The Israelis will almost certainly bomb Iran in early December. This will precipitate a series of very interesting responses from the world’s major powers. Our own fearless leader will express dismay that the “process” of infinite palaver and negotiation was not allowed to explore unplumbed depths of futility. The Chinese will be simmering for reasons not entirely clear to me: Iran has been a thorn in their side for decades, yet they seem intent on letting Adhmadinejad’s nuclear embers produce a flame (perhaps only to make the U.S. squirm). The Russians will grumble and immediately set about looking for ways to turn the crisis to their selfish interest. And any thoughtful American conservative worthy of the name will have to ask himself once again why we had to take out Saddam Hussein, the one player on the world stage who had held Iran’s rabid theocracy in check.
Because, after all, nations have no sacred obligation to labor AGAINST their self-interest (even if they need not be quite so Machiavellian as the Russians): the toppling of Saddam’s regime may well have been the beginning of our national suicide. I write these words as an unregenerate isolationist. I no longer reject the word, though it is not of my choice and reflects, I believe, a facile reduction of complex issues. I do not believe that one world order is morally desirable; on the contrary, I believe fervently that the appearance of such a beast would be catastrophic to basic human freedoms, to cultural traditions, and to the life of the spirit. Such an order would eventually melt down all language into an inexpressive babble whose parameters would be defined by the mass’s gross needs and meager abilities. It would inevitably nurture a two-tiered social and economic system reminiscent of medieval feudalism, with a pampered, privileged elite on top and an enormous crowd of water-bearers and street-sweepers below. The drones would sooner rather than later be culled to reduce their strain upon the system, and thereafter they would be carefully bred (at scientifically determined rates) to enhance their serviceability—all of this in the name of the holy trinity, Cost Effectiveness, Environmental Safety, and Social Responsibility. Liberals will stand about uselessly wide-eyed as their more extreme messmates morph into full-fledged “progressives”, complete with an agenda for merging human biology with cybernetics; and at last they, too, will be required either to sign on or check into the Reprogramming Camp.
I do not see a happy Christmas awaiting the end of 2009, in short—but it might be less dismal than I fear if we would at last recoil from the brink of World Oneness. Western Christendom’s disagreements with radical Islam are beyond negotiation, yet to vaporize Islamic terrorists around the world in a preemptive strike would outrage our “live and let live” tradition embedded in the example of Christ. Maniacal cults like the Taliban thrive because they enjoy substantial local support: we have neither the logistical capacity nor the moral right to “change the hearts and minds” of the locals until they suit our taste, any more than our states have the right to take children from their parents because Dad insists that the Second Coming is at hand. As a nation, we have the right and the obligation, rather, to secure and defend our borders. The money we shovel into the pit of “re-conditioning” the minds of Muslims halfway around the world might serve to create a viable state-of-the-art missile defense shield around the North American continent. We would then be exempt from the gravest threats of our adversaries—both those adversaries we can identify today and those who might mysteriously spring up tomorrow. We would not have to menace our ill-wishers with a retaliatory Armageddon probably lethal to the whole planet (Mutually Assured Destruction) in order to stay safe, nor worry about the long-term deterioration and eventual disposal of a dangerous nuclear arsenal. If we could simply swat away any hostile assault, then we could live our lives in peace while defying whatever power round about the world would control us.
It is our own leaders who stand in the way of such a course. Why do they not want us safe? Because, among the progressives, an impermeable defense shield is correctly perceived as destined to remove the most compelling motive for forcing America to join a world order; and because, among the less ideological but more corrupt, the concept of such a shield is usually perceived as displeasing our enemies, in whose pay these blackguards are (or in whose prosperity, shall we say, they have heavily invested). Both types are traitors; and when one mixes in the eternal leavening of outright fools, one finds very few capable and honest representatives in the United States Congress.
Yet if national disgust with both parties continues to rise, we may just reach the critical mass necessary to advance the cause of our own villages and families and freedoms and faith once again, for a while.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Mistrust: A Sacred Duty of the Free Citizen
The question (or line of questioning—but there’s really just one question here) is sometimes put to me, “Why are you so cynical? Why do you not trust people in power to do the right thing? You’re a good person… do you think yourself the only one of his kind? If you vote for good people, will they not do right by the voters as you and I would do? How can we have a democratic government without trust?”
We do not, in fact, have or want a democracy. We have a democratic republic—which means that we elect reliable people periodically to do our will rather than respond to every question of governance with thumbs-up or thumbs-down in a great soccer stadium. People in stadiums often behave with suicidal folly—even sensible people.
This response contains the kernel of an answer to every other question (all of them, as I said, being truly the same question). People are weak and highly corruptible. Their voting behavior has never been so easy to manipulate—or not, at least, since the days when a whole community could actually be crammed into an amphitheater—as now, when images and sounds groomed and vetted multiple times can be broadcast to them during every waking hour, and almost during their sleep. Just because a “leader” is selected from among them does not mean that this figure is mystically cleansed of his or her human fallibility upon vaulting to Olympus. On the contrary, the chosen one is submitted to temptations far in excess of anything known to the common man. The intoxicating thrill of instant power, flattery, celebrity, wealth (for the job brings all the trappings of a royal setting, even if its perks do not immediately make their way into a personal bank account)… these are enough to convince any ordinary man that he has become a god—or that he is GOD.
We should always mistrust our elected representatives, for the same reason that we should always mistrust ourselves. We are not God—none of us. Not even close. Yet we enjoy a truly formidable capacity to rationalize self-serving behavior into its opposite. I have often heard government officials make this argument, or its equivalent: “Of course I cheated on my taxes! Everyone else does, too! Why should I impoverish myself? I need wealth to be re-elected—and I need to be re-elected so that I can do good work for the masses. They need me to be re-elected!” Pitiful… the meltdown of a human soul into the pitch of sophistical self-deception is always a deeply distressing sight.
In a republic, to be sure, we cannot trust no one; but we can and must aspire to trust as few as possible as little as possible for as brief a time as possible. Term limits would be highly desirable, in abstract. If government is so complicated that a freshman rep will require another two terms just to begin to understand which corridors lead where, then the rats’ nest where he transacts business needs to be plowed under and replaced by the simplest of designs. In practice, attempts to limit one person’s influence prove easy to circumvent. Vladimir Putin remains the de facto ruler of Russia, the Left insists that Bush Junior constantly did the bidding of Bush Senior (who both did the bidding of Dick Cheney), and we very nearly elected Bill Clinton’s surrogate to the Whitehouse in the last election. Such subterfuge can lull a healthy mistrust to sleep.
Of imperative importance right now, therefore, is not to press home some sort of rules change which promises to do our work of vigilance for us: the important thing is that we be vigilant. We should particularly not trust people whose behavior throws up such warning signs as these: they force public schooling upon the poor yet send their own children to elite private academies, they railroad a program of public health care through the legislature yet secure special alternatives for themselves, they take over private companies and forcibly cut executive salaries yet vote themselves pay raises and regale themselves with endless lavish junkets to Europe and the Caribbean, they seize control of cherished freedoms to save the natural environment yet create and massive and incessant stream of fuming traffic from Mexico to the U. S., they seek to monitor the air waves dictatorially because talk radio is misleading millions yet decline to prosecute thugs with bludgeons who stake out poling stations… and so on, and so on.
