Category: The Dish

Back To Daddy

Bushbush_1

Poppy was finally forced – once again – to rescue the wayward son. My take in the Sunday Times:

The events of last week in America have an almost Shakespearean quality to them. It‚Äôs like some ghastly conflation of Richard II’s doom-laden ‘Down, down, I come’ and Richard III‚Äôs ‘winter of our discontent’. Richard II is how Bush would like the world to see him ‚Äî a king of noble motives brought low by injustice and fate. Richard III is … well, ask Karl Rove, the hunch in W’s back.

All of this is fascinating psychodrama, of course, and a humiliation for the dauphin. But it’s also good news. It’s a chance to leave behind the acrimony of the recent past and construct a new direction for Iraq and America. Poppy Bush can unite again with his son; Gates, Baker and Rice can try and put a realist finale to a neocon adventure; Democrats can unite again with Republicans … oh, who am I kidding? I don’t know what the future will bring. But if things look dark at the end of Act IV, there’s always Act V to come.

(White House Photo.)

Burke on Torture

A true conservative wrote:

"To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered to nature, and a Burke_7 constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence which are every where used to support them.

Let us take a review of the dungeons, whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly stored, by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support a a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in an abject servitude and dependence.  There was a time, when I looked with reverential awe on these mysteries of policy; but age, experience, and philosophy, have rent the veil; and I view this sanctum sanctorum, at least, without any enthusiastic admiration.  I acknowledge indeed, the necessity of such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary."

It’s from "A Vindication Of Natural Society Or A View Of The Miseries And Evils Arising To Mankind From Every Species Of Artificial Society" published in 1756.

The Fundamentalist Psyche

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.

The Hewitt-Hannity-Limbaugh Right

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.

Poem For Veterans’ Day

Poppies

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.

Jonah Attacks!

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 Tcscover_20 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."