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April 17, 2008
An open letter to open-minded progressives (part 1)
Are you an open-minded progressive? Maybe not, but you probably have
friends who are. This essay is for them. Perhaps it can serve as a
sort of introduction to this strange blog, UR.
If you are an open-minded progressive, you are probably not a
Catholic. (If you are, you probably don't take the Pope too
seriously.) Imagine writing an open letter to Catholics, suggesting
ways for them to free their minds from the insidious grip of Rome.
That sort of thing is quite out of style these days - and in any case,
how would you start? But here at UR, we are never afraid of being out
of style. And as for starting, we already have.
Is being a progressive like being a Catholic? Why shouldn't it be?
Each is a way of understanding the world through a set of beliefs.
These beliefs may be true, they may be false, they may be nonsense
which does not even make enough sense to be false. As an open-minded
progressive (or an open-minded Catholic), you would like to think all
the beliefs you hold are true, but you are willing to reevaluate them
- perhaps with a little gentle assistance.
There is one big difference between Catholicism and progressivism:
Catholicism is what we call a "religion." Its core beliefs are claims
about the spirit world, which no Catholic (except of course the Pope)
has experienced firsthand. Whereas progressive beliefs tend to be
claims about the real world - about government and history and
economics and society. These are phenomena which, unlike the Holy
Trinity, we all experience firsthand.
Or do we? Most of us have never worked for a government, and those who
have have seen only some tiny corner of one. History is something out
of a book. It isn't the Bible, but it might as well be. What is our
personal experience of economics? Gasoline prices? And so on. Unless
your life has been both long and quite unusual, I suspect your
memories shed very little light on the great questions of government,
history, etc. Mine certainly don't.
Of course, much of progressive thought claims to be a product of pure
reason. Is it? Thomas Aquinas derived Catholicism from pure reason.
John Rawls derived progressivism from pure reason. At least one of
them must have made a mistake. Maybe they both did. Have you checked
their work? One bad variable will bust your whole proof.
And is this really how it happened? Are you a progressive because you
started by believing in nothing at all ("We are nihilists! We believe
in nothing!"), thought it through, and wound up a progressive? Of
course I can't speak for your own experience, but I suspect that
either you are a progressive because your parents were progressives,
or you were converted by some book, teacher, or other intellectual
experience. Note that this is exactly how one becomes a Catholic.
There is one difference, though. To be a Catholic, you have to have
faith, because no one has ever seen the Holy Ghost. To be a
progressive, you have to have trust, because you believe that your
worldview accurately reflects the real world - as experienced not just
by your own small eyes, but by humanity as a whole.
But you have not shared humanity's experience. You have only read,
heard and seen a corpus of text, audio and video compiled from it. And
compiled by whom? Which is where the trust comes in. More on this in a
little bit.
I am not a progressive, but I was raised as one. I live in San
Francisco, I grew up as a Foreign Service brat, I went to Brown, I've
been bru****ng my teeth with Tom's of Maine since the mid-80s. What
happened to me is that I lost my trust.
David Mamet lost his trust, too. His Village Voice essay is worth
reading, if just for the shock value of the world's most famous
playwright declaring that he's no longer a "brain-dead liberal." There
are about five hundred comments on the article. Perhaps I missed one,
but I didn't notice any in which the commenter claimed that Mamet had
opened his eyes.
Of course, Mamet is Mamet. He's out to shock, not convert. Even the
word "liberal," at least as it refers to a present-day political
persuasion, borders on hate speech. It's like an ex-Catholic
explaining "why I am no longer a brain-dead Papist." John Stuart Mill
was a liberal. Barack Obama is a progressive, and so are you. Basic
rule of politeness: don't call people names they don't call
themselves.
Worse, Mamet doesn't just reject progressivism. He endorses
conservatism. Dear God! Talk about making your problem harder. Imagine
you live in a country in which everyone is one of two things: a
Catholic or a Hindu. Isn't it hard enough to free a man's mind from
the insidious grip of Rome? Must he accept Kali, Krishna and Ganesha
at the same time?
For example, Mamet endorses the conservative writer Thomas Sowell, who
he claims is "our greatest contem****ary philosopher." Well. I like
Thomas Sowell, his work is certainly not without value, but really.
And if you Google him, you will see that his columns frequently appear
on a conservative website called townhall.com.
