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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
Ok, so no. The article by Sohrab “Against David French-ism” barely mentions Trump and does not do so until the very end, it is not just about Trump.
Whether it is a good idea or not, the thought that conservatives need to be more aggressive in the “culture war” and in political fights did not start with Donald Trump. Frankly it may have cause and effect backwards. Trump is more likely the result of conservatives wanting to be more aggressive than he is the cause of them wanting to be aggressive.
Newt lead polls for a little while based only on pushing back on the media. In certain circles it is conventional wisdom that Romney lost the election because he did not fight hard enough.
A couple years ago every NT pundit would mock Trump’s supporters by saying (sometimes with a lame vocal pattern) “But he fights”. That was seen to be the reason supporters were giving for liking Trump. It is not that people have decided that they like the fight and the aggressive strategy because Trump is using this, it is that this is what at least some measurable part of the Republican electorate wanted to begin with.
Here’s part of it.
Its why i love Bulwark. In the end, its always about Trump, and they see it. Amari’s piece isn’t even readable, except that he attacks David French. But hey, if Bulwark can attack Trumpers, then Amari can attack NT’s He should just be bold about it though, instead of pretending he’s got culture war ideas that make any sense or that Trump will lead.
The irony is the last time I listened to French on a podcast, I thought he’d gone Trumper. C’mon Dave, gotta be nastier.
For the Nevers, everything is about the President, even when it’s not.
Here’s a quote from Damon Linker’s response to Ahmari’s column.
I think this is correct. Social conservatives seem to be in the minority in American these days. I read recently that 68 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. The sexual revolution of the 1960s has become mainstream, with a large majority of Americans supporting it.
There are issues where conservatives have the upper hand.
[] The presumption of innocence for college students accused of sexual assault. Secretary Betsy DeVos has done great work, reversing much of what the Obama education department did in this area.
[] Restricting woman’s sports to natural born women.
[] Some reasonable restrictions on immigration.
Those are the social issues with which conservatives can have some success.
You could just as easily say that about Trump’s ardent supporters.
Mmmm . . . no. Don’t think so.
It seems like the most common criticism of French is, he criticizes Trump.
Really? I’ve been reading all the arguments here criticizing French’s approach, and I don’t recall a single one based on his criticism of the President.
Earlier in this thread you said French criticized evangelicals simply because they voted for Trump over Hillary. Can you shoot a link/video, reference a podcast perhaps that backs this statement up? Thanks!
Okay, missed that one.
However, that is a point. One of the worst things Hillary said of us wasn’t that we were “Deplorable” (although that one got the attention) it was what she said in the next breath: that we were “irredeemable.”
And there are a lot of people who agree with Hillary in principle. They claim to be Christians, but they don’t seem to extend the slightest bit of grace to Donald Trump or anyone who voted for him. In their view, we cannot be saved.
That assessment is clueless. The culture war stuff well pre-dates Trump. It may have only gone mainstream in the R party since 2012, but contingents of conservatives have been concerned about it for far longer.
I, for one, have had an eye on it since 2006.
Rod Dreher writes:
Here’s more from Rod Dreher:
Or you can read the whole article by Dreher Sohrab Ahmari vs David French.
Sohrab Ahmari. David French. One of them voted for Hillary. It wasn’t David French.
Not all that relevant to this conversation, I just find it hilarious.
He introduces the man with a dismissive nickname and then calls him intellectually deficient, all before dealing with any of French’s ideas. That’s the definition of ad hominem.
Wait. Did Sohrab Ahmari really vote for Hillary?
Link? Reference?
I’m trying to find it in print right now, but he mentioned it several times over the course of his tenure on the Commentary podcast.
Now that you mention it, that sounds familiar. Which is part of what makes this turn of his so strange.
Big if true.
What social issues (or other issues) that you actually support do you wish for Republicans to give up on? How much support was there for the positions promoted by the Democrat party at the time they, for reasons of coalition politics, decided to advance the demands of their activist base? We live in a ‘winner-takes-all’ electoral system, things that (currently) lack strong public support often grow in popularity once people start to fight for it in the public realm.
The dispute ultimately boils down to what people are willing to tolerate in pursuit of what they prioritize, according to the demands of electoral politics. If someone is not going to have their priorities (already calculated in part on the basis of what can realistically be achieved) taken seriously, their support is going to be lukewarm, or lost altogether. That is, as they say, how we got Trump (whose ascendance and popularity likewise indicate that even most hardcore religious conservatives have already given up on gay marriage for the foreseeable future, which I’m personally fine with). Concerns have moved toward defending against the growing persecution of people within the conservative coalition, and beginning the long process of culturally fighting back against the ideologies which enable it; it doesn’t matter if you believe such concerns to be groundless or unimportant, they are real…..and those of us so concerned have no reason under the circumstances to accede to demands for moderation* on the cultural front. It is the moderates and business-first Republicans who still have something to lose, and must decide if advancing their priorities is worth associating with ‘deplorables’ like us, or if they prefer to allow the Leftists to fully control the country until the ‘bitter clinginess’ is beaten out of us, or lost to attrition and the indoctrination of children.
