SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
August 2005
Volume 12, Number 8
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
Subscription Rates.
Print version: $36 for six months; $72 per year; $144
for 2 years. For special discounted subscription
offers and e-mail subscriptions see www.sobran.com, or
call the publisher's office.
Address: SOBRAN'S, P.O. Box 1383, Vienna, VA 22183-1383
Fax: 703-281-6617 Website: www.sobran.com
Publisher's Office: 703-255-2211 or www.griffnews.com
Foreign Subscriptions (print version only): Add $1.25 per
issue for Canada and Mexico; all other foreign
countries, add $1.75 per issue.
Credit Card Orders: Call 1-800-513-5053. Allow
4-6 weeks for delivery of your first issue.
{{ MATERIAL DROPPED OR CHANGED SOLELY FOR REASONS OF
SPACE APPEARS IN DOUBLE CURLY BRACKETS. EMPHASIS IS
INDICATED BY THE PRESENCE OF "EQUALS" SIGNS AROUND THE
EMPHASIZED WORDS. }}
CONTENTS
Features
-> A Bad Name
-> The Moving Picture (plus electronic Exclusives)
-> An Echo, Not a Choice
Nuggets (plus electronic Exclusives)
List of Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
A Bad Name
(page 1)
{{ MATERIAL DROPPED OR CHANGED SOLELY FOR REASONS OF
SPACE APPEARS IN DOUBLE CURLY BRACKETS. }}
The question of "profiling" has become acute since
9/11. Everyone knows it's absurd, insulting, and useless
for airports to do body searches of Caucasian
grandmothers. Few of us want to encourage invidious
prejudices. So what to do? There are all those ethnic
sensitivities and multicultural taboos to think of.
First, let's pretend the government isn't in charge.
Imagine that the airlines and airports were privately
owned and pretty much unregulated, free to act only on
their own safety concerns.
At once common sense tells us that many large
categories of people can be written off as no threat.
Those grandmothers and, say, Japanese toddlers pose no
threat; so let 'em through.
But terrorism is now in fashion, so to speak, among
certain other categories, large enough to make us a
little uneasy at anyone who "looks" Arab or Muslim, or
looks as though he might be {{ (though terrorism is far
more common, as I've read, among the Tamil right now). }}
At times, "prejudice" becomes a matter of rational
caution, even for those who hate humiliating others. The
point is not to wound their feelings, but to protect
ourselves.
If a murderer is still at large, and all we know is
that he is a man with red hair, we go on the alert for
men with red hair until the right suspect is caught.
Nobody thinks this is any sort of insult to redheads, let
alone a judgment about them. It's strictly a temporary
practical measure until any danger seems to have passed.
{{ Sorry about the inconvenience to the innocent majority
of red-headed men, who I'm sure are fine people. }}
Right now, millions of innocent Arabs and Muslims
resemble the very few Arabs and Muslims who have been
committing suicide bombings and hijacking planes. That
makes them all, to some extent, suspects. {{ Again, sorry
for the inconvenience. }} No offense meant.
Let's be clear about where the blame lies. If you
commit an atrocity, then it's your fault if you bring
suspicion on everyone who resembles you. You have, as we
used to say, given the whole group a bad name. (The
expression, I notice, has dropped out of use lately. I
don't think we're allowed to acknowledge, anymore, that a
whole group can get a bad name.)
Arabs and Muslims aren't generally violent people.
Most of the time they seem quite peaceful. So who's to
blame for the current alarm about them?
Well, the actual terrorists, certainly. The criminal
commits the crime, not some indefinable entity like
"society." But in this case we can single out an entity
that actually bears a lot of responsibility: the U.S.
Government.
The chief reason that so many Arabs and Muslims,
enough to cause problems, hate us and resort to terrorist
violence is U.S. foreign policy. What a few white
Americans in suits have done has, as it were, given the
whole group a bad name, as far as some Arabs and Muslims
-- often educated and sophisticated young men -- are
concerned. Just as Arabs and Muslims, for their own good,
should discourage such violence among their own, so
should white Americans.