Click that link. Observe the atrocious graphic design. (Have you
noticed how far above the rest Obama's graphic design is? Some font
designers have.) Observe the general horribleness, so reminiscent of
Fox News. Then hit "back." Or, I don't know, read an Ann Coulter
column, or something. Dear Lord.
I am not a progressive, but I'm not a conservative either. (If you
must know, I'm a Jacobite.) Over time, I have acquired the ability to
process American conservative thought - if generally somewhat upmarket
from Fox News or townhall.com. This is an extremely acquired taste, if
"taste" is even the word. It is probably very similar to the way
Barack Obama handled the Rev. Wright's more colorful sermons. When
David Mamet points his readers in the general direction of
townhall.com, it's sort of like explaining to your uncle who's a
little bit phobic that he can understand the value of gay rights by
watching this great movie - it's called "120 Days of Sodom." It's not
actual communication. It's a ****-you. It's Mamet.
But many people will think exactly this: if you stop being a
progressive, you have to become a conservative. I suspect that the
primary emotional motivation for most progressives is that they're
progressives because they think something needs to be done about
conservatives. Game over. Gutterball. Right back to the insidious
grip.
Where does this idea that, if NPR is wrong, Fox News must be right,
come from? They can't both be right, because they contradict each
other. But couldn't they both be wrong? I don't mean slightly wrong, I
don't mean each is half right and each is half wrong, I don't mean the
truth is somewhere between them, I mean neither of them has any
consistent relation****p to reality.
Let's think about this for a second. As a progressive, you believe -
you must believe - that conservatism is a mass delusion. What an
extraordinary thing! A hundred-plus million people, many quite dull
but some remarkably intelligent, all acting under a kind of mass
hypnosis. We take this for granted. We are used to it. But we have to
admit that it's really, really weird.
What you have to believe is that conservatives have been
systematically misinformed. They are not stupid - at least not all of
them. Nor are they evil. You can spend all the time you want on
townhall.com, and you will not find anyone cackling like Gollum over
their evil plan to enslave and destroy the world. They all think, just
like you, that by being conservatives they are standing up for what's
sweet and good and true.
Conservatism is a theory of government held by a large number of
people who have no personal experience of government. They hold this
theory because their chosen information sources, such as Fox News,
townhall.com, and their local megachurch, feed them a steady diet of
facts (and possibly a few non-facts) which tend to sup****t, reinforce,
and confirm the theory.
And why does this strange pattern exist? Because conservatism is not
just an ordinary opinion. Suppose instead of a theory of government,
conservatism was a theory of basketball. "Conservatism" would be a
system of views about the pick-and-roll, the outside game, the
triangle defense and other issues of great im****tance to basketball
players and coaches.
The obvious difference is that, unless you are a basketball coach,
your opinions on basketball matter not at all - because basketball is
not a democracy. The players don't even get a vote, let alone the
fans. But conservatism can maintain a systematic pattern of delusion,
because its fans are not just fans: they are sup****ters of a political
machine. This machine will disappear if it cannot keep its believers,
so it has an incentive to keep them. And it does. Funny how that
works.
So, as a progressive, here is how you see American democracy: as a
contest in which truth and reason are pitted against a quasicriminal
political machine built on propaganda, ignorance and misinformation.
Perhaps a cynical view of the world, but if you believe that
progressivism is right, you must believe that conservatism is wrong,
and you have no other option.
But there is an even more pessimistic view. Suppose American democracy
is not a contest between truth and reason and a quasicriminal
political machine, but a contest between two quasicriminal political
machines? Suppose progressivism is just like conservatism? If it was,
who would tell you?
Think of conservatism as a sort of mental disease. Virus X,
transmitted by Fox News much as mosquitoes transmit malaria, has
infected the brains of half the American population - causing them to
believe that George W. Bush is a "regular guy," global warming isn't
happening, and the US Army can bring democracy to Sadr City.
Fortunately, the other half of America is protected by its progressive
antibodies, which it imbibes every day in the healthy mother's milk of
the Times and NPR, allowing to bask securely in the sweet light of
truth.
Or is it? Note that we've just postulated two cl***** of entity:
viruses and antibodies, mosquitoes and mother's milk. William of
Ockham wouldn't be happy. Isn't it simpler to imagine that we're
dealing with a virus Y? Rather than one set of people being infected
and the other being immune, everyone is infected - just with different
strains.