These men and women are whited sepulchers, bright and clean on the outside but carrying the stench of death within. They are hypocrites of the highest magnitude. Many of them deserve to be convicted of treason: some may deserve execution for deliberately plotting to set themselves up as kings over a once free, now subverted people. The level of threat implied in this population of professional shysters and Judases will NOT be assessed by history if the dog has his day—because the dog will write whatever miserable scraps of history are written, and who will read them in a nation of slaves? The threat, rather, must be assessed now, on the spot, and responded to without delay.
Vote these weakling specimens, many of whom have degenerated into profligate evil-doers, out of office. For God’s sake, don’t TRUST them. If some here and there appear to have honored the limited trust necessarily placed in them for a while, then extend that trust for another while. Do not, however, fall in love with a name or a habit of voting. Do not be stupid enough to believe that a repeat-offender lionized for his staying power deserves any more veneration than a Mob boss who has killed off all the competition.
We do not, in fact, have or want a democracy. We have a democratic republic—which means that we elect reliable people periodically to do our will rather than respond to every question of governance with thumbs-up or thumbs-down in a great soccer stadium. People in stadiums often behave with suicidal folly—even sensible people.
This response contains the kernel of an answer to every other question (all of them, as I said, being truly the same question). People are weak and highly corruptible. Their voting behavior has never been so easy to manipulate—or not, at least, since the days when a whole community could actually be crammed into an amphitheater—as now, when images and sounds groomed and vetted multiple times can be broadcast to them during every waking hour, and almost during their sleep. Just because a “leader” is selected from among them does not mean that this figure is mystically cleansed of his or her human fallibility upon vaulting to Olympus. On the contrary, the chosen one is submitted to temptations far in excess of anything known to the common man. The intoxicating thrill of instant power, flattery, celebrity, wealth (for the job brings all the trappings of a royal setting, even if its perks do not immediately make their way into a personal bank account)… these are enough to convince any ordinary man that he has become a god—or that he is GOD.
We should always mistrust our elected representatives, for the same reason that we should always mistrust ourselves. We are not God—none of us. Not even close. Yet we enjoy a truly formidable capacity to rationalize self-serving behavior into its opposite. I have often heard government officials make this argument, or its equivalent: “Of course I cheated on my taxes! Everyone else does, too! Why should I impoverish myself? I need wealth to be re-elected—and I need to be re-elected so that I can do good work for the masses. They need me to be re-elected!” Pitiful… the meltdown of a human soul into the pitch of sophistical self-deception is always a deeply distressing sight.
In a republic, to be sure, we cannot trust no one; but we can and must aspire to trust as few as possible as little as possible for as brief a time as possible. Term limits would be highly desirable, in abstract. If government is so complicated that a freshman rep will require another two terms just to begin to understand which corridors lead where, then the rats’ nest where he transacts business needs to be plowed under and replaced by the simplest of designs. In practice, attempts to limit one person’s influence prove easy to circumvent. Vladimir Putin remains the de facto ruler of Russia, the Left insists that Bush Junior constantly did the bidding of Bush Senior (who both did the bidding of Dick Cheney), and we very nearly elected Bill Clinton’s surrogate to the Whitehouse in the last election. Such subterfuge can lull a healthy mistrust to sleep.
Of imperative importance right now, therefore, is not to press home some sort of rules change which promises to do our work of vigilance for us: the important thing is that we be vigilant. We should particularly not trust people whose behavior throws up such warning signs as these: they force public schooling upon the poor yet send their own children to elite private academies, they railroad a program of public health care through the legislature yet secure special alternatives for themselves, they take over private companies and forcibly cut executive salaries yet vote themselves pay raises and regale themselves with endless lavish junkets to Europe and the Caribbean, they seize control of cherished freedoms to save the natural environment yet create and massive and incessant stream of fuming traffic from Mexico to the U. S., they seek to monitor the air waves dictatorially because talk radio is misleading millions yet decline to prosecute thugs with bludgeons who stake out poling stations… and so on, and so on.
These men and women are whited sepulchers, bright and clean on the outside but carrying the stench of death within. They are hypocrites of the highest magnitude. Many of them deserve to be convicted of treason: some may deserve execution for deliberately plotting to set themselves up as kings over a once free, now subverted people. The level of threat implied in this population of professional shysters and Judases will NOT be assessed by history if the dog has his day—because the dog will write whatever miserable scraps of history are written, and who will read them in a nation of slaves? The threat, rather, must be assessed now, on the spot, and responded to without delay.
Vote these weakling specimens, many of whom have degenerated into profligate evil-doers, out of office. For God’s sake, don’t TRUST them. If some here and there appear to have honored the limited trust necessarily placed in them for a while, then extend that trust for another while. Do not, however, fall in love with a name or a habit of voting. Do not be stupid enough to believe that a repeat-offender lionized for his staying power deserves any more veneration than a Mob boss who has killed off all the competition.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Why Would You Believe That Strangers Want to "Take Care of" You?
Question: what should be done in the case of the person who hasn’t the money to afford health insurance, but who drives a “pimped ride” with extra-large tires, broad spokes, “spinners”—the whole bit representing an investment of at least $60,000? What if the person without coverage owns a wide-screen, high-def TV? What if he or she eats out twice a day, or goes a-gambling at least once a month? What about the person who attends two or three MLB games and as many NFL games per year and also allows him- or herself a trip to the beach over the summer?
I’m outraged at the cost of my health insurance; and yet, I pay far less for it yearly than any of the people above would likely sink into his or her manège during the same twelve months. My family and I choose to deny ourselves several luxuries and frivolities (including all of those just named) so that we may have something which comes closer to a necessity.
In effect, then, we are all (or all of us who pay taxes, which becomes a larger group with every week of the Obama Administration) being confronted with a “luxury subsidy”. We will pay more for insurance in the long run—through taxes—and have less service at the clinic with longer waits so that certain of our brethren may continue to squander their money and leave their families uninsured (i.e., insured by the “public option”).
Truth be told, much of the opposition to insurance companies would have been diffused a couple of years ago if Republicans had been allowed to pass a tax deduction for the self-insured. This initiative was blocked by the Democrat-controlled House, however. Why? Precisely so that a constituency for public health care could be created. As malodorous as Republican leadership was during the Bush years, with Congress sitting quietly by as the executive branch devoured more and more powers not permitted to it by the Constitution, Republicans were at least under the impression (the illusion, some of us were say) that the nation stood in imminent danger. For years, most Democrats have been ruled by no objective more noble than the manufacture of a permanently dependent class which could be relied upon to support at the polls a permanent ruling elite.
The situation has substantial irony. Growing up, I was surrounded by the popular notion (not entirely a myth) that Republicans secured the interests of big business, while Democrats watched out for the little guy. While Republicans labored to ensure that stocks paid nice dividends (a boon to the frugal petite bourgeoisie to which my family belonged—hence not just a service to fat cats), Democrats fought to keep the profit margin from gobbling up shop safety and humane terms of leave. Republicans preached tough love: you can make it if you really try, they argued, and privation will give you the will to try harder. Democrats indicted the homily’s hypocrisy: many of us will NOT make it, they underscored, because we were not born into the affluence and influence which you Republicans take for granted.
