It may not exactly be traditional, but it’s “Tradition.” proving once again that, although translations may be imperfect, we still speak the same language.
One caveat: I really think this particular Tevye is too thin for the role. Maybe if he eats more sushi, he’ll grow into it.
[Okugai.]
Two days ago I got a flat tire.
I was in a hurry, as usual, racing to meet a friend for dinner, and as I pulled out of my driveway I immediately heard the sickening “flub” and felt that pulling to the side that signaled the nasty news. Drat.
Off to the gas station, which was still open. But the tire wouldn’t fill with air. This was much worse than the usual flat–this tire was a goner. Finito.
No, of course they didn’t have one in stock that matched the others. And these days spare tires are those little doughnut thingees that don’t allow you to go over fifty-five miles per hour, and the next day, as luck would have it, I needed to do a lot of highway driving. So the doughnut fix would be a very temporary one.
Yesterday I resentfully resigned myself to spending time I didn’t think I could spare driving over to the discount tire place. I resentfully resigned myself to spending money I didn’t want to fork over purchasing the mate to the others.
Plus, the waiting room in a discount tire place was not exactly where I wanted to be. There were the usual plastic chairs and car magazines from 2003 (it was a very good year), along with the gumball machine and the water cooler. There was a woman chattering on her cellphone, laptop perched in a place one doesn’t usually see it–her lap–frantically doing business, multitasking away.
I went outside for a moment to get my own cell phone before returning to settle in for the wait. But before I reentered the room I stopped for a moment. And when I stopped, I realized something: even though I was in a strip mall gazing at acres of asphalt, a Lowe’s, a Radio Shack, and all the usual trimmings, it was a beautiful beautiful day.
And not just a beautiful day. It was a glorious day, a spectacular day. It wasn’t just the blue sky and the fluffy white clouds and the perfect seventy-two degree temperature. There was something in the air, some freshness and cleanness, some mix of ions and light and smells that made it seem like air from a different time and place, a better one. It struck me that I needed to stay outside and simply breathe in that air, and relax.
So that’s just what I did. And when my car was ready, it seemed as though the wait hadn’t been nearly long enough.
Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club has posted the entire text of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement speech, in which the then-exiled Russian warned the Western world that its time might be up soon if it didn’t get religion.
That’s a flip summary of Solzhenitzyn’s message–his speech is actually much more than that. It’s an indictment of many of the flaws of Western society, and when I read it just now I could only imagine how the students, faculty, and guests at that occasion almost thirty years ago received his stern and gloomy Jeremaid.
Solzhenitzyn is a strange figure, a man of a complexity that belies facile description. His speech must have been shockingly strange at the time. Today it is shocking in another way, because the first two-thirds of it–a critique of the flaws of Western society–seems shockingly familiar.
That makes him somewhat prescient; he’s both a Jeremiah and a Cassandra, although I don’t necessarily agree with his suggested solution to the problem because, paradoxically and ironically, Solzhenitzyn’s remedy–a return to religion–gives at least the appearance of resembling the remedy of the Islamicist fundamentalist jihadis.
First, a few excerpts from his speech, to give you some of its flavor:
On courage:
The Western world has lost its civil courage…Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite…
The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about…So who should now renounce all this, why and for what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of common values, and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one’s nation must be defended in a distant country?
On politics:
A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless….
When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights…. Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually…
On the press:
The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.”…Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?….
On the consequences of the Vietnam War:
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you.
So, what is Solzhenitzyn’s remedy? A return to the overarching influence of religion–specifically, Christianity–in Western society. He believes that godless humanism, elevating the individual above all else, and eliminating the context of a greater and transcendent meaning to human life, has led inexorably to the societal flaws he described so well in his speech.
This is where Solzhenitzyn appears to circle round to a position that resembles that of our current enemies. Because isn’t that exactly what they’re saying? Counter the flaws of the Western Enlightenment with a return to the hegemony of religion in human life?
The issues are huge, and worthy of a book, or perhaps several books. But I’m only going to briefly touch on them; this is in the nature of a quick sketch.