What makes virus X a virus is that, like the shark in Jaws, its only
goals in life are to eat, swim around, and make baby viruses. In other
words, its features are best explained adaptively. If it can succeed
by accurately representing reality, it will do so. For example, you
and I and virus X agree on the subject of the international Jewish
conspiracy: there is no such thing. We disagree with the evil virus N,
which fortunately is scarce these days. This can be explained in many
ways, but one of the simplest is that if Fox News stuck a swastika in
its logo and told Bill O'Reilly to start raving about the Elders of
Zion, its ratings would probably go down.
This is what I mean by "no consistent relation****p to reality." If,
for whatever reason, an error is better at replicating within the
conservative mind than the truth, conservatives will come to believe
the error. If the truth is more adaptive, they will come to believe
the truth. It's fairly easy to see how an error could make a better
story than the truth on Fox News, which is why one would be ill-
advised to get one's truth from that source.
So our first small step toward doubt is easy: we simply allow
ourselves to suspect that the institutions which progressives trust
are fallible in the same way. If NPR can replicate errors just as Fox
News does, we are indeed looking at a virus Y. Virus Y may be right
when virus X is wrong, wrong when virus X is right, right when virus X
is wrong, or wrong when virus X is wrong. Since the two have no
consistent relation****p to reality, they have no consistent
relation****p to each other.
There's a seductive symmetry to this theory: it solves the problem of
how one half of a society, which (by global and historical standards)
doesn't seem that different from the other, can be systematically
deluded while the other half is quite sane. The answer: it isn't.
Moreover, it explains a bizarre contradiction which emerges
beautifully in Mamet's piece. At one point he writes, in his new
conservative persona:
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming
from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but
tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those
things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the
intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But earlier, he told us:
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that
government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people
are generally good at heart.
Okay, Dave. As a child of the '60s, you accepted as an article of
faith that government is bad, but now you believe that... government
is bad? Who's doin' donuts on the road to Damascus?
One of the fascinating facts of American politics today is that both
progressives and conservatives hate their government. They just hate
different parts of it, and they love and cherish the others. In
foreign policy, for example, progressives hate the Pentagon, and love
and cherish the State Department. Conservatives hate the State
Department, and love and cherish the Pentagon.
Look at how nicely this fits in with our virus X-Y theory. Wa****ngton
contains many mansions, some of which are part of the virus X machine,
others of which are perma-infected with virus Y. Outside the Beltway
is our herd of drooling, virus-ridden zombie voters. The X zombies
hate the Y agencies, the Y zombies hate the X agencies.
But none of them hates Wa****ngton as a whole. So they can never unite
to destroy it, and the whole machine is stable. See how beautiful this
is? By separating voters into two competing but cooperating parties,
neither of which can destroy the other, the two-party system creates a
government which will survive indefinitely, no matter how much happier
its citizens might be without it.
This is the prize at the end of our mystery. If you can find a way to
stop being a progressive without becoming a conservative, you might
even find a way to actually oppose the government. At the very least,
you can decide that none of these politicians, movements or
institutions is even remotely worthy of your sup****t. Trust me - it's
a very liberating feeling.
But we are nowhere near there yet. We have not actually found a
genuine reason to doubt progressivism. Minor errors - some little fact-
checking mistake at the Times or whatever - don't count, because they
don't do anything about your conviction that progressivism is
basically right and conservatism is basically wrong. Even with a few
small eccentricities, progressivism as a cure for conservatism is
worth keeping. It may not be an antibody, but perhaps virus Y is at
least a vaccine.
Moreover, we've overlooked some major asymmetries between the
progressive and conservative movements. They are not each others' evil
twins. They are very different things. It is quite plausible that one
would be credible and the other wouldn't, and the advantages all seem
to be on the progressive side.
First of all, let's look at the people who are progressives. As the
expressions "blue-state" and "red-state" indicate, progressives and
conservatives in America today are different tribes. They are not
randomly distributed opinions. They follow clear patterns.
My wife and I had a daughter a few weeks ago, and right before she was
due to be discharged the doctors found a minor (and probably harmless)
heart problem which required a brief visit from UCSF's head of
pediatric cardiology. A very pleasant person. And one of the first
things he said, part of his bedside manner, a way of putting us at
ease, was a remark about George W. Bush. Somehow I suspect that if he
had diagnosed us as hicks from Stockton, he would not have emitted
this noise.
