Wars on Christians Not Hitler’s Pope Empire or Umpire? Food Rights Fight ANDREW DORAN JOHN RODDEN & JOHN ROSSI ANDREW J. BACEVICH MARK NUGENT

JULY/AUGUST 2013

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America’s Last Hope?

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$9.99 US/Canada theamericanconservative.com Visit alphapub.com for FREE eBooks and Natural-law Essays

We read that researchers have used new technology to fi nd proof behind biblical stories such as the Parting of the Red Sea and the Burning Bush. Our writing uses a biblical story with a deadly result that is still happening today.

This biblical event is the creator’s command to Adam: “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat or you “Just found your site. will surely die.” Adam and Eve did eat the fruit of that tree, and for I was quite impressed disobeying the creator, they suffered much trouble and fi nally died. and look forward to Experience tells us that people worldwide are still acting on hours of enjoyment their judgments of good and evil. Now, consider what happens to and learning. Thanks.” millions of them every day? They die! It would follow that those - Frank whose behavior is based on their defi nitions of good and evil be- come subject to the creator’s warning, “or you will surely die.” We know that when people conform to creation’s laws of physics, right action always results. Children learn to walk and run by con- forming to all applicable natural laws. When they don’t, they fall. It is the creator’s laws that dictate what action is called for and what action is not. In the past century Richard W. Wetherill identifi ed a natural law, calling for rational, honest behavior, and he named it the law of absolute right. Most people know that natural laws require obedience, but in- numerable are unaware of this natural law. Mistakenly they try to get their way. We try to inform people not to contradict the creator’s law of right behavior, inviting death. These guiding thoughts explain why people fi nally die. You “I have fi nished reading might disagree, but a Garden of Eden awaits any who adhere to the book How To Solve nature’s law of absolute right. They stop their efforts to get their Problems. So simple, way and embrace the rational, honest way of the creator of life. yet so profound and powerful. Thank you.” Visit alphapub.com for more information or for a free mailing - Alex write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468.

This public-service message is from a self-fi nanced, nonprofi t group of former students of Mr. Wetherill. Vol. 12, No. 4, July/August 2013

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ARTICLES FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS

12 Story Lines, Not Party Lines 6 Christians lost the Iraq War 40 Kill Anything !at Moves: !e "e narrative art shapes culture— ANDREW DORAN Real American War in Vietnam and politics. by Nick Turse 7 FDR’s outdoor cathedral ROD DREHER CHASE MADAR LEWIS McCRARY 17 Texas Water War 44 !e Silence of Animals: On 9 America’s military mastermind Progress and Other Modern Will Dallas drown farmers’ WILLIAM S. LIND property rights? Myths by John Gray HENRY CHAPPELL J.P. O’MALLEY COMMENTARY 20 !e Anti-Alinsky 46 Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit John Jay Chapman’s penitent 5 Too small to fail of Food Rights: !e Escalating model of protest 11 Taming China without war Battle Over Who Decides What ALAN PELL CRAWFORD PATRICK J. BUCHANAN We Eat by David Gumpert MARK NUGENT 26 Civil War Comes Home 16 Turkish spring “Copperhead” is the story of the PHILIP GIRALDI 50 !e Little Way of Ruthie Leming: North’s forgotten dissidents. A Southern Girl, a Small Town, JORDAN BLOOM 39 Out to the ballgame and the Secret of a Good Life BILL KAUFFMAN by Rod Dreher 29 Rock for Republicans? JEREMY BEER Why the GOP loves John 58 "e man for Ava & Lana Mellencamp TAKI 52 Edmund Burke in America: DAVID MASCIOTRA !e Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism 32 Not Hitler’s Pope by Drew Maciag How Pius XII resisted Nazism GERALD J. RUSSELLO JOHN RODDEN and JOHN ROSSI 54 American Umpire by Elizabeth Cobbs Ho!man ANDREW J. BACEVICH 56 A Light !at Never Goes Out: !e Enduring Saga of the Smiths by Tony Fletcher and Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division by Peter Hook Cover illustration: Michael Hogue A.G. GANCARSKI

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions

PRO-GROWTH CONSERVATISM a government’s cultural policies can IMMIGRATION AND THE GOP “Springtime for Keynes” (May/June) also damage the economy. Policies that William Chip (“Immigration Made argued properly that economics contribute to the destruction of the Right,” May/June) is right to observe shouldn’t be the root of a conservative family also destroy the greatest incuba- that the mainstream media has re- political philosophy. I agree, but good tor of economically successful people. ported erroneously and incessantly economic policy will complement Finally, I would add that we su$er since the election that Gov. Romney’s that philosophy. And economic pre- a set of non-#scal governmental poli- loss was attributable to his failure to scriptions can’t do the job unless they cies that cut economic growth and the win enough Hispanic voters. are rational. chance of millions to li% themselves to As the New York Times’ statistical "e rational way to encourage eco- the level of prosperity they desire. "at guru Nate Silver demonstrated with nomic growth and increase the wealth is the “tax” of uncertainty. Today, the his interactive election modeling of all in society (even if the achievers President advocates higher taxes and program, the truth is that Romney get more than their less capable or less thus is positing a future with fewer would have lost the election even if lucky or more leisure-oriented broth- incentives for work, risk, and invest- he had won a majority of the Hispan- ers) comes from providing policies to ment. "e Federal Reserve System’s ic vote. Silver and a handful of other incentivize people to work to create monetary policy foretells a future set independent analysts have shown wealth and economic growth. for in&ation making savings seem like that Romney’s loss was due to his Fiscal policy is crucial and it must less of a good idea: why save a dol- failure to win as much of the non- be understood. George W. Bush said lar today when in the future it will be Hispanic white vote as other GOP he wanted to “put money in people’s worth #%y cents? Twenty-#ve? Our presidential candidates have in the pockets” and when he did that it was regulatory regime today threatens to recent past. as futile as Obama’s stimulus spend- make great swaths of business less More evidence of the mainstream ing. Demand stimulus is Keynesian successful, reducing the incentives to media’s collective decision to be- and it is baloney. build a booming society. And this “tax come a mere propaganda outlet for Good #scal policy changes relative of uncertainty” nets the Treasury not comprehensive immigration reform prices. "at means it makes work, a dime. and amnesty for illegal aliens can be risk, and investment more attractive. Keynes changed his views and his found in their refusal to report on It rewards pro-growth activities. "at every word isn’t baloney. But a conser- the only referendum actually dealing means marginal tax rates must be cut vative political philosophy is properly with illegal immigration to appear on and that translates into more real re- accompanied by a pro-growth eco- a statewide ballot in 2012. wards—real income to those who nomic philosophy that rewards the In Montana, which Gov. Romney work, save, and invest. virtues that a conservative values. It carried by a comfortable 55 percent Spending is not irrelevant. When provides the framework for prosper- to 42 percent margin, a Proposition government spends more to extend ous families, and a prosperous soci- 187-style measure called Legislative unemployment bene#ts or lowers ety that can use its added wealth to Question 121 denying state funded the age of Social Security eligibility, address society’s problems. Prosper- bene#ts to illegal aliens, won by a it makes it foolish for many to work. ous people have fewer problems, give landslide 80 percent. Undercutting the welfare reform rules more to charity, and have time to help Imagine the reporting frenzy that requiring the able-bodied to work others. would have erupted had Question changes the relative prices of working Keep up this important discussion. 121 lost. versus taking welfare. HOWARD SEGERMARK K.C. MCALPIN A conservative would also note that Washington, DC Harbor Springs, MI

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 !e American Conservative Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Daniel Larison Mark Nugent Editorial Director, Digital Maisie Allison Associate Editor Jordan Bloom National Correspondent { Vol. 12, No. 4, July/August 2013 } Michael Brendan Dougherty Contributing Editors W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, Localism’s Green Shoots Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, "omas E. Woods Jr. Publisher his is a season of regenera- le%-wing activists of the past, than to Ron Unz tion for America, unlikely rediscover community in commerce Associate Publisher though it seems. Unemploy- and everyday life. It’s a humble resis- Jon Basil Utley ment remains above 7 per- tance that repudiates “too big to fail” Publishing Consultant Tcent—if we count labor-force dropouts more powerfully than any amount Ronald E. Burr and the underemployed, the picture is of Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street Senior Editorial Assistant darker still—and the economy is brit- placard-waving ever could. Jonathan Coppage tle. "e surveillance state, by contrast, What drives this rejuvenated Editorial Assistants is robust, as National Security Agency localism isn’t hipster fashion—though Gracy Howard Robert Long whistleblower Edward Snowden re- there’s an element of that—but alien- Founding Editors vealed when he exposed the agency’s ation from the failed institutions of Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, collection of “metadata” records for neoliberalism: its political parties, Taki "eodoracopulos every American’s phone calls, emails, its mass media catering to the low- and Internet activities. Meanwhile, est common denominator, its factory !e American Ideas Institute even as the war in Afghanistan slumps food and cubicle work. For once, this President to an end, hawks le% and right—from is a kind of alienation that advances Wick Allison Bill Clinton to John McCain—caw for conservatism—or has the potential to !e American Conservative, Vol. 12, No. 4, July/ August 2013 (ISSN 1540-966X). Reg. U.S. Pat. intervention in Syria’s civil strife. To do so. Liturgy, poetry, and traditional & Tm. O!c. Published 6 times a year by "e judge by the national or world scene, arts in all their forms are among the American Ideas Institute, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20036- cause for cheer is sparse. refuges a deep cultural conservatism 3128. Periodicals postage paid Washington, DC But closer to home Americans are a$ords men and women storm-tossed and additional mailing o!ces. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes beginning to #nd alternatives to the by the 21st-century. But before they to !e American Conservative, P.O. Box 1091, habits that brought us “too big to fail.” can o$er these goods to others, con- Selmer, TN 38375-1091. Finding expression in everything from servatives must themselves rediscover Subscription rates: $59.95 per year (6 issues) in the U.S., $69.95 in Canada (U.S. funds), and farmers’ markets and the “food rights” them. "at means refocusing on plac- $79.95 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: movement to a burgeoning body of es, persons, and their stories and turn- $12.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $13.00 in Canada (U.S. funds). conservative scholarship, a rebirth of ing away from the narrow horizons of For subscription orders, payments, and other localism is underway. 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For editorial, call 202-955-3600. going away any time soon. But the new between neighborhood and nation, "is issue went to press on June 20, 2013. localism is less concerned to protest between context and abstraction, will Copyright 2013 !e American Conservative. corporate megaliths, in the manner of take time. But this is a beginning.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines

In February 2008, Archbishop Pau- Thrown to the Lions—by America los Rahho’s vehicle was attacked a%er In our Mideast wars, “collateral damage” includes Christian extinction he "nished praying the Stations of the by ANDREW DORAN Cross in Mosul. His driver and body- guards were killed. Rahho, wounded he dedication this spring of Christians su#ered severe persecution. but alive, was put into the trunk of the George W. Bush’s presiden- Neither the U.S. military nor the State assassins’ car and taken from the scene. tial library in Texas brie!y Department took action to protect He managed to pull out his cell phone rekindled debate about the them. In October 2003, human-rights and call his church to tell them not to Tde"ning event of his presidency, the expert Nina Shea noted that religious pay his ransom, saying he “believed Iraq War. With the visceral hatred of freedom and a pluralistic Iraq were not that this money would not be paid much of the media for the war and the high priorities for the Bush administra- for good works and would be used man himself having diminished over tion, concluding that its “di&dence on for killing and more evil actions.” His time, a more sober assessment of both religious freedom suggests Washing- body was found in a shallow grave two seemed to prevail in the coverage. In ton’s relative indi#erence to this basic weeks later. the same news cycle there appeared a human right.” Shea added, “Washing- During this systematic violence, the seemingly unrelated event, the abduc- ton’s refusal to insist on guarantees of U.S. military provided no protection to tion of two Orthodox bishops in Syria. religious freedom threatens to under- the already vulnerable Christian com- In fact, the ongoing con!ict in Syria mine its already di&cult task of secur- munity. In some instances, the clergy and the American invasion of Iraq are ing a fully democratic government in went to local American military units linked by a common thread: the fail- Iraq”—more prescience that would be to beg for protection. None was given. ure of the U.S. to consider the e#ect of likewise disregarded. As Shea noted at the time, the admin- its foreign policy on vulnerable reli- Iraq’s diasporic Christian commu- istration and the State Department— gious communities, especially Middle nity in America had also foreseen the whose record on Christian minorities Eastern Christians. danger and quickly took action, help- and religious freedom leaves much to In March 2003, on the eve of war ing thousands of refugees with hu- be desired—still refused to “acknowl- in Iraq, Pope John Paul II dispatched manitarian assistance. $e Chaldean edge that the Christians and other de- Cardinal Pio Laghi, a senior Vatican Federation’s Joseph Kassab, himself fenseless minorities are persecuted for diplomat, to Washington to make a "- a refugee from Baathist Iraq decades reasons of religion.” nal plea to Bush not to invade. Laghi, before, advocated zealously for their A month a%er the murder of Arch- chosen for his close ties to the Bush protection. Kassab’s brother Jabrail, bishop Rahho, President Bush ad- family, outlined “clearly and forcefully” a Chaldean archbishop, helped orga- dressed the National Catholic Prayer the Vatican’s fears of what would follow nize relief in Iraq during the Western- Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Joseph an invasion: protracted war, signi"cant imposed sanctions that lasted from Kassab had been invited to pray the casualties, violence between ethnic and 1991–2003, doing “all that he could Hail Mary and Our Father in Aramaic religious groups, regional destabiliza- to help the Iraqi people—Christians following Bush’s remarks, an act of soli- tion, “and a new gulf between Christi- and Muslims together.” Jabrail Kassab darity with the Christians of the Arab anity and Islam.” $e warning was not remained at his post until October world. “I had two or three minutes heeded. 2006, when a Syrian Orthodox priest, with the president behind the curtains,” Two weeks a%er the Bush-Laghi Fr. Paulos Eskander, was abducted and Kassab said in a recent interview. “He meeting, Operation Iraqi Freedom beheaded, a%er which Pope Benedict said he thought you had to "x the whole commenced. Shortly a%er combat op- ordered him to leave Iraq. Fr. Eskan- picture before coming to the other ele- erations concluded on May 1, the real der’s murder was part of a campaign ments. It was disappointing. He knew con!ict began. Amid the chaos and that targeted the most conspicuous of it was a failure and his administration sectarian violence that followed, Iraq’s Christians—the clergy. refused to acknowledge that.”

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Rosie Malek-Yonan, an Assyrian without any apparent thought to the and cruci"xion, according to Amnesty Christian who testi"ed before Con- consequences. As in Iraq, the insur- International. gress, would call the Bush administra- gent Islamist campaign in Syria targets When he came to o&ce, President tion a “silent accomplice” to “incipient priests, the most visible symbols of the Bush famously scribbled in a report genocide.” Anglican Canon Andrew Christian faith. on the Clinton administration’s inac- White of Baghdad’s Ecumenical Con- $e protection and perseverance of tion during the Rwandan genocide, gregation captured the reality bluntly: minority religious communities—in- “Not on my watch.” Bill Clinton today “All of my leadership were taken and deed, of religious freedom—contin- admits that inaction in Rwanda is his killed—all dead.” ues to be a low priority for the State greatest regret. One day Bush may $ose Iraqi Christians who !ed to Department under the Obama ad- look back on the neglect of the Middle America encountered tremendous ministration. $e U.S. fails to obstacles in seeking asylum. Many recognize that the Islamist- Chaldeans and Assyrians were de- Wahabbist commitment to Democracy in the Middle East tained, until their cases could be heard, eradicating Christian minori- is proving less tolerant than in what an attorney familiar with the ties today will result in the situation describes as “prisons,” add- extinction of diverse modes of the regimes it has succeeded. ing that she “never worked on a case Islam tomorrow, a fact that is where a Chaldean was granted asylum, not lost on moderate Muslims. but I heard that it happened.” $rough- $e objective of the Iraq War—to East’s Christians with similar regret. out these deportation proceedings, the democratize the Middle East—may Cardinal Laghi has recalled that Bush administration and the State Depart- yet be realized. But democracy in the “seemed to truly believe in a war of ment steadfastly refused to recognize Middle East is proving less tolerant good against evil” and that his work the conditions from which they were than the regimes it has succeeded. Un- was providential. “You might start, and !eeing—which the U.S. had helped to less swi% action is taken, the region’s you don’t know how to end it,” the prel- bring about—as “persecution.” In con- democracies will evolve into bastions ate warned. In a broad sense the Iraq sequence, most were deported. of intolerance and violence beyond War continues, and with it the extinc- Ironically, hundreds of thousands our comprehension. $ese democra- tion of Middle Eastern Christians. of Christians would "nd refuge in the cies will not march ineluctably toward quasi-autonomous republic of Kurd- liberty and pluralism, as some naïve Andrew Doran served on the Executive istan in northern Iraq. “$ey arrived,” Westerners continue to forecast de- Secretariat of the U.S. National Commission Kassab noted, “with nothing on their spite the evidence, but will end in the for UNESCO at the U.S. Department of State, backs, and the Kurds came to the res- ordered barbarism of Saudi Arabia, where he has since worked as a consultant. cue.” Traveling to the region to assist where punishments include beheading His views are his own. with resettlement e#orts, Kassab ob- served a Kurdish government willing, despite inadequate resources, to help the !eeing Christians. $e Kurds went Tomb of the Four Freedoms to the U.S. government, which they believed was partly responsible for the New York’s cold monument FDR’s internationalist vision refugee crisis, to ask for help. “$is fell by LEWIS MCCRARY on deaf ears,” Kassab recalls. Today Iraqi Kurdistan is assimilating espite his recognition as in!uenced by the remains of temples refugees from a neighboring country one of the great modernists and other sacred spaces, Kahn’s "nal torn apart by sectarian violence: Syria. of the 20th century, post- commission was a public monument. Among the refugees are more Iraqi war architect Louis Kahn New York City’s Franklin D. Roos- Christians, who originally !ed to the Dclaimed to be inspired by the crum- evelt Four Freedoms Park, designed by relative freedom and tolerance of Syria bling edi"ces of the ancients. A%er Kahn shortly before his death in 1974, only to "nd themselves again facing trips to Italy, Greece, and Egypt, he de- "nally opened last fall, four decades persecution, hunted by Syria’s rebels. veloped his signature style: “I thought a%er it was "rst conceived and several Many of these rebels are a&liated with of the beauty of ruins … of things generations a%er the 32nd president’s the al-Qaeda network. $e Obama which nothing lives behind … and 1941 speech setting out the moral case administration, bewilderingly, has so I thought of wrapping ruins round for the coming war in terms of “free- chosen to support Syria’s rebel groups buildings.” Fittingly for an architect dom of speech,” “freedom of worship,”

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines

“freedom from want,” and “freedom dominate the island. Yet one promi- blinded. $e entrance, a wide series of from fear.” $e Four Freedoms rhetoric nent reminder of the past, the 1856 shallow steps, is set into a 12-foot slab would outlive Roosevelt and become Smallpox Hospital, sits abandoned and that rises at an angle, like some an- a cornerstone of the American-led in advanced decay. Executed in the cient Aztec or Egyptian structure, and postwar international order, what was Gothic Revival style by James Renwick stands high enough to obscure what hoped to be a new era of perpetual Jr.—who also designed St. Patrick’s Ca- waits above and beyond. peace and universal human rights. thedral and the original Smithsonian Ascending this staircase suddenly $e new tribute to this grand vision Institution—it is a genuine ruin just reveals the memorial’s largest space, a occupies a dramatic space at the south- steps from Kahn’s newly constructed triangular plaza. Sparingly landscaped, ern tip of a narrow island in the East one. it features a lawn !anked by two sym- metrical rows of linden trees, under Tommy Kim Photography (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) which cobblestone paths meet at the same point several hundred feet away. $e converging walkways are an im- pressive visual trick, making the space appear larger than it is. $e clean lines "rst evoke a Parisian green, but the lack of furniture re- minds one that despite its designation as a park, this is not a place for leisure. Indeed the memorial’s posted rules require that visitors leave picnics and pets at home in order to “preserve its sanctity.” $e lawn space instead acts as the nave of a cathedral, a place that points to more hallowed precincts be- yond. At the terminus of both arboreal colonnades—the formal tone suggests walking on the grass is scorned—one is deposited in front of a Goliath-sized bust of FDR. Suspended in a large, re- cessed niche, it appears to !oat like the River between Manhattan and Queens. Given the island’s slender pro"le, giant head in the Wizard of Oz. Around the same time the memorial under 800 feet wide in most places, a But beyond this portrayal of Roo- was commissioned, the city renamed visitor en route to Four Freedoms Park sevelt as the Oracle of Hyde Park lies the 147 acres a%er FDR, and today cannot avoid encountering the former Kahn’s most dramatic feature. On ei- Roosevelt Island is an increasingly up- hospital, which o&cials plan to stabi- ther side of the small forecourt con- scale urban neighborhood, its thou- lize but leave in its current romantic taining the bust, one enters a space sands of residents connected to mid- condition. Dark stone walls, embattled that widens slightly to form an outdoor town Manhattan by an aerial tramway. parapets, and pointed-arch windows room, open to the sky but surrounded But it wasn’t always so idyllic. Before provide the illusion of medieval origin, on three sides by 12-foot-high slabs of the FDR rebranding, it was known for and it is hard to imagine a more strik- gleaming white granite. Upon crossing decades as Welfare Island, a legacy of ing contrast to the FDR memorial and the threshold to this tomb-like space, its history as the place where the city the new era it represents. $e age of the one directly faces the fourth side, com- sent all its undesirables. From the early charity hospital, imperfect but ornate, pletely open to the river and the Man- 19th century, the sick, insane, and des- gives way to the abstract yet shining hattan skyline, prominently framing titute—and until the 1930s, most of the promise of the new world order and the United Nations complex. city’s convicts—were housed in this the welfare state, a place where diseases Here anyone who has been to presi- purgatory in the East River. like smallpox are eradicated. dential memorials in Washington ex- Most of the infrastructure of pris- Approaching Kahn’s park—a se- pects to see the words of the great man ons and asylums has been demolished ries of outdoor spaces surrounded by chiseled into the tablets for the ages. or repurposed, and today high-rises bright white granite—one is nearly On one central panel the visitor is not

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 disappointed. Ninety-seven words that monument commissioned by FDR Whether the lack of similar energy form the key passage of the 1941 State himself used four angels to represent in the new FDR memorial is due to of the Union address are faithfully re- the freedoms—once revealed to great the shortfalls of Kahn’s method or the produced, ensuring one doesn’t leave fanfare in Madison Square Garden, eclipse of the Four Freedoms interna- without actually encountering Roos- it now resides in obscurity in a small tionalist vision, the park is a missed evelt’s formulation of the Four Free- town in the Florida panhandle, home- opportunity—it was a place positioned doms: town of an early war hero who died in to be an American analog to Paris’s Île combat at Pearl Harbor. de la Cité, the site of Notre Dame. But In the future days, which we seek One of the most famous depictions visitors to Roosevelt Island can instead to make secure, we look forward of political freedom lies downstream take a page from the Victorians and to a world founded upon four es- from Roosevelt Island in New York picnic under the ruins of Renwick’s sential human freedoms. $e "rst Harbor. $e Statue of Liberty provides hospital, remembering a time when is freedom of speech and expres- an allegory that enables many potent monuments drew on the full range of sion—everywhere in the world. narratives, including the celebrated human passions, displaying those elu- $e second is freedom of every lines from the sonnet inscribed at its sive qualities that lie between form and person to worship God in his own base: “Give me your tired, your poor function but make all the di#erence. way—everywhere in the world. / Your huddled masses yearning to $e third is freedom from want breathe free …” It is an image that en- Lewis McCrary is managing editor of $e … everywhere in the world. $e dures because it tells a powerful story. National Interest. fourth is freedom from fear … anywhere in the world. $at is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a de"nite basis for a kind of John Boyd’s Art of War world attainable in our own time and generation. Why our greatest military theorist only made colonel. by WILLIAM S. LIND A score of additional slabs line the 60-square-foot space, all unadorned. # and on for about 20 years, his slower opponent’s actions are too $e overall e#ect is more unsettling I had the honor of work- late and therefore irrelevant—as he than inspiring—a feeling that the tab- ing with the greatest mili- desperately seeks convergence, he gets ernacle is empty. Gazing a short dis- tary theorist America ever ever increasing divergence. At some tance across the water at Turtle Bay, the Oproduced, Col. John Boyd, USAF. As point, he realizes he can do nothing UN complex, perhaps the most lasting a junior o&cer, Boyd developed the that works. $at usually leads him ei- legacy of FDR’s vision, appears as a sad energy-management tactics now used ther to panic or to give up, o%en while relic of another era, when the victori- by every "ghter pilot in the world. still physically largely intact. ous Allies were con"dent that a per- Later, he in!uenced the designs of the $e OODA Loop explains how and manent international order would rise F-15 and F-16, saving the former from why $ird Generation maneuver war- from the ashes of World War II. becoming the turkey we are now buy- fare, such as the German Blitzkrieg In choosing Kahn, Roosevelt Is- ing in the F-35 and making the latter method, works. It describes exactly land’s planners may have simply been the best "ghter aircra% on the planet. what happened to the French in 1940, deferring to a man considered one of His magnum opus, a 12-hour brie"ng when Germany defeated what was the most cutting-edge architects of titled “Patterns of Con!ict,” remains a considered the strongest army on earth the 1970s. But their choice has inad- vast mine of military wisdom, one un- in six weeks with only about 27,000 vertently resulted in a monument that likely to be exhausted in this century. German dead, tri!ing casualties by presents the Four Freedoms as a cold, Boyd is best known for coming up World War I standards. $e French ac- technical formula. Both Kahn’s monu- with the OODA Loop or Boyd Cycle. tually had more and better tanks than ment and FDR’s doctrine overempha- He posited that all con!ict is composed the Germans. size form at the expense of narrative. of repeated, time-competitive cycles of It is also a partial explanation for our Other attempts to canonize the Four observing, orienting, deciding, and repeated defeats by Fourth Generation Freedoms were more successful. Nor- acting. $e most important element is non-state entities. Our many layers of man Rockwell’s series of paintings on orientation: whoever can orient more headquarters, large sta#s, and central- them helped the U.S. Treasury raise quickly to a rapidly changing situation ized decision-making give us a slow $132 million in war bonds. Another acquires a decisive advantage because OODA Loop compared to opponents

