Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Sohrab and the Chocolate Factory
If you’re a regular listener to the Commentary Podcast, you probably came to know Sohrab Ahmari in his capacity as a contributor to that enterprise. Sohrab’s immigration to America from Iran and subsequent conversion to Catholicism have also produced a much-discussed memoir – From Fire by Water – and another outgrowth; the curious creation of an entirely new branch of conservatism, which he calls “David French-ism.” Setting aside for a moment that nascent political movements love to identify heretics and then place them on trial in order to better indulge the narcissism of small differences (this gets the juices of the true believers flowing), what is this thing and why should we care?
The definition he gives of this philosophy is that it essentially consists of a “polite, (David French-ian) third way around the cultural civil war.” That’s it. The notion of “liberalism” itself is called into question as liberalism is inherently agnostic about ends, and cares considerably more about the means by which cultural and political questions are sorted out. This is clearly seen by Ahmari and those at First Things as some type of bug, not a feature. David has done a better job of defending himself from this spurious straw-man than I likely can, but I’m more interested in the other side… in what French-ism’s flip side “Ahmari-ism” consists of.
What is its goal? Again, Ahmari: “[T]o fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”
What is it that Sohrab really wants out of politics? An Everlasting Gobstopper, obviously. (Record Scratch…) Whaaat? Follow me for just a moment while we go on a wee side journey.
The fundamental unreality of the whole situation baffled me until I began to contemplate this contretemps from a different perspective – that of a morality play. In this play, Sohrab takes on the role of Charlie Bucket, from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which the titular hero is a poverty-stricken yet well-meaning urchin living in a Dickensian hellscape. Eating candy seems to be the primary obsession of this wasted and evil society; indeed, the consumption of Wonka treats provides the only meaningful release from the suffering induced by the grinding poverty afflicting the Bucket family, and Charlie in particular. The Wonka Company itself essentially forms the confines of the public square around which everybody gathers in the Wonka-verse.
In the story, other vices which bedevil the world are also put on display such as avarice, sloth, and gluttony. Note how cleverly this ties into the crises of morality which supposedly inflict America? Obesity, opioids, pornography, and divorce… Tell us, Sohrab:
How do we promote the good of the family against the deracinating forces arrayed against it, some of them arising out of the free market (pornography) and others from the logic of maximal autonomy (no-fault divorce)? “We should reverse cultural messages that for too long have denigrated the fundamental place of marriage in public life.” Oh, OK. How do we combat the destruction wrought by drugs (licit and illicit), by automation and globalization and other forces of the kind?
Hm. This sounds very similar to the Dahl’s-eye view of society that Ahmari holds up as being the natural outcome of the “Liberal” order: a culture which appeals primarily to the basest instincts and leaves people in a Bucket-like spiritual penury, constantly looking to inhale the next treat and forget the searing pain of their miserable existence.
The ill-considered conflation Ahmari engages in is to equate “Liberty” with “License.” This linguistic sleight of hand intentionally divorces liberty from its necessary counterpart: responsibility.
But as you know, the story moves on. In the midst of this hedonism and debauchery, a great light appears on the horizon: Wonka himself is offering Golden Tickets contained within his sweets representing an opportunity to tour the facility where the candy is made. For the Buckets, the ticket means salvation; to be raised from the slough of despond into a kind of secular heaven.
For those with less pure motives, the ticket turns out to be poison. As Charlie and the assembled crew of heathens are ushered through Wonka’s factory, they are picked off one by one by the various temptations contained therein… not because Wonka is a sadist, mind you, but by their own intemperance. (I will leave you, gentle reader, to decipher the meaning of that particular allegory.)
Be that as it may, Ahmari advances the argument that the indulgence made possible by liberal values (the temptations of the factory) will ultimately get you sucked up a chocolate pipe, dropped down the trash chute (you’re a rotten egg, Veruca!) or generally waylaid because those same liberal values “failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, communal solidarity, and much else.” But what are those permanent truths? Who gets to decide them and more importantly: who gets to enforce them? Ahmari is coy about this part, but if you read between the lines, the plot becomes clear.
