Friday, November 06, 2009

Baltic Night at the Yale Club

Last night I met a friend of Ojars Kalnins, the Latvian-American whose strange fate is recounted in RTRP. For many years National Review and (oddly) the State Department were the only people who, apart from the Baltic-American community, kept alive the notion that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were legitimate countries, wrongly annexed by the Soviet Union. After the fall of Soviet Communism, they regained their independence, though Russia labors to sap it.

My new Latvian acquaintance told me that he likes to ask Swedes, What was the second-largest city in the Swedish empire in the 17th century? Primed by his question, they cleverly answer: Riga. Then he tells them the correct answer: Stockholm. Riga was larger back in the day.

Embattled countries get to play one-up.

11/06 02:17 PM Share

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Better Than a Poke in the Eye with a Sharp Stick

D. R. Tucker quoted the introduction to Right Time, Right Place—"In the age of Obama, conservatism is in retreat . . . but it will be back, and its ups and downs are of interest to conservatives, their enemies, and ordinary Americans"—then asked if Tuesday meant we were back. I answered, "It was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." Much, much more needs to be done, but winning is different from losing, and often better.

He also told me after the interview was over that RTRP reminded him of Almost Famous, the coming-of-age movie about a teenage rock journalist. There is no Penny Lane, but instead there is my wife, Jeanne Safer, whom Mark Riebling called "the third character."

11/04 10:44 PM Share

No God, but Two Men at Yale

Tomorrow night I will discuss RTRP at the Yale Club (50 Vanderbilt Avenue, NYC). Drinks and snacks at 6 PM, me and WFB at 6:30. Members only.

Thank God it's not at Skull and Bones, I couldn't come.

11/04 04:46 PM Share

A Chance to Celebrate VA and NJ

Tonight I am on "The Notes" with D. R. Tucker on Blog Talk Radio, 8:30–9:00 PM EST.

What was the swallow for Reagan's spring? Probably Jack Kemp, who first came to national prominence with the Kemp-Roth bill late in the Carter years (see pp. 104-5, and 151-2 of Right Time, Right Place).

11/04 12:43 AM Share

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Rush: "It will inspire and motivate you."

A plug from Rush:

The name of the book, Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement. Richard Brookhiser. As a powerful, influential member of the media, he sent me an advance copy. It's been out awhile. It is written from somebody close up and a true disciple believer of conservatism and William F. Buckley Jr. I'll tell you, if you liked the Reagan sound bites from his Goldwater speech yesterday, treat yourself to Brookhiser's book because it's a trip back to the foundations of conservatism today and it will inspire you and motivate you.

The occasion for this was a discussion of NY-23; Rush had noticed my post a few days back in the Corner.

Query: Did Rush mean to write, "As a powerful, influential member of the media, he sent me an advance copy," or  "As a powerful influential member of the media, I was sent by him an advance copy"? Both, of course, are true.

11/01 07:02 PM Share

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Moyers, Me and WFB

...on Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS), Friday. 9 PM in NYC.

10/29 11:45 PM Share

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

A (Pregnant?) Pause

Eve Tushnet and I were talking about WFB and she asked me which public intellectuals I admired today. (I dislike the phrase, but it is current, so let it pass.) I came up with three names — George W. S. Trow, for Within the Context of No Context; Camille Paglia, for the opening chapters of Sexual Personae; and V. S. Naipaul, for what, everyone knows — but thought, even as I did so, that there is something melancholy about that list. Trow is dead; Paglia and Naipaul are with us, but repeating or at best building on work of earlier decades. One could think of other names — Paul Berman on terrorism; the post-9/11 Christopher Hitchens when he is not tootling in the Atheist Salvation Army Band — but it does suggest that we are waiting for the next thing. 

Two caveats: Good things remain good even though they are old; and even old things are new to those who discover them for the first time. When I discovered National Review the major columnists — James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Meyer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn — had been pulling their oars in the magazine for 15 years, some of them for longer than that elsewhere (see chapters 1 and 2 of RTRP).  That didn't stop me from learning a lot from them.

Still, if you see a strange, interesting man talking to himself . . .

10/27 11:00 PM Share

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The Yale Political Union turned 75 . . .

. . . and one of the pix in its gala dinner program showed WFB and George McGovern debating before the Union in 1980. I describe that debate on p. 99 of Right Time, Right Place.

Also on view at the dinner Saturday night, in the Presidents' Room in Woolsey Hall, were posters and pictures announcing or depicting other Union guests: Jerry Falwell, Allen Ginsberg. There was also an early shot of WFB speaking. His body language in formal situations was like a matador's or a dancer's — shoulders back, chest up, spine slightly bent. It was nervous in both the 18th- and 21st-century senses of the word: strong and vigorous, but also high-strung. Speaking was always work for him, exciting but intense.

After the dinner, I attended the Bacchanalian Orgy of the Party of Right, where I told members of the classes of 2009 to 2012 what WFB had done for us — pleasant work. The Chancellor's cup helped too.

10/25 07:37 PM Share

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Bill Moyers' Journal

I discussed Right Time, Right Place and WFB with Bill Moyers Thursday, to air October 30.

