Month: January 2002

A reader suggests an alternative Lord of the Rings analogy for Dubya. (By the way, I’m sorry I got Frodo’s relationship with Blibo wrong; he is his nephew, not his son.) Here’s the alternative:

“Bush is most clearly NOT Frodo. This will become obvious as the next installments of the Peter Jackson’s series are unveiled if he remains as faithful to the book as he has in his first installment. There has been a raging debate amongst fans for years about who the real hero of Tolkien’s masterpiece really is. It has two camps, one forming around Frodo, the ring-bearer, and the other around Samwise Gamgee, his faithful servant. I and many others are in Sam camp. Frodo has the legacy of the ring thrust on him, but he lacks a great deal of strength and moral dimension. In the end he fails in his quest (hope I’m not giving anything away here if you haven’t read the books) and if it were not for the fortuitous intervention of Gollum, the Ring would never have been destroyed. The credit for the successful completion of the quest goes to Sam, whose virtues are simple but essential: faithfulness, determination, endurance, love and hope. Sam doesn’t seek the quest but stands up to the greatest odds when he has no hope of success. The episode against Shelob is the favorite for most of the fans in Sam’s camp. Sam represents hope and that hope ensures his eventual success. His hope springs from his selfless love of his master, Frodo and his determination not to quit. The story doesn’t end with Frodo, he goes off to the Grey Havens when he can’t seem to enjoy the peace he has helped to secure. The book ends with Sam returning home to his wife who puts his daughter Elanor in his lap. Bush is not Frodo. Bush is Sam. Frodo labors under the Ring and seems constantly weary from it. Sam remains hopeful to the last and just plods on selflessly to ultimate victory and is comfortable enough in his skin to enjoy the prosperity he has helped secure. Bush’s mirth, hope, resolve are much more similar to Sam. Your blog should be retitled. George W. Gamgee.”

Fair enough. Any candidates for Gollum?

BRAVE AND HEART-BREAKING: Thomas Sowell on the fragile emotions of many black students.

I finally made it to Lord of the Rings. As a movie, it lacked real structure, but that’s because it’s merely a third of a movie. I can barely wait to see the entire nine-hour trilogy in one sitting. But as a parable, I can immediately see why the first installment has struck such a nerve. In some ways, all liberal societies are like the Shire. They’re instinctively peaceful, geographically lucky, a little complacent, and always vulnerable. Every now and again, real evil threatens and we’re all asked to fight. Tolkien’s response is very English and the virtues he ascribes to Hobbits, like their idiosyncrasies, are also classically English. It has a very Second World War feel to it – the plucky little Brits fighting the evil Nazis. But the present associations are strong too. Isn’t Dubya a classic Frodo? His dad, Bilbo – I mean, Herbert Walker – had his own little adventure with the dark forces, but poor Frodo is stuck with the legacy. He doesn’t change with the experience; his old and rather ordinary virtues just seem appropriate to the task. After the first installment, we have no idea when and how the real, final struggle with the global forces of evil will take place. But we know enough to believe that Frodo/Dubya will be able to cope. That’s why we’re still sticking with him, beyond the initial battle. Yes, we’re projecting a little; yes, he’s enjoying the benefit of some wish-fulfillment. But he’s also done well so far – for a Hobbit. And the darkest days may well still lie ahead.

OCCIDENTALISM: Here’s the best big-picture essay about September 11 to have emerged in the last month or so. It’s by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit and it’s in the New York Review of Books. The point I tried to make in my New York Times magazine piece, <a href = ‘This Is A Religious War,’ was that this war is not, properly speaking, between Christianity and Islam, as between a Fundamentalist, Illiberal Jihad and a Secular, Liberal Society. The temptation of fundamentalist politics extends to all religions, including Christianity, as we see in the United States. What Buruma and Margalit do is take this further, positing the phenomenon of “Occidentalism,” an anti-Western, anti-liberal mentality that includes bin Laden but also stretches back to Japanese nationalism, Nazism, Stalinism, and others. Hatred of the liberal, bourgeois West is not new. Hatred of Jews, emancipated women, homosexuals, city-dwellers, and other symbols of urban, Western life is an ancient trope in world history. Remember Babylon? Bin Laden does:

“In our world you don’t even have to move to the city to feel its constant presence, through advertising, television, pop music, and videos. The modern city, representing all that shimmers just out of our reach, all the glittering arrogance and harlotry of the West, has found its icon in the Manhattan skyline, reproduced in millions of posters, photographs, and images, plastered all over the world. You cannot escape it. You find it on dusty jukeboxes in Burma, in discothèques in Urumqi, in student dorms in Addis Ababa. It excites longing, envy, and sometimes blinding rage. The Taliban, like the Nazi provincials horrified by “nigger dancing,” like Pol Pot, like Mao, have tried to create a world of purity where visions of Babylon can no longer disturb them.”