Rather, the good doctor had identified us as members of the Stuff
White People Like tribe. This little satirical site has attracted
roughly 100 times UR's traffic in a tenth the time, which is a pretty
sure sign that it's on to something. The author, Chris Lander, only
really has one joke: he's describing a group that doesn't like to be
described, and he's assigned them the last name they'd choose for
themselves.
Lander's "white people" are indeed overwhelmingly white, as anyone who
has been to Burning Man can testify. But there are plenty of "white
people" who are Asian, or even black or Latino. In fact, as Lander
points out, "white people" are the opposite of racist - they are
desperate to have minorities around. Thus the humor of calling them
"white." In fact, as anyone who went to an integrated high school can
testify, Lander's use of the word "white" is almost exactly the black
American usage - as in, "that's so white." Add the word "bread" and
you have it down.
Who are these strange people? Briefly, they are America's ruling
class. Here at UR we call them Brahmins. The Brahmin tribe is adoptive
rather than hereditary. Anyone can be a Brahmin, and in fact the less
"white" your background the better, because it means your achievements
are all your own. As with the Hindu original, your status as a Brahmin
is not a function of money, but of your success as a scholar,
scientist, artist, or public servant. Brahmins are people who work
with their minds.
Brahmins are the ruling class because they are literally the people
who govern. Public policies in the modern democratic system are
generally formulated by Brahmins, typically at the NGOs where these
"white people" like to congregate. And while not every progressive is
a Brahmin and not every Brahmin is a progressive, the equation
generally follows.
Most im****tant, the Brahmin identity is inextricably bound up with the
American university system. If you are a Brahmin, your status is
either conferred by academic success, or by some quasi-academic
achievement, like writing a book, saving the Earth, etc. Thus it's
unsurprising that most Brahmins are quite intelligent and
sophisticated. They have to be. If they can't at least fake it,
they're not Brahmins.
*************
************
Interesting but quite long
The natural enemy of the Brahmin is, of course, the red-state
American. I used to use another Hindu caste name for this tribe -
Vaisyas - but I think it's more evocative to call them Townies. As a
progressive you are probably a Brahmin, you know these people, and you
don't like them. They are fat, they are exclusively white, they live
in the suburbs or worse, they are into oak and crochet and minivans,
and of course they tend to be Republicans. If they went to college at
all, they gritted their teeth through the freshman diversity
requirement. And their work may be white-collar, but it has no real
intellectual content.
(It's interesting how much simpler American politics becomes once you
look at it through this tribal lens. You often see this in Third World
countries - there will be, say, the Angolan People's Movement and the
Democratic Angolan Front. Each swear up and down that they work for
the future of the entire Angolan people. But you notice that everyone
in the APM is an Ovambo, and everyone in the DAF is a Bakongo.)
The status relation****p between Brahmins and Townies is clear:
Brahmins are higher, Townies are lower. When Brahmins hate Townies,
the attitude is contempt. When Townies hate Brahmins, the attitude is
resentment. The two are impossible to confuse. If Brahmins and Townies
shared a stratified dialect, the Brahmins would speak acrolect and the
Townies mesolect.
In other words, Brahmins are more fa****onable than Townies. Brahmin
tastes, which are basically better tastes, flow downward toward
Townies. Twenty years ago, "health food" was a niche ultra-Brahmin
quirk. Now it's everywhere. Suburbanites drink espresso, shop at Whole
Foods, listen to alternative rock, you name it.
Thus we see why progressivism is more fa****onable than conservatism.
Progressive celebrities, for example, are everywhere. Conservative
ones are exceptions. This is cold calculation: Bono's PR people are
happy that he's speaking out against AIDS. Mel Gibson's PR people are
not happy that he's speaking out against the Jews.
So when we question conservatism, we are thinking in a way that is
natural and sensible for people of our tribe: we are attacking the
enemy. And the enemy is, indeed, a pushover. In fact the enemy is
suspiciously easy to push over.
Look at the entire lifecycle of conservatism. The whole thing stinks.
