Of course, we should note that, unlike the “Octomom” whom Mandolyna rightly excoriates, the Gosselins did not engage in in vitro fertilization but in fertility treatments, which resulted in the release of multiple eggs, with their subsequent fertilization through entirely natural means. The only way to “select” a single embryo, then, would have been through the abortion of the other five.
Whatever I may think of the Gosselins’ later actions—and I agree with Mandolyna that “They sold their souls, and their children’s souls” in going on TV—I find it hard to criticize a woman for not being able to bring herself to end five tiny lives growing in her womb. Her doctors advised “selective reduction,” but she chose to carry all of the children to term at great risk to herself. If only she and her husband had continued to put their children’s welfare ahead of their own, their story might well have turned out differently.
Yet despite the situation in which their parents have placed them, Jon and Kate’s eight will always have one another. Which is why I must disagree with Mandolyna when she writes, “No child could possibly get what he or she needs in a two parent family with seven other siblings.”
Let me admit to having a certain interest in that statement. My wife, Amy, and I are the parents of seven beautiful, happy, and healthy children, and we have an eighth on the way. (I’ll let the reader pause and recall his favorite Catholic joke here.)
As hard as it may be for some readers to believe, every last one of those children was expected and welcomed—not just by Amy and myself, but by their older siblings. As late as ten years ago, when our third child was born, we would have laughed if someone had told us that we would one day be expecting our eighth. But our willingness to have more children has as much to do with our children’s openness to life as with our own.
This is the point at which the reader might expect me to insert some words about how, of course, we go without certain things, or how the quality of our time with each child makes up for any lack of quantity. In our case, though, that would be pure rubbish. Though I work for a nonprofit and Amy stays at home (and homeschools), our children have all that they need and probably too much that they don’t. Yes, it may be hard at times for them to find a little quiet time for themselves, but that was true in my own home, and I had only two sisters.
And our children have certain things that those in smaller families lack, such as the constant presence of friends and companions. Perhaps more importantly, they have a sense of hope for the future, an optimism that I remember having as a child (though there were only three of us in my immediate family, I had many cousins, most of them close by) but that I find missing in too many children today. In the desire to provide children with everything that they “need,” too many parents today schedule every last moment of their children’s lives, unintentionally smothering the sparks of spontaneity and creativity and individuality. No parents of eight could have enough control over their children’s lives to do the same.
There is something more, too, something deeper and more lasting. Amy and I believe in our Catholic Faith, but our children simply naturally live it. Hope is a theological virtue, infused by grace, but such grace flows through our home in abundance. It is the duty of Christian parents to pass the Faith on to their children, and particularly of the father to model Christ for them. But seeing the love of our children for their brothers and sisters and the sacrifices that they make for one another sometimes puts me to shame.
I am no sentimental lover of childhood for childhood’s sake, but I love children (especially my own). The size of our family is no accident, nor is it a reflection of some selfish desire, but rather of faith, and of hope, and of love.
When I look at my children gathered around the table at night, I cannot help but think that God knew what He was doing when He told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it.” If there is hope for our civilization, it lies in those who take His words to heart.
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The unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovo Albanian government on Feb. 17, followed closely by the Bush administration’s enthusiastic endorsement of the breakaway state, has been roundly criticized on this site and others. While much of the criticism has focused on the disturbing precedent that Kosovo independence sets”parts of the American Southwest will, by mid-century, have an equal claim to independence if the primary justification for such independence is the simple ascendance of an overwhelming ethnic majority”a more immediate concern is the rise of an avowedly Islamic state on the European continent, a state that has been baptized in the blood of European Christians and sealed with the ashes of Orthodox churches and monasteries.
The lightning speed with which the Bush administration recognized the new Islamic state should give pause to even the most enthusiastic supporter of secession or national self-determination as abstract principles (rather than political tools). This is, after all, the same administration that has spent seven years waging a far-flung “war on terror” that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars in American treasure and thousands of American lives (not to mention the lives of innocent Iraqis and the loss of American liberty). In rhetoric (if not in reality), the war on terror has been aimed squarely at al-Qaeda, and Americans can be excused, therefore, if they find it just a touch odd that the Bush administration would be so quick to welcome the appearance of an Islamic state Osama bin Laden helped to birth.
The relationship between the Albanian Muslim Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and al-Qaeda was acknowledged by Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence agency, in a Nov. 29, 1998, story in the Sunday Times of London. The CIA and German intelligence separately confirmed that jihadists trained in al-Qaeda camps in Albania and Afghanistan had flooded into Kosovo in the late 1990’s, while Bin Laden himself was traveling freely throughout Central Europe on a passport issued by the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. And, as I reported in the February 2008 issue of Chronicles, Albanian Muslim immigrants in at least one American city actively recruited for the KLA Caucasian converts to Islam, who were then sent to Afghanistan for al-Qaeda training.