It occurs to me that an odd turn-about is evolving right under our noses, as is illustrated especially well by the health care “debate”. Under the Democratic plan, the little guy will in fact be worse off than he is now without any coverage at all. Were he to be carried in red ruin to an emergency room today, our poor schmuck would not be left in the waiting room to bleed out: public funding would cover his immediate needs. Even if his problem were less dramatic—if his child, say, could not afford new glasses—most doctors would cut him a deal on an exam and a pair of specs (contrary to the mercenary picture which our President has painted of the profession). Under every form of revision which has yet been proposed, the same person would face a rationing of care, longer waits, a scarcity of doctors, a bureaucracy-heavy slovenliness of attention, and a stagnant research-and-development sector. Inevitably, rich people would continue to get special treatment—more than ever—whether in the form of jetting to specialists in other countries or simply in that of employing their own unregistered doctors on the sly. When abortion was illegal, rich girls took sudden vacations and came back restored; poor girls bled to death in soiled beds after swallowing some quack’s poison. So it will be in Obama’s Tomorrow.
The little guy doesn’t win in this game—and he isn’t supposed to. Driving about town unemployed in his Cadillac (or whatever “green” equivalent he clunked it in for), he is an insufferable drain upon a system already bankrupt—not merely bankrupt, but deeply in the hole for decades to come. One way or another, he will have to be disposed of. He doesn’t understand this yet: he’s still voting just the way his handlers want him to—and they, for a short while, will pay him off out of the rich man’s pocket. Sooner rather than later, however, he will vote in various ways to abrogate his right to vote. He will make cannon fodder of himself. Those who depend upon others for everything and have only their vote to render in the bargain will at last be stripped of their vote. Waiting interminably at the doctor’s office during a pandemic for a vaccine in short supply is one probable scenario. When those of the poor folk who are ambulatory riot in the streets, the police will cut them down… and then the rich will be charged with calling out the troops, and the elite will carry the poor vote in the last election that ever takes place in this moribund nation, and… and on to a medieval society whose power structure is girded in high-tech chain-mail.
THIS is why we are being precipitated into the abyss of “reform”. It may not happen just yet—there are reasons to believe that many Americans now see through the health-care smoke screen. The gambit will be repeated on another part of the chess board, however. Again and again and again. As I keep writing in this space, do NOT suppose that any group of human beings other than your family will “take care of you” without a hidden agenda. Why would you be so foolish?
I’m outraged at the cost of my health insurance; and yet, I pay far less for it yearly than any of the people above would likely sink into his or her manège during the same twelve months. My family and I choose to deny ourselves several luxuries and frivolities (including all of those just named) so that we may have something which comes closer to a necessity.
In effect, then, we are all (or all of us who pay taxes, which becomes a larger group with every week of the Obama Administration) being confronted with a “luxury subsidy”. We will pay more for insurance in the long run—through taxes—and have less service at the clinic with longer waits so that certain of our brethren may continue to squander their money and leave their families uninsured (i.e., insured by the “public option”).
Truth be told, much of the opposition to insurance companies would have been diffused a couple of years ago if Republicans had been allowed to pass a tax deduction for the self-insured. This initiative was blocked by the Democrat-controlled House, however. Why? Precisely so that a constituency for public health care could be created. As malodorous as Republican leadership was during the Bush years, with Congress sitting quietly by as the executive branch devoured more and more powers not permitted to it by the Constitution, Republicans were at least under the impression (the illusion, some of us were say) that the nation stood in imminent danger. For years, most Democrats have been ruled by no objective more noble than the manufacture of a permanently dependent class which could be relied upon to support at the polls a permanent ruling elite.
The situation has substantial irony. Growing up, I was surrounded by the popular notion (not entirely a myth) that Republicans secured the interests of big business, while Democrats watched out for the little guy. While Republicans labored to ensure that stocks paid nice dividends (a boon to the frugal petite bourgeoisie to which my family belonged—hence not just a service to fat cats), Democrats fought to keep the profit margin from gobbling up shop safety and humane terms of leave. Republicans preached tough love: you can make it if you really try, they argued, and privation will give you the will to try harder. Democrats indicted the homily’s hypocrisy: many of us will NOT make it, they underscored, because we were not born into the affluence and influence which you Republicans take for granted.
It occurs to me that an odd turn-about is evolving right under our noses, as is illustrated especially well by the health care “debate”. Under the Democratic plan, the little guy will in fact be worse off than he is now without any coverage at all. Were he to be carried in red ruin to an emergency room today, our poor schmuck would not be left in the waiting room to bleed out: public funding would cover his immediate needs. Even if his problem were less dramatic—if his child, say, could not afford new glasses—most doctors would cut him a deal on an exam and a pair of specs (contrary to the mercenary picture which our President has painted of the profession). Under every form of revision which has yet been proposed, the same person would face a rationing of care, longer waits, a scarcity of doctors, a bureaucracy-heavy slovenliness of attention, and a stagnant research-and-development sector. Inevitably, rich people would continue to get special treatment—more than ever—whether in the form of jetting to specialists in other countries or simply in that of employing their own unregistered doctors on the sly. When abortion was illegal, rich girls took sudden vacations and came back restored; poor girls bled to death in soiled beds after swallowing some quack’s poison. So it will be in Obama’s Tomorrow.
The little guy doesn’t win in this game—and he isn’t supposed to. Driving about town unemployed in his Cadillac (or whatever “green” equivalent he clunked it in for), he is an insufferable drain upon a system already bankrupt—not merely bankrupt, but deeply in the hole for decades to come. One way or another, he will have to be disposed of. He doesn’t understand this yet: he’s still voting just the way his handlers want him to—and they, for a short while, will pay him off out of the rich man’s pocket. Sooner rather than later, however, he will vote in various ways to abrogate his right to vote. He will make cannon fodder of himself. Those who depend upon others for everything and have only their vote to render in the bargain will at last be stripped of their vote. Waiting interminably at the doctor’s office during a pandemic for a vaccine in short supply is one probable scenario. When those of the poor folk who are ambulatory riot in the streets, the police will cut them down… and then the rich will be charged with calling out the troops, and the elite will carry the poor vote in the last election that ever takes place in this moribund nation, and… and on to a medieval society whose power structure is girded in high-tech chain-mail.
THIS is why we are being precipitated into the abyss of “reform”. It may not happen just yet—there are reasons to believe that many Americans now see through the health-care smoke screen. The gambit will be repeated on another part of the chess board, however. Again and again and again. As I keep writing in this space, do NOT suppose that any group of human beings other than your family will “take care of you” without a hidden agenda. Why would you be so foolish?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Spirituality and Government Compulsion Are of Two Houses
There is no holy obligation to create a government which enforces holy obligations. An Islamist society may take a different view if things; but for Christian ministers to throw whatever authority they may yet have (and they’re using it up at gas-guzzling rates) in support of “Obama-care” is insufferably arrogant. Be clear about this. The feasibility of providing a doc-on-demand for every resident, legal and illegal, of a society whose public coffers have long been empty may strike some of the fanciful as less dubious than it does those of us who can handle a column of figures. (After all, there are still so many RICH PEOPLE around!) Quite beyond practical issues, however, the “call to Christians” in this instance is unpardonably exploitative on the part of an ever more cynical and unprincipled administration and deplorably pompous on the part of self-styled men of God.
To feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and cure the sick insofar as is within one’s means is incumbent upon all Christians (though “the poor are always with you”: the utopian crusade to eliminate poverty, far from reflecting faith, bespeaks the secularist’s need for “results”). An obligation whose fulfillment is enforced, however, ceases to be a matter of choice and loses all its dutiful character. A robot is not “good” because it “bravely” defuses a bomb. It has no choice in the matter—it is programmed. Likewise, people whose contributions to the poor are extorted at gunpoint have not become charitable; they might well be deemed more morally admirable, indeed, for choosing to be shot, since in doing so they would at least assert themselves as creatures of free will. But we who hold the gun, you may say (I hope not—but someone may say) accomplish our moral duty by making those of ample means surrender a little wealth to the have-nots. This is a ghastly assertion, for the following reasons: in aiming the gun, you not only sacrifice time you might freely have spent yourself upon laboring for the needy (by staging garage sales, say, or holding raffles); you also and PRIMARILY (from a spiritual perspective) impose your chosen concern for the needy upon another free being—you deprive that other being of the freedom to struggle with his duties, to decide upon and live with his choices, and (in short) to grow in spirit. You have taken away what God has given… and who are YOU, little worm, to do so?
I have no great use for riches or love for the rich. I do not subscribe to the theory that all the rich have reached their state by being virtuously energetic. Maybe so, maybe not: energy is not in itself a virtue—one can be energetically deceptive or merciless. By the same token, however, I do not consider myself capable of foreseeing what good a rich man may do with his lucre if left alone. He may fund research into MS or build a plant which cheaply desalinates water. Who am I to force upon him and his like the creation of a vast bureaucracy dedicated only to a single repetitive activity as a string of ants is dedicated to carrying crumbs to the anthill? Or who am I to say that such force would execute God’s will?
If Obama’s phalanx of conscience-pricking ministers is so comfortably righteous in thus delivering God’s verdict on public policy, why does the same group not insist that the President outlaw abortion? Are these holy men more confident that welfare queens have a God-given right to be treated for obesity from my son’s college fund than that God intends for babies to enjoy the right of birth? Surely God wants children to have two parents; all indications are that the products of single-parent households run a greater risk of having a poor education, a low income, a higher stress level, and a prison record. Why does this circle of luminaries not lobby Obama to criminalize extra-marital sex and divorce? Why not ban TV shows and movies which celebrate violence? Why not dissolve the military and dismount all our defensive weapons systems (if we still have any)? Surely Jesus would never have approved of the gun, the tank, or the missile…
The truth is that not one of said ministers is capable of comprehending the complexity of the choices which sin and death have visited upon this world. No mortal is—but secular utopians in the sheep’s clothing of the pulpit least of all. Indeed, it is evident that many of these soi-disant oracles enjoy rather generous salaries themselves (not to mention all the perks of the job) and could really do much more to help the needy out of their own pocket. How about starting by sending the kids to public school and doing away with conferences, vacations, and nights on the town?
Whited-sepulcher hypocrites and grand-standing fools, one and all. God deserves much better servants… but the President couldn’t ask for a more star-struck bunch of puppets.
To feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and cure the sick insofar as is within one’s means is incumbent upon all Christians (though “the poor are always with you”: the utopian crusade to eliminate poverty, far from reflecting faith, bespeaks the secularist’s need for “results”). An obligation whose fulfillment is enforced, however, ceases to be a matter of choice and loses all its dutiful character. A robot is not “good” because it “bravely” defuses a bomb. It has no choice in the matter—it is programmed. Likewise, people whose contributions to the poor are extorted at gunpoint have not become charitable; they might well be deemed more morally admirable, indeed, for choosing to be shot, since in doing so they would at least assert themselves as creatures of free will. But we who hold the gun, you may say (I hope not—but someone may say) accomplish our moral duty by making those of ample means surrender a little wealth to the have-nots. This is a ghastly assertion, for the following reasons: in aiming the gun, you not only sacrifice time you might freely have spent yourself upon laboring for the needy (by staging garage sales, say, or holding raffles); you also and PRIMARILY (from a spiritual perspective) impose your chosen concern for the needy upon another free being—you deprive that other being of the freedom to struggle with his duties, to decide upon and live with his choices, and (in short) to grow in spirit. You have taken away what God has given… and who are YOU, little worm, to do so?
I have no great use for riches or love for the rich. I do not subscribe to the theory that all the rich have reached their state by being virtuously energetic. Maybe so, maybe not: energy is not in itself a virtue—one can be energetically deceptive or merciless. By the same token, however, I do not consider myself capable of foreseeing what good a rich man may do with his lucre if left alone. He may fund research into MS or build a plant which cheaply desalinates water. Who am I to force upon him and his like the creation of a vast bureaucracy dedicated only to a single repetitive activity as a string of ants is dedicated to carrying crumbs to the anthill? Or who am I to say that such force would execute God’s will?
If Obama’s phalanx of conscience-pricking ministers is so comfortably righteous in thus delivering God’s verdict on public policy, why does the same group not insist that the President outlaw abortion? Are these holy men more confident that welfare queens have a God-given right to be treated for obesity from my son’s college fund than that God intends for babies to enjoy the right of birth? Surely God wants children to have two parents; all indications are that the products of single-parent households run a greater risk of having a poor education, a low income, a higher stress level, and a prison record. Why does this circle of luminaries not lobby Obama to criminalize extra-marital sex and divorce? Why not ban TV shows and movies which celebrate violence? Why not dissolve the military and dismount all our defensive weapons systems (if we still have any)? Surely Jesus would never have approved of the gun, the tank, or the missile…
The truth is that not one of said ministers is capable of comprehending the complexity of the choices which sin and death have visited upon this world. No mortal is—but secular utopians in the sheep’s clothing of the pulpit least of all. Indeed, it is evident that many of these soi-disant oracles enjoy rather generous salaries themselves (not to mention all the perks of the job) and could really do much more to help the needy out of their own pocket. How about starting by sending the kids to public school and doing away with conferences, vacations, and nights on the town?
Whited-sepulcher hypocrites and grand-standing fools, one and all. God deserves much better servants… but the President couldn’t ask for a more star-struck bunch of puppets.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Ignore the Conspiracy to Ridicule Conspiracies
I seem to see public figures lining up like fighters on an aircraft carrier lately to disavow their belief in any sort of conspiracy theory—always in preface to their describing a possible conspiracy. “I’m certainly not a conspiracy theorist, but…” It must be time, then, for me to return to a well-worn hobby-horse.
To allow certain shills for sweeping public policy initiatives to convince you that only gullible fools ever entertain the suspicion of a conspiracy is to renounce your commitment to serious thinking.
No large corporation has ever lowered prices to knock smaller competitors out of business, right? That would be a conspiracy—and only an idiot believes in conspiracies.
No two or three owners of sports franchises have ever colluded to withhold whopping millions from a free agent so as to discourage others like him. No MLB or NFL schedule has ever been arranged so that popular, high-profile teams would play the most games during television primetime. No cereal company has ever placed cartoon figures in its flakes at just the time when its corporate affiliate was releasing a movie about said cartoon figures.
