- I used to read George Will occasionally just to see how
strange words bent to political purpose could become. No political commentator
in America is better able to use large words to say something at times
indescribably odd. I don't ask you to take this from me on faith. I offer
examples, although none is recent since my tolerance for this sort of stuff
has worn thin.
-
- By outward appearance, George is the eternal American
schoolboy. I imagine George's conception of himself and the career he would
follow may have been fixed when, as a reticent, dour twelve-year old with
cowlick and glasses, he achieved an early social success blurting out a
big word he had read, startling his teacher and breaking up his class.
He has been repeating the same trick for decades to the applause of intense,
pimply-faced boys in starched white shirts with dog-eared copies of Ayn
Rand tucked under their arms.
-
- America's plutocrat-Junkers do have courtiers serving
them just as the great princes of antiquity had. However, the pop-culture
tastes of these modern great eminences do not employ the likes of Walter
Raleigh or Francis Bacon. Instead we have Rush Limbaugh as one of the court
jesters, still doing frat-boy jokes about physical differences between
men and women forty years after college, and we have George as one of the
sages, who appears from all the sage-like figures of history and literature
to have selected Polonius as his model for style.
-
- A few years ago, George nearly choked over plans to move
a statue of some women to the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. He was upset
about an expense, as he gracefully put it, to "improve the representation
of X chromosomes." The statue is of suffragists. George couldn't resist
passing along a demeaning nickname, "The Ladies in the Bathtub,"
he picked up somewhere, perhaps at one of Trent Lott's good-ol'-boy get-togethers
down on his plantation.
-
- George tried to make the nickname an issue of artistic
merit. Artistic merit? The sculpture of the Capitol Rotunda is as uninspired
a collection of stolid, state-commissioned hulks as ever graced a giant
marble room. Aesthetics have never played a role.
-
- George said he'd "stipulate" the women were
great Americans - an interesting choice of words, "stipulate,"
the arid language of lawyers allowing one to proceed in court or settle
a contract without further discussion of some (usually minor) point. He
then observed "the supply of alleged greatness long ago exceeded the
supply of space for statues in the Rotunda."
-
- Well, clearly, choices do have to be made. And could
it be news to anyone, apart from survivalists, huddled in abandoned missile
silos, savoring George by candlelight as they bolt down freeze-dried snacks,
that politics play a role in every choice in Washington? My God, members
of the U.S. Congress, overwhelmingly male, actually have the flag that
flies over the Capitol changed about every thirty seconds to provide a
steady supply of authentic relics for interested, influential constituents,
almost the way tens of thousands of true splinters of the Cross were fashioned
as princely gifts in the Middle Ages. American presidents sign laws with
fists full of pens, one for each loop of the signature and as gift for
each key supporter. Politics just doesn't get more ridiculous anywhere.
-
- What's annoying about a statue to the movement that gave
(slightly more than) half the nation's people the right to vote? The importance
of what it symbolizes equals any democratic advance in the nation's history.
Why should a symbol for this achievement be the target of scorn?
-
- The Rotunda collection already had highly ambiguous symbols
that never upset George. Garfield was an undistinguished Civil War general
and an undistinguished politician, ennobled only by a frustrated office-seeker
assassinating him. Grant, despite his importance in the Civil War, was
one of the most dangerously incompetent presidents before Bush. Jackson
was a violent backwoods madman and unrepentant slave-holder, colorful and
interesting at a safe distance, but America would have been a far better
place without most of his presidential accomplishments. Hamilton, a truly
great figure in American history, was nevertheless a man who had absolutely
no faith in democracy.
-
- It would be unfair to draw conclusions about George's
prejudice only from his opposition to the statue, but in writing about
it, he managed, over and over, to use words of scorn and derision.
-
- How do you explain a squib that the possible removal
of a reproduction of Magna Carta in favor of the statue "might displease
a woman" (Queen Elizabeth II, whose gift it was)? Wouldn't you say
it might displease the British people whose representative the Queen is?
What explains his calling the statue one "less to past heroines than
to present fixations"? Why his belittling description of the campaign
for the statue as "entitlement mentality"?
