while ago I remarked on this blog that I liked the phrase "the fallacy of gray". The phrase refers to the nonsensical tendency to obscure important information by asserting that if something is neither black nor white it must automatically fall into a third category called gray.

Now, I'm not in favor of thinking in terms of simplistic binary oppositions that do violence to the actual shape and texture of reality. Very, very often the opposition between black and white is inadequate. But it's usually not any better to simply introduce the third category, gray, and attempt to conclude the discussion on that basis. What good is it if two categories become three or (as is usually the case when the Fallacy of Gray rears its ugly head) only one? The question must always be: where does a phenomenon fall on that long and infinitely divisible, line between black and white -- or between 0% and 100% -- or between zero and infinity. How do we express ourselves in terms of degree?

Everyone who's studied the history of science knows that the decisive step in the development disciplines like chemistry and physics was quantitative rigor and the introduction of measurement. Before precise measurement of quantities became common, the tangible benefits of scientific (or proto-scientific) endeavor remained rather limited. But as soon as scientists began to make really good measurements of everything that could be measured, it was off to races. The world has never been the same.

The invention of statistics -- a discipline dedicated to making the immeasurable measurable -- has similarly increased human capacities in the last two centuries, and turned fields like economics and sociology into rather well-grounded approaches to understanding the world.

And yet we continue to talk and argue without attempting to quantify. Why?

What the Elite Meet to Eat

In comments on an earlier post, I've been playing the proletarian. But in the interest of full disclosure, I think I should point out that I really like arugala.

Just so long as its called by its proper English name, rocket.

Also, when I order the biggest size at Starbucks, I call it a "twenty." (Just kidding. Actually I insist on calling it a "large.")

On Teaching Three Classes

1) Teaching two sessions of the same class is interesting. The practice generally makes me better for the second class. It's interesting how I don't quite repeat myself, how the students ask different questions. The performative aspect of teaching is highlighted.

2) Teaching three classes a day is tiring! Never mind the mental strain: I pace while I teach, and my feet hurt at day's end!

3) Lunch hour -- office hours -- are for surfing the net! When I post anonymously, it's from work.

Small Towns, Jews

Phoebe descants more on the overtones of the Republican speech, noting some old anti-semitic tropes--cosmopolitan elites, etc. Some thoughts.

1) Yes, the word-field of the Republican convention does overlap with some anti-Semitic tropes. I would say that most of the positive tropes of Christian European civilization overlap with some anti-Semitic tropes, but I'll grant it was a slightly tighter overlap--although I wouldn't say a much tighter one. I rather think that if you removed the speeches of Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, most of the venom would have been removed. That is, Palin, praised small towns, but Romney (in a remarkable display of self-hatred) explicitly bashed "eastern elites", and Giuliani got a wallop in at "cosmopolitans"--but this from a man whose electoral base as mayor was urban, Italian, and Jewish, and whose dislike of liberal elites is more ferocious because he fought so long against them in the belly of the beast. I do think that the personal demons of these two peculiar characters--neither of whom, thank the Lord, won the nomination--explain much, perhaps most, of the anti-urban-elite vitriol in the word-field of the convention.

2) The dichotomy of "small-town" and "Jewish" has a good deal of truth--but there are some interesting complications. Jews spread out across America at least as early as the mid-nineteenth century--to the small towns, to work as merchants, craftsmen, clothing salesmen,etc. So Levis jeans; so Jews in New Mexico in Death Comes for the Archbishop; so Ulysses Grant evicting Jewish peddlers from his army department in 1862; so a Jewish-West-Virginia mineworker in Homer Hickham's Rocket Boys; so Edward Jacobson of Kansas City (pushing "small town" a bit), Harry Truman's friend who played a crucial role in America's recognition of Israel. It might be true that most American gentiles have had more contact with small-town Jews than they did with Jews in the big cities, even if most American Jews lived in the big city, and even if the popular association was Jewish=urban. The small-town Jew has been liked and disliked in American small towns, but he has been a common, if not universal, presence.

