vulgar morality

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:01:58 GMT

GOING, GOING, GONE: The Vulgar Moralist is traveling to a continent far, far away, in a time zone long, long ago. Blogging will resume in October.

In the meantime, ponder this report, from the Boston Globe, on the retreat of democracy across the world. Culprit? The middle class:

Eventually, in many of these weak democracies, members of the middle class place their hopes in the very men they once deplored, realizing they trust the army officers, who tend to come from the same elite backgrounds, more than they trust the newly empowered poor. In Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, Mauretania, Venezuela, and many other states, the military tries to step in, claiming that it must intervene to restore "order," which usually means a return to old elite rule.

Security will always be preferred to chaos, by peasants no less than by the middle class. The decision is rarely absolute, and always wedded to the particulars of a community -- and the countries listed in the Globe article have practically nothing in common. I find it hard to believe that political trends in Fiji and Venezuela are driven by identical causes.

Political life, Thomas Sowell insists, is largely about tradeoffs. More of this means less of that, and we can't ever have it all. Morality exists to justify (or condemn) each tradeoff. Blaming the decline of democracy on a middle class whose size, composition, ideals, power, and unity are problematic, strikes me as a weak form of latter-day Marxism rather than an explanation.

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:45:57 GMT

SARAH PALIN AS EUROPE'S NIGHTMARE: It stands to reason that Europe's mass media has outdone ours in the matter of Palin rage. European elites fear democracy, and thus live in terror of their own people. This is true of prime ministers, CEOs, artists, and journalists -- or "intellectuals," as no doubt they would describe themselves -- all of whom tend to go to the same schools, babble the same buzzwords, and cower at the same nightmares.

Also, the elites of Europe are like a man who has had a stroke, and can remember only one thing, which he keeps repeating over and over, until it fills his life with whatever fractured meaning it still retains: "America primitive, Europe progressive." Europeans once ruled the world. They had the greatest power, the finest art, the most dazzling technology. Today, they make do with peevish envy. "We may be weak," they repeat, over and over, "but we are liberated from the past."

Palin the Christian huntress appears to these Euro-elites as the primitive past made flesh. She represents everything they wish to leave behind: marriage, parenting, individual responsibility, community involvement, religion, respect for tradition, and a life of moral seriousness spent largely outdoors. She embodies the resurrection and power of the past, and the rough beast they perceive her to be says more about their strange fears and anxieties than about Palin or any actual person:

Who literally believes that Jonah made his home in a whale's abdomen? Nobody really, apart from the US president-and the woman who was recently added to the 2008 Republican ticket.... Sarah Palin is the latest politician to carry the torch of science misinformation tainted by religious dogma lit during the Reagan administration and nurtured by George Bush.... Yet centuries after the Enlightenment, Sarah Palin, the putative US vice-president, can endorse the passing off of Bible stories as scientific facts, dressed up as the oxymoronic term 'creationist science'."

I seem to remember Jonah was in the belly of the whale because he had fled from his responsibilities, and God found an original way of turning him around. The talking heads of Europe today -- and this includes the newsmakers -- peddle little more than escapism, avoidance, and denial. They dwell in that comfy "whale's abdomen" of moral abdication, and live in terror that the voice of duty might find them, and turn them around.

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:57:27 GMT

SARAH PALIN AND THE DEATH OF NEWS: To people of a certain age, news appears to be the natural packaging for important types of information. Equally natural, to this group, is the journalistic style, with its superficialities, repetitions, omissions, stereotypes, and unwillingness to cite sources. In this manner they expect to learn of political developments, spectacular murders, destructive hurricanes. How else could it be done?

News appears natural to those no longer young because it has ruled over public discussion for three or four generations -- an eternity to the markeplace. My father and grandfather consumed news, and so did I for much of my life. But in fact there is nothing particularly natural, much less eternal, about the news: it's a business model which, like dueling among gentlemen, belongs to a specific moment in history.

Before there was news, elites traded all the information they needed in charming and discreet ways. They posted and received an extraordinary amount of letters -- the word "correspondent" harks back to this activity -- and read books prolifically. Broadsheets and dailies existed, but they presented examples of oratory and argumentation rather than novelty. Important people thus exchanged facts and opinions. The rest of the population was illiterate, or working too hard to care.

With the spread of literacy and improvements in printing technology, a golden business opportunity arose: selling industrially packaged information to the masses, thus offering access to an elite luxury. The first mass circulation newspapers changed the shape of information into arbitrary categories -- for example, "news," "opinion," and "entertainment" -- but they always moved to the front those events and commentaries of interest to powerful people. It's likely that sales were driven by articles on sports and movie stars, but politics, the sport and entertainment of the elites, always retained pride of place.