From the standpoint of the Bush administration’s foreign policy (not to mention the American national interest), the recognition of Kosovo makes little or no sense”at least on the surface. If we dig a little deeper, however, a disturbing pattern emerges.
Despite the insistence of some of his supporters (and even more of his detractors) that the War on terror is actually a crusade against Islam, President Bush has repeatedly insisted that it is not and that “true Islam” is a “religion of peace.” We should take him at his word: not about Islam being a religion of peace (that would be the height of naiveté) but about his purpose in waging the war on terror. There is no reason to believe that he, or any of his advisors, actually regards Islam itself as a threat”at least to the United States. A broad range of Islamic states and organizations, however, are manifestly a threat to Israel, and it’s within that context that we can understand the eagerness of the administration and its neoconservative supporters to support the creation of a Muslim state in Europe”far from where they believe such a state could do any damage.
Judging by the combination of words and actions, the Bush administration’s war on terror has had three aims: first, to gain direct control over a portion of the Middle Eastern oil supply; secondly, to make it possible to remove some or all U.S. troops and military bases from Saudi Arabia, since their presence there has been resented by both Osama bin Laden and, post-Gulf War, by the Saudi princes; and thirdly, to bring a measure of stability to the Middle East that will increase Israel’s security.
Of the three aims, only the second”removing troops and bases from Saudi Arabia”has achieved any significant success. But it’s an important clue to help us understand what the Bush administration (and the Clinton administration before it) regards as the goal of U.S. foreign policy toward Muslim states. The most important thing is to avoid potential conflicts, especially those that could destabilize the Middle East. (The fact that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East does not disprove the point; the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war, both inside and outside the administration, argued that it would bring greater stability to the Middle East.)
That tells us something, too, of the way that U.S. policymakers view the foreign policy of Muslim states. Since our political leaders do not take Islam seriously, they act”in all good faith”as if Muslim rulers do not take it seriously either. Thus, increasing Islamic immigration to the United States, massive Saudi funding of mosques here and in Europe (which facilitates that immigration; 300 mosques have been built in Kosovo over the past ten years, most with Saudi money), and the creation of Muslim states in Europe are not causes for alarm but potential opportunities, the reasoning goes, for increasing the reservoir of good will in Muslim states toward the United States.
There’s a certain split-mindedness at work here. After all, if U.S. policymakers really believe that the Saudis are not particularly serious about their religion, then how do they explain the fact that 80 percent of the 2,000 or so mosques in the United States have been built since the first Gulf War, and that the majority of those (according to the CIA) were built with Saudi money, even though Saudis make up a minor portion of Islamic immigrants to the United States? If the spread of Islam is not the aim, then there must be another, and it’s hard to think of one that’s more benign than bringing the “religion of peace” to a wider audience.
The neoconservatives have quite rightly taken their lumps for their role in fomenting the War on terror, but there is one charge of which they are actually (relatively) innocent: wanting to confront Islam qua Islam. Neoconservative nostalgia for the glory days of the Cold War has understandably raised suspicions that they were willing to use worldwide Islam as a substitute for global communism. But as Matthew Roberts has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt in “Putin Beyond the Propaganda,” the chief neocon strategists would still much rather fight Russia in a new Cold War”even using Islam to do so. They cringe at the suggestion of such writers as Srdja Trifkovic that the United States should join with Russia in a true “Northern Alliance” against a rising Islamic tide that, as it did 400 years ago, threatens to overwhelm Europe.
But Roberts and Trifkovic are correct: If Russia becomes an enemy of the United States, it will be because we have made it so. And we will have done so by ignoring the much greater threat of militant Islam”a threat that, for all of the rhetoric of the war on terror, does not arise primarily from nonstate actors such as al-Qaeda but from Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, that we regard as allies in the war on terror. Without the unofficial support of such states, al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, and the KLA would never have achieved the success that they have.
In response to the threat of Soviet expansion after World War II, George Kennan formulated his policy of “containment,” first laid down in his “long telegram” from Moscow in 1946 and published the next year in Foreign Affairs with a by-line of “X.” For the rest of his life, Kennan regretted that his initial proposal was highjacked to create the rationale for the military operation known as the Cold War; his vision of containment was not primarily military but political, economic, and cultural.
In formulating a foreign policy to handle the threat of Islam, we can learn something from one of the wisest of 20th-century diplomats, a man who, unlike many of those who highjacked his ideas, was a true American patriot. We do not need a War on terror, with its nearly unbearable expense in blood and treasure; the primary threat Islam poses to the United States today is political, spiritual, and demographic, not military. As such, it can be contained at a much lower cost.
We can hardly expect President Bush or his successor to deliver the American equivalent of Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address; but a little “straight talk” about Islam is certainly in order. Recognizing that orthodox Islam”what our politicians and media insist on calling “radical” Islam”sees no distinction between church and state is essential to formulating a realistic foreign policy. Muslim leaders view the expansion of Islam in both spiritual and political terms; dar-al-Islam, which all Muslims must work to make coextensive with the entire earth, is both a spiritual and a political order.