The MacGuffin of the 1971 adaption of the book Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is that Everlasting Gobstopper I mentioned above. Getting that Gobstopper is the point of the Moral Journey that Ahmari thinks “David French-ism” isn’t up to handling.
His goal it seems is nothing short of gaining control of the factory to start churning out those Gobstoppers. What if you don’t like Gobstoppers? It is known that the Gobstopper is the ultimate truth of the candy universe, and all who deny it are wrong at least, and fools or evil at worst.
What do you think “a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good” means? Gobstoppers for all whether you like hard candy or not.
But there’s a little hitch at the end of the tale we all need to know:
Do you see what happened there? It seems in the end that even Charlie Bucket is more of a French-ite than an Ahmari-ite.
Not to get our pop culture metaphors hopelessly tangled, but if we’ve learned nothing else this year perhaps it is that we ought to be skeptical of placing those in power who would ruthlessly enforce their own judgment over what ultimate good consists of?
Remember: “They don’t get to choose.” Enjoy your Gobstoppers.
Published in Journalism
It is funny: I don’t think “pantywaist moralist and scold” when I hear the word pastor.
Imposing morality? I’m not sure I have the time or heart for yet another debate about libertarianism. It does highlight Ahmari’s point, though: There is no such neutral space, but that doesn’t mean totalitarianism is the answer. Where it is a matter of law then which morality is animating that law matters.
Narrator: “The point must have evaded him.”
I’m not a fan David French, never have been.
But this Ahmari guy sounds he is an authoritarian who wants to use the power of government to force everyone to do what he wants them to do and is angered that the Constitution doesn’t allow that. So in the fight between French and Ahmari, I’m on the side of the Constitution.
But this cements my recurring theme that the least bad option is for the US to split into several countries. Neither the blue tribe nor the red tribe is willing to live in a country where the other tribe is allowed to walk around freely. Ahmari is evidence of that in the red tribe.
This can only end badly.
But that would be a misreading of what he was saying.
I just searched for more details of this story. It just came out minutes ago that her euthanasia request was denied and she died by starving herself.
https://www.businessinsider.com/noa-pothoven-starved-to-death-euthanasia-denied-2019-6
Ok. What I see as his gist is, he is mad at French for arguing the government shouldn’t force people to do things.
Where am I wrong?
The spot people are claiming Ahmari is seeking authoritarian solutions is the part where he wants to do what the left is doing by using our institutions against us.
It seems the issue taken with that is that we assume the only way the left is taking action is through the government. However, the left hasn’t limited themselves to government.
They went to seminary and infiltrated our churches. They are using a left’s right to free association against the right (but I don’t think French/pundits would approve of the right doing the same thing*) in business associations to the point of boycotting states. They even have financial services refusing to do business with gun manufacturers.
*I don’t want to limit this to French because it’s pretty widespread among the pundits that their definition of civility means we have to embrace universal non-discrimination in the face of the left’s ideological discrimination (else we be the left), but it has been pointed out several times around ricochet that being discriminating used to be a virtue. If the right exercising discrimination on a larger level than refusing to bake a cake, would these pundits back us up as that being our right (like they do the left) or would they lambaste us? I’m not entirely certain they would support it. And that matters in a world where written words can easily be drug up to support conclusions that inform and influence public opinion.
I agree with this to the same extent I agree that David French is counterproductive when he lashes out against President Trump. Neither French nor Trump are perfect, and as such, both earn criticism. However, politics is a team sport. Trump, being our quarterback, has been eviscerated from the moment he won the election…and I mean 24/7, 365…by the Democrats and their media. I, for one, try to avoid piling on the man who is our team’s leader, and who, btw, is doing a damn good job while being bombarded by enemy fire. David French, way too often for a fellow team member, can be seen running full speed to jump on that pile. Sorry, I just don’t trust French anymore, despite his service. And thank you very much for that.
