SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
December 2006
Volume 13, Number 12
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
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CONTENTS
Features
-> Hate: An Introduction
-> Winter of Discontent
Sobran's Forum
-> Toleration or War?
Cartoons (Baloo)
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
Hate: An Introduction
(page 1)
[Note: The following is Joe Sobran's speech to the 12th
Annual SOBRAN'S Charter Subscribers Celebration on
December 9 in McLean, Virginia.]
While I was planning today's remarks last week, I
put aside Plato and Shakespeare long enough to read a
book called MY FAVORITE SUMMER 1956, by a distinguished
author named Mickey Charles Mantle. In 1956 I was ten
years old, and it's still my favorite summer too. I don't
think Mickey Mantle had a more ardent fan than I was, a
skinny Little Leaguer in Michigan who had the enormous
thrill of seeing him hit a home run over the roof of
Detroit's old Briggs Stadium.
And what a home run it was. Pop, my brother Greg,
and I were sitting in the upper deck in dead center
field, above the 440-foot mark, and the ball cleared the
right field roof to our left, far over our heads, so it
must have traveled about 600 feet. And Mantle wasn't
taking steroids.
It was a wonderful year for both of us. Mickey was
only 24 years old himself, not that much older than I
was; and he won the Triple Crown, leading both leagues in
batting average, runs batted in, and of course home runs,
chasing Babe Ruth's season home-run record and propelling
the Yankees to a world championship. That was exactly 50
years ago! It was one of the greatest seasons any player
ever had, and it reached its climax in an exciting World
Series, the Yankees beating the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven
games. Several players from each of these mighty teams
were later elected to baseball's Hall of Fame. There were
giants in the earth in those days.
My fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Lawrence, let our class
listen to the whole series on the radio. I led the Yankee
faction of the class, and my best pal, Terry Larson, led
the Dodger faction. The emotional peak came not in the
seventh game, but in the fifth. The Dodgers had won the
first two games, with Terry razzing me hard. Then the
Yankees won the next two, tying the Series up and setting
the stage for a historic moment I'll never forget.
In Game Five at Yankee Stadium, the notoriously
tough Sal (the Barber) Maglie of the Dodgers, of whom it
was said, with all the era's ethnic insensitivity, that
he "looked like an ad for the Mafia," pitched against Don
Larsen (no kin to Terry, by the way) of the Yankees. The
game was a terrific pitching duel, scoreless until the
fourth inning, when Mantle got the first hit of the game:
a home run! That put the Yankees ahead 1 to 0, and no
Dodger had even gotten on base. Larsen was pitching a
perfect game! And we saw it all in full color on the
radio.
In the top of the fifth, the Dodgers' huge first
baseman, Gil Hodges, hit a screaming line drive to deep
center field. The fleet Mantle ran at full speed and
barely grabbed it with what he later called the best
catch he ever made, his back to the diamond. That was the
closest the Dodgers came to getting a man on base all
afternoon. I sweated out the rest of the game until
Larsen struck out the last batter, Dale Mitchell, to
complete the only no-hitter in World Series history.
Nobody has come close to pitching one since.
Now it was my turn to razz. "How about that, Terry?"
I shouted. It was no time for Christian mercy.
To my amazement, Terry took a wild swing at me and
burst into tears. The class fell silent. Nobody had ever
seen Terry cry before. Nobody could have =imagined= Terry
crying. It just never happened. The stern masculine code
of ten-year-old boys strictly forebade it, and Terry
Larson, of all people, was the last one who would do it.
Sal the Barber and Duke Snider might blubber, but not
Terry. He could have borne a family tragedy stoically
enough, but the humiliation of his Dodgers? No way.
Mr. Lawrence quickly urged us to calm down, but
there was no need. My glee had instantly turned to shock,
followed by a surge of guilt and pity. What had I done to
my best pal? A few minutes later I apologized, but Terry,
always a good sport, made light of his own weakness and
said he'd acted like a baby. Our friendship survived,
maybe stronger than ever, but after that traumatic moment
we never teased each other quite so roughly again.
