Taki's Magazine

Brideshead Reconstructed

2009-01-28T08:55:56Z

If subtlety is central to good art, then the new Miramax presentation of Brideshead Revisited fails on every account. Not only does this film fall short of a decent adaptation, but it was painful to watch.

Evelyn Waugh’s novel by the same name ranks as one of the greats of the 20th century. In it, Waugh portrays the terribly flawed Marchmain family, Catholic aristocrats living between the two world wars in England, from the eyes of the agnostic Charles Ryder. The overarching theme of the book points toward a defense of Catholicism, albeit presented in a secular form. It can also be read as a defense of elitism, the ancestral, and generally of Christianity; and a criticism of egalitarianism, democracy, and even Winston Churchill.

It remains a perennial problem to adapt an exceptional novel to film. (It’s probably a better strategy to take a mediocre novel, like The Forsyte Saga, and turn it into an exceptional miniseries, as was done in 1967.) And given the nuance of Brideshead, the difficulty is amplified. Regardless, the creators of the 1981 miniseries Brideshead Revisited were up to task. The series remains mostly faithful the novel, subtlety exists, and we witness outstanding performances by Jeremy Irons (Charles Ryder), Anthony Andrews (Lord Sebastian Flyte), John Gielgud (Edward Ryder), and Laurence Olivier (Marquess of Marchmain).

The same cannot be said for this recent 2008 adaptation. From the very start, the casting proves flawed. Although Matthew Goode adequately plays Charles Ryder, his performance pales in comparison to Irons’. And it only gets worse. Ben Whishaw captures none of the mannerisms or occasional likeability of Sebastian Flyte, Hayley Atwell’s Julia Flyte is boring, Jonathan Cake’s Rex Mottram is unbelievable, and Emma Thompson’s Marchioness of Marchmain is so severe she’s almost a caricature.

The true blame, however, lies not with the acting, but with the writing, as nothing can be done with a bad script, and the writers of this screenplay attempt to turn a great novel into a political manifesto–one, no doubt, critical of Christianity and extolling the virtues of homosexuality. It’s disheartening that, on the one had, contemporary neoconservatives utilize a so-called Christian universalism to eradicate any pride Westerners might have in their ancestral traditions (such as those adumbrated in this film); while on the other hand, the Left, like the creators of this film, repay the deed by further denunciations. By deconstructing and distorting the underlying meanings of Brideshead, this movie throws out the baby with the bathwater. One is left with shallow social commentary.

In Wagh’s novel, no evidence points toward any homosexual acts committed between Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte. In fact, their relationship appears platonic. But even if buggery took place, the moral of the story is clear. The book in no way condones a modern homosexual identity. Charles, after his friendship with Sebastian, leads a heterosexual life (although an adulterous one), whereas Sebastian, although living in a rat-hole in North Africa with some gimpy German deserter missing half his foot, only finds true solace through the largess of local monks. Regardless, this did not stop the creators of this film from making homosexuality a central theme. Throughout the picture one is bombarded with gratuitous kissing and holding-hands scenes between Charles and Sebastian.

According to this rendition, Charles and Sebastian would have been happy, if it weren’t for Sebastian’s overbearing Catholic mother–who comes off more as a Tammy Faye Baker than Waugh’s dignified Marchioness of Marchmain. She constantly indoctrinates poor Sebastian with Catholic doctrine, which, of course, leads him to drinking. If she had only embraced who he truly was! (In contrast, Lord Marchmain’s mistress, Cara, is a good liberal Catholic–one in the mold of a Caroline Kennedy.)

But things become more complex. Here Brideshead Revisited meets Melrose Place. Although in Waugh’s novel Julia Flyte remains a minor character in the first part of the story, not here. Early on, Charles is caught kissing Julia, almost immediately after kissing Sebastian. He must choose. Will he go the straight route (Julia) or the gay route (Sebastian)? Or will the three of them live happily together as a three-some? Maybe they could, but again enters Sebastian’s evil mother, taunting the children with more of that bigoted Christian doctrine.

One could go on about other flaws with this “adaptation,” such as its protean ending, but it’s probably better to say no more. Although not Catholic, I was always drawn to Waugh’s novel because of its subtle plot, brilliant character development, and overarching beauty, none of which is present in this movie, which leads us to a larger question: is good art possible in the age of political correctness? Must every great artifact of the West be cheapened through the lens of political correctness?

At the beginning of Waugh’s novel Charles’ cousin Jasper gives him this advice at Oxford:

You’re reading History? A perfectly respectable school. The very worst is English Literature and the next worse is Modern Greats. You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between. Time spent on a good second is time thrown away. You should to go the best lectures – Arkwright on Demosthenes for instance – irrespective of whether they are in your school or not…. Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house. Never wear a tweed coat and flannel trousers – always a suit. And go to a London tailor; you get better cut and longer credit…. Clubs. Join the Carlton now and the Grid at the beginning of your second year. If you want to run for the Union – and it’s not a bad thing to do – make your reputation outside first, at the Canning or the Chatham, and begin by speaking on the paper…. Keep clear of Boar’s Hill….