If your child dies in a hijacked plane, you can
thank Dick Cheney.
The Moving Picture
(page 2)
The Iraq war would have been unjustified even if it
had been a glorious victory, the "cakewalk" its
enthusiasts predicted. But the Bush administration chose
to make success proof of its righteousness, and must now
try to cope as it may with its failure. There is no great
anti-war movement this time; most Americans are just
writing it off and tuning it out. Condoleezza Rice still
insists ... but is anybody listening?
* * *
John Roberts, President Bush's pick for Chief
Justice of the United States, appears to be a principled
conservative, the kind I used to dream of when I still
thought it might make much difference. To put it in what
may seem a condescending manner, he appears to believe in
the same things I myself used to believe in at his age.
He also has many fine personal and professional
qualities, nicely combining a tough legal mind with
delicate tact. Things being what they are, he's probably
as good a choice as Bush could have made. True, liberals
aren't screaming, but we can't have everything.
* * *
Vital Distinctions Dept.: Joe Queenan, reviewing
Edward Klein's best-selling hatchet job THE TRUTH ABOUT
HILLARY (the subtitle, if you've got a minute, is WHAT
SHE KNEW, WHEN SHE KNEW IT, AND HOW FAR SHE'LL GO TO
BECOME PRESIDENT) in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW,
distinguishes usefully between the merely lousy (like
Klein's book) and the "sublimely vile" (like Geraldo
Rivera's autobiography). He uses the analogy of a typical
Kevin Costner movie (merely lousy), as opposed to an
"epic, studio-busting disaster" (HEAVEN'S GATE, say).
* * *
Two reasons I've lost interest in baseball are Pete
Rose and Barry Bonds. Both men had already established
Hall of Fame credentials by the time scandal clouded
their careers: Rose had set the major league record for
hits, surpassing Ty Cobb, before it transpired that he'd
placed bets on his own games; Bonds won several Most
Valuable Player awards even before steroids apparently
helped him set new seasonal slugging marks. So two of the
game's greatest players ever may be remembered with more
disgust than admiration.
* * *
Bob Woodward's new book, THE SECRET MAN, the story
of his dealings with Mark "Deep Throat" Felt, has had
disappointing sales: just over 60,000 copies, a healthy
enough figure, but only a third of what most of his books
have sold. Maybe Felt, a self-serving bureaucrat,
disappointed those who'd expected a more heroic figure.
Or maybe the Watergate story is just too old. Or maybe
the public was never as excited about it as the pundits
were in the first place.
* * *
VERA DRAKE, an award-laden film from the Brit
director Mike Leigh, is the story of a potty but
sweet-faced English housewife (Imelda Staunton) who does
abortions -- or, in the delicate phrase of the DVD cover,
"helps women terminate unwanted pregnancies." Not for
money, you understand, but out of the sheer goodness of
her heart. As she explains, "I help girls." Her own
family doesn't find out until the police spoil their
Christmas by coming to arrest her: one of the girls has
nearly died of her help (not to mention the child who did
die). Only her son is properly revolted to learn what Mum
has been doing. Poor Vera winds up doing two years in
prison. Moral: No good deed goes unpunished.
An Echo, Not a Choice
(pages 3-5)
{{ MATERIAL DROPPED OR CHANGED SOLELY FOR REASONS OF
SPACE APPEARS IN DOUBLE CURLY BRACKETS. EMPHASIS IS
INDICATED BY THE PRESENCE OF "EQUALS" SIGNS AROUND THE
EMPHASIZED WORDS. }}
Even before I read FIVE DAYS IN PHILADELPHIA, by
Charles Peters (PublicAffairs), I figured the breathless
subtitle probably told me all I needed to know: THE
AMAZING "WE WANT WILLKIE" CONVENTION OF 1940 AND HOW IT
FREED FDR TO SAVE THE WESTERN WORLD. Just as dozens of
other recent books have been celebrating the Founding
Fathers, from the 1776 Revolution to the earlier
Philadelphia convention that produced the U.S.
