Federal Judiciary

Fundamental transformation, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

During the general election campaign of 2008, Barack Obama talked a very moderate game -- even a conservative game. This was especially true in the debates versus McCain. He sounded like, oh, David Boren, or Sam Nunn. At times, he sounded like Richard Lugar, the Republican, whom he cited favorably. He mocked the idea that he was some wild-eyed radical out to socialize the country.

But on the eve of the election, with his big victory in sight, Obama let his hair down a little. He said, ?We are going to fundamentally transform the United States of America.? Granted, every candidate indulges in high-flown rhetoric. But Obama seems to have meant it, don?t you think?

With the nationalization of health care, we might ask the flummoxed and shocked, ?What part of ?fundamentally transform? didn?t you understand??

He also let his hair down with Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber. Candidate Obama said, ?I think when you spread the wealth around, it?s good for everybody.?

Again, we might ask, ?What part of ?spread the wealth around? didn?t you understand??

The cold truth is, if you?re going to elect socialists, you should expect socialism. Now, everyone gets all ?wee-weed up,? as the president says, when you say ?socialist? or ?socialism.? We Americans have the weirdest political nomenclature in the world. We are a country where socialists, collectivists, and leftists are routinely called liberal, and free-market types are routinely called conservative, right-wing, or worse.

Ever since I first began to peep classical-liberal views, in college, I have been called a fascist. You?

In France, the establishment scorns the entrepreneurially minded as ?neo-liberal,? and Americans are confused. When John Howard was in office, our mainstream media had to attack that right-wing, Bush-supporting, war-mongering prime minister of Australia: leader of the Liberal party, of course.

If Obama and Pelosi were politicians in France -- holding the same views they have now -- would they belong to the Socialists? Same question for Italy: Would they belong to the Socialists? How about Germany? SDP, right? And so on. To say it once more, America is a weird place. Foes of free-trade pacts, such as NAFTA, are called ?liberal.? When Angela Davis was vice-presidential nominee of the Communist party, she was called ?ultra-liberal? -- National Review had a field day with that.

I wish that Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont belonged to the Socialist party. (Instead, he runs as an ?independent? and ?caucuses? with the Democrats.) That would be refreshingly honest.

The Democrats? economic thinking -- and other thinking -- did not begin with the inauguration of Obama. Almost ten years ago, I interviewed Phil Gramm, the economist-politician who had just announced his retirement from the Senate. He said that of course the Democratic party was socialist, ?if by ?socialist? you mean the redistribution of wealth, more decisions made by the central government -- no question about it. My grandmother thought of the Democrats as the party of the people. What they are is the party of government.?

But for most contemporary ?liberals,? the people are the government, and the government is the people -- no difference, really. (And, frankly, you could make a case.)

It has long been the dream of contemporary liberal Democrats to make the United States more like Scandinavia, more like Europe in general. They have long been embarrassed by American ?exceptionalism.? I think in particular of the kids -- the American kids -- I studied abroad with. Every American difference made them cringe. They are the ones who slapped the Canadian maple leaf on their backpacks. And now people much like them are in control of the American government, or most of it.

Pelosi & Co. kept calling Sunday?s vote and achievement ?historic.? They were quite right. This is a milestone on the way to American Europeanization, or de-exceptionalization.

And how did this happen? Who is responsible for this development? The American people, of course -- the American electorate. Obama, Pelosi, Sanders, and the rest didn?t shoot their way into office: They were put there, fair and square, by voters. In a democracy, you really can?t complain about what you have -- that is, if you get your way at the polls.

To be continued, of course . . . Isn?t it nice that, in American politics, nothing is ever final? Or is a federal program, indeed, forever? In the Reagan years, we used to talk about a ?domestic Brezhnev Doctrine.? In world affairs, the Brezhnev Doctrine meant that, what was Communist, was Communist forever: no ?rollback? (or repeal, if you like). The domestic Brezhnev Doctrine meant: Once the Democrats put something in -- the TVA or whatever -- it was forever, no rolling back.

Well, as I said, to be continued . . .

Received an e-mail from Cambridge, Mass. Our reader said, ?During intermission at a school play, the health-care vote was announced. The audience stood and cheered.? Why, you bet. But surely there were some Scott Brown voters in that auditorium, right? They could not all have been Coakleyites and Obamites, I imagine. No? (Amazing how historic -- how distant -- that name Coakley now sounds. At least to me.)

Received an e-mail from Oxford, England:

Jay,

 

I?m English, and have been watching all this [the health-care legislation] unfold with horror. I think I have realised why I care so much. As a libertarian I have spent my life hoping that Britain will follow America?s example and move closer to her values. Today, the opposite seems to be happening. Is it possible that the United States is joining the old guard, and that the idea of America representing the future was just a chimera, or at best a temporary phenomenon? If America as it was intended falls, then which country will represent my ideal? Pretty terrifying stuff.

Perhaps they could reelect Howard in Australia?

I noticed a quotation from Carly Fiorina at the California Republican convention: ?Conservatives, independents, moderates, Republicans, Democrats, tea partiers, libertarians -- all of us now belong to one party: the Had Enough party.? That reminded me of maybe the neatest, pithiest political slogan of all time -- the Republicans? slogan in the midterm elections of 1946, after some 14 years of Democratic, New Deal rule: ?Had Enough??

