...the trailing edge.

First as tragedy, then as farce

Many warbloggers and other assorted Iraq-war supporters fancy themselves to be followers of Winston Churchill.

And one of the most widely read biographies of Churchill is the two-volume hagiography by William Manchester. (As a boy, I read the first volume. For boys, it's a good history.)

I had never thought to connect the two, though, until I read the following, from a 1989 review of Manchester's second volume by David Cannadine, reprinted in his book History in Our Time:

[Manchester's] concern is to retell (and to reburnish) the familiar story of Churchill's wilderness years, which were, Manchester insists, undoubtedly the greatest and noblest of his career. For most of the 1930s, Churchill was out of office, out of power, out of favour, and out of luck. He was spurned, derided and rejected by the lesser men in government; he was regarded as an outcast by the Tory Party managers; and he was banned from speaking on the BBC. [...] Truly, Churchill was a prophet without honour in his own country. But, undaunted and undismayed, he put together a vast underground intelligence network, which meant he was better informed about German rearmament and territorial ambitions than the Foreign Office. He made a succession of brilliant, unanswerable speeches, in Parliament and throughout the country, damning appeasement as cowardly folly, and struggled to alert the western democracies to the growing menace of Hitler. And so, in the eleventh hour, when all the grievous events that Churchill had so valiantly and vainly foretold had finally come to pass, the people eventually turned to him, as the rejected prophet became the national saviour and gave his country its 'finest hour'.

While Manchester waxes thus fulsome in his eulogistic evocation of Churchill, he shows no mercy to the cynical Judases who were, he believes, the 'betrayers of England's greatness'. [...] Without exception, Manchester insists, they were weak, shabby, irresolute, provincial mediocrities, who vainly believed that Hitler could be trusted and should be appeased. And they were supported in their ignoble endeavours by [...] unimaginative and hypocritical politicians [...] who believed in peace at virtually any price. Nor, Manchester insists, was this the full extent of their duplicity. For it was not just that they did not want to offend the Führer. Obsessed as they were with the fear of Communist subversion, they actually wanted to support and strengthen Nazi Germany as the most effective European counterpoise to what they saw as the much greater threat of Soviet Russia. And in order to do so, they deliberately misled the British public about the true nature and intentions of the Nazi regime.

Does any of Manchester's mythology sound familiar? Sound, perhaps, like a mythology we have been hearing since 9/11?

If you wanted to pretend to be Manchester's Churchill — wanted to interpret the geopolitical crisis of your own time so that you could enjoy the thrill of posturing in that particular heroic way — then would you have acted much differently than the warbloggers and their ilk have over the last five years, with their fisking and their demonizing and their unrealistic idealism and their blood-thirsty sermonizing?

A fine fantasy for boys. But isn't it time they grew up?

You can't work with someone who won't work with you

An interesting post-midterm wrapup by Rolling Stone contained this questionable assertion by David Gergen:

Voters don't want a whole series of confrontations over the next two years. […] Democrats have got to be willing to work with the administration […] That's going to be very hard for them to do.

I believe that the next two years will see "a whole series of confrontations" because that will be what the Bush administration will want. I see no indication that it has any intention of working with a Democratic Congress.

100 most influential Americans?

The Atlantic Monthly has posted a list of the 100 Americans who a panel of historians consider to be the most influential in American history.

I suggested adding five people to the list:

• Dale Carnegie
• Frederick Taylor
• H. L. Mencken (for his linguistic work)
• Bill Wilson
• Pete Rozelle

I also noted five people I thought could be removed:

• Stephen Foster
• Herman Melville
• Samuel Goldwyn
• Alexander Graham Bell (someone else was about to invent the telephone)
• The Wright Brothers (someone else would have invented the airplane)

An e-mail to Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR)

Dear Senator Smith,

I was a Republican from the early '80s until 2003, and I'm sad to say that I agree with this assessment someone wrote yesterday:

"The modern GOP -- or, more specifically, the axis of '70s campus Republicans now running it -- really is just a criminal enterprise disguised as a political party.

"Dirty tricks, large and small, are a sorry fact of life in American politics, but what the Republicans have done over the past few weeks -- the surrealist attack ads, the forged endorsements, the midnight robo calls, the arrest threats, the voter misinformation (did you know your polling station has been moved?) -- is sui generis, at least at the national level."

I hope, Senator Smith, that you want to play a role in cleaning up the GOP. I have been horrified with what I have seen during this election campaign.