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines whose small size and decentralized command enable a fast one. A Marine o&cer stationed with our counter-drug tra&c e#ort in Bolivia told me the traf- "ckers went through the Loop 12 times in the time it took us to go through it once. I mentioned that to Colonel Boyd, and he replied, “$en we’re not even in the game.” Another of Boyd’s contributions to military theory explains more of our failure in recent con!icts. To the tra- ditional levels of war—tactical, opera- tional, and strategic—Boyd added three new ones: physical, mental, and moral. It is useful to think of these as forming a nine-box grid, with tactical, operation- al, and strategic on one axis and physi- cal, mental, and moral on the other. Our armed forces focus on the single box de"ned by tactical and physical, where we are vastly superior. But non-state John Boyd during the Korean War forces focus on the strategic and the moral, where they are o%en stronger, in Being involved in every con!ict on our current condition that the greatest part because they represent David con- earth is useful if the real game is boost- military theorist we ever produced re- fronting Goliath. In war, a higher level ing the Pentagon’s budget rather than tired as a colonel. At John’s funeral in trumps a lower, so our repeated victo- serving our national interests. Here Arlington, which I attended, most of ries at the tactical, physical level are ne- too Boyd had a favorite line. He o%en the people in uniform were junior Ma- gated by our enemies’ successes on the said, “It is not true the Pentagon has rine o&cers. His own service, the Air strategic and moral levels, and we lose. no strategy. It has a strategy, and once Force, was barely represented. Boyd had a reservoir of comments he you understand what that strategy is, John’s work was o%en elegant, but in repeated regularly, one of which was, “A everything the Pentagon does makes person he was always the direct, and lot of people in Washington talk about sense. $e strategy is, don’t interrupt sometimes crude, "ghter pilot. Boyd’s strategy. Most of them can spell the the money !ow, add to it.” favorite, inelegant phrase for defeating word, but that’s all they know of it.” $e Perhaps Boyd’s most frequently ut- one of his many opponents in the Pen- establishment’s insistence on an o#en- tered warning was, “All closed sys- tagon was “giving him the whole en- sive grand strategy, where we attempt tems collapse.” Both our military and chilada right up the poop chute.” $at to force secular liberal democracy down our policy-making civilian elite live is what history will shortly give this the throats of every people on earth, is in closed systems. Because Second country if we continue to allow closed a major reason for our involvement and Generation war reduces everything to systems to lead us. Boyd’s work, which defeat in Fourth Generation con!icts. putting "repower on targets, when we is best summarized in Frans Osinga’s A defensive grand strategy, which is fail against Fourth Generation oppo- book Science, Strategy and War: !e what this country followed success- nents, the military’s only answer is to Strategic !eory of John Boyd, could fully through most of its history, would put more "repower on more targets. put us on a di#erent course. But learn- permit us to fold our enemies back on Ideas about other ways of waging war ing from Boyd would require open sys- themselves, something Boyd recom- are ignored because they do not "t the tems in Washington. Perhaps a%er the mended. With us out of the picture, closed Second Generation paradigm. establishment collapses, Boyd can help their internal "ssures, such as those be- Meanwhile, Washington cannot con- us pick up the pieces. tween Sunni and Shiites in the Islamic sider alternatives to our current foreign world, would become their focus. But as policy or grand strategy because any- William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver usual, Boyd was right: virtually no one one who proposes one is immediately Warfare Handbook and director of the in Washington can understand the ad- exiled from the establishment, as was American Conservative Center for Public vantages of a defensive grand strategy. Boyd himself. It says something about Transportation.

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Made in America PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

What China Is About

s America grew in the times contemptuous. Here is a partial engage in cyber-espionage, and thieve 1800s from a republic of a list of the targets of Chinese cyber-es- our national and corporate secrets. Is few millions, whose frontier pionage: $e Wall Street Journal. $e this the behavior of friends or partners? stopped at the Mississippi, New York Times. Bloomberg. Google. For years they have engaged in cy- Ainto a world power, there were con- Yahoo. Dow Chemical. Lockheed Mar- ber-espionage. $ey know we know it, stant collisions with the world’s great- tin. Northrop Grumman. Secretary of and they have seen us back o% calling est empire. State Hillary Clinton. Chairman of the them out. For years we have threat- In 1812, we declared war on Brit- Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen. Los ened to charge them with currency ain, tried to invade Canada, and got Alamos and Oak Ridge nuclear-weap- manipulation, and for years we have our Capitol burned. In 1818, Andrew ons labs. $e classi!ed avionics of the backed o%. Jackson, on an expedition into Spanish F-35 !ghter jet. $e U.S. power grid. If they have concluded we are more Florida to put down renegade Indians U.S. computers are being hacked fearful of a confrontation than they, harassing Georgia, hanged two Brit- and secrets thieved, as Beijing steals are they wrong? Other than fear or ish subjects he had captured, creating the technology of our companies and cowardice, what other explanation a !restorm in Britain. manipulates her currency to minimize is there for our failure to stand up to In 1838, we came close to war over imports from the U.S.A. and maximize China, when its behavior has been so Canada’s border with Maine; in 1846, exports to the U.S.A. egregious and insulting? over Canada’s border with the Oregon No one wants a war with China, Does America fear facing down Chi- Territory. and provocative though it is, China’s na because a political and economic A"er the Civil War, Fenians con- conduct does not justify a war that collision with Beijing would entail an ducted forays into Canada to start a would be a calamity for both nations. admission by the United States that our U.S.-British battle that might bring But China’s behavior demands a reap- vision of a world of democratic nations Ireland’s independence. In 1895, we praisal of our China policy over the all engaged in peaceful free trade un- clashed over the border between Ven- past 20 years. der a rules-based regime was a willful ezuela and British Guiana. Consider what we have done for act of self-delusion? War was avoided on each occasion, China. We granted her Most Favored What China is about is as old as the save 1812. Yet all carried the possibility Nation trade status, brought her into history of man. She is a rising ethno- of military con#ict between the world’s the World Trade Organization, threw national state doing what such powers rising power and its reigning power. open the world’s largest market to have always done: put their own inter- Observing the pugnacity of 21st-cen- Chinese goods, encouraged U.S. com- ests ahead of all others, suppress ethnic tury China, there appear to be parallels panies to site plants there, and allowed minorities like Tibetans and Uighurs, with the aggressiveness of 19th-centu- China to run trillions of dollars in and crush religious dissenters like ry America. trade surpluses at our expense. Christians and Falun Gong. China is now quarreling with India In 2012, China’s trade surplus with $ere is no New World Order. Never over borders. Beijing claims as her na- the United States was over $300 billion, was. $e old demons—chauvinism and tional territory the entire South and the largest in history between any two ethno-nationalism—are not ancient East China Seas and all the islands, nations. What has China done with the history. $ey are not extinct. $ey are reefs, and resources therein, dismissing wealth accumulated from those trade with us forever. And America is not go- the claims of half a dozen neighbors. surpluses with the United States? How ing to be able to deny reality much lon- Beijing has bullied Japan and the Phil- has she shown her gratitude? ger or put o% facing up to what China ippines and told the U.S. Navy to stay She has used that wealth to lock up is all about. Given her current size and out of the Yellow Sea and Taiwan Strait. resources in $ird World countries, disposition, one day soon we are going In dealing with America, China has build a world-class military, confront to have to stop feeding the tiger. And begun to exhibit an attitude that is at America’s friends in neighboring seas, start sanctioning it.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Ideas

Story Lines, Not Party Lines Why conservatives must master the narrative art

by ROD DREHER

ere’s a story for you. For years I devoted at all but rather the art and the saints that the faith much of my journalism—op-eds, blogs, produces—that is, the stories Christians tell and live. even a book about cultural politics—to Similarly, the ideals I held to be true did not speak to lamenting the rootlessness of American me with authority—at least, not authority su$cient to Hlife and prescribing solutions for it from within the command me to pack up my U-Haul and drive—until conservative intellectual tradition. Yet I never quite I saw them lived out in my sister’s narrative. found the wherewithal to live as I preached. It’s as if I Such is the power of story. didn’t !nd my own arguments convincing. Argument has its place, but story is what truly "en, from my home in faraway Philadelphia, I moves the hearts and minds of men. "e power of watched my sister Ruthie die slowly from cancer, myth—which is to say, of storytelling—is the power cared for by family and community in our south Loui- to form and enlighten the moral imagination, which siana hometown. "e doctrines and ideals I professed is how we learn right from wrong, the proper ordering as true unexpectedly took concrete form in the heart- of our souls, and what it means to be human. Rus- breaking story unfolding there. sell Kirk, the author of !e Conservative Mind whose When we arrived from Philadelphia for the funeral, own longtime residence in his Michigan hometown my wife and I were overwhelmed by what we saw. At earned him the epithet “Sage of Mecosta,” considered the little Methodist church where my family has been tending the moral imagination to be “conservatism at baptized, married, and given funeral rites for genera- its highest.” tions, over a thousand townspeople stood outside in "rough the stories we tell, we come to understand the heat and amid mosquitoes to pass by Ruthie’s body who we are and what we are to do. "is is true for both and pay their respects. Many of them were my school- individuals and communities. teacher sister’s friends, colleagues, and former students. Stories, as carriers of ideas, have consequences. Lin- Nearly all had, in some way, helped support Ruthie and coln, upon meeting Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet her family throughout her 19-month ordeal. Beecher Stowe, supposedly remarked, “Is this the little In that church, on that night, I had an epiphany. "is woman who made the great war?” is what community means. "is is the way my sister Kirk understood that the world might be won or lived: rooted in and faithful to the community that nur- lost on front porches, in bedrooms at night, around tured her, and that she in turn helped to nurture. family hearths, in movie theaters and anywhere young My wife and I experienced a conversion. Stand- people hear, see, or read the stories that !ll and illumi- ing under a live oak tree in front of the church, we nate their moral imaginations. If you do not give them grasped that what the people in St. Francisville, Loui- good stories, they will seek out bad ones. siana, had, we needed. "e poetry of Ruthie’s passion “And the consequences will be felt not merely in and the drama of the characters that played their parts their failure of taste,” Kirk said, “but in their misap- did for my wife and me what syllogisms and abstrac- prehension of human nature, lifelong; and eventually, tions could not—change our hearts and, in turn, our in the whole tone of a nation.” lives. Days later, we went back to Philadelphia, told True story: in 2003, I watched a segment of ABC’s our friends goodbye, and soon therea#er moved to “PrimeTime Live” in which Diane Sawyer pro!led the my Louisiana hometown. quest of a gay male couple to adopt a baby from an un- What happened brings to mind Pope Benedict wed teen mother. "e couple was plainly unprepared XVI’s observation that the most convincing argu- ments for Christianity aren’t propositional arguments Rod Dreher blogs at www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher.

12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 to raise a child, and though their fatherhood ex- periment failed, Sawyer concluded her charm- ing piece with unambiguous sympathy for them and for the cause of gay adoption. I knew that night that we were going to have gay marriage in this country. "e news media were only going to tell one kind of story about marriage, family, and homosexuality—and eventually this narrative, repeated o#en enough, would determine politics and policy. Ten years later, with the false, distorted, and simplistic an- ti-gay narratives of the past having been wholly replaced by false, distorted, and simplistic pro- gay narratives, a cultural revolution has substan- tially been achieved. Stories have consequences. Societies governed strongly by tradition keep their collective wisdom alive through storytelling,

says Baylor University literature professor (and Hogue Michael TAC blogger) Alan Jacobs. So why are contempo- rary conservatives so lousy at telling stories? In Jacobs’s view, conservatives have “done what other Americans have done: they’ve o%- loaded the responsibility for storytelling to the mass media. “And as, thanks to the upheavals of the Six - ties, the mass media shi#ed further and further Le#, Micah Mattix, who teaches literature at Houston conservatives found themselves stuck with stories told Baptist University, also gets this. "at’s one reason he’s by people who didn’t share their beliefs,” he continues. launched Prufrock, a daily e-mail newsletter compil- “By the time they began to realize that this was a prob- ing links to worthwhile writing on art, literature, and lem, they had lost the habit of making their own cul- ideas, hoping to awaken fellow conservatives to the ture, and had no cultural institutions they could draw good within contemporary art and storytelling. It is, upon to train up their young people in really thought- one imagines, a hard sell, given the prejudices today’s ful and culturally serious ways.” conservatives inherit from historical experience. Mat- What’s more, says Jacobs, having gone through two tix explains that as long as anyone today has been or three generations in which serious storytelling, alive, artists have o#en associated their project with across all media, has been associated with cultural the goals of progressivism and radicalism. liberalism, the right faces a situation in which its cre- “Other than Futurism, most art movements in the ative children are o%ered a choice: serious culture or 20th century have been sympathetic to the Le#,” Mat- conservatism. tix says. “"ere’s this idea that you see in Picasso, and I get this. As a bookish kid struggling to !nd a place a number of poets, of using art as a ‘weapon’ against in a world of hunting, !shing, and athletics, I was of- tyranny and war—these things being embodied by fered refuge in art, literature, and music my ninth- Franco, Hitler, Mussolini. "ough his poems weren’t grade English teacher. She was quite liberal, but she very political, Frank O’Hara used to refer to some of was the only person I knew who shared the passion them as ‘bullets’ in this sense.” for creativity awakening inside me. I came to be- "e point is not that art and narrative are designed lieve that all people who were serious about art were to manipulate, but rather that stories are unavoidably naturally liberal—and I became liberal too, for years. bearers of worldview. "is fact leads some on the right Over the years, I’ve seen that most of my conservative to conclude, crudely, that the solution is to raise up a friends who are artistically inclined became so in spite generation to create art infused with conservative ide- of their conservatism—that is, despite the fact that the ology—as if culture-making, of which storytelling is right-wingers they knew disdained the arts as e%ete key, could be reduced to ideological utility. and impractical. A love for art and literature was not In a 1995 Heritage Foundation lecture, historian part of the conservative story, as they received it. Wilfred M. McClay told a wonderful parable illustrat-

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Ideas

ing the problem with viewing story as merely a means ture war having turned so decisively against conserva- to an end. A tourist wandering through the back al- tives, perhaps it’s not surprising if a besieged minority leys of San Francisco’s Chinatown !nds his way into fears it cannot a%ord the luxury of ambiguity. an antique store. A bronze statue of a rat catches his “Could it be that if you’re in a position of power, eye, and he asks for its price. you can risk ambiguity in telling your story,” asks Mat- “"e rat costs twelve dollars,” the shopkeeper says, tix, “But if you’re !ghting against that story, as conser- “and it will be a thousand dollars more for the story vatives have been doing, the tendency might be to feel behind it.” that we can’t risk people not getting it the !rst time "e tourist, being a shrewd American, pays for the around, so we have to be crystal-clear and say every- rat, telling the old man he can keep his costly story. thing in black and white?” Walking away from the shop, the tourist sees rats Still, it’s a dead end—creatively, philosophically, emerge from the sewer drain and begin to follow him. and politically—for conservatives to mimic le#-wing As he strides faster, a mass of rats swarm behind him. storytellers. Running for the harbor pursued by thousands of ro- For one thing, conservatives today lack the artistic dents, the terri!ed tourist climbs a lamppost and hurls skill to tell stories as well as the le# does. More philo- the statue into the Bay. "e rat horde follows its idol sophically, the business of a conservatism with integ- into the water, and drowns. rity is not to impose an idealistic ideological narrative "e tourist runs back to the antique shop, and con- on reality but rather to try to see the world as it is and fronts the smiling shopkeeper. “So now you’ve seen respond to its challenges within the limits of what we what the statue can do, and you’ve come back to !nd know about human nature. out the story?” asks the Chinese man. Today, movement conservatism has made this task “No, no, no,” says the tourist. “Now I want to buy a more di$cult because the stories conservatives tell bronze statue of a lawyer!” themselves about themselves are exhausted and have "e tale means more than the punch line indicates, taken on the characteristics of brittle dogma. "e great McClay told his audience. It reveals, he said, “a char- challenges facing conservatism today are not those of acteristic American attitude toward the past”: that if the postwar era and cannot be meaningfully addressed the statue can achieve intended results, the story that by Reaganesque narratives. "e things we cherish are accompanies it doesn’t matter. not primarily under threat by statism in either its Soviet McClay’s point is relevant to the way many latter- or social democratic versions. "e more relevant prob- day American conservatives regard storytelling. To lem is how to preserve authoritative lessons about the recognize that worldviews inhere in stories is not the good life in an era characterized by triumphant global same as believing that they simply determine anyone’s capitalism and autonomous individualism. worldview. "is is because stories work by indirec- Conservatism has within it the capacity to answer tion: not by telling us what to believe but by helping these challenges, but not if conservatives cling to sto- us to experience emotionally and imaginatively what ries that have lost their salience. We don’t need stories it is like to embody particular ideas. that o%er prepackaged ideological answers to ques- If story is true to human experience, there will be tions few people are asking. We need stories like the an element of ambiguity in the telling, and this is one told in the comments section of my blog on the something ideologues of all stripes—from postmod- American Conservative website by a Texas reader. ernists in English departments to Christians of the "e reader, who asked to remain anonymous, re- sort who chastised Flannery O’Connor for not telling called how his West Texas hometown disappeared in “nice” stories—cannot abide. the 1980s and 1990s, its native population dispersed. "is is why Mattix, who trained in economics before It had to do with the collapse of government support studying literature in graduate school, believes that for farm programs, which occasioned a localized de- a properly understood conservatism—one thinks of pression. Yet those same New Deal-inspired govern- Kirk’s observation that conservatism is “the negation ment programs, which had been meant to support of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a those communities, incentivized bad agricultural and way of looking at the civil social order”—has far more !nancial practices. Government, having lured farm- in common with literary art than many people think. ers out onto the limb of dependence, sawed o% the “At its root, conservatism acknowledges that humans branch behind them, at the same time the oil-price are sel!sh with an aptitude for evil,” he says. “"is, in collapse devastated the Texas economy. my view, is more accurate than progressivism’s belief in Families lost their farms. "e town bled out of all the inherent goodness of mankind.” Yet with the cul- the people the reader grew up with. "ey were in time

14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 displaced by Mexican migrants getting by on seasonal by reading studies, position papers, and op-eds. work and welfare. Liquor stores now play a central MacDonald came from a working-class west- role in Main Street commerce. “I miss the hometown ern Pennsylvania family, graduated from Yale, and where I grew up,” wrote the man, now in Dallas. “It worked in Washington journalism at Reason before doesn’t exist anymore.” returning home to raise his kids. His experience has "is Texas story is politically ambiguous, in that taught him how hapless the right is at understanding it tells a story about how federal policies—some au- the power of storytelling. thored by the New Dealers, others by Reaganites— “"e smart people on the Right are working in the doomed his town. "e facts fail to conform to ideol- conservative infrastructure,” he says. “You want a con- ogy: it’s possible to read the story and come away with servative view on healthcare? It comes from Heritage, di%erent political and policy conclusions. Yet the sto- or maybe the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. Except ry incarnates policy debates in the lives of real people. most people don’t care. It’s too confusing.” Enter into a story like that and ideological abstrac- It would make a much greater di%erence, MacDon- tions seem both incapable of describing the world as ald believes, if conservatives were bringing their in- it is and telling us how to act in it. sights to bear writing for the network medical drama We need stories like the one told by Sam MacDon- “Grey’s Anatomy.” But that is hard to imagine, he says. ald, a libertarian journalist who helps administer a To become a truly creative minority, Micah Mattix small-town hospital near Pittsburgh. He’s neck-deep advises, conservatives need to throw o% the chains of in the healthcare policy debate and is struck by how ideology and teach themselves to recognize beauty in little most people care about its details. He’s also art and talents in artists that don’t easily !t our moral struck, as an industry insider, by how massively com- and political assumptions. "e skill with which cre- plex the system is and how di$cult it is for ordinary ative people tell their stories, in word, sound, and pic- people to understand. ture, should inspire conservatives to mastery of cra#. "is is where stories come in. MacDonald’s expe- Stories work so powerfully on the moral imagina- riences show that ordinary people understand policy tion because they are true to human experience in through storytelling. ways that polemical arguments are not. And because “Our way of discussing these issues doesn’t take the moral imagination o#en determines which intel- that into account,” MacDonald says. “We try to round lectual arguments—political, economic, theological, o% the edges with spreadsheets and best practices. We and so forth—will be admitted into consideration, try to build policies or align incentives. "at’s great. I storytelling is a vital precursor to social change. am all for e$ciency. “We need to learn to tell stories—‘To bend the ear “But that stu% misses what actually happens. Using of the outer world,’ in O’Hara’s line—to change culture spreadsheets to talk about healthcare is like trying to not today, but in a hundred years,” says Mattix. understand a strip club by analyzing its annual tax re- For his part, Sam MacDonald, an ideology-resistant turn.” conservative who has taught writing at the University Sam has this story about the neighborhood he grew of Pittsburgh, hopes to start a literary movement dedi- up in and how the people there received health care cated to telling the stories of working-class people of back in the day. In the story, Dolly, a little girl in the the Rust Belt. Recalling the Southern Agrarian literary 1940s, learned to take care of her sick neighbor and movement of the 1930s, MacDonald wants to do the saw how much nurses did to help the su%ering and same for the postindustrial culture of his native region. rally the community. It made Dolly want to be a nurse “"e Agrarians lamented that factory and town when she grew up. So that’s what Dolly became—and living destroyed community and family life. But the she was a good one. At 73, she still is. experience of Pittsburgh and, on a smaller scale, my Her son grew up admiring her, and eventually be- hometown, proved that wrong,” he says. “Someone coming what we call a “health care provider” himself. who is teaching can be the Allen Tate or John Crowe Now he’s the sort of man whose job it is to make sure Ransom of this movement. Someone who’s working a there are no more Nurse Dollys—that is, no more factory &oor can be the Wendell Berry. I’m not com- women like Dolly MacDonald, his own mother. "is paring myself to these guys, but someone needs to tale is about the demoralization of a community write about these things in a sustained way.” through the bureaucratization of health care. You can My own disa%ection with standard right-wing po- learn as much, and maybe more, about what’s hap- lemics, and the experience of writing about my sister’s pening in American health care by contemplating the experience and my return home, leads me to a similar story of Sam, his mother, and their community than conclusion. I !rst lived the story, then I wrote it down

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Ideas

in a memoir titled !e Little Way Of Ruthie Leming. Like my wife and I, the Swindells weren’t persuaded An interesting thing happened a#er that. Brian and to change their lives by argument; they were converted Julie Swindell, a pair of Louisiana expatriates living in by the power of story—the story of how my politically Florida, read my story this spring and discovered that unaware sister lived and died according to customs their longings for home and intuitions about the im- and traditions that can only be called conservative. portance of family had !nally found expression. "ey I contributed Ruthie’s story, and in turn my own, to decided to return home to raise their three children the moral imagination of my book’s readers, some of around their extended families. Julie’s mother wrote whom may, like the Swindells, use it to change their to thank me for my book, which she said gave her the own narratives and tell new stories. thing she had been longing for: a life with her children "is is not necessarily how a political party wins and grandchildren close to hand. elections. But it is how a culture is reborn.