Virus X replicates in the minds of uneducated, generally less
intelligent people. Townies are, in fact, the same basic tribe that
gave us Hitler and Mussolini. Its intellectual institutions, such as
they are, are subsidized fringe newspapers, TV channels, and weirdo
think-tanks sup****ted by eccentric tycoons. In government, the
bastions of conservatism are the military, whose purpose is to kill
people, and any agency in which cor****ate lobbyists can make a buck,
eg, by raping the environment.
Whereas virus Y, if "virus" is indeed the name for it, replicates in
the most distinguished circles in America, indeed the world: the top
universities, the great newspapers, the old foundations such as
Rockefeller and Carnegie and Ford. Its drooling zombies are the
smartest and most successful people in the country, indeed the world.
In government it builds world peace, protects the environment, looks
after the poor, and educates children.
The truth of the matter is that progressivism is the mainstream
American tradition. This is not to say it hasn't changed in the last
200 years, or even the last 50: it has. However, if we look at the
ideas and ideals taught and studied at Harvard during the life of the
country, we see a smooth progression up to now, we do not see any
violent reversals or even inflection points, and we end up with good
old modern-day progressivism. Of course, by "American tradition" we
mean the New England tradition - if the Civil War had turned out
differently, things might have gone otherwise. But when you realize
that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel about a hippie commune 150
years ago, you realize that nothing is new under the sun.
As Machiavelli put it: if you strike at a king, strike to kill.
Conservatism, which is barely 50 years old, which has numerous shabby
roots, can be mocked and belittled and scorned. The difference between
criticizing conservatism and criticizing progressivism is the
difference between criticizing Mormonism and criticizing Christianity.
You can't doubt progressivism just a little. You have to doubt it on a
grand scale.
To say that conservatism is a corrupt and delusional tradition, no
more than some "virus X," is to say that it's a tick on the side of
America, an aberration, an abortion, an error to be corrected. A
failure of education, of leader****p, of progress. A small thing,
really.
To doubt progressivism is to doubt the American idea itself - because
progressivism is where that idea has ended up. If progressivism is
"virus Y," America itself is infected. What is the cure for that? It
is a strange and terrible thought, a promise of apocalypse.
And yet it makes an awful kind of sense. For one thing, if you were a
mental virus, which tradition would you choose to infect? The central
current of American thought, or some benighted backwater? The
Brahmins, or the Townies? The fa****onable people, or the unfa****onable
ones?
Copy your DNA into the New York Times, and it will trickle down to Fox
News in twenty or thirty years. Copy yourself into Fox News, and you
might influence the next election. Or two. But how lasting is that?
How many people are intellectually moved by George W. Bush? (Repulsion
doesn't count.)
As a Brahmin (I'll assume you're a Brahmin), you live inside virus Y.
You are one of the zombies. Your entire worldview has been formed by
Harvard, the Times, and the rest of what, back in David Mamet's day,
they used to call the Establishment. Everything you know about
government and history and science and society has been filtered by
these institutions. Obviously, this narrative does not contradict
itself. But is it true?
Well, it mostly doesn't contradict itself. It's very well put
together. In some places, though, if you look really closely, I think
you can see a stitch or too. You don't need to sail to the edge of the
world, like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. All you need, for starters,
just to tickle your doubt muscle and get it twitching a little, is a
few details that don't quite fit.
Let's start off with three questions. We'll play a little game: you
try coming up with a progressive answer, I'll try coming up with a non-
progressive answer. We'll see which one makes more sense.
I don't mean these questions don't have progressive answers, because
they do. Everything has a progressive answer, just as it has a
conservative answer. There is no shortage of progressives to compose
answers. But I don't think these questions have satisfying progressive
answers. Of course, you will have to judge this yourself with your own
good taste.
One: what's up with the Third World?
Here, for example, is a Times story on the fight against malaria.
Often, as with politicians, journalists speak the truth in a fit of
absent-mindedness, when their real concern is something else. If you
read the story, you might notice the same astounding graf that I did:
And the world changed. Before the 1960s, colonial governments and
companies fought malaria because their officials often lived in remote
outposts like Nigeria’s hill stations and Vietnam’s Marble Mountains.
Independence movements led to freedom, but also often to civil war,
poverty, corrupt government and the collapse of medical care.
Let's focus on that last sentence. Independence movements led to
freedom, but also often to civil war, poverty, corrupt government and
the collapse of medical care.