Because of this political dimension of Islam, perhaps the most important aspect of American foreign policy toward Muslim states is something that’s normally considered domestic policy”namely, curtailing Islamic immigration to the United States. While not all Muslim immigrants may be a threat, we have no reliable way of determining which ones are. Since Islamic doctrine regards the rule of a Muslim population, no matter how small, by non-Muslims as “oppression””a condition that justifies jihad against the non-Muslim rulers”injecting such a population into our body politic has an effect similar to mainlining heroin. It may feel good now, but the long-term consequences are unlikely to be pleasant.
A corollary to our immigration policy would be an immediate cessation of the flow of foreign funds to the United States for the purpose of building mosques and Islamic schools. Both eyewitness accounts and in-depth examinations such as the Pew Research Center study released last May bear witness to what is taught in such places; as the Pew study found, younger Muslims in the United States are both more observant (50 percent attend mosque at least weekly, compared with 35 percent of older Muslims) and more likely to hold radical views (26 percent believe that suicide bombing can be justified under some circumstances, and another five percent refused to answer the question).
Saudi Arabia does not allow the construction of Christian churches in the kingdom; why should we allow Saudi money to finance the construction of hotbeds of Islamic radicalism within our borders?
Once we straighten out our own immigration policy, we should support others who wish to do the same. That would include opposing any actions, such as the admission of Turkey to the European Union, that would increase Muslim immigration into non-Muslim countries. The best way to avoid the creation of another Kosovo is to keep Muslim populations out of Europe.
Since the purpose of containment is to prevent the expansion of Islam, not to defeat Islam militarily, the United States should withdraw as soon as possible from areas of Muslim domination. First and foremost, that means Iraq, as well as the Middle East more broadly. It’s time to acknowledge that, despite initial success, our war in Afghanistan did not accomplish its stated goals. Osama bin Laden is still at large; Al-Qaeda is still a threat. It’s time to cut our losses.
Terrorism by nonstate actors should be treated, not as a foreign-policy and military issue, but as a criminal one. We might have had more success in capturing Bin Laden if we had put political and economic pressure on the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, the Bush administration has nearly bankrupted the United States and destroyed American prestige, while committing horrific violations of human dignity (read: “torture”) that would be completely unacceptable under criminal law. A foreign policy of containment would mean no more Abu Ghraibs and no more Guantanomos.
In all of this, we have to be careful to ensure that the implementation does not degenerate into a neoconservative military operation, designed to create an American empire that places our interests second to the good of others, or a Jimmy Carter-style foreign policy based on concern for human rights. As much as we might sympathize with the plight of Christians in Islamic countries and work privately to ease their condition, U.S. foreign policy needs to focus on the American interest, not on the interests of any other nation or group, no matter how passionately attached to it we might be.
Scott P. Richert is executive editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and is a regular contributor to Taki’s Magazine.
]]>In this final part of my series, I’m again relying heavily on the work of John Lukacs, and I would refer the reader, in particular, to his Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the United States in the 20th Century (lately reissued as A New Republic), The End of the 20th Century (and the End of the Modern Age), and Democracy and Populism.
As I mentioned in the previous part, Pope John Paul II, in his last book, Memory and Identity, defined patriotism as “a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius.” In this, he follows the word back to its Latin root: patria, the native land or, literally, fatherland. But a patria, by itself, has no human meaning, any more than, say, environment does. From a human standpoint, both terms imply some relationship to some group of men.
In the case of patria, that group, as the Holy Father goes on to show, is the nation, which etymologically descends from the Latin natio, meaning, most broadly, a group of people, but more specifically a tribe, a race, a nation—in other words, a people who are connected, both genetically and culturally, in a way that is a natural extension of the family. Indeed, John Paul writes:
“The term ‘nation’ designates a community based in a given territory [i.e., patria] and distinguished by its culture. Catholic social doctrine holds that the family and the nation are both natural societies, not the product of mere convention.”
Historically in English, both patria and natio have come together in patriotism, the love of a particular people in a particular place. Again, this is analogous to the human society of the family, which, throughout history, has not simply been defined genetically or culturally but with reference to the physical location of the family. Our modern, mobile American society throws us off here, because we think nothing of moving from state to state several times in our lives, nor do we particularly find it odd to sell our childhood home after we inherit it (assuming our parents haven’t sold it long ago). Our sense of belonging to a particular place—not only being a part of a particular place, but that place being a part of us—is extremely attenuated.
But the modern American experience is not normative—not only historically, but even today, among European-derived peoples. Europeans in Europe are much more rooted, and that close association with the land of their fathers—the patria terra, to return to the Latin—has a cultural (and, indeed, even a genetic) significance that has largely been lost here in the United States.
