Memorial Day: on patriotism

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of an older post.]

The story “The Man Without a Country” used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first “real” book—as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers—that I was assigned to read in school.

The plot was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story with some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad—and unfair, too—that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. “The Man Without a Country” was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students.

Patriotism has gotten a bad name during the last few decades.

I think part of this feeling began (at least in this country) with the Vietnam era and the influence of the left. But patriotism and nationalism seem to have been rejected by a large segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments were seen to have wrought on that continent during WWI and WWII. Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seemed to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name.

Here’s author Thomas Mann on the subject, writing in 1947 in the introduction to the American edition of Herman Hesse’s Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…

A strong statement of the post-WWII idea of nationalism as a dangerous force, mercifully dead or dying, to be replaced (hopefully) by a pan-national (or, rather, anational) Europeanism. Mann was a German exile from his own country who had learned to his bitter regret the excesses to which unbridled and amoral nationalism can lead. His was an understandable and common response at the time, one that many decades later helped lead to the formation of the EU. The waning but still relatively strong nationalism of the US is seen by those who agree with him as a relic of those dangerous days of nationalism gone mad without any curb of morality or consideration for others.

But the US is not Nazi Germany or anything like it, however much the far left may try to make that analogy. There’s a place for nationalism, and for love of country. Not a nationalism that ignores or tramples on human rights (like that of the Nazis), but one that embraces and strives for and tries to preserve them here and abroad, keeping in mind that—human nature being what it is—no nation on earth can be perfect or anywhere near perfect. The US is far from perfect, but it is a very good country nevertheless, always working to be better, with a nationalism that recognizes that sometimes liberty must be fought for, and that the struggle involves some sacrifice.

So, I’ll echo the verse that figured so prominently in “The Man Without a Country,” and say (corny, but true): …this is my own, my native land. And I’ll also echo Francis Scott Key and add: …the star-spangled banner, O long may it wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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My Philip Roth anecdote

The New Neo Posted on by

Author Philip Roth died last Tuesday. You can read hundreds of tributes to him and many criticisms of him, and I don’t have too much to add to that except to say that I liked his early works (including two that almost no one seems to care much for, Letting Go and When She Was Good) but I stopped reading him long, long ago because his works ceased to interest me, for whatever reason.

But in reading about him the other day I came across this interview of Roth by NPR’s Terry Gross, and it reminded me of something. Here’s the quote, which describes how he prepared his parents for the furor that would undoubtedly ensue when Portnoy’s Complaint came out:

Well, my mother and father were pretty good. I have to tell you, I had to prepare them. I felt I had to prepare them for the publication of this book. That was not something I had done with the previous three books. But before “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I did have to prepare them, I thought, because it became clear as publication came upon us that it was going to be a big book. I didn’t know that for a while, but then I knew it from my publisher, Random House. And I wrote books that they were publishing and so on.

And so I was living in New York City at the time, and I invited them over to have lunch with me. I invited my mother and father to come over from Elizabeth, N.J., where they lived to have lunch with me. And it wasn’t the first time they had come over and had lunch, but this was special. I said I wanted to talk to them about something. And we had lunch. And I said, look, this book is going to come out, and it appears as though it’s going to cause a sensation because it has the following ingredients in it. And I told them what they were. And I said, and you are going to be telephoned by journalists, and you have no experience with that. And I want to prepare you for it.

No. 1 is you don’t have to talk to anybody. You can politely hang up or unpolitely (ph) hang up. They’re just journalists, you know. And they’ll be very nice to you. And they’ll say flattering things to you. And they’ll say they know your – their aunt knows your brother who knows their cousin, try to get you to talk but you don’t have to. I said, if you want to talk, that’s fine with me, too. But I want you to know you don’t have to and that you won’t give offense to anyone if you don’t. And you may be well-advised not to, but it’s finally up to you.

He says his mother reacted by worrying that he’d become too grandiose, thinking the book would be a sensation, and that he’d be bound to be disappointed.

