Category: Old Dish

I like this idea from Noam Schreiber at TNR. The Democrats should stop whining about tax cuts and instead argue for different, more populist tax cuts, like a payroll tax holiday. If I were a Dem, I’d also argue for outflanking the administration in the war on terror not by quibbling over Iraq, but by insisting on a strategy for regime change in Saudi Arabia and Iran as well. If Gore had a brain, he’d be saying these things as well.

MAKING LIGHT OF TORTURE: What to make of this astonishing article at Slate? Am I hallucinating or is Tim Noah actually equating Saddam’s torturing of political enemies with consensual safe sado-masochistic sex between adults? Here’s one memorable phrase, glibly posited by Noah as if he is saying something clever: “[O]ne man’s recreation is another man’s torture.” Excuse me? Tell that to those tortured to death by Saddam. This moral equivalence is far worse, I think, than equating Miss World contests with forcing women to wear burqas. It trivializes enormous evil; and makes light of the hideous suffering inflicted on Saddam’s enemies. Somewhere in some dark prison right now, someone is being electrocuted, or burnt, or pummeled or tortured by Saddam’s henchmen. And Noah finds a way to equate that with free, consensual, sado-masochistic games: “It would be less awful if [Saddam’s] victims were willing. But how much less awful?” The answer is: less awful by a universe of awfulness. One has to ask: What universe is Noah in that he can even begin to think this way? How desperate is he for something to write that he can come up with this angle? Would he equate Stalin’s gulags with leather-fetish clubs? Would he trivialize Hitler’s holocaust by remarking how similar it is to some bondage games? Maybe he thinks he’s being funny. He’s not. He’s being depraved. Maybe he’s just peddling titillating details about S&M into what’s supposed to be credible journalism. Or maybe his goal is to stigmatize people with unusual sex lives just for the hell of it. But to do so by equating it with political torture is unequivocally vile. And there’s something about his chirpy repetition of the third person “Chatterbox” device while making light of the hideous torture of political prisoners that is truly sickening. Of course, he has the disclaimer: “By no means does Chatterbox mean to make light of these horrible practices. Quite the opposite: Chatterbox is trying to add a little weight to decisions about personal pleasure that shade into voluntary mutilation.” Maybe Chatterbox should take a tour of Saddam’s gulags before he writes such obscenities again.

Spinsanity makes the case against Gore and some of his detractors.

“I have argued with him on almost every subject in the world, and we have always been on opposite sides, without affectation or animosity…. It is necessary to disagree with him as much as I do, in order to admire him as I do; and I am proud of him as a foe even more than as a friend.” – G.K. Chesterton on his relationship with George Bernard Shaw, from Chesterton’s autobiography.

ONE DEM GETS IT: Peter Beinart makes a strong case for the Democrats to make hay about the federal munificence to corporate tax-evaders.

THE ENEMY’S TACTICS:Here’s a useful summary of Saddam’s police methods. This is what anti-war “progressives” want to protect from outside interference.

A BRITISH VIEW: “Sport is the arena in which men parade the virtues that are the essence of masculinity: courage, athleticism, strength, endurance, will, magnanimity in victory, dignity in defeat. Many women find that fantastically sexy, which is why you’ll rarely see a sports star with an ugly girlfriend. And many men find it sexy, too, which is why they stick pictures of their heroes all over their bedroom walls.That’s what’s so crazy about all the gay sportsmen rumours. For I don’t care how straight you are, how many women you shag or how many kids you’ve produced. When it comes to loving sport, we’re all a bunch of poofs.” – this, a defense of Al Gore’s “fifth column” remark, and an attack on Al Gore’s ‘fifth column” remark, all on the Letters Page.