3) Is it practically a mistake for the Republicans to sneer at big-city folk, coastal elites, eastern elites, cosmopolitans? The entire West Coast, and most of the East Coast, from DC to Maine, are solid Democratic voting blocs; so are the cities; so are said elites--and the people who are rallied by such sneers are in Ohio, Michigan, and other swing states. I think the most practical danger comes in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania (the Philadelphia suburbs), and New Hampshire--but even there I suspect the marginal damage is minimal.

4) The crucial thing here is the word "elites." I think people pay more attention to the noun than the adjectives--and most people don't think of themselves as elite. An elite is someone richer and/or more influential than you are--you are an ordinary joe, middle class, the salt of the earth, even if you earn $200,000 a year, send the kids to the Episcopal Wiccan Day Care and Basket-Weaving Combine, and get your op-eds published regularly in the Times. The only people who self-identify as elite, while still grousing about mortgage payments, are probably professors--their self-regard therefore contributing to their unpopularity--and they, famously, are voting Democratic. Ditto for most any other profession that self-identifies as elite. So the practical effects of rabble-rousing the elites should be muted, since elite is always the Other Guy.

Local Politics

A state senate race between long-time incumbent Martin Conner and young challenger Daniel Squadron. Details here. Now, I have no real stake in a Democratic primary, in a one-party town, but I vaguely prefer Conner--I don't like the idea of rich young nothings parachuting in to buy a local seat. Besides, I've had one interaction with Conner: when I was a poll worker in 2004, he spoke up rather officiously while waiting in line, asking what was taking so long. What was taking so long was that we were all inexperienced poll workers. Now, Conner was abrasive--but not insanely so--and arguably in the public interest. So for that one incident alone, I feel some grudging respect for the man.

But, says Goldberry, "Conner's part of Sheldon Silver's machine--I can't vote for him."

An unanswerable argument.

Genealogy Humor

On Steve Morse's Genealogy Website, there's a link called Where's Grandpa: Finding your great Grandfather in One Step. Take a look.

Note: Look closely at that second link.

Ichabod Obama

Phoebe is unenthused by the small-town rah-rah, and raspberries directed at the big cities, of the RNC. I argue in the comments in a different post that she's misunderstanding the point a bit. But this reminds me of an old small-town story, which is relevant to modern politics. I speak of course of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow--quite valuable, because it portrays in Ichabod Crane the figure of the liberal-to-be as he is very often seen from the outside, and most American writing (and writing in general) is from the point of view of young Ichabods, who don't quite understand why they're often so unpopular.

Ichabod Crane; who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut; a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodsmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. .... I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school, who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burthen off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little, tough, wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called “doing his duty by their parents;” and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that “he would remember it, and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.” .... The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers, whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time; thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief. .... Thus, by divers little make-shifts in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated “by hook and by crook,” the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

I've edited perforce, but the upshot is that Ichabod is a skinny, lazy, sponging, too-ingratiating type, tender towards those like himself, and unpleasant towards those stronger than he is. The Republican trope of the small-town is an appeal to the rugged small-town types who don't much like Ichabod Cranes, and the catechism of contempt sent toward Obama, and the "cosmopolitans," is an attempt to buff up their resemblances to Ichabod Crane. Note by the by that the younger John McCain bore a passing resemblance to

a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff, but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb, he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar.

Worth Repeating

From a brief Q&A with Charles Murray -- whose new book, Real Education, I've been wanting to read I ever have time -- in today's Washington Times:

You can get a degree from Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Duke - take your choice of elite university - without having been required to acquire rigor in verbal expression, rigor in forming judgments, or rigor in thinking about virtue and the Good. By “rigor” I mean having mastered the intricacies of logic, rhetoric, probability, and the nature of proof, among other things, and then having had your feet held to the fire for every logical lapse, every glib argument, every misuse of evidence in your term papers. Along with that, students need to graduate knowing, in a deep sense, the difference between being nice and being good. Most of all, they need to have taken the first step toward wisdom, which is being painfully aware that they aren't as smart as they once thought they were.

I would add only (and I think Withywindle might second me here) that students need to learn how to really take both sides of an argument, and they need to learn to listen. All this is much more important -- because much more basic -- than learning about other cultures, learning history, or even learning foreign languages.

Frankly, the experience of intellectual rigor should occur even earlier. By college bad mental habits may be too hard to break.