Were he alive today, he’d probably add: And keep clear of tawdry films based on novels. Time spent on cheap adaptations is time thrown away.

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Down with Culture!

2008-12-01T07:08:00Z

The concept of “culture” permeates many aspects of our lives. A ‘culture’ search for recent articles on Google News returned no less than 70,000 hits. One hears of high-brow culture (or used to), low-brow culture, American culture, black culture, white culture, gay culture, cultural homogeneity, cultural wars, and, more recently because of immigration, cultural assimilation.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote that without a “common culture and a single society…, the republic would be in serious trouble.” Neoconservative Sean Hannity argues that immigrants should “adapt to our culture” and be “assimilated into the culture.” Rudolph Giuliani (depending on what office he’s running for) has maintained that immigrants “infuse our…culture.” And the Hudson Institute even has a Center for American Common Culture, which “provides analysis and policy advice on issues of citizenship, patriotism, civic education, the assimilation of immigrants, and American common culture.”

But do we have a common culture? What is culture? Does it denote anything of importance? And if so, how do we preserve it? Isn’t, after all, the fundamental meaning of ‘conservatism’ to conserve?

The word ‘culture’ is at best ambiguous. For something as central to our battles today—the “culture wars”—it is interesting that this word is a relatively new creation, at least in its modern meaning. Until recent times, the primary meaning of ‘culture’, based on its Latin etymology (colere—to cultivate, till), was the cultivation of soil or the raising of plants or animals. Slowly, the extended meaning of “the training, development, and refinement of mind, tastes, and manners” had begun to take hold in the 19th century, which in the 20th century eclipsed the original meaning. Dictionaries today might define ‘culture’ as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.”

Matthew Arnold, who defined culture as “the best which has been thought and said,” sought to use high culture as an antidote to the rising barbarism of industrial 19th-century England. Institutions, he believed, could instill high culture, and thus raise the general level of civility. He favored the “transformation of [barbarians, Philistines, and the populace] according to the law of perfection.” Unfortunately, institutions, such as universal public education, did not produce such perfection, and state-sponsored programs, which briefly were committed to disseminating high culture, were later transformed into spawning grounds for Marxism and multiculturalism.

The contemporary guardians of the status of culture (found in Cultural Studies departments, Critical Theory studies, et al.), are post-Marxists intent on undermining Western Civilization. Culture has proved a useful tool for change, and the left’s (and neoconservatives’) latching onto culture probably resides in culture’s facility for change. Culture presupposes deracination and lack of rootedness. “The culture is changing,” we hear. Liberal newspapers indicate that groups A, B, or C, on a whim, can adopt culture P, Q, or R, as they see fit, and, when this is no longer trendy, they will opt for cultures X, Y and Z. As John Derbyshire recently wrote, proponents of a theory of culture hold that human nature is infinitely resilient, “like a water-filled balloon. Any of its characteristics can be pushed into almost any shape by ‘cultural’ forces…, but will submit to radical re-shaping if different forces are applied.”

Culture, presupposing man is infinitely resilient, facilitates radical reshaping, but does it actually exist? Any proponent of culture must first prove its ontological status. Does culture really exist or is it only a façon de parler? We speak of many things, which prove important for how we see ourselves, although there is not a shred of empirical evidence for their actual existence, e.g. the subconscious, Attention Deficit Disorder, etc. And if it is only a façon de parler, what is it? If culture is a property of certain things in the world and what they share in common, what is it that underlies culture that makes it meaningful? Is ‘culture’ a substitute for something else?

Is culture a theory how the world operates? If one were to ask a proponent of a theory culture to articulate its criterion of falsification, could he? In other words, what would need to be true in the world for culture inadequately to explain the reality of our experiences? If any such piece of evidence cannot be found, or only turns out to be further proof for the existence of a theory of culture (as Popper showed was the case for Marxism or Freudianism), then this idea of culture might better be thought of as a modern ideology. And ideological it probably is, especially in light of its replacing older forms of understanding.

John Lukacs (in “To Hell with Culture,” Chronicles, Sept. 1994) made the case for the primacy of civilization over culture, criticizing the modern widely held belief that culture supersedes civilization. Although civilization, the antithesis of barbarism, is the older concept, culture, a recent creation, has held the upper hand since nearly 200 years of intellectual support. Such a shift, Lukacs notes, has resulted in our present state of affairs where “one can have culture without civilization.” The liberal narrative thus runs that we have advanced from a state of primitiveness to civilization to culture. Today, culture (often a very crass culture) trumps all.

