Month: November 2009

"[O]ur strength lies, in our opinion, not in deliberation and discussion, but that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection," – Pericles.

Greenwald fisks the Republican meme – "trials in a real court would lead to the disclosure of classified information that would help the Terrorists":

To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself.

Andrew Bacevich and David Frum discuss whether Afghanistan is a rational place to invest a huge amount of money and lives at this point in world history.

A reader writes:

I disagree with your reader who says Palin is a bullshitter.  I kind of like bullshitters.  I consider someone like Bill Clinton to be a bullshitter.  Kind of smooth, kind of  full of one's self.  In my mind, Palin is a disturbed individual who does not live in a world where truth as a concept is relevant or even extant.  She is wholly a creation of the media because she has a sexy quality to her good looks (especially in an industry – politics – that has few beauties).  Her only cleverness is that she uses her child with Down's Syndrome as the entire basis of her being as a politician. Sorry to put it so crudely, but that is the thing that the hard right loves about her. (In fact, she recounts how she considered abortion but decided against it.  As a mother, I find that little story so disgusting. Why would a mother ever openly discuss that they thought about aborting her child? Or her defender, Bernie Goldberg, implying that a liberal would abort a Down's Syndrome child. Even more disgusting.) 

Some people who are not on the hard right like her for other reasons – especially because she is a working mother of five. They relate to her, and I think that is valid. 

What is missing is that she has no substance.  She is an empty vessel.  In our reality show, 24-hour news cycle world, one can be an empty vessel and still be wildly popular as a reality star, a politician, or whatever.  No one questions beyond the surface, and indeed it is politically incorrect to even imply that she is not bright.  If you are Kate Gosselin, then I have no problem with you being wildly popular and stupid (not that Kate is stupid).  If you want to lead my country, then I do have problems with you being popular and stupid.  (And, honestly, I am sick to no end of having leaders that are so dumb that the stock observation made about them is that they are not as dumb as we think.) 

So, for anyone who thinks you or others are wasting their time dissecting this woman and her "views," then I have one number for them.  46.  That is the percentage of voters that wanted Sarah Palin to be President of the United States.  What would that number be today?  With a media that has gone nearly wholesale against Obama, with a progressive movement that is enabling Palinites through relentless and often self-righteous fault-finding, with an almost silent group of Obama defenders, with a reality show obsessed culture, it is plausible that the 46 % could add the paltry 5% it needs to rule the world. 

Doesn't that chill you to the bone?

Apologies for the typo: the name of this remarkable fellow was Chuang Tzu or Zuangzi depending on your mode of translating Chinese names into English. I’ve long known of him via Oakeshott but had never really pondered the deep similarities between their thought before reading an unpublished paper by Chor-yung Cheung, an Oakeshott scholar from Hong Kong, at a recent Oakeshott conference. A light bulb went off as well when I realized that Chuang Tzu was also one of Thomas Merton’s favorite writers. Merton wrote his own versions of several of Chuang Tzu’s stories, parables and anecdotes. From a review:

Merton sees Chuang Tzu as his kindred spirit. Merton and Chuang Tzu both were hermits to some extent, and both spiritual philosophers of sorts, perhaps with Merton heavier on the spiritual side and Chuang Tzu more the philosopher. The content of their philosophies is similar, too. Merton assures us that his book “is not a new apologetic subtlety (or indeed a work of jesuitical sleight of hand) in which Christian rabbits will suddenly appear by magic out of a Taoist hat.” Yet Merton’s paraphrase demonstrates how Chuang Tzu’s writings closely resemble the apophatic thought of some Christian theologians and mystics that Merton writes about elsewhere.

Merton points out that Chuang Tzu’s Taoism is not “the popular, degenerate amalgam of superstition, alchemy, magic, and health-culture which Taoism later became.” Instead, Chuang Tzu’s Taoism values an inner unity, a hiddenness of the true man, and a practical asceticism that Merton also finds in Christian mysticism. Merton believes that Chuang Tzu’s gift of “unknowing” is similar to Christian contemplation. A Chuang Tzu disciple loses his self-conscious “knowledge” and gains an inner “unknowing” by which he lives through Tao. The disciple in one Chuang Tzu story, for instance, prepares for the gift of unknowing through a patient emptying of desires, otherwise known as a “fasting of the heart,” much as Merton’s contemplative must go through John of the Cross’ Night of Sense, when the will grows tired of desire and reasoning.