Constitution, Peters's book celebrates the triumph of the
one-party system, alias "the two-party system," in 1940.
Yet Peters tells this discouraging story about as
well as it can be told, because he finds it inspiring.
And he tells it at a nice, fast pace, never bogging down
in details. He may irritate, but he never bores. He has a
knack for good anecdotes and funny quotations, and his
nostalgia for an older America adds charm to his telling.
Life moved at a slower pace then; most Americans were
only a generation removed from the farm; they weren't
flooded with constant news reports (on December 7, 1941,
only one radio network devoted a full hour to the day's
events).
In his best-selling novel THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA,
published last year, Philip Roth based his story on a big
What If: What if Charles Lindbergh had gotten the
Republican presidential nomination in 1940, had whipped
Franklin Roosevelt in the November election, and kept the
United States out of war with Germany (and also rounded
up Jewish Americans, and so forth)? What actually
happened is, in a way, more interesting. More than a year
before Pearl Harbor, while Americans were still
overwhelmingly (over 80 per cent) opposed to intervention
in World War II, the Republicans took a dive by putting
up a sure-fire loser to challenge the popular monster in
the White House.
Yet Willkie managed to persuade the Republicans that
he could beat Roosevelt -- with a pro-war stance! Was
this audacity or insanity? Or -- a possibility Peters
never entertains -- was Willkie a Roosevelt stooge? From
Roosevelt's point of view, though Peters doesn't face
this obvious implication of his story, Willkie was the
ideal challenger, favoring his foreign policy and only
marginally opposed to the New Deal. Peters, raised in a
Democratic home, praises Willkie precisely for his basic
agreement with the incumbent. A politician as able and
underhanded as Roosevelt was capable of engineering the
nomination of a weak challenger; at least we can't rule
it out.
The November election shouldn't have been such an
easy victory for Roosevelt. He was violating a revered
custom by seeking a third term; even many of his
supporters knew he was lying when he pledged he wouldn't
send their sons to fight in foreign wars; the country
still bitterly remembered the similar lies of Woodrow
Wilson in 1916. An honest, Lindbergh-style Republican
really might have won. By failing to offer a real
alternative to Roosevelt, except maybe in candor, Willkie
gave Americans little reason to prefer him. If Roosevelt
lied about his intentions, Willkie lied only about which
party he belonged to.
Willkie was hardly even a Republican at all. An
Indiana lawyer and businessman who'd moved to New York,
he'd still been a Democrat as late as October 1938 and
maybe until early 1940 (he'd even been a delegate to the
Democrats' 1924 and 1932 conventions!); vying against
staunch Republicans like Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, and
Arthur Vandenberg (with a late boomlet for Herbert
Hoover), he was the only outright interventionist seeking
the party's 1940 nomination; what's more, he favored the
draft with no baloney about keeping American boys out of
foreign wars. But he had the backing of Time-Life's Henry
Luce, the NEW YORK HERALD-TRIBUNE, the northeastern
Republican establishment, many intellectuals, and what
Alice Roosevelt Longworth wittily called "the grass roots
of a thousand country clubs." At one press conference
during the convention, Willkie was actually applauded by
the reporters present.
What's more, he was an exciting personality whose
speeches could bring crowds to their feet. Mrs.
Longworth, a great wag, also quipped that Dewey (the
front-runner going into Philadelphia) looked like the
groom on a wedding cake; nobody would say that of the
rumpled, burly Willkie. But he was handsome and charming,
in his way, with a handshake that made grown men yelp.
