The American Culture

My fellow Golden Age of Detective Mysteries afficionado Mike Tooney has written an excellent review and summary of The Dead Sleep Lightly, a terrific collection of radio mystery scripts by the great detective story writer John Dickson Carr. Carr was the master of the "impossible crime," the murder that seems as if it cannot have been committed by a human being, and his narratives usually had a appeallingly creepy atmosphere and strong intimations of the preternatural.

The Dead Sleep Lightly is out of print, but copies are available in used bookstores and through online search engines. It is well worth seeking out.

With Mike's kind permission, I am reprinting his review here for your enjoyment and edification:

Radio: Until the advent of television, it was the most pervasive form of home entertainment available. Unlike TV, radio allowed--one could say forced--listeners to employ their imagination to its utmost, to supply imagery in their own private "theater of the mind." Radio could make a superstar of a ventriloquist' s dummy; it could permit listeners to create a convincing image of a comedian's old automobile, a vehicle that only existed as a vocalization; and radio could even give a boy genius an opportunity to scare the bejabbers out of America with a play about invaders from Mars.

The heyday of radio drama was in the 1930s and -40s; by a wonderful coincidence that was also the heyday of John Dickson Carr--and, needless to say, Carr was in the thick of it. In THE DEAD SLEEP LIGHTLY (1983), Douglas G. Greene has selected nine representative scripts that highlight Carr's abiding interests in the eerie and the mysterious.

For him, radio--rather than film--was the perfect medium of self-expression; film's faithful reproduction of reality was, for Carr, its principal limitation. If mystery thrives in the unseen and real terror has no objective substance, then it was in the "theater of the mind" that John Dickson Carr's talent for enthralling and baffling the listener would naturally flourish.

The Dead Sleep Lightly (1983)

John Dickson Carr (1906-1977)
Edited and with an Introduction by Douglas G. Greene (born 1944)
Doubleday Crime Club, Hardcover
Collection of Radio Mystery Scripts: 9 Plays 184 pages

Contents: Introduction: "John Dickson Carr and the Radio Mystery" (11 pages):

 "The Golden Age of the detective novel and the Golden Age of radio drama came together in the late 1930s and the early 1940s....perhaps the key year was 1939: that was when John Dickson Carr...wrote his first radio drama." (page 1)

"...Carr was able to combine comedy and spookiness in a way that...might be Wodehouseian or occultist, but was at base a Carrian synthesis. Only one of his comic plays is included in this volume; most of the others are neo-Gothic in mood." (page 2)

"Carr's use of atmosphere is key to his combination of rational detection with seemingly supernatural events. He uses setting and mood to make the reader [and listener] expect the supernatural and thus misdirect him from the clues that eventually lead to a rational solution." (page 3)

"To create mood by suggestion, to lead his audience into the menace of outer darkness--these are Carr's qualities both as a novelist and as a radio dramatist." (page 4)

With respect to his motion picture script writing experiences, "Carr's judgment [was] that filmmakers are 'madder than a crate-load of coots...'" (page 4)

"Carr enjoyed writing for the radio. He had no difficulty inventing plots, and he looked on his scripts as a welcome relaxation from writing novels." (page 8)

"Television was coming to dominate the American media, and Carr refused to write for video broadcasts; perhaps he recalled his unhappy experiences with film scripts." (page 9)

"Carr not only knew how far his audience's imagination could range; he counted on it. Some of the plays in this book depend on the listener fooling himself through his own imagination. " (page 10)

"...we have printed the scripts" [except for "some editorial decisions" that "we have had to make"] "exactly as broadcast, even including indications of knife-chords and other effects." (page 11)


1. Preface to "The Black Minute" (1 page)

Play: "The Black Minute" (1940)

Setting: London, 1940.

"So this is the ogre's den!" (page 15)

"I am reborn. Elsie talks to me."
"Elsie?" "My wife. She died four years ago." (page 19)

"That, my friend, is not part of his head. That's the handle of the knife. He's been stabbed through the throat." (page 25)

Comment: Dr. Gideon Fell solves a case of murder during a seance in a locked and completely darkened room.

"A little dirt. A little blood. A little span of life composed of the two. I've nothing much to lose there." (page 31)


2. Preface to "The Devil's Saint" (1 page)

Play: "The Devil's Saint" (1943)

Setting: Paris and Touraine, 1927.

"Because everybody who sleeps in that room...dies. " (page 41)

"We are a very old family, my friend. Old, and perhaps accursed." (page 45)

"Then it WAS murder?"
"Of course it was murder. Murder so cunningly contrived that the police never saw through it." (page 49)

Comment: An impetuous young man bets he can spend the night in a haunted room in a castle. If he wins, he can wed; if he loses, will he be--dead?

"Can a room kill? . .  .[Carr] wrote two novels, a short story, and two radio-plays, each solving the problem of the murderous room in a different way." (page 35)


3. Preface to "The Dragon in the Pool" (1 page)

Play: "The Dragon in the Pool" (1944)

Setting: An English country house, early 1940s.

"My father, of course, didn't die in the swimming pool. But that pool is the answer to the whole mystery."  (pages 55-56)

"I accounted to the police for every second of my time. I've got an alibi as big as a house." (page 58)

"He's been stabbed through the chest with a big wide-bladed knife." (page 65)

"I don't want to suggest you're stark, staring mad, but are you talking about an invisible knife?" (page 68)
 
Comment: Sometimes your worst enemy can be yourself, even if your intentions are good, a fact Andrew Prentice doesn't live long enough to appreciate; in this play, a victim turns into a sleuth and then into a victimizer-- quite an evolution for a character.