Journalists became the intermediaries between politicians and the mass electorate. Even today, news are rarely about events, but about whatever powerful people judge to be of interest or importance. Thus a NYT report on Hurricane Ike hastens to inform us what Texas "officials," including the governor, opine on the subject. A WaPo story on bombings in New Delhi immediately moves to what the Indian Home Secretary has to say about the bombers. The proximity to fame and power is seductive. It confuses journalists into thinking they too belong to the elite.

That brings me to my subject: the effect of Sarah Palin's nomination on the news media. Palin exudes ordinariness in her family life and hobbies. She somehow failed to attend an elite university. Her ideas seemed backward to the bicoastal elites. She is now striving for high office without being known by them. Mass news producers faced a choice: explain this person, or make her go away. The feminist elites, for reasons I have already explored, wanted her gone in the worst way. Journalists, who measure importance by what such elites believe, made their decision, and went on the attack.

They failed for reasons that are apparent to any disinterested observer: objectively, nothing in Palin's background disqualifies her for the vice-presidency. To the news media, however, the assault on Palin wasn't about her qualifications but about their power. And the power of the news -- based on newsmakers' proximity to presidents and ability to reach mass audiences -- is flickering and dying out.

The moment for industrially packaged information is over. It ended with the advent of the digital age, which flooded the market with information and lowered its value nearly to zero. This has dismayed everyone in a position of authority -- but it has been a disaster for those who profited greatly from selling the stuff. Newspaper subscriptions are down everywhere. All are cutting news staff, many have gone out of business. Newspaper stocks have crashed. In the digital environment, the news business model no longer makes sense. My son, the Sophistpundit, doesn't consume news, nor does most of his generation.

Worse still, in this environment users of information have become producers. Flaws in news reporting are jumped on and publicized. Dan Rather, direct heir to the heroic Edward R. Murrows and the sainted Walter Cronkite, was sent into early retirement by an upstart blog called Little Green Footballs. Far more people go to YouTube than watch the evening news. With the proliferation of channels, fewer watch any given one, including the old networks. The audience for MSNBC probably consists of the family and friends of its anchorpersons.

The mortal agony of the news business places in doubt the newsmakers' claim to be part of the inner circle. For the media, the assault on Palin thus carried the highest possible stakes: it was both business and personal. This explains the condescension, outrage, and growing panic -- all widely observed and commented upon -- when Palin not only survived the attack without difficulty, but also exploited it to her advantage.

News people have always had their pet politicians and their enemies lists. But in their treatment of Palin, they appear to have abandoned even the pretense of objectivity and professionalism, and taken sides in a presidential election. The political consequences so far have been exactly the opposite of what they intended. More importantly from a business perspective, they have abandoned key aspects of the news "brand," which in the mind of their remaining audience separates them from bloggers' drivel. They have become shouters rather than reporters, hit men rather than journalists.

And after taking such desperate chances, newsmakers have been shown to be powerless. In fact, they have helped make Palin into something of a political star. The old elites are unhappy with their performance, and can be relied on to criticize it. This will ensure the shouting will only get louder until election day. This, in turn, will speed up the audience hemorrhage, possibly in a significant way. The last of the gray-headed faithful still come expecting Walter Lippmann and Walter Cronkite, but get Maureen Dowd and Katie Couric instead.

A tipping point can't be far in the future.

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:29:42 GMT

WHAT FEMINISTS WANT: I have a cousin who is a feminist of the deconstructionist, postmodern variety. Years ago, while we were discussing world events, she lamented the total absence of women playing in the Big Game. I was surprised: what about Maggie Thatcher, at that time one of the most powerful persons in the world?

My cousin snorted at my naivete. "Thatcher isn't a woman," she explained.

Some things don't change. The sudden rise of Sarah Palin has had an effect similar to poking a stick in the cage of the unhinged left -- lots of wild noises and clawing at the air in the MSM, slapstick comedy to entertain those who have the stomach for it. The ruling theme seems to be that Palin, having failed to stop reproducing at the catch limit of 1.5 children, is the moral equivalent of the Evil Stepmother.

But there's also this, via Politico:

A spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women, noting Palin's opposition to abortion rights and support of other parts of the social conservative agenda, told Politico, "She's more a conservative man than she is a woman on women's issues."

No wonder she's the worst mother ever: she's a cross-dressing man -- just like that female impersonator, Marvin "Maggie" Thatcher, who my cousin thought was the worst British man ever.

Usually, I am completely confused about what feminists want. Is it equality of opportunity? Of outcomes? To be treated with dignity, as equals? Protected and supported by a powerful government, as befits frail, helpless victims?