Hanoi Story

I read a decade ago, in an article on the movie Toy Story, that Hollywood actors hate to play weak characters. Good and evil were both acceptable, so long as the characters were strong--but not weak. Ruined their image. Which meant that a whole range of very important stories--about weak men and women, about overcoming weakness--never got told, at least not with big stars. Toy Story was an exception because it was only the voice of Tom Hanks in a weak character, not attached to the man's face, so that was OK.

A number of people have noted how extraordinary it was that McCain said "And they broke me" during his speech last night--and, yes, it is extraordinary. It puts his weakness front and center--confesses it to the world--as part of a story toward the overcoming of weakness, by looking for a different sort of strength. I can't offhand think of any politician who's done that before.

There's also a fascinating interplay with ambition here. McCain has mentioned his POW status throughout his career, as part of getting himself ahead in politics--but he's also been hesitant to talk about it, and usually doesn't mention this part of the story. Never, I think, articulated it this way before. I don't think he much liked to think of himself as weak, talk of himself as weak, even if it had made him a better man. And now ambition thrusts him to the presidency, and has forced him to articulate what in his character makes him worthy to serve. Ambition, therefore, forced him to examine himself, and confess his weakness--which confession itself improves his character, and makes him more worthy to serve. Ambition and the improvement of his character are curiously entwined.

McCain Speech

Not as good as Palin's or Obama's. Also, his appearance remains unfortunate. Moving moments--how he will keep the country safe, what he owed to his fellow captives in Hanoi. I don't know if the speech would close the sale to anyone considering whether to vote for him.

Political Speeches as Comic Books

They always recap everything, for the benefit of those just tuning in. This drives journalists up a wall, since they have to hear everything a zillion ten times. I think they also therefore miscalculate: "Politician X needs to say Y now, not just say Z again." No, Z needs to be said again and again, because a lot of people never heard Z before.

Keep this in mind when people critique, say, Palin for giving her biography again in her speech just now, instead of going on to policy details. The biography needs to be said again and again and again this fall, just as much in Issue #241 of The Perils of Palin as in Issue #1.

My Kingdom Is Not Of This World

It is part of the terrible quandary of the world's sinfulness--what happens when the religious can only defend religion by acting in the world? When they must engage in politics, to oppose a party that puts forward the policies of Moloch, by supporting a party whose avowed support is compromised by other, worldly priorities, whose politicians are no saints? Is there no choice but compromising activity in the world? I like to think some can, and must, remain aloof from politics, so they can judge, condemn, and call to repentance, with an eye to God only, and not to Caesar. Some must be Niebuhrs, others prophets in the wilderness. If they weren't so tainted with "non-judgmentalism," I'd say the evangelical move away from political affiliation was a healthy development. It may be a healthy development in the long run, so long as they return to judging by God's standards, and not those of the Republican party.

Politics must not be everything to us. Some of us must dedicate themselves to God alone. And we whose faith and politics are entwined are especially called upon to remember this.

Country First

I'd like to post an exchange with an anonymous friend who reads the blog:

Friend: You have repeatedly stated that foregin policy/national security trumps everything else in this election. Are you comfortable with the possibility that Sara Palin may be the person making key national security decision on the fly in the event of a crisis?

Me: No. It is a permanent negative against voting for McCain. Not dispositive--but shall we say I moved from certainly voting for him to very likely voting for him? I've been trying to be as clear as possible on the blog that, whatever her political talents, Palin's inexperience is a negative, and I will not blame any voter who does not vote for McCain on that ground alone.

My friends, country first means criticizing your own when they make mistakes. And I am trying to put country first by saying clearly what Palin's negatives are. I trust the McCain campaign will take my criticism as embodying the best spirit of their campaign.

"New-Clear Weapons"?

I only watched a few minutes of Sarah Palin's speech, but I read the transcript on the ABC news web site. I liked it quite a bit (once I got past the parts about her family, which I'd already heard a version of in her speech in Dayton). And her delivery was apparently (to use the most popular metaphor) a grand slam home run.

But this caught my attention (scroll down on this page):

Terrorist states are seeking new-clear weapons without delay ... [Obama] wants to meet them without preconditions.

This seems to the text released by the McCain campaign. Is this what appeared on the teleprompter? Were they worried that she'd be derided if she said "nucular"?