No mechanic has ever put deficient parts in a car so that the owner would soon need to bring it back into the shop. No product has ever been designed to wear out sooner than its predecessors so that consumers would have to purchase more of the same product earlier. No auto manufacturing company has ever resisted engineering a more fuel-efficient engine because its corporate first cousin just happens to sell oil.
When local politicians who own land just outside the city limits become active in raising city taxes, it’s just an accident if the value of their property shoots up as the wealthy flee to the suburbs. When state legislators introduce a bill designating tax dollars to send the physically challenged to a special summer camp, it’s pure coincidence if Senator X’s son-in-law owns said camp.
No young woman ever married a wealthy older man with the intent of divorcing him months later and legally walking off with half his fortune: that’s just bad luck. No struggling young attorney ever married a wealthy older woman prior to embarking upon a political career: that’s just good luck.
In short, life is embedded in conspiracies. To say that the CIA launched 9/11 is infantile. To say that there’s more to the JFK assassination than the Warren Commission declared is less so. To say that FDR prodded the Japanese into hostilities because the country didn’t want to enter a war with Germany—or that Churchill (then with the admiralty) knew that U-boats were in the vicinity of the Lusitania and did nothing to protect her, hoping that a catastrophe would bring the States into WW I… I don’t know. Neither do you. It’s not beyond belief, because life in general—and politics in particular—works this way. The people who encourage us to let conspiracies grow unremarked by jeering every time someone raises a suspicion (“You think Obama WANTS the economy to collapse? You must believe that the army captured aliens at Roswell, too!”) are themselves part of a conspiracy… or perhaps they are just the morons (to use the phrase of one such railing hack) that they charge us with being. Indeed, the President himself has implied over the last month that doctors, insurance agents, police officers, and talk-show hosts all participate routinely in vast conspiracies. It seems that the skullduggery is only the work of aliens when it’s not viewed from your side of the aisle.
The other night I heard a certain Mr. Cohen (I cannot confirm that it was Richard Cohen of Florida—the name turns out to be common in government) glibly dismissing every objection about the “health care reform” bill raised by Greta van Susteren with a “not true”. A word or two to reassure voters that this big-city phone book of legalese does not contain the abominations about which they have been warned… that’s should do it, right? To Greta’s objection that the bill’s language was too convoluted for one to know WHAT was encoded therein, he answered that the courts would tear to ribbons anything clearly, plainly phrased. To her question about his recent townhall meeting, he remarked that it was not representative—that two-thirds of his constituency was African American, while only about 5% of the faces at his meeting were black. He concluded by stressing the need for citizens to trust their representatives.
This all deserves to be mounted and framed in a Rogues’ Gallery. Within about three minutes, one of our Congressmen 1) sweepingly denied the presence of several items in the bill while admitting that its obscurantism was almost impenetrable, 2) further admitted that our courts are likely to shoot down anything not worded with enough lubricity to mean everything and nothing, 3) further admitted that fair representation to his mind equates to tabulating various skin colors in attendance (as opposed, say, to prioritizing public spirit and civic concern), and 4) advised his electors that they should resume their blinders while he and his mates go about their very complicated and arcane business.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of atmosphere in which conspiracy would thrive, does it? “Trust me…” now, where else did we hear those two words during the past few years?
To allow certain shills for sweeping public policy initiatives to convince you that only gullible fools ever entertain the suspicion of a conspiracy is to renounce your commitment to serious thinking.
No large corporation has ever lowered prices to knock smaller competitors out of business, right? That would be a conspiracy—and only an idiot believes in conspiracies.
No two or three owners of sports franchises have ever colluded to withhold whopping millions from a free agent so as to discourage others like him. No MLB or NFL schedule has ever been arranged so that popular, high-profile teams would play the most games during television primetime. No cereal company has ever placed cartoon figures in its flakes at just the time when its corporate affiliate was releasing a movie about said cartoon figures.
No mechanic has ever put deficient parts in a car so that the owner would soon need to bring it back into the shop. No product has ever been designed to wear out sooner than its predecessors so that consumers would have to purchase more of the same product earlier. No auto manufacturing company has ever resisted engineering a more fuel-efficient engine because its corporate first cousin just happens to sell oil.
When local politicians who own land just outside the city limits become active in raising city taxes, it’s just an accident if the value of their property shoots up as the wealthy flee to the suburbs. When state legislators introduce a bill designating tax dollars to send the physically challenged to a special summer camp, it’s pure coincidence if Senator X’s son-in-law owns said camp.
No young woman ever married a wealthy older man with the intent of divorcing him months later and legally walking off with half his fortune: that’s just bad luck. No struggling young attorney ever married a wealthy older woman prior to embarking upon a political career: that’s just good luck.
In short, life is embedded in conspiracies. To say that the CIA launched 9/11 is infantile. To say that there’s more to the JFK assassination than the Warren Commission declared is less so. To say that FDR prodded the Japanese into hostilities because the country didn’t want to enter a war with Germany—or that Churchill (then with the admiralty) knew that U-boats were in the vicinity of the Lusitania and did nothing to protect her, hoping that a catastrophe would bring the States into WW I… I don’t know. Neither do you. It’s not beyond belief, because life in general—and politics in particular—works this way. The people who encourage us to let conspiracies grow unremarked by jeering every time someone raises a suspicion (“You think Obama WANTS the economy to collapse? You must believe that the army captured aliens at Roswell, too!”) are themselves part of a conspiracy… or perhaps they are just the morons (to use the phrase of one such railing hack) that they charge us with being. Indeed, the President himself has implied over the last month that doctors, insurance agents, police officers, and talk-show hosts all participate routinely in vast conspiracies. It seems that the skullduggery is only the work of aliens when it’s not viewed from your side of the aisle.
The other night I heard a certain Mr. Cohen (I cannot confirm that it was Richard Cohen of Florida—the name turns out to be common in government) glibly dismissing every objection about the “health care reform” bill raised by Greta van Susteren with a “not true”. A word or two to reassure voters that this big-city phone book of legalese does not contain the abominations about which they have been warned… that’s should do it, right? To Greta’s objection that the bill’s language was too convoluted for one to know WHAT was encoded therein, he answered that the courts would tear to ribbons anything clearly, plainly phrased. To her question about his recent townhall meeting, he remarked that it was not representative—that two-thirds of his constituency was African American, while only about 5% of the faces at his meeting were black. He concluded by stressing the need for citizens to trust their representatives.
This all deserves to be mounted and framed in a Rogues’ Gallery. Within about three minutes, one of our Congressmen 1) sweepingly denied the presence of several items in the bill while admitting that its obscurantism was almost impenetrable, 2) further admitted that our courts are likely to shoot down anything not worded with enough lubricity to mean everything and nothing, 3) further admitted that fair representation to his mind equates to tabulating various skin colors in attendance (as opposed, say, to prioritizing public spirit and civic concern), and 4) advised his electors that they should resume their blinders while he and his mates go about their very complicated and arcane business.
This doesn’t sound like the kind of atmosphere in which conspiracy would thrive, does it? “Trust me…” now, where else did we hear those two words during the past few years?