4. Preface to "The Dead Sleep Lightly" (1 page)

Play: "The Dead Sleep Lightly" (1943)

Setting: London, 1933

"There's a lunatic downstairs, sir."
"....What sort of a lunatic is he?" (page 74)

"I lost my head and bolted out of that house as though the devil were after me. Maybe he was." (page 84)

"I can't go to the police; I can't go to you; where CAN I go?"
"If I were less polite, sir, I should tell you." (page 85)

"The man's in danger, but you DON'T want the police?" (page 87)

"And this, apparently, is the famous library. This is the place where bogies walk and a telephone talks of its own accord." (page 91)

"He killed her. . . . Oh, not cleanly. Not with a knife or a bullet or poison. All he did was break her heart and leave her to starve." (page 94)

Comment: A man is convinced he's being haunted; Gideon Fell unveils the ghost and uncovers hidden motives.

"'The Dead Sleep Lightly' remains one of John Dickson Carr's most memorable accomplishments. With its shuddery atmosphere, its seemingly inexplicable events, and its rational conclusion, it is Carr at his finest." (page 71)


5. Preface to "Death Has Four Faces" (1 page)

Play: "Death Has Four Faces" (1944)

Setting: La Bandelette, France, 1930s.

 "I know these young English. Each year they come here, and they lose what you call the shirt." (page 101)

"But don't try any funny business, old man."
"Meaning what?"
"There's a nice sharp knife--got that?--a nice sharp knife waiting for people who try funny business." (page 105)

"You say this knife was not used as a dagger in the hand of an assassin?"
"Yes, I do."
"But at the same time it was not thrown?"
"Right."
"It follows, then, that I seek an invisible murderer?" (pages 109-110)

Comment: A young Englishman "lose[s] what you call the shirt" at the roulette table and comes close to losing his head on the guillotine when he's charged with an impossible murder.

"Carr rarely transferred his novels or short stories bodily to the radio....'Death Has Four Faces' is a re-telling of his too-little- known story 'The Silver Curtain'." (page 97)
 

6. Preface to "Vampire Tower" (1 page)

Play: "Vampire Tower" (1944)

Setting: Kent, 1930s.

"Damme, my girl, how do you do it? Are you a demon in disguise, or what?" (page 117)

"All I did was touch the trigger by accident. (Innocently) I-I do hope I haven't hit anything." (page 121)

"Here's a human soul....[e]xisting only to gloat when it draws life from fellow creatures. It's a modern version, the true version, of the old vampire legend." (page 123)

Comment: A young man attempts to catch a killer--but catches something else entirely.

"'Just how far does any man trust his wife, or his fiancee either for that matter?'. . . . Carr never posed the question more effectively than in 'Vampire Tower,' with its contrast between the hearty normality of an English fete and the tale of a tortured soul." (page 113)

 7. Preface to "The Devil's Manuscript" (1 page)

Play: "The Devil's Manuscript" (1944)

Setting: Weyford, an English seaside town, 1934.

"How did it happen, you ask? Can a manuscript, a mere story, strike the life out of a man's body?" (page 133)

"I'm absolutely crackers about you! Don't you know that?"
"No. I don't."
"WELL, I AM!" (page 134)

Comment: Never accept a challenge offered by a writer of ghost stories; the last line of the play is a killer.

"When John Dickson Carr chose a story by another author to adapt for the radio, he usually revised the original so much that it became his own work. . . . For this book, we have chosen 'The Devil's Manuscript,' based (with many changes) on [Ambrose] Bierce's 'The Suitable Surroundings' ." (page 131)

8. Preface to "White Tiger Passage" (1 page)

Play: "White Tiger Passage" (1955)

Setting: Brighton, 1954.

"To my shame and sorrow, madam, I AM Willie Whiskers." (page 150)

"Attend to me, my friend. This person is not normal. He is mad, and he have a madman's logic." (page 152)

"He'd been first stabbed in the back, and then . . . well, disembowelled. " (page 154)

"This knife I have here is a very interesting knife. I have only to press the button...(sharp click)...and a double-edged blade springs out." (page 162)

Comment: Andy Hardy and Nancy Drew versus the Slasher of the Boulevards: "Only a handful of [Carr's] radio scripts . . . feature hilarious coincidences worthy of P.G. Wodehouse, combined with subtle clues worthy of John Dickson Carr. The best of these is 'White Tiger Passage'..." (page 146)
 
 9. Preface to "The Villa of the Damned" (1 page)

Play: "The Villa of the Damned" (1955)

Setting: Rome and Naples at the time of Mussolini.

"No, I've never met her. But I've read a good deal about her family history. Daggers, poison, and treachery for more than five hundred years." (pages 168-169)

"Where did you get this sudden obsession about ghosts?" (page 170)

"Mortui te salutamus!"
"'Mortui'?"
"'We WHO HAVE ALREADY DIED salute you!'" (page 174)

Comment: A beautiful woman wants to revive a dead lover--dead for three hundred years.

"The impossible situation in 'The Villa of the Damned' may be the most daring of all. It is surely incredible that an entire suburb-- and perhaps an entire century--can vanish like smoke...." (page 165)

Short Biographical Sketch of John Dickson Carr (1 page)

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Short answer: Not always and in every way.

The question arose when my Tech Central Station article outlining a classical liberal view of the Iraq War brought criticism from my friends at the American Spectator, on the AmSpec Blog:

On Liberalism - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 @ 3:54:34 PM

Occasional AmSpec contributor S.T. Karnick has a piece at TCS Daily arguing for withdrawal from Iraq shortly after the troop surge shows results. Whatever the merits of this position, his framing of it is more than a little peculiar. Karnick claims he's laying out the classical liberal view of foreign policy. "Nation-building is simply not a proper function for government, according to classical liberal thinking," he writes. That statement would seem to write John Stuart Mill, a defender of the British Empire, out of classical liberalism. If the author of On Liberty isn't a liberal, no one is.

