A daughter reminisces: the making of a writer

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a beautiful piece by the Anchoress, an honest and complex tribute to the mother who gave her her love of words.

It would be interesting to uncover the heredity/genetics of what makes up a writer and reader. And by “writer” I don’t just mean professionals, but amateurs as well, all those who love words (remember, the root of the word “amateur” is “lover”) .

The Anchoress’s mother was brought up by deaf parents, which may have made her love of words even more powerful. As the Anchoress writes:

She gave me that – the love of words – of the very sound of words – the ability to take delight in a well-turned phrase or a crafty sentence, the ability to sense something beyond vowels and consonants, something that sounds like real music and gives almost as much delight. Drunk or sober, angry or gleeful, the stuff that poured from her mouth would routinely stop me in my tracks for the sheer glory of her word usage. I revelled in her immense vocabulary, her flawless diction. If some surprising, or obscene, words occasionally found their way into her soliliquies, even those were rendered inoffensive thanks to the plucky, affectionate way she inserted them.

Some people are just drawn to words from the start; I was one of them. And, as with the Anchoress, it did seem to run in our family. I grew up with a mother to whom I automatically gave all my school papers to edit, just as my father was in charge of checking my math homework (at least for a while). My mother loved taking the old blue pencil (metaphoric, in her case) to my childish efforts, indicating grammar corrections and the like, and then explaining them to me in a teaching moment. Didn’t everybody’s mother?

And didn’t everybody’s brother read poetry aloud to them in-between bouts of teasing and various other forms of torment? Some might call the poetry readings themselves a form of torment–but not me.

The answer, of course, is no. But I wasn’t aware of that at the time; I thought such skills went with parenthood, and maybe even big-brotherhood.

My mother used to have a newspaper column, and she was a child prodigy as a poet. My mother’s father was a writer also, although he worked in advertising, and her entire family used to compose funny jingles for all occasions–birthdays, weddings, any small excuse–set to popular tunes of the day. (Perhaps that’s why I appreciate Dr. Sanity’s lofty skills in that particular arena so much). I carried on the blue pencil tradition for my son when he was growing up. And now he’s a better editor and writer than I.

Which is as it should be, right?

For Mother’s Day: mothers and babies

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today–Mother’s Day–at ninety-two years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

Answering a true liberal’s question about Iraq

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently an elderly aunt (oh, I don’t think she’d like that “elderly” bit at all!) who lives in San Francisco asked me the following question during a phone conversation we were having, “So, do you still think it was good for us to go into Iraq?”

She’s a lifelong liberal Democrat, but one of those people in my life who, since my “change,” has always been patient and respectful towards me in all of our discussions. We actually don’t talk too much any more about politics–it’s mostly become one of those “agree to disagree” things–but at first we certainly did, and (unlike many) she made efforts to listen and never flew off the handle.

So, when she asked that question, her tone was only ever-so-slightly dubious, with the subtext, “How could you possibly believe such a thing?” only vaguely hinted at.

My answer amounted to the following:

Yes, in a way, although I never phrased it that way to begin with and wouldn’t describe it that way today. It’s not a question of “good for us,” although the results could end up being good for us in the long run. But the way I saw it at the time, and still see it, is that it was a difficult and risky decision that represented something we needed to do, faced with a bad situation that had been building for decades in that area.

The risks were always huge, but we had to take a stand on Saddam’s defiance of the terms of the ceasefire and of the UN’s authority, and we had to try to see whether we could get something decent going in the region. That country seemed, for a whole host of reasons (including, most prominently, humanitarian ones), a good place to try to start.

I take the long view, and the jury is still out on what will happen in Iraq. You may not realize it, because of the news sources you read, but the government there is still moving ahead, and the country is not actually in a civil war, despite the bitter and bloody conflict. And it may also seem strange to you when I say this, but I was actually expecting worse. I expected far more bloodshed to occur, and more unrest and street fighting, not less. In this perhaps I’m different than most, but I seem to recall those were the prewar predictions even from the Left–which they seem to have forgotten, since moving the goalposts is always good sport.

I never thought a good outcome was a foregone conclusion. And the idea that the Bush administration uniformly thought so is a distortion (and here I referenced my posts on that theme, and on the famous “cakewalk” remark).