One must stop to ask himself: If culture is a recent creation, how did we get along without it for so long? From the ancient Greeks to Renaissance Europeans, civilization continued without any modern notion of culture. In fact, it could be argued that the pre-Moderns got along better without it. If one were to graph the rise of the popularity of culture, one would chart a negative correlation to the decline of Western countries. The more deracinated a people becomes, the more it requires culture.

How did “pre-culture” countries survive? Prior to the Enlightenment, people spoke in more concrete terms. One would hear of Celts, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, the Franks, the Dutch, etc., but rarely would description dissipate into the abstraction of culture. The ascension of culture only occurs after the elevation of the abstraction of man, after the belief in the malleability of man, which De Maistre famously rebuked, “I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians…but man I have never met.”

The moral implications from such a change are profound. As culture entails deracination, so pre-culture civilizations emphasized the ancestral. For example, the role that genealogy plays in ancient morality cannot be understated. The Greeks believed in inherited guilt, and crimes committed by ancestors would be paid by the offspring. Greek tragedy contains countless characters whose destiny is determined by the wrongdoings of their forefathers. Although such a belief may seem unfair to modern sensibilities, it exemplifies the time-tested truth that the apple often does not fall far from the tree.

Pre-culture civilizations spoke on concrete terms, not in abstractions such as “culture.” These societies were rooted blood and soil, kith and kin, kin networks, and blood ties. Both Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism were predicated upon tribal systems, and classical political terms (e.g. nation) often imply link by blood. Aeneas was to found the gens Romana (Roman race), not invent or spread “Roman culture.”

Whereas modern morality seems to presuppose abstractions such as culture to transform, ancient morality was rooted in the ancestral. Even classical natural law, although equated with the mind of God, still manifests itself, as Cicero noted, in the mos maiorum, the tradition of one’s ancestors. Ancient morality, in other words, involved not simply a set of ideas, but the acting in accordance with the customary, time-tested ways of one’s forbearers. Unlike the modern phenomenon of choosing one’s culture, one was born into a set of ancestral traditions to which he was expected to conform.

Elements of the ancestral sill survive today, and what one means when he speaks of culture often overlaps with a classical understanding of the ancestral. When one speaks of assimilation and immigration, he inevitably he speaks of culture, but something deeper lingers. Patruck J. Buchanan once stated, “If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” Such inquiries demonstrate the shallowness of culture and the naïve belief that one can simply assimilate people into a culture, as one would record data onto a CD.

People possess ancestral loyalties, which persist regardless of attempted cultural assimilation. Third-generation, well “assimilated” Americans desire to learn their roots. Quite often, Asian Americans want to learn of Asia; African Americans, of Africa; and European Americans, of Europe. They want to learn about their ancestral traditions. Is this wrong? No. It demonstrates the call of the ancestral.

But regardless of the power of the ancestral, culture’s luster will continue to dazzle and deracinate. Only when Westerners put aside such ideological pretensions and again take seriously the ancestral will any hope of recovery seem possible.

Matthew A. Roberts writes from Parkville, MO.

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Who is Vladimir Putin?

2008-09-24T12:57:00Z

Even the editors of Time magazine can occasionally display some some wisdom, and to begin the new year, they got two things right: first, they canned Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer; second, they named President Vladimir Putin “Person of the Year.” Putin may not be very well understood in the America, but he’s certainly deserving of the prize. The recent Russian parliamentary election delivered his United Russia Party 315 seats in a 450-seat parliament. And with Dmitry Medvedev anointed as Putin’s successor, it appears that Putin will continue to wield influence as Russia’s new prime minister. Although some analysts have cried foul play in these elections, tampering would seem superfluous: Putin is one of the most popular Russian leaders of the past 85 years. Given the chaos of the 1990s, Putin has restored a sense of order and pride to Russia, and the Russians have demonstrated their devotion in these recent elections.

This affection is not shared by the American media elite, especially those in the neoliberal and neoconservative crowds, who usually have had nothing but negative things to say about the Russian president. Vice President Dick Cheney has warned that “opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade”; Michael Ledeen hysterically predicted that Putin wants to “Finlandize Europe.”

Regarding Putin’s recent condemnation of Kosovo independence—as “illegal, ill-conceived and immoral”—critics again have gone on the offensive. Calling Kosovar independence “inevitable,” David Satter, author of the doomsday Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State, writes in a National Review Online symposium, “Russia under Putin seeks to assert itself and, for that, it needs manageable conflicts with the West”; Tom Nichols criticizes Putin’s concerns as “pointless but hypocritical in the extreme”; James S. Robbins adds that Kosovar independence is a “very sensible redrawing of lines”; Ariel Cohen chimes in that Putin is “anxious to find points of confrontation with Europe and the U.S.”

