The recent anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction by atomic bombs reminded me of an odd encounter I once had with one of the responsible parties.

It happened at a Starbucks in a small Northwestern college town several years ago. I have a tendency to attract the crazies while out and about, so when an elderly character approached me to ask about the novel I was reading—Russell Kirk’s Lord of the Hollow Dark—I was reluctant to become entangled in conversation. By the time my unwelcome interlocutor got around to proclaiming that “intellectuals should be liberals,” I already regretted not having made a getaway. Still, it wasn’t until he claimed to have been a civilian witness to the dropping of both “Fat Man” and “Little Boy” that I thought I had a certifiable kook on my hands.

Later I realized this fellow wasn’t delusional after all. He was in fact whom he said he was: Lawrence H. Johnston, the physicist who, under the tutelage of his mentor Luis Alvarez, invented the detonator used on the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Russell Kirk wasn’t very happy about Professor Johnston’s contribution to science. I’ll leave it to Patrick Buchanan to make the revisionist case. Having lived among the Japanese and discovered their quiet stubbornness for myself, I don’t find such arguments convincing.

Unlike our foreign-policy chicken hawks, Johnston was aboard the observation aircraft The Great Artiste as these terrible weapons were delivered to their targets. You don’t board an aircraft on a deadly mission without your heart in your throat.

Johnston was one of what Tom Brokaw called the Greatest Generation: those who grew up during the Great Depression only to have to fight in World War II.

My late grandfather is to be counted among this Greatest Generation. Having grown up during the Depression with only two sets of clothing to his name, he had intended to become a schoolteacher. The war derailed those plans, and after it ended he chose to instead remain in the Army. He achieved the rank of Major before he was eventually forced into early retirement to make way for what was apparently an excess of West Point graduates.

Undaunted, my grandfather continued to serve as a non-commissioned officer. Later he was to learn his name had been selected at random for culling but that—in an early example of affirmative action—certain minority officers had been granted immunity. Still, he never betrayed any bitterness. On his long slide into heart trouble and dementia he remained in good humor, offering not so much as a complaint or the slightest whimper even when he must have been in considerable pain. As Russell Kirk wrote of his own parents, my grandfather had “performed [his] duties patiently, harming no one.”

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Where to find such men today? I wouldn’t suggest looking to our present military. Despite the endless homages to “our men and women in uniform,” most of the leaders in our now inclusive armed services are, in my experience, little more than shallow careerists. With some noteworthy exceptions, the military man is now a glorified civil servant concerned primarily with looking good on paper.

But just as the steely warrior has become a thing of the past, so too has his intellectual equivalent. Russell Kirk’s brand of conservatism is all but politically irrelevant, though probably no more so than the liberalism Professor Johnston espoused. With his claim that “intellectuals should be liberals,” Johnston probably only meant that thinking people should be open-minded rather than obsessed with enforcing PC edicts.

But Johnston, by then a long-retired physics professor, seemed only vaguely aware of such things. He did not seem to apprehend the fate that has befallen our universities, especially in their humanities and social-science departments. The average professor of “American Studies” would have had nothing but contempt for Professor Johnston. By now, even the likes of liberal news anchors such as Tom Brokaw have given way to the smug irreverence of Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper.

It seems likely that the Lawrence Johnston I encountered that afternoon was merely a lonely old man in search of some company over a cup of coffee. Perhaps he was seeking reassurance toward the end of his life that the deeds of his youth had been the right ones. I wasn’t able to provide him much company or reassurance, and for that I’m truly sorry.

Professor Johnston passed away last December. Here’s to Lawrence H. Johnston, Russell Kirk, and my beloved grandfather. May men of their caliber come to inhabit our world again. May there be great generations yet to come.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Mixed martial arts is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports, and many say it is already more popular than boxing. Yet MMA’s sociological and historical significance seems hardly to have been given a second thought. Our academics worry that it furthers “cultural ideals of domination and subordination tied to hyper-masculine norms”—i.e., “sexism” and “homophobia.” But such twaddle aside, what does MMA’s popularity signify about Western Civilization?

Our leftist academicians are probably right about one thing: MMA seems to embody modern hyper-capitalism in its crudest form. From its shoddy, unregulated beginnings, the sport has been transformed into a big-money commercial spectacle in less than two decades. The man largely responsible for this ascendancy is Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White, who is backed by the allegedly mob-connected Fertitta brothers. Like a Marxist caricature of the business tycoon, White’s attempts to monopolize this fledgling industry and break into international markets seem matched only by his classless thirst for self-aggrandizement. Much like our other magnanimous corporate leaders, he throws out the occasional charitable bone and bows to political correctness, even as he constantly threatens his stable of fighters with firing.

Despite the greed that surrounds it, MMA has earned a kind of sporting legitimacy. It is no longer the simple brawling it has sometimes been made out to be. John McCain was mistaken when he called it “human cockfighting.” At this point the conditioning and technical proficiency required to fight at the highest levels put most other professional athletes to shame. The average MMA champion has a background as an NCAA wrestler, Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, Olympic judoka, or some combination thereof.