Her response was to thank me for a thoughtful and complex answer–which gives you a good idea of what sort of a person she is, and why we can talk together. I doubt she agreed with me, but not only is she willing to talk and to listen, but I know I represent one of the few opposing views she ever encounters, and she values hearing a different perspective. That makes her a true liberal indeed, in the first sense of the word as it’s defined here:

broad: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; “a broad political stance”; “generous and broad sympathies”; “a liberal newspaper”; “tolerant of his opponent’s opinions”

Blogger collage

The New Neo Posted on by

I just noticed (via this link to the site by Gerard Van der Leun) that I’ve got a place in the blogger collage Blogs With a Face.” I’m especially honored, since I hardly qualify–I’m more like “blogs with a partly-hidden face.”

Van der Leun is especially pleased with his positioning next to the stunning Michelle Malkin. As well he might be. And I, likewise, have no reason whatsoever to complain about my personal surroundings. I am more or less encircled by some of the finest male pulchritude in the blogosphere, both on the sides and above.

And they can write, too.

Negotiating with Iran: who’s the real enemy?

The New Neo Posted on by

Even back when I was a liberal, I don’t think I ever was out of touch with reality about the nature of our enemies.

For example, when the ayatollahs came to power in Iran and launched their PR campaign by taking over the American Embassy and making the Carter administration look like impotent fools, it was clear what we were dealing with. The repressiveness of the new Iranian regime (particularly vis a vis women) was clear from the start, as was its aggressive intent and its uncompromising tyranny.

This was how the crisis began:

On November 1, 1979 Iran’s new leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged his people to demonstrate against United States and Israeli interests. Ruhollah Khomeini was anti-American in his rhetoric, denouncing the American government as the “Great Satan” and “Enemies of Islam”.

Well, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. There are few regimes around that represent such models of consistency over time.

Yes indeed, as I’ve said before, one can rightfully disagree on what to do about Iran. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record I will repeat: the intent of the Iranian leadership is clear, because they have made it clear. These are not people with whom one can expect to negotiate and reach any sort of favorable outcome, or indeed any outcome at all that isn’t a sham.

So the solutions lie elsewhere. They might be strategic: working with other nations to apply the screws in various ways, such as economically. They might be clandestine: working to help Iranians themselves change the regime. And of course they might be military, the solution hated most by liberals, leftists, and pacifists.

And in fact that latter solution–the military one–is also most hated by me. I would imagine it’s most hated by almost everyone on the right as well as on the left, because most people on earth are actually not eager for war if other solutions have a good chance of success. Those who advocate a military solution do so because they tend to consider it the least bad of a host of possible bad solutions, and risky ones at that.

I personally still advocate a combination of the strategic and clandestine solutions, holding off a military one till if/when it may be absolutely necessary. But in any event, I don’t think it’s best to take any possibility off the table.

I believe that I would feel the same way if I were still a liberal Democrat. Some would take that as evidence that I never was a liberal Democrat in the first place, but they would be wrong. The truth is that there have been tremendous changes in the last few decades in the stance of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party (and perhaps “wing” isn’t a good word, since the entire party has shifted enough that I’m not sure there’s much of a moderate wing remaining).

When I take a look at blogs of the liberal persuasion writing on the topic of Iran, I can’t help but feel that a sea change has occurred of such major proportions that I simply don’t recognize my own former party.

Here’s a case in point–not so much the post itself, but the comments that follow. The most common attitude I see there is that the enemy is bloodthirsty and is on the brink of starting a war, and the enemy must be stopped.

So, what’s wrong with that, you say? Only this: the enemy in question is the Bush administration. The other enemy–Iran–is given all the benefit of the doubt, and Bush is given none.

Iran’s motives are seen as, if not noble, then as understandable reactions to the threats of others. Its history and its own stated aims are ignored. Its ability to actually make a weapon is doubted; the longest possible time frame for such a possibility is accepted as the earliest possible time frame. And on and on…

Historical context? Fagettabout it.

Bad news vs. even worse news

The New Neo Posted on by

This morning when I went to Yahoo to check my email, I saw a headline about a blast in Nigeria that had killed two hundred people.

The original headline (it’s been slightly changed now) didn’t make the accidental nature of the explosion at all clear. So my first thought, of course, was terrorism.

But when I read the first few paragraphs it became apparent that that first thought of mine was wrong. Although the cause of the blast is still not exactly certain, this was the actual situation:

The villagers had been collecting the gushing fuel outside the coastal village of Ilado, about 30 miles east of the main Nigerian city of Lagos, when the fuel ignited, police and rescue workers said.

The dead are just as dead. But it appears to be a tragedy rather than a crime or an act of war.

My point? Ever since 9/11, when I hear about something like this, my first assumption is terrorism. It’s now the default position–whereas, prior to 9/11, the reverse was true.

It’s certainly not that terrorist attacks weren’t commonplace before, but it was easier to relegate them to the background. That shouldn’t have been the case–we know that now–but for so many of us, that’s the way it was.

