You Won't Be On Those Committees
No.98: March 11, 2022
Dear Friends,
I won’t dedicate yet another entire Square Inch to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but I hope you will indulge me a couple of observations because, (1) this war has the potential of metastasizing into something horrific on a continental or even global scale, and, (2) truth matters.
Across Facebook I see people who fashion themselves as “freethinking” people. They speak disparagingly of the “masses,” whom they often derogatorily label “sheeple.” You know, the sorts of people who just unthinkingly accept whatever their superiors tell them, lack the ability to see what’s “really” going on, and just don’t know that—sometimes they even write it like this for effect—You. Are. Being. Manipulated!
If it wasn’t so nauseating I would find it hilarious that these days they all sound like Vladimir Putin.
Seriously. It’s apparently the hallmark of “freethinking,” non-manipulated people to talk about, let’s see, the folly and threat of NATO expansion, political corruption in Ukraine, the historic ethnic and political ties between Russia and Ukraine, and now (the topic du jour, thanks to Putin stooge Tucker Carlson and others) the nefarious presence of biological labs in Ukraine! They must be producing bioweapons, right!? What else aren’t they telling us?
Look, just because my two local hospitals have pathology labs where they handle infectious diseases doesn’t make them potential war criminals. But there’s more to it than that, and you can read all about it here.
If these people are thinkers at all, they are certainly not freethinkers because independent minds do not follow such a predictable script. Some of them don’t know any better because they’re willfully brainwashed by their freely chosen media consumption habits (but I won’t call them sheeple because that’s disrespectful). Others do know better (e.g., Tucker Carlson) and that just makes them immoral. Carrying water for people who invade neighboring countries without provocation, slaughter civilians, and bomb maternity wards is wicked. Oh, not to mention the International Red Cross now claims that the “humanitarian evacuation route” out of Mariupol was laced with land mines. Subtlety and humanity have never been associated with the Red Army, and I guess they are not going to start now.
Let’s take another angle. AGHamilton is a Twitter account with 100k followers, and he spent some time watching Russian state television so that we don’t have to. I will reproduce his report here:
Update from the alternate reality of Russian news: segment on Russian volunteers handing out food to Ukrainians and gathering lists of needed medications. The volunteers came because Ukrainians blew up all the bridges, encircled the city, and cut off all supplies.
Now they are interviewing an army person that explains it's actually Ukraine that has surrounded and is destroying Mariupol while Russia is getting victims to safety.
He further says that the Ukrainians won't let civilians leave and are just using terrorist tactics to trap Ukrainians in certain buildings as shields. All the other news anchors are outraged at these tactics. (*eyeroll*)
Anchor now explaining that those Ukrainians that are fighting are choosing to side with Nazis just to keep their valuables (?). I don't even think he can make sense of what he's trying to spin.
Now another anchor explains that Russia is sacrificing to stop terrorism and those opposing the war are siding w terrorists. The next segment is on how the U.S. gas hikes are devastating to us and demoralizing Americans while sanctions have barely affected the Russian economy.
Ok now (2 weeks after the invasion) they are claiming they have magically found secret documents that the Ukrainian government was planning an invasion and complete destruction of the Donbas region on March 8th. And that's why Russia had to act. (What a coincidence!)
Next 2 segments are on the bioweapons conspiracy (amazing watching consistency with what some parrot here). Playing the Nuland video. Now suggests that America was very worried that Russia would discover their secret weapons and so we are paying off Ukraine to help cover it up.
"This isn't just being funded by the United States, but by the Pentagon. Can only be a secret weapons program. The Pentagon turned Ukraine into their own weapons experiment base just like what happened in Nazi Germany (the news commentator really said this)"
Now they are having an entire debate comparing Zelensky to Hitler. "Hitler didn't personally run one concentration camp, but that doesn't take any responsibility from him. So he has the same type of responsibility as Adolph Hitler"
Anyways, that's enough. You get the point. It really is a completely alternate reality and this is all Russians have access to right now. Keep that in mind, when you see certain people parrot this stuff or compare their info to info we get here.
Yes, I can understand Russians parroting this stuff because they don’t have access to the means of knowing any better (although, given their history, I won’t really let them off the hook; the post-Soviet years gave them ample insight into the power and ugly reality of their own State propaganda—they should know better). But what, pray tell, is Congressman (R-NC) Madison Cawthorn’s excuse?