Solzhenitzyn falls in the tradition of Russian thought known as “Slavophile” (a personal aside: back in the late 60s when I was in college, I learned of the movement in a course entitled “Russian Intellectual History,” which I’ve written about here). His return to Russia in 1994, where he now resides, is no surprise in that context, nor is his devotion to religion.
I agree with Solzhenitzyn that some sort of higher meaning seems necessary to get us out of the trap into which we’ve fallen. But religion can be another trap, and the jihadis are perhaps the best example of where that can lead.
I have no way of knowing what Solzhenitzyn really thinks or feels. But it’s my contention that the difference between what he is advocating and what the jihadists are advocating is profound, although there is a superficial resemblance in that they both rely on religion to save us. This difference goes back to a fundamental (pardon the pun) difference between Islam and Christianity, as I understand it.
People are fond of saying that religion is the problem; it’s caused no end of trouble on earth. While that’s true, it’s also true that it’s caused no end of good on earth. That paradox is resolved by understanding that religion is a malleable tool that can be used to many purposes.
One extremely important dimension on which religions–and divisions within religions–differ greatly is on how much personal freedom they advocate. Fundamentalists in all religions lean strongly to the side of unquestioning obedience, whereas those in other wings emphasize individual freedom of choice.
Another very important difference between religions is on the dimension of whether that particular religion should be spread, and, if so, how it should be spread. Islam (which means “submission”) has historically been a religion that doesn’t shy away from the idea of forceable and coercive conversion, whereas the forceably coercive strain in Christianity (not part of its holy texts as in Islam) has now shrunk virtually to the vanishing point.
So there are differences between religions, and differences within each religion. Right now the fundamentalist, coercive, triumphalist, and violent strain of Islam is growing. Thus the special danger that this segment of Islam represents to the world, a danger that no other religion currently presents in anywhere near its numbers, strength, goals, weaponry, and aggressiveness. Fundamentalists in many religions may resemble each other in the rigidity of their obedience to the rules of their respective religions, but they don’t necessarily resemble each other in how they view the rights of the rest of the world to practice a different one.
What does mainstream Christianity have to say about freedom? To cite another famous Slavophilic Russian writer, Dostoevsky, in his remarkable work “The Grand Inquisitor,” although freedom is part of Christ’s message to the world, it has at times been subverted and undermined by Inquisitors who don’t trust humanity with freedom.
If you’ve never read “The Grand Inquisitor,” which is actually a chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, you owe it to yourself to do so. Here’s the text.
Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor doesn’t just stand for the historical figures of the past who were the actual Inquisitors. He represents all attempts by religions and belief systems–including secular ones such as Communism–to perfect humanity by denying people their freedom in the hopes of creating a better world.
I cannot believe that Solzhenitzyn, with his experience in the Russian Gulag, meant to advocate a return to a religion that denies that individual freedom. At any rate, it’s not Solzhenitzyn’s particular views that are important, it’s the questions he raises. The dilemma remains, and it’s an ancient and exceedingly important one: how to foster and protect freedom without leading to anarchy and loss of meaning, including the loss of the courage to protect ourselves?
The answer is still unclear, but the hour is getting late–much later than it was in 1978.
Periodically I get an infestation of trolls here. It’s always interesting to me to note that trolls tend to proliferate any time Israel is being discussed.
Those of you who’ve been following this blog know what I’m referring to when I say “trolls,” but for others I’ll just summarize by saying that trolls are not just those who disagree with me. Trolls are people who come to a blog only to stir up trouble, move goalposts, get the commenters agitated, instult (sometimes quite viciously and/or obscenely), and ultimately ruin a blog and its comments section by causing commenters to leave or the blogger to shut down the comments function.
I ask the serious, nontroll commenters here, whom I highly value, to please bear with me as this gets corrected. It may take a while since I’m very busy and I use a friend to deal with technical matters such as these. In the meantime, please don’t respond to trolls in any way.