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

evelopments in the Middle East frequently Some Turkey analysts believe that this crisis will not confound even the most astute observers. go away, leaving Erdogan with two options. He can DTurkey, with its booming economy, NATO resign “for the good of the country” and turn over the membership, and business-friendly government is prime ministership to some Justice and Development often cited as critical ally and model Muslim-majority Party nonentity as a placeholder for him. He will mean- state embracing many Western social and economic while work behind the scenes to increase the power values. The U.S. ambassador in Ankara, Francis of the presidency through tweaking the constitution Ricciardone, has nevertheless privately warned Prime and will run for that o"ce next year. Or he can call Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Washington for his supporters to confront the demonstrators, as will be unable to support his violent repression of in Mubarak’s Egypt. If security breaks down, the role demonstrators protesting massive government of the army could prove critical, and Erdogan is not development projects. greatly loved by many in the o"cer corps. The Turkish people have begun to refer to the Many Turks, even those who are religious, fear a drift Syrian conflict as Ankara’s Vietnam, while secular into the type of intolerance that characterizes Islamic Turks unite to push back against Islamization, and the regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Erdogan, saying country’s security services warn about a new wave of the demonstrators are “arm-in-arm with terrorism,” al-Qaeda style terrorism. The U.S. Embassy and CIA insists he will do what he wants, emboldened by his have been caught flatfooted by the developments. successful clamp down on the once vibrant press. The The State Department has had virtually no contact Taksim riots were largely unreported in the Turkish with opposition political parties because of fear of media, and Erdogan blamed the part that he does not o!ending Erdogan, a pattern similar to the one that control, online social networks, for the unrest. prevailed with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. CIA o"cers Erdogan’s authoritarianism and his Islamist beliefs are routinely subject to blanket surveillance by the appear to go hand in hand. The national air carrier Turkish intelligence service MIT and have conse - Turkish Airlines recently stopped serving alcohol on quently considered it prudent to avoid developmental most domestic and some international flights and air contact with any politicians, working instead against stewardesses have been told to refrain from wearing targets that Ankara would consider agreeable, like makeup and bright colors. The drinking of alcohol in terrorism. Beyond its limited understanding of the public and after certain hours was banned to “protect political opposition, the Embassy has generally new generations from such un-Islamic habits,” and in handled Erdogan with kid gloves, only gently rebuking an attempt to rewrite Turkey’s rich culinary history, the government’s execrable treatment of journalists Erdogan even declared the nonalcoholic yoghurt drink and the media while reserving most of its political ayran to be the national beverage, leading critics to influence to advance Turkish rapprochement with note that the modern republic’s founder, Mustafa Israel. CIA and State analysts have been scrambling Kemal Ataturk, was rarely seen in photos without a to come up with cogent finished intelligence explain- glass of alcoholic raki in hand. ing the deteriorating situation, but have found that they have little independent reporting to identify the Philip Giraldi, a former CIA o!cer, is executive players in the emerging opposition. director of the Council for the National Interest.

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Politics

Texas Water War Does economic growth trump property rights?

by HENRY CHAPPELL

he Sulphur River rises in northeast Texas economic contribution to the state gives them a right and !ows eastward through some of the last to it. If they prevail, 67,000 acres of prime hardwood and best hardwood bottomland in the state. bottomland—all privately owned—will be con- Culturally and ecologically, this region is demned, taken under eminent domain, and drowned Tthe South, a country of turbid waters !owing beneath beneath a reservoir that will supply water to a grow- white oak, bur oak, Shumard oak, and ash. Here a few ing Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. $en, to satisfy en- cowmen still work in the Cracker manner, with the vironmental requirements, additional land—as much help of rough “cur-dogs” that might pull night shi"s as 140,000 acres—will be condemned and set aside to baying feral hogs. mitigate the loss of high-quality wildlife habitat. Scattered about the region are small communi- $e taking of private property has a way of provok- ties—Cuthand, Naples, Omaha, Dalby Springs. All ing unlikely alliances—whether small farmers and an- support, and are supported by, farming, logging, and archists #ghting construction of the planned Aeroport the broader timber industry. Hunting and #shing are du Grand Ouest in France, elderly urban preserva- deeply embedded in the culture. Recreational hunters tionists and youthful hipsters beating back philistine from urban areas pay landowners for access to forest incursion from chain stores in America’s urban cores, and #eld and patronize local businesses. or in this case, Northeast Texas farmers, environmen- $e #rst Anglo settlers trickled into the region in talists, hunters, loggers, timber companies, and local 1820s and began displacing the Kickapoo, who had real estate agents #ghting to protect their indepen- settled there a"er the contagion-induced collapse of dence from outside power. the Caddo. Area farmers eked out a living growing Traditionalist conservatives concerned about com- cotton, peanuts, and corn. Half-wild cattle and swine munity and continuity and libertarians o%ended by foraged on open range. By the early 1940s, descen- threats to private property share common enemies dants of those who #rst plowed former Caddo land here, though these neighbors on the political right found themselves displaced when urban land buyers #ght on di%erent fronts. Libertarian economist Mur- began to put up fences to keep out free-range live- ray Rothbard dipped an anarchic toe into the roiling stock. Many smalltime stockmen le"; others resorted Texas waters in a 1993 article, “Environmentalists to sharecropping. Fence cutting was common. Clobber Texas.” Rothbard blamed environmentalists Some held on, however. $eir heirs still draw all and the Endangered Species Act, calling them egre- or part of their livelihoods from the land. But a new gious obstacles to private and municipal use of water threat looms. While sixth-generation Sulphur River and suggesting that the Sierra Club preserve endan- farmers look at their grandkids and see eighth-gen- gered “critters of various shapes and sizes” in zoos. eration landowners, 120 miles west, on the semi-arid More seriously, he suggested, Blackland Prairie, Dallas-area business interests and water developers see in the verdant Sulphur water- A longer-run solution [to water-use con!icts], shed the essence of unlimited urban and suburban of course, is to privatize the entire system of wa- prosperity. ter and water rights in this country … . If all re- $ey want Sulphur River water “to ensure contin- ued economic growth” and claim that their region’s Henry Chappell is a novelist and journalist in Parker, Texas.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Politics

sources are privatized, they will be allocated to not yet been formally condemned, they cannot be the most important uses by means of a free price used in any way that could interfere with future reser- system, as the bidders able to satisfy the consum- voir construction. If a farmer decides to cut his losses er demands in the most e&cient ways are able to and sell, what kind of price can he expect under this outcompete less able bidders for these resources. restriction on the property? Whether or not new reservoirs are required to meet He has a point. Water development is heavily sub- projected population growth and the economic goals of sidized, and Dallas-area residents and businesses are the Dallas-Fort Worth elite is a matter of #erce debate. among the most pro!igate water users in the state, in Landowners and environmentalists argue that needs part because they aren’t paying anywhere near true can be readily met with existing reservoirs and through market value. Surface water is treated as a public re- increased conservation and improved technology. In source—despite, in some cases, byzantine systems of his indispensable muckraking blog at !e Texas Ob- junior and senior water rights—and the citizens of server, Forrest Wilder summed up the view of most northeast Texas can’t claim Sulphur River water as reservoir skeptics: “$ere’s big money in building res- their own. By extension, since !owing water must be ervoirs, but not so much in #xing leaky pipes… I mean, impounded for use by large municipalities, landown- who’s lobbying for a sensible plumbing code?” ers in the Sulphur watershed now stand to lose prop- As it happens, the engineering analysis that forms erty that has been in their families since before the fall the basis of Dallas region’s water plan was performed of the Alamo. by Freese and Nichols—the Fort Worth #rm likely to receive the lion’s share of the reservoir-engineering he proposed impoundment, named Marvin contract. TNichols Reservoir in honor of one of the found- Is this cronyism a Texas thing, or is it representative ers of Freese & Nichols, Inc., a Fort Worth engineer- of powerful bodies everywhere that push for giant en- ing #rm, will cost an estimated $3.3 billion. A 2002 gineering projects that require eminent domain? Must study by the Texas State Forest Service estimated that such projects go forward because “these people are construction of Marvin Nichols Reservoir would cost coming” or so that “these people will come”? And how the northeast Texas economy 400-1,300 jobs and $87- will the projected bene#ts be distributed—put another $275 million annually. way, how will the natural wealth be redistributed? But like old Jeremy Bentham tallying “hedons” and At #rst blush, this kind of disruption seems a perfect “dolors” to calculate the greatest good for the greatest example of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called number, urban business interests, water developers, capitalism’s “perennial gale of creative destruction.” and politicians make a utilitarian case for eminent do- Yet what’s creative about the destruction of land and main. $eir accounting involves population growth, livelihoods in the Sulphur River basin; what advances economic growth, and especially, of course, jobs. $ey have made stock farming and logging in that region assure us that while they feel for rural landowners, we obsolete? Is this not simply a transfer of vast human must face reality and look to the future. $e landown- and natural capital from one region to another? ers will be fairly compensated. In 2007, I attended a meeting of the state Senate n “Prospects for the Proletariat,” Russell Kirk de- Committee on Natural Resources. At issue was a bill Iscribed the destruction wrought by urban renewal that would “designate” 19 future reservoir sites, includ- on venerable working class neighborhoods in Detroit. ing sites on the Sulphur River. A dozen or so citizens expressed their opposition or support. A Fort Worth What resulted were urban deserts and urban jun- attorney explained with reptilian equanimity that all gles, not renewal; great pro#ts, though, were made opposition was futile, and in a moment of poorly hid- by eminent developers and contractors … $e den exasperation, a pro-reservoir senator said, “Like newcomers to Detroit had only begun to settle into it or not, these millions of people are coming. It’s our tolerable community … when down the streets responsibility to make sure the needed water is there.” came the federal bulldozer. Where to !ee now? In a bitter legislative battle that year, urban inter- ests—to the accompaniment of constant tub-thump- Land grabs like the proposed Sulphur River proj- ing by editorialists at the Dallas Morning News—pre- ects—or like China’s $ree Gorges Dam, which sent vailed. Many northeast Texas landowners now walk millions of peasants streaming into the cities—repre- pastures and woodlands that have been designated as sent proletarianization on an egregious scale. possible reservoir sites. Although the properties have At a bar in Omaha, Texas, I met a self-employed

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 logger who’d spent his working life in the Sulphur We’ve been in this #ght for about 10 years, and I ex- River basin. A huge, bearded man right out of cen- pect my son and grandkids will take up the #ght too.” tral casting, he bred and trained mules for pulling logs Andrew Sansom, Executive Director of the Mead- from places where industrial skidders would be too ows Institute for Water and the Environment at Texas destructive. “$at reservoir will probably put me out State University-San Marcos, writes in In Water for of business,” he said. Texas: An Introduction, “We must #nd a way to move What does a middle-aged logger do a"er the water westward in Texas. $is is inevitable, but, again, source of his livelihood is inundated or put o%-limits? the prospect of interbasin transfer is one that is not “Where to !ee now?” To the city, perhaps, where he universally accepted.” Inevitable, perhaps—and even can compete amid the burgeoning workforce that democratic, given that residents of Dallas Fort-Worth justi#es the reservoir that prevents him from earning far outnumber those of the Sulphur River basin. But a living in his home region. No doubt the economy will boom. Besides the obvious disruptions, a growth-at-all-costs ideology that treats land, water, and communities as nothing but raw material in!icts insidious damage to the foundations of constitutionalism. In Ideas Have Consequences, conservative thinker Richard Weaver argued that the right of private property is “the last meta- physical right remaining to us,” the only one to survive the “rancorous, leveling winds of utilitarianism.” Drawing on Locke and Je%erson, Weaver called widely distrib- uted ownership of small property the most e%ective barrier against an encroaching state and predatory capitalism. “Respect- ers of private property are really obligated to oppose much that is done today in the name of private enterprise,” he wrote. Similarly, in How to !ink Seriously About the Planet, philosopher Roger Scruton ar- gues that love and community arise from a sense of permanence. But if no place is safe from plunder, then no place can be safely loved. Over time, nihilism will pervade. Gary and Dolores Cheatwood have spent Michael Hogue their lives in the community of Cuthand, in Red River County. $ey own 600 acres, nearly all of it timber of the highest grade. Gary was born there. His grandfather bought the #rst that doesn’t make it right. 100 acres around 1917. $e Cheatwoods graze a few Conservatives and libertarians tend to be sanguine cattle on the property; they hope to leave the timber about population growth, and I’m con#dent that hu- for their two children and #ve grandchildren to use mans can engineer around shortages for generations judiciously. No one will draw a living entirely from to come. But I doubt that the politicians or the giants that 600 acres, but it provides the family a degree of of global capitalism who tout the bene#ts of an in#nite independence. It’s there if they need it. Marvin Nich- labor pool possess either the imagination or empathy ols Reservoir would cover their property. to keep a debit column of human expense. Perhaps if “It’s tough,” Gary says. “Our grandkids love the these visionaries stood in a river bottom, amid giant land. We haven’t cut any timber on it in our lifetime. hardwood trees, and listened to a rural Texan say that $ere are state and national champion trees there. she prays for an endangered species to appear on her My grandparents and great-grandparents lived there. property...

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 America

!e Anti-Alinsky John Jay Chapman teaches conservatives the spirit of practical agitation.

by ALAN PELL CRAWFORD Michael Hogue Michael

n Sunday, August 13, 1911, in the steel the Inquirer reported. A#er he “crawled out of the town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, an $ames, with shreds of $esh hanging from his charred African-American man named Zachari- body, he was roughly seized and $ung back into the ah Walker killed a white security guard %re, where the mob had decreed he should die.” Oin what Walker insisted was an act of self-defense. When ropes restraining him burned, Walker some- Fleeing the police, he attempted to commit suicide how managed to crawl out of the $ames once more, and was taken to the hospital to recover from a only to be hurled back into them, his “cries of agony gunshot wound. !at night, six masked men forced … drowned by the jeers of the crowd.” their way into the hospital and dragged Walker In time the cries died away, and members of the from his bed. Forcing him to crawl for half a mile, mob waited around until the ashes cooled. !en they then turned him over to a mob, which the they collected bone fragments. !e next day, boys Philadelphia Inquirer estimated to number between stood on street corners and sold souvenirs of what 3,000 to 5,000 men, women and children, includ- remained of Walker’s body. Fi#een men and boys ing “many of [Coatesville’s] leading citizens.” !ese were indicted for their roles in the atrocity, but pub- respectable townspeople “without any e"ort to con- lic outcry against their prosecution was intense, and ceal their identity, looked on without any evidence no one was convicted. of disapproval.” !e scene they witnessed was Walker “tossed Alan Pell Crawford is the author of Twilight at Monticello: upon a pyre of blazing hay, straw and fence rails,” as !e Final Years of !omas Je"erson.

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Accounts of the event appeared in newspapers Chapman himself was a Progressivean anti- along the East Coast. One reader who was “greatly Tammany Hall reformer who had a considerable moved” by the lynching was a vigorous and well- in$uence, scholars say, on New Republic founder connected New York writer, political activist, and Herbert Croly. Conservatives today have been brow- sometimes lawyer named John Jay Chapman. For a beaten into scorning the Progressives, but theirs full year, Chapman “brooded silently,” according to was a response to problems that troubled conserva- Richard Hovey, one of the few scholars to undertake tives, too: a society busily producing, in the words a serious study of his work. “!en he took action,” of Chapman’s admirer and near contemporary Al- Hovey writes. “He did a symbolic thing, unique in bert Jay Nock, “an upper class materialized, a middle the annals of this nation.” class vulgarized, a lower class brutalized.” Chapman wrote that he believed “the whole coun- Born in New York City in 1862, Chapman was the try would be di"erent if any one man did something son of Henry Gra#on Chapman, president of the in penance.” So he traveled to Coatesville “and de- New York Stock Exchange, and great-grandson of clared my intention of holding a prayer meeting to Supreme Court Justice John Jay. Chapman’s grand- the various business men I could buttonhole.” !at mother was an associate of abolitionist William few showed the slightest interest in his idea did not Lloyd Garrison, about whom Chapman would write deter him, nor did the di&culty of hiring a hall. On a book-length study. A Harvard man, Chapman August 16, 1912, he took out an ad in the Coatesville practiced law until 1898, when he devoted his ener- Record that read: gies to politics and journalism. From 1897–1901 he ran his own bracingly in- In Memoriam dependent newsletter, !e Political Nursery, which A Prayer Meeting will be held publicized reformist politicians and policies. A On Sunday morning, at 11 o’clock friend and one-time ally of !eodore Roosevelt’s, At the Nagel Building Chapman eventually broke with TR, concluding that Silent and aral [sic] prayer: he was a “broken-backed, half-good man … [and] Reading of the Scriptures: trimmer”an opportunist. Besides a number of Brief address by John Jay Chapman books, Chapman wrote literary essays, poems and In memory of the Tragedy of August 13, 1911 plays, though only the books and literary essays bear O Lord receive my prayer re-reading. A Hudson River grandee, he was a convivial soul !e words Chapman spoke that night would come and a devoted family man. A son, Victor Chapman, to feature in textbooks of rhetoric and anthologies who joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914 and of America’s greatest speeches. But he addressed an $ew as a member of the Lafayette Escadrille, was almost empty audience—and therein lay much of his shot down over France. Another son, Chanler Chap- act’s signi%cance. man, who died in 1982, was the model for Saul Bel- low’s Henderson the Rain King. ot many people today know a thing about Chapman was especially busy during the New NChapman, and precious few conservatives York City elections of 1895, working to dismantle would reserve a plinth for him in their statuary hall. Tammany Hall and playing what Edmund Wilson Chapman had already been forgotten more than called three-quarters of a century ago when Edmund Wil- son wrote in 1976, “hardly one reader in a million a spirited and provocative part. He made has heard of even the name of John Jay Chapman.” speeches from the cart-tail in the streets and More’s the pity, since Wilson regarded Chapman as created a great impression by getting down and perhaps the %nest writer on literature of his genera- manhandling hecklers who were trying to break tion, an opinion shared in many respects by Jacques him uphe was a man of formidable build Barzun, who edited Unbought Spirit, an anthol- then going back and %nishing his speech, and ogy of Chapman’s works published in 1998. As an a#erwards buying his opponents drinks. observer of politics, Chapman is equally stimulat- ing, and as a writer on the mechanics of political Chapman could confound even admirers’ attempts changeand as a practitioner of the methods he to pigeonhole his thought or predict his moves. “He promotedthis remarkable man should be of spe- just looks at things and tells the truth about them cial interest to conservatives. a strange thing even to try to do,” William James

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 America

wrote, “and he doesn’t always succeed.” It has never a larger theory of social change, one that is particu- been “easy to make peace with him,” Barzun con- larly well suited to a political tradition that puts great cedes, “for he is so unsettling. !ere is the matter stock in the individual. !is is a country established of the man’s perpetual cross-grainednessa cross- in part in the belief that individuals matter and what grainedness that is going to o"end every reader we have to say as individuals—rather than just as sooner or later.” Some reasons for this o"ense, as we anonymous members of sociological groups or po- will see, are understandable. litical movements—is important. We Americans have too readily persuaded our- selves that, no matter our station in life, we are e are met,” Chapman told his audience in among the powerless and disenfranchised. !is is “WCoatesville, “to commemorate the anniver- an ironic twist on our “rugged individualism.” Be- sary of one of the most dreadful crimes in history cause we like to see ourselves as rebellious challeng- not for the purpose of condemning it, but to repent of ers to authority, we also like to exaggerate the forces our share in it.” It was perhaps %tting that the e"ort to arrayed against us. !is is why Rush Limbaugh and prosecute those who tortured Zachariah Walker had Fox News like to think they speak for the disenfran- failed “because the whole community, and in a sense chised and o"er an “alternative” to the mainstream our whole people, are really involved in the guilt. !e media. !us even conservatives have come to see failure of the prosecution in this case, in all such cas- themselves as aggrieved underdogs, forever besieged es, is only a proof of the magnitude of the guilt, and of by forces so vast and intimidating that there is noth- the awful fact that everyone shares in it.” ing much we can accomplish as individuals. Although Chapman lived on the Hudson, he con- !is is true of white people as well as black, rich tinued, as well as poor, male as well as female. Impotent as individuals, we are convinced that the only leverage I knew that the great wickedness that happened we have is by combining forces with thousands in Coatesville is not the wickedness of Coates- ideally, millionsof others who share our sense of ville nor of today. It is the wickedness of all injustice, persecution or resentment. We speak—or America and of three hundred yearsthe wick- shout—truth to power, but always in chorus. We edness of the slave trade. All of us are tinctured march, we assemble, we occupy, to show that our by it. No special place, no special persons, are to outrage is shared by countless others. blame. !e trouble has come down to us out of Taking our cue from street theater, from college the past. !e only reason that slavery is wrong is that it is cruel and makes men cruel and leaves them cruel. Someone may say that you and I cannot repent because he did not do the act. Chapman could confound even But we are involved in it. We are still looking on. admirers’ attempts to pigeonhole Patriotic Americans have a hard time hearing his thought or predict his moves. these words. Conservative Christians insist on the depravity of man and say they believe all nations come under judgment, but they somehow manage to exempt their own country. !at only two people showed up for Chapman’s sporting events, from $ash mobs, and from the prayer servicean African-American woman from preachments of Saul Alinsky, we hide our otherwise Boston and a police informantdoes not make timid souls behind face paint and engage in acts of what he said any less true. !e poor attendance gooney exhibitionism the whole point of which is to might even make his accomplishment more impres- get on cable TV. !at is what we call a “demonstra- sive, insofar as it is still discussed today—if only by tion,” as if there is no other way to express ourselves those few who know of Chapman. !at an apparent as citizens. failure can actually reverberate into the next century Chapman at Coatesville o"ers another way. He supports Chapman’s understanding of social change, reminds us that in a “demonstration” something is or, as he called it in a book of the same title, “practi- exempli%ed and incarnatedin this case, a trou- cal agitation.” bled conscience or, as Chapman put it, a penance. Published in 1900, Practical Agitation is a manual Chapman acted alone, and his action was rooted in for political activism that does not seek immediate

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 grati%cation and does not insist that “demands” be “always set free by the same process: by the telling met. His is agitation for the long haul, and in that it of truth. !e identity between public and private re- is conservative in ways that Alinsky’s, for example, is veals itself in the instant a man adopts the plan of not. Chapman’s is activism for grownups. indiscriminate truth-telling. Let a man blurt out his “We think that political agitation must show po- opinion. Instantly there follows a little $ash of real- litical results,” he writes. “!is is like trying to alter ity.” Indiscriminate truth-telling requires a sense of the shape of a shadow without touching its objects.” humor, or at least a gi# for satire. Complacent people !e results of practical agitation “can- not show in the political %eld till they have passed through the social world.” !e goal should be to change the way people think and feel, rather than how Indiscriminate truth-telling requires a sense they vote. A vote is “only important because it is an opinion,” and it is opin- of humor, or at least a gift for satire. ions that must be in$uenced. !is can be done by argument, by the amassing and dissemination of data. Evidently this can also be done—when the right imitates the tactics of the le#—by bullying legislators “are so so# with feeding on political lies that they at town hall meetings or subjecting young women in drop dead if you give them a dose of ridicule in a di&cult circumstances to gruesome images on plac- drawing-room. Denunciation is well enough, but ards at abortion-clinic protests. laughter is the true ratsbane for hypocrites.” But there is another way, one that involves person- It is the individualthe individual conscience, al example and calls all of us to repent, not just those to be precisethat determines political and social of whom we disapprove. !is way is also more e"ec- change, and it follows that the man or woman who tive. “Everyone is aroused from his lethargy by see- seeks to prick the conscience of his neighbor will be ing a real man walk on the scene, amid all the stage no stranger to loneliness. Do not expect cheering properties and marionettes of conventional politics,” throngs in hotel ballrooms celebrating your victories Chapman had discovered from his own hard-won with you because, if you are doing it right, the victo- experience. People might object to what such a brave ries will be slow in coming. !at should not trouble soul says and does, but they listen, and their hearts disciples of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk, who be- and minds are changed whether they admit it or not. lieve change should not be rushed. !is is something !ey do not necessarily vote for such a candidate, “movement conservatives” in recent decades seem to “but they talk about the portent with a vigor no mere have forgotten. doctrine could call forth, and the discussion blos- “Do not think you are wasting your time, even if soms at a later date into a new public spirit, a new no one joins you,” Chapman wrote a full decade be- and genuine demand for better things.” fore he failed to raise a crowd at Coatesville. “!e !at is why the practical agitator should never prejudice against the individual is part of the evil you compromise his views. “It is the very greatest folly are %ghting.” in the world for an agitator to be content with a par- tial success,” Chapman wrote. “It destroys his cause.” he %rst thing anyone hears about Chapman in- He becomes part of the corrupt system he sought Tvolves Coatesville. !e second is the business to clean up. You can give up 10 percent of what you about his arm, which is mighty grisly too. In 1886, want only at the cost of “ninety percent of your edu- while he was a student at Harvard Law School, Chap- cational power; for the heart of man will respond man attended “the most innocent kind of party,” only to a true thing.” !e agitator must never settle. where he met a friend from childhood. When this “If, by chance, some party, some administration friend was making what Chapman decided were gives him one percent of what he demands, let him improper advances toward a young lady he admired acknowledge it handsomely; but he need not thank (and would later marry), he invited this rival to step them. !ey did it because they had to, or because out onto the lawn. !ere Chapman picked up a stick their conscience compelled them.” and thrashed the man. Conscience looms large for Chapman, and con- !e next thing Chapman remembered was re- science is closely tied to the private will, which is turning to his room in Cambridge where a coal %re

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 America

burned in the %replace. Overcome with remorse by what he saw as the vulgar and vertiginous swirl for beating his friend, Chapman wrapped a pair of of American life. In the years between the wars, he suspenders tightly around his le# forearm, plunged became convinced that it was the masses, not the the le# hand into the %re, “and held it down with my middle class, that were “most inimical,” according right hand for some minutes.” When he removed the to his biographer Hovey, “to the things of the mind hand, “the charred knuckles and %nger-bones were and spirit.” Reading of “labor troubles,” he began to exposed.” fear that the nation was “rocking with Bolshevism “!is will never do,” Chapman told himself, and in every form, from parlour to garret, from pulpit he set o" for Massachusetts General Hospital. Put to slum.” In Woodrow Wilson’s internationalism, he under ether, he woke up the next morning “without detected the in$uence of the “Jewish peril.” More the hand and very calm in my spirits.” A few days than that, he feared the waves of Irish Catholic im- later he was visited by Dr. Reginald Heber Fitz, “the migrants. When he protested Harvard’s decision to great alienist” and “an extremely agreeable man.” In elect a Catholic as a Governing Fellow, he began the course of his examination, Fitz asked Chapman receiving letters of support from cranks, including whether he was “insane,” and Chapman said, “!is Madison Grant, who was at once an enlightened is for you to %nd out.” !e arm “healed up rapidly,” conservationist and a celebrated theorist of “scien- while Chapman’s “inner composure, so far as I re- ti%c racism.” member, was complete.” !at same year, 1924, Chapman in an unpub- !e question of Chapman’s sanity is complicated. lished manuscript bemoaned the timidity of respect- !roughout his life, he was weighed down by mental able citizens in the face of mounting threats. !e Ku Klux Klan, he wrote, at least was not afraid to discuss the “true dangersthe Negro ques- Overcome with remorse for beating tion, the Jewish question, the Catholic ques- tion and immigration.” He began to fantasize his friend, Chapman wrapped a pair about connecting the “Ku Klux element with of suspenders tightly around his left forearm the better elements of the East. !e K.K. are and plunged his hand into the fire. on the right track, i.e., open war, and the rest of the country is in a maze of prejudice against the K.K. due to manipulation of the Eastern Press.” !e following year, Chapman’s poem a'ictions of one kind or another. A nervous break- “Cape Cod, Rome and Jerusalem,” which traced down in 1899, when he was 37, con%ned him to a America’s troubles to the “Jesuit and the Jew,” ap- dark room for 18 months. A few years later, he suf- peared the Klan’s National Kourier. fered another collapse, and a#er half a year of bed !ese eruptions seem uncharacteristic of Chap- rest in which he was spoonfed by a nurse he hobbled man, and they were. For most of his life, he was a about on crutches for six months more. He contem- forthright opponent of racism and bigotry. In 1897, plated suicide “but somehow thought it wasn’t of he wrote that “the heart of the world is Jewish” and much importance.” called it a “monstrous perversionthat we should Like a number of remarkable men of his time worship their God and despise themselves!” William and Henry James, Mark Twain, Abraham For all his anti-Catholicism, which he said he in- LincolnChapman wrestled with demons that herited from Huguenot forbears, in 1914 Chapman sometimes won the battle, if not the war. It seems rented a storefront in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen and obvious that at times he was out of his mind. To his turned it into a boys-and-girls club for the neighbor- credit, he realized this about himself. He also came hood children, most of whom were Irish immigrants. to accept that this madness could %nd expression in !is was a popular activity of its time, re$ecting a indefensible enthusiasms, and he would take mea- certain condescension, perhaps, but well meaning. sures to cool down. !is is one way to account for the In 1923, when Harvard President Abbot Lawrence fact that in the 1920s Chapman gave voice to half- Lowell prohibited a black student from living in the cracked utterances that are repulsive and disappoint- same dorm with whites, Chapman protested in the ingand all-too-characteristic of the Hudson Valley New York World that the action was an attempt to aristocracy at that time of great social upheaval. “keep alive at Harvard the idea of white supremacy.” A social critic as trenchant as John Adams or H. Such blacks “among us as can receive a college edu- L. Mencken, Chapman was troubled his entire life cation must be o"ered one which is without stigma.”

