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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
I absolutely agree that conversion one person at a time is essential. But, I believe we could be doing more on the political level. My hobby horse is public
educationindoctrination and the push to send everyone to college. And there’s a habit of timidity Republicans have gotten into — they couldn’t even defund Planned Parenthood with control of both Houses and the presidency for Pete’s sake!!There seems to be an attitude of “you can’t do that!” [use tariffs for leverage; move the embassy to Jerusalem; build a barrier along the border…] “You can’t say that!” It’s extreme risk aversion, which Trump doesn’t share. His brazenness comes with positives and negatives which most of us are willing to accept. Not French.
Wait. Isn’t Ahmari accusing French of not being enough of a scold?
Here is a test. You are Mitt Romney in a debate with Barack Obama. You make an interesting point and the moderator jumps in to tell you that you are wrong, when you are actually correct. Do you:
A) apologize to the moderator. If so, you are practicing French-ism.
B) tell Candy to shut her pie hole and curse the media for being partisan. If so, you are elected president. Congratulations!
I think he’s accusing him of not spiking the ball.
There’s some truth in that. I think he takes his eyes off the ball when he does it. He has this conceit that he’s “saving conservatism” from the awful Orange Man. I see it as a pride problem. He’s not being helpful, except to preserve his seat at the table with the lefties (until he’s no longer useful, and then he’ll get the ax, hopefully not literally).
Well, I think one way you do it is how the President is doing it — rolling back regulations that imposed certain social positions, such as getting rid of the Obama-era rules about school discipline, gender-identity policies, or campus sexual assault.
Those actions are certainly political, but they return the decisions — the liberty, if you will — to the schools themselves, not having Washington dictate how every school in the nation must operate.
Nope, you don’t get a moral consensus, because every school and every locale is different, but you do get freedom. And it took a political act to do it. That’s the sort of thing that I suspect Ahmari was talking about — not being afraid to use the power of politics — except in this case to return power and liberty to the people, not take it from them.
No, it makes you Newt Gingrich.
Who doesn’t remember the Gingrich Administration?
That’s unfair to French – I very much doubt he would do that, nor advocate that others do so.
This is so ironic, because I consider David “Haystack” French to be the king of the straw man argument. He probably feels it makes his moralizing more effective.
Still say he should have been WH Press Secretary. At least for a few months (which was probably as long as he could’ve lasted).
The left is not shy about using the political power they have to impose their will. The right is too shy. When the left had control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they immediately went to work fundamentally transforming this nation.
The right, on the other hand, was ill-prepared to deal with suddenly having power. As mentioned above, they couldn’t even defund Planned Parenthood (although I suspect every single one of them made that promise on the campaign trail). And they screwed up getting rid of Obamacare (which was one of the main reasons they were given power in the first place).
No, he’s a scold. He doesn’t limit his criticisms to the President. He has been scolding evangelicals for three years now for daring to vote for and support the President.
Ahmari says:
But I don’t believe that. I think “autonomy” or “free love” promotion by the Left is really a Marxist tool to destroy Western institutions. The end game is communism where autonomy is only allowed, when it advances the state. If the real end goal was autonomy, then they would not embrace Islamism, which has a lot of moral restrictions.
The embrace of Islamism is also a tool to destroy Western institutions. It all fits. Though I’m not sure they will be able to control that tool.
In one respect French has the better argument.
It costs nothing to be polite to a man before you strip him of his office and consign him to eternal darkness.
Finally David gets it. The right is becoming less classically liberal. Perhaps now David can start asking himself why the right is becoming less classically liberal. Who am I kidding, he’ll just spout the same “politicians are appealing to base instincts! there’s no rational reason to oppose liberalism!” crap the left-liberals believe.
Well that’s damning with faint praise.