10/24 12:04 AM Share

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Laudator Temporis Acti

Victor Davis Hanson and John Derbyshire have written variations on an old winger theme, Professor Hanson on his blog, John in his brand-new book, We Are Doomed. I have read the blog, not the book (I look forward to the book party Monday), but John's title seems clear enough.

The Latin phrase — "a praiser of things past" — is from the Ars Poetica of Horace, and it is not meant to be flattering. The praiser is depicted as a querulous crank. But the mood is an ancient and universal one, which we all feel at moments.

It can be expressive and entertaining. I have never liked it as an attitude towards life, though, chiefly because of its dishonesty. Professor Hanson has manifested this dishonesty in an unusually direct way, which is enitrely to his credit: He laments, on his blog, the decadence of modern movies, TV, fiction, and sports, and says he hardly consumes any of them anymore. But he consulted with the makers of 300, the movie about Thermopylae, which sold a zillion tickets. Now he can righteously say that 300 was a little indie film, not a Hollywood schlockbuster, so his point survives, and it does, but only relatively. I host documentaries for PBS, and I will bet him a copy of Thucydides that his little indie film had a bigger budget than any of mine. So he plunged into the culture and made an impact — as, on a different level, do I.

But, leaving aside this exception, why is the laudator temporis acti insincere? What should he do if things were really as bad as he says they are?

He could kill himself. Some cultures honor this choice — ancient Rome, samurai Japan. He could also kill himself slowly, with drugs and booze and venereal disease, and other cultures — Romanticism — honor that choice. But if he is not so dramatic, then he should just stay home. Why rail? No one will listen, and if they do, nothing can be done.

The laudator temporis acti honors the past moment and disdains the moments to come, but says nothing about the present moment, which he is determined to enjoy (in his case, by writing, or praising).  He does well, but he argues badly. So to his arguments, however sharp or clever, I say, feh.

I was looking at Up From Liberalism the other day, one of my favorite books of Bill's,
and it ends with Whittaker Chambers, Bill's favorite author, who could be a very gloomy writer. But he also wrote, "To live is to maneuver. . . . And, of course, that results in a dance along a precipice . . ." "We cliff-dancers," added Bill, "resolved not to withdraw into a petulant solitude, or let ourselves fall over the cliff into liberalism, must do what maneuvering we can . . ."

I did not understand that when I first read it at age 13 or 14. I am beginning to now.

10/22 10:52 AM Share

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The War on Rush

Sometimes it seems like I can understand the headlines by reading Up From Liberalism (1959). This was the first of Bill's books that I read (see pp. 11–13 of Right Time, Right Place). For the war on Rush, I turned to the foreword by John Dos Passos.

The "liberal" mentality which Mr. Buckley puts over a barrel in this book is, I am beginning to suspect, the ideological camouflage of the will to power of [a] new ruling class. I can't find any other explanation of these fits of hysteria, these fixations which time will prove to have been irrational. . . . Only some such phenomenon as the solidarity and esprit de corps of a class recently risen to power can account for the lynching spirit aroused against those who have sought to dislodge any fraternity member, whether bureaucrat or college professor, columnist or commentator, from an entrenched position of power. This disparity between the provocation and the reaction is, as the emotions of the moment cool, what stands out more and more as the characteristic trait of the "liberal."

Me: The class is not recently arisen to power — 1959 was 50 years ago — but the shaky old are perhaps as insecure as the newly arisen. In Rush's case, the fit was designed, not to defend a comrade, but to strike an alien aspirant to mainstream prominence.

Otherwise, Dos Passos could have written this at 10:00 this morning.

10/20 10:55 PM Share

Friday, October 16, 2009

See for Yourself

My RTRP talk at Claremont is online here.

The paintings behind me, whatever their merits, are ill-suited to video. People have said the same about my jackets and ties.

10/16 10:52 PM Share

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Why Are Jews Liberals?

Two of the events on my Left Coast swing were sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition (Beverly Hills and Alamo, CA). At the latter, Norman Podhoretz's question was posed to me.

My short answer was, I do not know. I can see why Jews would be left-of-center in Europe, where the right was associated with churches that were established, or persecuting. But that is not the case in America. As George Washington told the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights." (Did any public figure ever have a higher slugging average?)

I also mentioned the thesis of Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter in their book Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians and the New Left (I see on Amazon that they did a later paperback that drops the "New"). Rothman and Lichter argue that Jews gravitate to universalizing movements, such as Marxism, as a form of protection — if we are all workers together, maybe no one will pick on us. They note that this strategy has been followed by other minorities in other parts of the world — Christians in the Middle East, Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia.

More interesting to me in Right Time, Right Place is what became of Jews during my lifetime. I arrived in New York in a summer afternoon — 1977 — of Jewish popularity and prominence. Ed Koch became mayor, Woody Allen was still funny, Saul Bellow won a Nobel he had earned. Jews were cool (see pp. 56-7).