At moments like this, though, matters become clearer.

Feminists -- at least the professional "advocates" who roar from the NOW corner of the zoo -- are concerned about the fate of women only in a tactical sense. Big picture, they want to overthrow our moral structure, which everyone knows is a patriarchy allowing men to pinch women with impunity, and to impose even crueler humiliations on them, such as false eyelashes and cosmetic surgery.

"It's not about a piece of the existing pie," writes that famous home-maker, Gloria Steinem, "there's too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie."

What would New Pie America look like? What would be different? How would men and women get along?

Such questions hold little interest to feminists. Most are cultural pessimists, who believe the future will resemble The Handmaid's Tale. In practical terms, they want to increase greatly the power of the government, and to manipulate that power to change our behavior. But despite Steinem's brave talk of "too many of us for that," they don't believe the revolution is going to happen. Americans, they feel certain, are too stupid to allow it -- and in the nomination of Sarah Palin, the Alaskan man-woman, they have all the proof they need.

Strangely enough, this suits the professional feminists just fine. Their New Pie future is like Osama bin Laden's caliphate, a fairy-tale used to justify vandalizing reality. It's the vandalism they enjoy, the crashing and smashing of the status quo without a thought about alternatives.

Normal women, I would guess, want normal things: happiness, success, a loving family, an interesting job. To the degree they fullfill such desires, they -- like Palin, who seems to embody normality -- will be howled at, cross-dressed, and morally vandalized by the Abbie Normal ideologists at NOW.

UPDATE: From neo-neocon, who despite the surrealist green apple is a psychologist, an attempt to understand the feminists' derangement over Sarah Palin's nomination. Read the whole thing, but pay particular attention to the bizarrely sexualized feminist comments cited in the post. These are people whose entire worldview flows from the belief that American society, being exploitive to the core, can only treat women as sex objects. And that is precisely what they do to Palin -- in rather grotesque, unacademic language, calling her, for example, the conservatives' "hardcore pornographic centerfold spread."

Why do the feminists rage on about Palin's sexuality? Neo-neocon's prognosis: "I don't think the hatred of Palin would rise to its present level but for one simple fact: Palin is beautiful."

The distance between radical ideology and high school cattiness seems remarkably small.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:36:43 GMT

THE SOCIALISTS' FUTURE PHOBIA: "What the bourgeois . . . produces, above all," Karl Marx wrote in the Manifesto, "is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." A century later Nikita Khruschev, ruler of the country which embodied the grave-diggers, told the bourgeois world: "We shall bury you."

Probably the most persuasive argument on behalf of communism and socialism was that they owned the future. This stimulated and encouraged believers in a way indistinguishable from religious zeal. Everything was understood in advance, all events were predictable. "There is now an answer to every question," Arthur Koestler wrote of his conversion to communism, "doubts and conflicts are a matter of the distant past -- a past already remote, when one had lived in dismal ignorance in the tasteless, colorless world of those who don't know."

To the old-time socialist, the future was the stage for the greatest adventure in human history: the struggle for the revolution and the classless society. "The proletarians," wrote Marx, "have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

It is remarkable to turn from such bold, conquistador-like language to the grim mutterings of present-day socialists.

With the Soviet Union gone and socialist economic theory utterly discredited, socialists today turn Marx's prediction on its head. While we remain our own grave-diggers, there will be no revolution -- only the silence of the grave. Nothing is known, except that the future will be worse in every way. We have a world to lose.

By "socialists" I mean articulate elites more or less Marxist in outlook but united in their loathing of liberal democracy. For categorical clarity, and based on differences in sensibilities rather than ideology, I have nicknamed them Euro-hedonists, culture vandals, and Eco-Luddites. Given the objective failure of their ideas, one might expect these people to change their minds, or at least shift their ground. But their faith, as I noted in earlier posts, doesn't depend on objective tests but on moral conviction. Koestler wrote that the "common denominator" for conversions to socialism was "the rapid disintegration of moral values, of the pre-1914 pattern of life in postwar Europe." The disastrous turn of events for socialists since 1989 has deprived them of a future, but not of their moral rage against the present.

The result has been an attitude that moves far beyond pessimism or fatalism to something between a tantrum and a panic attack when considering the shape of things to come. Without much effort, I drew up a thick list of future developments that frighten the socialists:

Climate change, species extinction, deforestation, demographics, the Americanization of culture, the globalization of labor, transnational corporations, obesity, eating disorders, world hunger, fast food, intolerance, racism, sexism, Eurocentrism, nationalism, consumerism, competition, Islamophobia, the spread of religion, the spread of disease, pharmaceuticals, blogs, cable TV, talk radio, the death of news, Anglo-Saxon attitudes, the rising East, the Middle East, inequality, instability, structural unemployment, Macjobs, lower taxes, high debt.