Not until recently, anyway. This October, I sent
Terry an e-mail playfully reminding him it was the 50th
anniversary of his namesake's perfect game. I hoped the
old wounds had healed, but his reply struck me as a bit
humorless. Perhaps under our grizzled exteriors beat the
hearts of a pair of ruthless ten-year-olds.
Be that as it may, Mantle's memoir brought back a
flood of dear memories. But it also gave me another
shock. He recalled in passing that when the Yankees rode
the team bus to Brooklyn, thousands upon thousands of
Dodger fans had lined the streets, jeering, cursing, and
throwing garbage at them. I'd never known this. It would
have violated my ten-year-old's notions of sportsmanship,
such as they were (and are).
After all, it's only a game, right? That's what I
always thought, no matter how passionately I played and
rooted. We were taught that good sportsmanship was
essential. After our Little League games, we always shook
hands with the kids on the other team. I was baffled and
disgusted when I read about (for example) soccer fans
abroad rioting after games. I was even more shocked when
I heard news stories here in Virginia about stabbings,
some of them fatal, after high-school football games.
Doesn't the very word "sport" preclude such irrational
passion?
Oddly enough, my thinking about all this was changed
a couple of years ago by a book called THE ROSARY, by
Kevin Orlin Johnson. Johnson points out something I had
never known: that the Church Fathers had condemned all
sorts of competitive games and sports as immoral, not
only the violent gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome,
but even those I'd always assumed to be harmless and
innocent and even "character-building." Why? Because all
involved competition, rivalry, pride, egotism,
humiliation, and other vices, including hatred.
Before I read this, I'd been vaguely aware of what
is called the seamy side of sports: gambling, corruption,
cruelty, violence, lust, and so forth. But I'd always
thought of all this as incidental and inessential,
unrelated to, well, to my kids in Little League, to the
pinochle games my family delighted in, to the brilliance
of Capablanca's great chess games, to the heroism of the
Olympics, and to the kittenish rivalry of Terry Larson
and me. Did all this boil down to hate?
Such a view seemed awfully stern, even priggish. Yet
I was forced to see sport in a new way, just as I had
earlier been forced to reconsider the patriotic view of
"glorious war" I'd been raised on, which is still so much
a part of modern American culture. Obviously violence and
hatred are intrinsic to war. But to sport?
All of this did set me thinking about the very
nature of hate. Today we talk a great deal about hate.
Curiously, we have a huge literature about love, but
rather little about hate. Although we condemn it, we
seldom really bother to analyze it. I'd like to deal with
a basic distinction between two kinds of hatred, which
are often confused.
In one sense, hate is natural and even innocent. We
hate things that cause or threaten pain and other evils.
This kind of hate is properly called "aversion"; the
philosopher Thomas Hobbes's term for it is "the desire to
avert." We may justly feel aversion to people, even types
or classes of people, who may do us harm or wrong, as
when we avoid enemies or what we think of as "bad"
neighborhoods. This hate is defensive, and we may not
even consider it hate. In Baghdad today the Sunni Muslim
may reasonably hate the Shi'ite Muslim, and vice versa.
But obviously aversion can often spill over into
another kind of hate, which we may call spite or malice:
the positive desire not to avoid the enemy, but to hurt,
insult, or destroy him. Neglect of this simple but
sometimes elusive distinction has caused a great deal of
confusion and bitterness. Obviously different groups of
people have different and sometimes conflicting
interests. But, for example, whites who sense that "civil
rights" may mean the promotion of blacks' interests at
the expense of their own rights may be accused of hate --
"racism." Gentiles who sense that Zionism or Israeli
interests may injure American or Palestinian interests
may likewise be accused of "anti-Semitism." This is
strange, because the old question "Is it good for the
Jews?" implies the complementary question "Is it good for
the rest of us?" And we should be able to ask that one,
and to answer it frankly, without being suspected of
anything worse than exercising common sense.