-
- George attacks one national symbol but is especially
protective of others. He is especially protective of the reputation of
the Sage of Monticello, patron saint to America's militia and survivalist
crowd. Thomas Jefferson, much to the surprise of people who know him only
as a giant, worthy head on Mount Rushmore, provided the prototype for two
centuries of American shadow-fascism: use fine words about freedom in your
correspondence while living off the sweat of a couple of hundred slaves;
a man who never hesitated to stretch presidential authority to its very
limits, always seeking to extend American empire. Jefferson was a secretive,
suspicious, and vindictive man. He was not a friend to the spirit of Enlightenment.
-
- Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish scholar, published a biographical
study called "The Long Affair," in 1996, about Thomas Jefferson
and his peculiar admiration for the bloody excesses of the French Revolution.
Well, the Sage for Archer Daniels Midland went into a word-strewn fit over
the book.
-
- Perhaps, the single thing about the book that most upset
George was O'Brien's comparison of a statement of Jefferson's to something
Pol Pot might have said. Jefferson wrote in 1793, at the height of the
Terror, "·but rather than it [the French Revolution] should
have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but
an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better
than as it now is." George wrote off Jefferson's brutal statement
as "epistolary extravagance," and attacked O'Brien for using
slim evidence for an extreme conclusion about an American "hero."
-
- George went so far as favorably to compare the work of
Ken Burns with that of O'Brien, calling Burns "an irrigator of our
capacity for political admiration," as compared to one who "panders"
to "leave our national memory parched." Whew! See what I mean
about words?
-
- I mean no disparagement of Ken Burns, but he produces
the television equivalent of coffee-table books. O'Brien is a scholar,
the author of many serious books. The very comparison, even without the
odd language, tells us something about George.
-
- But language, too, is important. The irony is that George's
own words, "irrigator of our capacity for political admiration,"
sound frighteningly like what we'd expect to hear from the Ministry of
Culture in some ghastly place (dare I write it?) such as Pol Pot's Cambodia.
-
- But George should have known better. This letter of Jefferson's
is utterly characteristic of views he expressed many different ways. Jefferson
quite blithely wrote that America's Constitution would not be adequate
to defend what he called liberty, that there would have to be a new revolution
every 15 or 20 years, and that the tree of liberty needed to be nourished
regularly with a fresh supply of patriot blood.
-
- Jefferson's well-known sentimental view of the merits
of sturdy yeomen farmers as citizens of a republic and his intense dislike
for industry and urbanization bear an uncanny resemblance to Pol Pot's
beliefs. Throwing people out of cities to become honorable peasants back
on the land, even those who never saw a farm, was precisely how Pol Pot
managed to kill at least a million people in Cambodia.
-
- Jefferson is not now revered for his understanding of
the economics of his day. He truly had none, a fact which enabled the brilliant
Alexander Hamilton to best him at every turn. However this is not a mistake
Jefferson's intellectual heirs make, since money and power no longer come
from plantations and slaves. They understand money and pursue the principles
of economics narrowly often to the exclusion of other important goals in
society. Jefferson is only of value to them because of the powerfully-expressed
words he left behind belittling the importance of government, the only
possible counterbalancing force to the excesses that always arise from
great economic growth.
-
- What is it about many of those on the right relishing
the deaths of others in the name of ideology? You see, much like the "chickenhawks"
now running Washington, sending others off to die, Jefferson never lifted
a musket during the Revolution. While serving as governor of Virginia,
he set a pathetic example of supporting the war's desperate material needs.
He also gave us a comic-opera episode of dropping everything and running
feverishly away from approaching British troops in Virginia (there was
an official inquiry over the episode). Jefferson turned down his first
diplomatic appointment to Europe by the new government out of fear of being
captured by British warships, a fear that influenced neither Benjamin Franklin
nor John Adams.
-
- But real heroes aren't always, or even usually, soldiers.
Jefferson, despite a long and successful career and a legacy of fine words
(expressing thoughts largely cribbed from European writers), cannot be
credited with any significant personal sacrifice over matters of principle
during his life. He wouldn't give up luxury despite his words about slavery.