THE ENEMY’S ENEMY: This transcript is worth reading. It’s an interview with a Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasrin, who lives under the threat of death because of her criticisms of Islam. She fears for her life each day. And she specifically disputes the idea that there are several Islams, most of which are peaceful:

TN: … [I]t is written in the Koran that if you are not Muslim, or if you are you know disbeliever, then you should be killed. Islam divides the world in two parts: Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam. Dar al-Harb means land of infidels and Dar al-Islam means land of Islam. So it’s the Muslim’s duty to make, to kill all the infidels or make them convert and to make all the land Dar al-Islam, means land of Islam.
ES: What about the idea of tolerance?
TN: There is no tolerance. There is no tolerance in Islam because, you know if it is, if a law say, because a law says that disbelievers would go to hell if you are a Muslim but you reject Islam and if you deny Allah or Prophet Mohammad, then you should be killed. You know fundamentalists issued fatwa against me. Many people, the so-called liberal Muslims, say that: no, it’s not real Islam, Islam is for peace, Islam doesn’t allow any fatwa. Actually, it is not true. The fundamentalists are following, are practicing Islam correctly.

And the key point is that Nasrin, like Salman Rushdie, isn’t safe even in the West. The brutality isn’t only “over there.” It’s here.

QUOTATION MARK WATCH: Have you begun to notice how some commentators (mainly on the left but also on the paleo-right) have begun to put the term “war on terrorism” in quote marks? I wonder what part of the phrase they don’t buy. That we are fighting terrorism? Or that we are at war? Here’s a recent example. It’s in the opening paragraph. Send me other egregious ones as well, would you?

CLARIFICATION: In my post yesterday about Islam versus gays, some people were confused when I posited the notion of a fundamentalist Christian group possibly calling for the execution of gays. Obviously, I was referring to what happened with extremist Muslims in Australia. But the post was a little confusing, and I’m sorry for that. But if you think fundamentalist Christians would never say or believe such a thing, you’re wrong. Check this story out. Of course, these people are fringe types. But they exist – and are particularly influential in the “ex-gay” movement. But in some ways, I respect their hideous consistency. One of the things that befuddles me about some Christian fundamentalists is why they don’t call for public executions of homosexuals. They say they believe in the Bible literally. And Leviticus clearly calls for the death penalty for sodomy. So why do they refuse to follow the Bible? Or are they cafeteria fundamentalists?

He makes some good points.

Now he really is a loser. I have to say I loved his term “Mayberry Machiavelli.” Captures Rove beautifully. But how out of it was DiIulio in the first place to expect a non-political White House?

CORPORATE SCAMS: Ignore some of the loopy rhetoric. Arianna is dead-on in this column. The idea that the feds should be shovelling money to corporations who locate off-shore is simply disgusting. If I were a Democrat, I’d make a huge deal out of this. But then if I were a Democrat, I’d probably be on the take from these corporations as well.

THE RACISM OF THE POMO LEFT: Ian Buruma provides an important follow-up to my piece on the Miss World riots in the Guardian. Money graf:

Besides snobbery, there is a worse reason for being more outraged by western vulgarity than non-western murderousness. It might be called moral obtuseness, or even moral racism. The assumption appears to be that Africans or Asians can’t be held to our own elevated standards. They are more like wild animals, whose savagery should not be provoked by our foolishness. When we do provoke them, the consequences are entirely our fault. It would be as misplaced to apply our moral standards to their behaviour, as it would be to expect tigers to talk. The murder of Nigerians or Indian Muslims, or Iraqi Kurds, is par for the course, unless we did it, or Americans, or Israelis.

I think this describes a lot of white, Western, lefty sentiment toward Islamism. Many of these people actually believe that Western standards of freedom, decency, and tolerance cannot be expected of Muslims or other dark-skinned people. The way in which much of the Western Left (and parts of the insouciant right) simply excused the mass murder of hundreds in Nigeria is a function of this condescension. So, I think, is the idea that Iraqis don’t really want to live in freedom – or at least out of the grip of a disgusting dictatorship. What parts of the left are about is maintaining their own so-called morality, while consigning the inhabitants of the developing world to the backwardness that is naturally theirs’. If this were the nineteenth century, these lefties would be Tories. And eagles would be Gladstonian liberals.