Friday, July 31, 2009
Neo-Cons Are Just the Newest Con
I received a submission for Praesidium early this summer from a previous contributor who attached certain odd claims to the essay’s history. It was under consideration elsewhere, he wrote… yet I could use it if I wished. He had frequently “loaned” it to colleagues so that they might employ it in their classes… yet the footnoting was incomplete and improper (which, admittedly, could explain why it was forever “under consideration” elsewhere). The piece wasn’t at all lacking in merit, though its subject has been well worked over during the past decade: the ascent of the sixties generation to power in the academy, and the consequent veering of the curriculum—especially in the Humanities—toward a loathing of everything Western and canonical. My journal enjoys a 501c3 status, so I seek to preserve its pages from any appearance of narrow political partisanship (the reason behind my removing this column from the site of The Center for Literate Values, as well). I was a bit uneasy about some of this submission’s generalizations, therefore. Yet what most troubled me was its conclusion. Because of the academy’s bias, “newly minted Ph.D.s” (a condescending phrase used consistently by the author and consistently mis-punctuated) should be tutored upon graduation in a kind of summer school run by such worthies as… the essay’s author. The goal: to introduce them properly to those canonical Western works which they had been raised to detest at a distance.
Now, if the author were right about the academy’s bias (as he most surely is), why would he, without taking leave of his senses, suppose that its ruling elite would collaborate in this re-programming of “newly minted Ph.D.s”? You’d have to read the essay for yourself—but I promise you that it concealed no hint of Swiftean irony. And a re-programming is precisely what the author had in mind, and what he described. If the intellectualist Left is to be deplored for superciliously feeding “correct beliefs” to the benighted—and the author’s essay had cited the intractably arrogant Richard Rorty in this regard to fine effect—then why would the Right not be equally deplorable for using the same tactic? The thinker dedicated to Western ideals is supposed to hold, like Socrates, that the truth will out: in this case, that hungry young minds will inevitably read great books of their own volition, DESPITE and not BECAUSE OF the hemlock waved in their face. Though this formulation is naïve if stretched to an optimism about our ailing culture’s recovery within familiar boundaries, I and most of my collaborators at The Center are convinced that the great books will again float to the top after the United States has fragmented into three or four countries, after China’s Christians have successfully martyred themselves to bring down an inhuman tyranny, etc., etc. Goodness will not die, any more than it will be revived by chanting a catechism under the shadow of the master’s stick.
In short, I have found something faintly but irrepressibly presumptuous about this contributor throughout the brief history of my dealings with him. The friction between us finally produced sparks this past week. As I prepared to take the journal’s summer edition to the printer, I received a file in my e-mail which, I was assured, was a completely rewritten version of the “great books” essay. I laboriously worked through the same old passages, inserting hyphens, unraveling clumsy gestures at foreign languages, and trying to make the footnotes respectable (I at last took the blame for them upon myself in an editorial aside where I apologized for having “rushed” the author) without finding anything new besides a single long citation. Yet I preserved my humor. The author seemed willing, in a friendly overture, to exchange some e-mailed thoughts about how his neo-conservatism differed from my “paleo” variety, and I obliged him with thoughts similar to those I have shared in this column. His response… hmm. Difficult to gather the strands. Something about how big cities are exciting and people in the boondocks are all rubes. The Unibomber, I was invited to observe, was a withdrawn survivalist (and, of course, we know that urban centers never produce mass-murderers!). If we do not carry our technology and progress into the future, we shall be outstripped by the Axis of Evil in nanobots and rockets—and then the world will be ever so much worse than we would have made it!
And so on. I responded that I was busy freezing my apricot harvest and plotting my next mass-murder, and signed off.
I write of this annoying encounter here in my blog because I want my readers to be keenly aware that “conservatism” need not be a bad word—that, to be precise, there are false conservatives of the “neo” variety among us who possess all the bad qualities of liberals and none of the endearing ones. The liberal believes that we should not develop a machine or technique further simply because the next step is clear and feasible—that we should weigh, rather, the human cost of that step. So does the true conservative. The liberal recognizes that people are more satisfied living in relative harmony with nature, their routine measured in footsteps and the reach of an arm, than living atop a high-tech house of cards precariously holding natural forces at bay. So does the true conservative. The liberal believes that the world’s various tribes have an inalienable right to preserve their time-honored customs free of constant assault from satellite-purveyed images of pornography and whimsical mayhem… or so the liberal would say, if he or she had a true conservative to help out with the wording (for liberals become hopelessly perplexed by the paradox of “cultural freedom”, which is nothing less than the freedom to restrict things like sexual expression).
On all of these fronts—and on numerous others—the real adversary of the liberal who has not yet run amuck in a chaotic hurly-burly of geometrically multiplying freedoms and of the true, old-time (= paleo) conservative is that slithy tove, the neo-conservative, a creature whose very name is a pulsing contradiction. The neo-con, like my erstwhile correspondent, relishes mocking and railing. He calls it “argument”, and he congratulates himself upon his proficiency at it. Everyone who divines a conspiracy behind some matter of public policy, for instance, is the precise equal of the crackpot who thinks that the CIA manufactured the mayhem of 9/11. Yet when he sees such moral equivalency on the Left, the neo-con leaps into the breach of logic’s battered wall like a superhero. My correspondent’s essay remarked, quite rightly, that one cannot have a serious discussion with a liberal who equates Joe McCarthy with Joseph Stalin. Are the prospects of serious exchange any better with someone who tries to sweep laterally from Wendell Berry to the Unibomber?
Global warming may be the biggest boondoggle of our time. I hope to write more on the subject soon: I most certainly am convinced that the Left has exploited fear of climate change to secure more political power. Yet the true conservative does NOT believe that human beings are better off spending hours of every day zooming about expensively and without roots to countless venues of work and play, much to the detriment of neighborhoods, urban architecture, and profound personal ties. The proper argument against car culture is not that it’s poisoning our air—it may or may not be—but that it poisons our soul; and to affirm that we must nevertheless keep driving down this road because a) we can’t turn back and b) other nations will amass car-collars if we do not is a pitiable mush of logical contradiction and moral nihilism. If technology enslaves us to certain courses of action, then it cannot be bettering us as beings of freedom, BY DEFINITION; and if we have backed ourselves into a corner wherein exploitation of our fellow beings is the only means of saving our children from starvation, then how could we not be better off growing the food we need on our own land?
My cultured metropolitan northeastern correspondent, of course, knows that the olives in his cocktails are not yet all artificially assembled in China: he knows that peons somewhere are sweating under the sun so that he and his gilded entourage can hatch witticisms about deconstruction around the penthouse pool over caviar. The extent of his concern about the peons’ humanity is that all peons around the world should be allowed to compete with each other for a dime a day. There you have him, my liberal friends: the quintessence of what you loathe. But please know that you do not loathe him more than I do.
Now, if the author were right about the academy’s bias (as he most surely is), why would he, without taking leave of his senses, suppose that its ruling elite would collaborate in this re-programming of “newly minted Ph.D.s”? You’d have to read the essay for yourself—but I promise you that it concealed no hint of Swiftean irony. And a re-programming is precisely what the author had in mind, and what he described. If the intellectualist Left is to be deplored for superciliously feeding “correct beliefs” to the benighted—and the author’s essay had cited the intractably arrogant Richard Rorty in this regard to fine effect—then why would the Right not be equally deplorable for using the same tactic? The thinker dedicated to Western ideals is supposed to hold, like Socrates, that the truth will out: in this case, that hungry young minds will inevitably read great books of their own volition, DESPITE and not BECAUSE OF the hemlock waved in their face. Though this formulation is naïve if stretched to an optimism about our ailing culture’s recovery within familiar boundaries, I and most of my collaborators at The Center are convinced that the great books will again float to the top after the United States has fragmented into three or four countries, after China’s Christians have successfully martyred themselves to bring down an inhuman tyranny, etc., etc. Goodness will not die, any more than it will be revived by chanting a catechism under the shadow of the master’s stick.
