SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
August 2006
Volume 12, Number 8
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Managing Editor: Ronald N. Neff
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Triumphs of Democracy
-> Publisher's Note
-> Christians and Private Property
The Sobran Forum
-> Tribes, Veils, and Democracy
Nuggets (plus electronic Exclusives)
Cartoons
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
Triumphs of Democracy
(page 1)
{{ 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. }}
As I write, yet another war has erupted in the
Middle East, and Condoleezza Rice, an enthusiast of the
continuing war in Iraq, has been dispatched to try to
negotiate peace. Setting aside any sense of irony and
hypocrisy in that venture, anyone can see that she has
her work cut out for her. The failure of her mission,
needless to say, is a certainty.
Both sides, the Israelis and Iran-backed Hezbollah,
want war and won't accept peace on any terms the United
States can propose. Both can give so many reasons and
provocations for fighting that it is hard to imagine any
incentives for them to stop at this point. The most we
can hope for is that the United States won't be drawn
further into another conflict it has done so much to
promote.
As all the observers have already observed ad
nauseam, the United States has long since destroyed,
through its partiality to the state of Israel, any
possibility of acting as a mediator with the Muslims.
Both the Bush administration and Congress have lost no
time in supporting the Israelis' devastating assault on
Lebanon, which the rest of the world has almost
unanimously condemned as "disproportionate." And the
United States, while piously deploring the violence,
immediately rushed a new supply of rockets to Israel.
How the Israelis should have responded to
Hezbollah's rocket attacks on their cities is a good
question, and my own first reaction was to make
allowances for them, until I read that they had launched
their own assault =before= those attacks. Now I can only
marvel at this administration's ability to make any
situation, however grim, even worse.
Condemning "isolationism," the Bush team has
achieved one thing: the isolation of America with Israel.
{{ Even Tony Blair must be having second thoughts about
making himself such a reliable ally to this rogue
superpower, which makes even the unmourned Soviet Union
seem a model of prudence and forbearance. Meanwhile, Abe
Foxman, Charles Krauthammer, and the rest of the Amen
Corner have been explaining why the Israelis are right
again. }}
The reason men like Washington, Jefferson, and
Hamilton urged Americans to resist "entangling alliances"
was not that they were xenophobic, but that they
understood that there are often strong motives, moral and
otherwise, for intervention abroad. But even the highest
of motives might be contrary to American interests.
{{ In those days the chief danger they saw was U.S.
embroilment in European wars, especially those of France
and England. They would have been utterly incredulous at
the idea of American intervention in the Middle East.
Even Tocqueville's prediction of conflict between America
and Russia would have seemed far-fetched. }}
But the United States has long since abandoned the
once-revered principle of neutrality. George W. Bush,
surpassing even Woodrow Wilson in moralistic fatuity, has
all but declared war on Evil, proclaiming "global
democratic revolution." That is, only democracy can be
truly legitimate; with the proviso, of course, that only
the United States can decide what counts as truly
democratic.
As I've noted elsewhere, this comfortably simple
notion, no less than Marxism-Leninism, would serve as a
pretext for eternal war and revolution. And in fact it
has already proved impossible to apply consistently.
Recent democratic elections in the Muslim world -- in
Algeria, Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon, for example -- have
produced results unacceptable to the United States and
Israel. Even conquered Iraq has proved hard to
democratize to American specifications.
In America, we used to be taught, moments of crisis
elicit great leaders. We last heard it shortly after
September 11, 2001. One minor consolation of the latest
conflagrations in the Middle East is that this old saw
will finally be retired for good.
Publisher's Note
(page 2)
Dear loyal subscriber,
I am pleased to announce that cartoonist Baloo will
now be adding his original and creative illustrations to
SOBRAN'S.
Baloo, the pen name of Rex May, has drawn cartoons
for READER'S DIGEST, the SATURDAY EVENING POST, the WALL
STREET JOURNAL, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, the BULLETIN OF ATOMIC
SCIENTISTS, SATURDAY REVIEW, WOMAN'S WORLD, and NATIONAL
REVIEW. in addition to some well-known syndicated
features and church publications.
A retired postal worker, Rex May received his B.A.
in Russian language and literature and M.A. in English
from Indiana State University. He did a stint in the
Army, assigned to the language school and Army
Intelligence between undergraduate and graduate school.