KRUGMAN WATCH: In a rip-off of E.J. Dionne’s recent column, Paul Krugman says quite baldly that in the Wall Street Journal, “key conservative ideologues have now declared their support for tax increases – but only for people with low incomes.” Read the piece he cites. See if you can find any argument for actually increasing taxes on the poor. In fact, the editorial states that “While we would opt for a perfect world in which everybody paid far less in taxes, our increasingly two-tiered tax system is undermining the political consensus for cutting taxes at all.” The bottom line is that any further reductions in net taxes should be avoided. That’s not the same as raising them. Matthew Hoy has the goods. One instructive comparison: compare Dionne’s tough but fair piece with Krugman’s. It tells you all you need to know about Krugman’s intellectual integrity.

Imagine if a bevy of Christian Right fundamentalists argued at a public event at a university that a Biblical court should be set up in America that would allow Christians to put gays to death, as mandated by Leviticus. Imagine if such fundamentalists also called on their fellow believers to violate laws against anti-gay discrimination and hate crimes, and barred a gay lecturer at the university from the event. It would be a huge story – and rightly so. But it happened in Australia recently. Everyone looked the other way. Even the gay press ignored it. Finally, a left-winger, writing for something called “Green Left Weekly” blew the whistle. It seems to me that gay organizations need urgently to monitor Islamic fundamentalism and its threat to our very existence. To resuscitate an old slogan, silence = death. Literally. (Thanks to Tim Blair for alerting me to this.)

RAINES WATCH: Jack Shafer piles on again. Alas, it’s getting easier. He’s particularly befuddled by the Times’ weird no-news back-fill piece on steroid use. 3,000 words? For Pete’s sake: Why? I detect paleo-feminist hostility to men who enjoy being men; and the usual busy-body nanny-state hysteria about recreational drug-use. But I’m open to other suggestions. The only motive that seems unlikely is reporting the news.

THE MALE MIND: Why are so many cases of autism among boys and men rather than girls and women? Is autism culturally constructed? Or are the male and female brains subtly but distinctly different? The answer is obvious. It isn’t a matter of debate whether there are subtle differences between male and female brains: biologists know there are. Paleo-feminists will dispute this, but then they dispute whether there are any significant biological distinctions between men and women. Here’s an article thinking out loud about the social repercussions.

OSAMA’S LETTER: “I think the letter is filled with “pitch” paragraphs, pitches which hit on nerves around the world. It hit your nerve. It will hit others in a far different way. Break it down. It’s very, very good.” – all this and a defense of Alessandra Stanley on the Letters Page.

NOT-SO-FULL FAITH AND CREDIT: Some of you have emailed me to say that the real reason for opposing Massachusetts’ possible decision to legalize marriage rights for gays is its national implications. The argument is that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution would immediately mean that legal marriage in one state would be legal marriage in every state. Stanley Kurtz makes this point central to his case. I presume Stanley is simply unaware of Constitutional law in this respect. But the truth is: no serious legal scholar believes this at all. The best paper I know on this question was written by a very gay-sympathetic Constitutional lawyer in the Yale Law Journal (vol. 106, no. 7, 1997). Professor Larry Kramer (not the AIDS activist) is one of the leading experts in what is called the field of conflict-of-laws. He points out that marriage has never been legally subject to full faith and credit. In fact, all the legal precedents point to the opposite conclusion: that states can quite easily disregard legal marriages in other states for a host of legal reasons, most prominently through what is called the “public policy exception.” That is to say, if a state believes that another state’s marriages violates its own public policy, then those marriages can be void in that state. Of course, people could still try and sue for their rights, but, as Kramer points out, they sure shouldn’t expect results:

The brouhaha over Hawaii’s anticipated legalization of same-sex marriages is therefore a big dud from a conflict of laws persepctive. There is simply no problem: other states do not have to recognize such marriages, and they do not need special laws or federal legislation to make that clear.

Since Kramer wrote that, it’s even clearer. The U.S. Congress has passed the Defense of Marriage Act, enshrining gays as second class citizens under federal law; and many states have passed similar laws for their own domains. What was always highly unlikely has now become impossible. Any federal Constitutional Amendment is therefore completely superfluous as a matter of law and is being pursued out of what can only be called hysteria and malevolence. That’s why the White House opposes it. That’s why all intelligent and reasoned federalists should as well.