Perhaps it’s just the way the human mind and heart tends to work. We don’t like to face the reality of the threat until it’s made unequivocal. We don’t want to have to peer too closely into the heart of darkness. And too often we don’t want to have to do something about it until it’s close to being too late.

In this case and many others, I’m relieved to be incorrect. My sorrow remains at the loss of life. But there are degrees of terribleness in human events, and causes do matter.

Pubescent rites of passage: coming of age in Astoria (and elsewhere)

The New Neo Posted on by

Today, reading Fausta’s reminiscences about the coming-of-age party for girls in the Hispanic community known as the quinceaé±ero, I was reminded of–well, of lots of things, which I’ll get to in due course.

But first, Fausta quoting the NY Times on the subject:

In Miami, home to moneyed Latin Americans and wealthy Cuban-Americans, quinces are fancier than ever, with some parties now veering into Broadwayesque stagecraft. It is not uncommon for a young girl in belly-dancing attire to be carried aloft on a bejeweled “Arabian Nights” bed by four young men or to step out of a custom-built Cinderella castle. Birthday girls saunter across sandy floors as mermaids, é  la “Under the Sea,” or dance in Victorian regalia, or put on hip-hop routines. Masquerade parties are popular, and costume changes, as in stage productions, are au courant. Even when the party involves just the traditional waltz, a choreographer is a must.

“Some wear short dresses underneath their big dresses and during the disco, they rip off the big dress…”

Even though the quinces were more a bit more modest when Fausta was a girl, she was not looking forward to the event at the time for herself:

As a shy (it was a long time ago) fourteen-year old I dreaded the prospect of a solo evening-long performance on a Mass followed by a ball followed by a dinner. The dread increased as I watched my next door neighbor go through the preparations: endless discussions of what the gowns were to look like (white gown for her, gowns in coordinating colors for her mother and sisters), coordinating accessories, flowers, tuxedo rentals and a thousand other petty details…

When I was a fourteen-year old (and no doubt it was even longer ago for me than for Fausta), I didn’t know of any quinces. But there were other coming of age parties: for girls, the Sweet Sixteen. Bar Mitzvahs for Jewish boys. And weddings for all. I knew of no one who came out as a debutante, but I suppose that factored in for some.

Like Fausta, I wasn’t all that eager for the two that might apply to me, the Sweet Sixteen and the wedding. In fact, at the age of eleven, on attending my very first big wedding–held in a catering hall, with two hundred guests and eight attendants in pink satin, and a loud band making it hard to speak or to hear–I turned to my mother and shouted over the din, “I’m telling you right now: you’ll never get me to do this.”

Oh, my poor, poor long-suffering mother. She panicked; did I mean I was never getting married?

“Oh no, it’s the wedding,” I answered. “Don’t ever expect me to have this kind of wedding.”

Nor did I want to have the next kind of wedding I attended. It was different, that’s for sure: a late morning ceremony in a beautiful old church in Brooklyn Heights. The bride had designed and made her own gown, but this is misleading: she was an artist, and it was exquisite and unusual, a heavy satin with a vaguely Asian obi-like flair and tiny pearls sewn in a striking design. No, no problem there–although I certainly didn’t have the skill to follow suit, I admired her style.

The problem came later, when we went to her family’s elegant brownstone for the reception. No, not the brownstone itself; that seemed ideal. It was the refreshments. The day was insufferably hot in those pre-airconditioned times, close to 100 degrees. The crowd filled the brownstone and it became even warmer.

So, what was the menu? Elegant simplicity itself, like the bride’s dress:

(1) champagne
(2) salted peanuts

Nice beginning, you say? What about the rest?

There was no rest. That was it. And, if you use your imagination, you can guess what happened next. Everyone was sweating and also very hungry: dehydration led to thirst which led to greater imbibement of the champagne, hunger led to massive downing of the salted peanuts which led to greater thirst which led to…well, you get the idea. The entire crowd got totally and completely looped–almost dangerously so.

My own wedding, when it came in the fullness of time, was exactly as I wanted it to be: in my house, rather small, great food, good company.

But I digress (what, moi? Digress??) Back to the quince; we were speaking of the quince. And, thinking about the more general phenomenon of wretched excess in such matters, I’ve come to the conclusion that its a complex matter, perhaps just a natural part of human nature.

Note in the Times article that the idea of the huge coming out party is catching on:

The quince-style coming-of-age parties have even managed to influence the coming-of-age celebrations of other groups, including West Indians, African-Americans and Asians, who have grown infatuated with the party’s choreographed nature and family tributes. This trend is particularly evident in multicultural New York, where the tradition of trading slippers for heels, lighting 16 candles and surrounding the birthday girl with a weddinglike “court” of friends is winning over non-Hispanic girls.