In the mid 1970s he began writing for NATIONAL LAMPOON
and started gagwriting for freelance and syndicated
columnists. By the end of the 1970s, he was drawing
cartoons for a variety of magazines and syndicated
illustrators.
Joe Sobran thinks that Baloo's "visual style is
distinctive and instantly recognizable." I hope you like
it as well.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Fran Griffin
P.S. You can see some of his other cartoons at
http://homepage.mac.com/rmay
See biographical sketch and photo of Rex May (Baloo) at:
http://www.sobran.com/contributors.shtml#may
Christians and Private Property
(pages 3-4)
"Thou shalt not steal." This Commandment establishes
private property as a fundamental institution of moral
and social order. Property has generally been understood
in the West as a foundation of human dignity, personal
freedom, and the common good.
The modern enemies of the West have seen this
clearly: the abolition of private property is the first
item on the agenda of Marxist regimes, which totally deny
its legitimacy. In practice this means not that nobody
owns anything, but that the state owns everything -- and
everybody. Trotsky cynically appreciated the utility of
state ownership from the perspective of totalitarian
power: "In a country where the state is the sole
employer, opposition means death by slow starvation."
But property has always been a problematic
institution for Christians, who are enjoined by Christ to
renounce material happiness, to share with the needy, and
to be "poor in spirit." To many Christians this now seems
to mean helpless acquiescence in the destruction of
property rights, which they somehow feel are too base to
be worthy of defense. Property has been vulgarly
associated with simple greed.
And there is no denying the crassness and greed that
are so evident in capitalist societies. But we should
bear in mind that some champions of private property have
been sharply critical of capitalism; the two terms are
not, as the Scholastics would say, "convertible." The
Distributist movement, to which G.K. Chesterton and
Hilaire Belloc belonged, held that capitalism actually
undermines private property by depersonalizing it and
allowing its concentration in a few hands, while leaving
masses of people dispossessed. Chesterton made the point
with his usual pungency: "It is the negation of private
property that the Duke of Sutherland should have all the
farms in one estate; just as it would be the negation of
marriage if he had all our wives in one harem."
I can pretend to neither learning nor even a fixed
conviction on the matter. I do think the Distributists
are worth listening to. They rejected not only
capitalism, but also the purported remedies of
collectivism, which they saw as a vengeance on capitalism
rather than a correction of its faults. Their ideal was a
social order in which everyone had some property of his
own, not necessarily an equal division, but at least a
reasonable minimum. And Alexis de Tocqueville thought the
stability of American society was due to the circumstance
that nearly everyone owned property, and everyone
therefore respected everyone else's property rights. The
Distributist ideal is therefore at least not utopian. In
fact, Chesterton and Belloc insisted it had been realized
often in Catholic Europe.
A few points are worth bearing in mind. Greed is a
moral rather than a quantitative matter. The Baltimore
Catechism I studied as a boy defined greed (I think it
was called "covetousness") as the inordinate desire for
possessions, but the inordinacy had to do with something
quite distinct from the =amount= of wealth coveted. It
meant seeking happiness through possessions alone, and as
such meant, I suppose, a form of despair, of failing to
aspire to one's proper happiness in God. It also meant,
more earthily, being willing to gain wealth by illicit
means such as fraud or theft.
Furthermore, it is clearly a mistake to identify
greed simply with capitalism. This is a very widespread
mistake, usually accompanied nowadays by the
complementary mistake of associating state ownership with
altruism and compassion. As the political philosopher
Kenneth Minogue points out, the individualist
may well be altruistic to the point of
self-abnegation; he merely wishes to choose
his own way of acting. Similarly, egoism and
selfishness can appear in the most communally
minded people.... There is, in other words, no
logical relationship whatever between a right
on the one hand, and a motive (such as egoism)
on the other.
The distinction is brought home concretely by the selfish
privileges of the "New Class" of Communist rulers, with
their limousines and dachas which, though nominally owned
by "the people," are actually accessible only to the few.
Many eminent Christians in recent times have fallen
into the error of supposing that collectivist societies
approximate the Christian vision of universal sharing.
But in fact Communist societies, with their chronic
shortages, generate ferocious competition among people
who can hardly afford to be ashamed of their corruption
(and whom we ought not to judge too harshly). It is
possible to make a whole population poor; making it poor
in spirit is an entirely different matter.