I often find it useful to imagine that I'm an alien from the planet
Jupiter. If I read this sentence, I would ask: what is this word
freedom? What, exactly, does this writer mean by freedom? Especially
in the context of civil war, poverty, and corrupt government?
What we see here is that independence movements - which the writer
clearly believes are a good thing - led to some very concrete and
very, very awful results, in addition to this curious abstraction -
freedom. Clearly, whatever freedom means in this particular context,
it's such a great positive that even when you add it to civil war,
poverty, corrupt government and the collapse of medical care, the
result still exceeds zero.
Isn't that strange? Might we not be tempted to revisit this particular
piece of arithmetic? But we can't - because if we postulate that
colonial governments and companies (whatever these were), with their
absence of freedom, were somehow preferable to independence movements,
which created this same freedom (the words freedom and independence
appear to be synonyms in this context), we are off the progressive
reservation.
In fact, not only are we off the progressive reservation, we're off
the conservative reservation. No one believes this. You will not find
anyone on Fox News or townhall.com or any but the fringiest of fringe
publications claiming that colonialism, with its intrinsic absence of
freedom and its strangely effective malaria control (note how the
writer implies, without actually saying, that this was only delivered
for the selfish purposes of the evil colonial overlords), was in any
way superior to postcolonialism, with its freedom, its malaria, its
civil war, etc.
And what, exactly, is this word independence? It seems to mean the
same thing as freedom, and yet, it is strange. For example, consider
this Post op-ed, by Michelle Gavin of the CFR, which starts with the
following intriguing lines:
When Zimbabwe became an independent country in 1980, it was a
focal point for international optimism about Africa's future. Today,
Zimbabwe is a basket case of a country.
Let's put our alien-from-Jupiter hat back on, and consider the phrase:
When Zimbabwe became an independent country in 1980...
In English as she is normally spoke, the word independent is composed
of the prefix in, meaning "not," and the suffix dependent, meaning
"dependent." So, for example, when the United States became
independent, it meant that no external party was funding or
controlling her government. If my daughter was to become independent,
it would mean that she was making her own decisions in the world, and
I didn't need to give her a bottle every three hours.
In the case of Zimbabwe, however, this word seems to have changed
strangely and taken on an almost opposite meaning. From La Wik:
The Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) of Rhodesia from
the United Kingdom was signed on November 11, 1965 by the
administration of Ian Smith, whose Rhodesian Front party opposed black
majority rule in the then British colony. Although it declared
independence from the United Kingdom it maintained allegiance to Queen
Elizabeth II. The British government, the Commonwealth, and the United
Nations condemned the move as illegal. Rhodesia reverted to de facto
and de jure British control as "the British Dependency of Southern
Rhodesia" for a brief period in 1979 to 1980, before regaining its
independence as Zimbabwe in 1980.
So, strangely enough, the country now known as Zimbabwe declared
independence in 1965, much as the US declared independence in 1776.
The former, however, was not genuine independence, but rather illegal
independence. In order to gain genuine, legal independence, the
country now known as Zimbabwe had to first revert to British control,
ie, surrender its illegal independence. Are you feeling confused yet?
It gets better:
When Zimbabwe became an independent country in 1980, it was a
focal point for international optimism about Africa's future. Today,
Zimbabwe is a basket case of a country. Over the past decade, the
refusal of President Robert Mugabe and his ruling party to tolerate
challenges to their power has led them to systematically dismantle the
most effective workings of Zimbabwe's economic and political systems,
replacing these with structures of corruption, blatant patronage and
repression.
So: the independent rulers of the new, free Zimbabwe has refused to
tolerate challenges to their power. Thus, the international optimism
held by Ms. Gavin (who perhaps needed a bottle or two herself in 1980)
and her ilk, has given way to pessimism, and the place is now a basket
case. And who might have been challenging good President Mugabe's
power? Presumably someone who did not intend to dismantle the most
effective workings of Zimbabwe's economic and political systems - thus
earning the friend****p of Ms. Gavin and her not-uninfluential ilk.
This independence, as you can see, is a very curious thing.
In the sense of doing its own thing and never, ever needing a bottle,
there is actually one remarkably independent country in the world.
It's called Somaliland, and it is not recognized by anyone in the
international community. The Wikipedia page for Somaliland's capital,
Hargeisa, achieves a glorious level of unintentional high comedy:
Aid from foreign governments was non-existent, making it unusual
in Africa for its low level of dependence in foreign aid. While
Somaliland is de-facto as an independent country it is not de-jure
(legally) recognized internationally. Hence, the government of
Somaliland can not access IMF and World Bank assistance.