It’s no surprise, then, that patriotism, in modern American usage, has diverged from its historical definition and largely come to mean abstract adherence to some set of American “ideals”—for instance, the “proposition nation” or “credal nation” idea of the neocons, or the Jaffa-ite version of the “noble lie” of the Straussians. After all, how can patriotism retain its traditional meaning for people whose connection to the land on which they currently reside is at best momentary and accidental? It makes little sense to develop an attachment to a place (and the people who reside therein) when we’re only “passing through,” looking forward to our next move, “onward and upward,” as we chase the “American dream.”
The result, in the United States, has been the separation of those two terms that should be inextricably linked—natio and patria—and the destruction of patriotism, as traditionally understood. But because natio and patria are linked, when our relationship to the latter is attenuated, the former becomes more abstract—an ideological construct, rather than a lived reality.
The answer is not to throw up our hands and declare ourselves “rootless cosmopolitans,” as some who have actually begun to see the problem have done, nor to think that an abstract nationalism (either the “proposition nation” or some defining away of our differences until “American” means nothing more than “of the white race, residing within the borders of the current United States”) will solve our problem. Instead, we need to return to life as our ancestors lived it, and as most Europeans today still do: in one place, among our people, through many generations.
In other words, the answer to the loss of traditional patriotism is a revival of patriotism. That may seem obvious, but the opposition to this solution runs deep, and not only among those who hate the culture and civilization of European man, but even among many of those who claim to be interested in upholding it. Standing our ground—literally—is quite hard, and when the opportunity to move on presents itself, we’re often only too happy to take it.
It’s not always possible to remain where you were planted (as I, sadly, know), but moving out of necessity is different from moving out of choice, and the proper response to the former is to begin the long and arduous process of putting down new roots. In that way, through long and close association with a particular people in a particular place, we can begin to recover something of the life that our ancestors lived—and to forge, as they did, a civilization worth preserving.
(As my regularly scheduled posting here on Taki’s Top Drawer comes to an end, I’d like to express my deep honor and pleasure at having had the opportunity to be part of this endeavor over the last year. And I’d like to thank those who made this possible: former editor F.J. Sarto and, of course, Taki Theodoracopulos himself. For those of you have despised what I have written, I’m afraid you’re still stuck with me: the new editor, Richard Spencer, has asked me to continue to provide the occasional blog post, as well as more frequent longer pieces. For those of you, on the other hand, who have liked what I’ve written, you can find more at ChroniclesMagazine.org, where I’ll likely be posting more often now, and the Chicago Daily Observer, among other places.)
]]>In this second part, I rely quite heavily on the writings of the Hungarian-American (and Catholic) historian John Lukacs, though, for the sake of space, I’m not going to quote him. I’ve mentioned him, however, in case the reader would like to examine nationalism in greater detail, since I have only the space and time barely to touch on this issue.
In any discussion of nationalism, the first thing we need to do is to define our terms. Many people use the terms nationalism, patriotism, and even national identity interchangeably. For the purposes of this discussion, I will not. National identity is the consciousness of our close relationship to others who share a common language, culture, genetic endowment, and homeland, among other things. It is a constituent part of both nationalism and patriotism.
Against those who believe that national identity is a modern construct that has no basis in reality, Pope John Paul II, in his last book, Memory and Identity, points out that “Catholic social doctrine holds that the family and the nation are both natural societies, not the product of mere convention.” The mention of doctrine is important here: The Catholic libertarian, for example, who adamantly rejects the very notion of the nation in favor of a modern liberal understanding of universal humanity, is (as the Holy Father makes clear) dissenting from doctrine.
Patriotism, writes Pope John Paul II in the same book, “is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius.” Or, to sum it up as I have in other discussions of the works of John Lukacs, patriotism is the love of a particular people in a particular place (and the place is just as important as the people).
Nationalism, on the other hand, is, in its pure form, something different. As Pope John Paul II writes, “[N]ationalism involves recognizing and pursuing the good of one’s own nation alone, without regard for the rights of others.” It is insular, and not in a good sense; it not only assumes the superiority of one’s nation over the nations of others (which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself), but it refuses to acknowledge or understand that others might regard their nation in the same way. It can also (and often does) separate itself from a particular place, its native land. The nationalist can be rootless; the patriot cannot.
That is why nationalism tends to be expansive, imperialistic, while patriotism does not. Obviously, in the real world, these categories are rarely found unmixed. Even the most rabid nationalist likely has some patriotic feelings; while the most ardent patriot may find himself slipping into nationalism. What’s most important to understand is that these are poles of experience.
When modern liberals (and, on the right, their libertarian confrères) denounce the nation-state, most of what they object to—imperialistic wars, for instance—is nationalism. But not all, and this is where things can get a bit confusing. Within any particular nation, the opposite of the nationalist should be the patriot. But today, we often see nationalism as the primary bulwark against internationalism, and it’s certainly true that, against those forces and organizations that would destroy national sovereignty, the patriot might well ally himself with the nationalist. Remember, national identity is a constituent part of both patriotism and nationalism, but (obviously) it is not a part of internationalism.