Sarah Palin's Speech

Seemed solid. She does have the political talents. Listening to all the other speakers before, you can tell that she's first-rate, as they were not. (Although the format suited her better than them.) Only Huckabee also gave a first rate speech. Palin-Huckabee 2012?

Her accent is very strange to New York ears. A non-southern drawl--and, yes, a little Canadian-sounding.

John McCain's injuries unfortunately give him the appearance of doddering old age.

On Faith

The rise of secularism has a similar effect on faith. Where faith is a matter of effort, you can think of yourself as a Good Person just because you believe in God--and never mind actually living up to the commandments of faith. Granted sola fide, and all that, but there used to the idea that the moral life was a sign of salvation, if not its cause. Now we needn't even bother with that.

The Need to Fight Back

Over the last few days, in my occasional peeks at the mass media's treatment of Sarah Palin, I keep having flashbacks to those scenes in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in which the Taylor political machine efficiently assassinates Smith's reputation, creating momentum for his expulsion from the Senate.

That movie -- and Capra's oeuvre generally -- is often accused of being saccharine, but the darkness and cynicism of those scenes are the moral and narrative heart of the film, and Senator Paine's last-minute outbreak of conscience is only a deus ex machina. We know -- and the audience of the 1940s knew -- that it was all too easy for good men's reputations to be unfairly destroyed and that, in real life, the destroyers' minions could not be counted upon to break ranks and save the day. Somehow, I don't think we're going see Chris Matthews start bawling on the air and asking for the American people's forgiveness.

It's faintly comforting, in view of how loathsome the last few news cycles have been, to think that the national media has always been deeply corrupt. Plenty of people are making the argument that things are better now: the media's partisanship is obvious to anyone not hopelessly stupid or blinded by bias himself. But the sad fact is that the real difficulty was never, and never will be, the media: it's about how easily people allow themselves to be influenced by what they hear.

It's a fact of psychology: we know the smooth-talking salesman has an agenda which corresponds very imperfectly to our own, but we still find ourselves wanting to buy his wares. We often know when the person who wants to get us into bed isn't being honest about his feelings for us, but we listen anyway and, to some extent, we believe. People may know that the media is looking to give Governor Palin a rough time, and that the things being said about her are to some extent false or unfair, but that doesn't mean they won't absorb some of the poison being pumped out so vigorously by the talking heads and newspapers.

All this is by way of saying that Palin (and McCain) need to fight back. There's a danger, of course, that fighting back -- taking the media to task for how Palin has been treated -- will look like whining, or will take the McCain campaign off offense. Accordingly, some observers on the right are urging McCain/Palin to try to ignore and rise above the attacks. I'm of another opinion. I think that smears not forcefully answered tend to become part of the conventional wisdom, shaping people's view of reality in ways they don't even recognize. I also think that the time may have finally come for Republicans to forcefully and make the pro-left media a target in a general election.

That media is on shaky legs, anyway. Newspaper circulation and nightly news ratings for the major networks are plunging. The rise of the internet and of an alternative, conservative media have weakened the journalistic left's monopoly on the dissemination of truth. A sea change was signaled in 2004 by the rapid exposure of CBS's forged documents about Bush's national guard service. Polling indicates that Americans basically do not trust the media to bring them the truth. It's not as if the media is invulnerable.

Finally, it's not as if attacking the media can only make it more hostile to McCain and the Republicans. Given the current feeding frenzy, the attempt to destroy Palin, it's hard to see how things could get any worse.

But of course it is, after all, important that attacks on the media by McCain and Palin not look like whining. And it is important that the McCain team stay on offense. So striking back against the media needs to be done with some finesse. It needs to be done in a way that doesn't look whiny, reinforces the basic themes of the McCain campaign, keeps the heat on Obama, and appeals to the sensibilities of voters who are predisposed to listen.

This is what I suggest McCain might say:

"My friends, I chose Sarah Palin as my running mate because she's not a Washington insider. I chose her because she had to fight corrupt influences in Alaska, including much of the entrenched elite in her own party, to become governor, and because her entire career has been spent working on behalf of the people, and against special interests. If I go to Washington as President, I want someone by my side who shares my fierce commitment to reform, to cleaning up politics and shedding light in the dark corners where corruption and cynicism flourish. I want someone who cares more about the average American than about playing ball with fat cats so that he can raise money and secure reelection.