Here’s how the emanations of the penumbra of the internecine fight manifest themselves in the community that cares little for details and wants their half-arsed preconceptions reinforced:
Such a question requires that the author knows nothing of NR authors’ opinions on the subject. The audience nods vigorously, ascribing wishy-washy get-alongism to the magazine, despite its exhaustive stance on life issues. But you know those NeverFrenchers, always atwitter about his tone.
All I know is that I’m seeing the most conservative President in my lifetime making decisions that will have serious and lasting effects on all aspects of the US polity, and the Conservative standard bearers are complaining about the tone.
And we are seeing the denouement of an organized effort to remove an elected president from office and the Conservative standard bearers with some exceptions have been on the side of those using corrupt law enforcement to do their bidding. In fact French’s mentor openly encouraged these efforts.
I have often wondered why there are multi generational Democrat enclaves. Watching the Conservative standard bearers over the last few years have answered the question. To get elected and succeed in say Chicago as a Republican or conservative would require the type of person that Conservatives standard bearers would never support. Not because they would disagree with policy, but the battle would need to be fought in a way that these Conservatives could never rouse themselves to participate in or would agree.
Illinois has a Republican governor, and I read something about what he was doing, and there was a detail that shocked me. He was getting people from out of state to take on important roles. I thought that was weird. But maybe there weren’t enough people in state willing to do the trench warfare necessary to be successful. Maybe the place is full of Conservatives who are more than willing to snipe and complain, rather than take on the risk of putting themselves forward to implement changes that they purport to believe in.
They would rather Hillary Clinton be president that someone who offends their sensibilities. And are very convincing that if it comes to an ugly fight they won’t have your back.
Thanks alot.
Like their wishy-washy get-alongism on same sex marriage? Give it ten years and they will support unisex sports, women be damned.
I think Charles’s point is a bit different. Conservative elites shouldn’t be friends or do business with anyone who supports what happened in the Netherlands (assuming it’s true, I’ve not looked into it). Full stop. Similarly, conservative elites should boycott anyone who calls for the state persecution of conservative voters, especially if it goes further into fantasies about ethnic cleansing (maybe then we could rebuild the blanket taboo against ethnocentrism).
I think one reason why this is the case is because, at least for a significant faction within the GOP, limited government is a principle that is cherished more than any particular social goal.
If someone gets elected to Congress or gets a job in Trump’s cabinet hoping to reduce the power of the federal government, they aren’t going to be friendly to an agenda of remaking the culture according to 1950s values, even if they are congenial to 1950s values.
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were never going to go along with defunding Planned Parenthood. Now the GOP Senate has 53 Senators and can, presumably, spare losing their votes. But the US House is now under Democrat control.
Also, Senators like Cory Gardner in Colorado are trying hard to downplay their social conservatism because . . . . . . . . well the voters of Colorado are pro-Pot but not particularly pro-life.
Here’s the thing. Ahmari’s column blasting David French, of all people, is just a symptom of the fact that there aren’t very many socially conservative voters in the United States. Remember when Lisa Murkowski lost the 2010 GOP primary to a conservative opponent? Murkowski ran as an independent and won. Alaska is considered a deep red state. But it’s not socially conservative.
People like Sohrab Ahmari are always going to feel like the country is moving away from them. Lashing out against fellow social conservatives like David French is, in a weird way, understandable, but counterproductive.
One of the more interesting features of this Ahmari vs French debate is how, when the discussion doesn’t simply devolve into a debate over Trump, it illustrates differing views on “individual autonomy.”
It seems that Ahmari thinks our government grants its citizens too much individual autonomy and he also accuses French of supporting this.
Think of all the changes that have taken place in the last 60 years.
Contraception is widely available, not only for married people, but for single people too. This means our society has essentially legalized sex outside of marriage.
Would reeling in “individual autonomy” include the agenda of banning the sale and use of contraception among the unmarried? That’s a very hard sell.
What about easy divorce laws or no-fault divorce? Many state legislatures are passing pro-life legislation but none, as far as I am aware, are passing laws banning no-fault divorce. A marriage is one of the easiest contracts to cancel in the United States.