Well, he wasn’t disappointed; it certainly was a sensation.

But I have a personal anecdote that dovetails with that one—I can corroborate Roth’s story. You see, shortly after Portnoy was published, to great acclaim and controversy, my parents went on a cruise and became friendly with—of all people—Roth’s parents. When my parents returned, they reported on some conversations they’d had, in which the Roths mentioned how Philip had prepared them for the furor and onslaught from the press, and how to deal with the notion many people would have that they were like the parents in the book.

My parents said that Roths’ parents were nothing like the parents in the book. They were perfectly fine.

What’s more, my mother added, she observed that when the Roths were approached by people saying how proud they must be of their son the writer, they answered that they had two sons and were very proud of both of them.

Roth left that out of his tale (maybe he wasn’t even aware of it), but I’m here to report it.

RIP, Philip Roth. And your parents. And mine.

Trolls: leftist fantasies of rightist bigotry

The New Neo Posted on by

Trolls come in many shapes and sizes: concern trolls, flamers, and goalpost movers, just to mention a few. But there’s another kind of troll who comes to blogs on the right now and then, and we had a recent visit from this particular type.

I’m not sure what to call this sort of troll, so I’ll call him/her the Pretender. The Pretender comes to a blog masquerading as a sympathizer towards whatever point of view the blogger espouses. The Pretender’s goal is to create a character that supposedly sounds like a person on the right, but far more offensive and extreme.

Since the actual person behind the troll character is almost certainly on the left, however (or at least some group opposed to the right), that person can only create a caricature of a commenter on the right, one that sounds plausible to the troll but actually isn’t believable at all. Because, funny thing, the stereotypes that a person on the left generates (or swallows) about those on the right are just that, stereotypes and caricatures.

One of those stereotypes is about racism, which the left says is rampant and vicious on the right. And I have no doubt that there are people on the right who are in fact racist haters—just as there are on the left. But I’ve seen very few bona fide racists here, and certainly if they are going to flaunt their racism in some crude way they’re not going to last long here as commenters.

But the troll doesn’t know that. The troll thinks that he/she can slip this stuff in and the blogger and the other commenters will either ignore it—in which case the troll can later point to how racist the blog and its commenters are, based on the comments posted by the troll him/herself—or they will applaud it. The latter never happens, because the right (at least, mainstream right blogs like this) isn’t racist. Ignoring the racist comments sometimes does happen on a blog where the comments are too numerous (or the blogger too lazy) to be well-policed.

The goal of the troll is to make sure the right is seen to be hosting racist comments. It resembles those fake racist incidents that sometimes happen, particularly at universities, only to lead to the discovery that the person thought to be the victim of racism was actually the perpetrator trying to stir up a fake but believable claim of racism.

There are various ways to tell that a troll is a troll, but I’m not going to reveal them here. Trade secrets. What interests me about the Pretender type of troll is what the phenomenon reveals about the leftist mind. The Pretenders’ comments are a leftist fantasy of what people on the right think, but that fantasy is something emanating from the mind of leftists. Food for thought.

[NOTE: I am informed that the word I was seeking is “Moby.”]

The DOJ’s defiance of Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

Kimberly Strassel in the WSJ on the real constitutional crisis that’s going on:

The Constitution set up Congress to act as a check on the executive branch””and it’s got more than enough cause to do some checking here. Yet the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent a year disrespecting Congress””flouting subpoenas, ignoring requests, hiding witnesses, blacking out information, and leaking accusations.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has not been allowed to question a single current or former Justice or FBI official involved in this affair. Not one. He’s also more than a year into his demand for the transcript of former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s infamous call with the Russian ambassador, as well as reports from the FBI agents who interviewed Mr. Flynn. And still nothing.

Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, is being stonewalled on at least three inquiries…

Not only that, but the Democrats and the press (redundant, I know) would have us believe that it’s Congress and the right who are out of line for questioning or doubting the DOJ and its veracity and fine intentions, despite all the reasons there are to doubt that veracity and those fine intentions (and as though the left itself doesn’t doubt that veracity and those fine intentions when it suits the left’s purposes).