Mill's views on the Empire were different from those of some of his liberal contemporaries, by the way. There simply isn't any single set of narrow principles that define the "correct" classical liberal foreign policy (or modern liberal or conservative foreign policy, for that matter).

Posted By: John Tabin

My reply, posted by Hunter Baker on the the AmSpec Blog:

Karnick Replies to Tabin - Tuesday, May 29, 2007 @ 11:46:55 PM

S.T. Karnick asked me to post this reply to John Tabin's post regarding Karnick's understanding of Mill and liberalism:

Although his book On Liberty was indeed highly influential in forming the modern understanding of classical Whig liberalism, Mill frequently supported policies antithetical to it, because he believed in utilitarianism over natural rights. The following famous words from On Liberty—

"... the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or to forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise."

—are all too easily cast aside by the ultilitarian thought in the sentence that immediately followed:

"To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else." (On Liberty, ch. 1.)

This is a loophole through which one can drive an entire army. One could surely "calculate" that a free Iraq would "produce evil to someone else," and hence we may be justified in compelling it to become a modern, liberal, democratic state. But even if we set aside the fact that it is manifestly impossible to accomplish this task, it is clearly a contradiction of the first four sentences of Mill's statement. Mill's willingness to set such limits on liberty is, in fact, precisely what begins the movement away from classical liberalism to the odious modern kind.

To be sure, Mill tried not to go very far down that road himself, but his utilitarianism did open the door for the undermining of classical liberalism. Bad premises typically lead to bad conclusions, and utilitarianism has some highly intractable flaws, as is probably true of any foundational philosophy.

Mill was a great thinker, of course, and he was wrestling with problems that no one has ever fully solved nor probably ever will. That he was not fully consistent in his views on liberty should not surprise us nor reduce our opinion of his great stature as a political and social philosopher.

As to what happened to liberalism after Mill, well, sometimes even the nicest people have naughty children.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A commenter suggests that classical liberal principles are an impractical guide to international issues. Susan Behrend writes,

You are forgetting one thing - leaving a chaotic Afghanistan to the Taliban led directly to the 9/11 attacks. When the Soviets left, the world community just left the Afghans to sort it all out. They didn't do a very good job of it. . . . We can't leave Iraq to descend into becoming a failed state, unable to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing training camps. It is too easy for them to acquire weapons and transport them to our shores. THe problem with the pure ideology of classical liberalism is that its very purity makes it impractical in the real world. . . . What you say may be consistent with Locke et al, but it may not be consistent with keeping this country safe from harm

I agree that this is a dangerous world (of course!) and that our decisions must be based on realities. However, without principles and standards we have no way of judging reality and choosing what is the best course of action. As I have noted in my postings on this matter, there will always be empirical questions of fact to debate, and only then may we wisely apply our principles. I am glad that Susan brought up the emprical questions she raises.

However, I think that it is simply wrong to suggest that our government had a right, much less a responsibility, to project force into Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in order to prevent an attack on New York City nearly fifteen years later. We could hardly have drawn such a conclusion at the time or even in the years leading up to 9/11. Of course, Susan surely means the Afghanistan situation as an analogy to the present time, but the point remains: we have no way of predicting such remote threats and hence no sensible and effective way of countering them.

There is one thing we do know, however, and it is this: if we had operated on classical liberal principles during the mid to late 1990s, we would have answered the attacks on the United States—USS Cole, Somalia, etc.—forcefully, and that might indeed have prevented 9/11 from happening.

Using remote possibilities as premises for military action around the world is precisely what gets a nation in trouble. Responding firmly and effectively to real or imminent offenses is what keeps a nation out of trouble.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today marks the centenary of the birth of the greatest movie star of all time, John Wayne.

Wayne was a huge presence in the motion picture industry, and also a superb actor whose skills were consistently underrated by the critics.

Turner Classic Movies featured Wayne during the month of May, showing many of his movies. But there should be much more attention toward his great career and recognition of the images he brought to American life and culture. The strong, stolid, but usually easy-going and often humorous hero he created is an American archetype, and although he had plenty of models on which to base it, he made it his own. He produced his own films for many years, ensuring that he could tell the stories he wanted to tell in the way he wanted them told.

Wayne was of the right politically, but in the great twentieth century tradition of American classical liberalism. He was a Reagan-style Republican, stronglt opposed to both communism and to big government in general. His characters were almost always on the side of the good, were often a little personally troubled but fought through the adversities, and struggled hard not only to do the right thing but to make their part of the world a little better.

That is a legacy to be proud of, and John Wayne has rightly been seen as an American hero himself. His reputation took quite a few knocks as the devaluation of all values hit American culture and society with increasing strength over the past few decades, but only fools and swime deny his greatness and the truth and goodness of what he stood for.

Here are some of my favorite John Wayne films, which you may find of interest in looking back over his great and well-spent life:

Rio Bravo—Definitely one of my favorite films of all time.

Stagecoach—a classic Western, directed by John Ford. A disparate group of people are thrown together in a crisis, and the Duke leads them out. It spawned dozens of imitators over the ensuing decades.

Tall in the Saddle—the Duke's character fights political corruption in the old West, while female ranch owner Ella Raines is a strong and effective character. 

The Flying Tigers, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Fighting Seabees, They Were Expendable, Back to Bataan, Flying Leathernecks, The Longest Day—nobody was better in war movies than John Wayne. Nobody.

The Big Trail—an early classic Western of the sound era, directed by Raoul Walsh. 

The Telegraph Trail—a quickly paced Western from 1933, with some surprisingly interesting insights into economics and politics. Wayne thwarts a greedy businessman who is attempting to stop technological progress (the telegraph) in order to protect his position.

Rio Lobo, True Grit, El Dorado, The Comancheros, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—as the Western changed styles and forms during the late 1950s and after, Wayne continued to make superb films and retain his immense box-office appeal.

