‘From vulgarity to vulgarity,’ &c.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE C hances are, you know the National Review Institute, but do you know its book club? We are reading Up from Liberalism, the 1959 book by William F. Buckley Jr. I wrote a little post about the club and the book here.
He was no fan of Harry S. Truman, WFB.
I sat in the spring of 1958 before the television screen and beheld Mr. Truman, with the zest he has for that kind of thing, cavorting from vulgarity to vulgarity, oversimplifying issues, distorting history, questioning motives, provoking base appetites.
Some lines later, WFB refers to Truman as “the nation’s most conspicuous vulgarian.”
Some lines after that, he takes on Truman’s defenders and admirers, who likely share “the political objectives of the Democratic Party.” WFB says that the failure of these people to face up to the ex-president’s “personal limitations” amounts to “an anarchy in the world of taste and judgment.”
There’s more, of course — and even stronger.
• The foreword to Up from Liberalism was written by John Dos Passos, the famous novelist, essayist, and journalist. Something in the foreword reminded me of something else. (Something always reminds one of something else.) Do you mind if I quote from a piece I wrote earlier this year? Thanks for bearing with me.
That piece is called “Speech for All: A conversation with Geoffrey R. Stone, the free-speech prof at Chicago.” I will paste a few paragraphs toward the end:
Minority views are always vulnerable. Today, the Left is in the saddle — certainly on campus — lording it over others. (This is my view, apart from Stone’s.) But whoever is in the saddle, you have to beware of him. Ideally, liberal-democratic principles are in the saddle. Stone notes that a lot of students on the left felt they had to keep their mouths shut during the McCarthy era. He also notes that, if you supported the Vietnam War, you probably felt the same.
At some point in our conversation, I tell him a story, a personal one. When I was in college, I had a dear professor, an older woman, with whom I felt I could talk. I told her about my interest in conservatism. And I quoted William Safire to her: “I have to go down to the corner newsstand to buy a Hustler magazine, to have something respectable to hide my National Review in.” She laughed and said, “You know, when I was in college, we had to do that with our Nation magazines.” (The Nation is on the left, as you know.)
We understood each other.
There is fashion on campus, as there is fashion in virtually all areas of life. Check out Dos Passos, writing in the late 1950s:
Forty years ago a young man in college spoke ill of businessmen at some hazard. Profits were a sacred word. Advocates of labor unions were jeeringly asked if they had ever met a payroll. The tenets of the free market economy were as much a divine institution as The Ten Commandments. . . .
How different is the climate in the schools today! An apologist of the profit system often finds it hard to hold his job.
People tend to like diversity, toleration, and pluralism — in theory. But when it comes to practice, they may flinch (at best).
• Well, on to the coronavirus, the topic du jour — the topic of many jours. In a recent podcast with me, Mark Helprin noted that people used to speak of “the plague years.” That plural is ominous.
I was interested in this report by Peter Baker in the New York Times. Two things stuck out to me. “In a way, by doing all this testing we make ourselves look bad.” So said President Trump. He meant that, the more you test, the more you find people with the virus, so a country’s “numbers” go up.
That is a very significant statement by the president, I believe.
For months now, I have been saying that I don’t envy the “deciders,” as George W. Bush would say: the public officials who have to make decisions about “locking down” and “opening up.” You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In the report I have cited, Governor Cuomo of New York is quoted as saying, “There’s a cost of staying closed, no doubt — economic cost, personal cost. There’s also a cost of reopening quickly. Either option has a cost.”
That is an attitude of maturity. Again, I don’t envy these guys, strong as my opinions usually are.
• Speaking of Andrew Cuomo, have you seen Maria DeCotis, in a brief video she’s made? You won’t want to miss her: here. Ms. DeCotis is a comedian, actress, and writer in New York, originally from Fayetteville, Ga. (Website here.)
It always feels good to laugh, but it feels especially good in “this time of pandemic,” right?
• Do you find this funny?
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
That is a tweet from our president, written on May 4. Some people think he is unfit for the office; some people think he is fit as a fiddle — a Stradivarius, even.
• Do you think this is funny? Trump called George Conway “Moonface.” (Conway is half Filipino.) I have heard Asian Americans — and Asians in general — called “pan face.” I don’t think I had ever heard “moon face.” Anyway, it is perfectly possible to argue with George Conway — even slam him, hard — without calling him “Moonface.”
I would think. Then again, as my critics frequently tell me, I am a dinosaur.
• A few days ago, I noticed an eatery in New York: American Retro. I thought the name kind of applied to me . . .
• The estimable Eliot A. Cohen has written a piece called “We’re Discovering Our Character.” He talks about his grandfather Sam, who grew up in a shtetl, came to America with nothing, and wound up owning a shoe factory.
“There are not, and cannot be, quantitative measures of character,” writes Eliot, “but what Sam understood was that in the end, character dominated all else.”
I think that is right.
• In big cities — smaller ones, too — begging is normal. Routine. Some people beg “professionally,” as a way of life. I have witnessed it over the years in New York. Lately, I have seen people beg who have never begged before. At least, it seems that way to me. They explain that their backs are up against the wall, in this straitened time.
Are they running scams? Frankly, I doubt it. Experience has taught me to be very, very cynical. But I really don’t think they are — running scams.
I have offered “anecdotal evidence,” that dread thing, but there you are.
• My friend Dale Brott — chairman of our mag — forwarded a clever headline from the Akron Beacon Journal: “Stores, kitchens guard their loins.” The article has to do with “tight supplies” of beef and pork.
• My friend Kevin Williamson — NR’s roving correspondent (although none of us is doing much roving at the moment) — forwarded this article, with the comment, “One sympathizes.” The headline of the article: “A 5-year-old boy was pulled over in Utah on his way to California to try to buy a Lamborghini.”
• Feel like a little music? Well, I have a “New York Chronicle,” published in the May New Criterion. The last concert I attended, in the flesh, was on March 6 at Carnegie Hall. From then on, it was Livestream City.
Say what you will about the modern world — and I have already conceded I’m a dinosaur — these new technologies are really wonderful.
See you soon, my friends. Thanks for all.
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