On the other hand, in practical terms, nationalist movements can, paradoxically, advance the cause of internationalism. Montenegro’s secession from Serbia is a case in point. It was motivated by Montenegrin nationalism, and opposed by Montenegrin patriots such as the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan of Montenegro, Amphilochius. In the end, the nationalists won, by prostrating themselves before the European Union. Today, Montenegro is, for all intents and purposes, a satrapy of the European Union, whose power has been increased through a successful nationalist movement.
Within the context of the United States, with its massive internal migrations, increasing loss of national sovereignty, and the influx of huge numbers of immigrants who not only cannot (by definition) be American patriots (at least when they arrive) but are also frequently Mexican nationalists, the issue can become even more ambiguous. It is possible, for instance, that the road to a revival of patriotism in America runs through American nationalism. (John Lukacs, who has criticized what he regards as the nationalist tendencies in Pat Buchanan, also clearly admires Mr. Buchanan.)
It’s certainly true that many who consider themselves American nationalists are more patriotic than nationalistic, but it’s equally true that many who would eschew the term nationalist—such as the neoconservatives who run our government—are the most rabid nationalists in the United States today, in the sense that John Lukacs and Pope John Paul II use the word. The task for true patriots today is to encourage the patriotic impulse in the first group, while adamantly opposing the nationalism of the second.
]]>Let’s start with the obvious point: Race matters. I know that some people are scrolling down to the comment box already to explain why I’m wrong; why no good Catholic can believe such a thing; to cite St. Paul and Pius XI and Paul VI. In doing so, though, they’re proving my point: If race didn’t matter, what difference would it make that I’ve said that it does? Moreover, the Church, far from rejecting racial differences, assumes that they exist. Don’t believe it? Then, instead of trotting out St. Paul and Mit Brennender Sorge and Populorum Progresso, actually read them. The references to racial differences in these documents are not rejections of such differences, but acknowledgments of them.
The question is how we proceed once we acknowledge such differences. It is possible to accept racial differences as a fact of life while avoiding the obsessions of both the racialists and the anti-racialists. In fact, most of the anti-racialists hold, at root, the same assumption as the racialists. For both, race matters more than anything else: That’s why the anti-racialists feel compelled, against empirical evidence, to deny the very reality of race, because once they admit it, they believe (as the racialists do) that that reality has to trump everything else. The only way to get past racial obsessions, therefore, is to deny race.
We might as well deny that the sky is blue or that the sun rises in the east. Race is real; it matters; and, once again, we’re back to the fundamental question: As Christians, what do we do once we acknowledge this reality?
This is where St. Paul and Pius XI and even Paul VI should be our guides. “There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul is clearly not denying the differences between Jews and Greeks, any more than he is denying the differences between male and female or master and slave (because, recall, he counseled Onesimus to return to his master). What, then, is he saying?
He’s saying that salvation is open to all. In the context of St. Paul’s time, this is a wondrous thing, and yet we seem no longer to be able to apprehend its importance. As Candlemas draws near, we might recall the Canticle of Simeon:
Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace; because my eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
A light to the revelation of the Gentiles: In other words, Christ is not simply the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, but the extension of that covenant to all mankind. Even after the Death and Resurrection of Christ, that’s not an obvious thing; thus, St. Paul’s constant preaching on this point.
It’s odd to read our modern racial obsessions back onto this passage. It’s as if the anti-racialists say, “That’s all well and good, acknowledging that Christ brought salvation to all mankind, and not just to the Jews; but this passage is worthless unless it also upholds our modern conception of civil rights. The question of how we treat each other in this world, after all, is much more important than the question of where our souls go when we die.”
If the anti-racialists are tempted to reduce Christianity to some modern liberal “dream” of racial equality, the racialists suffer from a similar reductionism. The thought seems to be that race is the ultimate attribute that separates men. Nothing, it seems, could be more irreducible than race and all of the genetic differences that it implies. Black is black, and white is white, after all.
Yet this conception of race is very modern, and not at all universal, as racialists believe it to be. Throughout human history, other distinctions were primary: distinctions between families; between kin groups; between ethne; between nations. Yes, all of these are related, in some way, to the question of race. And yet, in other ways, they run deeper than race, because they separate men of the same race.
Even the history of the United States, as bound up as it is with racial questions, is, more importantly, the history of ethnic differences among whites. The insistence that the Founding Fathers were “racialists” in the sense that the word is used today is absurd. They were men who were very much aware not only of the difference of black and white, but of English from French, French from German, and English, French, and German from Slavic and Mediterranean Europeans. The idea of a “white racial consciousness” that encompasses all white Europeans is alien to their thought.
