Month: November 2006

A reader writes:

In response to a reader, you say,

"The Republicans had become so enthralled by what they were against that they had forgotten what they were supposed to be for."

In a broader context, isn’t this the crux of Fundamentalism? While the faithful can simply say, "This is what I believe," a Fundamentalist must say "This is what I believe, and what you believe is wrong." A Fundamentalist defines himself by what he is not.

This is also a good working definition of original sin. At the beginning of his Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote (I’m grossly paraphrasing here) that before the Fall, man was aware only of God, and had no awareness of himself apart from God, as one who looks straight into the sun cannot see anything but the sun.  The Fall came when man turned away from God and became aware of himself as something apart from God, as one who turns from the sun and sees his shadow is aware of himself only as an absence of light.

In the Old Testament, this is illustrated by Jonah, who (unsuccessfully) fled from God when commanded to go to Nineveh. In the New Testament, the parable of the pharisee and the publican makes the same point.

Seeing yourself only as what you are, rather than as what you are not, requires Christ-like humility. All who try will fail. The Fundamentalist embraces this failing and proclaims it as virtue. This is why Fundamentalist religion and Fundamentalist nationalism (jingoist patriotism) are such natural allies.

Christianity can and will survive the fundamentalist temptation. It ahs in the past; and it will in the future. It’s just the recognition of a lost spiritual compass that is hard.

A reader writes:

You articulated what I have been thinking for years about Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and these supposed conservatives.

If you listen to Limbaugh, Savage, and Hannity on the radio or TV  you discover that their perceptions of terrorists and U.S. Democrats and liberals are identical, as is their level of vitriol for both groups, and the methods they expouse for dealing with them: obliteration, actual or rhetorical.

Their rage is contagious. You either buy into it or become agitated with them and have to turn them off. This dichotomous ‘all or none’ ‘good and evil’ thinking (called splitting in the psychoanalytic literature), to me, is not healthy.

With Hannity, you only have to read the title of his recent book: "Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism". The fact that he can equate liberalism with terrorism and decribe each of them as "evil" means he has given up on democratic discourse. I wish it had given up on him.

The classic 1915 verses by Canadian John McCrae:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Mr Goldberg’s review of my book – judging by one quote – is in part a personal attack on me. Since it’s firewalled, I canot access it (NRO has a policy of restricting their readers’ access to a writer of whom they disapprove.) But Julian Sanchez has read the review in full, and has comments. One small point I would like to make. My blog is often impassioned, and throws elbows. Most blogs do. This one is actually quite civil in comparison with most. That’s part of a free-wheeling debate. At its best, I think the blogosphere can sound like the British House of Commons – loud, passionate, funny and often brutal in its arguments. But we are all "honorable gentlemen and women" in parliamentary parlance.

Nonetheless, I took great pains to write the book in a much different tone. It is painstakingly civil throughout and takes the arguments of my opponents seriously, and respects them. Jonah’s attempt to say otherwise is simply a bid to prevent conservative readers seeing what I have to say. If Jonah cannot recognize a good faith effort to inject more reason into conservatism, to subject the disaster of the last few years to some scrutiny, then I’m sorry for his blinders.

As for "shrill", I wrote a book called "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How To Get It Back." The title of Jonah Goldberg’s forthcoming book is "Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton."

Falco’s "Rock Me, Amadeus." Monty Python meets Depeche Mode. We may have a winner.

Click here to see the other entries…

Mark Steyn’s "America Alone" and my "The Conservative Soul" are, in some ways, two rival defenses of two different types of conservatism. Steyn’s is far more popular on the American right at the moment. Canada’s "Globe and Mail" reviews both new books here.

Mrs Garrison explains Darwin, from South Park:

Portland, Oregon, 2.15 pm.

He tells my colleague, Mike Allen:

"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I’d expected. Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass."

And Rove had nothing to do with Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard, did he?

No greater evidence that we are still at war with a very dangerous enemy:

"We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy," Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, said. "What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, Nearer 30 — that we know of. These plots often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan and through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

Boring but essential human intelligence, surveillance with court oversight, greater attention to the borders, and keeping the pressure on al Qaeda in Iraq and elswhere: all these are part of the solution. But any complacency seems to me misplaced.