Even a redoubtable conservative writer of our day,
George Will, comes perilously close to identifying the
public sector with public-spiritedness and the private
sector (as we now call it) with private "desires" and
"appetites." But it is obviously possible for the public
sector, even in a democracy, to become an arena of greed
in which some citizens demand benefits for themselves to
be paid for, ultimately, out of the pockets of other
citizens. The French economist and moralist Frederic
Bastiat cautioned us to see whether the state does for
one citizen at the expense of others what that citizen
could not do for himself without committing a crime. The
state without justice, St. Augustine says, is a band of
robbers.
What are the just claims of the state upon our
wealth? This is the crucial question, and I do not
propose to answer it here. But surely there must be some
specifiable limits and criteria, or the state will simply
overwhelm us. It is dangerous to justify the state's
claims in terms of its alleged beneficent motives; it is
also irrational. A bank robber may have good motives; it
is his means that are illicit. Vague appeals to
"compassion" (and invidious accusations against opponents
that they =lack= compassion) are no substitute for
reasoned argument.
But neither should we settle for the apparently
reasonable but deeply inadequate argument of capitalism's
defenders, such as the supply-side economists, that a
free market produces greater wealth and opportunity than
do the alternatives. This is evidently true, as far as it
goes; but it remains, at bottom, a utilitarian argument
that tells us nothing about what is good for man. Very
few conservatives of our day have been bold enough to
make a robust defense of private property for its own
sake. Usually they tell us how to get more wealth and
avoid the dangers of collectivism, without telling us why
that wealth is ultimately desirable beyond gratifying
such desires as we may already happen to have. The moral
high ground is thus left to socialists, who at least
purport to offer a substantive ideal. The two sides talk
past each other.
Those who associate property with greed might be
surprised to learn that the Founders of the American
Republic associated property with virtue. Their concern
was not merely to protect what was already possessed, but
more particularly to protect what James Madison called
"different and unequal faculties of acquiring property."
One of the great reforms of the "bourgeois" era of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to open the way
for the =acquisition= of property against the hereditary
interests who preferred to preserve the status quo.
To men such as Madison, the acquisition of property
through lawful means required the virtues of providence
and industry, while the possession of property tended to
make people rooted, responsible, and independent. It is
easy to deride this idea, but before we ridicule its
excesses we ought to consider whether our society has not
neglected its element of profound truth and gone too far
in the opposite direction.
In fact we should set aside current prejudices so
far as to realize that private property is actually an
=obstacle= to greed. It forces people to earn wealth by
their own efforts rather than to take by simple marauding
or sophisticated political manipulation what properly
belongs to others. This is, to be sure, a limited sort of
virtue, but the power of the state and society to produce
higher virtues is also extremely limited. The best, in
this case charity, can be the enemy of the good, in this
case a peaceful social order in which everyone's ordinary
rights are respected without regard to his spiritual
life.
Public affectations of high motives can pose a real
danger to the only kinds of political good attainable on
earth. Communism affects a disembodied and universal
benevolence, and produces instead an aggressive and
rapacious ruling power. This lesson seems very hard to
learn, and it cannot be claimed that Christians on the
whole have learned it very well. When invited to "speak
out" on social and economic issues, they very often fall
into the trap of demanding an impossibly idealistic
order, a Kingdom of God on Earth, which they are too
willing to see where it does not exist.
If Christians have a duty to offer social criticism,
they ought, in my judgment, to warn particularly against
the prevalent spiritual dangers besetting their
contemporaries. This means they ought to remind their
fellow citizens of the distinction between realizable
ideals and spiritually arrogant fantasies. It seems to me
that the almost friendless institution of private
property, which however answers to deep and permanent
human needs, expresses that distinction very well. By
recovering the understanding that property is a positive
good as well as a barrier against tyranny, we can help
show a guiltily materialistic society a way to the
happiness for which God made us.
[This essay originally appeared in CENTER JOURNAL (Fall
1983) of Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, Indiana.]