Now, let’s add to this to the mix: the Russian Foreign Minister said in a press conference yesterday in front of the entire world: "We are not planning to attack other countries. We didn't attack Ukraine in the first place." Before our very eyes Russia is living up to its long-lived and hard-earned status as the most obvious propaganda machine in the history of humanity. They are liars. Full stop. And it is these very liars who peddle ideas like, say, that NATO expansion is what caused this, or that Ukraine is run by Nazis, or that “Zelensky is a thug,” or that Ukraine is persecuting Russian-speaking citizens.
My point? Giving a single drop of credibility to anything these people say for any reason (not least in the interests of scoring points against domestic political opponents) when they show such obvious willingness to say the most outrageous lies, is not a sign of intellectual (or moral, for that matter) health and wellbeing. Quite the opposite. There’s an old saying that a person who lies to you about little things might be lying to you about the big things. Here is a companion principle: people obviously lying to you about the big things (“We didn’t attack Ukraine”) are certainly lying to you about the little things. No—a thousand times no!—the Russians do not “have a point.” Anyone who thinks they do is a mark for propagandists and con-men, and anyone who goes on to parrot that imagined “point” is a Putin stooge. So, ignore them. Henceforth I will try to take my own advice, but as you can tell that is proving a difficult task.
Finally, I’ll just say that I personally resonate with remarks from Senator Romney yesterday regarding all of our hand-wringing about escalation: “It’s time for him to fear what we might do.”
Should We Break Up Classical Liberalism?
This might seem like a wildly unrelated topic, but it really isn’t. We are in the midst of a struggle between an authoritarian power and a nation wanting to join an alliance of western liberal democracies. And those western democracies have a lot in common, most notably a broad commitment to classically “liberal” institutions and values.
These would include things like representative government, a balance of powers, the rule of law, protection of private property, free markets and free trade, and securing the rights of conscience, religion, assembly, speech, and so forth. There is, of course, a bell curve: no other nation, for example, has enshrined in its founding documents protections as strong as our First Amendment, but broadly speaking the western world has been committed to these ideas. I’m oversimplifying, but this civic architecture is essentially a set of agreed-upon rules whereby a society can establish public policy and settle disagreements without killing each other. We’ve been at it for 300 years or so, and the results are not even very mixed: the past three hundred years has seen an explosion of prosperity and freedom unlike the world has ever seen.
And radicals on the fringes hate it.
On the far left progressive wing, the institutions and architecture of classical liberalism hinder their political goals of ushering in utopia. Liberalism is holding us back. They are relics created by white men for the purpose of oppressing people and maintaining their own political and cultural power. So, the thinking goes: we could more easily establish a new society of equality if we weren’t constrained by silly things like filibusters, or if we could just cancel people who don’t think properly and forbid them from assembling or speaking or participating in the political process. In essence: seize the reins, clear away the hurdles, and we will deliver prosperity and blessing!
And on the right—which historically has been the conservative end of the spectrum—there are radicals who also think the institutions and architecture are a hindrance. This argument goes like this: these constraints and hurdles are insufficient in stopping our political opponents from achieving their goals! For example, the sexual revolution is sweeping away everything in its path—look at the outrage today among elites that Florida doesn’t think 3rd graders need to know about gender identity and sexual orientation. [Sidebar: if you think 5, 6, 7, or 8 year olds need to hear from their teacher about gender identity, gender dysphoria, same-sex attraction, and so forth, then you are likely someone who should not be allowed around children. To believe that children of that age have any notions whatsoever relevant to those topics is to sexualize them—a big ‘ol No No, at least until yesterday. And if they do have such notions, it is sad evidence that they have already been sexualized by adults.] The complaint from the far right, in essence, is that the liberal order is useless in the face of this cultural onslaught. Seize the reins, clear away the hurdles, and usher in a new era of morality, prosperity, and blessing!
Again, I’m oversimplifying because there are a lot of complexities involved. For now, I am going to leave for another day the important distinction between our civil architecture and civil society, or, put another way, politics and culture. These should not be confused, but often they are in these debates. Indeed, that confusion may be at the heart of both rejections of classical liberalism. What I would like to do right now is briefly comment on three fairly prominent right-wing critics of classical liberalism.