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 College, in fact, was where otherwise prejudiced of well-%nanced organizations in Washington that young people can be educated out of their ignorance. provide comfortable careers for ideologues and In his classic !e Protestant Establishment: Ar- opportunists. Assuming that the way to in$uence istocracy and Caste in America, E. Digby Baltzell the political world is by amassing mailing lists and concedes that even in his most “fanatic” period, raising money, they have funded think tanks, front Chapman “had the insight to see the dangers and groups, lobbying %rms, and other agitprop factories, fallacies of his extreme anti positions.” In mid-1925, and they have elected senators and congressmen and for example, he wrote to a friend in France, “!e countless state legislators. But by their own admis- decay of life, mind, and character of the American sion, conservatives have very little to show for all this has got on my brain and come out in the form of e"ort. ! at is because these activities can become anti-Catholicism,” a mania he clearly felt was some- ends in themselves, and they almost always do. !at thing to be gotten rid of. “It is all too easy to become is the danger of attempting to change “the shape of a toqué”meaning cracked“in agitating anything shadow without touching its objects.” that is anti.” Such a stance toward the rest of the world, “turns into a mystic hostility and this in turn grows very o#en into a ‘manie des persecu- tions.’ Men come to believe they are spied on, There are lessons for conservatives followed, and treated with black magic by the organization or sect that they hold in horror.” not only in Chapman’s sunnier moments Chapman needed to get a grip on himself, but also in his bleaker ones. and he did. He sailed to Europe to clear his brain. Four years later, a#er Herbert Hoover defeated Democrat Al Smith, the %rst Catho- lic to be nominated for president by a major party, Chapman’s approach is closer to that of Francis Chapman told a friend he had become “quite calm of Assisi, at least as described by G.K. Chesterton. about the Roman question ever since the election Moved to repair the ruins of San Damiano, Francis somehow got rid of it.” !at was an exaggeration, understood that the way to build a church “is not to but he was making progress. In 1931, with good- pay for it, certainly not with somebody else’s money. humored self-deprecation, he said he was perfectly !e way to build a church is not even to pay for it capable of passing a whole “row of convents and Ro- with your own money. !e way to build a church is man Churches on the way up the Hudson with equa- to build it.” So Francis collected stones and begged nimity. All is well.” In two years, he was dead. others for stones. Enduring ridicule, he rebuilt the !ere are lessons for conservatives not only in church with his own hands, discovering, in Chester- Chapman’s sunnier moments but also in his bleak- ton’s words, er ones. His obsession with immigration fueled his feelings of isolation, and in the dank prison cell of that his glory was not to be in overthrowing his disordered mind, he saw in the Klan virtue where men in battle but in building up the positive there was only venality. His seemingly willful blind- and creative monuments of peace. He was truly ness to the evils of racism led him to forget and then building up something else, or beginning to violate the methods for meaningful civic action he build it up; something that has o#en enough had established with such eloquence years before. fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuild- He cut away for all time much of the moral author- ing; a church that could always be built anew ity he once possessed, squandering the “educational though it had rotted away to its last foundation- power” that, for him, was the quintessence of suc- stone, against which the gates of hell shall not cessful agitation. prevail.

n the twenties,” Chanler Chapman wrote, “my It would be a mistake to confuse conservatism “Ifather fought a twilight battle with the pres- with a church. But it is not an error to approach the ent.” Conservatives know how that can feel. !is is a ordeal of its restoration with reverence, with humil- movement, a#er all, that de%ned itself back in 1955 ity, with a sense of individual and collective respon- as standing “athwart history, yelling Stop.” sibility alike and in full awareness of the fact that to Where the conservative movement has made great make real gains, as Chapman once wrote, we must gains in recent decades is in establishing networks “never reap but only sow.”

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Film

Civil War Comes Home “Copperhead” dramatizes the ’60s antiwar movement—1860s, that is.

by JORDAN BLOOM

Loss became commonplace; death was no longer en- that they’re unwounded. "e movie is narrated by one countered individually; death’s threat, its proximity, and who stayed behind, an orphan named Jimmy (Josh its actuality became the most widely shared of the war’s Cruddas), who lives with the Copperhead Beeches. experiences. ... for those Americans who lived in and "e father of the family, Abner Beech, is according to through the Civil War, the texture of the experience, its Kau#man “neither a doughface nor a congenital con- warp and woof, was the presence of death. trarian: he is, rather, a Je#erson-Jackson agrarian in — Drew Gilpin Faust the Upstate New York Democratic tradition.” Abner’s son, Je# (Casey Brown), named a$er his n the living room of his house in Rappahan- political icon "omas Je#erson, is in love with Esther nock, Virginia, !lmmaker Ron Maxwell brings (Lucy Boynton) the daughter of the town’s most fer- up the 2008 book from which that quote is vent abolitionist, Jee Hagadorn, played powerfully by drawn: !is Republic of Su"ering: Death and the Angus McFayden. In an early scene Esther renames IAmerican Civil War. We’re talking about the costs of her suitor Tom since his other name evokes the trai- the war Maxwell—director of “Gods and Generals” torous president of the Confederacy. and “Gettysburg”—has made a career of interpreting. As Je# and Esther grow closer, the rest of the town, “All of the numbers are being revised upwards” since led by her father, turns against the Beech family. First Faust’s book came out !ve years ago, he says—by 20 it was just Jee. "en, to quote Harold Frederic, “there percent in 2012 alone. came to be a number of them—and then, all at once, His new movie concerns those Northern Demo- lo! everybody was an Abolitionist—that is to say, ev- crats who adjudged the costs too high and called for erybody but Abner Beech.” "e once peaceful town a settlement with the South. "ey were dubbed “Cop- falls sick with war fever and Abner is accused of ev- perheads” by their opponents and likened to the ven- erything from disloyalty to watering down the milk he omous snake. It was a name they accepted, and now sells. In one memorable scene the pastor of the town’s it’s the name of the new !lm. Produced and directed one church lists notable Democrats as the seven heads by Maxwell and written by antiwar populist historian of the Beast from Revelation. Abner, not normally one (and TAC columnist) Bill Kau#man, “Copperhead” is for needless provocation—the boys in the beginning about a small town in upstate New York where divid- of the !lm only remember him resorting to violence ed opinions about the war threaten to tear the com- once in their lives—walks out quoting the Beatitudes: munity asunder. Based on an 1893 novella by Harold “blessed are the peacemakers.” Frederic of Utica—whom Maxwell calls the “Charles In the midst of it all Je# joins the Union army—re- Dickens of upstate New York”—it focuses on two belling by enlisting—to impress his future wife. So as families, one Copperhead and one abolitionist. not to spoil the movie, su%ce it to say that things get It is a !lm about the Northern home front: there is worse before they get better, though on the last page not a single battle scene or slave, though characters re- of the novella Esther comes around to calling him Je# turning from the South talk of both. “"e whole point again. is that the war intrudes on the people where they are,” “Copperhead” is the !rst sympathetic take on the Maxwell says. Northern dissenters from the Civil War in recent “Copperhead” opens in 1862 to six boys traipsing popular culture. We are all abolitionists in retrospect, across a !eld and talking about a distant war. In time and you need only look as far as the New York Times’ two will be killed in battle, two will be maimed, and two will survive unscathed, albeit only in the sense Jordan Bloom is associate editor of "e American Conservative.

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 © Copperhead the Movie Ltd. 2012 Ltd. Movie the © Copperhead

Ciarán Macgillivray, Josh Cruddas, and Francios Arnaud in “Copperhead”

sesquicentennial remembrances to get a feel for the opposed the Interstate Highway System and all sorts of Copperheads’ tarnished reputation—they are “peevish stu# like that,” he says, quoting William Appleman Wil- and bordering on paranoid,” prone to “mystical think- liams’s injunction to “let us think about the people who ing.” lost.” Abner Beech is a man who lost. Moreover, Kau#- Needless to say, the !lm’s writer and director dis- man’s !rst novel, Every Man a King, was consciously agree. In one of his books Kau#man describes the op- working in the regionalist tradition of which the author position as “honorable and deep-set in the old Ameri- of “Copperhead” is a part, and the screenwriter admits can grain.” Some Copperheads were indeed guilty of that “as an upstate New York patriot, it’s really exciting plotting to overthrow or withdraw from the Union, to me that we have Harold Frederic, who I think is a but that was not characteristic of the movement as a great American novelist, reintroduced to a lot of people whole—in the !lm, the Beeches’ only formal expres- who haven’t heard of him.” sion of any political opposition is in voting for Demo- Kau#man’s favorite scene in the !lm has the same crats. (An act that, to be sure, almost causes a riot.) charming admixture of localist anarchism and literary A$er Maxwell’s expensive, logistically intense ear- worldliness that makes his own books so entertaining. lier work—which involved many historians, the con- It’s an exchange between Abner and Avery, a minor sent of national parks, and thousands of reenactors— character who might be called the town’s spokesman his next project a$er 2003’s “Gods and Generals” had for the Union, played by Peter Fonda (an eclectic reac- to meet three strict criteria, he says. It had to “abso- tionary himself), recalling his father in “Young Mister lutely motivate me as a !lmmaker,” it had to have a Lincoln.” A$er Abner goes on about Lincoln’s tyran- novel angle on the war, and it had to be economical to nies—imprisoning dissidents, shuttering newspapers, produce. "e planned sequel to “Gettysburg” featur- conscripting young men—Avery asks him, “Doesn’t ing the conclusion of the war is o$en discussed but, the Union mean anything to you?” Avery replies: “It being another costly war epic, only meets one of Max- means something. It means more than something. well’s preconditions. “Copperhead” meets all three. But it doesn’t mean everything. My family means “I !nd it obscene that we have to, for the twentieth more to me, my farm, the corners means more. York time in a motion picture, see the prolonged, agonizing State means more to me. "ough we disagree Avery, death of Abraham Lincoln,” says Maxwell. “Spielberg you mean more to me than any Union.” does it again in his beautiful style, he’s the !lmmak- “"at to me is the most poignant scene in the mov- er of our age. But how many times do we have to be ie,” says Kau#man. “Maybe that’s just because I guess dragged through that hagiography? … "e untimely there’s a little bit of me in that particular disquisition.” death of any man is to be deplored, but what about the When talking about the story of “Copperhead,” other seven hundred thousand?” both Kau#man and Maxwell are quick to invoke po- For Kau#man the a%nity with the subject matter is litical ideas, so it’s a dimension that’s hard to ignore. even deeper. “Over the years I’ve written about anti- “Obviously in one sense it’s an antiwar movie,” Kau#- expansionists and loco-focos and populists and people man says, “but if there’s a political point to the !lm, it’s who wanted to save the small rural schools, people who a defense of dissent, which sounds sort of innocuous.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 Film

‘Well that’s really brave.’ But in fact !lms, books, “profound sense of loss” brought about by accelerated theater, pieces of art, when they treat the subject technological and cultural change. they’re almost always cheating. "ey stack the deck, "e places that formed him as younger man are and the author &atters himself and the audience be- now unrecognizable. "e people have moved and the cause the dissenter is always someone with whom all landmarks are gone—the Zeta Psi frat house where he right-thinking people of our age agree. It’s this ‘Inherit lived as a student at NYU’s old Bronx campus, gone. the Wind’ bullshit, you know? It’s a cheat.” "e Jewish community center where he used to direct We don’t automatically identify with Abner because plays, gone. “Garret Mountain, where we used to have he dissents from “what’s probably the sacredest cow in picnics. Half of the mountain has been sheared away American history,” says Kau#man. “In that sense it’s as a quarry.” provocative, and it’s meant to be provocative.” "e old Metropolitan Opera House, where he !rst “Our proclivity is to identify with the dissenter, ex- saw Wagner’s “Ring” cycle: a “jewel, a world jewel! It cept here the dissenter has been essentially discredited had the best acoustics of any room on earth, it was re- by our history,” Maxwell says. “Our o%cial history and nowned for its acoustics, Caruso sang there, Zinka Mi- our received wisdom, right or wrong, is the reality. lanov sang there. Great conductors performed there. "ere’s a big monument on the Mall to Abraham Lin- Razed to the ground and an ugly skyscraper put up!” coln, he’s seated there like Zeus in a temple. So to any- "e appeal of “Copperhead” very much stems from one who was in the North, the Southerners were just this sense of loss, and just as Kau#man and Maxwell’s the enemy; but anybody in the North who was against life experiences and artistic pursuits drew them to the Lincoln’s war had to be either misguided or a traitor.” story, the average American movie-goer is primed "e question is whether !lmgoers are willing to be to... not really get it. Roger Ebert wrote in his rather provoked in this way, and much of that depends on unkind review of “Gods and Generals” that it was a their impression of how fair the !lm is being to both movie for people who do things other than watch- sides. “"ey’re only willing to be challenged by it if the ing movies, like reenact Civil War battles. "at’s true challenge is emotional and personal,” says Maxwell. “As enough; but then, who is this one for if it doesn’t even soon as you get into any kind of didactic, manipulative have any battles? scenario, an audience will reject it. I would reject it.” If nothing else, the !lm is a reminder that the Civil "e Harold Frederic novella takes itself a good deal War began a process of centralization and upheaval less seriously than this movie does—it’s downright that continues today, and to resist it is neither futile nor funny in parts—though the !lmmakers’ circumspec- racist. If Lincoln’s modern critics o$en downplay the tion makes sense in light of the sensitive subject mat- racial animosity his opponents tapped into, Kau#man ter, and they’re at pains to be evenhanded toward both writes, “the eulogists of Father Abraham … gloss over sides. Jee, as he’s written, is a “real caricature,” says the extent to which the Civil War enshrined industrial Kau#man. “We humanized him, or Angus McFayden capitalism, the subordination of the states to the federal did, who’s tremendous in that role. Jee is absolutely behemoth, and such odiously statist innovations as con- right about the central moral question of the age: slav- scription, the jailing of war critics, and the income tax.” ery, its immorality, the need to abolish it decades ago. “"e meaning of the war had come to inhere in But he has subordinated all that’s nearest and closest its cost”—to cite Faust again—even in Lincoln’s sec- to him to an abstraction. ond inaugural address, which presumed to weigh the “Abner too, to a lesser extent, su#ers from Jee “blood drawn with the lash” against the “blood drawn Hagadorn-ism, depicted most harshly in the scene by the sword” on the scales of divine justice. To ques- when he’s getting on his soapbox again, talking about tion whether anyone has the authority to commit ‘tearin’ up the Constitution, making every house a human lives to such a calculation is to know Abner house of mourning,’ and it doesn’t occur to him that Beech. his wife is sitting in the same room and thinking about His kind of patriotism begins at home; it’s built of her own son who’s gone, quite possibly dead. At that stronger stu# than a “Mission Accomplished” banner moment, he’s an all-forest, no-trees guy.” and can’t be embodied in a jobs bill. To the extent that those local a%nities still hold power, the message of ow at the tail end of a long career, Maxwell has the !lm’s ending is hopeful. It takes a tragedy—and Ndecamped from the hubs of the !lm industry I won’t tell you what it is—but the fever in the Cor- to the heart of Civil War country in the northern ners breaks. "e community comes back. And to the Shenandoah, on top of a mountain. He tells me about extent that they don’t, we might nonetheless remem- his childhood in Cli$on-Passaic, New Jersey, and the ber that to love thy neighbor is still a subversive act.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Music

Rock for Republicans? How the GOP misunderstands John Mellancamp’s heartland ethic

by DAVID MASCIOTRA

ohn Mellencamp is a walking contradiction: myth. "e handsome guy in jeans and T-shirt, wavy a self-identi!ed redneck but politically liberal; hair in a Presley pompadour, cigarette hanging from a world famous musician who has married or his mouth is as American as cowboys, baseball, and Jdated models and actresses, but who never had a the stars and stripes. permanent residence outside southern Indiana. He is Mellencamp likely comes o# as a brute to hip ur- one of America’s best and most authentic songwrit- banites. He once told a story about ducking into a Los ers, but he began his career with the fake name of Angeles alley to smoke a cigarette. An employee at a Johnny Cougar, singing songs he now admits were high-priced clothing boutique found him and scolded “terrible.” him, “Your smoke is wa$ing into our store.” Mellen- Without fail, every campaign season an ambitious camp took a look at the thick cloud of smog in the sky Republican candidate adopts “Small Town,” “Pink and asked, “You live in this !lth and you care about Houses,” “Our Country,” or another Mellencamp hit me smoking?” as entrance music. And without fail, John Mellen- "e values and principles that Mellencamp cel- camp politely requests that the politician stop playing ebrates are heard in the songs for which he is most his songs at rallies. famous. “Pink Houses,” perhaps his signature anthem, He has performed at rallies for noble causes. Mel- features the instantly memorable chorus—“Ain’t that lencamp is one of the founding board members of America / For you and me / Ain’t that America / Farm Aid—the longest running bene!t show in Something to see, baby / Ain’t that America / Home of American history, providing assistance to small fam- the free / Little pink houses for you and me.” "e near- ily farmers—and he has lent his talents to the fund- est rival to “Pink Houses” is “Small Town,” the song raising campaigns of homeless shelters, children’s hos- he wrote to pay tribute to Seymour, Indiana, the farm pitals, and even independent bookstores. He is one of community where he was born, raised, and “taught the few musicians to perform for the troops and their the fear of Jesus.” “I cannot forget from where it is that families at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I come from / I cannot forget the people who love me,” Although I’d prefer that he not, he has also opened Mellencamp sings in the catchiest version of localism for Democratic politicians at various rallies begin- ever cra$ed. ning in 2008, breaking a policy of issue advocacy but “Small Town” represents much of what Mellen- electoral neutrality he maintained through the !rst 25 camp embraces in his art—micro-patriotism pri- years of his career. "e di#erence between his perfor- oritizing love of country with love of community, mances at Democratic functions and his co-optation Christian principles, and the virtues of family bonds, at Republican rallies is the obvious one of consent. He neighborhood ties, and individual freedom. In “Cher- chooses to play at the former and rejects participation ry Bomb”—a beautiful blend of folk, beach R&B, and in the latter. Why, then, do so many members of the early rock ’n’ roll that deserves admission into the GOP continue to play his music at their events? What is the appeal to them, and what are they missing? David Masciotra is a columnist with the Equal parts James Dean and the Marlboro Man in Indianapolis Star. He is the author of All "at We appearance, gravelly voiced, Mellancamp has a rough Learned About Livin’: "e Art and Legacy of John aesthetic that speaks to American character and Mellencamp (forthcoming, University Press of Kentucky).

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Music

American songbook—Mellencamp looks back on his nalism, yet believes in social assistance for the poor, early twenties with infectious fondness and unapolo- sick, and hungry, the widows and orphans that the getic nostalgia, remembering the days when “holding Bible identi!es. Mellencamp inhabits common hands meant something.” ground with libertarians on social issues, and he is "e portrait of American life that Mellencamp a consistent opponent of war and foreign interven- paints appears traditional. It doesn’t matter how many tion, but he does not believe that an unfettered free times he writes and sings muscular rock songs about market will solve every social problem. casual sex and wild nights underneath street lamps, he He has watched the corporate conquest of family always returns to the traditions of “love your neigh- farms and sings about it on the angry lament, “Rain bor,” “do unto others as you would have done unto on the Scarecrow.” He has witnessed how a$er de- you,” and “the greatest among you is your servant.” cades of politicians relegating poverty relief to an in- Mellencamp was raised in the Nazarene Church e&cient welfare state or indi#erent corporate state, and le$ when he was 16 because, as he tells it, “"ey poor men, women, and children have become col- said, ‘no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, and girls lateral damage, and he sings about it on the heart- breaking “Jackie Brown,” the story of a desperately impoverished man who commits suicide. When Mellencamp sings about his country in He has seen the wreckage that a market-driven, money-obsessed, and “Pink Houses,” he does so with a sense of joy and materially measured culture has piled celebration, but the ecstasy is tempered with agony. up in place of the small communi- ties he cherishes, and he measures the damage in “Ghost Towns Along the Highway.” "e mode of American life that prioritizes mobility above all and can’t wear make up.’ And I said, ‘"at doesn’t sound instructs the young to conduct themselves in a con- like much fun’.” stant search for the next big thing has created gen- He might have le$ the church of his childhood, erations whose “love keeps on moving to the nearest but he never fully le$ the faith. "e image and name faraway place.” In “"e West End,” he sings of a dy- of Jesus hovers over Mellencamp’s music. He o$en ing neighborhood and in a powerful turn of phrase performs on stage with a white porcelain statue of manages to capture and condemn decades of de- Jesus in front of his ampli!er. A painting of Jesus structive policies from big government and big busi- hangs over a jukebox on the album jacket for his ness: “It sure has changed here since I was a kid / It’s best record, “"e Lonesome Jubilee,” and he invokes worse now / Look what progress did.” Christ’s teachings in many of his songs, from some One of the problems of movement conserva- of his biggest hits to some of his most obscure al- tism is a resistance to—and o$en %at out rejection bum cuts. On “Jack and Diane,” his only number one of—complexity. Too much of the American right single, he combines both of his belief systems into is dominated by a mentality that views its country a visceral prayer: “So let it rock / Let it roll / Let the with childlike simplicity and awe. Any invocation of Bible Belt come and save my soul…” American iconography must be worshipful, and for According to the red-state-versus-blue-state men- those who combine Christianity with nationalism to tality that dominates discourse on cable television, a create a civil religion, any sign of the cross must be middle-aged white Christian man who lives in Indi- celebratory of everything American. ana, proclaims his love for the Bible Belt, and attacks When Mellencamp sings about his country in political correctness—in “Peaceful World,” he sings, “Pink Houses,” he does so with a sense of joy and cel- “We all know this world is a wreck / We’re sick and ebration, but the ecstasy is tempered with agony. "e tired of being politically correct”—is obviously a Tea verses tell the stories of poor black neighborhoods, Party member who subscribes to Glenn Beck’s !e young people who watch the steady erosion of their Blaze, %ies a “Don’t Tread On Me” %ag in his yard, dreams, and the “simple man” who “pays for the bills, and believes the Republican Party is too moderate. the thrills, and the pills that kill.” His more recent an- John Mellencamp is not a Republican. He is a them of patriotism “Our Country” is optimistic but self-avowed liberal—but his is a community-based prays that one day “poverty can be just another ugly le$ism that distrusts bureaucracy and hates pater- thing” and “bigotry can be seen only as obscene.” He

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Michael Hogue

searches for peace in the culture wars, proclaiming that “there’s room enough here for science to live” and “room enough here for religion to forgive.” Most of Mellencamp’s spiritual lyrics are personal pleas for the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. ("e song “Ride Back Home” is particularly beautiful in this re- spect.) But in a political context, Jesus’ role as the “prince of peace” seems especially important to Mellencamp. In “To Washington,” he sings about the sins of war and asks, “What is the thought pro- cess to take a human’s life / What would be the reason to think that this is right / From Jesus Christ to Washington.” John Mellencamp’s America is a con%icted country full of beauty and brutality, mercy and cruelty, life and death, and sin and redemption. Republican politicians and right-wing com- mentators o$en miss the con%ict as they seek opportunities for static categorization. "ey pro- ceed down this path at their own peril. Ignoring the problems that plague America will only lead to their exacerbation, and that cer- tainly doesn’t seem wise—much less patriotic. intelligent traditionalism that holds the values and In 1987, Mellencamp added a violin, an accordion, treasures of the past sacred but takes into account a banjo, a dobro, and gospel backup singers to his al- the gi$s of modern times. ready powerful rock band. He called the hybridiza- Mellencamp’s “gypsy rock” was no small achieve- tion of traditional Americana with rock ‘n’ roll, “gypsy ment, but it might be easier accomplished in art than rock.” It was an innovation that in large part catalyzed in politics. "e singer has o$en said most of his fans the “no depression” and “alternative country” move- are Republicans, and judging by the politicians who ments of the 1990s, and which still in%uences popular most o$en play his music and the audiences at his music in the sounds of Mumford and Sons, the Avett shows across the Midwest, he is probably right. Free- Brothers, and several other rock and country bands. market fundamentalists, big-government Repub- Mellencamp never receives the acclaim he de- licans, and war hawks enjoy Mellencamp’s music. serves for such a groundbreaking venture. He com- Maybe eventually they will start to listen. bined some of the best elements of American music’s "e quality that colors most of Mellencamp’s work past—black gospel, Appalachian folk, Delta blues— is hopeful nostalgia. "at might seem like a con- with some of the best elements of anthemic rock and tradiction, but in a country that has a progressive melodic R&B. movement dedicated to wiping out the past and a He created a sound of con%ict: the jubilation of the conservative movement too o$en committed to kill- gospel struggling against the anger of the blues and ing the future, it might be exactly what the culture the sadness of the folk !ddle, sublimated into the needs. It is frustrating, infuriating, and also, against aggression of rock ‘n’ roll. It is an aural map for an all odds, inspiring. But ain’t that America?

