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Ellen Willis in hand and "sivilized" by an aristocratic WASP high school teacher, Columbia, and Cambridge; MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH AMERICA: once again, the magazine editor who is seduced THE CAUTIONARY TALE by the utopian chimeras of the left, then does OF A CHEERFUL CONSERVATIVE battle against them. Though the introduction by Norman Podhoretz promises something new—a discussion of Free Press, 2000 248pp $25 anti-Americanism on the right—the delivery turns out to be brief and perfunctory. What is new about this book is signaled in the subtitle: "cheerful" aptly describes N A RECENT issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz's demeanor, where in previous writ- Podhoretz pronounces American Pastoral ings words like "contentious," "embattled," and, Philip Roth's best novel, while confessing at times, "resentful" sprang to mind. Despite hisI uncertainty that this is a disinterested aesthet- enlisting the likes of Henry Adams, Henry ic judgment, because the novel's political impli- James, and Alexis de Tocqueville as interlocu- cations resonate so well with his own views. At tors, his narrative is less a meditation on pa- first this scruple struck me as misplaced. Though triotism than an inspirational tract. Though I agree with Podhoretz on little else, I was blown Podhoretz's first and best memoir-cum-polemic, away by American Pastoral, which taps into the Making It, was also about his love affair with potency of the American dream—and the poi- America, it was an affair with ambiguities and gnancy of American naiveté—on a level that tran- tensions. Now such complications are recalled scends ideology. Contemporary fiction has offered fondly, as the early struggles of a long and pros- few characters as compelling as Roth's protago- perous marriage might be; the journey toward nists, the New Jersey-Jewish star athlete and suc- assimilation is invoked mainly as proof that cessful businessman, whose blond good looks in- Podhoretz has earned the right to be as earnest, spired the nickname "Swede," and his Irish, not to say corny, in his patriotism as any char- ex-beauty-queen wife, who raises cattle. (Their acter out of Our Town. Similarly, he likens his daughter, who destroys their lives by becoming a short-lived veer to the left in the sixiies to an Weathermanesque radical and bombing the local episode of infidelity whose resolution has left post office, is less well realized; by the end she is the marriage stronger than ever (as often hap- something of a caricature, leaving the impression pens in such circumstances, he displays a sus- that Roth understands her no better than her picious need to constantly reaffirm his passion). devastated parents do.) Yet after reading My Love Self-consciously seventy, he embraces the per- Affair With America, I can more easily believe sona of mellow elder statesman, even making that Podhoretz would reduce Roth's complex and some conciliatory remarks about the culture unsentimental vision to a political message, for war, which he sees as having reached an armi- this memoir-cum-polemic is shockingly stice, or what others less cheerful than he might one-dimensional and smug. call a stalemate. On being asked to review Podhoretz's book, Along with Podhoretz's new mood comes a my first reaction was that I had already reviewed marked disinclination to focus his argument; it, twenty years ago. And indeed, much of it is he rambles and free associates on subjects rang- a rehash of earlier works: once again we meet ing from his immigrant relatives to the poor Jewish boy from Brownsville, taken anti-Semitism to Saul Bellow, punctuating his

TO8 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 BOOKS text with long, footnoted asides. He seems to effectively excluded from participation in a so- want to entertain his readers into agreeing with cial world defined by access to material goods his point, which is that we live in the best of and cultural opportunities they don't have. all possible worlds. His love affair with America From this perspective, the relevant frame of and his more recent love affair with capitalism reference for discussing Americans' standard of ultimately converge in a love affair with his living is not the third world but other advanced own good fortune, which he apotheosizes in a postindustrial nations, or better yet, our own chapter called "Dayyenu American Style." The recent past—the genuine mass prosperity of the reference is to the Passover song that recites fifties and sixties. And the impact on most the many blessings God has bestowed upon the Americans of the last two decades' dramatic Jews, ending each verse with "dayyenu" (it upward redistribution of wealth is best mea- would have been enough). "America is not sured by people's declining control over the God," Podhoretz graciously stipulates; yet conditions of their work and their lives. I don't America, as he sees it, has bestowed analogous care about Bill Gates's personal possessions. I blessings on its citizens. After calling on us all care about the power of the rich to dominate to give thanks for the Constitution and its fruits, politics and policymaking, to defund public he gets to what, for him, is the heart of the goods, to resist regulation, to deny workers job matter: "If America had only granted me the security and benefits, to enforce long hours of inheritance of the English language, that would work for low wages, to bid up the price of land have been enough. But America then sent me and housing, to reshape all social institutions to a great university," and so on. He ends the on the model of the hierarchical corporation. I chapter, and the book, by thanking America care, in