And you do have to be tough. Consider fighter Conor Heun’s win despite a dislocated elbow or Rob Emerson’s embarrassing admission that he sometimes wets himself owing to extreme fatigue during practice sessions.

But does any of this bodily sacrifice make MMA a countertrend or antidote to our present age’s feminization, decadence, and self-absorption? The most likely answer is “no.”

Just like this world’s Latrell Sprewells and O. J. Simpsons, many of these fighters are without honor. Steroid use is not uncommon. More than a few fighters barely into their thirties are on testosterone-replacement therapy to compensate for allegedly low natural levels of the hormone. Some are incorrigible rule-breakers, while at least one aspiring champion engages in white-collar crime in his off hours.

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The racial silliness that makes up so much of our public discourse has also infected the MMA world. Fans are meant to believe that the words “BROWN PRIDE” tattooed in oversized letters across former UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez’s chest are merely a healthy expression of ethnic solidarity. But Caucasian fighters whose bodies are adorned with similar displays get sanctioned. Mr. Velasquez is the child of an illegal immigrant. Privileged, contemptible Anglos are apparently supposed to celebrate this narrative as the American Dream exemplified.

Women have swiftly asserted their equal right to break each other’s jaws and orbital bones. Liberated women’s invasion of the “masculine space” of combat sports, once almost solely the domain of working-class minority males, seems to be among the final fronts in the gender-equity wars. Having freed themselves from patriarchal oppression’s constraints, these women now claim their right to move down in life rather than up. Why pursue a stifling corporate career when you can duke it out in the gym with the boys? Even Dana White, who postures as a recalcitrant chauvinist, seems to be coming around to the idea.

MMA attracts many professionals who are keen on slumming. Ph.D. Rosi Sexton is probably MMA’s highest academic achiever, while Jeff Monson and Rich Franklin are notable among those who hold graduate degrees yet abandoned professional careers to pursue fighting.

Haven’t we seen all this before? Is history indeed cyclical?

It may not even be accurate to claim the gladiators were only symptomatic of Roman decline. The arena’s spectacles may well have worked to reinforce Roman law and morality in the citizenry’s minds. Often, however, the bouts didn’t end fatally, and at times there were female gladiators. Bored aristocrats sometimes entered the arena, as did certain emperors who made sure to minimize personal risks. The phenomenon of bread and circuses looks, as others have observed, like an apt description of our own historical moment.

These fighters are our modern gladiators, but if history is to be trusted, this is nothing to celebrate. The implications are ominous.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Henry Rollins

Dear Henry Rollins,

In a recent interview you expressed concern, like so many of our other socially conscious celebrities, that the so-called “War on Women” was slowing the wheels of progressive permissiveness. It caused me to reflect on why I’m no longer much of a fan. I thought it might be cathartic for us both if I explored the subject in the form of an open letter, something like the one you once penned to Ann Coulter (not that I don’t think she’s a shrieking harpy myself). Since you share your angst with others on stages all across the world while clad only in a pair of skimpy shorts, I figure you’ll have no qualms about this.

Your career started inauspiciously. A number of great punk bands emerged in the early 80s, but Black Flag was not one of them (cool logo, though). Frankly, Henry, the band was at its best when you weren’t singing.

Still, it was during that otherwise forgettable decade that you began to forge something of a unique and compelling persona, committing yourself to physical fitness and acquiring a number of distinctive tattoos, many of them atrocious.

I liked you much better in your 90s phase. You had by then come into your own as a kind of countercultural “renaissance man.” There were books, music (often lackluster), spoken-word performances, and movie roles (mostly bad). But what you lacked in consistency and talent, you made up for with prodigious output and an unparalleled intensity.

It was this intensity that made you a source of fascination for many. It set you apart from your fellow rock stars whom you rightly chided for being weak in both body and mind. As embarrassing as it now seems, I found much of what you wrote back then inspiring. You implored us to “Not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone” and to “Keep your blood clean, your bodies lean, and your minds sharp.” Heady stuff for impressionable youths.

And you walked the walk, Henry, not allowing success to go to your head or up your nose like so many other “artists.” At the 1995 Grammys you performed in a tuxedo—but barefoot. Even Madonna observed that you’d never forgotten your roots. You were the antithesis of the rock star, the anti-Bret Michaels. You were somebody, Henry, because you were yourself.

But you’ve changed. Henry Rollins, you’ve sold out. Looking back now, there were signs of trouble. When you started being seen publicly with that loathsome loudmouth Janeane Garofalo (”the Tea Party is racist”), it was already too late.

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It probably wasn’t a conscious decision on your part, but nobody plays for long with the showbiz crowd and remains untouched. Despite your eschewal of drugs and alcohol and continuing preference for unadorned T-shirts, Henry, you know you’re one of them now.

While you seem to think your political opinions are still perceptive and edgy, they’re mostly recognizable as the default liberal opinions of the LA set you hang with these days. But having read a few books by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky does not make you somehow more enlightened than the average Joe with whom you claim affinity but toward whom you actually condescend. At this point you have a lot more in common with Tori Spelling than you do with Sid Vicious.

