Here’s an essay you would never read in a major American newspaper (except perhaps the Wall Street Journal). It’s published in the left-wing magazine, New Statesman, which makes it all the more remarkable. It’s by Peter Watson, who recently wrote a book, “The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century.” For the book, he interviewed intellectuals and scholars across the world for an overview of the leading innovations and new ideas of the twentieth century. There was surprising consensus about the various breakthroughs in science, and the arts. Then he writes: “What shocked me were my interviews with scholars of non-western cultures. Here, I am referring not only to western specialists in the great non-western traditions, but scholars who were themselves born into those traditions – Arab archaeologists or writers, economists and historians from India and China, poets and dramatists from Japan and Africa. All of them – there were no exceptions – said the same thing. In the 20th century, in the modern world, there were no non-western ideas of note.” No non-western ideas of note. The man will be accused of ethnocentrism, of course – but then why do all the non-western scholars agree with him? It seems to me they’re onto something, and this knowledge, which is largely verboten in civilized society, is a critical part of our current situation. One way of dealing with the vast disparity between western and non-western achievement is simply to negate the rationality of any such judgment – hence postmodernism. Another is to blame everything on Western colonialism – hence post-colonialism. Another, among the less deluded, is simply rage. If you grew up in a place that was, to all intents and purposes, culturally and intellectually moribund, how would you feel about the cultural and military hegemon? I think it would take enormous open-mindedness not to feel some resentment and envy. A more likely response among the not-so-virtuous is simply hatred for the symbols of such glaring cultural and material success. I do believe a certain kind of politico-religious fanaticism is a part of the Islamo-fascist equation. But I also think that Nietzsche was right in diagnosing that one of the most powerful and destructive forces of our time is simply resentment of others’ achievements. This crisis has highlighted the most extreme form of that resentment in the Islamic world – and all the pettier forms that are busy rallying, half-embarrassed, half-terrified, to its defense.
WORTHY OF CLINTON: “‘We want to brand Tom Ridge,’ a White House official said. “When people see him, we want them to think, ‘My babies are safe.”” – from Tuesday’s Washington Post.
REPUBLICANS AND GAYS: Two recent stories show how deep the shift is among Bush Republicans toward greater acceptance and equality for gay citizens and their families. An Associated Press story highlights the appointment of openly gay Scott Evertz to oversee policy towards HIV and AIDS and of Michael Guest and his husband to the American embassy in Romania. In these two appointments, Bush outdid Clinton, although the number of openly gay appointees in this administration is still woefully tiny. The story also points out the Bush administration’s maintenance of anti-discrimination policies in the federal government. It might have added the defense of pharmaceutical profits and therefore HIV research. We’re not close to equality yet, but these steps show a real and sensible thaw, and give the lie to those who argued last fall that the Bush administration would have meant a huge step backward for gay equality. Frankly, I’d rather have these gay appointments made entirely on the basis of merit without a song and dance about it than the gay quota-mongering and financial shake-down operation of the Clinton years. Then yesterday, yet another leading Republican came out in favor of equal treatment of gay and straight couples: former president Gerald Ford. In an interview with the dependably fair Detroit News columnist, Deb Price, Ford was asked about gay couples. Ford said: “I think they ought to be treated equally. Period.” He went on: ‘I have always believed in an inclusive party, in welcoming gays and others into the party.” So we now have Republican titans Ford and the late Barry Goldwater on the side of gay inclusion, leading lights like Alan Simpson and Mary Matalin on board, and a current president edging clearly toward acceptance. They make some of the anti-gay hysteria on the radical right seem even more irrelevant than it was even before September 11.
The Dish 