JUDICIAL USURPATION: A little history simply confirms this. The main legal precedents are in inter-racial marriage cases. Inter-racial marriages were long recognized in northern states before they were made legal in southern states. In fact, the discrepancies lasted over a century. If Full Faith and Credit worked the way Kurtz argues, Massachusetts’ inter-racial marriages would have been legal in Mississippi immediately. And when SCOTUS finally ruled against the ban on inter-racial marriage, it did so not through the “full faith and credit” clause but through equal protection. (I wonder how many conservatives today actually oppose that piece of judicial ursurpation of the people’s will. Polls in 1967 when the court ruled on inter-racial marriage showed higher opposition to inter-racial marriage then than to same-sex marriage now. I ask Stanley Kurtz directly: would he have opposed Loving vs Virginia as judicial liberal activism? If not, why not? It was classic court usurpation of an ancient tradition supported by huge majorities in the states involved.) In other words, the notion that marriage in one state means marriage in every state is false. It is untrue. It is not rooted in fact. It is an unfact. Its veracity is pushing up the daisies. Next time you read or hear someone making such an argument, make a mental note that he or she is either ignorant or happy to lie to advance his or her political agenda. (Shameless plug: the best collection of legal papers and essays on this issue, including the full analysis by Kramer, can be purchased here.)

TO GORE’S DEFENSE: Tim Noah rushes in to poo-poo the notion that Al Gore’s “fifth column” reference is anything comparable to my own qualified use of the term over a year ago. (I say ‘qualified” because I wrote “what amounts to a fifth column,” meaning it need not be a self-conscious or literal one. And in retrospect, I should add that I wish I hadn’t used that inflammatory phrase. But it was two days after 9/11 and my emotions were in full flood.) Noah defines the term by referring to the following definition: “a clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal. The term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).” Given that definition, it seems to me that my point was prescient. It’s now simply a matter of public record that some people – on the far ri
ght and, to a greater extent, the far left – really do sympathize with the enemy in this war, or certainly find the United States to be more morally suspect than al Qaeda, Saddam or the Islamo-fascists, or believe the alleged power of international Jewry is the deeper issue. I get daily emails from these people hailing every defeat for the United States and every victory for Saddam. Most weeks, I link to some statement of anti-Americanism from these fringe and not-so-fringe types. Is Noah saying that I’m fabricating these statements? And if I’m not, why should I retract a prediction that has turned out to be alarmingly on the mark?

NOAH’S COCOON: Noah may disagree. To which I have to respond: How would he describe the beliefs of someone who says, for example, that the real enemy in this war is the United States? What is his view of, say, ANSWER, the organizing group behind the anti-war rallies? Or the views of Noam Chomsky? Do such people exist on the American left? The answer is empirically yes. Among the academic class, this ambivalence about defending America and the Consitution from Islamofascism is endemic. I can see why embarrassed liberals like Noah don’t want to acknowledge the existence of such types; but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Now compare this to Al Gore’s statement about the “fifth column” in the media. What could he possibly mean? Does he mean that some journalists, under the cover of objectivity, actually favor a conservative agenda? If he does, I think he’s right. But it also surely applies (and to a far greater extent) to the left as well. But the use of the term “fifth column” is completely unnecessary here and deliberately inflammatory. And Gore doesn’t even have the emotional excuse of writing two days after a mass murder. Imagine, to turn the tables, if I had called Howell Raines a member of a “fifth column,” and argued that “most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting the daily Democratic talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.” This is, in fact, one of the themes of this blog, but I haven’t used the term “fifth column” precisely because of its inflammatory implications. If I had, do you think Tim Noah would have let it pass? Not a chance. Which just goes to show that Noah is precisely part of the problem he purports to be above.