Isn't all of this quite curious? Doesn't it remind you even a little
bit of the scene in which Jim Carrey rams his yacht into the matte
painting at the edge of the world?
Two: what is nationalism? And is it good, or bad?
This question is rather similar to question one. I thought of it when
a progressive blogger for whom I have great respect made the offhand
comment that "Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist." "Sure," I found myself
thinking. "And so is Pat Buchanan." It wasn't the time, but I saved
this little mot d'escalier and can't resist bringing it back up now,
like bad fish.
Unlike independence, I think everyone pretty much agrees on the
definition of nationalism. Nationalism (from the Latin natus, birth)
is when people of a common linguistic, ethnic, or racial heritage feel
the need to act collectively as a single political entity. German
nationalism is when Germans do it, Vietnamese nationalism is when
Vietnamese do it, black nationalism is when African-Americans do it,
American nationalism is when Pat Buchanan does it.
And this is where the agreement ends. La Wik's opening paragraph is a
masterpiece of obfuscation:
Nationalism is a term referring to doctrine or political movement
that holds that a nation, usually defined in terms of ethnicity or
culture, has the right to constitute an independent or autonomous
political community based on a shared history and common destiny. Most
nationalists believe the borders of the state should be congruent with
the borders of the nation. However, recently nationalists have
rejected the concept of "congruency" for sake of its reciprocal value.
Contem****ary nationalists would argue that the nation should be
administered by a single state, not that a state should be governed by
a single nation. Occasionally, nationalist efforts can be plagued by
chauvinism or imperialism. These ex-nationalist efforts such as those
propagated by fascist movements in the twentieth century, still hold
the nationalist concept that nationality is the most im****tant aspect
of one's identity, while some of them have attempted to define the
nation, inaccurately, in terms of race or genetics. Fortunately,
contem****ary nationalists reject the racist chauvinism of these
groups, and remain confident that national identity supersedes
biological attachment to an ethnic group.
Everything between them is pure nonsense as far as I can tell, but
note the direct contradiction of the first and the last sentences. How
can you be a nationalist, even a contem****ary nationalist, if you
believe that national identity supersedes biological attachment to an
ethnic group? If nationalism isn't plagued by racist chauvinism, in
what sense is it nationalism at all?
And so: if I'm a Czech and I live in Austria-Hungary, do I have a
right to my own country? Should I make violence and terror and bomb
until I get it? What if I'm a German and I live in Czechoslovakia?
Should I make violence and terror and bomb?
A number of Germans noticed this very odd thing in the '20s and '30s.
They noticed that America and her friends were very much committed to
national self-determination, that is, unless you happened to be
German. Czech nationalism was good - very good. German nationalism was
bad - very bad.
Once you start looking for this little stitch in the canvas, you find
it everywhere. It is good, very good, to be a black nationalist. In
l'affaire Wright we have seen the intimacy between progressivism and
black nationalism - so well illustrated by Tom Wolfe. Indeed, every
reputable university in America has a department in which students can
essentially major in black nationalism.
On the other hand, it is bad, very bad, to be a Southern nationalist.
Any connection to Southern nationalism instantly renders one a pariah.
Of course, Southern nationalists have sinned. But then again, so have
black nationalists. Are Americans, black or white, really better off
for the activities of the Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, or even
the good Rev. Wright?
Similarly, it is good to be a Vietnamese nationalist. It is still bad
to be a German nationalist, or a British nationalist, or even a French
nationalist. Germans, Brits, and Frenchmen are supposed to believe in
the common destiny of all humanity. Vietnamese, Mexicans, or Czechs
are free to believe in the common destiny of Vietnamese, Mexicans, or
Czechs. (Actually, I'm not sure about the Czechs. This one may have
changed.)
Does this make sense? Does it make any freakin' sense at all?
Since this subject is so touchy, I will let my feelings on it slip: I
don't believe in any kind of nationalism. Of course, being a Jacobite
and all, I also believe in Strafford's Thorough, so you might not want
to be getting your constitutional tips from me.
Third: what's so bad about the Nazis?
Okay, they murdered ten million people or so. That's bad. There's
really no defending the unprovoked massacre of millions of civilians.