That isn't all. Today those who oppose the idea of
same-sex "marriage" are apt to be charged with hating
homosexuals, now known as "homophobia" (a weird word
Shakespeare managed to get by without).
The rock star Elton John, who has "married" his male
lover, has recently delivered himself of the view that
religion -- all religion -- ought to be banned, because,
of course, it produces hate. What kind of hate? Why,
homophobia! This view of "religion," especially
Christianity, is a staple of liberalism, particularly in
the entertainment industry, as witnessed by such films as
INHERIT THE WIND (made in 1961), where Christians are
shown as crazy, Darwin-hating bigots; the viewer would
never guess that the raving fundamentalist William
Jennings Bryan was in most respects one of the leading
liberals of his day.
Not that gay rights had become a liberal cause yet
in 1961, let alone been a passion of Darwin's a century
earlier, but ... well, you know. All progressive causes
eventually converge. And all forms of bigotry and hate
are ultimately "right-wing." Just what does "right-wing"
mean? This is always a fuzzy concept in the liberal mind,
where anti-government anarchists, limited-government
conservatives, and totalitarian fascists -- not to
mention monarchists, plutocrats, et cetera, et cetera --
are all somehow "right-wing." Homophobes naturally fit
right into this miscellaneous category. The very attempt
to delimit marriage rationally seems to be a form of
invidious prejudice. Logic itself is hate, I gather.
This is truly absurd. Marriage has always been
understood as an objective union between a man and a
woman, for the practical purpose of establishing the
paternity of children. It therefore can't apply to a
union of two people of the same sex. It's a simple matter
of definition. Samuel Johnson once remarked to James
Boswell that adultery is more serious for a woman than
for a man because a man's infidelity, though immoral and
in fact "equally criminal in the sight of God,"
nevertheless "imposes no bastards on his wife," and
"confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the
crime." Of course Johnson wasn't thinking of
homosexuality, but of the nature of marriage in itself.
Unlike most people today, he didn't think of marriage as
particularly connected to romance. Far from it.
Johnson's view of marriage has nothing to do with
"hating" anyone. It has everything to do with the nature
of the two sexes. Dragging "hate" into it merely muddles
the issue. It is sheer sentimentality to suppose that
marriage can be something other than it is. What would be
the point of it if there were only one sex and no
procreation?
And here we may consider a seeming paradox of
Christianity. On the one hand, our Lord commands us to
love our enemies. This is hard enough. But he also tells
us that we are unworthy of him unless we hate our parents
and children for his sake. Love our enemies and hate our
families? It seems contrary to reason.
Jesus does not ask us to pretend that our enemies
are our friends. He is quite unsentimental about that. He
assumes that we have real enmities -- again, objective
relations -- that can't be wished away. He warns us to
expect to be hated and persecuted. By whom? By "the
world."
How are we to resolve this? "Be wise as serpents,
but harmless as doves." We may practice aversion but not
spite. Again and again, we are told, he and his apostles
took defensive and evasive action "for fear of the Jews."
Fear, not spite. Fear is a form of hate, but it is very
different from malice. It's the desire to avoid, not the
desire to harm. And the desire to avoid may be entirely
compatible with genuine love, or charity, which is not an
emotion but an act of will.
Our literary heritage has much more to say about
love than about hate. But leave it to Shakespeare to
write with profound insight into both emotions. One of
his deepest insights about hatred -- in the sense of
spite, not aversion -- is its self-destructive nature.
His most famous example is Iago, who hates Othello and
Cassio so extremely that he is finally consumed by his
own unfathomable malice.
But Shakespeare offers two different, and
instructive, studies of hate in HAMLET. Hamlet is
commanded by his father's ghost to "revenge his foul and
most unnatural murder." And he certainly hates Claudius,
who has not only killed his father in the most
treacherous way, but has also seduced and married his
mother.