"The problem is that when you pose a danger to the special interests, when you represent real change, the folks who are used to having everything own way know it, and they come after you. Up until this year, I've had it easier than I should have. I was a Republican who took on corruption and political gamesmanship among my fellow Republicans, and the media -- many of whom are just part of the Democratic elite, working for the Democratic party -- loved me for it. But now, now that it's a choice between me and Senator Obama, they're not so fond of me anymore. That's fine. I want to fix what's wrong with politics in America a lot more than I want to be the media's token good-guy Republican.

"And the folks at NBC, and MSNBC, and CBS and CNN and the New York Times really seem to hate Governor Palin. In the past week, they've thrown everything including the kitchen sink at her in an effort to destroy her. Some of the attacks have been more vicious than anything I've seen in my political life. They've tried to make it look like she's a bad mother. They've gone after her teenage daughter. The New York Times, on page one, has printed lies that they've since had to retract about her past political affiliations and disgusting innuendos about the parentage of her youngest child.

"Just to set the record straight, Sarah Palin was never a member of the Alaska Independence Party, she didn't support the Buchanan campaign in 2000, she never demanded that an Alaska state trooper be fired, she is the mother of Trig Paxson Van Palin, and [voice rising] you can't believe everything you read in the New York Times. You especially can't believe the part about 'all the news that's fit to print.' There's a lot that the New York Times won't tell you -- especially about Senator Obama's relationships with Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko. And some of what they print nowadays is tabloid trash. Does making a national issue of one of the toughest decisions in a young girl's life really help fix what's broken in Washington? Does it really contribute to the national debate? No, but of course that isn't the point.

"My friends, don't think that the big media corporations aren't part of the entrenched power structure in Washington politics. Journalists all have friends in politics or finance, they have people who give them access in exchange for favorable coverage. Journalists get ahead because they make friends in high places and toe the party line. If they didn't toe the line, they'd risk their well-paid jobs and their friendships too. For decades now, a lot of big institutions in the media have become more and more closely aligned with the most powerful interests in the Democratic Party. This hasn't been good for the Republicans, it hasn't been good for the Democrats, and it hasn't been good for America. It certainly hasn't been good for Sarah Palin's family over the past few days.

"It's one thing if most people in the media want Barack Obama and Joe Biden to win this election. In the end, you, the American people will judge and you, the American people will decide. But it's another thing if the journalists that cover this election have become so partisan, so one-sided, that they look at someone like Sarah Palin, someone from a small town who's worked hard to clean up Alaska politics, and their first instinct is to figure out how they can smear her reputation or turn her into a laughingstock.

"A lot of good people among my supporters have been surprised and puzzled by the assault on Governor Palin. This kind of viciousness is hard for good people to understand, and so they sometimes assume that the smears and innuendo must have some foundation in truth. But it's not so. What's behind all the smears and innuendo is those old, dark human emotions: hatred and fear. They hate and fear Sarah Palin because she's not like them. She comes from a different part of America, and she's been tough enough that she's never had compromise her principles to get ahead. They hate and fear her because her presence on this ticket makes it clear that a McCain presidency represents real change in Washington. If Sarah Palin and I make it to White House, we're not going to rest until we've broken the power of the special interests, stamped out pork barrel spending, reined in the bureaucracy and handed the government of the United States back to the people for whom it was created.

"For decades, one of the biggest problems in America is that Washington insiders have used big media to tell Americans what to think, to protect people who ought to be exposed and to slander people who try to change the way the game is played in Washington.

"Barack Obama talks a lot about change, but he's voted with his party's leadership more often than any other Senator. When he was back in Chicago, he played ball with the Daley machine and shady money-men like Tony Rezko. He's named as his running mate Joe Biden, who's been sitting in the Senate for almost a quarter of a century. Now [grins] I don't think there's anything wrong with spending a few terms in the Senate, and Obama and Biden are both, at heart, decent men who have gotten swallowed up by a corrupt system. Many of the journalists spreading misinformation about my running mate are decent people who have gotten swallowed up by a corrupt system and have lost sight of why they got into journalism in the first place. I've been tempted many times over the years, my friends. I know from firsthand experience how hard it is, in Washington, to keep your head and hold onto your principles.