Here’s the original. Mickey says the fact that Kelley turned out to be a Boston Protestant doesn’t vitiate the entire story. Make your own mind up. Howell Raines may not know the difference between Boston Catholics and Protestants. But anyone who’s Irish-Catholic knows that when you spell Kelley with an “e”, you’re usually no papist. And you also know that Catholic-bashing isn’t exactly unknown among Boston Protestants. But somehow “Boston Protestant Attacks Catholic Church” doesn’t promote Raines’ agenda, does it? (By the way, the Times can’t even get his middle initial right either. Is it David J. Kelley or David E. Kelley? The Times has both – one for the caption and one for the piece. That’s our paper of record!)

“If I were young enough for military service and was compelled to fight either for Iraq or America, I would fight for Iraq, on the simple grounds that the Iraqis and their surrounding countries should be allowed to work out their own destinies without Western bullying. If I feel that, how much more strongly would it affect a young British Muslim?” – A.N. Wilson, the London Evening Standard. Perhaps Wilson is unaware that, at present, the only chance Iraqis have of “working out their own destinies” is after a Western liberation.

GILMORE WAS HERE: Readers may remember Glenda Gilmore as the Yale professor who argued in the Yale Daily News that the real enemy in the current war was the United States. I linked to her as a nominee for the coveted Sontag Award. The Yale Daily News comment board subsequently lit up with some controversial posts and some abhorrent ones. The pure jibes were removed, as they should have been. But Gilmore is not content. She wants the Daily News to remove discussion boards or is apparently threatening to sue the student paper for libel. According to this piece in today’s Yale Daily News, other faculty members are supporting her. It is, of course, part and parcel of some parts of today’s left: they have been in the forefront of intimidation of free speech for years now. But that policing free discussion of important issues in a student newspaper is now an acceptable course of action shows how deep the rot has gone. Good for those Yale students fighting back for free speech.

THE DIGNITY OF GAY RELATIONSHIPS: Great news from two quarters today. The new Archbishop of Canterbury has affirmed the dignity of faithful gay relationships within the Christian tradition and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the monstrous 1986 Bowers vs Hardwick ruling that upheld a law that made consensual non-procreative sex in private ok for heterosexuals but a criminal act for gay people. Slowly, the double standards in sexual morality are being unraveled by reason and faith. There will be backlash – especially if Massachusetts ends its discrimination against gay citizens in marriage rights next year. Conservatives who support federalism in every other circumstance will try and coerce states to adhere to federal marriage diktats if individual states move toward equality under the law. Revealing about their true priorities, isn’t it? Federalism for everyone who agrees with them. You want to know why some people find some Republicans two-faced on states’ rights? Here’s why.

Was I hallucinating or is the New York Times now advertising on, yes, Matt Drudge’s blog? Matt Drudge, constantly belittled and scorned in the Times’ news pages, derided as an internet “gossip” whom real journalists are “reduced” to reading when all else fails, is now helping sell the New York Times. Congrats to both parties.

THE FIFTH COLUMN: That’s Al Gore’s description of some conservative-leaning media outlets. Here’s the quote:

The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh – there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media … Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.

I think what he means is that conservative political bias is anathema to good media (implying, I think, that only liberals can be good journalists). He names names. He accuses individuals of being traitors to their own vocation. Now you’ll recall the hubbub when I suggested over a year ago that some politically leftist enclaves might at some point launch “what amounts to a fifth column” in the war on terror. I named no names; I made sure to qualify my remarks; even so, the hatred of the United States that worried me then has since flourished in several places, especially the academy. Still, that one sentence of mine was described in the New York Times as a “disgusting diatribe.” Eric Alterman even attempted to insinuate that I had described all New Yorkers or blue staters in this way. So I’m waiting for these same sources to denounce Gore for saying something far less nuanced or careful. He even insinuates that being Republican in the media is to represent a “fifth column.” And he does so long after the immediate emotions after 9/11 have subsided. Again, I’m waiting …

BLOGGER BARBIE: Yes, it was inevitable.

BBC BIAS WATCH: Check out this piece from the BBC news site. The headline: “Iraq Attack ‘Means Third World War’.” Look for the “balance” that is allegedly the BBC’s guiding principle. This is pro-Saddam propaganda, pure and simple – from a German former U.N. official. Can you imagine the BBC running a similar piece urging the need for disarming Saddam?