The Searchers—critics greatly respect this Western for its thoughtfulness and complexity, and Wayne's characterization of the emotionally disturbed protagonist, Ethan Edwards ,is central to the film's success.

The Alamo and The Green Berets—Wayne had nothing but respect for America's fighting men, and he stuck his neck out to defend their honor when it began to be increasingly questioned during the 1960s and '70s. These two films are both excellent portrayals of men in combat and are highly moving at times. Wayne directed them himself, which suggests how important they were to him. Each of the two films has some uncomfortably sincere and direct moments which snide, smug people can deride as hokey, but anyone with any sense of decency and honor can appreciate the real beauties of these films.

The Hellfighters—Wayne portrays a character based on Red Adair, who led a team that made their living in the highly dangerous occupation of putting out oil-rig fires. Although directed by Andrew V. MacLaglen, the film takes the Howard Hawksian approach of using the dangers to reveal the personal character of the various individuals involved.

Donavan's Reef—with one of Wayne's warmest, most appealing performances and a great example of his skill at comedy, this John Ford comedy tangles with some serious issues and wins.

The Quiet Man—raucous comedy, heartfelt, drama, a beautiful setting, one of the greatest fight scenes of all time; directed by John Ford.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

One was that the idea of the surge is to get the situation in Iraq stable enough so that we can leave:

I want to remind you as to why I sent more troops in. It was to help stabilize the capital. You're asking me how much longer; we have yet to even get all our troops in place. General David Petraeus laid out a plan for the Congress, he talked about a strategy all aiming—all aimed at helping this Iraqi government secure its capital so that they can do the—some of the political work necessary, the hard work necessary to reconcile. . . .

[I]t's going to require taking control of the capital. And the best way to do that was to follow the recommendations of General Petraeus. As I have constantly made clear, the recommendations of Baker-Hamilton appeal to me, and that is to be embedded and to train and to guard the territorial integrity of the country, and to have Special Forces to chase down al Qaeda. But I didn't think we could get there unless we increased the troop levels to secure the capital. I was fearful that violence would spiral out of control in Iraq, and that this experience of trying to help this democracy would—couldn't succeed.

Clearly he's at least toying with the idea of the surge is to get things stable enough so that we can get out. Unfortunately, he appears also to be rhetorically reserving the option to keep a skeleton crew of U.S troops there for the indefinite future. This would be extremely ill-advised, in my view, as the troops would simply become hostages in an unstable foreign country. However, Bush appears at least to be strongly acknowledging the notion that the idea of a surge is to enable the great majority of U.S. troops to get out. That's a good start.

Point two is when Bush said of Iraq, "It's a sovereign nation." That is explicitly point 1 of the classical liberal position I've outlined in my analysis. It also reinforces the notion that Bush is truly looking for an exit strategy (at long last) and that the surge is his attempt at achieving the soonest reasonably graceful withdrawal possible:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we've asked before, but you can begin it with a "yes" or "no."

THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

Where Bush fell short, once again, from a classical liberal perspective, was in his claim that fighting in Iraq is a good way to prosecute the war on terror, which I noted in my analysis is entirely unconvincing.

Failure in Iraq will cause generations to suffer, in my judgment. Al Qaeda will be emboldened. They will say, yes, once again, we've driven the great soft America out of a part of the region. It will cause them to be able to recruit more. It will give them safe haven. They are a direct threat to the United States. . . .

It's better to fight them there than here. And this concept about, well, maybe let's just kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they've been attacking ever since. They are a threat to your children, David, and whoever is in that Oval Office better understand it and take measures necessary to protect the American people.

On the question of whether it's better to fight "them" here or in Iraq, Bush's assumption that these are the only two alternatives seems to me highly dubious indeed. We should fight them wherever they are, provided only that there is a real, credible threat to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. And the connection between that and Iraq strikes me as very tenuous indeed.

Regardless of whether Bush follows through on the implication that he's preparing as graceful and quick an exit as possible, certainly the terms I mentioned in my analysis have begun to enter the debate. Of course I believe that that's a very good thing, as a classical liberal perspective provides wise guidelines for actions both domestic and foreign.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Do producers and TV networks have an obligation to their viewers?

Producers and networks are increasingly using long-term plotlines in order to keep viewers returning week after week. In shows such as 24, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Prison Break, and the like, a long-term, overarching plot line keeps moving the narrative forward as each episode resolves lesser elements of the story.

It's a great way to keep viewers interested in a show, and when done well, it gives a program the narrative drive of a Victorian novel by Wilkie Collins or Anthony Trollope.

But what happens when such a show gets canceled? Should viewers who have invested multiple hours in a program just be left hanging?

That has been the case in the past, with cancellations of programs such as Point Pleasant and Miracles, and it appears that we're never going to find out who killed Boston medical examiner Jordan Cavanaugh's mother in Crossing Jordan, which NBC cancelled at the end of this just-concluded season.

CBS, however, has decided to reward its viewers' investment in the prgram Jericho, which the network cancelled last week after one full season. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Since [the cancellation announcement], passionate "Jericho" fans have organized and bombarded the network with letters and e-mails that state feelings, such as, "This show has touched us like no other before" and "CBS has cast aside a gem in Jericho." An online petition, http://www.jericholives.com, already has 60,000 signatures. . . .

[CBS President of Entertainment Nina] Tassler was so moved by the response that she posted a letter to the fans on http://www.cbs.com, her spokesman, Chris Ender, said. . . .

In the letter, Tassler told the fans that she also loved the show: "We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the 'Jericho' story."

CBS executives will meet this week to discuss how the network can let the fans know how the "Jericho" story would have ended.