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 Religion

Not Hitler’s Pope What history taught Pius XII about resisting tyrants

by JOHN RODDEN AND JOHN ROSSI

his year marks the 80th anniversary of nationality or ethnic origin, have been consigned to one of the landmark moments in the re- death or slow decline.” cent history of the Catholic Church—the "e New York Times at the time observed of Pius signing on July 20, 1933, of a concordat be- XII’s Christmas address, “"is Christmas more than Ttween the Vatican and Hitler’s Nazi regime. What ever he is a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a makes this event so signi!cant is that it constitutes continent.” Pius XII’s message was carefully analyzed the starting point for bitter accusations regarding by Reinhard Heydrich’s branch of the SS, which saw the Catholic Church’s alleged failure to condemn the pope’s message as an attack on the Nazi regime the tyrannical, totalitarian "ird Reich and the Ho- and its anti-Semitism. Calling the Christmas address locaust that #owed from it. Ever since the appear- “a masterpiece of clerical falsi!cation,” the SS report- ance of Rolf Hochhuth’s play, “"e Deputy,” in 1963, ed that the “Pope has repudiated the National So- the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII have been cialist New European Order” and noted his assertion excoriated for their silence before the horrors of the that “all peoples and races are worthy of the same Holocaust. consideration.” “Here,” they argued, “he is clearly Recent revelations, based on interviews with a Ro- speaking of the Jews.” manian spymaster, indicate that Hochhuth may have Piux XII was not, as the title of one book about been the dupe of a clever KGB plot to undermine him charges, “Hitler’s Pope.” And the 80th anniver- the in#uence of the Vatican a$er World War II. But sary of the Reichskonkordat is a timely occasion for a for the last half century, Hochhuth’s charge has put fresh look at how that agreement between the Vati- the Vatican on the defensive, particularly during the can and Nazi Germany came about. last decade, when a !restorm of international con- troversy accompanied Pope Benedict XVI’s approval he concordat with Germany was signed by Pope of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints’ rec- TPius XI. But it was formulated and negotiated by ommendation to name Pius XII “venerable,” a step his close aide, the papal secretary of state, Cardinal towards possible canonization. "at move triggered Eugenio Maria Giuseppi Pacelli, who would succeed new rounds of recrimination about the Vatican’s al- him as Pope Pius XII. Regulating relations between leged callousness toward Hitler’s victims, especially the Vatican and various nations, concordats in no Jews, and about the historical issues surrounding way amount to o%cial endorsement of a regime. Pius XII’s dealings with the Nazis. Nonetheless, popular opinion has typically treated Yet lately the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial them as such. began so$ening its view of Pius XII. "e wall text In the a$ermath of the Russian Revolution and criticizing him for not speaking out against Nazi of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire treatment of the Jews has been retitled from “Pope a$er World War I, the Vatican used concordats to Pius and the Holocaust” to “"e Vatican and the Ho- safeguard the Church’s !nancial and geopolitical in- locaust.” Signi!cantly, Pius’s message of Christmas 1942 is now highlighted, in particular his declaration John Rodden is the author of "e Politics of Literary that “hundreds of thousands of persons, without any Reputation, among other books. John Rossi is professor fault on their part, sometimes only because of their emeritus of history at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 terests. Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli devoted their energies to protecting the confessional status of the Catholic Church in education and guaranteeing the independence of organizations such as Catholic Youth. In Germany, no earlier concordat existed. Be- fore German uni!cation under Bismarck in 1871, the Vatican had negotiated treaties with several of the German states, including Bavaria and Prussia, yet no formal agreement with either Wilhelmine or Weimar Germany followed. Because of this lack and fears for the German Church a$er Hitler came to power in January 1933, Pius XI and Cardinal Pacelli sought to normalize relations with Berlin. "ey wor- ried that the Nazis might turn their secular ideolo- gy into a substitute religion that would displace Christianity and become the equivalent of a German national church. "ey also un- derstood that many German Catholics

Michael Hogue

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Religion

viewed themselves as a persecuted minority ever “discreet voices in the Vatican privately recalled since Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in the 1870s. A deal the bad precedent” and reminded Church leaders with the new German state would demonstrate the of what had happened. Much of Cardinal Pacelli’s patriotism of German Catholicism. measured response to Hitler and Nazism rests on Already by the mid-1920s, the Vatican recognized this historical experience. the blasphemous evil of Nazism: the worship of the As John Connolly, a scholar of modern European state, the dei!cation of Hitler, the atheistic secular- Catholicism at the University of California, Berkeley, ism of the Nazi ideology. But Pius XI and Pacelli felt writes in From Enemy to Brother: !e Revolution in any condemnation of the movement would rebound Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933–1945, a$er Pacelli against the Church. became Pius XII he pondered and ultimately rejected One option for dealing with Nazism was o&-lim- a condemnation of Hitler. On the eve of World War II, its—a papal bull, an o%cial condemnation by the Father John Oesterreicher, a Catholic convert of Jew- ish descent born in Moravia, and Karl "ieme, a German Catholic, implored the Vatican to release Catholic German soldiers from their oaths of loyalty to Already by the mid-1920s, the Vatican Hitler on the grounds that he was about recognized the blasphemous evil of Nazism. to launch an unjust war. Writing in April 1939, Osterreicher argued that Catholics are “not bound in obedience” to a ruler if the ruler “launches war in criminal fash- ion.” Pope of the Nazi regime. According to Oxford Uni- "e proposal garnered no support. Pacelli—now versity historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, the leading Pius XII—told to a con!dant that a papal bull con- British scholar of the Protestant Reformation and demning Nazism or excommunicating Nazis who Catholic Counter-Reformation, the use of a papal were Catholics would help neither Catholics nor bull excommunicating a secular ruler was reject- Jews. And just what Pius XII feared took place in ed because of the Church’s experiences during the Holland in July 1942. Without informing the Vati- Counter-Reformation. In !e Reformation: A His- can, the cardinal of Utrecht issued a pastoral letter tory, MacCulloch argues that the 1570 papal bull ex- condemning the persecution of Dutch Jews. "e Na- communicating Queen Elizabeth I of England “was zis responded by arresting all baptized Dutch Jews, so generally recognized as a political blunder that it including the philosopher-nun Edith Stein, and sent was even remembered in the 1930s when the Papacy them to extermination camps. considered how to react to Hitler’s regime.” Fast-forward to a scene decades later and a conti- Honest, idealistic, and fanatically puritanical, nent away. During the 1976–83 rule of the military Pope Pius V (1566-72) issued a papal bull, Regnans junta in Argentina, the Catholic Church was urged in Excelis, to deprive Elizabeth I of her title as Queen to denounce the regime. Today’s Pope Francis I— and absolve her subjects “from any type of duty” to then Jorge Bergoglio—served as the provincial of the her. In his capacity as “Prince over all nations and Jesuit order in Argentina during the 1980s and chose kingdoms,” Pius V proclaimed that Elizabeth was “a instead to exert indirect pressure on the junta. In !e servant of vice,” “a heretic and abetter of heretics,” Jesuit, the authorized biography of Bergoglio written and merely the “pretended queen of England.” by Argentinian journalist Sergio Rubin, Bergoglio What followed was a terrible backlash in Tudor revealed that he had hidden people on church prop- England: a wave of persecution against English erty to evade the dragnet. He even once slipped his Catholics, the execution of hundreds of priests, the identity papers to a dissident who resembled him, de!nitive secession of the Church of England from thereby allowing the man to #ee the country. But he Rome, the fatal identi!cation of Catholicism with never openly confronted, let alone condemned, a re- treason, and the loss of tens of thousands of formerly gime that was torturing, kidnapping, and murdering faithful Catholics who decided to remain loyal to the thousands of “state enemies.” Rather than castigate temporal order. the junta for its human rights violations, he publicly "e Vatican is not a sound-bite culture, and the supported the regime and sermonized about the back!res of 1570 taught Cardinal Pacelli during the need for “patriotic” Catholics. rise of Nazism in the 1930s. As MacCulloch notes, Bergoglio preferred to operate o&-stage, in the

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 wings, ever conscious—like Pope Pius XII—that a so they believed would Hitler in Germany, which public confrontation might incite the wrath of the was still nominally led by President Paul von Hin- regime. If Pius XII had spoken out more forcefully, denberg. "is was a serious misreading of the Ger- his statements might well have endangered Italian man situation and an equally serious misjudgment Jews in hiding who were secretly sheltered in the of Hitler. Vatican. Bergoglio harbored similar anxieties about "e Vatican’s desire to broker a deal also arose Argentines on the run from the junta. Bergoglio’s from its opposition to communism and “godless seeming failure to oppose state terror publicly was a Russia.” Pope Pius XI had served in Poland during strategic, pragmatic decision to adopt a surreptitious the con#ict between Poland and Russia just a$er approach against overwhelming tyrannical power. World War I, and like many traditional conservatives In the Nazi era, similarly, the Vatican didn’t wish he viewed communism, with its proclaimed atheism, to in#ict on the German Church what had happened as the Catholic Church’s most dangerous enemy. when the papacy previously resorted to bulls of ex- Cardinal Pacelli had shared this view ever since his communication; it preferred to resist through back stint as Germany’s papal nuncio during the 1920s, channels. In his groundbreaking study Britain and shortly a$er the communist uprisings in Munich in the Vatican during the Second World War, Owen 1918-19 that temporarily seized power. Pacelli be- Chadwick, dean of historians of Vatican-German lieved German and Italian fascism could function relations during the Nazi era (and a non-Catholic), as an e&ective bulwark against Marxism-Leninism. expressed the Papal strategy as follows: Most European democracies harbored similar views about the choice between fascism and communism. History is long, tyrants are short. "ey rise, and Hitler ingeniously exploited this belief leading up to kill people and suppress monasteries, and close World War II: the appeasement policies of various churches. But protest will change nothing; and European governments owed much to a perception soon the tyrants come to a bad end, and the of Hitler’s non-negotiable anti-communism. "e Church shakes itself a$er the persecution … bombshell announcement of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in We bow to the storm, and put down our heads, August 1939 abruptly shattered that illusion. and wait. For we have faith, and know that our day will come.

"is view was not just the Vati- A lapsed Catholic who regarded all branches can’s. In 1925 the Soviet foreign minister, Georgy Chicherin, a of Christianity as degenerate offspring of Judaism, friend of the future pope since Hitler nonetheless saw a treaty with the Vatican Pacelli’s days as papal nuncio in Germany, argued that commu- as a title to moral legitimacy. nism would defeat capitalism, but the church might indeed endure and prevail against all secular ide- ologies. “Rome will prove a harder nut to crack. If A lapsed Catholic who regarded all branches of Rome did not exist, we would be able to deal with Christianity as degenerate o&spring of Judaism, Hit- all the various branches of Christianity. "ey would ler nonetheless saw a treaty with the Vatican as a title capitulate before us. Without Rome, religion would to moral legitimacy and as a diplomatic coup, an die.” act of recognition by the most in#uential nonpoliti- cal institution in the world. So in the spring of 1933 iven the disastrous results of o%cial papal con- he made all the right public noises about respect for Gdemnations of national rulers when last issued the church and the state’s jurisdiction being limited in the late 16th century, in 1933 a concordat rather to temporal a&airs. Privately, he cra$ed his plan for than a papal denunciation seemed to Pius XI and eliminating all domestic enemies, whereby neutral- Cardinal Pacelli a wiser course with Germany’s new izing the Catholic Church in Germany would repre- leader. "ey believed that the time to deal with Hit- sent a valuable opening move. ler was when the "ird Reich was not yet !rmly es- "e Holy See realized that the "ird Reich was tablished: just as Mussolini had needed the endorse- an aggressive, power-mad regime. Cardinal Pacelli ment of the Church in Italy to secure his position, told Ivone Kirkpatrick, British charge d’a&aires at

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Religion

the Vatican, that he viewed the Nazi regime with dis- now had no illusions about the Nazis, who were gust. Kirkpatrick informed the British Foreign Of- “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer.” !ce that Pacelli “deplored the action of the German "e encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, usually government at home, their persecution of the Jews... translated as “With Burning Anxiety,” owed some- their reign of terror to which the whole nation was thing to Pius XI’s acerbic directness, but the Ger- subjected …” Yet Cardinal Pacelli justi!ed the con- mans accurately attributed most of it to Pacelli. He cordat on the grounds that he had to face the reality spoke #uent German, and the encyclical was pub- of the Nazi regime and gain diplomatic leverage with lished in German—and meant to be read by German a signed document, for if the German government Catholics—instead of the Latin usual for Church violated the concordat, Ivone reported, then “the documents. Quite clearly, it was designed to send a Vatican would have at least a treaty on which to base message, and the Nazis took it as an insult. a protest.” Mit Brenneder Sorge was drawn up in Rome, Given the reputation of the Holy See for glacial smuggled into Germany by couriers to avoid con!s- speed, negotiations for a concordat in the spring of cation, and issued in March 1937 on Palm Sunday. 1933 proceeded with uncharacteristic haste. Within It was read from every Catholic pulpit in Germany. "e encyclical represented the most blistering indictment of Nazism by any government or major institution before Putting aside his preferred diplomatic approach, World War II. While the encyclical spe- ci!cally skewered Nazi Germany for Pacelli affirmed that he now had no illusions breaking the concordat, the document about the Nazis, who were “false prophets also attacked the Nazi doctrines of rac- with the pride of Lucifer.” ism and paganism. Pacelli used strong language, with Hitler himself charged with “aspirations to divinity” and la- beled “a mad prophet possessed of re- two weeks of o%cial meetings, the agreement was !- pulsive arrogance.” nalized. In theory it granted much that the Vatican "e German government reacted with immedi- sought: guaranteed independence of the Catholic ate outrage. Hitler suppressed the Catholic press, schools, !rm protection for the Catholic press, !nan- con!scated all copies of the encyclical, and forbade cial support for Catholic clergy, and state recogni- German newspapers to print or report it. "e Ger- tion of the rights of special Church institutions such man ambassador to the Vatican, Diego Von Bergen, as the Catholic Youth organizations. "e concordat’s lodged a formal protest against what he called an un- primary purpose was to safeguard the Church’s ac- acceptable interference in German domestic a&airs. tivities to administer the sacraments and celebrate Speaking for the Pope, Cardinal Pacelli dismissed Mass: if its sacred, divine functions could proceed, the protest and rea%rmed every accusation leveled Pacelli reasoned, then the Church could outlast the in Mit Brennender Sorge. Nazi regime as it had survived a long list of threats to Relations between the Vatican and the Reich de- its existence in the past. teriorated, as the Vatican watched with dismay the However pleased Hitler was with the Reichs- dramatic events of 1938: the Anschluss with Austria konkordat for the respectability it lent his regime, in March, the Munich agreement to carve the Sude- he didn’t take long to begin violating its terms. By tenland from Czechoslovakia in October, and the early 1934, the freedom of the Catholic press was terror of Kristallnacht in November, when the Na- infringed, Catholic schools were closed, and in the zis unleashed the fury of the mob against the Jewish next two years the Catholic Youth organizations community in Germany. were absorbed into the Hitler Youth movement. With war on the horizon, Cardinal Pacelli and Pius Protests from German bishops and the Vatican alike XI vainly issued a series of diplomatic protests. A$er were ignored by the Nazi government. the Munich pact, the Vatican announced, “In the In light of these treaty violations, Pacelli deter- past nations had been o&ered as matrimonial pres- mined that he had grounds to act. In 1937, a$er con- ents; today they are being traded away without their sultations with the German bishops, Pacelli dra$ed consent.” Regarding the persecution of the Jews, Pius a sharply worded papal encyclical. Putting aside his XI told Belgian pilgrims visiting the Vatican that preferred diplomatic approach, he a%rmed that he Christians should not “take part in anti-Semitism

36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 because in Christ we are all Abraham’s descendants "e Vatican recognized in the 1930s that it wasn’t … Spiritually we are all Jews.” In September 1938, living in the Middle Ages. In the Age of Faith, the pa- when Mussolini instituted anti-Semitic legislation in pacy’s powers were far-reaching and excommunica- Italy, Pius XI declared scathingly, “Catholic means tion represented a plausible deterrent to a tyrant, as universal, but not racialism, nor nationalism, nor the German Emperor Henry IV discovered when he separation … One wonders therefore why Italy has had to beg forgiveness at Canossa. But the disastrous felt the need in an unfortunate spirit of imitation to blowback when Pope Pius V deployed the ultimate copy the example of Germany.” power of a papal bull against Queen Elizabeth I re- mained seared in the Vatican’s institutional memory. ooking back, let us remain vigilant about our "at mis!re led to Catholicism being equated with Lown all-too-ready surrender to what Lord Acton treason in the mind of the English public. No evi- identi!ed as “the tyranny of the present.” "e Vati- dence suggests that a similar condemnation of Na- can and Pope Pius XII have endured a half-century zism would have had much e&ect other than to turn of sustained criticism for failing to combat the Nazi the full force of Hitler’s terror against the Church, horrors. Yet it is only fair to ask: who spoke louder while failing to help Jews or other victims of Nazi at the time? In the mid-1930s, the European pow- racism. ers counseled caution in the hope that Hitler would "e concordat of July 1933 and the Vatican’s sub- prove himself a moderate statesman. Even when the sequent response to Nazism emerged from its histor- regime showed its true face to the world in 1937–38, ical experience. "e Church’s institutional memory calls to avoid rash action prevailed. A$er the Mu- is measured not in years but in centuries. Its policy nich pact, Western statesmen voiced support for towards Hitler and Nazism was rooted in the con- appeasement; President Roosevelt sent Prime Min- viction that it would ultimately endure this temporal ister Chamberlain a simple congratulation for the evil as it had others in the past. Imperfect though it agreement: “Good man.” "e list of leading Euro- was, the conduct of the Vatican in the face of Na- pean statesman and intellectuals taken in by Hit- zism is no cause for shame when compared to that of ler during these years is a long one: Lloyd George, ex-president Herbert Hoover, and G.B. Shaw, among oth- ers. Even the otherwise perspica- cious Winston Churchill admired Hitler’s “patriotic achievement.” To hold the Vatican and Pius XII guilty Some publications in Britain and of inaction regarding Nazism is unhistorical. France, and even in the Catholic press, did raise their voices in pro- test against Hitler more loudly than did the Vatican, at least before Mit Brennender Sorge in March 1937. "e press organs on the le$, particularly the Marxist its contemporaries. According to the eminent Brit- le$, condemned the "ird Reich unequivocally—at ish historian Martin Gilbert, a scholar of World War least until the Nazi-Soviet pact. In the U.S., liberal II, the Christian churches saved a half million Jew- Catholic magazines such as America and Common- ish lives during the Holocaust, with the majority of weal also criticized Hitler during the early and mid- those rescued by Catholic clergy and laity receiving 1930s more strongly than did the Vatican. the support of the pope. An estimate that “hundreds Nonetheless, to hold the Vatican and Pius XII of thousands of Jews were saved by the entire Catho- guilty of inaction regarding Nazism, when they did lic Church under the leadership of Pope Pius XII,” speak out a$er 1937 against the evils of racism and Gilbert stated in an August 2003 interview, “would rampant nationalism, is unhistorical. One may con- be absolutely correct.” tend that a clear condemnation of National Social- Eugenio Pacelli was a diplomat by training and a ism was part of the church’s duty as a teacher on faith man of caution by temperament. Whether he was a and morals. Yet just as plausibly, one can argue that “saint” or not is for Vatican o%cials to decide. Cer- saving lives by not provoking a megalomaniacal dic- tainly there is much to debate. "is, however, should tator like Hitler was more judicious than delivering a be clear: to dub Pius XII “Hitler’s Pope” is almost as grand moral gesture. absurd as calling Hitler “Pacelli’s Puppet.”