This intransigence [on the part of the DOJ] is creating an unprecedented toxicity between law enforcement and Congress, undermining what has long been a cooperative and vital relationship. It is also pushing lawmakers ever closer to holding Justice Department officials in contempt or impeaching them. Congress hasn’t impeached a member of the executive branch (presidents excepted) since the 19th century. Let’s agree such a step would amount to a real crisis. And the pressure to use these tools to get disclosure is growing, as congressional Republicans worry about losing their oversight authority in the midterms, and suspect the Justice Department is stringing them along for that very reason.

So make no mistake about it. As I wrote yesterday, none of this investigation of the excesses of the DOJ re the Trump campaign would be going on if the GOP didn’t control Congress. This fact should be driven home by every GOP participant in the Congressional campaign for 2018, because I believe most people don’t connect those dots and realize what the effect of a Democrat-controlled Congress would be (and by “most people” I include a lot of people who call themselves conservatives and are angry at what they call the GOPe).

As Strassel wrote, “congressional Republicans worry about losing their oversight authority in the midterms,” and well they should. In fact, we should all worry about it.

Strassel ends her piece this way:

…[Trump should] declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the public see the truth. That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for itself, to “undermine” an investigation. And it would end the Justice Department’s campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to its reputation with the public and with Congress.

No doubt the Democrats would shriek if he were to do that, but I agree that it may be the only remedy at this point.

Jonathan Haidt on the extreme importance of opinion diversity to challenge motivated reasoning

The New Neo Posted on by

Brilliant talk by Haidt:

I’ve become more and more impressed with Haidt over time. Fearless, clear, supported by evidence, he keeps churning out these videos and giving these talks. He started as a liberal—I don’t know where he’s at politically at this point, and it really doesn’t matter to me. He’s doing such good work on the problems at universities, and the chilling effect of SJWs on the pursuit of truth.

It is extremely disappointing, however, that that video has only about 85K views. That’s almost nothing in the world of YouTube.

It’s also interesting to me that two psychology professors who are not on the right or of the right (or who at least didn’t used to be), Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, are doing such fine work in countering the anti-free-speech tyranny that has taken hold at universities.

Two different worlds: If you look at the MSM, you’d think Trump was doing very very poorly

The New Neo Posted on by

And that has been true for his entire presidency.

So take a look at a sampler for today at memeorandum. Nothing unusual about today; it’s very typical. Trump doing badly vis a vis North Korea. Trump “venting anger” at this and that (often, it’s Trump “raging” and/or “out of control”). “Concerned by Trump, some Republicans Quietly Align With Democrats” (although funny thing, what I’ve seen most of the time is a few concerned Democrats quietly aligning with Republicans). Sad tales of separated “immigrant families” (i.e. illegal immigrants). Focus on a weirdo 9-11-truther GOP candidate for Congress in a district in Illinois in which the Republican primary was uncontested and the Democrat is virtually certain to win anyway. Hit piece du jour on Jordan Peterson. Seahawk wide receiver saying “Trump is an idiot, plain and simple.” Featured op-ed in the WaPo entitled, “Are Republicans abetting a demagogue—or something worse?” And perhaps my personal favorite: “The Chilling Effect of Trump’s War on the FBI.”

Countering that? A few neutral articles—neutral in the sense that they’re not directly about Trump nor are they attacks on Republicans, nor even about politics—as well as one from Kimberly Strassel that appeared in the WSJ and presents the other side: “The Real Constitutional Crisis: The FBI and Justice Department continue evading congressional oversight.”

So that’s the picture with the featured articles (“Top Items”). Different worlds, and the world of the right is far less visible to the casual observer. And this represents the usual ratio of left-to-right coverage in the MSM generally. It requires no effort at all to see the views on the left, which are presented as mainstream, standard, the default positions. The right’s point of view is something you have to seek out. And how many do?