Buruma and Margalit are particularly good on the misogyny of Occidentalism:

“To all those who see military discipline, self-sacrifice, austerity, and worship of the Leader as the highest social ideals, the power of female sexuality will be seen as a dire threat. From ancient times women are the givers and the guardians of life. Women’s freedom is incompatible with a death cult. Indeed, open displays of female sexuality are a provocation, not only to holy men, but to all repressed people whose only way to exaltation is death for a higher cause. Pictures of partly naked Western women advertising Hollywood movies, or soft drinks, or whatever, by suggesting sexual acts, are as ubiquitous in the world as those images of the Manhattan skyline. They are just as frustrating, confusing, and sometimes enraging. For again they promise a sinful, libidinous world of infinite pleasure beyond most people’s reach.”

This is an impassioned and brilliant essay, and significant because of where it appeared. Can the New York Review be breaking ranks with the anti-Western leftism that has infected it for so long? The last sentence in the piece is an obvious rebuke to Edward Said and his acolytes:

“But if one thing is clear in this murky war, it is that we should not counter Occidentalism with a nasty form of Orientalism. Once we fall for that temptation, the virus has infected us too.”

One of the great hopes of this period is that a revived and muscular liberalism may arise from the ashes.

FACTOID OF THE DAY: “Excluding fossil fuels the total exports of Arab countries are equal to those of Finland, a country of only 5m people.” – David Landes, Sunday Times. The rest of the piece (on the doleful effects of Arab misogeny) is pretty good too.

The small drug company, Vertex, and the big drug company Eli Lilly, are set to announce today that they have the beginnings of a viable protease inhibitor for Hepatitis C. Other companies are also hot on the trail. The reason I point this out is that it shows how foolish it is to pit research for one disease against another. Some criticism of the amount of money poured into HIV has been because it allegedly takes away from money spent on other diseases. But science doesn’t work that way. Often a breakthrough in one area – like blocking the protease in the HIV virus – can yield clues for other viral treatments, like blocking the protease in Hepatitis C. Vertex pioneered one of the better HIV protease inhibitors; no surprise they’re one of the first to make this breakthrough. AIDS research has already transformed our understanding of immunology, helping many other diseases, including breast cancer. Science is rarely zero-sum. Unlike, alas, politics.

(Full disclosure: I have bought and sold Vertex shares in the past; and own some today.)

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “I don’t know whether President Bush reads Foucault – I don’t imagine French intellectuals are high on his bedtime reading list – but if he had he would be aware of the maxim that power creates resistance, and resistance new forms of power: B-52s on the one hand, box-cutters and suicide-bombers on the other. – Joan Smith, the Independent.

SIMPLE BUSH: Revealing piece by Jake Weisberg on Bush’s recent success. Jake believes that the war has brought out Bush’s virtues, because war is simple and Bush, being relatively dumb, is good at simple things:

“Bush continues to exhibit the same lack of curiosity, thoughtfulness, and engagement with ideas that made him a C student. Nuance, complexity, subtlety, and contradiction are not part of the mental universe he inhabits. And curiously enough, it is these very qualities of mind-or lack thereof-that seem to be making him such a good war president.”

Actually, of course, war can be pretty complicated, as can successful management of people. What’s simple is knowing why we should fight, which requires not intelligence but a moral compass. Bush is quite obviously intelligent. He just doesn’t let his intelligence dictate his sense of right and wrong. He knows the two realms of intelligence and morality are categorically separate, a simple truth many liberals don’t easily acknowledge. That’s why government isn’t always best left to the most theoretically clever. It’s best left to those who are practically smart and morally clear. Eggheads like me, and Jake, should stick to journalism. And we shouldn’t condescend to politicians who are achieving things neither of us could begin to master.

You heard about this Sunday Times scoop here first. If you haven’t registered, Drudge has a summary.

THE BRITS AND THE EURO: 73 percent are now against. Or are they?

