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Optimists, Pessimists, and Others
 I believe in looking on the bright side. Some readers
may find this hard to believe, because I’m always arguing, but
it’s true. I just try not to confuse the virtue of hope with the folly of
optimism. They are entirely different things, even opposite things.
 It’s
too easy to be a pessimist these days. Much better to enjoy the funny side of the
human folly that is on display as never before.
Consider a
celebrity couple whom, to protect what little privacy they have left,
I’ll call Brad X and Angelina Y. They are, as we used to say, shacked up
and already have a natural child, but they’ve announced they
aren’t going to tie the knot, as we also used to say, until gay people
can get married too.
You have to
admire such a spirit of self-denial. Of course in the meantime, needless to
add, they’re going to go on fornicating, as we used to say, until
society has redefined its oldest and most basic institution to suit their liking.
Now if
you’re inclined to get indignant about such people, you’re
courting apoplexy. So why not just have a good laugh at their
self-importance? You can also pity them for their stark inability to laugh at
themselves. They’re missing a great joke.
You don’t
have to be either an insensate optimist or a gloomy pessimist; the sane
alternative is to be a reactionary with a sense of humor, like Jonathan Swift
and Samuel Johnson. Express your disapproval with a smile.
The optimists
got us into war in Iraq with their crazy predictions of quick, easy success.
Now they are going to the other extreme (as optimists usually do) by
predicting even worse horrors if we pull out than if we stay; for example,
that if we withdraw from Iraq, the terrorists will follow us home! All the way
across the Atlantic? They don’t explain the logistics of this. Can
terrorists walk on water?
![[Breaker quote for Optimists, Pessimists, and Others: The sane alternative]](2007breakers/070618.gif) But
why on earth should we trust their judgment now? We have had horrors enough already,
and those horrors will continue as long as we stay. Wishful thinking has
already cost thousands of lives and maybe a trillion dollars.
But happily,
there is a growing body of people whose optimism has proved curable. Bill
Buckley, the great dean of American conservatism (and my old mentor, the
greatest Christian gentleman I’ve ever known), has had the wisdom
and honesty to admit that his support for the Iraq war was wrong. There is
rejoicing in heaven!
The angels must
also be singing when Peggy Noonan writes her gently sagacious columns in
the Wall Street Journal. She too has become something much
greater than what she was: the most eloquent speechwriter of her
generation. Now she writes from the heart, and what a heart it is! Ask my
kids: Peggy is an old family friend, beloved of all the Sobrans for much more
than her exquisite prose.
David Brooks,
the neoconservative pundit of the New York Times, is another
old acquaintance of mine. Though he hasn’t (yet) recanted his support
for the Iraq war, a subtle but definite change has come over his work, and he
no longer shows enthusiasm for imperial adventure. Best of all, he writes
some of the most wide-ranging and penetrating commentary in the daily
press, full of original insight and humor; I’m still laughing at his recent
piece on Al Gore’s new book. His columns are often worth reading
several times.
Until recently
The American Conservative, founded by Pat Buchanan and
Taki Theodoracopulos, was, apart from their writing, a major disappointment
to me. I seldom disagreed with it, but it seemed lifeless and poorly edited.
But recent issues have been electrifying. Among many other gems, it has
featured a fascinating description of life in today’s Iran by Peter
Hitchens (Christopher’s Tory brother).
Some of us
(ahem!) were right all along about the Iraq war; others, maybe most of the
country, were a little tardy. But the real reason for hope is that almost
nobody who originally opposed this war has come to favor it. All the
movement of conversion is the other way.
The optimists,
eager to add the glory of an Iran war to that of the Iraq war, are now talking
to themselves. We seem to be eavesdropping on the soliloquies of madmen.
President Bush has been called many things, but I don’t think anybody
would describe him as a quick study.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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