Each tribe of latter-day socialism clings to its own special nightmare about the future. The Euro-hedonists, for example, are terrified of "flexibility" -- a sense that the government, which should protect and cushion them against reality, will some day flip around and make demands. Paris, birthplace of the revolution and the original Commune, now produces university students who riot for the status quo.

The dark premonition of the culture vandals involves a cabal of Jews, fundamentalists, the oil companies, and ordinary beer-swilling Americans, who will abolish science, make virginity a requirement for citizenship, and pack off tenured professors to Guantanamo in hideous orange jumpsuits.

The Eco-Luddites also wish to freeze the status quo -- only, in this case, it's the weather. They fear the day after tomorrow, when the climate will change. This, we are told, is a "planetary emergency" which will "exceed anything we've experienced in the history of humankind" -- even, one presumes, World War II, the Mongol conquests, and the bubonic plague (not to mention the Last Glacial Maximum). Because we were bad, because capitalism pollutes, we will burn forever.

Since writers and artists love to strike a proletarian pose, popular culture has been infected with future phobia. Old-time science fiction conjured technological utopias, even when aliens turned up to threaten our survival or transform our children into gods. With the novels of Kurt Vonnegut -- who believed suicide bombers were "very brave people" and that "the only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected" -- science lost importance, while the fiction became angrier and more regressive. Others followed in Vonnegut's path. The future was a failure, a dystopia -- dog-eat-dog societies populated by stupid, greedy, and self-destructive characters, who live dingy, ugly lives, and deserve nothing better than their marginal existence and eventual extinction.

The same angry vision consumed Hollywood. The last sci fi movie with a progressive outlook was probably 2001. Blade Runner, released during the Reagan administration's inaugural year, portrayed a grotesque, dystopian future, in which ordinary people lived like paupers and corporate grandees killed their enemies at will. By now the nasty, brutish future has become a movie cliché, the default setting for productions both wildly popular (Terminator, Riddick, Matrix) and obscure (Brazil, They Live, 12 Monkeys).

These are fictional settings -- entertainment, nothing more. In the real world, Americans see their future as an continuation of the pursuit of happiness. We are the ultimate products of liberal democracy, which invented the idea of progress, of an endless forward race, of expecting our tomorrows to improve on yesterday. Joseph Schumpeter called it "creative destruction," but in truth it is permanent revolution in ways undreamed of by professional revolutionaries of the old Marxists school. Marx himself, however, understood the dynamic restlessness that drove liberalism: "Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeoisie epoch from all others."

Marx expected socialism to beat liberalism at its own game -- to push bourgeois agitation to its logical conclusion, which was the proletarian revolution. His heirs now seem to be taking the opposite tack: to tranquilize and paralyze liberal democracy, like a dangerous animal to be removed from the proximity of man. The strategy is sound, even if success is doubtful here in America. If the model of human relations becomes the nursing home, liberal democracy is finished.

Until that happens, the specter haunting socialists will be the future, with all its change, disruption, and everlasting uncertainty.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:30:18 GMT

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: Paul Berman thinks the Russian incursion into Georgia marks the end of "the age . . . of democratic revolutions," which by his reckoning began in 1989. The revolutions Berman has in mind are the overturning of Soviet-supported puppet states in 1989, the "color revolutions" in the Ukraine and Georgia, and the stirrings of the 2005 Arab Spring, particularly in Lebanon. He observes, rightly, that "each new wave [was] weaker than the last" and, more speculatively, that with the invasion of Georgia "the tide rolls out."

Conversely, Brian Micklethwaite of Samizdata believes the illiberal left has suffered a "big ideological defeat," partly masked by their constant crisis-mongering on climate change. Micklethwaite's point is that socialism can offer no positive alternatives to free enterprise. Remove "the hysteria whipped up around the changeability of the climate," and it becomes clear that the left has "no other arguments against a more-or-less capitalist, more-or-less free market world economy."

On the surface, no contradiction exists between the political retreat of democracy and the ideological triumph of capitalism. It may portend the rise of a brutally competitive, no-holds-barred world: let China stand as an exemplar.

At a deeper level, it seems strange. Democracy and free enterprise are two important elements of that transformational witches' brew we call liberal democracy. That a people could be free to invest and produce and spend securely, yet unfree to choose their rulers, would require a Platonic class of tyrants never yet seen in history. Otherwise, the lack of balance will lead to a tipping point: freedom or unfreedom on both sides of the equation. The Chinese model is unsustainable. One recession will sweep it away.