What about pornography? How many members of Congress are advocating a national ban on porn? None, as far as I am aware.
So, Sohrab Ahmari might be fighting a losing battle.
Some of them deserve it for their embrace of Trump. Your statement doesn’t exactly demonstrate that David is wrong to do so.
But if that shoe doesn’t fit you, don’t wear it.
The transmutation of Trump from figure of convenience to holy vessel is specifically what David is discussing, and that is a problem.
Can you folks who say David French has criticized evangelicals for simply voting for Trump provide some receipts on that claim?
I have read a lot of French’s work, listen to his podcast almost every week and I’ve never seen any evidence of this claim. Quite the opposite actually. I’ve heard him say that he understood the calculus of voting Trump instead of Hillary as justifiable.
He has criticized people like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham for being hypocrites. But he only did that because they are in fact, hypocrites.
I wonder what this debate would look like if “civility” was being used as a proxy for “immigration”.
This is an excellent point. Conservatives (of all stripes) are fighting on two fronts: against the insidious, no-holds-barred approach of the professional Left, and against the seemingly inevitable cultural “slouching to Gomorrah.” Sadly, it seems we end up battling with one another more than we do the other side.
I think moving forward, it’s beholden on French and others who have maintained their conservative beliefs but are outraged and saddened by Trump now being the champion of them to find someone in 2024 who can articulate those beliefs and has led a life that exemplifies those beliefs, but who can successfully fight back against the take-no-prisoners/everyone-I-oppose-is-Hitler style of politics the Democrats and their mouthpieces within the big media outlets have taken to using over the past two decades during the Internet era, where civility has fallen face-first into a mud puddle. (In this vein, I’d be interested on French’s take on Mike Pence, who drives the left almost as insane as Trump due to his social conservatism, but who may already be disqualified by some #NeverTrumpers in 2024 simply for accepting the job as Trump’s vice-president.)
On the other hand, Ahmari’s youthful dalliance with Marxism may be long gone, but the connection between Marxism and authoritarianism seems to still have some vestiges in his call that we stop defending the rights of the left to spout that type of crap. French is right that if you stop defending the rights of people to say and support things you know would be destructive to society as a whole, you’re headed down the same path as the left, in that you’re going to rely in the future on “really smart people” to determine what is and isn’t within the bounds of public discussion. Just because the woke left is attempting to do that today doesn’t mean people on the right should try to beat them to the punch, and in the end any effort to do that would be self-defeating to the Republic as a whole, since the ideas would just be censored, and wouldn’t go away unless you made the people go away. There is a sweet spot in the middle between Ahmari’s demand for top-down action and French getting the vapors over any type of aggressiveness.
Um… Gingrich was never nominated. Something about his marriage wasn’t kosher, or he said something mean to his first wife, I forget. The French Republicans ( not Vichy!!!) wouldn’t have such an immoral man as their representative.
This has been a problem for a very long time in the GOP.
Don’t understand the article. Just say what the problem is. Would it take longer? We call these folks liberals, but they aren’t liberal. They’re marxists of one sort or another. They’re anti capitalists and don’t like old ideas of morality. They are the enemy of the kind of freedom our founders tried to establish. They promote the kind of freedom our founders saw as the threat. I think we could sort it all out if the most important politics was first, less important as intended, and second local rather than national. We’re 330 million souls in a large chunk of country. That makes all national politics abstract and removed and sets up different interests that are harmful to folks where they live and mostly indifferent to them. I think we can debate with liberals over schools, local rivers, local industrial pollution, business licensing roads etc. But lobbyists who say they represent us will argue with their lobbyists in Washington and the bureaucrats and politicians will play the dispute and the rest of the country full of real people with real interests to lose. Conservatives of various stripes can argue all they want at the local or even state level, but at the national level they must get behind generals who can win. The war is for the survival of the liberal democracy and we’re been losing it.