He never risked a serious clash with the Virginia Establishment over slave
laws during his rise in state politics. And in his draft of the Declaration
of Independence, he lamely and at length blamed the king of England for
the slave trade, yet, when he wrote the words, it was actually in his interest
to slow the trade and protect the value of his existing human holdings.
-
- Unlike Mr. Lincoln later, who had none of his advantages
of education and good social contacts, Jefferson did not do well as a lawyer.
He never earned enough to pay his own way, his thirst for luxury far outstripping
even the capacity of his many high government positions and large number
of slaves to generate wealth. Again, unlike Mr. Lincoln, Jefferson was
not especially conscientious about owing people money, and he frequently
continued buying luxuries like silver buckles and fine carriages while
he still owed substantial sums.
-
- Jefferson spent most of his productive years in government
service, yet he never stopped railing against the evils of government.
There's more than a passing resemblance here to the empty slogans of government-service
lifers like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich who enjoy their government pensions
and benefits even as they still complain about government. Jefferson's
most famous quote praises the least possible government, yet, as President,
he brought a virtual reign of terror to New England with his attempts to
enforce an embargo against England (the "Anglomen" as this very
prejudiced man typically called the English).
-
- Jefferson, besides having some truly ridiculous beliefs,
like those about the evils of central banks or the health efficacy of soaking
your feet in ice water every morning, definitely had a very dark side.
Any of his political opponents would readily have testified to this. Jefferson
was the American Machiavelli.
-
- It was this side of him that put Philip Freneau on the
federal payroll in order to subsidize the man's libelous newspaper attacks
on Washington's government - this while Jefferson served in that very government.
At another point, Jefferson hired James Callender to dig up and write filth
about political opponents, an effort which backfired when Callender turned
on Jefferson for not fulfilling promises. Callender famously dug out and
publicized the story about Sally Hemings, Jefferson's slave-mistress, his
late wife's illegitimate half-sister (slavery made for some amazing family
relationships), a story we now know almost certainly to be true (by the
way, dates point to Sally's beginning to serve Jefferson in this capacity
at 13 or 14 years old). It was this dark side of Jefferson that resulted
in a ruthless, years-long vendetta against Aaron Burr for the sin of appearing
to challenge Jefferson's election to the presidency.
-
- George charged O'Brien with wronging Jefferson on his
racial views by quoting from Jefferson's youth and ignoring a different
statement years later. But history really doesn't support George. Jefferson
was challenged by others over the years on this issue, and, rather than
argue a point on which he knew he was vulnerable, he tended to keep quiet,
but there is no good evidence he ever changed his views, despite bits of
writing, twinges of his own conscience undoubtedly, that sound sympathetic
about how blacks might have arrived at their then piteous state.
-
- Jefferson expressed himself in embarrassingly clear terms
about his belief in black inferiority. And it is important to note that
in doing so, he violated one of his basic principles of remaining skeptical
and not accepting what was not proved, so this, clearly, was something
he believed deeply. There is also reliable evidence that on one occasion
he was observed by a visitor beating a slave, quite contradicting Jefferson's
public-relations pretensions to saintly paternalism.
-
- When Napoleon sent an army attempting to subdue the slaves
who had revolted and formed a republic on what is now Haiti, President
Jefferson gave his full consent and support to the bloody (and unsuccessful)
effort.
-
- Hero? I have no idea how George defines the word, but
by any meaningful standard, Jefferson utterly fails.
-
- In another flight of fancy some years ago, George equated
honest efforts to limit campaign contributions to attacks on the First
Amendment, about as silly an idea as claiming the Second (well-ordered-militia)
Amendment defends the right of every household to own tanks and missile-launchers.
-
- America restricts many forms of commercial expression
deemed destructive or dangerous. Liquor advertising on television, certain
forms of cigarette advertising, pornography, and racist propaganda are
among these. Are these attacks on the First Amendment? Well, if they are,
concerns for the Amendment are trumped by concerns for protecting children
from noxious substances.
-
- I'm not sure I can think of a more noxious thing than
the complete twisting and distorting of democracy by money in Washington.
Restrictions on things like liquor advertising testify that people recognize
the suggestive, manipulative nature of advertising, yet America's national
elections have pretty well been reduced to meaningless advertising free-for-alls
between two vast pools of money.