“I am amazed at how many nationalities come in and want these Sweet 16’s ””Indians, Filipinas, Chinese,” said Angela Baker-Brown, who runs Tatiana’s Bridal in Queens, which sells quinceaé±era dresses and props, like the scepter the birthday girl carries. “It is a Hispanic tradition, but these other groups are going to these parties and wanting one as well.”

Greed, you say? Materialism? Yes, of course. But reading between the lines I see something else as well, something more heartwarming: love. Call me naive–and perhaps I am–but I think that’s part of what’s operating here:

The Hispanic community treats it this way: I have one or two daughters. She may get married several times but a ’15’ happens only once. It’s once in a lifetime…Many families who can’t really afford the party have them anyway. Traditionally, quinceaé±era parties have cut across class lines. “They save for this for years,” Ms. Albuerne said. Mexican-Americans often share the cost with the extended family, naming several godparents specifically to participate in the process. Cuban families open special savings accounts. “I know some Hispanics who have placed second mortgages on their home for this,” she said. “It’s important.”

The passage from childhood to adulthood traditionally has had these sorts of markers and celebrations, cutting across cultures. The impulse is nearly universal. The ages differ, and the details certainly do: menstrual huts and scarification, for example, are not part of a quince (at least not yet), although tattoos seem to be making a generalized comeback.

But the urge is there, and it is twofold: to mark an important passage for a beloved child, and to do it in style. In our affluent society, we have the money to try to outdo each other in ostentation, it’s true. But perhaps that’s just another human impulse that goes along with any society with greater resources; note the potlatch.

So, I’d consider accepting any quince invites that might happen to come my way. And I bet there’s more than champagne and salted peanuts on the menu.

Understanding Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush: the context

The New Neo Posted on by

How best to understand Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush?

I’ve already noted that the letter seems to have worked nicely as propaganda for many people; the evil Bush seen as rejecting the “process” (as in “peace process” or “process of dialogue that might lead to understanding and rapprochement”) that Ahmadinejad is seen as opening.

And so, in the interest of cultural sensitivity, I turn to Amir Taheri, Iranian expatriate journalist, to help us out in our desire to comprehend Ahmadinejad. Writing in today’s NY Post, Taheri gives us some needed historical and religious context:

“The whole world is moving towards God,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to his American counterpart, George W. Bush. “Would Your Excellency not wish to join?”…

Ahmadinejad’s epistolary exercise seems merely another of his quirks. But it must be seen as yet another sign that the new leadership in Tehran is determined to provoke a direct confrontation with the United States in the hope that, plagued by internal problems, the Americans will either back away or be humiliated.

Ahmadinejad’s move fits into a 14-century-long Muslim tradition, initiated by the Prophet Muhammad himself, of writing letters to “the rulers of the world.” In 625 A.D., having consolidated his position in Medina and established a secure power base for his rule, the prophet decided it was time to call on “the infidel” to abandon their faith and submit to Islam. He dictated letters to Khosrow Parviz, the Persian king of kings (a Zoroastrian), and to Emperor Heraclius of Byzantium and the Ethiopian monarch Negus (both Christian).

To each, the prophet’s offer was simple: Convert to Islam and secure a place in paradise – or cling to your beliefs and face the sword of Islam.

The Persian monarch ordered his security services to find the “insolent letter writer” and bring him to the court in Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Empire at the time. According to Islamic folklore, Muhammad escaped capture only because, soon after, Khosrow Parviz was murdered by his son and designated heir. And within a decade the Persian Empire had disintegrated, with most of its territory falling to the armies of Islam…

It would be wrong to dismiss Ahmadinejad’s letter to Bush as just another of the Islamic leader’s many weird habits. It would be more prudent, and better politics, to take Ahmadinejad seriously and try and understand him in his own terms.

His letter contains a crucial message: The present regime in Iran is the enemy of the current international system and is determined to undermine and, if possible, destroy it.

It continues to puzzle me that so many of us have to learn the same lesson over and over, and that is this one: tyrants mean what they say. Iran’s leadership hasn’t had its people chanting “Death to America!” for nothing for all these long decades.

There are issues open to debate: how close is Iran to being able, if not to destroy, then at least to inflict a significant body blow on the US or its ally Israel; and what would be the best course of action to prevent it.

But there should be no debate on one thing: the desire is there on the part of Iran’s leadership (perhaps not its people–but, unfortunately, their intent doesn’t count for much in this equation). If, after so much repetition, we fail to understand that one basic fact, then we are worse than useful idiots: we might be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.