/s/ Steve Casburn

What conservatism is for me

A self-described leftist writing in to Andrew Sullivan summed it up well:

[Y]ou see classic conservatism as the defense of liberty from brutality through doubt, caution, common sense and rigorous self-examination[.]

The right-wing paradox

The right wing in America is stuck with the paradox of holding a philosophy of "conserving" and an actual order it does not want to conserve. It keeps trying to create something new it might think worthy, someday, of conserving.

-- Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative, pg. 211.

Too little, too late

Peggy Noonan has not left her President. Her President has left her.

I left the Republican Party three years ago because the truth of every one of Noonan's criticisms of Bush (and several other criticisms as well) was obvious by then, and I was disappointed and disgusted that no one in the GOP was willing to challenge him. Every major Republican political figure (Noonan included) was content to stay silent and let things go to hell. I wanted someone to have the courage to run against Bush in the 2004 presidential primaries; to take a stand for a different vision of what the Republican Party could and should be. No one did.

That's why I have no sympathy for Noonan and her ilk. They made the bed in which they are about to lie.

Saying what has to be said

Keith Olbermann unloads [streaming video].

We say we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. When, then, will we rid ourselves of an administration that takes away our freedoms and undermines our bravery?

When literacy was entertainment

For an American coming of age in the last third of the nineteenth century, one of the surest ways to gain prominence or to secure it was to become a fine public speaker. Oratory was an indispensable element in both politics and religion, on every public holiday and anniversary, at every unveiling of a statue or laying of a cornerstone, and at the banquets obligatory for any group able to hire a cook and rent a hall. Dozens of lecture circuits had sprung up by midcentury, enabling farmers as well as city dwellers to hear the best-known politicians, writers, actors, and preachers in the land.

[…]

[…N]early every adult had been able to witness a variety of oratorical performances. They thus elevated public speaking with much the same mix of canny criticism and admiration we now apply to professional athletes and movie stars. Newspapers routinely published the full or nearly full transcripts of major political speeches and sermons by celebrated ministers; editorial "impressions" accompanied the texts.

-- Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, pgs. 10-11.

A certain kind of question

Freud asked, "What do women really want?" It is the kind of question people ask when they do not want to know.

-- Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative, pg. 150.

Hoisted on their own petard

Two views on the Foley scandal: Glenn Greenwald and Billmon.

Becoming what you oppose

I used to tease Frank about the way he opposed the state while becoming obsessed with it. He thought of nothing else, day or night. It had even greater power over him than he thought it was trying to get. Once one defines oneself primarily by opposition to one other thing, the essential surrender is made. One resembles those Christians who defined themselves in terms of opposition to the devil. The devil himself became their operative god, the thing that filled their thoughts and limited their actions. The obsessed person longs for some Ahab showdown with his own white whale. He grows to resemble the cruel thing he opposes, becomes its antitype or photographic negative[…]

-- Garry Wills, Confessions of a Conservative, pg. 59.

The torturers

A friend wrote the following about the compromise a few weeks ago between the Senate and the President about the use of torture:

The Senate, whose majority leader systematically killed cats obtained under false pretenses from local animal shelters, has given the sole authority to determine exactly what does and does not constitute torture to a man who used to blow up frogs with firecrackers.

Fair and balanced e-mail #3

An e-mail to Fox News:

Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 10:53:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: Steve Casburn
To: comments@foxnews.com
Subject: Labeling Mark Foley a Democrat

 
Dear Sirs,

Earlier this week, Fox News repeatedly showed a graphic which labelled disgraced Republican congressman Mark Foley as "Former Congressman Mark Foley (D-FL)".

Until this incident, I had questioned your standards and biases but believed that Fox News was basically a news organization. I can't believe that now.

 
Sincerely,

/s/ Steve Casburn

Inside and outside

We can learn a great deal about something without learning of something; we can perceive the outline with remarkable clarity without perceiving the essence; we can see how a thing is seen without feeling how that thing is felt.

Maybe Fox News knows something about liberals. Maybe atheists know something about Christians. Maybe Americans know something about Iran. Maybe Ohio State fans know something about Ann Arbor. Maybe I know something about a thousand things.

But how important are the things known when compared to the things unknown? And in the absence of the things unknown, what worth exists in conclusions drawn from the things known?

Openness goes both ways

No one who looks upon disagreement as an occasion for teaching another should forget that it is also an occasion for being taught.

-- Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book (1972 ed.), ch. 10.