In short, I have found something faintly but irrepressibly presumptuous about this contributor throughout the brief history of my dealings with him. The friction between us finally produced sparks this past week. As I prepared to take the journal’s summer edition to the printer, I received a file in my e-mail which, I was assured, was a completely rewritten version of the “great books” essay. I laboriously worked through the same old passages, inserting hyphens, unraveling clumsy gestures at foreign languages, and trying to make the footnotes respectable (I at last took the blame for them upon myself in an editorial aside where I apologized for having “rushed” the author) without finding anything new besides a single long citation. Yet I preserved my humor. The author seemed willing, in a friendly overture, to exchange some e-mailed thoughts about how his neo-conservatism differed from my “paleo” variety, and I obliged him with thoughts similar to those I have shared in this column. His response… hmm. Difficult to gather the strands. Something about how big cities are exciting and people in the boondocks are all rubes. The Unibomber, I was invited to observe, was a withdrawn survivalist (and, of course, we know that urban centers never produce mass-murderers!). If we do not carry our technology and progress into the future, we shall be outstripped by the Axis of Evil in nanobots and rockets—and then the world will be ever so much worse than we would have made it!
And so on. I responded that I was busy freezing my apricot harvest and plotting my next mass-murder, and signed off.
I write of this annoying encounter here in my blog because I want my readers to be keenly aware that “conservatism” need not be a bad word—that, to be precise, there are false conservatives of the “neo” variety among us who possess all the bad qualities of liberals and none of the endearing ones. The liberal believes that we should not develop a machine or technique further simply because the next step is clear and feasible—that we should weigh, rather, the human cost of that step. So does the true conservative. The liberal recognizes that people are more satisfied living in relative harmony with nature, their routine measured in footsteps and the reach of an arm, than living atop a high-tech house of cards precariously holding natural forces at bay. So does the true conservative. The liberal believes that the world’s various tribes have an inalienable right to preserve their time-honored customs free of constant assault from satellite-purveyed images of pornography and whimsical mayhem… or so the liberal would say, if he or she had a true conservative to help out with the wording (for liberals become hopelessly perplexed by the paradox of “cultural freedom”, which is nothing less than the freedom to restrict things like sexual expression).
On all of these fronts—and on numerous others—the real adversary of the liberal who has not yet run amuck in a chaotic hurly-burly of geometrically multiplying freedoms and of the true, old-time (= paleo) conservative is that slithy tove, the neo-conservative, a creature whose very name is a pulsing contradiction. The neo-con, like my erstwhile correspondent, relishes mocking and railing. He calls it “argument”, and he congratulates himself upon his proficiency at it. Everyone who divines a conspiracy behind some matter of public policy, for instance, is the precise equal of the crackpot who thinks that the CIA manufactured the mayhem of 9/11. Yet when he sees such moral equivalency on the Left, the neo-con leaps into the breach of logic’s battered wall like a superhero. My correspondent’s essay remarked, quite rightly, that one cannot have a serious discussion with a liberal who equates Joe McCarthy with Joseph Stalin. Are the prospects of serious exchange any better with someone who tries to sweep laterally from Wendell Berry to the Unibomber?
Global warming may be the biggest boondoggle of our time. I hope to write more on the subject soon: I most certainly am convinced that the Left has exploited fear of climate change to secure more political power. Yet the true conservative does NOT believe that human beings are better off spending hours of every day zooming about expensively and without roots to countless venues of work and play, much to the detriment of neighborhoods, urban architecture, and profound personal ties. The proper argument against car culture is not that it’s poisoning our air—it may or may not be—but that it poisons our soul; and to affirm that we must nevertheless keep driving down this road because a) we can’t turn back and b) other nations will amass car-collars if we do not is a pitiable mush of logical contradiction and moral nihilism. If technology enslaves us to certain courses of action, then it cannot be bettering us as beings of freedom, BY DEFINITION; and if we have backed ourselves into a corner wherein exploitation of our fellow beings is the only means of saving our children from starvation, then how could we not be better off growing the food we need on our own land?
My cultured metropolitan northeastern correspondent, of course, knows that the olives in his cocktails are not yet all artificially assembled in China: he knows that peons somewhere are sweating under the sun so that he and his gilded entourage can hatch witticisms about deconstruction around the penthouse pool over caviar. The extent of his concern about the peons’ humanity is that all peons around the world should be allowed to compete with each other for a dime a day. There you have him, my liberal friends: the quintessence of what you loathe. But please know that you do not loathe him more than I do.
Friday, July 24, 2009
News Flash for Professor Gates: Life Is Hard for All of Us
A couple of white cops in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pound on the door of a residence in an upscale section of town. A black man answers. They immediately assume that his skin is the wrong color to belong in this setting, and they demand to see identification. Having been satisfied on this point, they nevertheless insist that the poor man step outside—and once they have induced him to forsake the relative safety behind his threshold, they cuff him for disorderly conduct and haul him down to the station.
This is approximately the sequence of events which the President of the United States and his media minions project of the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., last week. The images are incredibly naïve. Consider some of the facts either scarcely mentioned or wholly ignored by the media menagerie (including FOX’s grandstanding “moderate”, Shepherd Smith)—facts, I stress, available to any adult possessed of common sense and requiring no access to police records.
a) A neighbor reported a stranger breaking into and entering Gates’s house: the two cops had to assume that the person they encountered inside might well be there illegally, since he had not been recognized by someone who lived next-door. At this point, any qualified and sane officer would adopt a “ready for anything” posture: no one disputes that the house had been entered forcibly.
b) Gates produced two forms of identification—but billfold debris is dubious proof that someone OWNS A HOUSE. A forged address could have been transposed upon an otherwise valid i.d. rather easily, the i.d.’s carrier may have reported his address falsely when registering, the carrier may have been a former resident now denied access by the owner, etc. How frequent are such cases? I don’t know—and neither do you, and neither does President Obama. (But I DO know that they are more frequent in university towns, having lived in many myself.) Police protocol, I would hope, requires that a suspect step outside under such conditions. If he were allowed to remain in the house while the contention that he was said house’s owner was further verified by computer, and if he were in fact a criminal, he might turn and flee, summon an accomplice for help, secure a hidden weapon for deadly use, etc., etc.
c) Gates appears to have barked to the officers almost at once, “You’re only doing this because I’m a black man!” If I were a cop, I would take this kind of remark—with all its innuendo of impending lawsuit and career-ending uproar—as a malefactor’s gambit to back me away from performing my duty. After all, Gates DID BREAK INTO HIS HOUSE. He should most certainly have appreciated that he had placed himself in a delicate situation, and have shown enough intelligence to recognize that his innocence was far from transparent—either to the police or to his neighbors. Indeed, one would have thought that a Harvard professor would possess enough sense to alert the neighbor adjoining whatever door he intended to pry open of his harmless design. Well, maybe not… not these days.
d) If the two cops had indeed backed off after being greeted at the door by an indignant and belligerently BLACK man, and if it later turned out that the man was indeed an intruder and had walked off with Professor Gates’s irreplaceable files, documents, and research, the two hapless men in blue would forever after have been branded nincompoops, at the very least—and probably also accused of half-investigating a crime in progress once they found that black people were involved.