An 18-page letter a day keeps the world at bay: love that “process”

The New Neo Posted on by

Alexandra of All Things Beautiful’s take on Ahmadinejad’s 18-page letter to Bush emphasizes the fact that it was a good propaganda move for the Iranian President. She writes:

Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad scored quite a success with his 18-page letter to President Bush. Timing was of course carefully orchestrated to coincide with his high-profile visit to a key Muslim country, Indonesia….

We are…little surprised to be told by Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz that the letter “could have been the beginning of a new process,” and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s reaction, which has of course already been labeled as a ‘quick brushoff’, would fuel anti-American feelings in Iran.

Ahmadinejad is not ignorant of how this plays to the Left, as Alexandra points out. As for me, I note his canny use of that new-agey word “process”–as in the vaunted Israeli Palestinian “peace process,” the success of which was so deeply hoped for and wished for that it took a long time to understand that it was an emperor with no clothes.

Alexandra also quotes Amir Taheri’s piece on the subject of what to do about Iran:

Something interesting is happening with regard to the crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Slowly the blame is shifting from the mullahs to the Bush administration as the debate is redirected to tackle the hypothetical question of U.S. military action rather than the Islamic Republic’s real misdeeds. “No War on Iran” placards are already appearing where “No Nukes for Iran” would make more sense.

The attempt at fabricating another “cause” with which to bash America is backed by the claim that the mullahs are behaving badly because Washington refuses to talk to them.

Taheri goes on to point out the abject failing of the Carter and Clinton administrations in dealing with Iran.

Revisiting the Carter approach is an exercise in futile and frustrated toothgrinding at the shortsighted naivete of it all. A recap:

In 1979, soon after the mullahs seized power, Mr. Carter sent Ayatollah Khomeini a warm congratulatory letter. Mr. Carter’s man at the U.N., a certain Andrew Young, praised Khomeini as “a 20th-century saint.” Mr. Carter also tapped his closest legal advisor, the late Lloyd Cutler, as U.S. ambassador to the mullarchy.

A more dramatic show of U.S. support for the mullahs came when Mr. Brzezinski flew to Algiers to meet Khomeini’s prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan. This was love at first sight — to the point where Mr. Carter approved the resumption of military supplies to Iran, even as the mullahs were executing Iranians by the thousands, including many whose only “crime” was friendship with the U.S. The Carter administration’s behavior convinced the mullahs that the U.S. was a paper tiger and that it was time for the Islamic Revolution to highlight hatred of America. Mr. Carter reaped what he had sown when the mullahs sent “student” fanatics to seize the U.S. embassy compound, a clear act of war, and hold its diplomats hostage for 444 days. “The Carter administration’s weakness was a direct encouragement to [anti-American] hard-liners,” wrote Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the hostage-takers, years later.

I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to take Asgharzadeh’s word for it on this, if on nothing else.

Clinton’s approach was cagier, but ultimately, not cagey enough:

Beating his own drum, Bill Clinton has rejected the threat of force and called for “engaging” Iran. This is how he put it in a recent speech: “Anytime somebody said in my presidency, ‘If you don’t do this, people will think you’re weak,’ I always asked the same question for eight years: ‘Can we kill ’em tomorrow?’ If we can kill ’em tomorrow, then we’re not weak.” Mr. Clinton’s pseudo-Socratic method of either/or-ing issues out of existence is too well-known to merit an exposé. This time, however, Mr. Clinton did not ask enough questions. For example, he might have asked: What if by refusing to kill some of them today we are forced to kill many more tomorrow? Also: What if, once assured that we are not going to kill them today, they regroup and come to kill us in larger numbers? We all know the answers.

I have no facile solution to the problem of Iran; I don’t think anyone does. But we are fooling ourselves if we think that either Carter or Clinton have much to say on the matter that would be helpful at this point.

And we are doubly fooling ourselves if we believe that the Ahmadinejad letter represented an attempt by Iran to begin “a new process.” No, I think the process was actually a rather old one.

Harry Harlow and his monkeys: being cruel to be kind?

The New Neo Posted on by


While researching my recent series on questioning authority, I got the idea to write a post about the seminal Milgram experiments on obedience to authority.

When I was a psych major back in college, part of our learning experience involved—as you might expect—studying psychology experiments. Many were of the so-called “rat psych” variety, and some were of a more clinical nature. Then much later, while getting my clinical Master’s in the early 90s, I had to read many more. In between, I actually worked as a social science researcher in a place with a sterling reputation. So I’ve done my time—and more—in the field of psychological research, including being a subject back in college (I remember interminable sessions with what was known as a “memory drum.” Bloody boring.).