The real hypocrisy in all this is that in backing Kosovar independence, these devotees of the war on terror (and quixotic cold warriors) are supporting the creation of an Islamicist state within Europe. Putin, by opposing this Trojan horse, proves himself to be the true patriot of the West.

But the hypocrisy does not end with Kosovo. Neocons are often willing to shelve the war on terror to help the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), whose membership includes Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Michael Ledeen, et al. As John Laughland writes in the Guardian:

“The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin’s Russia, and cultivates the support for the Chechen cause by emphasizing the seriousness of human rights violations. ... It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable ‘Muslim’ causes, Bosnia and Kosovo—implying that only international intervention in the Caucasas can stabilise the situation there.”

After the recent elections, this chorus of condemnation has intensified. Siding with potential Chechen terrorists against a man who has exposed numerous terrorist networks in Russia, critics have painted Putin as dangerous and autocratic. But the real question, which the media talking heads fail to ask, is: What crime has Putin committed? Do any of his practices even resemble the system of gulags, mass murder of millions, and nuclear bullying of the Stalinist era? Is he planning to occupy Western Europe or bomb the United States any time soon?

Of course not. Putin’s real crime is that he has refused to play by the rules of globalization. In fact, he has done something rather remarkable, indeed, unheard of these days in most Western countries—he has sought to pursue policies that truly are in Russia’s interest. Putin recently commented, “Russians will never allow for the development of the country along a destructive path, the way it happened in some countries in the post-Soviet space.” In other words, Putin is uninterested in Wilsonian crusades in the Middle East, undermining his own economy with suicidal free-trade pacts, driving down wages with Third World immigration, or turning over Russia’s beloved oil and gas assets to multinational corporations. Putin is doing what he was elected to do: protect Russia.

And in doing so, Putin has proven himself a true Russian patriot. Concerning immigration, Putin has instigated rules to make even Rep. Tom Tancredo appear coy. Recognizing that illegal immigrants are driving down wages in an already depressed economy as well as inciting anger among Russia’s native lower classes, Putin has steered towards a path of attrition. He has sought to reduce the presence of foreign workers at wholesale and retail markets, which had become magnets to illegal immigrants. He said that authorities should “protect the interests of Russian producers” and “the native population of Russia.” In other words, Russians first.

While American “conservatives” like John McCain warn of the “intolerance” of the religious Right, Putin has overseen a true revitalization of Orthodox Christianity in Russia. Having been closed for nearly 70 years, the Solovetsky Islands, one of the holiest sites in Russian Orthodox Christianity dating back to the 15th century, have been repopulated by monks. And most recently, Christian teaching has returned to Russian public schools. As Clifford J. Levy reports in the New York Times:

“Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union ... localities in Russia are increasingly decreeing that to receive a proper public school education, children should be steeped in the ways of the Russian Orthodox Church, including its traditions, liturgy and historic figures.”

While it is nearly criminal to mention “Christmas” in American public schools, Russian teachers are openly instructing their students in the basic tenants of Christian morality, and with Putin’s blessing, the Kremlin has hosted Russian Orthodox priests to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Putin has whole-heartedly pushed for the inclusion Christianity in public life. As David Nowak, of The MoscowTimes.com has observed:

“Not since Tsar Nicholas II has Russia had a leader so keen to embrace religion. Putin has made regular public appearances with Church representatives and has said the Church “plays a paramount role in preserving the moral pillars” of society.”

To all this Putin’s neocon and neoliberal critics will respond, “that’s great, but he has failed to liberalize Russia’s markets.” But why should he? To let Russian oligarchs auction off Russia’s natural resources to multinational corporations? The liberal-economic paradigm is alien to Russia’s traditions, and it would be un-Burkean to impose such a foreign order upon her. Russia has her own homegrown traditions and will chart her own course in the 21st Century.

Putin is no angel, but he is hardly the devil incarnate that many in the media make him out to be. Though he has continued some Soviet practices, Putin has mitigated them with Russian traditions and religion. He as also been prudent in recognizing that a complete break with the immediate past would be a disaster. He has sought to steer a course he feels reflects the long-term interests of the Russian people. In fact, he is pursuing a my-own-country-first policy that many Americans wish our own leaders would follow.

But inside the Beltway, the neocons at ACPC want to revive the spirit the Committee on the Present Danger and view Russia through the ideological glasses of the days of yore. Chicken hawks want an international conflict that is not in our interest against a country that is not a threat and to demonize a man who is in fact sensible and patriotic. Instead, we should extend the olive branch to Russia and recognize her as a nation of the greater West—a cultural, transnational body of which we are a part (or should hope to be.)

