Classical Values :: At least when levees burst, they can be plugged . . .

At least when levees burst, they can be plugged . . .

Is there any way to get David Brooks to just shut up? I mean, I try to be patient, but I keep seeing his September 4 New York Times editorial being thrust into my face, but to see it recycled (with the title changed from "The Bursting Point" to "A new storm ahead") in today's Philadelphia Inquirer was the last straw. His thesis seems to be that America is "losing" its "innocence":

It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade.

It's not clear to me at all. I lost twenty friends to AIDS beginning in the 1980s. Watched 'em die slow agonized deaths one by one, and helped as much as I could. The death rate slowed, but I continued to watch more die in the 90s. I don't think there's anything more grueling than watching your loved ones die, and I don't think there could be. This is not to minimize the suffering of others in any way; only to say that human suffering is not new to me, and bad as the events of the past decade are, they aren't quite as personal and in my face. Why would Mr. Brooks assume I share his apparently naive perspective?

Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.

I was attacked by a mob of kids when I was two years old. They tied me up and I had an out of body experience in which I imagined I was in a cartoon. Finally an adult (himself frightened by what he saw) saved me. I learned that humans are evil, that children start out as more evil than adults (something masked by a bizarre, almost mythological belief in "innocence"), and that by adulthood, many if not most former children have managed to keep their evil under control -- to varying degrees. Until war breaks out or order breaks down, then the monstrous, childlike evil appears again. Granted, what happened to me was nothing compared to what happened to children in Rwanda. Or New Orleans, where a 5 year old girl was raped and murdered, and a 7 year old had her throat cut. But it was enough to disabuse me of any notion that all humans are inherently good. Or that it's a good idea to rely on "authority" for "protection."

If I could learn that at two, and if I have seen that reconfirmed for most of my adult life, why has it taken David Brooks so goddamned long?

Or is he just pretending to be shocked? If there's one thing more tedious than naive people being shocked, it's sophisticated people pretending to be shocked. Most tedious of all (and what I find unendurable) is when the latter is done in the name of moral leadership. I have enough trouble as it is without others telling me how much trouble I'm supposed to be having "acknowledging dark realities."

Is there any way to make it stop?

As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.

Hmmm..... I wonder if that might be a reference to Watergate. Actually, I didn't especially lose faith as a result of Watergate, because I didn't have much faith to lose. What did shock me was to learn in the 1990s that Americans hadn't been given the real story of Watergate, and that the whole thing might have been a hidden coup. But even that -- how could it have made me lose faith? In order to lose faith, you have to have it. I try to have faith in a fragile document called the Constitution, but I'm even cynical about that, as it's been rendered meaningless over the years -- a process brought about largely through the efforts of people who want to "help" others, and who imagine they can build a better world by reshaping human nature.

"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.

That is true. I agree with David Brooks. Mick Jagger sang that. (And now he's singing torch songs for sweet NeoCons.)

Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had "been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away."

Can we be so sure that this was what Midge Decter felt? I'm sure she said it, but even assuming she literally felt it, are her feelings about the foundations of her house binding on the rest of us? Why? Simply because she penned a metaphor about the feelings?

Americans in 2005 are not quite in that bad a shape, since the fundamental realities of everyday life are good. The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Sorry, but I never liked or had confidence in FEMA, and the recent disaster only confirmed my suspicions. The National Guard performed quite well once they were finally sent in, and they still are. I think the state and local governments in Alabama and Mississippi handled things better than in Louisiana, but I always knew the latter has been notorious for corruption, and has ever since Huey P. Long. Am I surprised? No. Have I lost confidence? No! This is about what I would have expected considering a disaster of this magnitude.

As to the "feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction," yeah, I admit to that. I think we're headed in an increasingly communitarian direction, with elements of the left and right combining forces to further destroy freedom. But it's not unexpected. I expect more, and I expect to see emotion-laden, moralistic communitarian drivel squeezed drop by drop from the fetid water until at last it's all pumped out, and then I expect to see the daily scolding continue as the corpses are discovered. Wrong direction? Sure. But there's more than one way of defining wrong.

Sorry, he's not done yet. (I know this is last week's editorial, folks, and I tried to ignore it then, but recycled moralizing has a way of motivating me to do what I'd just as soon not do. It's no fun being a reactionary and a counter-reactionary at the same time.)

Funny thing, this "reaction" business:

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

A big bang? Must we? I've seen enough of people trying to "fundamentally change the way things are" to last several lifetimes, and I don't know that I can stand more. Man doesn't work that way. The kind of change I suspect he means involves changing human nature by centralized statism, and it has never worked. All it does it produce more human misery, if not mass murder.

Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.