As far as I’ve seen no one has really been arguing against boycotting states or companies or trying to influence institutions on liberal grounds, and I don’t see how that is incompatible with French’s way of doing things.
Conservatives have always criticized Republican Presidents when they have deviated from conservatism (which they all have.)
Trump is the first one where Republicans have been outraged by it.
What I understand him to be saying is that we have reached a point where we should not balk at using political power to affect changes in culture. That doesn’t mean forcing people to do things. In many ways it means removing the force that has been put in place by the left. But that still requires using the levers of politics.
Essentially, the left has been using the political sphere for the purposes of social engineering, and we’re no longer in a “live and let live” culture. We’re in a “you must approve!” culture. (e.g., bake the damn cake.)
Just electing good moral citizens won’t solve anything if you don’t allow those moral citizens to actually use their elected positions to affect change. And our culture no longer has an agreed-upon moral foundation that would easily allow change outside of politics.
So the choices seem to be to use what political power is given us (something conservatives are really bad at, but the left is extremely skilled at) or resign ourselves to being shoved into the catacombs by the incremental march of the left.
Not the first. There are still people who have gotten very very angry with me for daring to criticize W. Bush.
Trump is the first Republican president of the Twitter age, however, where reactions to all criticisms are instantaneous, and that is a game changer. There’s a lot more reflexive anger at play than before. Under Bush a conservative pundit could write a damning piece on problems in the administration, and you might have to go a full 24 hours to see a rebuttal! (I’ll pause while everyone catches their breath)…..
Now? You have rebuttals up in minutes, and pearl-clutching outrage across Twitter in seconds. It’s a different game, people don’t take the time to think through and process this stuff because there’s more reward in being the first to react (You get more retweets and hotlinks that way). Outrage is such a reaction (and anymore a cheap and devalued one at that). It’s all too easy to be outraged, and too easy to pick a favorite pundit to always be outraged at (and of course Twitter gives you quick emotional confirmation bias on your outrage). But that means what might have been digested over 24 to 48 hours until a decade ago, and thus generating more tempered responses, now all too often generates binary good / bad reactions – and the truth of the critique cannot be weighed with any sense.
If Twitter et al had been as forceful under Bush, we’d see the same thing as we see today – where we’re all demanded to pick sides instantly, and be outraged all the time.
Because for one thing, the right is really bad at organizing for action.
And I can’t say it any better than it’s said here.
The problem I have with this notion is that Sohrab doesn’t seem to be advocating for a return to a “live and let live” standard, which I think all of us would agree is preferable to “bake the cake!”
That is the fundamental difference between where David and Sohrab seem to want to go: David wants to return to a public square of neutrality (which is the proper role for government in our system) and Sohrab implies that the Government needs to become an active participant in determining what the “right” values are.
Well, what does that consist of? Instead of “you will bake the cake” will it then be “thou shalt not bake the gay cake”? What is the logical conclusion of Sohrab’s call for activism, and why shouldn’t traditional moral suasion be preferable to using the heel of the state to enforce our preferences?
No, it’s “thou shalt not be forced to bake the cake.” I thought that was clear.
This seems like a distinction without a difference.
Here’s an excerpt which I think actually gets to the heart of the matter between the Frenchist and Ahmari approaches.
The bits I underlined above: That evangelism-focused approach . . . that’s Frenchism. I hear Ahmari saying that we need to approach the culture wars more like the left is doing. Organizing and capturing.
We need to find the onramps.
That whole article is worth reading and absorbing.
That sounds very close to David’s position and not Sohrab’s.
Sohrab is a co-signatory to the First Things manifesto that essentially asked for the state to use its power to roll back the “eclipse of permanent truths” and claimed that small government is some sort of abstract value with no inherent worth of its own.
How is a reasonable person supposed to interpret this confluence of endorsements? Sohrab wants a large government and to roll back some of the ills he sees in society. Hm. We have this large government conveniently sitting around… why don’t we use it?
That’s the danger. That’s the temptation – that having something like that sitting around invites its use.