Matthew A. Roberts writes from Kansas City, Missouri.

This article was originally published on February 30, 2008.

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Putin Beyond the Propaganda

2008-02-20T05:00:00Z

Putin has whole-heartedly pushed for the inclusion Christianity in public life. As David Nowak, of The MoscowTimes.com has observed:

Matthew A. Roberts writes from Kansas City, Missouri.

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The Archaeology of Globalism

2008-02-04T05:01:00Z

Quodsi tales dei sunt ut rebus humanis intersint, Natio quoque dea putanda est…, quae quia partus matronarum tueatur a nascentibus Natio nominata est.” - Cicero, De Natura Deorum, III.XVIII.

In July of 2007, Rep. Ron Paul wrote:

We must remain focused on what ideology underlies the approach being taken by those who see themselves as our ruling-class, and not get distracted by the passions of the moment or the rhetorical devices used to convince us how their plans will be “good for us.” Whether it is managed trade being presented under the rhetoric of “free trade,” or the ideas of “regime change” abroad and “making the world safe for democracy” – the underlying principle is globalism.

Wherever we turn, we hear of globalization. Former Ambassador Robert Strauss recently donated $7.5 million for a globalism research center at the University of Texas. Rich Lowry, in "Global Capitalism Saves Children," implores, "let’s save the world – help it grow." And Thomas L. Friedman, in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, writes that this great panacea "increases the incentives for not making war and increases the costs of going to war in more ways than in any previous era in modern history.’’ Neoconservatives and neoliberals alike warn us that if we turn our backs on the great project, we are doomed. Or worse, we are evil, as charged former World Trade Organization Director-General Mike Moore:

“There is also a darker side to the backlash against globalization. For some, the attacks on economic openness are part of a broader assault on internationalism - on foreigners, immigration, a more pluralistic and integrated world.”

But what is this new religion of globalism? It has become such a pervasive ideology that no single camp exists. Almost all elitists seem to buy into it – whether one is a neoconservative supporting war, a Wall Street investor backing free trade or a Hollywood liberal adopting God knows how many children from around the world – although they disagree on some points. Ad minimum, globalism presupposes international integration. Thus, we infer three basic tenets of globalism: (1) interventionist foreign policies, (2) free trade and (3) mass immigration (illegal or legal).

Regarding the first point, not everyone in the world (e.g. conservative Muslims) wants to be integrated into an internationalist order. But whereas a George Washington or Edmund Burke would let them go their own way, the globalist feels the imperative to assimilate them, thus sensationalizing a charge (e.g. supporting terrorism, ethnic nationalism or hating freedom) as a pretext for intervention, which usually begins with global sanction and often ends in invasion. Although globalists may disagree on the target region (Serbia, Iraq or Darfur) or what type of punishments must be meted out (a harsh scolding, sanctions or invasion), they all agree it is our business to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.

Although one often hears criticism of the negative effects of free trade, both the Left and Right continue to back it. The old labor-union leftists were critical of free trade for decades, but they either no longer have any influence or have morphed into internationalist crusaders. Regarding leftists and their changing priorities, Paul Gottfried has written:

“The major change that the Left has undergone over the last 30 years is the replacement of an economically-oriented socialist persuasion by a multicultural one…. The updated Left plays down such old-style socialist goals as nationalizing productive forces, and it favors the market when commerce can be used to break down regional and national barriers and to achieve cultural diversity.”

This is no surprise, nor is it a recent development. In fact, the Left’s support of free trade can be traced all the way back to Karl Marx, who in 1848 said:

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

One should not be astonished, then, that neoconservatives, many with Trotskyite origins, have nearly silenced all criticism of free trade in the GOP despite the fact that conservatives historically and philosophically have opposed unbridled free trade. It is unfortunate that many Republicans have been so thoroughly "neoconned" on this topic, as it is enfeebling our economy and undermining our national sovereignty.

There is probably no more potent marriage between big business and Third World ethnic lobbies than on the issue of immigration. Big business acquires cheap labor; Third World immigrants get the spoils of a First World welfare state; and liberal politicians gain new constituencies, assuring continuance of their power. Everyone is a winner. Well, everyone except the native stock, American workers and taxpayers. Two things are taking place. First, American wages are being driven down by both legal and illegal immigration, both in blue-collar and white-collar professions. Labor economists, such as George Borjas, have well documented this phenomenon. Second, immigrants take more from the economy than they invest in it. For example, the Lone Star Foundation figures that illegal immigrants cost Texas about $4.5 billion per year, versus about $1 billion in tax revenue. In short, taxpayers are subsidizing big business with the cheap labor that is driving down their own wages.