Berman and Micklethwaite, I believe, are scrutinizing tea leaves, trying to forecast the future of liberal democracy. Berman sees a retreat, Micklethwaite an approaching victory. Both misunderstand the relation between a mode of organizing communities, such as liberal democracy, and actual human populations.

Liberal democracy isn't a controlled experiment to determine the viability of individual freedom. It's a set of moral propositions: a way of life. Its advance will depend less on revolutions than on virtue and persuasion; its retreat won't be driven by ideological alternatives but by the superior moral zeal of its opponents.

Of the two great organizing principles -- roughly, top-down and bottom-up -- liberal democracy is the more recent by far and the less stable. It requires moral traditions sturdy and adaptable enough to survive the frenzy of creative destruction. This takes constant watchfulness and recalibration, and often enough a major shift in how a tradition is understood. Equality, for example, isn't a question of laws but a moral perspective, and in the US this perspective has expanded to embrace categories of people -- women, blacks -- not originally included.

The moral traditions of liberal democracy are essential because they guide the community through the whirl of change stirred up by the system. And let's be clear about this: liberal democracy relentlessly tears apart ancient customs, habits, and relations, and is loathed by established elites everywhere, including the US. The ignorant and foolish get equal votes with the learned and wise. The poor look the rich in the eye -- may become newly rich and look down on their betters. Hierarchy becomes competition, obedience turns into questioning, the value of leisure is degraded in favor of hard work. Information escapes even the possibility of control. Children are exposed to disgusting material, housewives are allowed to become sexually desperate, the young mock the old. If the last 25 years have been an age of anything, it has been of disruption.

To survive, liberal democracy requires a passionate commitment to the civic virtues: self-reliance, self-rule, public-mindedness, courage, integrity, etc. A people can only internalize these virtues after long, confusing struggles in the realm of events -- forty years in the wilderness, and a promised land which must be reconquered every generation. While despotism might crumble overnight, events since the French Revolution have shown that liberal democracy can only become a moral imperative in small, often stumbling, steps.

There was never an age of democratic revolutions. Berman is a brilliant theoretician of liberalism, but in this instance he is mistaken. After the fall of communism in Europe, former puppet nations sought to put as great a distance as possible between themselves and Russia, strategically and ideologically. They asked to join NATO and often held elections that overthrew Russian-supported regimes. The moral passion was inspired by nationalism and a hatred of the Russian empire. Liberal democracy was important only in relation to these.

In countries like the Czech Republic, which had nourished the civic virtues before Stalin's troops marched in, democracy took root. In others where no such traditions existed, such as the Ukraine, democracy remains a dicey proposition -- at best, a liberalism in the egg, unborn and uncertain in life expectancy.

Similarly, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon was driven by the hatred of Syrian rule felt by a segment of the population. Once the Syrians departed, the revolution petered out. The establishment of a true liberal democracy, with proportional representation and the rule of law, is probably desired by not a single political group in the country.

The opponents of liberalism have always included the power elites who saw themselves as a Platonic guardian class, the intellectuals who longed for government by rationalistic formulas, artists and writers nostalgic for heroism in daily life, and moralists who distrust private persons to choose good over evil. For the last 200 years these groups clustered around various forms of socialism, which inspired them and provided an attractive alternative to liberalism. It also constrained their behavior: beyond criticizing the status quo, socialists needed to explain why Stalin purged so many party members, why Khruschev invaded Hungary, why Germans, Cubans, and Vietnamese all fled their socialist homelands by the millions.

The failure of socialism has removed all contraints. The groups listed above, inspired by deeply and sincerely held moral passions, still hold liberalism in contempt. That might change with the passing of the baby boomer generation, or it might not. What is certain is that the critique of liberal democracy can today be conducted in a wholly nihilistic mode -- because, unlike the old socialists, the new zombie socialists no longer expect to inherit the earth. They have nothing to protect or defend, and can surrender without risk to the joys of vandalism.

So Micklethwaite, too, is mistaken. The lack of alternatives to liberalism will not lead to the mass conversion of former socialists, or even to an admission of defeat. Instead, they will engage in increasingly irresponsible attempts to bring down the temple on their own heads, and rejoice in the destruction.

The argument between those who identify government power with the community and those who believe in personal freedom will never be terminated by some conclusive piece of evidence. Being moral in nature, it is in fact not an argument at all, but a struggle between hostile ways of life. Those of us who support and defend liberal democracy should always keep in mind how difficult its virtues are to internalize, and how implacable the moral rage of its enemies must necessarily be.