I certainly never did, before the internet. It was the internet that made such things easily accessible. Nor was I purposely seeking out the point of view on the right. It actually came to me by accident, through links from other articles I happened to be reading, and I was naive and ignorant enough that I didn’t even realize which periodicals I clicked on were from the left and which from the right.

But that’s how I ended up reading so much on the right without being fully aware of what I was doing, and ultimately discovering that the right side made more sense to me than the left. I had just never been exposed to it before.

Elections have consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s rather commonplace to see people on the right mention that the machinations of Comey, Clapper, McCabe, et. al. regarding the investigation of the Trump campaign would never have been revealed to the American people had Hillary Clinton been elected president, as was expected.

I’ve also often seen it said by people on the right that the GOP in Congress is nearly worthless and that the two parties constitute a “uniparty” with little distinction between them. But although I certainly agree that the Republicans in Congress often deeply disappoint, I have long argued that not only are they better than the Democrats but the idea that the two parties are alike is a destructive one.

And so it is in the spirit of that latter thought that I will add something I rarely if ever see pointed out, which is that while it is correct that the entire operation by which the “deep state” spied on the campaign of Donald Trump would not have been revealed without the election of Trump, it is also the case that it is unlikely to have been revealed without the election of a Republican-majority Congress as well.

In other words, it was necessary to have someone like Devin Nunes as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, pushing for disclosure. The way Congress works is that the majority party gets to chair committees and set agendas. Does anyone really think the same revelations would have seen the light of day had the Democrats been in charge?

Trump calls Kim’s bluff and finesses him

The New Neo Posted on by

At least, that’s the way I see this announcement:

“Please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place,” Trump wrote in a letter to Kim.

Why?:

On Wednesday, a top North Korean official launched another verbal fusillade at the Trump administration, calling Vice President Pence a “political dummy” and saying his government is just as ready to inflict an “appalling tragedy” on the U.S. as it is to talk.

The president returned the favor in his letter, writing that while Kim likes to “talk about” his nuclear capabilities, “ours are so massive and so powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”…

Trump, however, did not close the door to sitting down with the reclusive North Korean leader in the future.

“Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you,” he wrote. “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”

I used two metaphors from card playing: calling a bluff (poker) and finessing (bridge). Not being much of a card player myself, maybe I’m not using then exactly correctly. And of course negotiations with North Korea are not a game.

Except that all negotiations are games, not in the sense of being light entertainment, but in the sense of strategy and tactics and sizing up one’s opponent. Here Trump is delivering a message that says: you think you’re in charge? Think again. If you want to meet with me, there’s a certain standard of behavior that’s required.

Whether the message will be received in a way that ends up being to the US’s advantage—and, as Trump suggests, to the world’s advantage—remains to be seen.

House votes to roll back portions of Dodd-Frank

The New Neo Posted on by

The bill passed with bipartisan support, 258-159. The beneficiaries will be smaller banks that claim to have been unduly hampered by the bill:

The bill stops far short of unwinding the toughened regulatory regime put in place to prevent the nation’s biggest banks from engaging in risky behavior, but it represents a substantial watering down of Obama-era rules governing a large swath of the banking system. The legislation will leave fewer than 10 big banks in the United States subject to stricter federal oversight, freeing thousands of banks with less than $250 billion in assets from a post-crisis crackdown that they have long complained is too onerous.

Republican lawmakers and the banking industry cheered a measure they said would help unshackle banks ”” and the economy ”” from regulatory burdens.

The Senate had already passed a version of this back in March, also with strong bipartisan support—16 Democrats and one Independent joined. That seems pretty rare nowadays for a bill that actually might mean something.

More here:

The bill, once signed, will be one of the most significant rewrites of financial industry rules in nearly a decade. It would lessen regulatory scrutiny on smaller banks, including regional banks like BB&T, SunTrust Banks, Key Bank, and American Express, as well as community banks and credit unions.

The bill’s proponents say it’s an example of bipartisanship at its best. But progressives say it goes too far and that it purports to help small community banks when its changes really benefit large financial institutions.