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 37 TheThe PowerPower ofof RealismRealism

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TNIAdforAmCon.indd 1 6/19/13 3:36 PM Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN

A League of My Home

am writing this on a sunny and in these bleachers, too, with friends Howard and Chase Utley, who were, fragrant June morning, sitting and apparitions, conducting decades- in successive years, very kind to our in the bleachers o! the Little long conversations and hearing ghost- daughter during the Muckdogs v. League "eld on which I played all ly echoes. Muckpuppies games. (#ese tilts re- Ithose summers ago. My Little League Even in the bushes, alas, those quired the boys to come to the park coach, Larry Lee, died last week, and ghostly echoes can get lost in the din. the Saturday morn a%er a Friday night it is a Kau!man family habit (not an Each batter has his own “walk-up game and presumed revelry. #e guys eccentricity!) to revisit places associ- music,” which means that every time a who showed—Utley, Howard, and ated with the recently deceased. home team lad strides to the plate we some very good-natured Latin Amer- I can see myself out there at short- are treated to a ten-second snatch of ican players—were saints.) stop for the Cubs in the National his favorite song. Year in and year out, As for the majors: yawn. I can rattle League playo! game. Bottom of the the boys’ collective taste is execrable. o! the starting lineup of the 1975 Kan- sixth, tie game, bases loaded, ground- I’ve yet to hear, say, X or Neil Young, sas City Royals but I couldn’t identify er hit my way, I "eld it cleanly, throw though what I really long for is the a single player on the 2013 Royals ros- home… and into the dirt, skipping it sound of silence. ter. It’s not early-onset dementia, or so past the catcher. Game over, season Conversation is the casualty in the I hope; I just don’t care. over, Little League career over. Shucks. empire of noise. I am vice president Several years ago I had a free a%er- Pretty much every male relative of the team but I can’t get the damned noon while visiting D.C. and thought of mine—father, brother, cousin, decibelage turned down. John Nance I’d take in my "rst Nationals game. uncles—was all-league in baseball or Garner was right about the impuis- #e Metro ride to the stadium, with football, but as for me, well, they also sance of VPs. its passengerial cargo of black and serve who only sit and watch from In minor-league baseball, the place, white ball-capped fans, was a rare and the bench. I’m a quinquagenarian and not the players, is the thing. #is heartening sight in our segregated now, rather to my astonishment, and place is: My old friend Donny Rock, capital city. I still bring out the glove to toss the the groundskeeper, lining the base- As I neared the ticket booth I hesi- ball with our daughter, who humors paths. Grande dame Catherine Roth, tated. Did I really want to spend three the old man with a game of backyard now 92, refusing to stand for the va- hours "dgeting through interminable catch in the high grass. pid “God Bless America,” which since TV timeouts, which make between- I don’t hold, however, with my Up- 9/11 has a$icted our ears during the innings breaks and coaches’ trips to state landsman Frederick Exley’s mo- seventh-inning stretch. My mom, the mound foretastes of eternity? Nah. rose conclusion that “it was my des- who has lived her entire life in our So attending a Nats game remains on tiny—unlike my father, whose fate it Snow Belt county, putting on her jack- my list of #ings to Do in D.C. Before was to hear the roar of the crowd—to et when the temperature dips below I Die (along with visiting the Freder- sit in the stands with most men and 80. Yappy Yapperton, countless sheets ick Douglass home and the gravesites acclaim others. It was my fate, my to the wind, yelling inanities from the of Gore Vidal and Clover Adams at destiny, my end, to be a fan.” (Exley’s beer deck. (Scratch that: Yappy is ei- Rock Creek Cemetery). books belie any such shrinking viole- ther dead or in prison today.) Back in the bleachers I think of tism.) #e boys of summer come and go; William Cullen Bryant’s poetical wish #is is the 75th year since profes- I prefer life in the bleachers. A fair that he die “in &owery June/When sional baseball came to Batavia, and number of big leaguers have passed brooks sent up a cheerful tune.” Bry- we are among the last of the train- this way, and I follow them in the box ant got his wish. It’s the little victories whistle towns in the low minors. I sit scores. Especially Phillies’ stars Ryan that count.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 39 Arts&Letters

legitimacy. We launched a ruthless pac- and #ghting with the Khmer Khrom Vietnam: A War i#cation campaign; it failed—but not ethnic minority and wrote a memoir on Civilians before Washington spread the war into about it? I don’t doubt this man’s cour- Laos and Cambodia and ultimately age any more than I believe that our by C H A S E M A DA R killed some two million civilians. $is war in Southeast Asia can be recast as was the war, and there was no “demo- a “Lost Crusade”—his book’s title—to Kill Anything !at Moves: !e Real cratic side.” protect Vietnam’s ethnic minorities. American War in Vietnam, Nick Turse, By contrast, my interlocutor—an Nobody wants to be called out for Metropolitan, 370 pages intelligent and cultured person—did “spitting on the troops.” Not that his- show a sure command of the political torians have found a single instance ew Americans born a!er the Tet history of Tibet, which had been the of people actually expectorating on O"ensive know even the barest next stop on her Asian tour. returning Vietnam soldiers. $at this facts about the Vietnam War. I From Generation X on down, there piece of revanchist folklore has taken Faim this generalization not at the o!- is a gaping lack of knowledge about the such #rm root shows how hypersensi- underrated Joe Sixpack but at gradu- most foolish and brutal of our postwar tive America remains to any hint that ates of our #nest universities. I remem- wars. (Yes, worse than Iraq.) But this the war was anything less than noble. ber getting co"ee with an old friend, is not a vacant lot ready for intellec- Even a!er four decades, you don’t then fresh out of Yale, right a!er she tual development. Instead this block of make friends by implying that the had backpacked through Vietnam. nescience is something dense, opaque, personal sacri#ce of members of your Whenever she mentioned the war she and fenced o" with barbed wire. Why community was for nothing. referred to the former South Vietnam is there so much socially reinforced ig- Or worse than nothing. Because the as “the democratic side.” It was imme- norance about our bloodiest war since main reason we don’t want to know diately clear that she, like virtually ev- World War II? about Vietnam is that it gave so much eryone else of her and my generation, One reason is that uttering any less- to not want to know about. Yes, Viet- had never heard of the Geneva Accords than-%attering account of the war is nam was a military defeat that killed of 1954 to guarantee free elections in likely to make one feel, even in 2013, some 58,000 American soldiers and South Vietnam, elections scuttled a!er like a bit of a traitor. By airing unpleas- le! 75,000 severely disabled—reason the CIA predicted that Ho Chi Minh ant facts about the war am I smearing enough, for many, to stu" it down would win. My friend had had no sense my Uncle G—, an avid gardener, terrif- the memory hole. But as scholar and that the U.S. invaded (a word rarely ic father, husband, and all-around great journalist Nick Turse shows in a new used, but what else can you call send- guy who was an Army Ranger in Laos? book that is scrupulously document- ing 500,000 troops to a foreign nation?) Am I blood-libeling my brother’s be- ed, what makes the memory of this South Vietnam to prop up an authori- loved high-school English teacher who war so worthy of repression is that its tarian government with little popular served in the Special Forces advising de#ning feature was mass atrocities

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Michael Hogue

against civilians. Rape; the massacres the atrocious carnage in%icted on hun- 1969 by Americal Division’s Charlie of women, children, and the elderly; dreds of thousands of civilians. Nick Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infan- military vehicles running over civilians Turse’s scholarly mission is to haul it try—not because it wasn’t an appalling for sport; “Zippo raids” that burned into the center of historical inquiry and war crime but because the event, now down villages; indiscriminate shelling public memory, where it belongs. Kill fashioned as a horri#c one-o" anom- and aerial bombardment; despoliation Anything !at Moves o"ers neither ar- aly, has perversely absolved the rest of crops and drinking water; routin- gument nor a new narrative—it simply of the war, obscuring for instance the ized torture—this was the unredeem- aims to make violence against civilians massacre of 118 civilians at Dien Nien able essence of our Vietnam War, not “the essence of what we should think of or of 68 civilians at Phuoc Binh; of 200 American teenagers coming of age and when we say ‘the Vietnam War’.” civilians at An Phuoc; of 86 killed at bonding against a bamboo backdrop, $e war was “a system of su"ering.” Nhon Hoa; 155 killed at the My Khe not “good intentions” in Washington Turse is sick of hearing about My Lai— (4) hamlet. leading us into a “quagmire.” the programmatic slaughter of over Turse’s book is sometimes repeti- Of the 33,000 books about the Viet- 500 Vietnamese women, children, and tive, by design: “I thought I was look- nam War, all but a few eagerly sidestep elderly men carried out on March 16, ing for a needle in a haystack,” he says

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters about embarking on his research, like Samuel Huntington) and urban principles—Robert McNamara had “what I found was a veritable haystack slums. He tells the stories of dozens gone to the Department of Defense of needles.” $ere was nothing excep- of individuals, mostly Vietnamese, straight from the helm of the auto tional about My Lai. In the words of whose lives were ruined by the war. giant—and the slaughter was indus- Ron Ridenhour, the former helicopter Pham $i Luyen, 13 years old on Oc- trial in scale. Victory over the Viet door-gunner who did more than any- tober 21, 1967, when American mem- Cong was to be achieved by quanti#- one to expose that particular massacre, bers of Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st able “kill ratios,” to reach that elusive it “was an operation, not aberration.” Marine Regiment came to her village tipping point where the insurgency $e numbers are numbing. Ac- of Trieu Ai and massacred a dozen ci- could no longer replenish its troops. cording to study by Harvard Medical vilians, including her father. Nguyen $is approach hard-wired incentives School and the University of Washing- $i Lam, a villager from the Mekong to secure a high “body count” down ton, there were 3.8 million violent war Delta, who was gunned down by U.S. the chain of command, with the result deaths, of which two million were ci- helicopters on the morning of May 20, that U.S. soldiers o!en shot civilians vilian, with similar estimates reached 1968 while at work in the rice paddies; dead to pad their tallies and thereby by the Vietnamese government and she lost her le! leg, her sister-in-law move up the ranks. Robert McNamara himself. Up to lost her life. (As Turse reports, “Even It was Gen. Julian Ewell who made 500,000 Vietnamese women turned a U.S. Senate study acknowledged that the killing of Vietnamese civilians to sex work. 14,000 South Vietnamese by that by 1968 some 300,000 civilians into standard operating procedure. civilians were killed, mostly by U.S. had been killed or wounded in free- Ewell assumed the military command #repower, during the Tet O"ensive. #re zones.”) Bui $i Houng, gang- of the Mekong Delta region in early 70 million liters of herbicidal agents, raped by #ve members of a Marine 1968 and immediately upped the req- notably Agent Orange, were dumped unit as other Marines shot dead her uisite body count to 4,000 a month, across the countryside. (“Only you unarmed husband, mother–in-law, then to 6,000. At the end of the year, can prevent forests” was the travestied and sister-in-law in Xuan Ngoc ham- he started Operation Speedy Express, Smokey the Bear slogan.) 3.4 million let on September 23, 1966. a six-month infantry assault on the combat sorties were launched by the It was a great big homicidal carni- delta region, killing thousands of Viet- U.S. and South Vietnam between 1965 val. Sergeant Roy Bumgarner of the namese, a great many of whom were Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, civilians. (Civilian war casualties were then the 173rd Airborne 80 percent of all patients at provincial Brigade, achieved celeb- hospitals.) Air power raised the kill- rity within the ranks for his ing to industrial scale, with a total of The relentless violence against slaughter of Vietnamese ci- 4,338 gunship sorties, 6,500 tactical civilians was more than the activity vilians, and when in 1969 he air strikes dropping at least 5,078 tons was #nally court-martialed of bombs and 1,784 tons of napalm. of a few sociopaths: it was policy. for the murder of three ci- One American regional adviser de- vilians, his only penalty was scribed it as “nonselective terrorism.” a reduction in rank and a As another veteran recalled, “A Co- monthly #ne of $97, which bra gunship spitting out six hundred and 1972. $e amount of ammunition lasted only half a year. Bumgarner rounds a minute doesn’t discern be- #red per soldier was 26 times higher stayed on active duty throughout, tween chickens, kids and VC.” than in World War II. In the north- quickly rose back from private to ser- Ewell, known by his men as “the ernmost province of South Vietnam, geant, and was one of the last U.S. in- Butcher of the Delta,” was awarded Quang Tri, only 11 out of 35,000 vil- fantrymen to leave the country. One a third general’s star and made a top lages were not damaged by bombing civil a"airs lieutenant involved in the U.S. military adviser at the Paris peace or artillery. A survey found that 96 case—and outraged by its lack of con- talks. His book about the operation percent of Marine Corps second lieu- sequence—chalked up the light sen- was taught at West Point. tenants said they would torture pris- tence to “the M.G.R.–the Mere Gook Some readers (and many more non- oners to obtain information. Rule” which granted free rein to hom- readers) in the United States will reject Turse paints a fresco of casual cru- icidal violence. this knowledge and accuse Turse of elty and the wholesale destruction of But the relentless violence against beating up the troops, hating Ameri- an agrarian society relocated at gun- civilians was more than the activ- ca, etc. In fact, Turse shows quite a bit point into “strategic hamlets” (a plan ity of a few sociopaths: it was policy. of empathy for the American grunt, dreamed up by Harvard professors $is was a war fought along Fordist a heavily armed teenager in a wholly

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 foreign environment. But he does not legislatures from Mississippi to New to the stories of the civilians whose suf- look away from the senseless destruc- Jersey passing resolutions in support fering was orders of magnitude higher. tion U.S. troops perpetrated, “fueled of the man, who was under house It will be the work of others to unpack by a toxic mix of youth, testosterone, arrest at Fort Benning. (In Georgia, the implications of this seminal work, racism, anger, boredom, fear, alien- Calley had a vigorous defender in the which raises so many questions. Do ation, anonymity, impunity and ex- young Democratic governor, Jimmy counterinsurgency and paci#cation citement.” Turse will not have Lt. Wil- Carter.) Newsweek’s Vietnam corre- campaigns unavoidably lead to ram- liam Calley alone made the fall guy for spondents, Kevin Buckley and Alex pant slaughter of civilians? ($e New My Lai, “as if the deaths of more than Shimkin, fought a losing battle to York Times marked the 10th anni- #ve hundred civilians, carried out by make their magazine publish a long versary of the Iraq invasion with an dozens of men at the behest of higher story about the systematic nature of op-ed from counterinsurgency guru command, were his fault alone.” As wartime atrocities, arguing, like Turse John Nagl attempting to salvage his pet the #les of the Pentagon’s own War today, that My Lai massacres were tactic from blood-soaked ignominy Crimes Working Group show, “atroci- widespread and “normal.” ties were committed by members of $e magazine eventually every infantry, cavalry and airborne published a heavily edited division, and every separate brigade version shorn of its most that deployed without the rest of its important #ndings. The Geneva Conventions on the division—that is, every major army A book with such an el- treatment of enemy prisoners weren’t unit in Vietnam.” evated atrocity-per-page so much flouted as shot in the temple. Telford Taylor, a retired brigadier ratio demands the great- general and former Nuremberg pros- est rhetorical #nesse, lest ecutor, daringly argued in 1971 for chapters like “A Litany war crimes tribunals that would try of Atrocities” and “Un- American o&cers—this idea went no- bounded Misery” be- where. $roughout the war there was come mere litanies of atrocities of of Afghanistan and Iraq.) Can armies a veneer of law regulating the soldiers, unbounded misery. Turse is up to the “control” and “protect” a population but impunity for war crimes was close task: he doesn’t rant, doesn’t scold, without routinized atrocity? to absolute. Even when atrocity alle- and his writing never raises its voice. And how much of the slaughter gations (usually made in the face of His research is a triumph of the his- was, according the laws of armed con- heavy peer pressure and intimidation) torian’s cra!, with sources including %ict, legal? Turse generally sticks to did result in investigations, there were hundreds of interviews with Ameri- the non-legal term “atrocity” rather few convictions, and such sentences as can veterans and dozens with civilian than “war crime”—which is very wise, did get handed down were generally survivors of atrocities, conducted over given that the two terms don’t overlap minimal—and then usually reduced several trips to Vietnam. More im- as closely as many would like to be- further. Most cases were allowed to pressive still is his mastery of archival lieve. $ere is no doubt that American, %ounder until collapsing upon the sol- resources: Turse was bequeathed the South Vietnamese, and Viet Cong sol- dier’s discharge. ($e pattern of impu- copious notes of Newsweek’s Buckley diers violated the laws of armed con- nity is redolent of Central American and Shimkin, and he has broken new %ict in their treatment of civilians. $e state violence in the 1980s—except the ground with the previously unex- Geneva Conventions on the treatment perpetrators have jarringly non-Latin plored #les of the Army’s War Crimes of enemy prisoners weren’t so much surnames like Du"y, Cushman, Bow- Working Group—which he happened %outed as shot in the temple, a #nd- ers, Parker.) $e War Crimes Working upon in the National Archives and ing con#rmed by the Pentagon’s own Group, whose #les are the backbone photocopied for several days straight investigations and the International of Turse’s research, was formed not to while sleeping in his car in the parking Committee of the Red Cross. But how investigate and prosecute but to per- lot. And a good thing he made copies much of the carnage, particularly that form damage control: a!er the My Lai because the drive to suppress memo- stemming from aerial bombardment, story broke, never again would the ries of Vietnam has entered even the was perfectly legit under international military be caught o"-guard when an archives: the #les were later removed humanitarian law? $e point is still atrocity hit the news. from the shelves. argued, with military lawyers like W. $e main e"ect of the My Lai news But the word is out. Turse’s book has Hays Parks contending that the “Roll- was to provoke a wave of sympa- shi!ed the focus of the Vietnam War ing $under” campaign that dropped thy for Lieutenant Calley, with state from the stories of American soldiers 640,000 tons of bombs on North

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters

Vietnam and killed tens of thousands Unlearning racist, his thoughts on Christianity can of civilians was in strict compliance be seen as a re%ection of his suspicious with international law. to be Human attitude to progress. In a letter he wrote Many humanitarian-minded law- to the novelist and playwright John yers will bristle at this, but why not by J.P. O’MALLEY Galsworthy in 1901, Conrad declared, admit that the law is on the side of the “Scepticism, the tonic of mind, the ton- B-52s, not that of the civilians below? !e Silence of Animals: On Progress ic of life, the agent of truth—way of art Who do you think wrote the law in and Other Modern Myths, John Gray, and salvation.” the #rst place? We urgently need to see Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 222 pages It’s with admiration for Conrad’s an- how the laws of war work in practice, tipathy to dogmatic principles that John given that so many hawks of both le! n 1896 the Anglo-Polish writer Jo- Gray references this short story at the and right insist that law and lawyers seph Conrad wrote a short story beginning of !e Silence of Animals. are a viable means of fashioning mili- called “An Outpost of Progress.” It For Gray—emeritus professor of Eu- tary force into a precise, therapeutic Irecalls the tragic fate of two traders— ropean thought at the London School instrument. But as this book suggests Kayerts and Carlier—who are sent by of Economics—Conrad’s lucid prose is throughout, the primary function of a Belgian corporation to a remote part a reminder of how instrumental myth the Rules of Engagement and military of the Congo. is in helping human beings cope with law in general is not to restrain lethal A"orded the luxury to buy local the existential ennui that is central to force but to authorize it. In Vietnam, slaves to complete their physical work the human condition. As Gray elo- the overriding principle of Internation- for them, the two men spend much quently puts it: “$e power of myth is al Humanitarian Law, the current pre- of their days idle. Over the next few in making meaning from the wreckage ferred euphemism for the laws of war, months their food supplies run out, of meaning.” turned out to be the Mere Gook Rule. and the ship they are expecting from Conrad is one of many writers from War puts incredible stress on the rule Europe fails to arrive. In a quarrel over the canon of modern literature that of law—when not putting it through sugar rations, Carlier is the #rst man to Gray references in this short polemic. the shredder—and beneath the law, our die. Others include Ford Madox Ford, sense of justice and morality. Consider Witnessing the death of his col- John Ashbery, Sigmund Freud, and the example of U.S. Army Major Carl league, Kayerts soon loses the will to Wallace Stevens. Gray interconnects Hensley, charged with investigating go on. He hangs himself from a wood- abstract lines of poetry, memorable war-crime allegations. Under pressure en cross, which was put there to mark passages from some of the age’s #nest to suppress his #ndings, he blew his the death of an earlier trader, who, the writers, and insights from his favor- brains out with a shotgun on the day narrator tells us, had “watched the con- ite philosophers and thinkers—along of April 15, 1971. $e military came struction of this outpost of progress.” with a number of his own aphorisms. instantly and removed every piece of If such a thing as a philosophical Here are a few examples: “Humankind paper in the Hensley home. “$ey lesson can be gleaned from this short is, of course, not marching anywhere”; pulled the trash cans. $ey le! nothing story, it is this: without the prospect “$ere is only one human animal, for- behind,” remembers his daughter Karla of a future or a society to guide them ever at war with itself”; “To think of Hensley, then a child. in how to live, these men see no rea- humans as freedom-loving, you must What happens when no honest son for existing. Faced with a choice be ready to view nearly all of history as memories of atrocity get le! behind? between living without a purpose or a mistake.” We learn nothing and repeat the car- death, both choose the latter. When I began reading this book, it nage in new places with names like As the story reaches its climax, Con- felt as if Gray was simply going over the Fallujah, Haditha, and Helmand. We rad juxtaposes an image of the steamer same old ground, rehashing his man- cover ourselves with the “fog of war” #nally arriving from Europe just as tra about the myth of progress, which like a thick %eece blanket, and those Kayerts breathes his last hanging from goes something like this: history does who would li! it from us do not get the cross. But all is not lost, it seems. not follow a linear pattern, mankind is our thanks. But Nick Turse and his Kayerts #nds the redemption in death not on a march to progress, and anyone disturbing and necessary book de- that he could not #nd in life, while hu- who thinks otherwise is either a funda- serve our deepest gratitude. manity—it appears—rolls onwards in mentalist or slightly deluded. Yet while the great march of progress, as the Eu- there is an element of this, !e Silence Chase Madar is an attorney in New York ropean settlers sail down the river. of Animals o"ers a more nuanced ap- and the author of $e Passion of Bradley While Conrad’s ideas about impe- proach. Manning. rialism would today be considered Over his distinguished career, Gray

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 has come to be seen as a cantankerous was certain that liberal democracy— and show how they are similar. In Al- know-all by his enemies and as a ge- however it was achieved—would be Qaeda and What it Means to be Mod- nius by disciples who share his nihilist the West’s gi! to those countries that ern, Gray argued quite convincingly vision of the world. While to many he hadn’t quite #gured out how the pro- that the neoconservative movement remains one of the most revered politi- cess of government worked. and fundamentalist Islam were cut cal theorists in contemporary Western $e argument doesn’t end with the from the same cloth: both are apoca- philosophy, his opponents see him as a discipline of politics, either. lyptic myths of utopian hope that stem contrarian who refuses to nail his col- For rational atheists like Richard from the Jacobin principle of revolu- ors to the political mast. Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late tion and progress. Some of the intellectual giants he Christopher Hitchens, the world will Almost every major political ideol- has learned from—on both the le! and magically transform itself into a co- ogy we have been exposed to in the last the right—he now regularly criticizes, herent place if we just embrace science hundred years, Gray posits, is a prod- including John Stuart Mill and Fred- and reason. uct of Enlightenment thinking, and if rick Hayek. (He has written acclaimed Another of Gray’s habits is to take we want to trace the trajectory of the books about both.) two seemingly opposite ideologies Enlightenment idea of progress back to In the 1980s, Gray was an advocate for $atcherite free-market principles. But as Tony Blair carried the Iron La- dy’s ideology into New Labour’s suc- cessful 1997 election campaign, Gray The Liberal Agenda is swung le! of center and gave up on the New Right. the Blueprint for $is process of reassessing his own political and philosophical judgment is what makes him such an interesting National Ruin! critical thinker. While he has changed ideological clothes a number of times, there is one side of Gray that has been extremely consistent: his deep suspi- Say Goodbye to the cion about massive projects for human America You Knew freedom. $is is something he inherited from Read this compelling new his intellectual hero, Isaiah Berlin. book by best-selling author $e most dangerous man in the James R. Cook – world, in Berlin’s humble opinion, is he who thinks he has discovered the true meaning of life, for such a character Free! believes that an earthly paradise can be National Bankruptcy achieved in this divided world of ours. Why The Middle Class Is Doomed Call 1-800-328-1860 Now! As advertised on CNBC and Fox News. What Gray takes from Berlin is the idea that every actor in each of these massive thought-projects has been Call 1-800-328-1860 Name or send in this coupon convinced of his own infallibility. But, and we’ll rush you a Address as history has proven, all have been copy of National mistaken. Lenin believed he had dis- Bankruptcy and our City State Zip powerful Financial covered—via Marx—the laws that Newsletter Home Phone Work Phone governed history; Hitler was sure the FREE of charge. Jews and the bourgeois were the root TELEPHONE NUMBER REQUIRED FOR PROCESSING NBMAGS cause of all evil in the world. Francis Fukuyama was convinced that free- market capitalism would be the last

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JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters its sources, we must go back to ancient certainty. Human beings are the only The Fight for Greece and the early days of Christian- animals who have equipped them- ity. Gray writes: selves with symbols to help make Food Rights sense of an existence they cannot un- Mixing a Greek idea of reason as derstand. $ey have a tendency, says by MARK NUGENT giving access to timeless truths Gray, to think and act as if these sym- with a Christian view of salva- bols actually exist. Much of philosophy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food tion in history has not produced and religion—particularly in a Western Rights: !e Escalating Battle Over Who anything like a coherent synthesis; context—Gray contends, “is not much Decides What We Eat, David Gumpert, but the resulting humanism—sec- more than a rationalization of this con- Chelsea Green, 280 pages ular and religious—has formed ceit.” the central western tradition. If human beings want to attain in- ver the past two decades ner peace, they could learn a thing or Americans have taken un- Sometimes such grand declarations two from the animal kingdom. To il- precedented interest in the feel like Gray is stating that nothing lustrate this point, Gray recalls a story Oway food is produced. $ose who matters, so contemplating a notion of of a bird watcher from Essex in South discover the grim facts tend to move a brighter tomorrow is a waste of time. East England called J.A. Baker. In a toward traditionally and locally pro- But within this black hole of despair, a book he wrote called !e Peregrine, duced foods. Some are motivated by white light emerges, if one allows some Baker described how he obsessively health concerns, others by environ- time for Gray’s argument to ferment. followed this bird for a period of ten mentalism or alarm at the ill treatment When it comes to ontology, Gray’s years. His hope was to shed his hu- of animals in factory farms. Many also guru is Sigmund Freud. For it was man identity and become the bird. appreciate the sheer sensual pleasure Freud who understood that human $e horror that Baker was %eeing of a more traditional diet and way of from, says Gray, was a “world life. As it happens, the neatly packaged in which humans encountered wares lining supermarket aisles usual- only re%ections of themselves.” ly aren’t as tasty or nourishing as what If human beings want If the human mind is ever to you get from local farms. to attain inner peace, they escape the various myths that Small farmers and food produc- could learn a thing or two make up our lives, it must be ers welcome the newfound interest in through small moments of what their work, given that industrialization from the animal kingdom. Gray calls “Godless contempla- and consolidation have imperiled their tion.” What this o"ers, he ex- cra!. As David Gumpert notes in Life, plains, is “mere being.” Gray be- Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights, lieves, as the book’s title suggests, “$e United States lost nearly 90 per- beings are constantly at war with their that “the silence of animals”—who cent of its dairy farms between 1970 own re%ections and in a state of per- don’t share our capacity of language to and 2006, even while the number of petual discontent. Put simply: it’s part construct meaning—is something that milk-producing cows declined only 25 of the human condition to wonder everyone should strive for. percent.” Now farmers increasingly sell why you exist and what your purpose $is is perhaps Gray’s least contro- directly to consumers, freeing them- of being is. But answering that is a war versial book to date, but it’s up there selves from the relentless downward no human being is ever going to win. with the best that he has written. Gray pressure on prices that comes with sell- Freud believed the only way out of would admit that his own thesis isn’t ing to large distributors. this conundrum was to deal with life infallible. In fact, one suspects he pre- $at merciless pressure gave us the through metaphors and myth. fers people to read his books with a $1 double cheeseburger and the factory As Gray puts it: “Freud’s mythol- critical eye—as another great English farm—otherwise known by its creepy ogy captures features of human expe- philosopher, Bertrand Russell, once acronym, CAFO, for “Concentrated rience that are enduring and universal. commented, “When a man tells you Animal Feeding Operation.” As we’ve Of course [these] ideas are systems that he knows the exact truth about become accustomed to dirt-cheap of metaphors … so is all human dis- anything, you are safe in inferring that prices at the supermarket, the drive- course, even if metaphors are not all of he is an inexact man.” through, and just about everywhere one kind.” else, we’ve overlooked the costs im- In Gray’s worldview, the great en- J.P. O’Malley is an Irish writer living in posed by the CAFOs’ #lthy conditions, emy of all philosophical thought is London. toxic waste products, and con#ned,