It seems unrecoverable now, almost unimaginable. This process I understand, somewhat. Much of it is Israel-driven. Years of anti-Israel Soviet propaganda did their work, and do it still, even as many of the stars whose light we see at night have actually gone out. The 1967 and 1973 wars were deeply humiliating to the Red Army: all those tanks chewed up by Israeli Shermans. Steps had to be taken, and were. Liberals, for their part, grew conflicted about defending a David that behaved like a Goliath. Was Exodus supposed to lead to Ariel Sharon? Finally, Israel acquired allies that simply embarrassed liberals, especially Jews. Liberty Baptist is a long way from Walter Benjamin.

For whatever reason, the tide has turned. In the Bush years "neoconservative" and "Straussian" simply meant, in common political parlance, "Jewish warmonger," and this languague came chiefly — apart from Pat Buchanan and a few Paulnuts — from mainstream liberals (see pp. 170 and 230-231). The fever has abated somewhat since the election of Barack Obama, though I wonder if it will it spike again as Afghanistan drags on.

10/13 06:37 PM Share

Monday, October 12, 2009

"This Book Can't Be Beat . . ."

". . . as an intellectual coming-of-age memoir coupled with an insider's view of an important political movement and its leaders." The Indianapolis Star's review of RTRP is out.

10/12 10:12 PM Share

Lose Jobs, Live Better!

Riding past Oakland en route to an RTRP book event in Alamo last week, I was told that our rush-hour commute was relatively quick, thanks to the economy.

Not an argument the Obama administration will want to make, though I do remember Dan Rather saying, after reporting a Reagan-era dip in inflation, that merchants would be able to charge less for their goods.

10/12 12:15 PM Share

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Obama's Nobel

The one time WFB praised Sartre was when he declined his Nobel. Bill found his reasons — it was a capitalist, imperialist prize — all wrong, but he found the individualism of the refusal bracing.

10/10 05:53 PM Share

Thursday, October 08, 2009

It Ain't Over Until . . .

One of the pleasures of talking about RTRP is learning new tales of Bill. Tony Hall, one of the audience at the Pacific Research Institute event in San Francisco, told me a great one about Bill debating Mayor Alioto on Firing Line (Hall was a young aide).

Alioto was splendidly turned out in high Italian style. He also answered very long — not to the point, but verbosely enough to keep Bill's responses hemmed in. He made one grave mistake, alluding to Bill and other conservatives as Irishmen.

Hall said that throughout the show, Bill sized Alioto up. Then, as the last break ended, he leaned forward and murmured, "All right, paesan, I'm going to take the gloves off." By putting it that way, he already had. A flustered Alioto crumpled.

So debates are not always won by pure intellect. No need to tell Socrates — he already knows that.

10/08 05:08 PM Share

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Secrets of Writing, Revealed

One of the questions that came up in Claremont, Calif., on my Left Coast swing was, How does one become a (better) writer? I gave three practical exercises.

Writing. Practice does not make perfect, unless you are Keats, but it makes you better. Write and write and write, to deadline if possible (that compels you to write faster).

Reading. Read good writers. Steal shamelessly. In time, and with luck, the dross of imitation will fall away, and you will be left with your own alloy. (WFB was a model to all who wrote for him, though we couldn't — and shouldn't — have become junior WFBs ourselves).

Editing. (Don't you mean being edited? — Ed.) Having your flourishes struck away is a necessary experience. It is good to have to take one hundred words out of a piece because an ad got bigger; better to have to put the words back and add another hundred because the ad went away.

The students were very impressive, and I had the pleasure of the company of Charles Kesler, sometime NR-nik, old friend, and longtime teacher, to me, and to many others.

10/07 01:15 PM Share

Monday, October 05, 2009

This is Your (and America's) Life

Talking about WFB at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley today was like hero gridlock. Brecht said, unhappy is the country that needs a hero, and one knows what he meant. But there is enough unhappiness in life always to require them.

Touring the splendid library before the talk, I felt, first, the vertigo of one's life becoming history. Pop nostalgia gives a variant of this feeling — we all watched the Brady Bunch! (I didn't, but still.) This was real history, which I had experienced. There were sections of the Berlin Wall; I got a chunk in a lucite cube at a party at the German consulate (no East or West any more) in New York City shortly after the Wall fell. There were shots of Reagan at the 1984 convention; I covered it. There was a replica of his Oval Office; Mona Charen showed me the real one after hours, and of course she and many of my friends, older and younger, got to see it much more often.

I felt, second, the pastness of the past. The Reagan Library has the airplane that was Air Force One for every president from Nixon to GHW Bush (how did the Reaganites nab it?). When you see all the gear (including the football) behind the cockpit, you realize that all of its functions could be performed on your cell. The telephones attached to the arms of seats look like Stanley Steamers, or ox yokes.

A hardy perennial bloomed in the Q&A after my talk. After reading RTRP (and Chris's book), one man felt "disappointed" with Bill. Do we really expect perfection of those we admire? I said, unless you're writing the Gospels, you will have disappointing things to say in any biography. Few will portray a man who was also as lively, as high-spirited, and as generous as WFB.

10/05 08:42 PM Share

Ahmadinejad, Lantsman!

Will Ahmadinejad be at any of my Republican Jewish Coalition events? Or is he in the Iranian Guard Jewish Coalition?

10/05 12:07 PM Share