It's interesting to see Tassler explicitly acknowledge and apprecaite the viewers' commitment to the series, and recognize that it is both the right thing and a good public relations move for the network to oblige them by providing a sense of closure.

That's the right move, and let's hope that other networks follow suit. 

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

As frequent visitors Pascal and Mike both note in comments on my "Theocracy Slur" item, it is clear that the old terms Left and Right do not apply in the post-Cold War world but that there are nonetheless still two very different mindsets operating in the West.

One could see these two minds as representing ends of a continuum, with most people somewhere near the middle of one side or the other (sort of a dual bell curve, with one bell on each side of the neutral or zero mark), but clearly there is a great difference between the mentality that embraces abortion and the one that abhors it; the one that presses for schemes of world government and the one that supports national sovereignty and individual and community autonomy; the one that believes national citizenship should ideally be granted to anyone who wants it and the one that believes in working for national cultural unity; the one that stresses government income redistribution by force and the one that regards private property as sacrosanct, and so on.

In fact, statism and (classical liberalism) can easily be seen as the outcomes of these two mentalities, not the fundamental source of the major conflicts within the West over the past few decades.

It is tempting to think that one side tends to think in terms of what is best for society and the other what is best for the individual. That is the way most people characterized the two sides during the century past: individualism and collectivism.

This goes back to the Enlightenment-era differences between the British/Scottish/American concern for individual rights and the Continental belief in the primacy of the General Will.

But this distinction doesn't wash today, nor did it do so during the past century. The same mind that favors economic redistribution, an obviously collectivist orientation, also favors the freeing of mentally unstable persons, a definitely individualist approach. And the same mind that presses for free markets often approves of community authority over how much public indecency to allow.

It it still not quite clear, then, exactly what constitutes the two separate minds.

Or is it?

Perhaps the difference between the two ends of the continuum is perfectly evident, but neither side wishes to admit it.

As I wrote in my article for the Fall 2006 issue of Orbis magazine, there appear to have been two main streams of thought throughout the history of Western civilization.

One stream comes from Greece and Rome, and the other from Calvary. The Western world, sometimes known as Christendom, has always vacillated between the two, with one stream sometimes sweeping history in its direction, and sometimes the other being predominant. Western history is in fact the record of the intellectual turbulence created and sustained by these two currents. To understand where we are today, we have to understand the nature of these two streams and where each would lead us.

I believe that we are at another point in history in which we may well be in transition between dominance by one of the two streams, as during the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras. Such periods are times of great intellectual and cultural tumult, and we are certainly experiencing a highl level of such turbulence these days. Hence, a further investigation of the nature of these two streams and their current manifestations is in order, and I shall provide it in coming installments on this site.

Posted by S. T. Karnick at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most powerful weapons of the left today has quietly taken hold and moved into the mainstream culture without the right realizing what has been happening:

The Theocracy Slur.

This is the notion that American Christians want to replace our current form of government with a theocracy that will openly oppress non-Christians and impose the Ten Commandments and other bizarre (as they see it), sectarian opinions through law on a highly unwilling populace.

It is a perfectly absurd notion, given the vast distance our society would have to travel to get anywhere near such a condition, and the amount of anti-Christian policy that has been implemented by the nation’s courts and legislatures over the past half-century. Nonetheless, it is a common claim today, despite its entirely fantastic nature. It codifies and extends the Left's customary characterization of the Religious Right as an alien, un-American force.

Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation recently noted a typical example of the Theocracy Slur, one aimed at indoctrinating high school students in the dangers of Christian belief:

Burlington Township High School in New Jersey . . . last month held a mock hostage-taking and school shooting training scenario. As the Burlington County Timesreported, the perpetrators in this scenario were “members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the ‘New Crusaders’ who don't believe in separation of church and state” and who “went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.”

Such grotesque and outlandish beliefs about American Christians are standard issue today among the left. Consider, for example, the following books released in the past couple of years: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the Twenty-First Century, by Kevin Phillips; Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, by Mel White; The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris; An Angel Directs the Storm: Apocalyptic Religion and American Empire, by Michael Northcott; The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America, edited by Kimberly Blake; and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, by Chris Hedges. Get the idea?

That’s just a sampling of many such titles, and the ideas in them are repeated continuously in articles, editorials, and op-eds and on TV and radio. Harris, for example, in a March 15, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed titled “God’s Dupes,” hysterically claimed that every Christian, without exception, “inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism.” Harris argues as follows:

Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists—men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin's Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals—who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally—deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

Harris’s conclusion: “it is time we broke this spell en masse.” A less tolerant attitude is hardly imaginable, and one can clearly see that Harris is simply projecting his own hatred onto others, imagining that Christians must despise him as much as he loathes them. And naturally, if one assumes that all Christians, inadvertently or otherwise, are protecting a vanguard of theocrats who would turn the United States into a Christian version of Taliban Afghanistan—after all, Calvin’s Geneva was actually a pretty good place—then they are a mortal danger to society and must be suppressed at all costs.

Hence the Theocracy Slur is central to leftist politics today. Harris makes the argument thoroughly explicit, but he is only articulating what the American atheist left increasingly and openly believes: that all Christians, without exception, are complicit in an ongoing attempt at a religious coup d’etat of the United States.

This belief, moreover, makes it impossible for Christians ever to win any trust from the atheist left, even by agreeing with them on particular issues, as some evangelicals are trying to do by adopting the left’s position on global warming, for example. For if all Christians are inherently furthering a Christian Taliban takeover, then Christianity is a dire problem and must be stamped out, for the nation’s protection.

As a result, concessions to the left only enable it to win greater support on those particular issues and do nothing to ameliorate the atheist left’s intense fear and hatred of Christianity.

In addition, the Theocracy Slur explains why the contemporary left expresses little to no concern about Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Satanism: the numbers of believers in those religions in the United States are so small that the left sees no imminent danger from them. Christians, on the other hand, are numerous and potentially powerful.