The gift of unknowing – what Oakeshott would try to capture in his theory of aesthetics as well as of practical life – is perhaps best put in this classic Chuang Tzu tale that was central to Oakeshott’s understanding of how human beings actually do what we do, and live how we live, irrespective of modern rationalism’s claim to have captured all human knowledge in theory:

Duke Huan was in his hall reading a book. 

The wheelwright P’ien, who was in the yard below chiseling a wheel, laid down his mallet and chisel, stepped up into the hall, and said to Duke Huan, “This book Your Grace is reading—may I venture to ask whose words are in it?”

“The words of the sages,” said the duke.

“Are the sages still alive?”

“Dead long ago,” said the duke.

“In that case, what you are reading there is nothing but the chaff and dregs of the men of old!”

“Since when does a wheelwright have permission to comment on the books I read?” said Duke Huan. “If you have some explanation, well and good.  If not, it’s your life!”

Wheelwright P’ien said,

“I look at it from the point of view of my own work. When I chisel a wheel, if the blows of the mallet are too gentle, the chisel slides and won’t take hold. But if they’re too hard, it bites in and won’t budge. Not too gentle, not too hard—you can get it in your hand and feel it in your mind. You can’t put it into words, and yet there’s a knack to it somehow. I can’t teach [explain] it to my son, and he can’t learn it from me. So I’ve gone along for seventy years and at my age I’m still chiseling wheels. When the men of old died, they took with them the things that couldn’t be handed down. So what you are reading there must be nothing but chaff and dregs of the men of old.”

Once you have understood this story, you have understood the core philosophical principle of conservatism.

Jamie Kirchick wants to stop sending PEPFAR money to Uganda, which has introduced legislation that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death:

When a government actively encourages homophobia, the effect reverberates throughout society. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has accused European gays of coming to his country to "recruit" people into homosexuality. Ugandan newspapers and bloggers have seized on the proposed law to launch their own broadsides against gays, posting the names and photographs of individuals in Wild West-style "wanted" posters in print and online. A major tabloid, the Red Pepper, trumpeted an expose headlined "Top Homos in Uganda Named" as "a killer dossier, a heat-pounding and sensational masterpiece that largely exposes Uganda's shameless men and unabashed women that have deliberately exported the Western evils to our dear and sacred society."

From 2004 through 2008, Uganda received a total of $1.2 billion in PEPFAR money, and this year it is receiving $285 million more. Clearly, the United States has a great deal of leverage over the Ugandan government, and the American taxpayer should not be expected to fund a regime that targets a vulnerable minority for attack — an attack that will only render the vast amount of money that we have donated moot.

"Confucius called on Lao Tan and spoke to him about benevolence and righteousness.   

Lao Tan said, “Chaff from the winnowing fan can so blind the eye that heaven, earth and the four directions all seem to shift place. A mosquito or a horse-fly stinging your skin can keep you awake a whole night. And when benevolence and righteousness in all their fearfulness come to muddle the mind, the confusion is unimaginable.   

If you want to keep the world from losing its simplicity, you must move with the freedom of the wind, stand in the perfection of Virtue.   

Why all this huffing and puffing, as though you were carrying a big drum and searching for a lost child." – The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, one of Oakeshott's influences.

(Drawing: Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly (or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi)

In his Sunday column, Andrew examined the superhuman powers of Sarah Palin. Joining the study of her lying psyche was Michelle Goldberg, Bella DePaulo, David Benjamin, and Matt Taibbi. David Nood corrected her grasp on Alaskan history while Douthat highlighted one of the true silver linings of her rise. On the news side, Palin gave her mission statement to O'Reilly and continued to trash the father of Tripp. Meanwhile, Levi's mom was sent to prison.

In other weekend coverage, Krauthammer endorsed the "show trial" meme, Liz Cheney stoked more fear, Fallows bemoaned the coverage of Obama's trip to Asia, McWhorter gave him advice on ending the drug war, and a reader provided a view from his recession. Get your weekly Jonah Lehrer fix here and here.

In assorted fun, we featured an kick-ass story of sudden fame, found a fascinating document of forgotten fame, read some terrible fictional sex, watched a cool display of imperial decline, and delivered some YouTube crack from The Wire and Mad Men.

— C.B.