But the madness does not stop there. Not only are Americans asked to sacrifice their livelihood for the sake of the great project, but also to forsake their posterity. Whether consciously or not, almost all internationalists push for some sort of "propositionalism," the belief that a nation can be founded upon the common belief in a few propositions. This type of universalism lacks any Burkean appeal to tradition, common ancestry or historical underpinnings, which is why proponents of it believe they can erect democracies in vacuums and transform the United States, via immigration, into a multicultural utopia. It has become a new religion in and of itself; consequently, older religions like Christianity are not immune. In a recent interview with Al Arabiya television, President George W. Bush said, "I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God…. I believe there is a universal God." Au revoir, Nicene Creed and the last 1,500 years of Christianity.

Although globalists espouse versions of these three basic tenets, they often disagree on policy implementation and issues such as global warming, abortion, the role of the U.N. and Middle Eastern affairs. While neoconservatives make it their primary objective to transform the Middle East into a liberal democracy, other globalists have different priorities. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt may criticize the Israel Lobby’s influence on the United States, but as members of the Council on Foreign Relations they are not calling globalism into question. And while Sen. Chuck Hagel or Robert Novak might criticize the war in Iraq, they both support other aspects of globalization, especially policies that allow mass immigration. This infighting can be acerbic, as the war in Iraq has demonstrated. As a result, viewpoints are often mischaracterized. For example, Andrew Sullivan has called Hagel "the great paleocon hope," although Hagel is in no way a paleoconservative, but an internationalist unhappy with the implementation of the war. (A defining achievement of the Old Right was the Immigration Act of 1924, the resuscitation of which Hagel most certainly would oppose.) In short, these internationalists fault failed policy decisions rather than championing an alternative paradigm, such as regionalism, traditional patriotism or America-first priorities.

Shadowboxing among globalists has come to pass as debate in the United States. Every frontrunner for the 2008 Presidential Election, Democrat or Republican, is a globalist to one degree or another. Although leading Democrats oppose the Iraq War, they support intervention in Darfur and elsewhere and certainly support allowing an inundation of Third World immigrants, which they believe will sustain their hold on politics. In the mainstream media, few pundits criticize globalization. Those who do complain, like Patrick J. Buchanan or Lou Dobbs, are castigated by the rest.

Yet, there is still hope. Despite all the propaganda in the media and academia, national polls show that the majority of Americans oppose the war in Iraq, free trade and mass immigration. If a charismatic politician were to rally round these three issues alone, he could foment a broad base of support. Perhaps it’s high time for a political realignment, but a movement needs organization and a leader.

————

Matthew A. Roberts writes from Kansas City, MO. Image courtesy of the Slovenian band Laibach

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The Wrongs of “Rights”

2007-10-16T03:01:00Z

On almost any political topic we can expect these days to find talk of ‘rights’. We hear of human rights, women’s rights, fathers’ rights, civil rights, gay rights, polygamy rights, immigrants’ rights, religious rights, animal rights, the right to choose, the right to life, etc. And if a particular right does not now exist, be patient; it is probably only a matter of time before it does. An entire ‘rights industry’ has sprung up. Pick a cause, and someone will find rights to defend therein.

Whence does this avalanche of rights come? Prior to the Enlightenment, we heard very little of ‘rights’ as they are now construed. There previously existed natural law, whose legitimacy existed in nature and God. God’s law was the basis of society, to which the religious laws of the state conformed and from which the legitimacy of rule was derived. But natural law is quite different from the modern rights inundation.

Cicero provided the first systematic articulation of natural law (1). He associated natural law with right reason, with the mind of God, and finally as something already instantiated in Roman law, history and custom. Traditional Roman laws accorded with nature, and it was custom (mos maiorum) that nourishes these laws for citizens. The average citizen did not need to perform an algorithm in his head to determine right action. He had only to defer to customary practice.

Mos maiorum underlined most Roman moral thought. The mos maiorum, however, was not an abstract ideal to overturn historical precedent. It was historical precedent. And not only was this their moral tradition, it was also their ancestral tradition. It comprised the customary, time-tested ways of their ancestors as transmitted by blood and progeny. The modern rights industry, however, sees history not as a manifestation of time-tested truths, but rather as one of oppression. These new ‘rights’ are not products of history and ancestral tradition. Rather, they are convenient tools to overturn and abolish historical precedent and ancestral custom.

Modern rights are creations of the Enlightenment. Created by philosophes, rights were perpetuated (often violently) by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and other radicals. Some based them in nature; others, in the god Reason, or yet others, in the state. But they all adhere to a Procrustean universalism. These rights are “natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable” said the revolutionary French National Assembly in 1789. These ‘rights’, always in opposition to long-standing tradition or community custom, require large governmental, if not international, force to institute their authority.