The ultimate consequence of the current use of the media to enforce an identity politics position on personal expression is clear: to establish that people’s statements should be evaluated on their expected consequences, and that the expected consequences of Christianity are the enslavement of the American people to religious fanatics who wish torture and death on all unbelievers. The only solution to such a problem is to unleash dreadful assaults on those who dare to press Christian claims in public.

This is the impulse behind homosexual activists’ physical invasions of churches, spitting the Eucharist on the floor, and other such overtly bigoted and fanatical anti-religious behavior. It is also what is behind the attempts to criminalize criticism of homosexuality, even or especially when made from church pulpits.

The process is simple: claim that an idea or proposition with which you disagree endangers the physical safety of some group of people, and then declare that for their protection such statements simply cannot be made. Then use all possible means to stop them: media attacks, character assassination, lawsuits, physical intimidation, and, whenever possible, legislation and the use of government force.

It can happen here, to revive Sinclair Lewis’s claim about fascism, and it is clear that these attacks must only increase unless and until American Christians stand up on their hind legs and fight back with equal force.

Such a counterattack will bring even greater fury from the atheist left, there can be no doubt, but it is the only alternative to the increasing erosion of Christianity as a viable force in American society. That, after all, is the enemy’s real goal.

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Ann Coulter's thoughts on the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, from her most recent column, are impressive. She is unbounded in her admiration for the man, saying, " Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell."

Her comments provide a powerful tonic against the toxins spread by the press both during Falwell's life and in the wake of his death. Here is an excerpt:

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.

He was such a good Christian that back when we used to be on TV together during Clinton's impeachment, I sometimes wanted to say to him, "Step aside, reverend -- let the mean girl handle this one." (Why, that guy probably prayed for Clinton!)

For putting Christ above everything -- even the opportunity to make a humiliating joke about Clinton -- Falwell is known as "controversial." Nothing is ever as "controversial" as yammering about Scripture as if, you know, it's the word of God or something.

Coulter is right. Among people in power in this nation, there is a powerful desire to suppress real knowledge of Christianity and in particular its centrality to all that is good in our society and in fact to all of Western civilization throughout history. That is a fact and should be a truism. The media's specious and contemptible use of the Rev. Mr. Falwell as a punching bag over the years is direct and irrefutable proof that most people in positions of power in this society despise and reject the very things that have made this such a great, powerful, and unusually virtuous nation.

Coulter herself is widely hated among American smarty-pants types, perhaps even more than the Rev. Mr. Falwell was, and that is saying a lot. What people despise about her is that she is a powerful and uncompromising defender of Christianity.

Her rhetoric is often intermperate, and indeed sometimes unjustifiably so, but what she stands for is thoroughly good and right.

The press love "suffering Christ" Christians who embrace everyone who hates them and who rush to adopt the values and ideas of the enemies of the faith. They intensely hate Martin Luther-style Christians whose fervor for their beliefs do not allow for smarmy compromises with the minions of the devil. 

It is time for those who believe in a culture that values freedom, truth, and other Christian virtues to stand up and say so, as Ann Coulter does.

Brava, Ann.

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The far-left polemicist Alexander Cockburn, longtime columnist for The Nation, has been openly skeptical toward the dangerous-anthropogenic global warming theory that has increasingly animated the entire left during the past decade. In a recent column in The Nation, he skewers the global warming alarmists as superstitious, unreasoning, supercilious chiliasts.

Here are some excerpts from his column, "Is Global Warming a Sin?":

There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely on unverified, crudely oversimplified models to finger mankind’s sinful contribution--and carbon trafficking, just like the old indulgences, is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed.

Now imagine two lines on a piece of graph paper. The first rises to a crest, then slopes sharply down, levels off and rises slowly once more. The other has no undulations. It rises in a smooth, slow arc. The first, wavy line is the worldwide CO2 tonnage produced by humans burning coal, oil and natural gas. It starts in 1928, at 1.1 gigatons (i.e., 1.1 billion metric tons), and peaks in 1929 at 1.17 gigatons. The world, led by its mightiest power, plummets into the Great Depression and by 1932 human CO2 production has fallen to 0.88 gigatons a year, a 30 percent drop. Then, in 1933, the line climbs slowly again, up to 0.9 gigatons.

And the other line, the one ascending so evenly? That’s the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, parts per million (ppm) by volume, moving in 1928 from just under 306, hitting 306 in 1929, 307 in 1932 and on up. Boom and bust, the line heads up steadily. These days it’s at 380. The two lines on that graph proclaim that a whopping 30 percent cut in man-made CO2 emissions didn’t even cause a 1 ppm drop in the atmosphere’s CO2. It is thus impossible to assert that the increase in atmospheric CO2 stems from people burning fossil fuels. . . .

As [meteorologist Martin] Hertzberg says, water in the form of oceans, snow, ice cover, clouds and vapor “is overwhelming in the radiative and energy balance between the Earth and the sun. ... Carbon dioxide and the greenhouse gases are, by comparison, the equivalent of a few farts in a hurricane.” And water is exactly that component of the Earth’s heat balance that the global warming computer models fail to account for.

It’s a notorious inconvenience for the Greenhousers that data also show CO2 concentrations from the Eocene period, 20 million years before Henry Ford trundled out his first Model T, 300 to 400 percent higher than current concentrations. The Greenhousers deal with other difficulties, like the medieval warming period’s higher-than-today temperatures, by straightforward chicanery, misrepresenting tree ring data (themselves an unreliable guide) and claiming the warming was a local European affair.