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: As I pointed out last week, in France, the major publisher, Flammarion, has just published a children’s book called “Dreaming of Palestine,” a thinly veiled anti-Semitic tract. This kind of thing, I now learn, is by no means new to Flammarion. That publishing house also brought out Edouard Drumont’s “La France Juive,” back in 1886. According to Johns Hopkins professor, David Bell, “La France Juive” was “the most influential anti-Semitic work in French history, and probably the most influential in nineteenth-century Europe. It went through 200 editions, becoming one of the great bestsellers of the period, and helped create the atmosphere in which the Dreyfus Affair took place.” Plus ça change …

MISS WORLD, APPEASERS: From the semi-literate press release put out by the Miss World organization:

The Miss World Organisation and all of the Miss World contestants were shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling comments made in the Nigerian Newspaper “This Day” that led to such a tragic loss of life.

Jaw-dropping.

THE PAPER OF RECORD: Maybe you saw the piece that ran earlier this month in the New York Times on one of the writers for “The Practice.” It was about the show’s coverage of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church. The headline ran: “A Catholic Writer Brings His Anger to ‘The Practice'”. The accompanying photograph had as a caption: “David J. Kelley, writer of “The Practice,” was raised as a Catholic in the Boston Diocese.” The entire story was about a Catholic writer’s grappling with his own Church – and it was an effective one. The only trouble with this story is that it isn’t true. The Times ran a correction last Tuesday: “An article in The Arts on Nov. 7 about “The Practice,” the ABC television series that has been been addressing the scandal over sexual abuse by priests, misstated the religious background of the writer David E. Kelley. He was brought up Protestant, not Roman Catholic.” This correction essentially destroys the entire story. The writer’s Catholicism was the entire rationale for the piece. And it took them from November 7 to November 25 to make the correction! I guess they were waiting for people to forget about the original story. Sorry, Howell. We’ve got Nexis now.

POMO ANTI-SEMITISM: What happens when post-modernist critical theory meets the Holocaust? I guess we’ll soon find out. These guys are from Berkeley and Washington State University.

SO WAS IT FAKE? Swiss experts believe the Osama audio-tape is a fake. If it is, I think it’s an extremely good sign that OBL is dead. Here’s hoping.

THE MEME PROPAGATES: Newsweek has picked up on the damage Howell Raines’ dictatorial paleo-liberalism has done – and is still doing – to the New York Times. His unhinged campaign against the Augusta National Golf Club appears to have been the final straw for some Times journalists. “That was just shocking,” one anonymous Times staffer tells Seth Mnookin. “It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues. We don’t run articles that just say so-and-so is staying silent. We run articles when something important actually happens.” Of course, this notion that the silence of others makes something a news story is one of Raines’ leitmotifs. It was under that loopy rubric that he justified turning the Times into an anti-war propaganda sheet last summer. Meanwhile, Raines is … silent. Newsweek reports yet again: “Raines refused to discuss the Times’s coverage.” In fact his only recent response to his critics was to an audience of lefties at Berkeley. Here’s a simple question: what kind of journalist won’t talk to the press about legitimate stories about his coverage?

THE LIBERAL ARAB WORLD: They don’t execute gays; they just persecute them.

FATWA, FATWA: A left-wing black feminist has been targeted by the Islamo-fascists for killing. She has to live in hiding in the United States. Never heard of her? I guess her fellow lefties are too busy campaigning for the release of Mumia.

My old colleague, the legendary British journalist and drunk Henry Fairlie, had a favourite story about his long, lascivious love affair with America. He was walking down a suburban street one afternoon in a suit and tie, passing familiar rows of detached middle-American dwellings and lush, green Washington lawns. In the distance a small boy – aged perhaps six or seven – was riding his bicycle towards him.

And in a few minutes, as their paths crossed on the pavement, the small boy looked up at Henry and said, with no hesitation or particular affectation: “Hi.” As Henry told it, he was so taken aback by this unexpected outburst of familiarity that he found it hard to say anything particularly coherent in return. And by the time he did, the boy was already trundling past him into the distance.