His extemporaneous brilliance wowed everyone. (Women
adored him, and he took full advantage of their
susceptibility, with his wife's tacit consent.) He
campaigned with furious energy, adding a cunning mastery
of backstage politics.
Like many American public figures of his era, Peters
notes, Willkie consciously adopted the earthy manner of
Will Rogers, whose immense popularity survived his death
in a 1935 plane crash. Peters is old enough to remember
how powerfully Rogers's homely humor influenced the way
Americans then saw themselves and their politicians.
Though largely forgotten now, Rogers's gently deflating
style helped define an age; he even had a column in the
august NEW YORK TIMES. The seemingly guileless Willkie
even copied his haircut, right down to the stray lock
hanging down on his forehead.
These are excellent observations, as are Peters's
recollections of the hit movies of the day, {{ such as
THE WIZARD OF OZ, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, GONE WITH THE WIND,
and GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS. }} I only wish he'd said
something about one of the most popular and
characteristic books of the decade, Dale Carnegie's HOW
TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, which sold millions
of copies. Written in a colloquial style, it was in its
way a work of genius, turning the normal desire to be
liked into conscious technique. The book cited the
successful methods of great charmers from Roosevelt's
postmaster general Jim Farley (who claimed he knew 50,000
people by name) to a bigamist who had married dozens of
women. {{ Alexis de Tocqueville would have recognized it
as a touchingly typical expression of the American
spirit. }}
But Peters makes an even more serious omission,
which leaves his story incomplete. British covert
operations, desperate to draw America into the war,
worked tirelessly to promote Willkie and, worse, to smear
his Republican opponents. More than spontaneous idealism
was helping shape the 1940 election. It was one of the
most sinister episodes in American democracy. Yet for
Peters the story is still the triumph of innocence; he
begins the book with a paean to Winston Churchill, who,
in his own way, certainly won American friends and
influenced the American people.
In those days before television, the dominant media
were radio, newspapers, and motion pictures (newsreels
being a standard feature of movie houses); but as Peters
reminds us, weekly magazines like THE SATURDAY EVENING
POST, LOOK, and Luce's LIFE, with its superb photos of
current events, weren't far behind. In May 1940, when
Luce had pulled out the stops for Willkie, LIFE ran an
enormous eleven-page spread touting him for president.
It helped that Willkie faced a dull Republican
field. Dewey, New York's scourge of organized crime, was
young and promising, but on the big question of the day
-- the war in Europe -- he waffled. Ohio's Robert Taft,
sternly opposed to U.S. intervention, was respected but
unloved; Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg, also against
intervention, hardly bothered campaigning. Hoover hoped
to be drafted, but his defeat in 1932 was still an open
(and fatal) wound. Once Dewey's initial lead wilted,
Willkie had the momentum to overtake him and stop a late
surge for Taft, and the others couldn't agree on how to
block him; it took six ballots for him to win, not to
mention the balloons and carefully prearranged ballyhoo
normal in political conventions.
With Hitler making daily headlines in Europe, things
were happening fast, and only Willkie and his crack team
knew how to exploit their velocity, keeping the press
sympathetic at every step. It was one of the last
conventions to offer suspense, certainly the last to
feature fisticuffs among delegates on the floor, and
Willkie was the center of the drama.
In essence, he won the nomination because he was so
much like Roosevelt; then he lost the election for the
same reason. Four out of five voters wanted to stay out
of the new war, and they were offered two pro-war
candidates.
The GOP platform committee had its work cut out for
it. In a virtuoso exercise in ambiguity, it produced a
statement carefully worded to accommodate Willkie's
interventionism without infuriating "isolationists" (as
Peters always calls the opponents of war) who still
dominated the party. In his acceptance speech, Willkie
asked "you Republicans" to "join me" -- apparently
forgetting that =he= was supposed to have joined =them.=
Willkie's nomination, Peters exults, emboldened
Roosevelt to step up his mostly but not entirely furtive
actions against Germany and Japan: "Simply put, Roosevelt
could not have done it without Willkie." Even in defeat,
Willkie's "impact on this country and the world was
greater than that of most men who actually held the
office [of president]."