short, about democracy. for his apartment in Manhattan and his house in East Hampton. ODHORETZ recognizes that dedication to Although this stuff verges on unintended as-yet unrealized ideals expressed in the satire, Podhoretz does not ignore the existence p Declaration of Independence and the of Americans less well off than he. Rather, he Constitution might, as he puts it, "present it- repeats the standard conservative response to self as a higher form of patriotism." Though he attacks on increasing inequality: no problem, can't quite bring himself to acknowledge that because capitalism generates so much wealth this brand of patriotism always competed with that virtually everyone has enough; even the Amerika-hating third-worldism for the soul of poorest American is rich by the standards of the new left, he attributes his own left turn to Bangladesh. In this vein Podhoretz invokes a "a limitless faith in the perfectibility of this study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, country." But since this very faith implied dis- according to which 40 percent of families be- satisfaction with America as it was, Podhoretz low the official poverty line own their own sees it as bearing the seeds of anti-Americanism. homes, 92 percent have color television, and He makes the familiar argument that sizable majorities have microwave ovens, air utopianism is bound to turn into hatred of a conditioners, and cars. "What most Americans world and a people resistant to utopian aims, care about," he declares, "is what they have, which is why utopians who gain power end up not what Bill Gates and George Soros have." committing mass murder. It follows that The left, in contrast, is mired in the comple- America's best defense against this fate is de- mentary sins of ingratitude and envy. mocracy "as it presently exist[s] in the real I'm not in a position to assess the statistics, world." This theme also informs Podhoretz's but the argument misses the point. What's critique of various elements on the right. wrong with economic inequality is not simply Paleoconservative nativism, the symposium in that one person owns more than another—it's the "theocon" journal First Things that suggested that some people have the power to subordi- revolution might be justified in view of the nate others by doling out or withholding the Supreme Court's refusal to overturn legal abor- means of subsistence. The poor are those who tion, and Paul Weyrich's call for the Christian have the least control over their fate and are right to abandon politics because the Ameri-

DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 109 BOOKS can people refused to support Clinton's impeach- count oneself a patriot, in the strict sense, and ment are all cited as unacceptably hostile to oppose American policies, even call for revolu- real-world American democracy. Here Podhoretz tion—but only if one's assumed framework re- sounds almost like a liberal. After all, the left mains the sovereign state. And though I accept today has thoroughly marginalized its utopians, that framework for many practical purposes—I arguing that democracy as it exists is the best see myself as a citizen in an American polity, I we can do (give or take a little tweaking to curb vote, I would defend the United States if it were the worst excesses of the market). Yet it has attacked by a foreign power—I resist it philo- clearly never occurred to Podhoretz that the sophically. In a larger political and cultural ideology of laissez-faire capitalism is itself uto- sense, I am for globalization, which is to say pian—in that the free market is an abstraction cosmopolitanism. It's globalization without rep- that has never actually existed—or that its tri- resentation, globalization on corporate terms umphal pursuit on a global scale poses a more that I abhor. In any case it is no longer a seri- formidable challenge to American patriotism ous option to concentrate on preserving or ex- than the delusions of nativists, theocrats, and tending democracy in one country, and the eco- third worldists combined. nomic nationalism espoused by some on both The present status of the United States as the right and the left would be a futile as well "the world's only superpower" and headquar- as reactionary move. Politically it really is one ters of the world economy tends to obscure the world, ready or not. fact that the American government must oper- This in no way means that an American ate within bounds strictly circumscribed by the left can ignore the country that remains our agenda of the world's economic elite. The new immediate context and, for most of us, a cru- economic order entails a massive transfer of cial aspect of identity. How then can our power from nation states to transnational cor- "Americanness" contribute to a democratic poli- porations, from elected officials to unelected tics that transcends the American nation-state managers, and from national business classes as such (assuming, as I do, that desires for free- with a stake in their countries' well-being to dom and equality are not intrinsically Ameri- global conglomerates concerned only with se- can, or Western, but human)? The possibili- curing the cheapest possible markets and ruth- ties cannot even be imagined, in my view, with- less about moving around their capital to disci- out recourse to that ecumenically maligned and pline governments or buy them off. As a result, dutifully repressed requirement of political cre- America is governed less democratically than it ativity: a utopian vision. There's no denying was thirty years ago, is further from fulfilling the devastation that utopian thinking gave rise what to most people is its promise—which is to—or became an excuse for—in this century; not that