The level of demagogy instantly reached by these trifling events will not help race relations in the United States. If the Cambridge police “behaved stupidly”, as the President told the world, then the President himself behaved disingenuously in seizing upon an incident whose details were an utter mystery to him in order to preach the sermon, yet again, Black Men Can’t Get a Fair Shake. Most of us have heard this homily too many times. I myself have devoted countless hours in my teaching career to giving certain students a little extra tutelage because, through no fault of their own, they were raised and educated in an impoverished environment. If they had the will and the wits to better themselves, I found the time. I have just this summer, however, watched from ring-side as a very competent female coach lost her job due to some patently trumped-up complaints that appeared in her file quite late in the school year (after most of us had left for the summer) and all at once. The gist of every charge? That she didn’t give her black players as much consideration as the whites. This is the button you push first when you want to make trouble, and everyone knows it—including the white males who jettisoned the unfortunate woman from their department.
Let’s get this straight. All different kinds of people have life hard for all different kinds of reason: short men, tall women, the overweight, the homely, the visually impaired, the deformed, the soft-spoken, the sensitive, the shy, the deeply traumatized, the unlettered, the over-educated, and—perhaps most of all—the punctiliously honest. Any one of these “afflictions” could be, in certain circumstances, a far worse handicap to professional and social success than having dark skin, which has indeed become a clear asset in certain circumstances (as the President well knows). People of Caucasian and Asian provenance are growing very weary of hearing people of African descent insist that they need and deserve special favors to make their way. In fact, I know personally of several African-Americans who have tired of being associated with this humiliating refrain; but they, of course, run the risk of being called “race traitors” if they speak up, since they stand in the way of unlimited freebees.
I tell you in all candor: if I ever have to break into my own house, and if a squad car pulls into my driveway five minutes later, I intend to be very, VERY obliging. I will have put a couple of human beings in a most awkward position—people who hope to see their children again later that evening. Professor Gates, whose work I have enjoyed on occasion, behaved stupidly. He needs to dig out an anthology of the ancient Greek poets, if one is yet to be found on Harvard’s campus, and look up Mimnermus. “Oude tis estin / anthropon ho Zeus me kaka polla didoi”—“There is no one among men to whom Zeus does not give many miseries.”
This is approximately the sequence of events which the President of the United States and his media minions project of the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., last week. The images are incredibly naïve. Consider some of the facts either scarcely mentioned or wholly ignored by the media menagerie (including FOX’s grandstanding “moderate”, Shepherd Smith)—facts, I stress, available to any adult possessed of common sense and requiring no access to police records.
a) A neighbor reported a stranger breaking into and entering Gates’s house: the two cops had to assume that the person they encountered inside might well be there illegally, since he had not been recognized by someone who lived next-door. At this point, any qualified and sane officer would adopt a “ready for anything” posture: no one disputes that the house had been entered forcibly.
b) Gates produced two forms of identification—but billfold debris is dubious proof that someone OWNS A HOUSE. A forged address could have been transposed upon an otherwise valid i.d. rather easily, the i.d.’s carrier may have reported his address falsely when registering, the carrier may have been a former resident now denied access by the owner, etc. How frequent are such cases? I don’t know—and neither do you, and neither does President Obama. (But I DO know that they are more frequent in university towns, having lived in many myself.) Police protocol, I would hope, requires that a suspect step outside under such conditions. If he were allowed to remain in the house while the contention that he was said house’s owner was further verified by computer, and if he were in fact a criminal, he might turn and flee, summon an accomplice for help, secure a hidden weapon for deadly use, etc., etc.
c) Gates appears to have barked to the officers almost at once, “You’re only doing this because I’m a black man!” If I were a cop, I would take this kind of remark—with all its innuendo of impending lawsuit and career-ending uproar—as a malefactor’s gambit to back me away from performing my duty. After all, Gates DID BREAK INTO HIS HOUSE. He should most certainly have appreciated that he had placed himself in a delicate situation, and have shown enough intelligence to recognize that his innocence was far from transparent—either to the police or to his neighbors. Indeed, one would have thought that a Harvard professor would possess enough sense to alert the neighbor adjoining whatever door he intended to pry open of his harmless design. Well, maybe not… not these days.
d) If the two cops had indeed backed off after being greeted at the door by an indignant and belligerently BLACK man, and if it later turned out that the man was indeed an intruder and had walked off with Professor Gates’s irreplaceable files, documents, and research, the two hapless men in blue would forever after have been branded nincompoops, at the very least—and probably also accused of half-investigating a crime in progress once they found that black people were involved.
The level of demagogy instantly reached by these trifling events will not help race relations in the United States. If the Cambridge police “behaved stupidly”, as the President told the world, then the President himself behaved disingenuously in seizing upon an incident whose details were an utter mystery to him in order to preach the sermon, yet again, Black Men Can’t Get a Fair Shake. Most of us have heard this homily too many times. I myself have devoted countless hours in my teaching career to giving certain students a little extra tutelage because, through no fault of their own, they were raised and educated in an impoverished environment. If they had the will and the wits to better themselves, I found the time. I have just this summer, however, watched from ring-side as a very competent female coach lost her job due to some patently trumped-up complaints that appeared in her file quite late in the school year (after most of us had left for the summer) and all at once. The gist of every charge? That she didn’t give her black players as much consideration as the whites. This is the button you push first when you want to make trouble, and everyone knows it—including the white males who jettisoned the unfortunate woman from their department.
Let’s get this straight. All different kinds of people have life hard for all different kinds of reason: short men, tall women, the overweight, the homely, the visually impaired, the deformed, the soft-spoken, the sensitive, the shy, the deeply traumatized, the unlettered, the over-educated, and—perhaps most of all—the punctiliously honest. Any one of these “afflictions” could be, in certain circumstances, a far worse handicap to professional and social success than having dark skin, which has indeed become a clear asset in certain circumstances (as the President well knows). People of Caucasian and Asian provenance are growing very weary of hearing people of African descent insist that they need and deserve special favors to make their way. In fact, I know personally of several African-Americans who have tired of being associated with this humiliating refrain; but they, of course, run the risk of being called “race traitors” if they speak up, since they stand in the way of unlimited freebees.
I tell you in all candor: if I ever have to break into my own house, and if a squad car pulls into my driveway five minutes later, I intend to be very, VERY obliging. I will have put a couple of human beings in a most awkward position—people who hope to see their children again later that evening. Professor Gates, whose work I have enjoyed on occasion, behaved stupidly. He needs to dig out an anthology of the ancient Greek poets, if one is yet to be found on Harvard’s campus, and look up Mimnermus. “Oude tis estin / anthropon ho Zeus me kaka polla didoi”—“There is no one among men to whom Zeus does not give many miseries.”
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