*which is almost never contrary to the personal preferences of those advocating it, oddly enough.
The same-sex marriage issue has been brought up in this thread a few times as an example of an issue where, presumably, Sohrab Ahmari’s tactics would be different from that of David French. But I don’t understand exactly how opponents of same-sex marriage would try to move the country back to traditional marriage, given that such a large majority (apparently 68 percent) has made its peace with same sex marriage.
Ahmari and others can argue that no-fault divorce represents the triumph of individual autonomy over Judeo-Christian values, but it seems that any state legislator who tries to restrict no-fault divorce would be get squashed like a bug.
With same-sex marriage, much of the heavy lifting for the Left was done by non-elected official, the judiciary, so they didn’t have to worry too much about public opinion.
Is Sohrab Ahmari advocating that a conservative US Supreme Court strike down no-fault divorce laws or laws allowing for pornography unconstitutional, a right-of-center version of Roe vs Wade?
I suspect that Ahmari was speaking more broadly about what he believes his interpretation of classical liberalism is responsible for through decades of social change, and the supposed attributes of it which led to said consequences, and not regarding any expectation that reversing no-fault divorce is a realistic near-term policy goal in most states (I can’t even speculate on his opinion on Constitutional matters, as I don’t know anything else about him, though I had seen his name here and there). His article was partly against his own strawman of classical liberalism, as well as French’s aversion to a robust culture war (which he believes to be dictated by French’s classical liberalism). Its the aversion to cultural warfare on behalf of the Republican base, and the consequences thereof, that my posts are in response to, not so much the rest.
It’s hard to fight these issues where classical liberalism is the mainstay of the day.
The Left believes in autonomy. Don’t let their push for socialism fool you. They believe in the individual’s right to do whatever the hell they want without censor… unless its speech that criticizes another’s individuality. It’s where you have a Right to express yourself in any way without anyone making you feel bad about it.
What they don’t believe in is suffering the consequences of bad choices. After all, if all choice is permissible and perfectly equal, then no choice should have negative consequence. So negative consequence is a result of bad luck or theft.
On the right, we have internalized just enough of that classical liberalism that only on a ever more limited list of cultural issues are we allowed to say “that’s a bad choice”. We can’t say SSM is a bad choice for society. We can’t say that social encouragement of divorce is not a good choice for society.
Because we actually don’t believe, by way of classical liberalism, that thousands of individuals exercising their own autonomy, can have any effect on culture, society, and by extension, politics.
And yet, the left proves over and over again that if an equal choice produces bad results while another equal choice produces good results, than society must take care of the bad results.
You can’t argue against it in a society that considers autonomy and individualism the most sacred good in all the land. That is the culture. Individualism is the culture. To the left, its limited to the culture and taken out of politics.
To the Right, it’s in both culture and politics. I’m thinking questioning its culture stronghold is worthwhile.
It is a philosophical question where pivoting our thoughts on it does affect culture. Are there good and bad choices, Does enough people making those bad choices have an effect on society… answering those questions, as a whole, in the affirmative (where we currently universally answer no) changes the arguments.
I’m not sure I follow your argument, Stina, but I disagree with this assertion. The Left wants sexual autonomy, and that’s about it. In all else — conformity. But, the hardest part of being a leftist (means never having to say you’re sorry) is keeping up with the fads of what is socially acceptable (“moral”). Here, too, I consider the fundamentals of the progressive “faith” malicious. “Tear down the old (traditional, customary — ideas that work) and bring in the new!” And whatever was yesterday is old.
The Left is intentionally a force for chaos. The chaos it creates atomizes society and allows the most ruthless to attain more power until, finally, they have what they want — tyranny. Works every time as far as I can tell.
Conformity would give you order (more than even I want). They are using hyper individuality in culture (cultural appropriation, anti-assimilation), language (pro-native languages, anti-national language, pro-ebonic education), religion (pro muslim, hindu, Buddhist, atheist, pagan), and sexuality/identity.
They haven’t limited it to sex.
This promotes chaos which strengthens the state.
Fantastic comment. It really encapsulates that there are consequences of letting people make their own choices, especially if we’re not free to criticize bad choices. Personally, I’m in the camp that it’s better to let people make choices and experience the consequences of those choices. But even if society isn’t going to let us criticize those who make bad choices or stupidly force us to subsidize their bad choices, the answer isn’t to not let anyone make certain choices, it’s to stop making people “take care of the bad results.” It’s a human right to make bad choices, but it’s also a human right to tell someone else you’re not going to bail them out from the consequences of their bad choices.
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/losing_ground_t.html