THE SOBRAN FORUM
Tribes, Veils, and Democracy:
Understanding Muslim Societies
by Jon Basil Utley
See photo and description of Jon Utley at:
http://www.sobran.com/contributors.shtml#utley
(pages 5-6)
Understanding much of the Muslim world can be helped
by reviewing BRAVEHEART, Mel Gibson's classic movie of
Scottish freedom fighters. It shows how the clan
chieftains were always ready to betray William Wallace
and his Scottish nationalists for their narrow tribal
concerns, and how the English king could so easily bribe
and manipulate them. Such a knowledge of tribal cultures
has been missing in Washington.
In chaotic, invasion-prone lands, loyalty to
families and tribes was the only way most individuals
could have even a modicum of security and safety. The
system evolved from man's earliest history. A family or
tribe would avenge murder, rape, or theft done to its
members. Every outsider knew this and so thought twice
about doing possible harm. Clan and tribal support also
served as a form of life insurance. Children of dead
parents would be looked after. The Middle East, with its
open borders and constant invasions, developed the
strongest forms of this tribalism long before Mohammed's
time. The Old Testament well exemplifies historic
tribalism.
The second major reason for tribalism in
poverty-stricken societies was to keep wealth within the
family. Intermarriage among cousins meant fewer heirs, so
wealth was not divided among so many descendants or
dissipated to outsiders; marriages were arranged with
people who were trustworthy and already known. Love with
an outsider would distort clan growth, and every effort
was made to keep young women from meeting any strangers.
Brutal examples of enforcement are typified by the
occasional story of young liberated Muslim women even in
Europe who are threatened or even murdered by their
fathers or brothers for dating outsiders.
Veils first evolved in Iran. The seclusion of women
was first reported by Herodotus in his history of the
Greek invasions as a Persian custom. Keeping women
secluded was also a display of wealth, as it was possible
only for wealthier men. The poor Bedouins could not
afford to seclude their women, as they needed their work,
so veils were much less common.
In Iraq since the invasion, we have learned that
Saddam really ruled through the tribes by bribing or
giving special favors to the leaders, much as the English
king in BRAVEHEART did with Scottish clan chiefs. A
tribal elder had authority over his tribe, and it was
culturally acceptable for him to control its money and
resources. In Saudi Arabia, until recently it was
considered traditional for the king to receive and
dispense all the oil royalties. But he in turn had the
obligation to look after his tribe, and every week he
held an audience during which the poorest could visit him
and ask for help or money.
The "Romeo and Juliet" revolution
In an article entitled "Cousin Marriage Conundrum"
in THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE (January 13, 2003), Steve
Sailer explained how approximately 50 per cent of
marriages in Iraq took place between first or second
cousins. (The rate for Americans is .2 per cent, while
for Pakistanis in England it is 60 per cent.) The author
argues that the Muslim world never experienced the "Romeo
and Juliet" revolution, namely, the romantic practices
through which Europe evolved away from tribalism. Also,
in Europe the Catholic Church condemned marriage between
first cousins. Yet even a hundred years ago, marriage
between second and third cousins was still common. The
daughter of a friend of my uncle's from England once told
me that even until the First World War her father's
generation did most socializing with their cousins.
Referring to government and culture, Sailer
explains, "By fostering intense family loyalties and
strong nepotistic urges, inbreeding makes the development
of civil society more difficult." He quotes Randall
Parker:
Extended families that are incredibly tightly
bound are really the enemy of civil society
because the alliances of family override any
consideration of fairness to people in the
larger society. Yet, this obvious fact is
missing from 99% of the discussions about what
is wrong with the Middle East. How can we
transform Iraq into a modern liberal
democracy if every government worker sees a
government job as a route to helping out his
clan at the expense of other clans?
Sailer also explains how this affects business
structures -- larger corporations, for example, "tend to
be rife with goldbricking, corruption, and nepotism, all
because their employees don't trust each other to show
their highest loyalty to the firm rather than their own
extended families" -- as well as military actions, where
troops mistrust fellow soldiers from different clans.
This is a reason Middle Eastern armies are so
incompetent. The Ottoman Empire did not even develop
limited-liability corporate laws, a foundation for wealth
creation in Europe, because most business was either
government or family. Another side of cousin marriage was
constant conflicts and wars. People hated and wanted
vengeance against neighboring tribes and clans more than
they feared foreign conquest. Although clan loyalty is a
reason that Muslim lands have been so easily conquered by
outsiders, it also explains why they are very successful
guerillas. Bravery, loyalty, and trust among families and
clans make them formidable fighters, as the British
learned long ago in Afghanistan.