For these new rights to exist, they had to supplant the older authority, often with the help of a centralized government to do so. Natural rights eventually replaced ancestral traditions, statute supplanted customary law, and entitlement usurped obligation.

Universal rights have permeated most aspects of modern life, even Christianity.

Although the Bible never criticizes inequality or even the institution of slavery, Christians today find an entire plethora of civil and human rights in scripture. Pope John Paul II often championed human rights, although 19th century popes dismissed rights wholesale as perversions of the Enlightenment. And now Protestants have also furthered the baptism of the rights industry. Peter Toon, in “Christianity & Subjective Human Rights” states:

“[C]onservative Protestants and biblically-minded Evangelicals…have absorbed much of the ‘rights talk’ of Western culture. This can be seen via a careful analysis of some of their modern biblical paraphrases where ‘rights talk’ comes into the translation” (2).

And as Christianity has conformed to the rights industry, so has the other great bulwark against the Enlightenment: conservatism. Although the Old Right opposed the emerging rights industry, modern ‘conservatives’ have largely been co-opted. So-called conservatives have been compelled to replace tradition with abstract rights.

Much of what we hear today in terms of political debate is but the pitting of one Enlightenment right (eg, liberty) against another (eg, equality). So-called conservatives rarely evoke tradition or ancestral precedent, but rather seek to play the rights industry at its own game – where the left has the inbuilt advantage. The neoconservatives, using the bogeymen of historicism and relativism, have supplanted traditional conservatism with a liberal rights-based ideology.

Leo Strauss spent considerable time and ink refuting ‘historicism’, which has become the bête noire of much neoconservative journalism. Open any neoconservative publication and you can probably find an attack upon either relativism or historicism. In his essay, “The real cabal”, Sam Francis noted:

“The attack on ‘historicism’ is intended to reject the Burkean appeal to tradition…. [Straussians] seem to deny the distinction and adopt an antihistorical universalism based on natural rights that leads them to embrace what is, at bottom, the worldview of the left.”

Not that moral relativism is a good thing, but any form of moral relativism becomes so riddled with contradiction that hardly anyone (except a few postmodernists) takes it seriously. But an historical consciousness can both elucidate and sustain certain truths. Traditional historicism, such as one finds in Edmund Burke or Joseph de Maistre, provides the signposts for those seeking to conserve certain traditions and institutions. In reality, historicism poses no real threat and complements universal truths.

The real enemy for the neo-Jacobin, as Claes Ryn has pointed out, is “the ancestral” (3). They want to replace the real America, with its British and European past, with a theoretical construct, a proposition nation, based upon liberal, abstract ideals.

And not just the past, but the present too must be transformed. Genophilia, the word Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming has coined for instinctive attachment to family and tribe, must be expunged (4). This time-honored loyalty, the basis of older, more conservative civilizations, has no place in the liberal proposition state of the neoconservative – at least not in any Western country. All conservative loyalties must make way for the abstract ideals of the Enlightenment.

Although Strauss himself claimed the ancients as a source of authority, his portrayal of the Greek and Roman thinkers is devoid of any real content. The Greeks were proudly an ethnocentric people. Athens was organized upon tribes, and Roman morality was based upon ancestral custom. Strauss’s political society, however, made of ‘natural right’, resembles more the modern rights industry than anything we would associate with Plato, Aristotle or Cicero. He uses the ancient world as a backdrop upon which he superimposes modernist rights theories.

And the students of Strauss have furthered the assault upon Western civilization with Enlightenment abstractions. Harry Jaffa seeks to “celebrate revolution” and invent “radical break[s] with tradition”, while Michael Ledeen supports “creative destruction” and endless war in the name of democracy (5).

Strauss’s current acolytes are more interested in utopian rights and nation building than sustaining traditional European-American customs and values. Rather, they seek to supplant tradition with radical absolutes. Anne Norton aptly summarizes their lack of conservatism (6):

“Appeals to history and memory, the fear of losing old virtues, of failing to keep the faith with the principles of an honored ancestry, came to seem curious and antiquated. In their place were the very appeals to universal, abstract principles, the very utopian projects that conservatives once disdained.”

With friends like this, who needs enemies? Conservatives, the one-time sworn enemies of the rights industry, have been supplanted by rights peddlers. And other than pockets of orthodox Christians and traditional conservatives, the rights industry no longer confronts any opposition. Liberals and neoconservatives alike (is there any difference?) are in lockstep advance to further the enshrinement of a Procrustean liberal universalism.

Hopefully, as the rights empire expands, it will reach ‘rights overstretch’. As the causes become more absurd, so will the rights. Like overpopulated bacteria eating each other in a petri-dish, competing rights will turn upon each other and ensure the fall of the rights industry. Then perhaps we will be able to build from the remaining fragments of our assailed traditions.

