Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
I've been reading Charles Flood's 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History. It is almost surreal to be reminded of how -- in the midst of the Wilderness, Cold Harbor, and the ongoing slaughter in Virginia (the Army of the Potomac took 60,000 casualties in three months) -- the real Lincoln haters, from Fremont on the left to Greeley on the right, schemed to do him in, only to see all of these setbacks dissipate in early September as Sherman took Atlanta and Sheridan pushed his scorched-earth raids into Virginia. It is a depressing reminder of how fickle the public is, and how eager it is to identify with a winning cause. In reaction to all this, Lincoln himself was not above firing and hiring entirely on political considerations and doing the sort of horse trading that puts modern Congressmen in the pokey.
Although a classicist, I had never read Procopius's The Wars before, either in English or Greek--a much better work than the more popular Secret History. What Belisarius achieved in North Africa in a few weeks--destroying the Vandal Empire in toto--seems almost to read as if fiction, especially how he conquered Carthage with small, often unreliable forces, far from home, and with a jealous emperor in Justinian. Procopius writes (ca. AD 540-550s) in a very clear Greek that deliberately emulates classical authors like Xenophon, nearly a millennium earlier--reminding us how long-lived Hellenism really was (and Constantinople would last nearly another 1,000 years after Belisarius, its authors still emulating 5th-century BC Attic prose.)
Michael Barone has been writing a series of insightful articles -- here's his latest -- about how Obamism is increasingly at odds with the majority of voters and his own favorability is waning and no longer can carry through an unpopular agenda. We know this by a variety of different barometers. November 2010 will be a reckoning that we have not quite seen in our recent past. I think Barone is right, especially since the tendency of more conservative voters in off-year elections is not fully reflected in the polls.
I read carefully Angelo Codevilla's American Spectator essay on the nation's elite. He makes a good argument that the Ivy League liberal technocracy (and its counterparts in the West) is not merely hypocritical, but corrupt as well. They differ from creators of capital and those who build things, largely in that they are interpreters and modifiers but hardly creators of real things. Here I note how John Edward's "two nations" ends up in a 4,000 sq ft. "John's room" within an even larger mansion--all the fruits of ambulance chasing; John Kerry's egalitarian sermons on taxation devolve into cheating on the sales taxes due on his $7 million plaything yacht, itself purchased with someone else's money; Al Gore, of recent "digital brownshirts" fame, who parlayed green alarmism into a near billion dollar fortune, seems an unapologetic mansion-collector and energy hog; Timothy Geithner lectures on the need for higher taxes after ducking out on his FICA obligations and using rather tawdry and unlawful write-offs. We go from Duke Cunningham and the "culture of corruption" to Rangel and Dodd in a blink of an eye.They all remind us of the money schemers among the hierarchy of the Medieval Church. What Codevilla's targets have in common are three general traits: Ivy League or elite school certification (I say certification rather than education because it is mostly a question of a diploma rather than any quantifiable acquisition of knowledge or inductive reasoning); a tendency to lecture the entrepreneurial classes on their greed; and an insatiable appetite for those delights and goods that they scorn in others. I note much of the elite NY-DC media shares this profile. It is all quite unsustainable, as we are seeing in the strange implosion of Barack Obama, who once both lapped up Jeremiah Wright's pop class and race hatred, and yet was intrigued with the nice things that a Tony Rezko might bring to the table—all under a proper Harvard veneer.
But this summer has also seen a lot of bad journalism. Perhaps the most pathetic has been the sudden outrage over criticism of Obama, allegations of racism, and the lamentation over partisanship--this after the left wrote novels, made movies, and did stand-up comedy about killing George Bush. We are in unreal times: suddenly Bush's frivolous aristocratic golfing has become a much needed breather for an overworked President; natural disasters like Katrina are as much referenda on the President as unnatural one's like the BP mess are not; filibusters once good, now bad; recess appointments once bad, now good. All the old commandments on the barn wall have been crossed out and rewritten. There is almost no self-awareness on the part of the Obamians that the past tearing down of the president in ways that transcended good taste and decorum have established protocols that they now resent most deeply--almost as if to say "God, I pray they don't dare do to Obama what we routinely did to Bush". A bunch that gave us sordid lies about the Palin pregnancy, Checkpoint, 'the war is lost' and Guantanamo as a Gulag suddenly seem shocked that any might remember any of that in this new age of 'can't we just get along?'.
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Jun '10
Re: Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
You neglected to mention Chelsea Clinton's upcoming $5 million wedding, which perfectly encapsulates the excesses of our new elite. These people live like the robber barons of yore. The difference, is that the robber barons built roads, railroads, steel plants and other things of lasting value. Our new elite simply lives off the productive work of others.
Jun '10
Re: Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
Evil only brings shame when it's true goodness that brings honor. But what brings shame when it's winning, and winning alone, that brings the honor? Not winning? Is that the only evil now? If that's the world we have to look forward to, God help us.
Jun '10
Re: Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
Welcome back, professor, and thank you for mentioning Codevilla. His essay after two weeks still has traction, and that's significant. He correctly identifies the characteristics of America's ruling oligarchy, and then goes on to suggest, quite rightly, that finding a remedy isn't going to be easy. If the Republican Party prefers to be co-opted into the elite governing class rather than act as a principled opposition party, where will we as citizens of the republic find our champion?
Despite a lack of leadership, I think the citizen class in America has some advantages. The first is that average Americans smelled out the danger early on and were able to mobilize spontaneously from the grassroots. The second is that new media has broken the stranglehold on information formerly held by the MSM. And the third is the hubris of the ruling class. The ruling oligarchy is living in a Versailles of their own construction, as oblivious to the will of the American people as any French courtier was to the concerns of a fishmonger's wife.
I see this struggle to take back the republic as something that will reach well beyond November 2nd. More . . .
Jun '10
Re: Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
Even if the citizen class puts our professional political class on notice with a hard anti-incumbent backlash this November, will it be enough? What about the vast federal bureaucracy now running on automatic pilot? It seems an inevitable flaw in government that once a bureaucracy reaches a certain critical mass, it begins to arrogate to itself the power to rule without a mandate from the citizenry. Combine this power with an executive branch willing to selectively enforce the law, and you get a combination that threatens the founding principles of our nation. Bureaucrats are insulated and untouchable. How else would one explain the bold moves by EPA to regulate green house gasses, or a DOJ that won't prosecute people of color, or an INS that will simply put a freeze on enforcement? We have moved into the realm of the surreal at this point. I'm beginning to believe at this point that I will not witness the end to this struggle in the years left to me on this planet. I think it's going to be a generational struggle before we return to our founding roots.
Jun '10
Re: Flood, Procopius, Barone, Codevilla: A Summer of Reading
Angelo Codevilla in his article writes:
"While it [the American ruling class] stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof."
I am of the opinion that outside of elected representatives all (and I know that 'all' is a sweeping generalization) political power is held by patronage or promises thereof. I would gladly read an opinion that contradicts mine, but in my view politics is one of the few if not the only occupation in the world that relies more on loyalty than on merit. Thus when two candidates present themselves for a position/sinecure the one who is deemed the most loyal or trustworthy is most likely to succeed. Politics only pretends to meritocracy, but as I wrote above I would gladly be convinced otherwise by a cogent agrument. Any takers?