I instituted Haloscan comments rather than Blogger some time ago in order to have better control over trolls. This worked for a while, and it still works to a certain degree. But it’s relatively ineffective against what I will now refer to as semipro trolls–meaning trolls of a certain sophistication, who use proxies and other forms of hiding in order to avoid being banned.
I am in the process of considering another comments system that will be more effective against this type of troll as well. In the meantime, I will be deleting comments from those trolls who use proxy IP numbers and IP shields, as well as those who post under multiple identities (sock puppets). One example of the first category is “justaguy,” and an example of the second is Robert and Dave the Rabbit.
Robert/Dave the Rabbit is an interesting case, because many of his/their comments are not really trollish. But by definition, posting under multiple identities is troll behavior, unless it’s done only once in a while for reasons of humor.
Ah those helpful young men of Hezbollah! See this.
For those of you without access to the NY Times, here’s the gist of the article:
Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network ”” as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well ”” was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.
“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”
So Hezbollah starts the war, puts civilians in jeopardy, and then gets credit for cleaning up the mess. Sweet.
The most important part of the article is the quote by Saad-Ghorayeb: “the gross vacuum left by the state.” After decades of civil war and outside influence, Lebanon is now teetering on the brink of being a failed state. In fact, it may be a failed state already. And in a failed state, evil rushes in where angels fear to tread, and evil does it in the guise of good.
I’m reminded of how the Taliban got started in the yawning vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Soviets after their lengthy and destructive war there. The Taliban seemed like helpful young men at first, too, trying to create order out of chaos.
This, however, from the blog Lebanese Political Journal (via Pajamas Media), sounds a faint–very faint–note of hope.
Commenter Tatterdemalian calls my attention to this AP news item.
Take a look. Take a good look.
It’s a well-known fact that many newspaper readers only peruse the headlines, and this one–“Rockets hit Lebanon despite cease fire”–would lead one to believe that Israel had fired rockets at Lebanon in violation of the cease fire. Wouldn’t it?
The first paragraph–“Tens of thousands of Lebanese jammed bomb-cratered roads Monday as they returned to still-smoldering scenes of destruction after a tenuous cease-fire ended 34 days of vicious combat between Israel and Hezbollah”–is devoted to the destruction the Lebanese people have suffered. It’s only in the second paragraph that the writer reveals what the headline refers to, which is the fact that the rockets fired “despite cease fire,” the ones that fell short of their targets in Israel and landed in south Lebanon, were fired by Hezbollah.
The use of the passive voice in this headline is far from an isolated instance, and is emblematic of the rot that has taken over news services such as the AP and Reuters. And don’t for a moment think that the passive voice would have been used if it had been the Israelis doing the firing.
[In case you’ve missed all the studies that show consistent MSM bias in its coverage of the Middle East, here’s one.]
[CORRECTION: Those who wrote that the headline is not in the passive voice are correct. The problem with the headline is that the rockets are considered the actor rather than those who launched them. Thus the true actor is disguised, and it’s left to the reader to fill in the blanks, which most would naturally do by assuming the actor was Israel.]
The second podcast of the illustrious Sanity Squad is now up at the new and redesigned Pajamas Media site.
My “s” and “f” sounds aren’t really as hissy as they sound; I’m still trying to find a good mic position that doesn’t distort my voice. I’m also trying to rid myself of my new and inexplicable love affair with the word “um” (is it a word? Well, at least I sound contemplative).
Guess the origins of Siggy’s accent, and you may be the one to win our prize.
A piece by Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi entitled “Israel’s Broken Heart,” in the current New Republic (subscription only), places the blame squarely on the Olmert administration for mishandling the opportunities of the last month.
Israeli public opinion was united as never before; only the furthest reaches of the far left failed to see this war as an existential one–and that’s “existential,” not in the sense of some arcane Satrean philosophy, but in the original sense of “a battle for its very existence.”