——

Matthew A. Roberts writes from Kansas City, Missouri. This article has been reprinted from Quarterly Review with permission. Photo of “Pope Dementia” of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

NOTES

1. Republic 3.33; Laws 1.18-19; Laws 2.8-10; Inv. 2.162

2. Peter Toon, “Christianity & Subjective Human Rights”, Touchstone 11, no. 6 (1998). Also available online at www.touchstonemag.com

3. Claes G Ryn, “Where in the World Are We Going?” (Lew Rockwell, 4 April 2006) www.lewrockwell.com

4. Thomas Fleming, The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), p58

5. Claes G Ryn, “Jacobin in Chief”, American Conservative, 11 April 2005. Claes G Ryn, “Which American?” (Lew Rockwell, 5 May 2004) www.lewrockwell.com. Michael Ledeen, “Creative Destruction” (National Review Online, 20 September 2001) www.nationalreview.com

6. Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p174

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Of Spartans and Shi’ites

2007-05-03T03:01:00Z

The Battle of Thermopylae, the subject of Zack Snyder’s animated 300, was memorialized by the Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories. Herodotus’ purpose in writing about these events was to preserve the kleos (fame) of heroes. What a testament to his efforts it is that over 2,000 years later Mr. Snyder portrays these heroes on the big screen.

The Battle of Thermopylae is perhaps the most famous battle of the Persian Wars, which were a defining moment in Greek History and Western Civilization. Any film about this subject matter is going to be a daunting task, and unfortunately Mr. Snyder’s opus falls short.

Both directed and co-written by Mr. Snyder, 300 is based upon the graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller, which in turn is derived from Herodotus. Gerard Butler (Beowulf & Grendel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life) plays Leonidas; Lena Headey (The Remains of the Day) plays Queen Gorgo; and the Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro plays Xerxes.

Snyder utilizes computer-generated imagery and as a result, the film is long on cartoon carnage, and short on epic empathy. The movie is fast paced, and technically well executed, but the characters often feel lifeless, and the context and significance of the Battle of Thermopylae are underdeveloped. The historical inaccuracies are too many to list. Such oversights do not necessarily mar a film, but historical rendering is at its best when it takes plausible liberties with the grey areas between known facts, not liberties with the facts themselves.

Gratuitous political correctness and historical revisionism detract from the plot and its seriousness. In a few scenes, the equality of Spartan women is celebrated, and Queen Gorgo takes on a political role unheard of in Spartan, or in any ancient, society. The film also implies that the Spartans are fighting for the abstract ideas of freedom and reason, or to rid the world of mysticism, when in fact they were fighting for something more visceral and real: the defense of their homelands from foreign invaders.

The Persians were invading Greece, and the Greeks required time to evacuate, mobilize, and prepare for the coming battles. Realizing that it would be a suicide mission, in 480 B.C. King Leonidas, one of the dual-kings of Sparta, agreed to block the pass at Thermopylae with 300 of his bravest men. In one of the most famous land stands in history, King Leonidas with his soldiers held the pass for three days against the Persians until, finally, they were cut down to the man.

This delay of the Persian army allowed the other Greeks time to regroup, which ultimately lead to Greek victories at Salamis and Plataea, where the Persians were thoroughly defeated and expelled from Greece. Reflecting upon the ultimate sacrifice of Leonidas and his men, Herodotus said that he memorized all 300 names because they deserved to be remembered. This sentence alone better underscores the momentousness of these events than any bricolage of million-dollar special effects that we see in Mr. Snyder’s film.

In the past few weeks, debates surrounding the film have shifted to politics. Critics have recently interpreted the film as an analogy of the Bush administration, where G.W. Bush is Xerxes (minus the body piercings), defeated by a small band of guerrilla fighters. (A few Bush cheerleaders have somehow tried to spin the opposite interpretation.) Mr. Snyder denies this intent, although he probably well knows this buzz will help to sell tickets.
Despite his purpose, such an analogy may be fecund. Like the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, the Greeks were a very tribal, ethnocentric people who did not take kindly to foreigners invading their ancestral lands. Like the Persian army, the U.S. military is a multicultural, multi-ethnic and international force, held together not by blood but money. As in Herodotus, the modern-day events tell of a large empire trying to subjugate a small country, regardless of the will of its people.

Xerxes, who wanted to “bring all mankind under [his] yoke,” was outraged when storm destroyed his bridges across the Hellespont. Showing hubris, he demanded that the Hellespont be given 300 lashes - an offense to the gods. One must wonder whether our current Jacobin transformation of the Middle East to liberal democracy is also a type of hubris; and if so, shall we suffer the same fate as did Xerxes?

Matthew A. Roberts contributes to various publications and beckons from Kansas City, Missouri.

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