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:54:57 GMT

THE FUTURE OF A DEAD IDEAL: Out of the great threshing floor of history, we have received two ways of organizing our species. In one, the government claims to represent the community, and considers private persons to be at best supplicants, more likely dangers to social peace. In the other, the individual demands the choice of many paths to salvation, even if it means less social cohesiveness and a weaker government. Neither principle has ever been pushed to an absolute, even in the most extreme historical examples. Pol Pot's Cambodia knew private interest and enterprise; Gladstone's Britain imposed mandatory education and regulated pub hours.

But in every society the moral arrows all point in one direction or the other. Either the government stands for the whole, and can be forgiven many sins -- or the private person embodies human dignity, and must be allowed the freedom to annoy and to fail.

The sanctification of government power is the default setting of history, but its most successful promoter over the last 200 years has been socialism. The rise of the private person, a new thing under the sun, engendered liberal democracy, with its rights and protections, its faith in private property and free markets. Again, there has never been a pure example of either -- but in each nation the political and economic arrows, guided by moral justifications, point in one direction or the other.

The moral imperatives matter greatly. These are not intellectual propositions to be proven or disproven like tomorrow's weather forecast. They are expressions of right and wrong behavior -- orientations to good and evil -- passionately defended by their adherents.

Events have not been kind to socialism. Its most complete embodiment, the Soviet Union, became an ideal but also a problem for the democratic-minded. Too plainly, the Soviet Union resembled tsarist Russia with better organized brutality. The question was whether Soviet socialism could be reformed -- whether, in brief, the great power of a revolutionary bureaucracy could somehow be humanized.

The answer came exactly 40 years ago, in August 1968, when Soviet tanks obliterated the Czech communist party's experiment in democratic reform. The Czechs had overthrown their Stalinist leadership under the motto, "socialism with a human face." But revolutionary socialism requires inhumanity: the imposition of equality by unfettered government power must end in tyranny and bloodshed. That is not a deviation, but the inescapable logic of the ideal. (Any who doubt this, go read Hayek.)

Martin Kettle, in the Guardian, recalls the collapse of faith in that ideal after the Soviets suppressed, with blood and iron, the dream of reform that was the "Prague Spring."

That question was big and it was simple. Could the Soviet communist model of socialism be reformed or not? Today we know the answer. But the world of 1968 could not be so sure. The question was at the heart of the Prague Spring. Dubcek's reforms raised the possibility that there could be some kind of democratic socialist third way in which collective goals and socialist projects coexisted with democracy, free institutions and individual freedoms. Tony Judt is right to argue in his great book, Postwar, that the slogan of socialism with a human face was not just rhetorical and right to insist that the Prague 68ers didn't "really" want to import liberal capitalism. They actually believed that reformed socialism could work.

The reform question was not being asked only in Czechoslovakia itself. It was also being posed to some degree in all the Soviet client states of eastern Europe, though manifestly under less open circumstances, as well as in limited ways under the repressive conditions of the USSR itself - and beyond. For it was being asked too, though in different ways by all those on the left, including on the left in this country, who believed that Stalinism represented the betrayal not just of 1917 but also of an otherwise still valid revolutionary socialist tradition.

The invasion of August 1968 put an end to all that.

"August 21, 1968 was not the day communism died," Kettle writes. "But it was the day communism's death sentence was confirmed."

The final agony of Soviet communism in 1991 incidentally killed off its kinder, gentler sibling, democratic socialism: both shared too many discredited assumptions and hopes for the latter to survive the catastrophe. No particular date can be put forward for the moment of death -- say some time in the 1990s. At that point, the problem shifted from the reform of communism to something far more fundamental: what do socialists now believe? What justifies the faith in great government power? Why should equality matter?

The collapse of socialism as an ideal of government should not be confused with the triumph of liberal democracy. This never happened. True, Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed an ideological "end of history," because the great totalitarian systems that had challenged liberalism lay in ruins. But, as Roger Kimball notes, Fukuyama dwells in a Hegelian palace of theories and ideas, which rejects the significance, and thus the moral weight, of events.

In the world of flesh and blood, the failure of socialism denied the opponents of liberalism a coherent alternative. Nothing else changed. The moral loathing felt by those who identify the community with government power, if anything, intensified after the fall of the Soviet Union: a natural reaction to defeat. Untethered from a real-world model of political organization, such loathing could express itself without fear of comparisons, and judge liberal democracy against a standard of utopian perfection. Condemnations, never gentle in the past, acquired a nihilist edge. The point was no longer to replace liberalism, but rather to strike at it, to wound it, to destroy it if possible.