In such struggles, it’s useless to pretend that one can fight halfheartedly, or with one hand tied behind one’s back because of PC considerations. Halevi describes a political cartoon that appeared in Maariv showing Olmert as a boy playing with a yo-yo inscribed “Israel Defense Forces.” Halevi writes:
None of Israel’s wars was ever fought with greater micromanagement by a government, and no government was ever less qualified to manage a war as this one.
But it wasn’t just Olmert. In recent years, Israel experienced cutbacks in its defense forces much like the US did in the Clinton years. Lulled by Oslo and Camp David and a vision of its own strength, as well as the dream of peace that seemed close at hand, the state of military readiness that Israel had maintained for so many years seems to have softened.
And who can blame them, really (oh, I know; many people can blame Israel for just about anything and everything)? As others have stated before, Israel was tired, bone-tired and weary, of being Sparta all the time.
The immediate post-World War II generation in Israel had no such illusions. They were used to the idea that they would have to struggle against the world merely to be allowed to exist. Subsequent generations lost some of that edge. But events are conspiring to force them to resharpen the swords they were so eager to beat into plowshares.
Halevi ends his article on a note of hope; he believes that this is only one round in a lengthy battle, and that Israel will ultimately be victorious.
But what does “victory” mean in this context, I wonder? How bad will it get before this is over? Will it go nuclear on Iran’s part? And how much time is left before it does? If so, what sort of preemption is necessary, what sort is effective, and what sort is possible?
This is beyond description. So I won’t bother to describe it.
I’ll just add this commentary: what hath the Sixties wrought?
And this caveat: please, readers, DO NOT try this in your home! Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Here’s what Powerline has to say about the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon so far, and the present ceasefire:
So Hezbollah goes out on top. My guess is that the IDF has had quite a bit of success in killing terrorists, but that will go largely for naught as no one knows about it, and Hezbollah’s claims of victory will be deemed credible.
Tet, anyone?
There was a famous comment by an NVA Colonel in Vietnam during the final negotiations of that long ago but still hugely influential war, which I wrote about in this segment of my “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change” piece. I offer the quote once again:
“You know you never beat us on the battlefield,” I [Harry G. Summers Jr., American negotiator] said to Colonel Tu, my NVA counterpart.
“That may be so,” he said, “but it is also irrelevant.”
My observation:
Lessons learned from Vietnam: all that is necessary to win a war against the US is to turn domestic public opinion against it, even if you are militarily outclassed, even if you are defeated in every battle. It’s a lesson that was not lost on our current opponents.
Nor on Israel’s current opponents, as well. Although in the present case I would emphasize “international public opinion” rather than domestic.
The Lebanese army received its marching orders today.
Actually, it received two sets of marching orders: one from its own commanders, and then another from Hezbollah, superceding the original command.
Though we hardly needed any more clarity on the impotence of the Lebanese government, we’ve gotten it. Hezbollah has pulled rank on the Lebanese.
The Lebanese army was ready to head south to form a large force in a buffer zone south of the Litani River, but the two Hezbollah Cabinet ministers took control of a Cabinet meeting and made it clear to the de jure (but not de facto) Lebanese government that the troop movement just wasn’t going to be happening.
The result? Humiliation of the Lebanese government and its armed forces. Its lack of power cannot be denied in any sort of face-saving move. And humiliation is an especially negative and intolerable emotion in the Arab world’s shame-based culture.
Captain Ed believes this dynamic will work to force a civil war in Lebanon (another one; the country has had more than its share of civil wars, I’m afraid):
The humiliation traveled from the generals to the troops, as everyone understood exactly why their orders to move out got countermanded. Government officials finally gave voice to the conundrum that all of us knew existed during this entire conflict, complaining that the Hezbollah “political party” would not abide by government decisions.
Hezbollah is a shadow ruler in control of Lebanon, and it’s coming out of the shadows, emboldened. Heretofore it had a great deal of support among many Lebanese, but has that changed? I’ve written about this possibility before, here, based on Michael Totten’s predictions that the Hezbollah/Israeli war would be followed by a Lebanese civil war against Hezbollah.