Understanding Paradise
Poverty-stricken peoples and those who go abroad to
live in alien cultures, e.g., Europe, are also more
receptive to fundamentalist religion as a familiar
cultural anchor. It was in Istanbul that I first really
understood Heaven for early believers. Thinking about how
the Muslim paradise seems focused (to us Westerners) on
sensual pleasures for males, I asked a female Islamic
scholar what women would find in Paradise. She told me
how miserable life in the deserts was during most of
human history -- invasions, disease, constant hunger,
brutality, dictators, murder, rape -- "nasty, brutish,
and short," in the words of Thomas Hobbes. Just having
enough food, living in beautiful green gardens, going to
sleep with safety, living with justice, being together
with loved ones -- that was enough, that alone would be
Paradise. Such an understanding makes it irrelevant to
ask what one would "do" in Paradise, much less, as an
American child today might ask, whether the Internet and
cell phones exist there. Even today, this type of
paradise can look pretty good for many poor Muslims.
Building democracy
Building democracy in such lands is obviously a very
slow process. It can come about with education, economic
prosperity, social intermingling in cities, and so on,
but very slowly. This is why the rule of law is now
considered by economists to be more important than
democracy, why the successful transitions to modern
society have come about only in countries where a "good"
semi-dictator or ruler has stayed in power long enough to
effect the change. "Justice" is a very basic part of
Muslim teachings and so lends itself to the rule of law.
The modern societies in Asia have all experienced stable
government and laws first, then economic development and
more freedom.
America's promotion of democracy is all too often
framed in terms of elections and majority rule. Rarely do
we hear the proponents of democracy in Washington explain
dispersal of power, protection of minority rights, legal
restraints on majority rule, and so on. It is, of course,
patently ridiculous to argue that because people can
vote, usually along tribal lines, as happened in Iraq,
that a society is therefore democratic. Instead, strong
federalism should be a major objective. An interesting
article by Robert Pringle (WILSON QUARTERLY, "Mali's
Unlikely Democracy"; Spring 2006), explains that
democracy is working in Muslim Mali mainly because of
much local autonomy.
America can't install democracy in foreign
countries, much less create one with bribes and bombs.
What it can do is provide a framework for international
rule of law, stability, and an example for foreign
nations. Of course, the attack on Iraq has undermined all
of this, but America is still seen as an ideal by
millions.
[A version of this article originally appeared on the
website Antiwar.com (http://antiwar.com/utley) and is
used here with the permission of Justin Raimondo, editor.
Jon Basil Utley, a long-time SOBRAN'S Charter Subscriber,
is associate publisher of THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, and
Robert A. Taft Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
He has written for the HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW on foreign
nationalism and is director of Americans Against World
Empire (www.conservativesforpeace.com).]
NUGGETS
ONE OF THE HORRORS of this horrible summer has been the
suspicion that -- dare one say it? -- Al Gore may be
right about global warming. Fawning talk-show hosts have
been hailing his movie, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, as
"nonpartisan" and "apolitical," whose thesis we all can,
and must, rally around. Apolitical? Yes, if a vast
increase of government power and a total surrender of
liberty, without precedent in history, are apolitical, I
guess that's true. (page 7)
GUIDED BY THE NEOCONS, the Bush administration has
become, in destroying Iraq and igniting the entire Middle
East, Iran's best friend. Among its many incidental
achievements it may congratulate itself on the renascense
of the Democratic Party, which stands ready to recapture
both houses of Congress and tighten its hold on the U.S.
Supreme Court. I can't applaud the coming change, but it
can't be any worse than the last six years. (Can it?)
(page 10)
SURPRISE! Up in Massachusetts, the first lesbian couple
to be united in unholy matrimony has split up. (page 12)
CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/articles/leads/2006-08-
cartoons.shtml
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 7-12)
* Gibson's Offense (August 3, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060803.shtml
* The Bush Revolution (July 27, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060727.shtml
* It Can't Transpire Here (July 20, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060720.shtml
* The Irving Danger (February 23, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060223.shtml
* Irving Loses Again (February 21, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060221.shtml
* The Reluctant Emancipator (December 14, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060124.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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