Latter-day believers in government power have lost their unifying faith, and can be found clustered along fault-lines that reflect personal taste more than systematic thinking.

The Euro-hedonists believe nothing's left worth fighting for. One might as well eat, drink, copulate with abandon, and pretend tomorrow will never come. Those who decry this way of life must be Christian fundamentalists or Victorian prigs, over whom one feels morally superior. A large and intrusive government is required to act as permanent employer and dispenser of a generous dole. Those who criticize this political arrangement must be selfish and uncaring. Those willing to take risks and work hard are obviously unhinged, and must be protected from themselves by government regulations.

Euro-hedonists can be found anywhere, but as the name implies they are rather thick on the ground in the Old Continent. The golden youth of the Sorbonne, rioting for guaranteed job security when 23 percent of their generation remains unemployed, are fine examples of Euro-hedonism. The British woman who had nine children with five different men, spent her dole money on a months-long trip to Goa, and felt wounded when criticized after her abandoned daughter was murdered, is a less fine example.

The culture vandals believe Western civilization is the root of all evil: imperialism, racism, capitalism, sexism, consumerism -- and that's only the tip of the ismic iceberg. To save the world, everything about the West must be smashed, soiled, defaced. America must be shown to be the motherland of selfishness. The history of Europe must be revealed to be a series of genocides and usurpations. Columbus was a slavemaster. George Washington was a greedy land speculator. Jefferson slept with slaves. The art and science and the political innovations of the West were cheap tricks perpetrated by white males and paid for with the blood and sweat of workers, women, and minorities.

Postmodernists are the supreme culture vandals. They thrive in academia, the mass media, Hollywood, the law, and every profession in which playing a part supersedes personal action. And they expect a revaluation of all values, a cultural revolution which only a powerful government can impose.

For Eco-Luddites, industry and technology must literally bring about the end of the world. Democracy means pandering to illicit pleasures, the market economy means fouling the planet irretrievably. Flood, pestilence, and death will be our punishment. There are too many people on earth -- the family must be destroyed. We murder to dissect -- apes deserve human rights. We are sick with profit-seeking -- we must submit to the chosen few who speak for the good of all. A strong, wise ruler must be embraced, who will force us to close our factories, trade our cars for bicycles, turn out the lights forever, wear sackcloth, and repent.

Just possibly, he might look like Al Gore.

A word might be said about the paleosocialists, who still use the old class struggle to justify nationalizing the economy and monopolizing power on behalf of the proletariat. In most places, these paleos are old, lonely, baffled men, clinging to a corpse that was once an object of desire. Only in Latin America, with the likes of Hugo Chavez, does this retro brand of socialism still hold some appeal.

In truth, all latter-day socialists fear the future, and long for a past in which the future was theirs. If liberal democracy is a delicate balancing act between tradition and creative destruction, this tribe of nihilists and nostalgics might, despite their essential triviality, pose a problem.

But more on this in a later post.

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:27:37 GMT

NONJUDGMENTALISM, HERE AND ABROAD: One often finds, among highly educated people, the belief that moral judgment is a matter of study, reflection, and analysis -- that nuance is inherently superior to assertiveness. But it isn't at all clear why this should be so. Moral dilemmas aren't intellectual problems, but rather calls to action. In normal individuals, a well-trained moral sense becomes the guide to right action, driven by the logic of the situation: if p then q. For example, if an adult is savagely attacking a small child, then I must intervene and put a stop to the abuse. Or if a stranger drops a wallet full of money, then I must return it to its owner.

Most moral dilemmas are of this sort. One may be afraid to intervene and save the child -- one may be tempted to keep the money -- but I'm not sure what would be added by more facts or deeper analysis, other than the possibility of failing to do the right thing.

The worship of nuance in morality leads quickly to an inability to judge, then to the glorification of nonjudgmentalism. Every situation is too complex. Everyone is a sinner, and all the sinners saints. This attitude has become ingrained among us: if I call someone "judgmental" it invariably implies criticism, aimed at a Victorian prissy.

In this context, it is interesting to read (via Instapundit) Walter Shapiro's characterization of John Edwards' fall from public grace. Edwards, put simply, is the latest of a long line of politicians who cheated on their wives then lied about it. Shapiro, while happy to tar Vice President Cheney with "megalomania," presents himself as a naif in the Edwards soap opera: who, knowing the man as he did, would have suspected him of "reckless behavior and shameless hypocrisy"?

Now, to give Shapiro credit, "hypocrisy" comes close to a judgment. In fact, however, Edwards lied. In the scale of vices, hypocrisy pales before dishonesty.