Yet Hamlet, though he seems to recognize revenge as
his duty, can't quite bring himself to do it. For one
thing, he says, "the spirit that I have seen may be a
devil," who seeks "to damn me." And as a Christian,
though he doesn't put it this way, he knows that revenge
is a mortal sin, however he may try to justify it. His
own soul is at stake. We, too, have mixed feelings about
the mission of vengeance. (Claudius himself is tortured
by guilt.)
But then comes something that criticism of the play
has strangely neglected. After Hamlet, in a mad moment,
kills Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius, Polonius's
son Laertes demands his own revenge on his father's
killer. Here are Laertes's words:
To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest
devil!
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes, only I'll be reveng'd
Most throughly for my father.
Later he adds that he would willingly "cut
[Hamlet's] throat i' th' church."
This may sound like mere rant, but it expresses the
kind of hatred of which Hamlet is not really capable.
Hamlet doesn't quite "dare damnation," and it's notable
that he passes up the chance to kill Claudius at prayer,
though the reason he gives has been much debated. To
quote our friend Dr. Johnson again, Hamlet's professed
reason -- that unless Claudius is damned, his revenge
will be imperfect -- "is too horrible to be read or
uttered."
Hamlet may say he wants Claudius to go to hell, but
Laertes says he is willing to go to hell himself. And
this is the very nadir of hate -- to hate so bitterly as
not to care what it may do to yourself, to your own soul.
Hamlet has shrunk from suicide. Laertes's boundless
wrath, however, is indeed suicidal.
Liberal ideology talks as if hate were usually
directed against whole categories of people; but in the
real world, as in Shakespeare, it's most often felt
toward individual persons. Even in wartime, as Paul
Fussell observes, soldiers are more apt to hate their own
officers than the nominal enemy. The enemy merely wants
to kill you, while your immediate officer is apt to
humiliate you. And this is why Iago hates Othello and
Cassio; without intending to, they have injured his
pride. Iago says of Cassio that he has "a daily beauty in
his life / That makes me ugly." And this points to
another root of real hatred: envy of the superior.
Prince Hamlet is a delicately poised enigma, to
himself and us, but Laertes is transparent: he's a
reckless avenger. But for that very reason it's Laertes
who makes the diabolic nature of revenge absolutely
clear. Finally, when he is about to stab the unsuspecting
Hamlet with the poisoned foil, he says, "And yet it is
almost against my conscience." Then he and Hamlet, both
avenged, die in mutual forgiveness. It's a terrible mess,
but somehow, in spite of everything, a note of grace has
crept in. Human genius can hardly go further.
In the end we are left to ask ourselves the perhaps
unanswerable question: What would Mickey Mantle make of
all this?
That aside, we see where real hate, soul-eating
malice, can lead us. It's an emotion that we are
witnessing all over the world, from divorce courts to
fanatical religious wars and suicide bombers. We speak
too readily of hate over mere differences of opinion, as
if criticism of political claims were a form of
persecution. I myself have become a little weary of
hearing about lynch mobs, slavery, Hitler, and the
Holocaust every time someone tries to bring a sense of
proportion to hysterical claims of victimhood.
After all, the kind of hate liberals imagine to be
pretty much ubiquitous -- they seem to believe that women
and minorities =never= have a nice day -- requires not
only near-idiocy, but a lot more time and energy than
most of us have. There's only a certain amount of
mischief you can reasonably blame the Jews for. After six
years of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, I think we should
give the gentiles some credit, too.
One final point. Lots of people deplore sex and
violence in movies, and I think it's obvious enough why
pornography is immoral. As for violence, which after all
is only simulated on film, I think we need to be clear
that what's wrong with it is very specific: that it's not
just violence we enjoy, but usually =vindictive= violence
-- violence with some moral pretext. The audience seeks
to be entertained by having its vengeful impulses
stimulated. The villain makes us hate him, so we feel
morally justified in taking pleasure when the hero takes
violent revenge on him. We practice hating, so to speak,
even if those we hate are purely imaginary characters.
And we come out feeling "moral" when we have actually
been corrupted.
Much more could and should be said on this, but I've
probably said enough for now. After all, this is only an
introduction to hate.