Even when the idea of the white race took hold among American thinkers and politicians in the early 20th century, it didn’t encompass such people as Taki (Greek), Justin Raimondo (Sicilian), John Zmirak (Croatian), or myself (Polish). It wasn’t simply “white” but “Anglo-Saxon Protestant” as well. I’m not pointing this out to whine about mistreatment at the hands of WASPs; far from it. Instead, I’m mourning what was lost as we began, especially between the wars, to strip the various European ethnic groups of their separate identities and amalgamate them into a more abstract “American” identity that, at best, was a WASP ideal, but somehow less even than that.
The obsession with race is one result of that action. Humans long for some sense of identity, and when we no longer know ourselves as Poles or Germans or Englishmen, we fall back on the most obvious differences between ourselves and others: skin color, bone structure, etc. But race, while a component of family, kin, and nationality, is no substitute for any of them. In making it the “whole ball of wax,” both racialists and anti-racialists betray their own rootlessness.
]]>When the New York Times finally succeeded, on October 5, 2007, in unmasking “Fake Steve” as Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes, I was afraid that The Secret Diary would quickly come to an end. Lyons’ edgy humor, I thought, depended on his anonymity, and I figured that he’d find himself self-censoring now that everyone knew who he was.
Turned out I was wrong. With Forbes officially behind him (they now sponsor his site), Lyons began producing more posts—often several each day—and the quality increased. In late December, in an homage to the comic Andy Kaufman, he wrote a brilliant series of posts in which he seemed to come out of character, claiming that Apple had made him an offer that it wouldn’t be wise to refuse. Capitalizing on the announcement that the founder of Think Secret, a longtime Apple rumor site, had agreed to shut the site down (in return, some reports suggested, for a significant cash settlement), Lyons detailed his own “negotiations” with Apple. With each post, however, he slipped back a little more into character, until he finally told Apple, in one of his trademark phrases, “Siooma.” (I won’t expand the acronym here; after all, Taki’s Top Drawer is a family blog.)
In all of this, Lyons has been irreverent, often crude, sometimes obscene, but always funny. Until yesterday, that is, when he ran a remarkably unfunny post under the headline “Pope blasts media in pathetic attempt to boost his own pageviews.” (N.B.: The post is not only obscene but includes an attack on the Eucharist as well as pedestrian attempts at “priests are gay” humor.)
Now, as readers know, I am a traditional Catholic, but my toleration for anti-Catholic humor is much higher than, say, that exhibited by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The Church, after all, has been around for 2,000 years, and those of us who take Her seriously as a more-than-human institution founded by Christ Himself know that a laugh or two at Her expense is not likely to do any damage. (I remember, for instance, a comic strip by Wiley, the objectively anti-Catholic cartoonist for the Washington Post, that the Catholic League regarded as one of the worst displays of anti-Catholicism in that particular year. It depicted Pope John Paul II in full regalia, crozier in hand, on a street in the Wild West, gunning down a heretic. After I finished laughing, I cut the strip out and posted it on my office door.)
Most humor, though, depends on the context. Stephen Colbert, a Catholic whose character on The Colbert Report is a hyper-Catholic, can make the occasional joke at the Church’s expense because it’s in character. But there’s nothing in Mr. Lyons’ “Fake Steve” persona that sets the stage for such humor, especially since the document that “Fake Steve” uses as the hook for the post—Pope Benedict’s message for the Church’s “Social Communications Day”—is much more likely to offend a senior editor at Forbes than the CEO of Apple.
That’s not to say that Mr. Lyons couldn’t write a “Fake Steve” post involving Pope Benedict that would be humorous and in keeping with the conceit of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. For instance, if Pope Benedict, known iPod owner and user, were to receive Bill Gates at the Vatican and to accept a Zune 2, one could easily imagine “Fake Steve” writing an irreverent, “Take that, Benny” post that might well be crude and go a bit too far for the Catholic League but still be funny.
This post, however, is written with the sense of humor of the self-proclaimed anarchist/libertarian/atheist teenager who sneaks into the school’s media center after hours to duplicate his cut-and-paste zine of incisive social commentary on the school’s last remaining mimeograph machine. Lyons is better than that—or, at least, I thought he was.
I’d like to give Dan Lyons the benefit of the doubt and to believe that this post was just a bit of meta-humor that failed. Pope Benedict’s message included the line that, “in order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences, [the media] does not hesitate at times to have recourse to vulgarity and violence, and to overstep the mark.” A skilled humorist could have used that line as the basis of a very funny post illustrating the Holy Father’s point. The fact that Lyons is such a skilled humorist, yet the post is not funny by any stretch of the imagination, sadly removes the benefit of the doubt and proves that Pope Benedict is right.
]]>But if, as “Jet” correctly pointed out in the same comment thread, “I dont think its possible to define who uses what OS by political ideologies,” there does seem to be something of a correlation between political viewpoints and the use (or rather, reuse or mashup) of Apple’s TV commercials. The great “1984” ad, produced by Ridley Scott to introduce the original Macintosh, is an obvious target, and there are many versions out there with Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani in the role of Big Brother. Not surprisingly, almost all end with an endorsement of Ron Paul.