Well, maybe. But at least one detail supports the
hunch that Roosevelt had Willkie under his control.
Peters mentions that "Roosevelt loved gossip, whether it
be about historical figures or Wendell Willkie's
mistress, Irita Van Doren." The latter was the ex-wife of
the historian Carl Van Doren, an accomplished woman
prominent among the New York literati (whom she helped
Willkie court).
The point being just this: if Willkie didn't follow
the script, Roosevelt could always arrange a timely
scandal. As Lyndon Johnson, a Roosevelt disciple, knew,
collecting useful dirt about possible enemies can be an
invaluable political skill. Letting them know early on
that you have it can save you a lot of trouble later. And
Roosevelt, Peters notes, did let Willkie know.
It was a potent threat, so potent that it didn't
have to be spelled out. Any hint of marital discord could
wreck a politician's career. Willkie kept a careful
distance from Irita Van Doren throughout the fall
campaign and, for good measure, resumed sleeping with his
wife, who observed drily, "Politics makes strange
bedfellows." Then too, Averill Harriman, a big Democratic
financier, donated heavily to Willkie before the
Republican convention; he also gave generously to
Roosevelt's campaign.
After the convention, the Willkie magic faded
suddenly -- one might even say suspiciously. The only
issue dividing him from Roosevelt was the propriety of
seeking a third term, as they agreed on everything more
substantial. Only late in the race did Willkie make a
desperate but half-hearted appeal to those
"isolationists" by hinting that Roosevelt might send
American boys to fight abroad. He still lost by five
million votes.
Right after the election, Willkie came forth in
support of Roosevelt's Lend-Lease scheme to help Britain.
Roosevelt praised his patriotism. Willkie continued
offering such patriotic gestures, wrote a best-seller
called ONE WORLD, took on a few new mistresses, and threw
his hat into the ring again in 1944. This time the
Republicans threw it back decisively. Meanwhile he smoked
and drank unstintingly and died of a heart attack that
same year.
Peters, a native of West Virginia, was just entering
his teens in 1940, following politics, he tells us, as
avidly as most boys followed baseball. His favorite movie
was MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, and he still sees
Willkie as a Frank Capra hero, raised to glory by the
spontaneous Will of the People, albeit with a bit of
machination behind the scenes.
Even now, Peters remains a believer, thrilling at
the memory of seeing Roosevelt pass through his home
town. With the rest of the awed crowd, he "caught a
glimpse of the upturned chin, the magic smile, and the
wave of his hand."
Nice to a fault, Peters credits everyone with good
motives, even those "isolationists": they quite
understandably didn't want their sons dying overseas. So
why was it imperative for the United States to get into
the war? How was it threatened by Germany, which failed
even to conquer nearby Britain?
For Peters these are givens, which need no
explaining. Hitler was evil, and there's an end on't.
Well, what about Stalin? Wasn't he evil too? But Peters
barely mentions him, or indeed the Soviet Union, or
Communism, except to note that Germany and Russia were
allies for a spell. (Japan isn't even mentioned in the
book's index.) Nothing must be allowed to complicate the
Frank Capra scenario, starring Wendell Willkie as
Mr. Smith.
Peters praises Willkie extravagantly, stressing the
brilliant intelligence that awed everyone who met him,
intellectuals as well as politicians. He came from a
brilliant family and compiled his own excellent academic
record. But there is no evidence of "his original and
important ideas," or any ideas, in the book. He captured
the mood of the moment, obviously, and his presence must
have been electrifying; but nothing Peters quotes
suggests more than ordinary intelligence.
Neither Willkie nor Peters, moreover, ever explains
why Germany posed a threat to America. Why would it?