You may remember a few years ago that Sohrab Ahmari, a former editor at the New York Post, wrote a scathing essay in the pages of First Things denouncing conservative commentator and pundit David French. I won’t rehash that whole debate, but his argument is essentially what I outline above: classical liberalism is for pansies. It’s powerless to stop the progressive tide, and the rules we are so studiously following are not the ones our enemies our following. What we need to do is seize power and enforce our values. We need a government “re-ordered” to the “common good” (as he sees it). The old idea, that government provides an orderly and lawful space for individuals and communities to pursue happiness as they wish, should be discarded for a government that essentially tells people what happiness is and “enforces” it.
What could go wrong?
Well, for me that whole debate ended at a very specific moment in time. Sohrab Ahmari and David French met for two public debates, at both of which French had the better of the argument. But the moment—the moment—the debate was over took place during their second appearance. As I recall, Ahmari was literally right in the middle of arguing that we need a government strong enough to pressure people to make right and moral decisions, when he reached into his blazer pocket and grinned. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and sheepishly said, “Although they haven’t got me to stop smoking yet.”
The End. /Fin. The government that can’t make Sohrab Ahmari stop smoking is not suddenly, when Sohrab Ahmari is at the reins, going to be able to steer anyone else toward his vision of the “common good.”
Rusty Reno is the editor of the magazine in which that salvo appeared, First Things. He’s on the bandwagon, too. In a debate with Father Robert Sirico, held at King’s College, New York City, he also advocated for a more robust government willing to, say, crack down on Big Tech and multinational corporations, to police various kinds of speech, and to “re-orient” society toward the “common good.”
As far as I was concerned, the debate was over when Father Sirico interjected: “Rusty, you are not going to be on those committees.”
Oof. Mic drop.
I was then intrigued a few weeks ago when Doug Wilson wrote a blog post that started out as a defense of the Canadian truck drivers and then veered into a pretty full-throated rejection of our system of classical liberalism—or at least a “temporary” rejection. It is a picture-perfect articulation of the complaint I noted above: “They” are not playing by the rules, so the rules are useless in stopping them. We need to stop playing by the rules, too. Seize the reins, get rid of the hurdles, and we’ll re-order things properly! And then we’ll reinstate the rules. Promise.
Here’s his punchline:
So both sides are now playing Calvinball but, consistently with that game, we now see two completely different versions of that game. The progressives, being antinominan in spirit as they are, have rejected all forms of authority, and with it, any kind of rules. Unfortunately, it has landed them in a place where they have also forgotten Alinsky’s rules, to wit, 2,3, 5, and 6. There are therefore miserable and unhappy . . . and losing. They are therefore both losing, and losing it.
The conservatives would be more than happy to go back to playing football. If the progressive left doesn’t like it that the conservatives have discovered how to play effective Calvinball, all they need to do is go back to the old rules. But here is their sorrow. They can’t. They don’t know how. They have lost their way. The old rules will have to be reimposed by the conservatives, but only after we win this round of Calvinball.
Ah, the old “If you let me break the rules to win this round, I pinky promise to reinstate the rules afterward.”
I simply observe that this is what every single tyrant in modern history has said.
Miscellany
I’ve kept you long enough. I was going to give you a full explanation and defense of why I wholeheartedly believe in the Designated Hitter rule in baseball because some of my friends are intractable Luddites in this regard. But it can wait. Why? Because Major League Baseball is back, and the Designated Hitter is now a universal reality and will be forevermore. There will be plenty of time to discuss it because my side won the argument. Condolences, National League friends.
Now, let’s Play Ball!
Brian,
I'll assume you mistakenly omitted Wilson's paragraph immediately above the one you quoted. Here it is:
"The Canadian truckers, and the successive waves of uncooperative normals coming up behind them (please see here and here), are willing to disobey traffic laws in defense of the genuine ancient verities that are being challenged by their government—their basic rights, in other words. But they are nevertheless not willing to loot stores, or burn down buildings, or shoot cops. This is why the protesters in Ottawa are doing things like cleaning the bathrooms of businesses that have stayed open. They are parking their trucks where Trudeau doesn’t want them to, but they are still respecting the Ten Commandments."
If you read the two paragraphs above that, you'll see even more starkly exactly the Calvinball which Wilson describes the truckers as playing:
Simple civil disobedience. Straight outta the pages of classical liberalism.
According to you, however, Wilson is advocating for the same "Calvinball' as the progressives.
Man, you really should read your opponents more carefully. It's a blight on your otherwise nice work.