Not exactly. The phrase was “small government as an end in itself.” Which is the only place the size of government is mentioned at all in that manifesto.
But thanks for pointing me to that. I really like it. Particularly:
And this shot at globalism:
Okay, but I want my group to be called God and Guns. ;-)
No, seriously, I would start with education. Local discussion group on “What are your kids learning in public school?” Introduce E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge to anyone who hasn’t heard of it. Little Platoon for Education Reform.
Mentioning small government as an “end in itself” is derisive enough to justify my reading of their meaning, I think.
Trump is one of the most ruthlessly investor-focused Presidents we’ve had. He’s obsessed with the Stock Market and has explicitly tied its value to the success of his Presidency. His tax cut package was aimed almost exclusively at investors, businesses and owners of capital.
Perhaps people just like it that Trump pays lip service to the working class, even as he quadruples down on Traditionally Republican policy goals?
Re: “Small government as an end unto itself” I will quote Dennis Prager:
“The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.“
Small Government is a positive value unto itself which is worth pursuing for its own sake. Ahmari seems to disagree.
If only there was an economic system where the workers owned the means of production…
Just one small quibble… I’ve never like the use of the term “small government” because I think it doesn’t capture the aim that the Founding Fathers were going for. I like using “limited government” as a better description than “small government”. I don’t want a small military for example, but I do want government limited in what it can and should do a la the 9th and 10th amendments.
Okay, I think we’re just talking past each other, now. Especially if you think that Ahmari is calling for socialism, then we won’t find common ground.
I don’t think Ahmari is calling for socialism.
I do think he’s advocating for a more paternalistic state – one whose aims are to hew closer to what the writers at First Things and other Catholic intellectuals deem to be the “eternal truths” which need elevation and protection.
What is less clear is what the limiting principle of such a state or movement could be. Ahmari of course is coy and evasive about this.
Fair enough.
OK. So I get the impression that the Right is supposed to pass laws that make it illegal for the left to make things illegal?
Is this getting closer?
I think we’re drifting away from Ahmari’s main point. The Left has been using the force of government to inculcate radical individualism (subjective morality) encouraged and reinforced by secular/atheist public
schoolingindoctrination to divide and conquer. To break up the moral consensus and inherited concepts of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. To disfigure Justice into “social” justice. Does anyone believe same-sex marriage will be the end of the changes to our traditions and customs concerning marriage? Puhleaze.The Left is using government power to enforce positive rights. How is government licensing of same-sex couples’ relationships in any way a “live and let live” concept? It has simply denied the ability of people to apply their conscientious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman in their lives! This was predictable and predicted.
I would guess David French agrees with Ahmari on the substance. Where they disagree is style. Almost the entire antipathy toward Trump is a style (and pride) issue.
So, yes, little platoons. And, yes, fearlessly use the power we attain to roll back and block (permanently, if possible) positive rights. [Prager was right about a marriage amendment] You do not have a right to healthcare (do you suppose these lefty doctors will be shocked to find themselves enslaved?). You do not have a right to free education. You do not have a right to marriage without meeting some very minimal, non-intrusive standards (age, consent, number, distant consanguinity, sexual complementarity). You do not have the right to use my tax money to pay for your abortion! I can’t speak for Ahmari, but these are the kinds of political actions this Catholic wants to see.
And, lucky for you if you live in a Christian society, because Christians feel obligated to the poor and will make sure you get what you need, even though you don’t have a right to it.
I think this is the fundamental difference but slightly modified: French does indeed want a neutral public square, while Ahmari assumes that there is no such thing as a neutral public square.
The public square wasn’t neutral in any sense we’d recognize at our founding or really any time since. It’s certainly not neutral in other societies. Perhaps one can argue that there is some brief period of seeming neutrality while a society transitions from one dominant framework to another. The neutral public square of our founding assumed so much that is in dispute today: Christianity, for one big one. With that giant price of admission aside the neutral public square was then open for debate within that framework.