On the other hand, I really really recommend Nicholson Baker's new
book, Human Smoke. Baker is a progressive and pacifist of immaculate
credentials (his previous achievement was a novel which fantasized
about assassinating President Bush), and what Human Smoke drums into
you is not a specific message, but the same thing I keep saying: the
pieces of the picture do not fit together. They almost fit, but they
don't quite fit. The genius of Baker's book is that he simply shows
you the picture not fitting, and leaves the analysis up to you.
For example: we are taught that the Nazis were bad because they
committed mass murder, to wit, the Holocaust. On the other hand...
(a): none of the parties fighting against the Nazis, including us,
seems to have given much of a damn about the Jews or the Holocaust.
(b): one of the parties on our side was the Soviet Union, whose record
of mass murder was known at the time and was at least as awful as the
Nazis'.
And, of course, (c): the Allies positively reveled in the aerial mass
incineration of German and Japanese civilians. They did not kill six
million, but they killed one or two. There was a military excuse for
this, but it was quite strained. It was better than the Nazis' excuse
for murdering the Jews (who they saw, of course, as enemy civilians).
In fact, it was a lot better. But was it a lot lot better? I'm not
sure.
And as Baker does not mention, our heroes, the Allies, also had no
qualms about de****ting a million Russian refugees to the gulag after
the war, or about lending hundreds of thousands of German prisoners as
slave laborers to the Soviets. The idea of World War II as a war for
human rights is simply ahistorical. It doesn't fit. If Nazi human-
rights violations were not the motivation for the war that created the
world we live in now - what was?
Furthermore, Baker, who is of course a critic of American foreign
policy today, sees nothing but confusion when he tries to apply the
same standards to Iraq and to Germany. If Abu Ghraib is an
unbridgeable obstacle to imposing democracy by force on Iraq, what
about Dresden or Hamburg and Germany? Surely it's worse to burn tens
of thousands of people alive, than to make one stand on a box wearing
fake wires and a funny hat? Or is Iraq just different from Germany?
But that would be racism, wouldn't it?
Beyond this is the peculiar asymmetry in the treatment of fascist mass
murder, versus Marxist mass murder. Both ideologies clearly have a
history of mass murder. If numbers count - and why wouldn't they? -
Marxism is ahead by an order of magnitude. Yet somehow, today, fascism
or anything reminiscent of it is pure poison and untouchable, whereas
Marxism is at best a kind of peccadillo. John Zmirak pulls off a
lovely parody of this here, and while I have yet to read Roberto
Bolan~o the reviews are quite glowing.
Neither the Soviet Union nor the Third Reich is with us today, but the
most recent historical examples are North Korea and South Africa.
North Korea is clearly somewhat Stalinist, while apartheid South
Africa had looser but still discernible links to Nazism. I welcome
anyone who wants to claim that South Africa, whose border fences were
designed to keep immigrants out, was a worse violator of human rights
than North Korea, an entire country turned into a prison. And yet we
see the same asymmetry - "engagement" with North Korea, pure hostility
against South Africa. If you can imagine the New York Philharmonic
visiting Pretoria in an attempt to build trust between the two
countries, you are firmly in Bolan~oworld.
Again: this is just weird. As with nationalism, each individual case
can be explained on its own terms. Put all the cases together, and
double standards are everywhere. And yet the inconsistencies do not
seem random. There seems to be a mysterious X factor which the Nazis
have and the Soviets don't, or the South Africans have and the North
Koreans don't. The treatment may not just be based on X, it may be X +
human rights, but it is definitely not just human rights. And yet X
does not appear in the explanation.
X seems to be related to the fact that the Nazis are "right-wing" and
the Soviets "left-wing." As the French put it: pas d'amis a droit, pas
d'ennemis a gauche. But why? What do "right-wing" and "left-wing" even
mean? Weren't the Soviet and Nazi systems both totalitarian
dictator****ps? If Communism is "too hot," fascism is "too cold," and
liberal democracy is "just right," why not oppose Communism and
fascism equally? In fact, the former is much more successful, at least
since 1945, so you'd think people would be more worried about it.
Again, we are left with pure confusion. It is simply not possible that
the horizon is made of canvas. And yet our boat has crashed into it,
and left a big rip.
Part 2 will appear next Thursday, April 24.
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