Winter of Discontent
(page 2)
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH
Dear Mr. President:
If you receive e-mail messages from Nigeria
beginning with the word "Congratulations!" don't answer
them.
Sincerely,
Joseph Sobran
* * *
This great nation is in the throes of Obama fever,
not even dampened by the revelation that Barack's middle
name is Hussein. President Barack Hussein Obama? I guess
we've gotten over 9/11!
* * *
Ruth Marcus of the WASHINGTON POST remarks on "the
clanging disconnect between the Republican Party's
outmoded intolerance and the benign reality of gay
families today." Just what does "outmoded intolerance"
mean? Unfashionable? Formerly, but no longer, justified?
What has fashion to do with right and wrong? And imagine
a liberal using the other phrase without the word "gay."
"The benign reality of (normal) families"? I ask again:
Don't these people listen to themselves?
If Miss Marcus is any guide, only homosexuals
realize "family values" nowadays. Hillary, take note: It
no longer takes a whole village to raise a child; a
couple of dykes will do.
* * *
They never fail: Front-page headlines in the NEW
YORK TIMES ("Augusto Pinochet, 91, Dictator Who Ruled by
Terror in Chile, Dies") and the WASHINGTON POST ("A
Chilean Dictator's Dark Legacy") said it all. We can
safely predict some very different headlines when Fidel
Castro kicks the bucket. I vividly remember the TIMES's
1976 editorials when China's Mao Zedong and Spain's
Francisco Franco died a few weeks apart: Mao was a
progressive "leader" who, despite a little rough stuff,
had brought his country forward; Franco was a reactionary
"strongman" with no such redeeming achievements. When is
a dictator not a dictator, but a "leader"? When he's a
Commie!
* * *
Neoconservative heavy hitter Robert Kagan, author of
DANGEROUS NATION, deprecates the deprecation of America's
"messianic impulse." He argues that this country has
always been more imperialist than otherwise, ever
spreading -- by arms, if necessary -- "the universal
principles of liberalism embedded in the Declaration of
Independence." And Kagan thinks this is, on the whole,
fine. Never mind what the Declaration's author and his
tradition have said; "History is not on their side."
* * *
Aren't all these arguments about America's global
role a bit presumptuous? They presuppose an era of
prosperity and surplus that has hitherto supported huge
military expenditures abroad, but which may soon come to
an end. In his recent book, EMPIRE OF DEBT, Bill Bonner
argues powerfully that America's days as a rich country
are numbered. If the dollar collapses and we find
ourselves eating out of garbage cans, we won't even be
able to contemplate such expensive hobbies as spreading
democracy.
* * *
If you'd like a little relief from all the bad news,
you may enjoy the great Bob Newhart's memoir of his
career in comedy, I SHOULDN'T EVEN BE DOING THIS! I've
been a fan of Newhart's relaxed hilarity since my early
teens, nearly half a century ago, and this endearing
little book has made me only more ardent.
* * *
Speaking of humor, I suspect that one of the great
faults of traditional Scriptural translation, especially
the King James Version, has been to make Jesus sound so
awfully solemn, almost forbidding. Surely his parables
and paradoxes display wit, irony, a sense of fun, even a
certain delight in surprising and shocking our
expectations. "It's all true, but it's not quite what you
bargained for, is it?" he seems to smile. He was an
absolutely innocent and virtuous man, yet, after all, the
kind of guy rather disreputable people could welcome to
their parties. Even his enemies never thought to call him
a prig; why, oh why, do so many Christians make him sound
like one?
SOBRAN'S FORUM
Toleration or War?
by Doug Bandow
The conventional wisdom is that the West should
combat terrorism by exhibiting religious toleration
towards Islam. If only Christians recognize Islam as a
"religion of peace," it will be so.
It's a cheerful thought but has constantly run afoul
of reality. After all, when the Pope noted the
unexceptional historical truth that Mohammed expanded his
influence through the sword, Muslims went on a violent
rampage around the world. Before that was the endless
caterwauling in Islamic countries over publication of
cartoons that criticized Mohammed.