In that exchange, Henry used to reminisce, so much of America was summed up. That distinctive form of American manners, for one thing: a strong blend of careful politeness and easy informality. But beneath that, something far more impressive. It never occurred to that little American boy that he should be silent, or know his place, or defer to his elder. In America, a six-year-old cyclist and a 55-year-old journalist were equals. The democratic essence of America was present there on a quiet street on a lazy summer afternoon.

Henry couldn’t have imagined that exchange happening in England – or Europe, for that matter. Perhaps now, as European – and especially British – society has shed some of its more rigid hierarchies, it could. But what thrilled him about that exchange is still a critical part of what makes America an enduringly liberating place. And why so many of us who have come to live here find, perhaps more than most native Americans, a reason to give thanks this Thanksgiving.

When I tuck into the turkey on Thursday, I’ll have three things in particular in mind. First, the country’s pathological obsession with the present. America is still a country where the past is anathema. Even when Americans are nostalgic, they are nostalgic for a myth of the future. What matters for Americans, in small ways and large, is never where you have come from – but where you are going, what you are doing now, or what you are about to become. In all the years I have lived in America – almost a decade and a half now – it never ceases to amaze me that almost nobody has ever demanded to know by what right I belong here. Almost nobody has asked what school I went to, what my family is like, or what my past contains. (In Britain I was asked those questions on a daily, almost hourly, basis.) Even when I took it on myself to be part of the American debate, nobody ever questioned my credentials for doing so. I don’t think that could ever happen in a European context (when there’s a gay American editor of The Spectator, let me know). If Europeans ever need to know why Ronald Reagan captured such a deep part of the American imagination, this is surely part of the answer. It was his reckless futurism (remember star wars and supply-side economics?) and his instinctive, personal generosity.

Second, I’m thankful for the American talent for contradiction. The country that sustained slavery for longer than any other civilised country is also the country that has perhaps struggled more honestly for the notion of racial equality than any other. The country that has a genuine public ethic of classlessness also has the most extreme economic inequality in the developed world. The country that is most obsessed with pressing the edge of modernity also has the oldest intact constitution in the world. The country that still contains a powerful religious right has also pushed the equality of homosexuals further than ever before in history. A country that cannot officially celebrate Christmas (it would erase the boundary between church and state) is also one of the most deeply religious nations on the planet. Americans have learnt how to reconcile the necessary contradictions not simply because their country is physically big enough to contain them, but because it is spiritually big enough to contain them. Americans have learnt how to reconcile the necessary contradictions of modern life with a verve and a serenity few others can muster. It is a deeply reassuring achievement.

Third, I’m thankful because America is, above all, a country of primary colours. Sometimes the pictures Americans paint are therefore not as subtle, or as elegant, or even as brilliant as masterpieces elsewhere. But they have a vigour and a simplicity that is often more viscerally alive. Other nations may have become bored with the Enlightenment, or comfortable in post-modern ennui. Americans find such postures irrelevant. Here the advertisements are cruel, the battles are stark and the sermons are terrifying. And here, more than anywhere else, the most vital of arguments still go on. Does God exist? Are the races equal? Can the genders get along? Americans believe that these debates can never get tired, and that their resolution still matters, because what happens in America still matters in the broader world. At its worst, this can bespeak a kind of arrogance and crudeness. But at its best, it reflects a resilient belief that the great questions can always be reinvented and that the answers are always relevant. In the end, I have come to appreciate this kind of naivety as a deeper form of sophistication. Even the subtlest of hues, after all, are merely primary colours mixed.

At the end of November each year this restless, contradictory and simple country finds a way to celebrate itself. The British, as befits a people at ease with themselves, do not have a national day. When the French do, their insecurity shows. Even America, on the fourth of July, displays a slightly neurotic excess of patriotism. But on Thanksgiving, the Americans resolve the nationalist dilemma. They don’t celebrate themselves, they celebrate their good fortune. And every November, as I reflect on a country that can make even an opinionated Englishman feel at home, I know exactly how they feel.

“My America,” first published November 24, 1996, Sunday Times of London