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 sickly cows pumped full of antibiot- ics. In that light, the $1 cheeseburger seems like an awful swindle. And when consumers pay more for high-quality meat from a nearby farm, interacting with people who raised the animals humanely and with a sense of stew- ardship toward the land, it makes eco- nomic sense. But farmers and consumers who want to secede from America’s indus- trialized food system eventually cross swords with state and federal regula- Raw milk is uniquely tors. Originally intended to oversee fraught. Small farmers do large, capital-intensive operations, face obstacles in selling these regulators now police small pro- naturally raised meats, but ducers who o!en can’t a"ord to abide they bene#t considerably by requirements designed for much from the rise of farmers’ larger ones. Amid the intensifying markets across the coun- clash between regulators, police, and try. Raw milk, on the oth- big agriculture on one hand and small er hand, is impossible to Michael Hogue farmers and their customers on the buy legally in many states other, Gumpert’s titular “food rights” and has been subject to concept was born. draconian crackdowns, America’s food regulatory system sometimes involving un- heavily favors the goal of eliminat- dercover investigators and ing pathogens from the food supply SWAT-style raids. Raw- over promoting health broadly under- milk drinkers, undeterred, circum- ence. Raw-milk advocates also claim stood. One could subsist entirely on vent the law through novel contractu- that pasteurization kills o" not just Mountain Dew, Slim Jims, and Lucky al arrangements of uncertain legality. pathogens but also bene#cial, health- Charms without any interference from Why the intransigence on both promoting bacteria in milk. the government—which is as it should sides over something as mundane Regulators and their allies, however, be in a free society. Of course, the gas- as milk? $e industrialized produc- dismiss health claims for raw milk as station gourmand invites chronic dis- tion system requires the sterilization fantasy and pseudoscience, condemn- ease, stratospheric costs for medical of milk through pasteurization. $e ing the product as inherently unsafe. care and prescription drugs, and an system demands that milk have a long Indeed, a number of outbreaks of food- early death. But should he eschew his shelf life and travel great distances borne illness have been associated with modern diet for traditionally produced from cow to fridge—and betray no raw milk. According to the Centers for farmers’ goods, he is likely to encoun- sign of its less-than-sanitary origins. Disease Control, raw milk has been re- ter all sorts of legal obstacles. If he de- In the process, raw-milk partisans sponsible for two deaths and hundreds velops a taste for raw milk, he may as say, it’s stripped of a broad array of of illnesses in the United States between well have a target on his back. health bene#ts. Many of their claims 1993 and 2006. Gumpert concedes the Much of Gumpert’s book focuses are as yet unsubstantiated by scienti#c heightened risk but dismisses CDC on this forbidden commodity—un- research—though a large 2006 study estimates of foodborne illnesses in pasteurized and non-homogenized of 15,000 children in Europe (where general as “wild extrapolations.” Many (“raw”) milk—and the rebellion of raw milk remains generally legal) sug- enthusiasts suspect that hostile regula- milk-drinkers and producers amid gested that those who consumed raw tors are quick to home in on reports of crackdowns and legal struggles. milk had lower incidences of asthma illnesses associated with raw milk, thus Gumpert skillfully tells the story of and allergies. $e authors of a simi- in%ating the reported number of out- the food-freedom movement, and lar 2011 study concluded that certain breaks in relation to other foods. of raw-milk producers in particular, whey proteins in raw milk, which are While the health claims and con- here and on his blog, “$e Complete reduced or destroyed by pasteuriza- cerns alike remain nebulous, the law Patient.” tion, probably account for the di"er- regarding raw milk is a thicket of

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters detailed federal and state regulations. Washington, D.C., group Grassfed on milk. Technically, no retail sale has $e act of drinking raw milk is legal in the Hill, which distributed milk, meat, taken place: members are taking de- every state, and farmers and their fami- eggs, and fermented vegetables from livery of products they already own. A lies can consume milk produced from a Pennsylvania Amish farmer named handful of states that prohibit the re- their own cows. But that’s where the Daniel Allgyer. He had previously sup- tail sale of raw milk have ruled herd- simplicity ends. Federal regulations bar plied milk to large dairy processors for shares legal by statute, regulation, or the transport of raw milk across state $2 to $2.50 per gallon but was able to court decision. In others, the legality lines for sale. In some states, all sales of more than double his price by selling is ambiguous. raw milk for human consumption are directly to consumers. He also found Over the past several years, small illegal. Among those states, though, a market for yogurt and cheese for the farms and buying clubs have come several allow raw milk to be sold as “pet #rst time. (Large processors tend to under attack, with numerous raids, food”—even when it’s clearly intended buy only milk, preferring to make de- arrests and prosecutions by state and for human consumption. Other states rivative products themselves). Follow- federal agencies. Gumpert o"ers a bar retail sales of raw milk but allow it ing a lawsuit by the FDA, a 2011 ruling number of reasons for the apparent to be sold directly from the farm. Sev- barred Allgyer from continuing to sup- crackdown. First, highly publicized eral states, including California, allow ply food to Grassfed on the Hill, and he outbreaks of foodborne illness stem- for regulated retail sales of raw milk. became a carpenter. ming from dangerous conditions at Farmers and consumers have re- Another model for distributing raw factory farms raised alarm. In 1992, sponded by circumventing the regu- milk is the cowshare or herdshare, in beef from the fast-food chain Jack in lated food system, with limited suc- which the consumer purchases a share the Box tainted with a virulent strain cess. One method is the private food of a dairy cow or herd. $e price paid of E. coli sickened hundreds of people club, in which members pay an an- for a gallon of milk is said to be the and killed four children. Lawmakers nual fee to gain access to farmers’ fair value of the farmer’s labor in car- and the media brought intense scruti- products. An early example was the ing for the herd and producing the ny to the issue of food safety a!er that. $is period also saw the rise of a young attorney named Bill Marler, who had landed record-breaking settlements for victims of the outbreaks. “$e publicity made Marler the go-to lawyer for food safety cases,” writes Gumpert, argu- ing that the tactics by which he made a name for himself have contributed to “an ever-mounting—and at times unwarranted—climate of fear around food safety.” In a post-9/11 climate that favored stronger law enforcement, the 2002 Bioterrorism Act granted new powers to the FDA with the ostensible goal of protecting the food supply from ter- rorist attacks. Mission creep soon set in, Gumpert writes, and he details evi- dence of FDA coordination with state prosecutions of food clubs in Minne- sota, Wisconsin, and Georgia. In one high-pro#le case, a!er an un- dercover investigation by the FDA, the California Department of Food and Ag- riculture, and the L.A. County Health Department, a food club called Rawe- some was raided by state, county, and federal agents. $ree of those arrested became known as the “Rawesome

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 $ree”: James Stewart, who co-founded and #ve other Maine towns soon fol- about the travails of eccentric refugees and headed Rawesome; Sharon Palmer, lowed its lead. $e movement hit a from the domain of Big Ag and Big a small farmer and supplier of eggs and roadblock in May, however, when a Food. $e invocation of novel rights dairy; and Eugenie Bloch, who helped judge ruled that municipalities do not to unregulated foods and lo!y appeals Palmer sell her goods to local farmers’ have the power to exempt themselves to the civil rights movement are not markets. A year later, Rawesome was from state licensing requirements. going to foment a revolution against shut down for good. $e prosecutions $roughout Life, Liberty and the America’s regime of state and federal gained widespread attention but never Pursuit of Food Rights Gumpert ex- food regulations. became a cause célebre, thanks to in- presses sympathy for the idea that $ere’s reason to be skeptical of the #ghting among Rawesome’s founders “food rights”—the principle that con- localist ideal, too. Many members of and erratic behavior among the Rawe- sumers should be able to obtain the private food clubs live in big cities and some $ree. James Stewart skipped food of their choosing—constitute place their orders online, and their court appearances and thus violated rights on par with others guaranteed food will be transported hundreds of bail and was arrested by three bounty by the Constitution. Indeed, this lib- miles over several states. $ese buy- hunters in an incident captured on You- erty was so self-evident at the time ers may be reassured by the fact that Tube. Sharon Palmer was accused of of Constitution’s dra!ing that no one their milk and pork is coming from outsourcing eggs represented as having saw the need to codify been produced on her farm and obtain- it. Like many other ing loans from Rawesome members un- champions of an em- der fraudulent pretenses. battled cause, Gumpert In another recent case that attracted invites comparisons to Activists look forward to a future in national attention, a Wisconsin farm- the civil rights move- which “food rights” take their place er named Vernon Hershberger—who ment, wondering when “had been born into an Amish com- the food-rights move- beside religion, speech, and guns in the munity but le! to live a more con- ment will see its “Rosa American pantheon of liberties. ventional life”—had organized cus- Parks moment.” tomers of dairy and meats from his Activists, then, look Grazin’ Acres farm into a private club. forward to a future in In 2010, his farm store was raided by which “food rights” take Wisconsin o&cials who sealed refrig- their place beside religion, speech, Amish farms, but the circumstances erators in his store and poured blue and guns in the American pantheon of its faraway production might be as dye into a huge vat of his farm’s raw of Constitutional liberties. But theirs opaque as those of products at the lo- milk. Following a jury trial, in May is perhaps a better rhetorical strategy cal Whole Foods. $is commerce is 2013 Hershberger was acquitted of than a legal one: in a society thickly happening on a large enough scale, three of the four charges against him, webbed with commercial regulations, and with goods traveling long enough which involved operating his business courts are unlikely to recognize such distances, that it’s unlikely to escape without retail and dairy licenses re- absolute claims. scrutiny—and even sympathetic ob- quired by the state. ($e fourth charge Nor are judges likely to accept the servers might question whether it was for violating a holding order and legal loopholes of food clubs and should. continuing to sell his goods, which herdshares in which consumers own Raw-milk advocates nostalgically Hershberger had admitted.) cows and pay farmers for their board, point to a time in the early 20th cen- In addition to courtroom battles care, and milking at a price charged tury when raw milk was legally sold against state and local regulators, per gallon of milk. $us no goods are throughout the country alongside the farmers are taking their cause to the technically bought or sold—but to pasteurized variety. $is milk came voters. In Maine, new restrictions the naked eye, the arrangement looks from dairies certi#ed by an industry on small dairy farms met with spir- uncannily like customers buying organization called the American As- ited resistance. Opponents launched milk from farmers, and judges can’t sociation of Medical Milk Commis- a campaign for town ordinances that be blamed for seeing things that way. sions. $e establishment of a similar would essentially nullify state law, al- And food-rights activists are unlikely organization to certify the produc- lowing farms to sell unregulated food to attract wide support from a su- ers supplying today’s private buying directly to consumers. Sedgwick, permarket-faring public that is easily clubs could o"er the public assurance Maine in 2011 became the #rst town spooked by potentially unsafe foods. that this milk was produced accord- to pass a Food Sovereignty ordinance, Most people don’t know or don’t care ing to the industry’s best practices of

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters sanitation. Similarly, if USDA stan- How Rod Dreher is less clear. dards for slaughtering animals or state Dreher begins by portraying Ruthie permit requirements are designed for Went Home Again in quasi-Rousseauan terms as an un- large producers, it’s conceivable that spoiled child of nature, uncorrupted small producers wishing to operate by JEREM Y BEER because uninterested in civilization’s outside that system could devise and higher echelons. She cares for aban- adhere to an alternative set of reason- !e Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A doned animals, #shes, excels at sports, able but fair standards. Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the and gets into #ghts, sometimes on her $is isn’t to suggest that the stamp Secret of a Good Life, Rod Dreher, brother’s behalf. We see her as a teenag- of approval from a private certi#ca- Grand Central Publishing, 288 pages er, shooting at a deer and answering her tion board will prompt the FDA and Paw’s question whether she has hit her USDA to abandon their enforcement he Little Way of Ruthie Leming target with the joyful cry, “Hell yeah, I e"orts: change at these agencies only isn’t quite what one expects. did.” Later, we encounter her as a young comes from above. But we’ve seen $e title alludes to the little way woman dancing un-self-consciously on court cases, such as Vernon Hersh- Tof St. $érèse of Lisieux, but Ruthie the bar at a Cajun hangout. She liked to berger’s, in which juries prove to be Leming was not a saint. She has no drink and make out down by the river. less concerned with the letter of the little way that could be wholeheartedly For Dreher, all of this conveys the es- law than with safe products and re- endorsed as a universally valid spiritu- sential core of Ruthie’s personality: in sponsible producers, and are therefore al practice. And the pathos of the story stark contrast to himself, she su"ered willing to leave the parties to these derives not so much from her own from no crippling anxiety, no paralyz- buying arrangements to their busi- story, gutwrenching as it is, as from ing self-analysis. No restlessness, ei- ness. If o"-the-grid food producers the struggle of her only brother—the ther. “She was satis#ed with what she were certi#ed by third parties to have author—to come to terms with it. had in front of her,” he writes. Either submitted to rigorous safety proce- $e basic outline of Ruthie’s story by nature or by an act of will, she was dures, public opinion and the legisla- will be familiar to readers of Rod Dre- a happy and contented member of the tive climate might begin to turn. her’s blog at !e American Conserva- Starhill community. Whatever the future holds for food- tive’s website. Ruthie was 40 when she $at is impossible for Dreher. As a culture fringe-dwellers, Life, Liberty was diagnosed with a viciously aggres- child, he is a dreamy indoors kid trapped and the Pursuit of Food Rights is a sive form of lung cancer. She #nally in a practical outdoors world. He is of compelling account of their clashes succumbed 18 months later, leaving little use to his father and, as will happen with government. Gumpert fosters a behind three daughters (Hannah, Re- to dreamy indoors kids, he eventually sense of justi#ed outrage at the plight bekah, and Claire), a husband (Mike), becomes a target of the mouth-breath- of the farmers who have lost their her parents, and her brother. Her se- ing set at school. Soon a!er one espe- livelihood a!er these prosecutions. rene courage in the face of catastrophe cially scarring episode of bullying, he It shouldn’t be an ordeal, or require inspires and changes many of those #nds freedom by enrolling at a boarding shady legal arrangements, to purchase around her, especially Rod. school in distant Natchitoches. College or supply high-quality food. Ruthie also le! behind, and was in follows, and a journalism career that $ere will be deaths from patho- the intervening months loved and sup- takes him to ever-more-distant cities. gens when people skate around regu- ported by, the community of Starhill He never comes to hate West Feliciana, lations, whether on the farm or the in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana— to which his family has many and varie- factory %oor. $e industrial food sys- “one of the last real places in America,” gated ties; indeed, he comes to respect tem carries considerable health risks as one of her brother’s friends later and champion its virtues. But he is not of its own, of which the public is only describes it. Dreher tells the story of of it, and he is glad to be out. now becoming aware. We should be Ruthie’s life and death against the back- Ruthie never understood. She liked allowed to evaluate and act on these drop of the place and people to which where she was from and apparently nev- tradeo"s, as we do in other areas of life. she belonged, and to which she was er considered leaving. She married her $ese decisions shouldn’t be made for unquestioningly loyal. It is a beautiful high school sweetheart, took a teaching us, particularly not by regulators who story that never cheaply tugs at a single job at the local school, and built a home are bound up with the industrialized heartstring. Dreher’s disciplined rejec- on her parents’ property. She accepted food system that has made Americans tion of sentimentality makes for an in- everything about Starhill just as it was. so sick in the #rst place. credibly moving narrative. $e place nurtured her soul as much as Whether Ruthie’s story means pre- it con#ned her brother’s. Mark Nugent is a TAC senior editor. cisely what the author thinks it means $is fundamental di"erence in out-

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 look #nally creates a chasm between the most important things in her life. decide to move from Philadelphia to Ruthie and Rod. $ere is the time, He has “di&culty in squaring her con- West Feliciana, where they have expe- for example, when they were both in #dent faith in God’s providence with rienced scenes of intense emotional school at LSU, eating lunch with one of her white-knuckled refusal to admit power. Even someone who believes that Rod’s friends. Rod and his friend begin any facts that stood to undermine her repatriation is very o!en a good thing to mouth the usual sort of stereotyped hope.” Dreher attributes this stance may have counseled them to let a little undergraduate philosophical musings to her “active” nature and her “com- time pass before making such a decision. about Nietzsche and the death of God. mitment to duty, even to the point Predictably, di&culties arise. A Ruthie doesn’t demur, argue, or laugh of self-sacri#ce.” But this may be too sometimes maddeningly analytical them o". She is simply contemptuous. moralistic an interpretation. Ruthie fellow, upon his return to West Felici- “What is wrong with y’all? … Listen was committed to being faithful to that ana Rod cannot help but to pick at old to you. You sit here for hours talking which was her own, which isn’t quite scabs. He is troubled by his failure to about this crap, and it doesn’t mean the same as self-sacri#ce. $is compo- understand just how a wall arose be- anything. You’re just talking. You’re not nent of her character is her glory, but tween his sister and him in the #rst doing anything!” because it is also ruthlessly exclusion- place. He is tortured by new evidence Dreher reads this as evidence of ary it is also her limitation. her incapacity, or at least disdain, for In the months leading up to abstract re%ection unrelated to imme- Ruthie’s death Rod begins to Communities need their boundary- diately practical concerns. But more see what he has missed in liv- challengers as much as they need fundamentally, Ruthie must have sus- ing the life unrooted. Friends, pected that her brother and his po- neighbors, extended family, their boundary-protectors. seur friends studied philosophy not so even strangers give deeply of much to discover the truth of things as their resources and their time to develop an arsenal to be used against to help Ruthie and her family. Testimo- that Ruthie never came to accept his West Feliciana, their family, and every- nials to her deep and lasting impact on choices and way of life. He is consumed thing she loved. others multiply. In this dying observed, by a deep need for a&rmation—a need $is raises the question of what it Dreher shows us a community uni#ed, that the reader suspects may be impos- means to be faithful. For Ruthie—as even sancti#ed, by love—a community sible ever to ful#ll. Despite the author’s for many people—it meant to not whose storytelling, casual neighborly in- intentions, with respect to these issues question that to which one is obligated, teraction, and bonds of friendship added the book ends on a note of uncertainty. one’s own. Rod was more concerned up to so much freedom from loneliness, Ruthie Leming was a remarkable about being faithful to his perception meaninglessness, isolation. “We saw, woman who met death with remarkable of the good, the true, and the beauti- here in our town, in the life and death of bravery. But the truth is that commu- ful—whatever that might mean for Ruthie Leming, a foreshadowing of the nities need their boundary-challengers his loyalties to place and kin. Neither’s redemption of the world,” Rod says in as much as they need their boundary- conception of faithfulness was capa- his eulogy. It is a conclusion amply sup- protectors, their Rods as much as their cious enough to include the other’s. ported by his narrative. I defy any living Ruthies—even if the former can never $us, for example, Ruthie does not person with a soul to read these chapters occupy a central place in those com- wish to know the details surround- without blubbering like a fool. munities. A!er all, the only e"ective ing her diagnosis. She does not re- Ruthie’s death brings even more clar- challenges come from those who share search her disease online, she asks ity for Rod. He begins to think “about fully in their community’s trials, su"er- few questions, and she refuses to hear how little I really knew about Ruthie’s ings, obligations, and celebrations, and her prognosis. Her primary concern life, and how I understood even less. can therefore speak with the credibility is to remain faithful—to her family, I had somehow come to think of her that membership confers. !at is the her community, her God, her friends, living in a small town as equivalent to importance of loyalty to place. With her students. And she is worried that her living a small life. $at was #ne by his return to West Feliciana, one hopes knowing all the facts about her disease me, if it made her content, but there that Dreher will see that he has fully as will make this impossible, that she will was about it the air of settling. Or so much to o"er his community as did his sink into self-pity and anxiety. I thought. What I had seen and heard lovely and loving sister. Rod is ba(ed by this approach. He these last few days showed me how cannot understand that Ruthie’s prin- wrong I had been.” Jeremy Beer is a founding editor of the online cipled rejection of knowledge about $e story does not end there. Very journal Front Porch Republic and coeditor her disease allows her to be faithful to soon a!er Ruthie dies Rod and his wife of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters

Un-American opponent of tyrannical power not the American intellectual right in suited for emulation in democratic, this study of the reception and use of Conservative? egalitarian America; others labeled Burke in the U.S. since the Founding. him a simple utilitarian. Edmund Burke in America is a concise by G ERALD J. RUSSELLO Russell Kirk forcefully rejected this treatment of the many ways Ameri- interpretation, both in !e Conserva- cans have thought of Burke, and Ma- Edmund Burke in America: !e tive Mind and in his later biography ciag presents an important historio- Contested Career of the Father of of Burke. For Kirk, the defense of graphical treatment of the emergence Modern Conservatism, Drew Maciag, tradition Burke mounted conveyed of a Burkean conservatism—even as Cornell University Press, 285 pages not some utilitarian calculus but he concludes it is something of an ar- rather an argument that customs ti#cial growth on these shores. n the 1950s, American conserva- that had developed over centuries— Burke inspired ambiguous reac- tives—then a scattered group of fu- while perhaps also representing the tions shortly a!er the Founding. He gitives—sought an intellectual an- greatest good for the greatest num- had, a!er all, been the agent of New Icestor who embodied their principles ber—were at root an expression of York colony prior to the Revolution, and whose writings could be applied enduring principle. $is was the far- and he supported the colonists’ griev- to the contemporary United States. thest thing from what Kirk derisively ances through the 1760s and 1770s. Books like Peter Stanlis’s Edmund termed “Benthamism,” a utilitarian- In a telling detail Maciag recounts, Burke and the Natural Law and, most ism that would change customs and the Continental Congress toasted to famously, Russell Kirk’s !e Conser- tradition as soon as some abstract Burke’s health in 1775 as a friend of vative Mind repackaged the 18th-cen- principle bid it to do so. Rather, liberty. But his interest in the colonies tury Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke championed the principle of lasted only so long as they were a part Burke into an all-purpose conserva- order, which Kirk described as “an of the Empire; once that was no longer tive champion. Where Burke stood anticipatory refutation of utilitarian- the case, it disappeared. against Jacobinism during the French ism, positivism, and pragmatism, an Not until 1791 did Burke’s Re#ec- Revolution, conservatives could resist a&rmation of that reverential view of tions on the Revolution in France reach communism during the Cold War. As society which may be traced through America, and when it did his former Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, admirers and friends, such as $omas the Roman jurisconsults, Paine, were disappointed by his fer- the Schoolmen, Richard vent stance against the French Revo- In his own day Burke was not Hooker, and lesser think- lution. Burke’s relation to the new a reactionary or even a conservative ers.” nation changed. By that time, accord- Burke, therefore, was for ing to Maciag, the die had been cast: in our sense but a reforming Whig. the ages. But not all con- America was a revolutionary nation, servatives agreed with the even if that revolution was quali#ed picture Kirk and others by respect for certain British political were painting. Libertarian- traditions. Burke’s devotion to a he- Burke had stood for eternal verities in minded thinkers like National Review reditary king and aristocracy, how- 1790, so too he could now stand for senior editor Frank Meyer rejected ever, was bound to fall on deaf ears. the natural law against an emerging Kirk’s conservatism as an aristocratic Burke became a controversial if not liberal relativism. collectivism. Richard Weaver, author disfavored #gure among the Founding Although in retrospect seemingly of the seminal conservative work generation. Maciag highlights this in a obvious, this choice was not one ev- Ideas Have Consequences, wrote a fa- chapter comparing Burke to John Ad- eryone would have made. In his own mous essay arguing that Burke’s “argu- ams, who is sometimes considered a day Burke was not a reactionary or ment from circumstance” was, from a sort of American Burke. $e English- even a conservative in our sense but conservative point of view, inferior to man himself understood his mission a reforming Whig. Moreover, while Lincoln’s “argument from principle.” as being to “apply the brakes to the he is eminently quotable, his words Yet the view of Kirk and Stanlis has momentum of Enlightenment over- are just as suitable to support liberal prevailed: Burke is now routinely con- reach.” But Adams was an American causes as conservative ones. In the sidered a founder of American con- and sought to implement “Enlight- 19th century writers such as the his- servatism. enment thought in some workable, torian George Bancro! considered Drew Maciag considers why responsible manner.” $e two were Burke an admirable, but outdated, Burke’s stock has risen so high on aligned in opposition to the French