Maybe you were always like this. Maybe it’s me who’s changed. But whichever it is, Henry, your self-serving stories about visiting the troops through the USO and knocking around the Third World to see how the other half lives—once so entertaining—have become intolerable these past couple of years. The same can be said of the inanities about universal brotherhood you derive from these experiences:

It makes you see humans can get along just fine….It’s governments and foreign policy getting in the way of the global fun to be had.

Your hysteria over contraception and the fact you “feel bad for women” and worry “we’re going back in time” is a facile pose, Henry. If you respected women you might have married one instead of scribbling about your many dysfunctional relationships. You wouldn’t be 51 and still dating because it’s hard for you to be “truly close to someone” or whatever neurotic Hollywood excuse you use.

Henry, in hindsight, it now seems clear that the supposed individualism and self-actualization you made a career out of promoting was only another form of the self-absorption that Malcolm Muggeridge called the Great Liberal Death Wish.

To prevent others from succumbing to that delusion, I think it’s time to ask you nicely to do what you once so crudely demanded of Ann Coulter: Henry Rollins—with all the love and respect due to you—please shut up.

Best wishes,

T. R. Bennington

In keeping with its world-famous heartlessness, the United States has defunded UNESCO. The world’s innocent children are unjustly suffering even as you read this.

Such has been the predictable cry of outrage heard ever since UNESCO’s member states voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a full member back in October. The vote automatically brought into force US laws passed in the 90s prohibiting government funding to any UN organization that accords Palestine the same status as member states.

Among the morally condescending media types condemning the US over the issue are The Daily Show and some random but delightfully entertaining veteran journalist named Tim King, a former Marine who says the US is snatching the last bread crumbs from hungry babes:

The world already hates Americans for unnecessary religious wars that are unjustified, now it can hate Americans more for pulling food from the mouths of starving children.

Mr. King’s sentiments are in lockstep with the reflexively anti-American—yet somehow still American—leftist journalistic establishment.

Then there’s the other half of mainstream journalism in the US: neocons such as David Frum. Frum was quick to respond to the Daily Show bit by penning a piece in defense of “Israel and those who value the US-Israel relationship.” By this Mr. Frum must mean his fellow neoconservatives and the Christian Zionists they’ve continually managed to con.

UNESCO’s response to the US defunding has been to lobby Washington. They’re apparently in the process of setting up an office specifically for that purpose. But rather than using the smear term “lobbying,” they’d prefer you called it “raising awareness,” just like they do.

UNESCO head and former Bulgarian Communist Party apparatchik Irina Bokova, one of many to have made a miraculous conversion to liberal democracy in the blink of an eye two decades ago, has made regaining US funding priority number uno. She’s been doing the rounds in the US to drum up sympathy. The Obama Administration seems willing to oblige her.

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How much money are we talking about here? Chump change, really. Between 60 and 79 million a year depending on who’s counting. It’s barely enough for the tail fins of the latest stealth fighter or a handful of platinum chains for any self-respecting rapper, but it’s the principle that matters.

Ostensibly UNESCO is involved in a variety of commendable activities including poverty reduction, literacy programs, and resource management. As our aforementioned friend Tim King tear-jerkingly puts it:

When it comes to UNESCO, there are no rivals. It is the agency in the world that provides relief and education to the suffering; their work is endless and terribly important.

Perhaps, but it also comes at all times with generous helpings of Cultural Marxist-style social engineering. If I didn’t know better I would be tempted to suggest that UNESCO’s real agenda is worldwide cultural subversion in preparation for some sort of New World Order—but that’s crazy talk.

Still, I’ve met a few of these UNESCO cats, and they gave me the willies.

Ronald Reagan, whatever influence his administration’s neocons may have had on him, was right to see through UNESCO’s humanist claptrap to its rabidly far-left essence. He turned off the financial tap in 1984. It wasn’t until 2002 that the “compassionate conservative” and incorrigible spendthrift George W. Bush announced his intention to reinstate UNESCO’s funding.

But what do UNESCO’s lofty humanitarian ideals look like when they go up against the hard realities of international politics? Here’s what:

“After two years of debate and hand-wringing,” The New York Times tells us, the UNESCO executive board has recently approved a “scientific prize” sponsored by Equatorial Guinea’s “repressive” dictator and purported cannibal, Teodoro Obiang Nguemo Mbasogo (yeah, that’s his name). The Times article cites no more compelling reason for the award’s existence than that it may bolster the self-esteem of Dark Continent’s inhabitants. The prize money’s origin is already in question. Let’s hope no food has been snatched from the gaping maws of the downtrodden in the process.

In other news, Syria maintains a seat on UNESCO’s human-rights committee.

What does the average American think of all this? By ‘average,’ I mean those who are not unreasonable Christian Zionists or leftist anti-Israel types driven more by a hatred of the United States than any authentic compassion for the Palestinians. If I may presume to speak for this populist base—often mentioned by political candidates but rarely heard from—we’re tired of our country’s never-ending international involvement to the neglect of its own working and middle-class citizens. Some of us may even be generous souls who aren’t completely averse to helping feed the poor abroad. But we’d rather not toss another dime at programs administered by UN technocrats preaching the gospel of liberal internationalism.