And the bill has exposed fault lines within the Democratic Party: Progressives and many 2020 presidential hopefuls in the Senate have lined up against the legislation, while some moderates and those from rural states support it and seek to hold it up as an example of their ability to work in a bipartisan manner.

Of course. The latter want to be re-elected in their more moderate districts and states, if possible. The progressives are appealing to an entirely different constituency.

Duke strikes another blow against freedom of thought

The New Neo Posted on by

Safe spaces at Duke.

Safe from thought, by way of purges:

About 100 students and alumni have asked Duke University to reinstate a professor whose teaching style encourages students to think critically about their opinions and opposing views.

They believe that the private university refused to renew a contract for Evan Charney, associate professor of the practice in the Sanford School of Public Policy, because he made some students feel uncomfortable by playing devil’s advocate on sensitive issues.

“In a time when political tribalism and divisiveness keep us from engaging fruitfully with one another, the skills Charney teach us are necessary to train the next generation of citizens,” they wrote in an open letter to The Duke Chronicle.

At least some students at Duke are interested in freedom of speech and liberty, even if the administration isn’t.

That’s not all that’s going on at Duke in the free speech (or rather, anti-free-speech) realm. There’s also this:

A Duke University Divinity School professor who called diversity training a “waste” of time has resigned after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him and he was barred by his dean from faculty meetings.

At issue is a February email in which Professor Paul Griffiths advised his colleagues not to bother with a proffered volunteer diversity training, called “Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training.” Slated for March, it would work to ensure the divinity school is “equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture,” according to the invite.

“I exhort you not to attend this training,” Griffiths stated in his Feb. 6 listserv reply to his peers. “Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty.”

“”¦ We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it,” he added.

For that, he was accused of racism and sexism, and disciplinary proceedings against him were launched.

He resigned instead. Here’s part of a letter of explanation he wrote:

…[Born in England,] I’ve been a delighted citizen of the United States by naturalization since 1994, and have lived here much longer than that, from the bitter end of the Carter presidency to the astringent beginning of the Trump years. I’m sixty-one now, and was twenty-four when I landed at JFK Airport with a suitcase, a scholarship, and $500. My life in those years has been a university life, which has been both a privilege and an ecstasy.

Deep in me is a love for, and romanticism about, the United States that is perhaps only possible for an alien. Equally deep, the gift of class and temperament, has been a need to make my way. That’s an ordinary immigrant passion, at least for those without resources. I had none, except for words. And so words, in universities, have been what I’ve used to make my way. I’ve used them to elucidate, to explain, to understand, and to argue. The word-life, which is the same as the life of the mind, has been for me one of struggle to accentuate and sharpen intellectual differences with the goal of increasing clarity about what they come to and what’s at stake in them. I’ve been rewarded for that word-struggle with academic positions and some academic honors. For those rewards I’m grateful and, often, still, astonished. How is it possible that I’ve held professorial chairs at top-flight universities? It didn’t seem possible when I began; it scarcely seemed so even when it happened; and now that it’s over it seems like a Taoist butterfly-dream or a Buddhist sky-flower.

It’s over because I recently, and freely, resigned my chair in Catholic Theology at Duke University in response to disciplinary actions initiated by my dean and colleagues. Those disciplinary actions, in turn, were provoked by my words: critical and confrontational words spoken to colleagues in meetings; and hot words written in critique of university policies and practices, in support of particular freedoms of expression and thought, and against legal and disciplinary constraints of those freedoms.

Griffiths held the Warren Chair of Catholic Theology at Duke University.

If you want to dig deeper into the back-and-forth of the emails that led to the disciplinary actions against Griffiths and his firing, you can find them here. It makes for sobering and depressing reading. But it’s not that we don’t already know about this sort of thing happening; we do. This is precisely the sort of issue that has earned Jordan Peterson his fame—a popularity which is only growing, despite attempts at hitjobs on him in the press, such as this one appearing in the august and oh-so-objective NY Times.