"And that's a big reason why I wanted Sarah Palin as my running mate. I didn't pick her mainly because she's a woman, or because she's young. I understand those things balance this ticket and make our campaign more interesting and more appealing. But I wanted her for a much more important reason: she's a reformer, a maverick, someone I think will keep a McCain administration on the straight and narrow, working and fighting to root out corruption in Washington and restore government to the people. I wanted her because she comes from the middle class, and right now the middle class needs tribunes, needs champions, needs people who will stand up for their interests and their rights.

"But lots of people in the media don't feel that way. I don't expect them to change their minds. I expect them to keep going after Sarah Palin, throwing whatever mud they can dredge up from the swamps of far-left web sites like the Daily Kos and the Democratic Undergound. So be it. But Governor Palin and I don't intend to take these kind of scurrilous attacks lying down. I intend to call the media to account, to demand the kind of responsible journalism that this country needs and deserves.

"And I have a challenge for the American people: if they want to take their country back, they're going to need to look past the pundits and the opinion-makers and figure out for themselves what's really at stake in this election. They're going to need to be savvy enough to know when they're being lied to or misled by powerful interests who don't want them to have all the facts, who want them to be distracted by gossip and stereotypes because when they're not able to think for themselves about the real issues, they have to let Washington insiders do their thinking for them. At least, that's what the people who run the New York Times are hoping for.

"But things aren't as simple for the elites as they once were, my friends. The internet has changed everything -- the truth is available for people who want to find it. Now, more than ever, the American people have a chance to make government start working for them again. I'm hoping to help them do that, and I know Sarah Palin can help me help them do that.

"I also know that the people who are attacking her have underestimated her. They've underestimated me and they've underestimated the American people. They're going to discover that the American people aren't going to be misled, however loudly and often they broadcast their lies. At the end of the day, Governor Palin is going to be standing tall, and she and I [crescendo:] are going to bring real reform to Washington whether the special interests like it or not. Because Washington doesn't belong to the special interests. It belongs to all Americans, wherever they live and wherever they work -- even in places as far away as Wasilla, Alaska."

A speech like that could probably use a few more applause lines, but you get the idea.

On Abortion

Like the Holocaust, a metastasizing evil that corrupts all who come in touch with it. Once murder becomes a choice, morality is reduced to the bare minimum of not aborting your child, and everything else--chastity, say--becomes a mere irrelevance. "Chastity? Oh, shucks, at least she kept the baby." And a terrible person, a Schindler, becomes a hero, by the mere fact of refraining from murder.

Interesting that so many evangelicals seem to have been awakened to faith by facing the choice of murder--and realizing they couldn't. But what a terrible world that so many have that choice.

On Sexual Morality

The most depressing aspect of the whole Bristol Palin issue is the possibility that it's true that even Evangelical Christians don't take sexual morality as a make-or-break issue anymore--that they've been so rotted by "non-judgmentalism," and the soft bigotry of low expectations, that they actually think there's something particularly admirable in the "at least they kept the baby and got married later" situation.

What do you want? A cookie?

Ya know, the sociological and religious arguments in favor of abstinence, pre-marital chastity, etc., are no less valid post-Palin than pre-Palin; "walking the walk of social conservatism" ought to include not just keeping a Down's Syndrome baby but also being an effective moral teacher to your children, such that they keep their legs together until they're married. They're both part of the irreducible minimum--and anything less is Christianity very Lite, and not a little Cafeteria.

American Christianity has been too big on Sin Now, Repent Later for a long time now, and I suppose I shouldn't just think of this as a modern collapse--but the modern collapse of avowed standards, and of practice, even in the evangelical core, is distressing. And this little episode does its bit to erode standards yet further--and to illustrate the dangers of prostituting religion to political causes. Where is the preacher who will say that Bristol sinned, and that her mother should repent to God for her failure as a parent? If the dog doesn't bark, it will tell you a great deal about the rottenness of modern American Christianity.

McCain already has done damage to the nation's moral fabric. He is already causing me to doubt his judgment. And I am not feeling any more happy-happy-joy-joy about Palin.