But I must admit (or is it confess?) that too much social science research is “garbage in, garbage out.” Not all of course, but quite a bit. Some of this is the fault of sloppy methodology. But most of the problem may be inherent in the nature of the beast of social science research itself: too many variables to control for, too many unknowns.

But even social science has some experiments so very wonderfully done, and with such fascinating results, that they not only impressed me when I first encountered them, but they stayed with me and inform me still.

One was the famous “learned helplessness” research, in which dogs who received painful electric shocks without the possibility of escape learned that their efforts to avoid the pain were futile. Later, when they received shocks in a situation in which they were able to escape, they didn’t even try. Another was the perhaps even more famous case of the Harlow monkeys. Still another, of course, was Milgram’s research on obedience to authority.

The first two involved cruelty to animals in those pre-PETA days. The third involved feigned physical cruelty (and, some would argue, actual psychological cruelty) to humans. I’m no PETA member, but I’ve seen the visuals on Harlow’s monkeys and the shocked dogs–both the films and the still photos–and they are disturbing to watch.

Harlow’s research wasn’t limited to the esoteric halls of academe; his surrogate-mother monkeys became well-known through a feature in Life magazine in the 50s, where I first encountered them as a young child.

There was something haunting about those photos. I could hardly take my eyes away from the mournful expressions of the baby monkeys Harlow had taken away from their mothers and raised with two “surrogate mothers”–a wire one with a bottle attached, where the baby could get its nourishment, and a cloth one the baby could cling to for comfort (see photo that begins this essay).

And cling they did:


Before Harlow, many psychologists thought that the mother/infant bond was based on the nourishment provided. Harlow theorized that touch and comfort were even more crucial–if not in keeping the infant alive, then in keeping it emotionally healthy. This may seem self-evident today, but at the time it was revolutionary.

Harlow’s experiments exemplify the paradoxical nature of research that subjects animals to some sort of cruelty and yet yields results that can benefit humans.

Here’s a description of what actually happened to Harlow’s monkeys:

When the experimental subjects were frightened by strange, loud objects, such as teddy bears beating drums, monkeys raised by terry cloth surrogates made bodily contact with their mothers, rubbed against them, and eventually calmed down. Harlow theorized that they used their mothers as a “psychological base of operations,” allowing them to remain playful and inquisitive after the initial fright had subsided. In contrast, monkeys raised by wire mesh surrogates did not retreat to their mothers when scared. Instead, they threw themselves on the floor, clutched themselves, rocked back and forth, and screamed in terror…

In subsequent experiments, Harlow’s monkeys proved that “better late than never” was not a slogan applicable to attachment. When Harlow placed his subjects in total isolation for the first eights months of life, denying them contact with other infants or with either type of surrogate mother, they were permanently damaged. Harlow and his colleagues repeated these experiments, subjecting infant monkeys to varied periods of motherlessness. They concluded that the impact of early maternal deprivation could be reversed in monkeys only if it had lasted less than 90 days, and estimated that the equivalent for humans was six months. After these critical periods, no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the monkeys’ abnormal behaviors and make up for the emotional damage that had already occurred. When emotional bonds were first established was the key to whether they could be established at all.

But the story is actually worse than that. It turns out that even the contact comfort of a cloth surrogate mother was not enough to raise a healthy monkey. All of Harlow’s monkeys had severe disruptions when they grew up–for example, they could not mate.

You might ask: what’s the point? Isn’t this stuff obvious? Who needed an experiment to prove it? But that’s 20/20 hindsight; at the time, Harlow’s results sent shockwaves through the psychology community:

What may seem obvious to us now…was as counter to the conventional wisdom in psychology in those days as Galileo’s ideas were to the astronomy in his day…The field was dominated by the behaviorist theories of psychologists like B. F. Skinner and child development theories exemplified by John Watson, who used his presidency of the American Psychological Association to conduct a personal crusade against cuddling children.

Harlow’s carefully executed and presented research sent shockwaves through the psychology community, eventually discrediting behaviorism and many other -isms under the extraordinary force of the information he collected. His voluminous hard data replaced what previously had been anecdotal evidence in fledgling schools of thought, providing a much-needed scientific basis for theories like attachment theory, humanistic psychology (Abraham Maslow was his first graduate student), and patient-centered therapy.

And what of Harlow himself? According to this Boston Globe profile, he was a troubled and contentious man. His life included two broken marriages, alcoholism, and depression (did he, perhaps, have only a cloth mother, too?)