Hitler didn't even want war with England, and after
France and England declared war on Germany he warned the
United States not to intervene. He had a hard enough time
crossing the English Channel; crossing the Atlantic Ocean
would have posed far graver difficulties. As Taft said,
"There is a good deal more danger of the infiltration of
totalitarian ideas from New Deal circles in Washington
than there will ever be from activities of the communists
or the Nazis." Very true; and thanks to Willkie, those
ideas infiltrated Taft's own party in 1940. At one
private dinner party that year, Taft exploded in anger
when Willkie said he would vote for Roosevelt rather than
any Republican candidate who opposed aid to Britain and
France.
During the fall campaign, the only objections
Willkie could raise against his opponent were to his
seeking a third term and to the red tape and
mismanagement in Washington. There were no differences of
principle or philosophy worth mentioning.
Willkie was the wave of the future, as it turns out.
Today it's routine for Republicans like Newt Gingrich and
Jack Kemp to hail Roosevelt as the greatest president of
the century. The GOP has adopted his interventionist
policy, along with his domestic programs, as its own; it
even hurls his pet epithet "isolationist" at the
Democrats!
Yet for Peters, Willkie's greatness consists
precisely in his aping of Roosevelt. Much as I enjoyed
FIVE DAYS IN PHILADELPHIA, I couldn't help feeling that
Peters has missed the real point, and the most
interesting overtones, of his own story. He is too
beguiled by its straightforward surface. I kept thinking
the book should have been a Mario Puzo novel.
NUGGETS
INSULTING THEIR FAITH: President Bush's endorsement of
"intelligent design" has provoked indignant yelps from
those who believe that life is an accident. I'm a bit
surprised they get so upset by a little blasphemy, but
apparently they are, in their own way, very devout. The
evolutionist creed, I gather, is roughly this: "There is
no God, and Darwin is his prophet." (page 7)
IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS: I'm no longer really a fan
of baseball -- I lack the stamina required of a couch
potato -- but I'm an avid fan of baseball theory. I'll
explain in a future essay, but meanwhile I commend one of
the most gripping, original, witty books ever written
about the game, Michael Lewis's MONEYBALL: THE ART OF
WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME (Norton, now in paperback).
(page 8)
FINE DISTINCTION: Ideally, we would have law without a
state. What we have instead is the state without law.
This is the difference between anarchy and chaos.
(page 9)
CIVICS FOR SUCKERS: Opinion polls, like elections, are
clever devices to make the hostages think they control
their captors. (page 10)
HEALTH NOTES: "Stem Cells Heal Burns," says a WASHINGTON
POST headline. While we're looking on the bright side of
things, why not "Cannibalism Provides Protein, Prevents
Malnutrition"? (page 12)
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 6-12)
* Film's Great Chameleon (July 28, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050728.shtml
* Inordinate Fear (August 2, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050802.shtml
* Islam and Terrorism (August 9, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050809.shtml
* The President and the Professor (August 11, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050811.shtml
* The "Seamless Garment" (August 16, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050816.shtml
* The Iraqi Constitution (August 23, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050823.shtml
* The Patriot's Creed (August 25, 2005)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2005/050825.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All articles are written by Joe Sobran.
You are receiving this message because you are a paid
subscriber to the Joe Sobran column or a subscriber has
forwarded it to you.
If you are not yet a subscriber, please see
http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml
for details or call 800-513-5053.
Copyright (c) 2005 by the The Vere Company,
www.sobran.com. All rights reserved.
[ ENDS ]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All articles are written by Joe Sobran.
You may forward this newsletter if you include the
following subscription and copyright information:
Subscribe to the Sobran E-Package.
See http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml
or http://www.griffnews.com for details and samples
or call 800-513-5053.
Copyright (c) 2005 by The Vere Company -- www.sobran.com.
All rights reserved.
Distributed by the Griffin Internet Syndicate
www.griffnews.com with permission.
[ENDS]