-
- No one objects to informative discussions of liquor,
cigarettes, or racism on television, yet any thoughtful person knows that
advertising for the same products or ideas is something else altogether.
Do the most fundamental issues of a nation deserve the debased treatment
they receive in election advertising campaigns? The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
cost little but supplied voters with real information, something that cannot
be said for any money-drenched campaign of the 20th Century.
-
- When a particular aspect of free speech, as the right
to give and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, undermines democracy
itself, it is not just one Amendment at stake, it is the whole evolution
and meaning of the American Constitutional system.
-
- Further, large amounts of campaign money, in economic
terms, represent barriers to entry against newcomers, outside the two money-laden,
quasi-monopoly parties. Try marketing a new product against a firm with
the market position of a Microsoft or a Coke without tens of millions to
spend, no matter how good your product, and you'll see what I mean by barriers
to entry. This is something many find instinctively repellent and unfair
in their most ordinary, everyday shopping and business dealings. How much
more so where it directly affects the entry of candidates and new ideas
into government?
-
- Apart from the sheer ugliness of watching members of
Congress grovel for money, we have many examples of money's pernicious
influence on elections. The CIA has spent God knows how many millions of
dollars influencing elections in other countries, yet observe America's
great touchiness a few years back over even a hint that China may have
played the same trick. This only shows how well Americans understand what
money does to politics, yet whenever someone tries to do something to improve
a rotten situation, George and other courtiers switch on their word processors
and start felling trees.
-
- My last citation from George concerns his regret over
the coarseness and lack of civility in America, what George called "Dennis
Rodman's America," or in another place, "a coarse and slatternly
society" jeopardizing "all respect·."
-
- Unfortunately, George's historical errors gave him a
false basis for measuring moral decline. He wrote that the youthful George
Washington was required to read "110 Rules of Civility and Decent
Behavior." The fact is the highly ambitious Washington chose the small
book and forced himself to copy out the rules in longhand so that he might
become more acceptable for advancement in British colonial society.
-
- Young Washington was heavily influenced by associating
with families from the cream of British colonial society, people not at
all characteristic of average colonial Americans. Most of America then
was a rude, rough place. Newspapers regularly libeled and abused with a
ferocity we can scarcely imagine today. Drunkenness and brawling were common.
Fights often included such grotesque practices as gouging out eyes. And,
of course, the filthy brutality of slavery was normal, on exhibit in many
streets.
-
- It is simply wrong to say that American behavior has
gone downhill from a golden age. Europeans in the 19th century noted with
horror the way Americans spit tobacco juice everywhere - even on the floors
and carpets of the most elegant hotels. Visitors to the White House used
to clomp around in muddy boots, pawing and even walking on furnishings,
cutting souvenir swatches from the drapes and carpets and grabbing anything
small enough to stuff under a coat - often leaving the place a shambles
after a large public gathering.
-
- At times there have been rules or practices that might
now be cited as exemplifying a lost age of gentility, but citing these
in isolation misrepresents the general tone of the past. While George cited
the clean language used in movies under the Production Code in the 1940s,
he neglected to mention that, while Hollywood worried about sexual innuendo
in scripts, in any American city a policeman might freely and openly address
a black citizen as "niggah." And while Hollywood fussed over
suggestive words in "Casablanca," it was still possible in some
parts of the country to lynch a black man and suffer no penalty.
-
- But George is more concerned about sexual coarseness
than violence. This happens to be a characteristic America's Puritans.
It has also been characteristic of tyrant-temperaments. Hitler did not
permit off-color or suggestive stories told in his presence. Lincoln, on
the other hand loved a good off-color joke.
-
- Now, again consider George's words about "a coarse
and slatternly society" jeopardizing "all respect·."
Slattern? Just what century does he think it is?
-
- In fact, it is easily observed that people who use foul
language are expressing anger and frustration, and there are lots of angry
people in America: the pressures of the society do that to you. Trying
to get at the cause of the anger would raise a discussion of civility to
something worthwhile, but George seemed simply to want to "tut tut!"
a bit like some marquis in the late 18th Century worrying about the niceties
just before the deluge.
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