Take a look, if you can bear it, at this account in today’s Washington Post of the horrific torture and imprisonment of an Afghan man, Sayed, suspected of being a Christian. The passage that haunted me most is the following:

“Behind closed doors here in Kabul, in the southern city of Kandahar and elsewhere, the Taliban enforced its Islamic code with a brutality only hinted at by its public actions. Non-Muslims were a common target. About 50 Hindu families who live here were ordered by the Taliban to wear distinguishing yellow clothing. Most of the few remaining Jews in Kabul left the country. There may be a few Christian Afghans; if so, they hid from the Taliban for fear of execution. With Sayed, the Taliban thought it had to set an example. The soldiers pulled him out of his cell. They kicked him, punched him, pulled his hair. They spat on him. The soldiers begged the commander for the privilege of killing Sayed with their knives. ‘God will give us our reward, because this is the one who converted,’ they said.”

This is the end-point of the fusion of political power and religious fundamentalism. It is evil. And it must be nipped in the bud wherever and whenever it appears.

DASCHLE’S OMISSION: The one thing Daschle didn’t say in his much-touted speech yesterday was that the enacted tax cuts must be reversed. His argument for a return to balanced budgets makes no sense without this. So his glaring omission must surely reflect his own political calculation that calling for higher taxes is a non-starter. If it is, then Bush surely enjoys an enormous advantage. The Republican bluff has been to dare the Democrats to raise taxes. The Dems have just blinked. The game is almost over before it has even begun.

It’s a great place over there, isn’t it? In Saudi Arabia, they just beheaded three gay guys for ‘sodomy’ and ‘gay marriage,’ the first modern martyrs for equal marriage rights I’ve heard of. In Jordan, the Jordanian press association is disciplining one of its members for daring to interview hyper-dove Shimon Peres, thus violating a ban on interviews with Israelis. I wonder what they’d do with a gay journalist? Thank God for America.

BIG HARVARD BABIES: Kudos to Salon for taking on these pampered poseurs.

FIFTH COLUMN WATCH:Here’s an 18-year old Muslim Scot from Dundee in a recent issue of The Scotsman:

“Britain is an evil regime and it is corrupt. The idea of democracy goes against everything that Muslims should believe. Democracy is a man-made construct. Instead, everyone should live their life by the teachings of Allah. You ask me to follow Tony Blair, a man, or to follow Allah, our divine teacher? There is no contest. We believe that it is the obligation of every Muslim to fight to create an Islamic state that is based on the Koran… Every single Muslim should have a love of Jihad. They should want to go out on a Jihad. Every single Muslim should have these feelings. It would not bother me to shoot a British soldier in the least. Why should it?”

Charming, huh? The position of the moderate British Muslims is expressed by one Haq Ghani, Scottish president of the UK Islamic Mission:

“No one can condone what [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid tried to do. But anyone with a brain can see what created him and drove him to it. What Richard Reid did is not an act of terrorism – it is an act of frustration. Many young and old Muslims are frustrated by the way their faith is being targeted by George Bush and Tony Blair. Unless they address the root cause of what is creating people who are willing to kill innocent civilians then more acts like this will happen.”

Here’s my suggestion for a root cause: Islamo-fascism.

LETTERS: Pat and Adolf, the euro and Texas, cruising on the Tunisian street, Britney Spears and homosexuality, etc.

Useful debunking of the sanctification of Muhammed Ali in the Telegraph. I’d forgotten he was such a racist in his youth. Can you imagine a white boxer who had said, “A black man should be killed if he’s messing with a white woman,” being given the Hollywood makeover?

“What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.” – Jerry Falwell, September 13, on the 700 Club.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have been talking about God lifting his anointing, his mantle, from the United States of America.” – Pat Robertson, December 5, on the 700 Club.

“The Almighty has withdrawn his blessing from our people.” – Adolf Hitler, February 1, 1933, in his first address to the German nation after assuming the Chancellorship. (As reported in Ian Kershaw’s “Hitler: 1889 – 1936”, Penguin Books 1998, page 440.)

It turns out that Clinton’s last dog, Zeke, was also killed by a car. Weirder?

Michael Barone clarifies things, as usual. How do you reconcile the conflict between “National Greatness” conservatism and “Leave Us Alone” conservatism? You do the national greatness stuff abroad and the small government agenda at home. Okay, sign me up.