I question whether this ceasefire will hold and, if it does hold, whether it will further the cause of a probably illusory “peace process,” or merely serve to give Hezbollah more cover to burrow ever deeper into Lebanon.
If one studies the rise to power of Hitler in Germany, it becomes clear that his ascendance was far from inevitable. There were many forces arrayed against him; unfortunately, they were all incompetent, miscalculating, double-dealing, or just plain unlucky.
But it’s clear that when Hitler came to power he did not have the support of the majority of Germans. Nevertheless, come to power he did–and the rest, as they say, is history. And if you read the linked article, please note the role of paramilitary groups such as the Storm Troopers in his rise, as well as the fatal flaw of an extremely weak central government in Germany.
The combination of the paramilitary Hezbollah troops taking the ascendance in Lebanon and the weakness of the Lebanese government bodes ill for the future of Lebanon and the world. Like our parents and grandparents before us, who watched the events of the 1930’s unfold, we do indeed live in “interesting times.”
[More:
The [Lebanese] army’s equipment is poor, and no match for the Israelis. Lebanon has no air force or navy. One soldier said Hezbollah was better armed and organised, and that he was reluctant to confront “the resistance fighters”. Another soldier said his brother and a cousin were fighting for Hezbollah. “I can’t turn a gun on the resistance, because they are family,” he said.]
Yesterday I made one of favorite my annual treks to get away from it all, driving a few hours to the western part of New Hampshire to the Sunapee Crafts Fair.
That website doesn’t even begin to do it justice, nor do the words “Crafts Fair,” which conjure up macrame planters viewed by granola-chumping strollers in Birkenstocks.
No, not this one. The crafts are as sophisticated as they come, and as beautiful (also, alas, as expensive–I spent part of the day trying on the most spectacular suede coat in the world, priced at $1450, and then sadly bidding it adieu. A person can dream, right?).
The setting is a state park in the mountains near a lake. The weather was unusually glorious–and, just as unusual, somewhat chilly. The exhibitors (all 200+ of them) are set up in a series of huge tents: fiber artists and jewelers and printmakers and iron forgers and furniture artisans of indescribable flair and grace. One picture is worth a thousand words, but the photos at the website don’t express how stupendously and splendiferously beautiful these wares are.
There are also the usual overpriced sausage sandwiches and pizza slices, not all that lovely–I had one of the former. And I managed to purchase three gifts for others (wedding and two birthdays), all wonderful, all unique.
I noticed once again, as I’ve noticed many times before, that craftspeople at this level tend to look quite striking. Visually and artistically inclined, of course, as well as individualistic, they pay attention to colors and textures and uniqueness. Many of them have a calm and centered quality that must come from the Zen-like concentration required to work this way, day after day.
This is in contrast to what I’ve noticed when groups of writers get together (bloggers, of course, are in a different category altogether). About 20% of writers seem to be visual people, as well, and pay some attention to how they look (I count myself among their number). The other 80% appear to have emerged from their garrets resembling nothing more than a bunch of moles blinking from the unaccustomed light of day. Their clothes are thrown together from a ragtag grab bag–styleless and formless and shapeless; their bodies something only tentatively inhabited, poorly tended housing for their vast and overworked brains.
Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it’s not really all that far off; I’ve been to a bunch of writers’ workshops in my time. And a more colorless-looking lot of people you’d be hard pressed to find.
But I digress; back to the Crafts Fair. Best of all, I always meet my old college roommate there (we always joke about that word “old,” too, especially as the years go by and we edge closer to being just that). She lives in western New Hampshire, and I don’t get to see her all that often, so the Fair is a good venue for a get-together.
There’s nothing, nothing, nothing like a friend for life, a best friend, a true friend. We’ve been there for each other through all the considerable ups and considerable downs of the last–well, who’s counting?–years, through sickness and health and through not-all-that-rich and poorer and through love and marriage and kids and even changes of politics.
Afterwards we ate in a dreadful restaurant with a beautiful view on the shores of Lake Sunapee, until the sun set and we went our respective ways, she to the northwest and me to the northeast. But the friendship remains.