the poor will own their trailers but yet to pronounce it, in Podhoretz's words, "logi- that everyone, or almost everyone, will be cally and psychologically inherent in middle class—and is no more a genuinely in- utopianism" is a narrow reading of history. For dependent entity than the New York Stock Ex- if democracy as a utopian ideal can be said to change. have produced its negation in communist to- talitarianism, it has also inspired our own long HAT DOES it mean to be a patriot un- and continually unfinished struggle to put its der these circumstances? I use the principles into practice, as well as similar W word "patriot" loosely, to cover those struggles throughout the world. of us who believe that our formation as Ameri- The ideal of democracy as something more cans and our attachment to America's abstract than just "what is" is not purely abstract for ideals, its concrete culture, or both are relevant Americans. It is a dynamic, if often submerged, to our political aspirations. But in truth I find element in our culture, reflected in the irrev- patriotism a problematic concept. Although it erence toward authority and toward one's "bet- is not exactly the same thing as nationalism, it ters," the expansive optimism, the urge to tran- does imply an a priori loyalty to the nation (as scend limits, the penchant for self-invention, in "I pledge allegiance to the flag"): one can the belief in material pleasure as a human right

DISSENT / Fall 2000 BOOKS for which Americans are justly known. That for all who have caught some corner of the these very impulses, especially the last men- wave of twentieth-century American prosper- tioned, have often been enlisted in the service ity, but what he's actually doing is spilling the of corporate power and profits is also true. The beans. Does a patrician with a retinue of ser- point, though, is this: perhaps America's dis- vants really fit the image of what America is tinctive contribution to a global democratic supposed to be about—even if he's grateful? politics is the idea of an immanent utopia—a There's an item in Podhoretz's "Dayyenu" vision of freedom and equality constructed from litany that younger members of his own urban those democratic tropisms already embedded in upper-middle, knowledge-producing class— our bones, a movement propelled not only by surely a sizable portion of his readership—are dissatisfaction with what is, but by apprecia- likely to find particularly tactless: of course it's tion of what is incipient. For me it's the wife in that Manhattan apartment, "much like the one American Pastoral, with her fierce battle against in which the affluent parents of some of my being forever defined as "the former Miss New classmates at Columbia had lived." After all, Jersey," who best embodies America's utopian he must know that these days—as the price of strain—not the "revolutionary" daughter. housing in Manhattan has gone the way of tu- Right now, of course, the momentum is lips in sixteenth-century Holland, abetted by with the Podhoretzian view of America as a mag- the gutting of rent regulation—no one but the nificent flagship that will capsize if too many truly rich can acquire such a place. Unlike the people demand access to the first-class deck: myriad poor displaced by rent inflation, the can't they shut up and be happy they're along artists, writers, teachers, students and other for the ride? For Podhoretz, though, even this assorted middle-class Americans now being is not enough; he wants everyone to be as happy pushed out of the heart of the city will not for the first-class folks as the latter are for them- thereby lose a decent roof over their heads— selves. He deplores, for instance, the "ugly" "merely" the convenience and cultural ameni- response of liberal book reviewers to a memoir ties of a downtown way of life. in which William F. Buckley Jr. describes "in The irony is that with the escalating trans- almost lubricious detail" his luxurious life, from formation of Manhattan into a plutocratic mo- his "big house on the water" to his "outsized noculture (and similar developments taking limousine driven by the perfect chauffeur (one place in other "desirable" cities, from Boston of a host of equally perfect servants)," and con- to San Francisco), this very way of life, whose cludes that "we are obliged to be grateful" for essence is social and economic variety, is on its America's bounty. way to being destroyed. How, amid the statis- Why Podhoretz is so insistent that people tics debunking the importance of equality, are like Buckley—or himself—deserve to be ap- we to assess the loss of a version of America in plauded for kvelling over their assets is a ques- which people of all classes and many cultural tion better addressed by psychoanalysis than by sensibilities must share the same space, social commentary. But the poverty of his ori- non-drivers and other misfits can survive, bo- gins may explain his incomprehension that hemians and intellectuals and dissidents can hostility to such recitations has less to do with find each other, and those of us with no taste envy, or even with p.c. moralism about con- for suburbia can feel at home? This land may sumption and greed, than with a more primi- be your land, it may be my land, but it is indu- tive bourgeois reflex: what middle-class mother bitably their real estate. Would that Podhoretz has not warned her children that it isn't nice and his fellow cheerleaders knew the differ- to brag about what they have? It's a nicety de- ence. • signed to preserve the myth that we have no classes in this country. ELLEN WILLIS is the author of Don't Think, Podhoretz may imagine that he is speaking Smile: Notes on a Decade of Denial.

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