Harlow didn’t even like monkeys—or animals—at all, which undoubtedly made it easier for him to conduct his research:

Harlow felt no kinship with his test subjects. “The only thing I care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property I can publish,” he said. “I don’t have any love for them. I never have. I don’t really like animals. I despise cats. I hate dogs. How could you love monkeys?”

Harlow fired off some excellent bon mots, including this one:

[Harlow] was at a conference one day, and every time he used the word “love” another scientist would interrupt and say, “You must mean proximity, don’t you?” until at last Harlow, a brash man who could also be strangely shy, said, “It may be that proximity is all you know of love—I thank God I have not been so deprived.”

But one wonders. If the original experiments were dark, later ones (after his divorces and electroshock treatments for depression) grew far darker, and entered the realm of sadism. I’m not using this word lightly; see whether you agree with me:

[Harlow] built a black isolation chamber in which an animal was hung upside down for up to two years, unable to move or see the world, fed through a grid at the bottom of the V-shaped device. This Harlow called “the well of despair.” Indeed, it was successful in creating a primate model of mental illness. The animals, once removed, after months or years, were shattered and psychotic. Nothing Harlow did could bring them back. There appeared to be no cure. No way to contact, to comfort.

Harlow’s earlier research was somewhat cruel, but it had a clear purpose and results that could be used to the benefit of humans. This later research (performed during the 60s) almost undoubtedly would not have been allowed today, whatever his previous reputation. It amounted to the torture of highly intelligent and sensitive animals, to no real purpose.

To me, it’s a case of balance. Harlow’s early experiments had elements of cruelty, but even before the experiments were performed it was clear that they could have some beneficial results for child-rearing (which have ultimately come to include advances in the treatment of premature and institutionalized infants, and the resurgence of breastfeeding). Furthermore, with those early experiments, the extent of the resultant disturbances to the monkeys’ psyches was unforeseen and unexpected.

Harlow’s latter experiments, however, seemed to have no redeeming social importance. The horrific results on the monkeys’ psyches seem not only predictable, but inevitable, and it’s virtually impossible to see how even the feisty Harlow could have argued, prospectively, of any real benefit to our knowledge of human nature likely to result from them.

In certain cases it may indeed be necessary to be cruel to animals in order to be kinder to humans. But Harlow’s trajectory is a cautionary tale of the necessity to calibrate the two.

We may mock PETA for its excesses—I certainly do. But there are times—especially in the relatively unfettered past—that research on animals can go too far. The trick is to make a considered and reasonable judgment about when that may be so, balancing the possible good with the probable harm likely to result. In that equation, people count more than animals, but animals still count for something.

See no evil: sadistic terrorists and “World War III”

The New Neo Posted on by


Mudville Gazette covers the killing of Iraqi journalist Atwar Bahjat (see NOTE below). If you haven’t yet read a description of how this 30-year old woman was brutally and tortuously murdered, I warn you that it’s very strong stuff.

I don’t usually link to such things. Who would want to dwell on them, or join in their sensationalizing in any way? But as Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom has pointed out, avoiding the horrific details is a way of denying the nature of the enemy we face, and that is something we can ill afford:

Our own media feels the need to shield us from such brutality, even as they report daily on the US and Iraqi death count””or seemed almost to fetishize the torture photos from Abu Ghraib.

But presuming to protect us from the nature of our enemy, like many of the MSM’s other actions in framing the war on terror, is irresponsible””and either presumptuously paternalistic, or cynically calculating.

True, there is a fine line between “war porn” and the dissemination of information. But we nevertheless have the right to know who it is we are fighting. Because knowing just might have an impact on how we, as a country, feel about the necessity of carrying out the fight””and how far we are willing to go to see our enemy vanquished.

I don’t see how it’s possible for most people to read the account of Bahjat’s death and not feel that those who perpetrated it are evil. (And yes, the perpetrators are not Moslems as a whole. But they are a subgroup of Moslems–jihadi terrorists–who commit these acts in the name of the Moslem religion, chanting prayers even as the torture and murder is performed. And yes, I know about the Inquisition. But that was quite a while ago, if you check your history.)

Why do I use the word “evil,” as opposed to simply “violent?” It is because this–and so many other of their acts–was not a mere killing (as though killing can ever be “mere”); it was the purposeful amplification of this young woman’s suffering before she died, in order to inflict maximum horror. As such, it appears to enter the realm of sadism and sociopathy (I wonder, by the way, if this isn’t one of the reasons why so many would prefer to treat the perpetrators as criminals, if captured, and deal with them through the criminal rather than the military justice system).