We’re warmer now because today’s world is in the thaw following the recent ice age. Ice ages correlate with changes in the solar heat we receive, all due to predictable changes in the Earth’s elliptical orbit round the sun and in the Earth’s tilt. . . . In past post-glacial cycles, as now, the Earth’s orbit and tilt give us more and longer summer days between the equinoxes.

Water covers 71 percent of Earth’s surface. Compared with the atmosphere, there’s 100 times more CO2 in the oceans, dissolved as carbonate. As the post-glacial thaw progresses the oceans warm up, and some of the dissolved carbon emits into the atmosphere, like fizz from soda. “The greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards,” Hertzberg concludes. “It is the warming of the Earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse.” In vivid confirmation of that conclusion, several new papers show that for the last 750,000 years, CO2 changes have always lagged behind global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years.

Those are the facts, but given that they conflict with the religion of the global warming alarmists, it is unlikely that the left will listen to Cockburn on this. On the contrary, based on past experience they're much more likely to break out the thumbscrews and iron maiden.

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The explosion of hatred toward the late Rev. Jerry Falwell on the left is truly appalling. It is documented in excruciating terms in this article on the Newsbusters site.

I'll provide just one representative sample of this revolting manifestation of the blatant evilness of the modern left, as reported in the Newsbusters article:

John Edward's former campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:

The gates of hell swing open and Satan welcomes his beloved son

No word yet on whether or not that position is shared by John and Elizabeth Edwards campaign, or how Edward's staff will spin this into a fundraising opportunity.

Can you imagine the firestorm of denunciation if people on the right said things like this?

Remember what happened to Tim Hardaway and Don Imus for far milder comments? 

I call upon Time magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, the New Republic, and all other left-of-center major newspapers, magazines, and media outlets to report on this and repudiate it, just as they would if the right said these things about someone on the left.

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In a comment on our entry on Hollywood censorship of smoking, Lars Walker points out that "from an actor's point of view--a cigarette gives you something to do with your hands." He's quite right, and there's more interesting cultural material to mine from this subject.

To wit . . . 

The common belief is that cigarette smoking in movies became the norm when talkies started and actors didn't know what do with themselves during long conversations that were necessitated by static cameras lodged in enormous, soundproof booths. There's some plausibility in that, but if you watch silent films you'll see that there's plenty of cigarette smoking in them as well. Cigarette smoking increased rapidly after World War I, and largely because of the invention of the safety match, which is much easier to use than a taper!

In short, the movies had nothing to do with it.

My theory is that smoking has always been popular in the movies because the rising, curling, and ever-changing image of smoke coming from a cigarette makes boring conversation shots look much more interesting. It would be a pity to take that away from people just to prevent a few hundred thousand agonizing deaths from cancer each year.

But I jest, of course.....

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The Rev. Jerry Falwell, a televison evangelist and moral activist, died today at the age of 73.

Falwell was, of course, one of the great bugaboos of the Left for the past three decades, and he earned that distinction largely by having non-atheist and non-latitudinarian principles and sticking to them.

Falwell had failed to install the theocracy that leftists had long insisted he was intent on creating in the United States.

Although I disagree with some of his theological positions and many of his political statements, I acknowledge that Jerry Falwell tried to work correctly within the American system to effect positive change.

He founded an institution, Liberty University, that may well hae a greater and more lasting influence on American society than any of his political activities did.

Falwell's political activities were thoroughly justifiable on the basis of American history and our constitutional order, in great contrast to those of most other prominent political activists of our time, who wish to force their wandering desires and phony panics on us by dint of pure government power.

Far from trying to impose a theocracy, Falwell tried to work through the electoral process honestly to restore to the American people the opportunity to decide the important moral issues of our time. Despite his occasional rhetorical excesses, Jerry Falwell appears to have been an honorable man.

AP reports that Falwell enjoyed a good day at the university in his last hours: "The day before he died, Falwell 'had been up on the mountain by the logo, and students were up there picnicking, and he had had a happy exchange with those students,' [Liberty University executive vice president Ron] Godwin said. Tuesday morning, he said, Falwell was talking about plans for the future." That sounds like a fine way to leave this vale.

May God rest his soul.

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The Motion Picture Assoociation of America has announced that portrayals of smoking will be considered in rating movies, along with depictions of sexuality and violence. Glamorization of smoking will bring on a more restrictive rating, and tobacco use will be added to the increasingly elaborate descriptions of movie content the industry's rating system is incorporating.

Given that nobody is allowed to smoke anywhere in the previously free United States, simple realism would seem to require filmmakers to stop showing people smoking. Of course, reality hasn't been an interest for Hollywood for several decades.

Witness, for example, Hollywood's support for global warming myths and leftist politics.

Of course the real reason smoking is so common in Hollywood movies is that it is so common in Hollywood. I'd very much like to see statistics on this, but it's clear that Hollywood people smoke more than the rest of us for two reasons.

One, smoking does help an individual keep their weight down, though it is hardly a panacea in that regard, and

Two, smoking is more common among the lower classes than among the upper.

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My essay on the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek in the April 20 print edition of National Review (not available online) considers the essentials of classical liberalism—and finds that a crucial element of classical liberalism is the moral philosophy developed by thinkers such as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith and dervived from Christian principles.

What distinguishes classical liberalism—and modern Reaganite conservatism—from libertarianism is exactly this concern for preserving and strengthening the moral structures that make freedom possible.

Click here to read on....

Repairing the Right

By S. T. Karnick

Review of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek, edited by Edward Feser (New York: Cambridge University Press), 342 pages, $29.99 pb, ISBN 0521615011

The 6.4 trillion dollar question in American politics today is whether the great coalition of the Right—the Reagan alliance between libertarians and traditionalist conservatives—can be put back together. It is tempting to see the Nobel Prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek (1899-1992) as a potential key figure in establishing a solid philosophical foundation for such a happy remarriage. Hayek wrote secular arguments for traditionalist policies and philosophy, and based them solidly on worldly evidence.