But "reckless behavior"? Are to to infer that the lying and the hypocrisy meant to conceal the fact Edwards was taking a risk with his career? But why was it risky business in the first place -- because Edwards was a politician, and the voters demand an unfair standard of their office-holders? That is where Shapiro finally comes down: "If we stopped expecting would-be presidents to be paragons of marital fidelity and shining examples of religious faith in the public sphere, we would not set ourselves up for constant disappointment at human frailty."

As the late, great Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote: "The line between good and evil runs through every human heart." We should practice forgiveness because the flesh is weak. At any given moment, any person may yield to temptation. But human frailty is the reason we need morality in the first place, and converting moral failure into a prudential or political calculation merely expands the circle of immorality.

Edwards' actions weren't reckless -- they were wrong. Whether we were disappointed in him or not, they would remain wrong. In fact, our expectations are totally irrelevant to the case. Suppose, for example, that a "would-be president" turned out to be a murderer or a thief. What would our disappointment add or detract to the meanness of his deeds? He might be condemned or forgiven, but his character couldn't be wiped clean. And, in the end, many of us look to a politician's character, more than to ideology, when we choose our office-holders.

Public discourse in this country has been strangely warped by the nonjudgmental taboo, but in the end Americans pass judgments. That's why Edwards has (in Shapiro's word) "flatlined" as a political figure.

In Britain, if this depressing article by Theodore Dalrymple (via City Journal) is accurate, Shapiro's low expectations for politicians have been extended to the entire population. Violation of the most basic human obligations, like that of a mother for her children, inspire no repugnance in the articulate classes, but rather anger against those who would judge such frailty.

Dalrymple relates several cases of dreadful parental neglect. Fiona MacKeown, for example, in 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with a boyfriend and eight children by five fathers -- the whole thing paid for by the dole. She abandoned one of her daughters, a 15-year-old, with a man ten years older whom she scarcely knew, then moved on with her vacation. After a series of sordid events, the daughter's dead body turned up on a Goa beach.

Fiona MacKeown rejects accusations of parental neglect. That is to be expected. Just as predictable is the support she has received from the liberal press in Britain. Here's the Guardian: "The opprobium . . . served up to Fiona MacKeown . . . has been hideous to behold." Why hideous? Well, men who have children by many women are considered "studs," while women who do the same by many men get labelled "hussies." Everyone is a sinner, and all the sinners saints.

Dalrymple, one of my favorite Brits, reflects on the matter:

What explains the nonjudgmental attitude among elites? The reluctance to criticize Fiona MacKeown might be an expression of sympathy for someone in the throes of grief: however foolishly (or worse) she behaved, she certainly did not deserve the murder of her daughter. Furthermore, the Guardian and Observer journalists might argue, we do not know enough about the details of her life to criticize her fairly. Perhaps she is a good mother in most respects; perhaps her children, apart from the drug addict and the murdered Scarlett, are happy, and will lead lives of fulfillment and achievement. After all, no style of upbringing guarantees success or, for that matter, failure; and therefore we should suspend judgment about her.

I suspect, however, that the main consideration inhibiting elite criticism of MacKeown is that passing judgment would call into question the shibboleths of liberal social policy for the last 50 or 60 years -- beliefs that give their proponents a strong sense of moral superiority. It would be to entertain the heretical thought that family structure might matter after all, along with such qualities as self-restraint and self-respect; and that welfare dependency is unjust to those who pay for it and disastrous for those who wind up trapped in it.

Maybe so. But contempt for the family is part of a larger problem: the rationalist impulse, which seeks to impose abstract formulas on resistant human flesh. The rationalist seeks nuance when action is called for, and holds traditional institutions like the family, and traditional notions of right and wrong, to be simplistic if not primitive. The marital oath, the mother's obligation to her children, every form of duty passed down from our ancestors -- the very idea of virtue, a word never uttered without irony -- are considered invitations to hypocrisy.

In its latest incarnation, the rationalist reflex has tended to devolve into a kind of mindless hedonism, of the kind that produced Fiona MacKeown. It's a miserable existence, a drifting through chaos and dark night. Instead of achievements one has impulses. Instead of spouses one has transient "partners." Instead of a moral community one has the mirror. Instead of duties one has state support.

Morality, which makes acceptable and predictable the behavior of strangers, constitutes community. A nation that has lost its moral convictions, therefore, has become a aggregation of private desires. It can survive in that state only until it encounters aggression: until the first challenge that requires, for the survival of the group, self-discipline and self-sacrifice. At that moment -- in disregard of rationalist formulas and the pieties of Guardian editorials -- an irrevocable judgment will be rendered.