But Bahjat’s torture killing is no means an isolated incident, as when a psychopath commits a crime acting out of some sort of individual pathology. It is part and parcel of the group movement that is jihadist terrorism today, and goes way beyond the strategic inculcation of fear (although it is undoubtedly also a strategic move meant to do that very thing).

“Evil.” Many mocked Reagan for calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” and George Bush was likewise thought to be guilty of the same lack of sophistication and nuance when he used the term “axis of evil” for the triumvirate of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. For, after all, “evil” (in its non-religious sense, that is–its religious sense is such a huge topic that it’s beyond the scope of today’s essay) is a word left over from childhood. It dwells in the land of fairy tales and legends, in a simplistic dichotomous way of looking at the world that many adults of sophistication believe they’ve outgrown.

Of course, we are no strangers to evil’s face. In the twentieth century, it made quite a splash with the Nazis, who likewise seemed to have had a widespread and basic sadistic bent, an enjoyment of torture for its own sake. The same appears to have been true of Saddam’s regime, as well as others too numerous to mention.

But beheadings in particular, seeming to emanate from a distant barbaric past, represent a practice that we might have expected would have disappeared from the face of the earth by the twenty-first century. The fact that terrorists and jihadis have managed to stage a revival of this particular brutality complete with added sadistic refinements and the newfangled wonders of videotape and the internet to spread the images around the world (a la Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg), is hard for the modern mind to assimilate. It’s as though bogeymen and fire-breathing dragons, chimeras and man-eating giants thundering “Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman” have suddenly sprung to life out of the pages of a storybook, wedded to cutting edge communication technology.

But in a strange and paradoxical way, the over-the-top nature of the drawn-out violence in this and other similar killings only makes them easier for many to deny. Despite the existence of video documentation, such methods seems so barbaric as to be almost unbelievable. And this air of unreality isn’t helped by the fact that media coverage of such things is tentative and muted.

The fact that many of the jihadis and their supporters may be literally bloodthirsty offends our PC sensibilities and our postmodern vision. So it’s much, much better–isn’t it?–to focus on President Bush rather than on the terrifying mental images of the dying woman in the video.

And yesterday President Bush obliged by uttering some words that stirred controversy–he mentioned in an interview that we are in a global war that could be characterized as World War III:

…he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it “our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war — World War III”.

Bush said: “I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

A predictable yelp of outrage ensued in the blogosphere. A roundup is offered by Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest, who observes:

You have to wonder what morally-relativistic, rainbow colored, secular fundament these folks have been wearing for a hat for years. What part of “airplanes into sky-scrapers followed by endless sermons of Hate America and various video tapes shrieking Death to Americans” do they not understand? Have they not gotten the memos from Iran for the last 27 years?

Apparently not. Many seem to believe that, when the mullahs have had their people chant “Death to America,” they don’t really mean it. Many also seem to forget that the attack on 9/11 was not a response to a muscular War on Terrorism but the impetus for it.

But when Bush describes what he sees–a worldwide fight against jihadists who have made their own aims known–some consider him to be the bloodthirsty one. I understand that Bush’s critics fear a spreading of the battleground to other venues such as Iran, but once again, they are mistaking cause for effect. Iran has been at war with the US and the West for a long, long, long time. And the World War to which Bush is referring is not always–or even primarily–a “hot” one.

Why hasn’t the message coming from the Islamicist jihadi side, sent loudly and repeatedly, been received? Perhaps the reason is not such a mystery after all, because hearing the message would mean we’d have to step outside our comfortable modern world and back into the realm of nightmare, and to engage that nightmare decisively, boldly, and effectively in a lengthy and difficult struggle. That effort would sometimes take a military form, but more often would be fought with cerebral and cultural tools.
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Actually, there is nothing all that new about what President Bush said yesterday. He had already stated as much (although he didn’t use the exact “World War III” phrase) shortly after 9/11, when he addressed Congress on September 21, 2001:

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war, but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning.

Americans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack….

They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way…

Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success….

This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight.

But to fight that fight effectively we need to take our hands away from our eyes and take a good look at the enemy we face.

[NOTE: After I wrote this piece, I noticed that Mudville Gazette had posted an addendum indicating there is some doubt about the identity of the woman being beheaded in the video. However, whether it be Bahjat or not, it is known that Bahrat was murdered by her kidnappers. It is also known that these scenes of torture and beheading are almost commonplace with this particular enemy.

One more thing: the “evil” nature of the enemy is not limited to its sadism. Although sadism is part of it, it is a symptom of even greater evils, such as the suppression of human rights and liberty in general, and the desire to spread this tyrannical ideology throughout the globe.]