Sunday Night Journal — September 5, 2010
It’s been a busy weekend, and I’ve been having serious
computer problems. So I’m going to limit this to a few comments
on recent events.
First, the so-called “ground zero mosque” story. Why
“so-called”? Well, the use of the term “ground
zero” to refer to the still-gaping hole where the World Trade
Center used to be has always bothered me a little. The term
originated, I think, with the early tests of the atomic bomb; it
referred to the point of the explosion. As terrible as the
destruction of the WTC was, it was not on the scale of a nuclear
weapon (though one could argue that its global consequences have
been). And the use of the term seems to give a greater victory to the
fanatics who perpetrated the attack than they really deserve.
And what is proposed isn’t just “a mosque,”
though it does include a place for Muslims to pray. Maybe this makes
it technically a mosque, but the use of the term seems intended to
inflame public sentiment, which certainly has been inflamed.
My own view of this, for what it’s worth, is that it needn’t
be a national issue at all. Let New York decide, I say. But since it
is a national issue, and the
lines of the debate have been drawn largely on the familiar
left-right divide, one forms an opinion. Unfortunately I can’t
agree with my friend Daniel at Caelum
et Terra. I think he has an overly benign view of Islam in
general, and the meaning of its collision with the West, both ancient
and contemporary, and I don’t think the Westboro Baptist
analogy really holds. But I don’t agree, either, with those on
the right who think the building of this Islamic complex would
represent a successful phase one in the conquest of America by Islam.
This
piece at Inside
Catholic is pretty much my
view: in the abstract, it would have been okay to build the thing,
but since a large percentage of the population in both New York and
the country at large—a significant majority, according to some
polls—views it as an affront, the imam ought to retreat
gracefully, and build it somewhere else. The best analogy, as Rychlak
says, is to the Carmelite convent opened near Auschwitz. I thought
Jewish opposition to it was misguided and even offensive, but it was
real and from their point of view not unreasonable, and to have
insisted on keeping the convent there would only have inflamed the
ill feeling.
*
The big Glenn Beck “Restoring
Honor” rally has come and gone. I don’t really know much
about Glenn Beck, though what I have seen suggests he is in fact a
bit nutty. And I didn’t really get how this event was going to
restore honor to the nation. But I think those who see in it, as they
see in the Tea Party and other populist outpourings, the spectre of
American fascism reveal more about themselves than about their
opponents. One of the things they reveal is something I’ve been
noticing more and more in recent years: the left in general really
does not like middle-class Americans. In fact it often seems to hate
them, and it certainly fears them.
Setting aside the attempt to get
at the roots and reasons of this hostility, as being too big a topic
for this hasty piece, I have to say that it seems a terrible mistake,
politically. The people who are attracted to this movement are
ordinary hard-working civic-minded Americans who are deeply (and rightly) worried about the future of their country, and are convinced that the left
in general and the Obama administration in particular wish to throw
out the baby with the bathwater in what they call reform. Obama’s
famous promise to “fundamentally transform” the country
decidedly does not resonate with them; it sounds more like a threat.
They don’t want to fundamentally transform the country, they
want to fix it. For the left to work so hard at demonizing them is
not only bad for the country, it’s bad for the left; it
contributes to the perception that the programs of the left are quite
intentionally hostile to tens of
millions of ordinary people.
*
Markos Moulitsas of Daily
Kos fame is certainly not
helping things, with his newly
published book which apparently insists, with a straight face,
that there is no difference between the Taliban and American
conservatives. One cannot hold this view both seriously and
reasonably. I don’t know in which of these categories Moulitsas
is deficient, but it’s good to see that at least some on the
left recognize it.
*
Similarly, I’m puzzled by
the extreme vilification of Sarah Palin, as evidenced by a hit piece
in Vanity Fair (described
here—I
haven’t been able to make myself read the thing itself). I’m
not especially a fan of Palin, and I don’t think she’s
qualified to be president, and I really hope she doesn’t run.
But the repugnance with which she’s regarded by many on the
left seems to go far beyond political opposition: they hate not only
her views, but her,
and—here it is again—the middle-class America she
represents. I really don’t think the left likes the common man
very much anymore, which sheds a lot of light on the difficulty it
has in convincing him that its programs are for his benefit.
*
Also at Inside
Catholic, an interesting
appraisal of the appeal of Taylor Swift, by Danielle Bean. I do not
know Ms. Swift’s music at all, but this explanation of the
reasons for her popularity makes it seem that she’s at least a
much healthier presence than, say, Lady Gaga.
But the vast majority of women respond to an instinctual drive to
nurture and give of themselves to others by getting married and
becoming mothers….Let’s see, little girls: Shall we seek
personal fulfillment through a sincere gift of self and a life of
self-giving love? Or by using sex as a weapon with which we attempt
to dominate men? Roll your eyes if you must, but my money’s on Swift,
sappy love songs…
I hope she’s right, though I fear a little for those girls
who do follow this path: those who have done so and been betrayed
(not just disappointed—we’re all disappointed in life to
some degree—but betrayed), or simply unnoticed and
unappreciated, are among the most deeply hurt people I know, and the
decline of marriage in our time makes such self-giving all the more
risky. But God never lets love go to waste or unanswered; if there is anything about him of which I feel certain, it is this.
*
And speaking of women: The Anchoress is away in Rome, and her blog has been full of guest posts from
several witty and profound Catholic women bloggers: Sally
Thomas, Simcha
Fischer, and the aforementioned
Danielle Bean. I’m through now—go read them.
Light On Dark Water 
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