But that’s low-hanging fruit. Somewhat more interesting is this parody of one of Apple’s “Switch” ads:
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Or this (low-quality but funny) version of Apple’s more recent “I’m a Mac” ads:
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And then, of course, there’s Apple’s second most famous ad campaign (behind “I’m a Mac”): the “Think Different” ads. They turn out to be perfect vehicles for promoting Ron Paul:
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And once you’ve watched all of those, here’s a little bonus, Access Hollywood-style, featuring musician John Mayer (who frequently performs at Apple keynotes and product introductions) lecturing Justin Long, who plays the Mac in the “I’m a Mac” ads, on the constitutionalism of Ron Paul. Note Long’s very strange response of “Paul Wolfowitz” every time that Mayer mentions Ron Paul’s name:
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All of which makes me wonder: Why haven’t the supporters of any candidate used a Microsoft commercial as the basis of a viral campaign ad?
]]>“It is the responsibility of [the other country] to ensure that the border operates properly, according to the signed agreements,” he said. “We expect the [other country’s people] to solve the problem. Obviously we are worried about the situation. It could potentially allow anybody to enter.”
Imagine, say, Condoleezza Rice uttering those words, with “Mexico” in the first set of brackets and “Mexicans” in the second. Or even “Canada” in the first and “Canadians” in the second, since, as the Honorable James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, has pointed out repeatedly in the pages of Chronicles and in our recent book Immigration and the American Future, our unsecured northern border presents just as great a threat (though of a different kind) as does our unsecured southern border.
Alas, neither Secretary Rice nor anyone from the U.S. State Department is likely ever to make such remarks. Instead, the comment came today from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel, in response to the decision of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to allow 350,000 Palestinians to pass from the Gaza Strip into Egypt to buy food. The Palestinians were then escorted back into Gaza.
When Americans call for tougher border controls, we’re often called every name in the book and accused of mean-spiritedness toward Mexicans, “who just want to come here to do jobs that no American will do so that they can feed their families.” In the case of Israel, and the Gaza-Egypt border crisis, the Palestinians have broken down the border wall to gain access to food and medical supplies in Egypt because their families (unlike most Mexican families) are quite literally starving, as a result, the Jerusalem Post reports, of “the blockade imposed on the territory by Israel.”
Will American pro-immigrationists apply the same standard to Foreign Minister Mekel’s remarks as they do to Ron Paul’s? Somehow, I don’t think so.
]]>Most readers of this website probably know that McCorvey never actually had an abortion, but instead put the child up for adoption. She became a pro-life activist in 1995, and she later converted to Catholicism.
In the long run, McCorvey’s endorsement of Ron Paul may not make much difference, but it does highlight the fact, on this 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, that only one candidate has a real plan for reducing the number of abortions performed in the United States. After three-and-a-half decades of lip service to the cause of life, the Republican Party no longer can be trusted on this issue. It’s time, as Ron Paul proposes, to return the issue to the states, where, in our federal system, it belongs, so that local pro-life activists can begin to unravel the Culture of Death that has prevailed in this country since 1973 and to bring about, in some states at least, a Culture of Life.
UPDATE (10:55 A.M.): Lew Rockwell has the scoop.
]]>Some libertarians, such as Lew Rockwell, have belatedly come to understand why Apple builds a better product, but when push comes to shove, they’ll still defend the would-be monopolist from Redmond. Business success, no matter how it’s attained, apparently trumps the ideal workings of the market.
Still, every time I see a story such as the one published in the London Times yesterday, I can’t help but wonder when the libertarian love affair with Microsoft will come to an end. It’s hard to imagine a less libertarian proposal than Microsoft’s latest patent application:
Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.
The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.
Of course, Microsoft puts the proposal in the best possible light. It’s all about the health and welfare of workers, don’t you see? The fact that such data could (and therefore would) be misused by employers is irrelevant. The libertarian knee will jerk when the libertarian brain registers this line from the article:
Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.
If unions are against it, and business owners are for it, then Microsoft is clearly doing the Lord’s (or at least Adam Smith’s) work.
The fact that such technology will also be sold to the government (which will likely turn out to be the most enthusiastic customer) shouldn’t bother anyone, should it? After all, the problems of the modern world can all be solved by making government more like business. What better place to start?
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Yet another reason (as if we needed one) to be excited about the candidacy of Ron Paul. An immigration policy that treats the external threat posed by the applicant’s country of origin as reason to deny entry to the United States would not only make America safer, but, in doing so, it would decrease, rather than increase, the pressure to spill American blood and treasure overseas.
And it would inevitably result in public debate over which countries should be on the list—which might finally mean an end to the silence about the Saudi regime’s quiet support for Islamic terrorism.
This is a brilliant move by a brilliant man, who just confirmed (as if he needed to) his Old Right credentials. Let’s defend America at the best place we can: her borders.