I guess Brooks has forgotten that a powerful element which helped bring about what he calls "Reaganite conservatism" was actually libertarianism. A philosophy grounded in the very natural desire to be left alone by Those Who Know What's Best. While it is true that Americans were sick to death of pessimism and feebleness, the optimism and strength that Reagan brought to bear was grounded in a libertarian belief in individual initiative and less government.

But don't take it from me; here's Reagan speaking:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

At the rate people are being lectured in the middle of a disaster (which they're told was caused by their crimes of war, racism, sodomy, abortion, and Global Warming), told they've lost their confidence, told how they should "feel," I wouldn't be surprised to see a consensus emerge along the lines of "ENOUGH!"

I'm glad Brooks at least recognizes that people are ready to burst:

We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.

I just wish he wouldn't use the word "we" in a way that implies I agree with him. Two weeks in a row, and I'm unwilling to take it anymore.

I can only hope that moral lectures don't help pave the way for ever more big government solutions to problems caused by big government.

UPDATE (09/08/05): Matt Welch questions the report of the raped child, and cites the Guardian, which says

New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass said last night: "We don't have any substantiated rapes. We will investigate if the individuals come forward."

And while many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward.

Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention centre toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses.

Well, the story I linked above was written by the Times-Picayune's Brian Thevenot (bthevenot@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3482) and he quotes Guardsman Mikel Brooks, who certainly would seem reachable. (It's probably his picture here.)

So, while I am not about to track down the reporter and the guardsman (who doubtless have better things to do right now than answer bloggers' questions) I'm wondering about the claims that the stories can't be substantiated and sources can't be found. . .

CORRECTION AND UPDATE (09/28/05): It turns out that Brian Thevenot's piece (which I linked above) turned out to be wrong. I have admitted my mistake in linking to it, and I regret linking to it. (The above link no longer works, but the story can be found here.)

Brian Thevenot has not issued any retraction; instead he has attacked the media for bad reporting, while saying nothing about his own.

My thoughts here, here, and here.

Comments

Excellent again. Thank you. This is why I read you.

I have never understood why "intellectuals" talk so much about an "end of America's innocence" at every event, or what they mean, or who they think they are speaking for. When have Americans ever had this innocence, this naivete, that these intellectuals condescendingly attribute to them? Our generation saw the Watergate imbroglio, the Viet Nam War, racial separatism (so soon after the end of segregation!) and riots, assassinations, and Pol Pot. Our parents' generation saw the Great Depression, Hitler, and Stalin. The generation before that saw the First World War. Before that, slavery and the Civil War. The Founders of our country had no illusions whatsoever about human nature, which is why they wrote the Constitution with its checks and balances so that no tyrant (including a majority) could grab all the power. It was not the American Revolution but the French Revolution that was based on Rousseau and the idea that a team of enlightened intellectuals could remake human nature and usher in a new age of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

As to my own personal experience, I knew that I was an evil kid from way early. I was lazy, lying, sassy, and also sadistic long before I ever heard of de Sade. I loved to read stories and comics and watch shows and cartoons featuring captivity and bondage. Masochistic, too (which Dawn would say was my somewhat redeeming degree of holiness along with my love of Egyptian mythology). In 6th grade, I once got in a fight with a girl who held me down on the blacktop. I still have fond memories of that.

And other kids much the same way. The first time I heard of Hitler was when some boys in 1st grade were "heiling" him. Our parents and teachers didn't like that, which was precisely why they did it. We got into all kinds of mischief. Our Dad spanked us with his thong every morning after our baby-sitters told our parents what naughty boys we had been the night before. We had a lot of fun. I don't remember ever thinking of us as innocent, and our parents certainly didn't. Those were better days in many ways, but innocence wasn't a part of it.

I love that quote from Reagan about libertarianism and conservatism. Like E. Merrill Root and Frank S. Meyer, I am libertarian in that I value the freedom of the individual, and conservative in that I believe that this freedom must be founded on a Divine order. As somebody wrote a while ago in Dean's World: "Freedom requires virtue. Virtue requires faith. Faith requires freedom." The style of that!

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · September 8, 2005 12:02 AM

I wrote:
"and also sadistic long before I ever heard of de Sade. I loved to read stories and comics and watch shows and cartoons featuring captivity and bondage. Masochistic, too (which Dawn would say was my somewhat redeeming degree of holiness along with my love of Egyptian mythology). In 6th grade, I once got in a fight with a girl who held me down on the blacktop. I still have fond memories of that."

I'm proud of my perversions. According to the Janus Report on Sexual Behavior, Ultra-Conservatives are the most inclined to feel that sado-masochism is "very normal". As Dawn would say, hierarchy and discipline are integral to the Divine order. "I am holy Norma's captive Goddess...."

Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · September 11, 2005 09:56 AM