As Edward Feser observes in his Introduction to the thoroughly informative and stimulating Cambridge Companion to Hayek which he edited, “it is typical of New Right thinking to try to combine an emphasis on free markets, limited government, and individual liberty with the encouragement of personal moral restraint and respect for tradition and religion. Hayek’s body of thought weaves these themes together systematically, regarding as it does both the deliverances of market competition and those of tradition as the byproducts of similar selection mechanisms.”

That should be enough, one might think, but it isn’t, as the book ultimately makes clear. Subsequent chapters trace the evolution of Hayek’s subject matter from his early days as an economist to his political, philosophic, and scientific writings of later years. Underneath the variety of subjects he tackled, Hayek’s thinking retained a firm foundation. As Feser notes, “A characteristically New Right combination of classical liberal economics and Burkean conservative social theory seems to have been his settled position, and by the end of his life, the label ‘Burkean Whig’ was the one he indicated best characterized his politics.”

Contributor Robert Skidelsky points out that Hayek was no libertarian—he argued, for example, that the state should provide a social safety net. As contributor Andrew Gamble notes, “The issue he always maintained was not whether planning should be done or not, but whether it should be done centrally or divided among many individuals.” His preference, of course, was for the latter.

The book offers good insights into Hayek’s debates with British economist John Maynard Keynes. The two had more in common than is commonly thought. Skidelsky notes that Keynes identified the intellectual foundations of Western civilization as “the Christian Ethic, the Scientific Spirit and the Rule of Law,” and he cordially welcomed Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, calling it “a grand book” in which he found himself “in deeply moved agreement,” though he did have some criticisms, maintaining (of course) that macroeconomic government intervention could be done well, which Hayek dogmatically denied.

Skidelsky notes that Keynes really wanted the same thing as Hayek: to defend Western, liberal values. Their big difference was over the amount of state intervention required for that good work. Moreover, as more than one contributor to the book observes, Hayek never really did say exactly where to draw the line between excessive laissez-faire and overly intrusive government. He was completely victorious, however, in his criticism of socialism, beginning in the late 1930s. His argument was simple and devastating: “he argued that socialist planning could not accomplish the ends it set out for itself,” contributor Bruce Caldwell notes.

A market economy, Hayek noted, incorporates an unimaginably large number of personal decisions based on an even greater number of individual preferences, and does so with amazing accuracy through the price mechanism. And even if it were possible for any group of people or machines to do the computations necessary to replace the price mechanism, the knowledge they would need—the individual preferences—does not exist outside the local context and thus cannot be accessed by planners, as contributor Peter J. Boettke notes.

Hayek truly can be said to have changed the world with his publication of The Road to Serfdom in 1944, just when it seemed that the movement toward collectivism was inevitable and inexorable. Contributor Anthony O’Hear praises the book’s “combative spirit” and notes, “Hayek asserts that socialism means slavery and that even in the democratic west we are steadily moving in the direction of socialism.”

The good news Hayek found was that central planning wasn’t necessary anyway. As contributor Eric Mack points out, “A great deal of Hayek’s message is simply that a well-ordered society exhibiting rational coordination among its members need not be a designed and commanded order. Freedom and the choices of free individuals can also be the source of rational coordination.” In The Constitution of Liberty (1960), Hayek sketched out a political approach intended to preserve such a liberal social order.

A central tenet is that legitimate government actions are those that adhere to the principle of equality before the law. Favoring individuals or groups would thus be forbidden. This makes individual liberty a critical element of the equation. In addition, Hayek says, the government itself should be bound by the rule of law. Even within these strictures, he concedes, not all that is permissible will be wise, but the principles would definitely sweep away the kind of destructive economic planning that was common at the time.

This effort was really an attempt to posit classical liberalism as the alternative to modern statism. As contributor Chanduran Kukathas notes, The Constitution of Liberty opens with the words, “If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.” The political system that Hayek proposed, as Kukathas describes it, was an order “governed by abstract rules of just conduct.” Abstract rules, contributor Roger Scruton notes, govern conduct without specifying the end to be achieved by them. An order based on abstract rules and individual liberty is able to accommodate a healthy pluralism and avert tribalism, two important goals for Hayek after World War II.

The opposite danger, however, is the great curse of the modern West. A liberal social order “is possible . . . only if there is widespread agreement on some values,” Kukathas notes. Hayek places his trust in the organic growth of socially beneficial customs and traditions. But traditions break down all the time, Scruton observes, and “if these good things decay, then there is no way, according to Hayek, that legislation can replace them. For they arise spontaneously or not at all.” Government cannot reverse the decay, and the foundations of the liberal social order and market economy continue to erode.

What keeps a society together, Scruton observes, are bonds of “history, territory, language, and allegiance. . . . Only when this sense of membership is in place are people disposed to submit to a common rule of law and willing to place contractual obligations to strangers above tribal and family ties.” Excessive emphasis on the free and sovereign individual frays these bonds, Scruton observes, and the modern, heavily interventionist state undermines these traditions further. As a result, Scruton notes, “spontaneous order . . . is a rare achievement” in human history.

This is where conservatism is essential to the maintenance of a liberal social order, Scruton says, for one of conservatism’s goals is “to give a coherent and humane account of the kind of pre-political membership that will sustain free institutions and a rule of law.” This essential loyalty cannot “be costlessly replaced by relations of a purely contractual kind.” Therefore, Scruton concludes, “liberalism is possible only under a conservative government.”

Although Hayek has the right end in view, his means are insufficient to get us there. In the end, Hayek’s thinking is an important and even necessary element of the modern right—but not a sufficient one. Where Hayek leaves off, other defenders of moral traditions and social bonds must step forward.

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