52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 Revolution, but even there Maciag partner in the American political Kirk never really explained—in sees a di"erence. As the only Federal- culture. He writes that “American the way, say, T.S. Eliot did for Eng- ist president, Burkeans quickly learned that they land—what traditions de#ned the na- were unlikely to prevail. $e excep- tion. He wrote little, for example, on Adams #t the bill for the forces tionalist environment proved too re- American creations like jazz or even of order and continuity, as well sistant to the innate traditionalism of baseball, o!en a go-to source of pop as Je"erson did for the forces of the Burkean message. In reaction to wisdom for right-wingers. Yet Maciag innovation and progress. If the this, the Burkean perspective became does not fully address what Kirk was Republican-Enlightenment ideal transformed into a perennial coun- doing with his invocation of Burke. was to become the dominant terpoint that was played against the Kirk was waging a battle of imagina- national vision, and so give rise major themes of egalitarianism and tion, not only with liberalism and oth- to an ideology of liberalism and competitive material progress.” In er strains of conservatism—a nuance progress, then certainly a coun- other words, conservatism is destined Maciag notes but whose signi#cance ter-persuasion, loosely de#ned to play “the loyal opposi- as conservative, was needed in tion—strong enough to order for the dynamic progress in%uence the agenda, not to function. strong enough to set it.” Maciag’s treatment Kirk clearly wants Burke to be the Maciag also devotes chapters to of Kirk, whom he calls source of a tradition opposed to what Jacksonian America; the antebellum “the greatest postwar Whigs, who attempted a partial res- Burkean,” is sympathetic he called “defecated rationality.” toration of Burke’s reputation in re- while focusing on a cen- action against the mob rule of “King tral problem. For Kirk, Andrew” Jackson; the post-Civil War Burke represented the period and Gilded Age, when John entire intellectual ances- Morley and E.L. Godkin identi#ed try of the West sharpened to a point he passes over—but with what he saw Burke as a utilitarian; and $eodore thrust at the heart of revolutionary coming a!er liberalism, what Kirk Roosevelt, who alternately detested France. Kirk clearly wants Burke to called the Age of Sentiment. Kirk, like and admired a conservatism that be the source of a tradition opposed others such as Daniel Bell, Marshall owed less to Burke than “religious fun- to what he called “defecated ratio- McLuhan, and Philip Rie", saw liber- damentalism, monopoly capitalism, nality,” yet one still connected to the alism and the rational Enlightenment and ‘tory’ attitudes toward culture and primordial wisdom of the natural law, that brought it into being coming to society.” Roosevelt leads to Woodrow about which Burke said little explic- an end. What would replace it had the Wilson, who wrote substantially, and itly. But because Kirk took a “holistic potential to be shaped by a powerful positively, about Burke in the 1890s. and inseparable view of civilization,” imaginative vision of human society, Wilson’s Burke was opposed to ab- he could not incorporate “the mod- a vision Kirk saw in Burke. $is was straction and favored responsible ern ideals of progress, equity, democ- not a rigid aristocratic vision but one reform; he was getting closer to the racy, and the pursuit of happiness.” In that recognized society as an inter- postwar conservative’s vision. that sense, Kirk was more reactionary locked union of communities. It’s a $e second part of the book, than Burke ever was: “while Burke vision that caused one writer, Catholic “Postwar America,” considers how was a progressive reformer who de- University professor of politics Claes and why Burke became the right’s fended British traditions that were Ryn, to call Burke the #rst postmod- intellectual standard-bearer. Maciag declining but not yet extinct, Kirk ern. In this, Kirk was Burke’s true heir: rightly focuses on larger intellectual condemned liberal reformers and Kirk once went so far as to say that it movements, such as the revival of sought to impose ancient, foreign, “may be the conservative imagination “natural law thinking” on Catholic and vague traditions that had never which is to guide the Post-Modern campuses in the late 1940s, as well really existed in the United States.” Age.” as on more concrete factors, such as $is is for Maciag ultimately a mis- Conservatives are ever in the mi- the 1948 publication of Burke’s cor- taken endeavor because Burke can nority, for Maciag, because modernity respondence. $e conservative re- never quite #t in America, and his re- has unleashed a power that can go in appropriation of Burke brings Ma- surgence in the 1950s was merely an only one way: “you cannot turn back ciag to his second theme: for Maciag, opportune moment for a movement the clock.” But as Chesterton respond- conservatism is a vital but junior looking for a father. ed to that aphorism, since a clock is

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters manmade, as is culture, the clock can Umpire Strikes Out over the next two centuries, the United be turned anywhere we like. Maciag States established itself as arbiter of dis- notes the (in some ways) changing by ANDREW J. BA CEVICH putes among the growing roster of na- nature of conservatism but without tions comprising the international or- addressing the changing nature of lib- American Umpire, Elizabeth Cobbs der. Unlike the imperial powers of old, eralism. A century ago, many liberals Ho"man, Harvard University Press, the United States established itself as were eugenicist elitists who would no 440 pages an “umperial power,” assigned the re- more have supported gay marriage sponsibility “to compel acquiescence or a liberal welfare state than does illiam Appleman Wil- as necessary with rules that had earned Rush Limbaugh today. To argue that “ liams viewed world his- broad legitimacy.” Today, writes Ho"- conservatism must always be a junior tory through the wrong man, America has become “the enforcer partner, merely correcting liberalism’s endW of the telescope,” writes Elizabeth of what is, most of the time, the collec- excesses, implies that there is a de#ni- Cobbs Ho"man in her novel reinter- tive will.” To charge the United States tive direction not only to liberalism pretation of American statecra!. “On with committing the sin of imperialism, but to history itself, a contention that, balance, American diplomacy in the therefore, “is not simply improbable if it is not unfalsi#able, certainly has twentieth century has been far more but false.” It’s also a pernicious slander. little to con#rm it. triumphant than tragic.” While others $ose who perpetrate this do immense Seen in this way, the conservative might characterize the 20th century harm: “Diagnosing America’s problem reappropriation of Burke becomes as dismal or barbaric, Ho"man looks as ‘imperialism’ is damaging,” she writes. more comprehensible. Burke’s mys- past the bad news and #nds much to Rather than suggesting an alternative ticism and reliance on some form of celebrate. Most importantly, during approach to policy, “this %awed charac- natural law were not meant to convey the 20th century imperialism went terization merely saps morale.” Ho"man a legalistic structure of metaphysics, out of fashion. In place of empire, new worries about American morale. with “ought” con#dently derived from norms—“access to opportunity, arbi- “is.” Nor is Burke’s common resort to tration of disputes, and transparency In any human endeavor requir- “circumstance” a rejection of natural in government and business”—evolved ing supreme e"ort, morale helps principles. Rather, it is a recognition and have now “taken hold around the determine outcome. If citizens that mystery—not reason—lies at the world.” $ey have today become “the are uncertain about their own or heart of each individual and the so- leitmotifs of national policy and global their government’s motivation, cieties the human race creates, thus history.” Further, these new norms fos- they will #nd it di&cult to prevail conservatives are enjoined to eschew tered the spread of “democratic capital- against enemies, inertia, pessi- social engineering and respect the be- ism,” which “drove material progress mism, and all the other forces that wildering array of ways in which we and facilitated enough peace and coop- continuously complicate human can organize our life together. $ere eration for humanity to %ourish.” For achievement. are enduring principles, but they must Ho"man, a professor of history at San be si!ed from particular facts, not Diego State University, this describes By implication, historians bear some theorizing. the world in which we live. responsibility for bolstering the nation’s Although Maciag de#nes Kirk and Many factors account for this hap- collective spirits, lest inertia and pes- his supporters as premodern “anti- py development. Chief among them, simism impede the onward march of rationalists,” the reality is more com- however, has been the role played by progress. plicated. Maciag is right that at times the United States, the “bellwether” Were that not enough, those false- Kirk seems to be speaking from a and “pivot of this worldwide trans- ly charging the United States with world “that had already passed away.” formation.” America “nurtured new imperialism sow the seeds of anti- But that is what makes the imagina- global trends” and “pioneer[ed] the Americanism abroad. Take terror- tive vision of Burke, as seen through new norms.” It provided “the cutting ism, for example. As Ho"man sees it, the work of Kirk, the most formidable edge of a larger and growing interna- American critics of U.S. foreign policy alternative to liberalism among the tional critique” of colonialism. As these helped persuade violent Islamists that conservatisms vying for attention “new international norms took hold… “all Americans [are] part of a malig- today. America gave history a decisive shove.” nant imperialist plot,” thereby provid- In 1789 the Constitution had estab- ing ammunition to the likes of Osama Gerald J. Russello is editor of $e University lished the federal government as arbi- bin Laden. Put simply, she writes, “the Bookman and author of $e Postmodern ter of disputes among the several states events of 9/11 teach that words must be Imagination of Russell Kirk. comprising the Union. By #ts and starts as precise as possible, for they can be-

54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 come like slippery knives. An umpire French-Israeli coalition seeking to U.S. counterparts into becoming accused of being an empire may bleed do in Egypt’s annoying Gamal Abdel ever more involved.” And anyway, out, to everyone’s detriment.” Nasser. (On how the Soviet-American Mohammad Mossadegh was an As a determinant of the way that oth- bloc fared in enforcing global norms odd duck who “received diplomatic ers see the United States, Ho"man im- with respect to the simultaneous Hun- visitors in his pajamas” and “wept plies, scholarly judgments carry greater garian Revolution, she opts for silence.) openly when moved.” Per#dious Al- weight than do the words and actions Ho"man concludes American Umpire bion made us do it. of those who actually make policy. By by describing Western interventions t
Vietnam? A!er the 1954 Geneva Ac- extension, historians should keep their in the Balkans during the 1990s. Once cords, “indigenous opponents of Ho criticism of U.S. policy within bounds. U.S. forces entered the fray, the oppo- Chi Minh formed a permanent gov- “American academics have a sober re - sition, she writes, “folded like a cheap ernment in the south and refused sponsibility,” Ho"man warns, “to make paperback” and “genocide came to a to hold the promised elections.” To sure that incriminations of their coun- stop.” Points well taken. judge by Ho"man’s version of events, try and fellow citizens are made only to On the second count, however, Ho"- the United States played no part in the extent warranted.” man makes her case by cherrypicking these developments. And don’t tag Readers curious as to how over the or ingeniously reinterpreting the his- the presidents who stumbled into period of a century and a half an in- torical record. Here are #ve examples. Vietnam with being imperialists. consequential republic perched on the “$e dynamics of the Cold War im- eastern seaboard of North America t
During the 1840s, in their disputes prisoned them all.” emerged as the globe’s preeminent su- with Mexico, peace-loving Ameri- perpower will want to look elsewhere. cans “showed a decided preference “$is book concludes with the Bal- “Organically, over the course of time,” for arbitration,” according to Ho"- kans,” Ho"man writes, “where the Ho"man remarks, “the United States man. More speci#cally, “on three twentieth century began and ended.” had become indispensable to main- occasions [Washington] attempted $e con%icts of the post-9/11 era get lit- taining order against the evils of chaos to persuade Mexico, known to be in- tle more than a passing glance, Ho"man on a crowded, globalized world.” Yet solvent, to sell all or part of sparsely noting that “$ese wars have not yet American Umpire does not explain populated California.” Mexican receded into history. $ey bridge past, how the United States acquired the leaders perversely refused. Sure, the present, and future, where only fools, muscle needed to perform this indis- United States subsequently invaded angels, and journalists dare to tread.” pensable function. and dismantled the country, but Still, terminating American Umpire in Indeed, Ho"man’s interests lie else- hadn’t Mexicans asked for it? the 1990s is the equivalent, say, of pub- where. She wants to show that access, t
Does the Boxer Rebellion suggest lishing a history of American statecra! arbitration, and transparency consti- American complicity in imperialis- in 1950 and disregarding everything tute the abiding themes of American tic exploitation of China? No, says that had happened since 1938. It’s a tad statecra!. In addition, she aims to drive Ho"man. Instead, with U.S. troops too convenient. How, for example, might a stake through the canard of Ameri- participating, military intervention Ho"man incorporate the Bush Doctrine can imperialism. Making good on this o"ered a “new prototype for inter- of preventive war or the Obama Doc- dual purpose requires two things. First, national policing.” trine of targeted assassination into her Ho"man must show how the United t
Annexation of the Philippines? themes of access and arbitration? As for States has promoted common global Ill-advised, yet hardly proof of transparency, how does that mesh with norms while serving as “umpire, arbi- American imperialism, the epi- Washington’s growing appetite for secret trator, bouncer, playground supervi- sode amounting to “an adolescent surveillance? Finally, in the wake of the sor, policeman, whatever.” Second, she identity crisis expressed in Euro- Iraq debacle, is it really still possible to must demonstrate that U.S. actions American cross-dressing.” Besides, speak, as Ho"man does, of “the military others describe as imperialistic are not no prominent American actu- harmlessness of the United States”? what they appear to be. ally “praised colonialism outright”; No, it’s not. Whatever the implica- On the #rst count, she achieves mod- Ho"man thereby airbrushes imperi- tions for American morale, let’s not est success. Without doubt, the United alist progressives like Senator Albert pretend otherwise. States has on occasion functioned as Beveridge out of the picture. an umpire of sorts. Ho"man opens her t
$e Iranian coup of 1953? Washing- Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston book by recounting the Suez Crisis of ton was “forced by escalating events University. His new book is Breach of Trust: 1956, in which the “Soviet-American to pick a side,” Ho"man writes. How Americans Failed $eir Soldiers and bloc” [sic] brought to heel an Anglo- “British o&cials maneuvered their $eir Country.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters

Manchester Heroes to become Joy Division. (Morrissey’s Years later, Hook would encounter ascent to pop stardom was still years Brotherdale again—behind the coun- by A.G. GANCARSKI down the road). ter, taking Hook’s order at McDon- So what was Joy Division all about? ald’s. A Light !at Never Goes Out: !e $e question still resonates because the Even as Joy Division coalesced mu- Enduring Saga of the Smiths, Tony band’s music—despite being rooted in sically, the musicians were not the Fletcher, Crown Archetype, 704 pages ri"s and keyboards of the late 1970s— best of friends. Sumner failed, for still matters. Neil Tennant of the Pet example, to invite Hook to his 1978 Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Shop Boys claimed that Joy Division’s wedding—though Unknown Pleasures Division, Peter Hook, It Books, 416 most successful single, “Love Will Tear is conveniently short on insight as to pages Us Apart,” is the perfect pop song, and why this snub happened and what it Bono has talked at great length about might have said about the character of f there was one moment that was what an in%uence the brooding, mer- the author. Despite this internal acri- central in the formation of the curial, ultimately doomed Curtis was mony, Curtis held the band together Manchester music scene, it was a on his development as a musician. with his presence and his lyrics, which Isparsely attended Sex Pistols show in $ey mattered just as much to people Hook likens to a “conversation with a 1976. Among the few dozen people in who couldn’t play a note if their lives genius.” Hook throughout the book attendance at the Free Trade Hall that depended on it. comes back to the idea that without night were youths who would become Joy Division didn’t begin fully “captain of the ship” Ian, the band’s some of the most important people in formed, of course, and Hook’s wry music as New Order was not nearly as British music history. Mick Hucknall and de! documentation of the band meaningful. from Simply Red was there, as were trying to #nd its way highlights his As Joy Division matured, Hook the Buzzcocks, and Peter Hook and book. $e band played its share of gigs took issue with producer Martin Barney Sumner from what would be- to empty or near-empty rooms, as well Hannett for creating sonic environ- come Joy Division, also Steven Mor- as to crowds that would sooner attack ments that were too “spacy” and bur- rissey, who would eventually form the band than appreciate its sonic ied the bass in the mix. $e bassist the Smiths. Morrissey would go on subtleties. Long before Bernard Sum- wanted a more traditional hard-rock to a proli#c solo career, while Joy Di- ner—the Joy Division guitarist who sound. A recurrent theme in these would go on to become the pages involves Hook biting the hand voice of New Order a!er that feeds him: he goes on to make Ian Curtis’s suicide—be- repeated references to Curtis’ impo- came a pop superstar in tence due to his epilepsy medication, a At the next Sex Pistols gig, Peter Hook his own right, Hook re- side e"ect that extended to the singer’s asked Ian Curtis to be lead singer of members him being com- a"air with Belgian temptress Annik pared to Barney Rubble. Honore, which Hook seems to rel- what was to become Joy Division. $roughout this book, ish saying was “never consummated.” Hook demysti#es the idea ($e author and Sumner both report- that the band, or Curtis, edly “had a go” at her.) was somehow exempt from $e band found critical success as vision, a!er the suicide of its singer, typical rock-band behavior, playing they synthesized in%uences ranging would regroup as New Order. “japes” on each other and chasing from Kra!werk to the Velvet Under- For Peter Hook, Joy Division/New women. ground, but Curtis’s medical condi- Order bassist and the author of Un- Before Joy Division was Joy Divi- tion got worse, with intense stage known Pleasures, the memoir about the sion, the band was called Warsaw, a shows leaving him exhausted and in band’s earlier incarnation, the experi- name chosen right before a gig to re- a delicate state which extended be- ence was transformative. $inking that place an even more forgettable name, yond gigs: he even fainted when his the Pistols were, like him, “working- Sti" Kittens. And like all bands in for- daughter was born, around the time class tossers,” Hook had a revelation mation, they had trouble #lling out the band’s #rst album, also called “Un- watching them perform. “Sounds aw- their personnel spots—speci#cally, known Pleasures,” was released. Hook ful but f---ing a, I could do that.” At the the drum kit. Hook tells of a former puts Curtis’s eventual suicide into next Sex Pistols gig, which was much drummer, Steve Brotherdale, who context of his doomed love triangle more widely attended, Hook asked Ian spurned the band to join another and his wife’s unwillingness to accept Curtis to be lead singer of what was out#t that seemed more promising. his a"air with Annik Honore. Curtis

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 attempted suicide with phenobarbital the Smiths start gigging—200 pages studio to record B-sides for a single on Easter Sunday 1980 and #nished of sludgy summary of the formative o" the #nal album, “Strangeways, the job a few weeks later, before what years of Morrissey and Marr. While it Here We Come.” $e strongest part would have been Joy Division’s inau- is interesting enough that Morrissey of this book documents that last ses- gural American tour. found his school years full of casual sion, in which Morrissey forces the For fans of the band, the darkness abuse, how much really needs to be band through a workmanlike cover of the book is alleviated with great said about it that is not already delin- of Cilla Black’s “Work Is a Four Letter narrative details, everything from eated in the Smiths’ lyrics? Word.” $e end is near, and it is vivid. William Burroughs telling a broke One might hope for some insights If only there were more genuine rev- Curtis to “f--- o"” when the singer about how a band like Joy Division, elations like that in this text. But they tried to wangle a free book from him and a front man like Curtis in particu- are sparse. to stories of how Hook did cocaine for lar, in%uenced the Smiths. Fletcher A Light !at Never Goes Out is sim- the #rst time (spoiler: at the “Pretty In has only about 500 words on the lo- ply weak on sources, which consist Pink” premiere, as guests of OMD). cal legend’s suicide and pop music’s mostly of interviews with peripheral For all its %aws, Hook’s volume tells loss; we hear that Morrissey saw it #gures and a few quotes from Johnny the story of how Ian Curtis and Joy as a cautionary tale. We also get very Marr in which he seems utterly unin- Division were just working-class kids little about Morrissey’s on the make. obsession with James $e Hook book has the singular Dean, which led to the luxury of #rst-person, self-interested early career pamphlet- Johnny Marr couldn’t leave the coke, narration. In contrast, !e Light !at sized “book”, James Never Goes Out, by veteran music bi- Dean Is Not Dead. But speed, or weed alone, and the rhythm ographer Tony Fletcher, adopts an ac- we get dozens of pag- section were all too eager to party it up. ademic tone and reads as if its author es about such utterly were getting paid by the word. $ere prosaic subjects as the is, to be fair, a lot of information here Smiths’ dodgy manage- about the Smiths, but not much of it ment situation. Why? Probably be- terested in rehashing his group from will be new to anyone who followed cause the author could get these guys 30 years ago. $e lack of Morrissey’s the band through the British press as to go on the record. If only Fletcher involvement in this project is crippling. they became a phenomenon. could have gotten the roadies to opine, What we get about Morrissey—the $e #rst third of the book rehashes he might have been able to stretch this central #gure—reads like robot sum- familiar trivia. Did you know Mor- material into two volumes! marizing his Wikipedia entry. $ere rissey was a fan of Shelagh Delaney Fletcher does make clear why the is no resolution of the competing and Oscar Wilde? Or that Morrissey Smiths had such a brief if acclaimed claims about Morrissey’s sexuality— and Marr bonded over a B-side by the existence, spanning only 1982–1987. gay, straight, celibate, asexual, or a Marvelettes? And that a song by the Johnny Marr couldn’t leave the coke, combination thereof—in part because Smiths was central to pseudo-indie speed, or weed alone, and the rhythm the author couldn’t get anyone to talk treacle-fest “500 Days of Summer”? If section—drummer Mike Joyce and and perhaps also because he feared to that stu" is new to you, this book may bassist Andy Rourke—were basically speculate and risk legal action. $e be of some value. Smiths fans of long adjuncts in terms of creative control, book reads as if Fletcher is still hop- standing will have seen this material and they were all too eager to party it ing till the end that the singer will give before. up. $e band couldn’t #gure out when him an interview at last. As a biogra- Much of the material on the band’s it would have been to their advan- pher, this guy is like Willy Loman. early history is used to establish the tage to make a music video, and they Perhaps there is nothing new for an culturally reactionary posture of the couldn’t agree on their management outsider to say about the Smiths. Over band’s songwriting duo, Morrissey situation, or their record label, or their a quarter-century a!er their breakup, and guitarist Johnny Marr. It is no producers. their music still holds up, but that surprise to any serious fan that the One point that Fletcher makes well doesn’t mean Fletcher’s book needed Smiths’ single “Panic” owes a debt to bears mentioning. $ere is a school to be written, certainly not at its door- “Metal Guru” by T Rex or that “$e of thought that says that the Smiths’ stop length. Headmaster Ritual” was inspired by breakup might have been avoided if Moz’s secondary school experience. the band had permitted Marr to take A.G. Gancarski writes from Jacksonville, A third of the book is over before a break instead of forcing him into the Florida.

JULY/AUGUST 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki

!e Art of Artie Shaw

ixty-!ve years or so ago, the was Rita Hayworth, and there was an- looking man who is the world’s great- biggest star in Hollywood, as other great seductress. Just think “Gil- est clarinetist and takes the greatest well as the biggest stud, was a da” and you’ve got my point. beauties America has produced as clarinetist whose combination When Shaw threw in the towel, he wives and mistresses, who collects Sof good looks, extraordinary musical was making $60,000 per week, a colos- 15,000 books and gives it all up be- talent, and great intelligence made sal sum in those days, when his band cause he is also a prophet and sees him the brightest !gure under the was number one in the United States. where our culture is going. I’m sure California sun. His name was Artie #e reason he quit was because he saw some vulgar wise guy asshole in Hol- Shaw, but he was born Arthur Jacob the coming of the cacophony that today lywood might think him a nutcase, Arshawsky, the son of Jewish immi- represents our culture. He wrote Duke but if only we had more such nutcases grants. Artie married eight times and Ellington a letter saying that dishon- around. Just imagine what Artie Shaw among his wives—check this—were esty, lack of dignity, cheapness, shoddi- would think or say about today’s rock Ava Gardner, the smoldering beauty ness, and ignorance were becoming the scene. Or the Kardashian women. from the deep South that drove men taste of the masses. He lived to a very Whereas the ancient Greeks pre- mad, including Frank Sinatra; Lana old age incognito in Los Angeles, writ- ferred and trusted only the beauti- Turner, the blonde that went though ing a book he never !nished that ran ful—Socrates was an exception—the men like a Panzer division through to millions of words investigating the egalitarian society of today prefers French infantry; Kathleen Wind- possibilities of language. and trusts the homely. #e freaks. sor, the novelist and author of For- Artie concluded all his concerts How in heaven’s name can Madonna ever Amber; Evelyn Keyes, Scarlett by hitting a cosmic high with his C or Jennifer Lopez be taken seriously O’Hara’s younger sister and later the at the end of his own creation, “Con- and be paid for being ugly? #ose great love of director John Huston; certo for Clarinet.” Here are some of oversized lips of that ghastly Angelina and some others whom I’ve never his greatest hits: “Begin the Beguine,” Jolie would be called une deformation heard of. “Frenesi,” “Star Dust,” and hundreds professionnelle by the French, and they But wait. Artie wasn’t !nished. of other recordings I was lucky to would be right. Poor Jennifer Anis- He le" my personal favorite, Betty hear time and again while growing ton looks like a maid my parents once Grable, at the altar. Can you imagine up. Shaw hired Billie Holiday, Mel had, not a movie star, and don’t get me leaving Betty and her million-dollar Tormé, Buddy Rich, “Hot Lips” Page, started on Paris Hilton. Her fathom- (of that time) legs waiting in front of and many others. He volunteered for less vulgarity is matched only by her a justice of the peace while you were the Navy in World War II, saw ac- physical obscenity. out playing the clarinet with some tion, and performed under !re in the #ese are times for the odious, the buddies? Betty was the all-American Paci!c, something that our last three untalented, the ugly, the hirsute, the cheerleader type, with the best gams presidents would deem a very dumb cacophonous so-called rock stars. in town, a pouty mouth surrounded act, I am sure. Artie saw it coming and did the right by white-white perfect skin, and an at- Even his great rival, Benny Good- thing. #e trouble is I can’t even get titude that was deliciously wholesome man, apparently not a very nice man, my children to listen to his record- as well as extremely sexy. Try and top conceded that Artie was the tops. ings—you can lead someone to the that today, you Hollywood uglies. Duke Ellington called him his idol. well, but it doesn’t mean they’ll drink. One of the few that escaped Artie So, there you have it. A very good- Oy vey!

58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE JULY/AUGUST 2013 ANYTIME. ANYWHERE.

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