]]>We’re pleased to have Taki aboard, and in honor of his new column, we’re offering the readers of Taki’s Top Drawer a special introductory rate to Chronicles: $19.99 for 12 issues. To take advantage of this special rate, simply call Cindy Link at (800) 383-0680 and mention the secret code: TAKI. (This offer, unfortunately, is not available to current subscribers, only new ones.)
For close to 15 years, we’ve weathered multiple postage-rate increases and rises in paper prices without increasing our subscription rates, but the latest increase (around 33 percent) forced on us by President Bush’s cronies on the Postal Board of Governors is too much to bear. By February 1, we’ll be raising our subscription rates across the board, and $24.99 will be the lowest introductory rate you’ll be able to find.
So if you’ve been thinking about subscribing to Chronicles, there’s never been a better time. We have (in my humble opinion) the best stable of regular columnists of any conservative magazine in America, and it just got better. (And in a few months, it may get even better still. How’s that for a teaser?)
Lock in your low rate now, and make sure you don’t miss a single column by Taki. And if you’re willing to subscribe for multiple years, simply mention that to Cindy, and she can set you up with a two- or three-year subscription that can help you beat President Bush’s inflation.
(BONUS: The first commenter who can explain why we’re calling Taki’s column “Under the Black Flag” will receive a free one-year subscription. Just make sure, when you leave your comment, to put your real e-mail address in the “Email Address” field so that I can contact you to get your physical address.)
]]>The effect will likely be to push Musharraf further away from the United States, out of fear for his own power, and to embolden those radicals who would like nothing more than to make Pakistan a radically Islamic state—and, of course, to control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
Once again, the Bush administration’s “diplomacy” has failed miserably. Secretary of State Condi Rice, by putting her efforts into delivering a symbol rather than playing Realpolitik, has helped make the world a much more dangerous place.
]]>According to the time stamp in the e-mail headers, I received a “Press Advisory” last night, at 11:50 P.M. CST. The headline of the advisory reads: “Student’s Civil Disobedience and Arrest at Rockefeller Center: Demonstration against the war in Iraq.”
Yet another crackdown on peaceful protest, I thought. As I’ve written elsewhere, the war in Iraq is not only immoral because of its effects over there, but because of the role it has played in restricting civil liberties at home. That’s nothing new, of course; Justin Raimondo and Bill Kauffman have both eloquently recalled the works of members of the Old Right, who saw this as a near-universal effect of waging unjust and unnecessary wars.
Time for a post over at Taki’s Top Drawer. So, I opened the Press Advisory to get the details, and that’s when the Twilight Zone music started playing. See if you hear it, too:
”WHO: Ashley Casale, who first came to media attention when she organized a march from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to protest the war and demand impeachment, and a coalition of student organizations from Washington D.C to New York.
WHAT: students have organized a display of civil disobedience to demand an end to the occupation of iraq.
WHERE: Rockefeller Center, NYC in front of famous Christmas Tree display.
WHEN: 4 PM, Sunday December 23, 2007”
So, I’ve received a Press Advisory to inform me of an arrest that hasn’t taken place yet? What, exactly, does that imply? That the erosion of our civil liberties is so complete that we can say, with certainty, that an arrest will take place at a peaceful protest where “Students will sit in front of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center and play the John Lennon song, ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ while reading the names of every U.S. soldier killed since the invasion of Iraq in 2003”?
Or does it mean that those students intend to make sure that they are arrested, no matter what it takes? Or, if we assume that the possessive in the headline is correct and not a mistake, not students, but a student, presumably Ashley Casale?
I want this war to end, as quickly as possible, but I’m not sure that stage-managed media events, designed to draw more attention to their organizers than to the men and women killed for no reason in Iraq, is the way to do it.
]]>What about the second most popular? Well, that depends. If we treat each variant spelling of a name as a separate name, then the second most popular boys’ name is Thomas. Good Christian—and historically British—name.
But if we treat all the variant spellings of a particular name as signifying the same thing, then the picture changes. According to the Daily Mail, in that case, the second most popular boys’ name in Britain is now “Mohammed.”
It gets better. There were 6,772 Jacks born in Britain this year, down 156 from 2006. The various spellings of Mohammed, however, numbered 6,347, up 411 from last year. As the Daily Mail notes, “if the trends were repeated next year, Mohammed and its variant spellings would be the most popular choice in England and Wales.”
“If the trends were repeated next year . . . ” Does anyone seriously think that they will not be?
When Enoch Powell delivered his “Rivers of Blood” speech on April 20, 1968, Muslim immigration to Britain had been rising for a decade and a half, but it was roughly comparable to the rate of Muslim immigration to the United States today. The name “Mohammed,” in any and all of its variant spellings, was not even on the radar of most popular boys’ names.
What a difference 40 years has made. But we don’t have to worry: It can’t happen here. Right?
]]>