Assume for the sake of argument that the Pope's
comments were unfair and that the cartoons were
offensive. But no more unfair and offensive than the
treatment of =Christian= images in Western nations. And,
even more important, no more unfair and offensive than
the treatment of Christians and Christian images in
Muslim nations.
Indeed, most of the nations hosting vociferous mobs
supposedly aggrieved by the latest Western blasphemy do
more than just suppress any public display of
Christianity; these countries actively persecute or
acquiesce in the persecution of Christian believers.
In some nations the oppression is overt: try to
worship publicly in Saudi Arabia, for instance. Try to
share your faith in Iran. In many other nations
persecution is private but systemic, allowed if not
encouraged by the authorities. In some instances the
formal government is irrelevant: try to hold a Christmas
service in Iraq.
As I travel the globe, I keep looking for evidence
that Judaism and Christianity are advancing their faiths
through violence. Strangely, I have yet to discover
Christian converts filling a truck with dynamite and
destroying a mosque. Or congregants at a Jewish temple
torching a Muslim madrassah. I'm looking for cases of
Mormons hijacking a plane to crash into downtown
Islamabad, Hare Krishnas kidnapping and beheading Muslim
aid workers, and Bahais taking over a cruise ship and
tossing overboard a handicapped, elderly Muslim. I'm
still waiting.
In fact, the worst religious persecution comes in
Islamic nations. In Indonesia I saw churches and a Bible
school that had been destroyed by Muslim mobs. In March I
met a Christian pastor whose wife lost a leg in a bombing
at their church; their home was burned down the following
year. A few years ago I walked through Christian
neighborhoods in the town of Ambon, burned down by Muslim
mobs.
In Bangladesh I met a young Christian woman who fled
her village after being kidnapped and forced into a
marriage by a Muslim family. I talked to Christians
threatened with violence after their conversions.
In Pakistan I stayed with a Christian family in
hiding after the father, a convert to Christianity, fled
to America to escape death threats. His wife's relatives
hoped to kidnap their children. In that country churches
have been bombed and congregants assaulted; Christians
are prosecuted for blasphemy if they deny the essential
tenets of Islam.
In all of these nations economic, legal, political,
and social discrimination is rampant. Government services
and benefits are denied to Christians. Even when public
officials don't incite violence, they rarely attempt to
prevent it. Muslim killers or rioters are rarely
arrested, let alone punished.
Yes, Christianity once relied on the sword. But the
problem of Islam and violence is not confined to the
past. It is very much part of the present.
Islamic protests against the slightest Western
criticism of or doubt about the religion of Mohammed ring
hollow. Many Muslims appear unable to defend their faith
through anything but intimidation, violence, and
persecution.
Does what we say in the West bother Muslims in the
Middle East and elsewhere? They have little cause to
complain so long as Islamic states fail to recognize that
people created by God in his image should be left free to
decide whether and how to follow him. A coerced
conversion yields no glory to God, even if his name is
Allah.
How about a deal? We in the West won't talk about
the unpleasant beginnings of Islam or publish nasty
cartoons about Mohammed. In return, Muslim nations will
stop killing and persecuting Christians and will give
Christians the same freedoms that Muslims enjoy in the
West.
Fair enough?
Doug Bandow is vice president of policy at Citizen
Outreach and the author of FOREIGN FOLLIES: AMERICA'S NEW
GLOBAL EMPIRE (Xulon Press). He is working on a book on
international religious persecution.
CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/articles/leads/2006-12-
cartoons.shtml
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 7-12)
* The Jim Webb I Met (November 30, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061130.shtml
* The Atheist's Pulpit (November 23, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061123.shtml
* Apocalypse Soon (November 17, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061117.shtml
* The Republican Future (November 9, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061109.shtml
* Election Projections (November 6, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061106.shtml
* Normal Brains (Novemberr 2, 2006)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/061102.shtml
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