You could have fit that on a very small button -- and they did!

Back to England for a moment (we had that letter from Oxford): I was in London recently, and read the papers there with interest. Like you, perhaps -- if you?re a Reaganite -- I am not too excited about the prime ministership of David Cameron. And he may not win: It would not be shocking to see Gordon Brown returned to power. But if Cameron does get in, just about the best thing about his government will be that Michael Gove will be education secretary (more or less). Will be Britain?s Bill Bennett.

Gove is a figure well-known to readers of National Review and of this column. When he was first elected to Parliament, I did a piece on him for NR: for here was a writer -- a superb right-of-center journalist -- who had stood for office and won. Not content merely to scribble, he was ?in the arena,? to borrow TR?s words.

In early March, Gove said this to the Times: ?I?m an unashamed traditionalist when it comes to the curriculum. Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of 11, modern foreign languages. That?s the best training of the mind and that?s how children will be able to compete.?

I will quote from the Times article:

History should be taught ?in order -- it?s a narrative,? Mr Gove said. Lessons should celebrate rather than denigrate Britain?s role through the ages, including the Empire. ?Guilt about Britain?s past is misplaced.?

 

English classes would put more emphasis on the classics, with children encouraged to learn poetry by heart. ?A lot of the ?great tradition? is locked in a cupboard marked ?too difficult? and that?s quite wrong.?

Say what you will about a Cameron prime ministership, which would probably be so wet, it would be soaking: Michael Gove as education czar would be thrilling.

I?ll have more about him and his plans later . . .

Here is a little family news, so to speak: Our senior editor David Pryce-Jones, a famous writer, is the son of a famous writer, Alan Pryce-Jones, who was editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Both of them have authored a million books. David?s daughter Jessica Pryce-Jones has just published Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success. Jess, as she is known, is a big-time expert in this field of happiness (and unhappiness) at work. She is based in Oxford and is married to the BBC correspondent David Shukman. She is the first in her Pryce-Jones generation to publish a book. They are all brilliant (natch), whether they publish books or not.

The next generation will almost surely author books. There are nine children in that group, with a tenth due any day now, I believe, and the oldest of those children is in his first year at Cambridge. He is studying hard sciences -- chemistry and the like -- but he has a serious literary bent, and a political one as well. I would not fall over dead if he became prime minister. And if that is the case, let us hope he is Pryce-Jonesian in his politics, as well as in other respects. But even if he were Labour -- he would be laudable Labour, I?ve no doubt.

John Gross is a Londoner, and as erudite and judicious a writer as you?ll ever encounter. He has an anthology of parodies -- an anthology he has edited -- coming out soon. In the meantime, enjoy, as I did, his piece in the current Commentary, ?Denying Shakespeare.? (Subscription required.) This is a piece on the ?anti-Stratfordians,? which is to say, those who do not believe that Shakespeare was Shakespeare: who believe that the plays and poems were written by somebody else, or even a team of non-Shakespeares. Over the decades -- centuries -- we have had the Baconians, the Oxfordians, and others. Some eminent folk have succumbed to anti-Stratfordian superstition, including Mark Twain.

I remember a point someone made long ago about Oxford -- about Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford: We have poetry by him -- poetry indisputably by him. It is good poetry. Certainly I wish I had written it. But it?s not Shakespeare, by a long shot.

Another Shakespeare tidbit, sort of? I think NR junkies will particularly like this: I recently reviewed a revival of Ambroise Thomas?s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Opera. But that?s not what NR junkies will like (in all probability): I?m talking about this: Some years ago, I took a ?Christmas sail? with the Buckleys, Bill and Pat. This was in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. One of the crew members was a very dignified man, about 40, named Hamlet. He remains the only Hamlet I have ever met. Pat Buckley had an observation about how he pronounced his name -- something like ?Omelet.? ?Hamlet? is a very hard name to wear, I would think, but this gentleman wore it well.

I have never met an Othello, a Shylock, or a Timon. Have known a few Lears, and one Titus.

The other night in a concert hall, I heard a dog not barking -- and I will explain. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, the theater in St. Petersburg was known as the Mariinsky Theatre: a home for ballet and opera, in particular. After the revolution, ?Mariinsky? went by the wayside: and the theater became known as the State Academic Theatre. A little later, the name ?Leningrad? was added (the ?Leningrad State Academic Theatre?). In 1935, the joint became known as the Kirov, and, for the next many decades, that name went all around the world.

Sergei Kirov, as you recall, was the brutal Bolshevik who, in grand Soviet tradition, was killed by other brutal Bolsheviks. They all deserved each other, richly.

At the end of 1991, the Soviet Union went bye-bye, and the theater in St. Petersburg reclaimed its old name: Mariinsky. (For that matter, St. Petersburg reclaimed its old name, too.) However: The opera, ballet, and orchestra continued to travel in the West under the name Kirov -- because Westerners had grown used to that name. Understandably, the relevant authorities were reluctant to harm their brand.

Whenever I would review the orchestra, for example, I would get a few angry letters -- mainly from Russian émigrés. They would say, ?Stop using that name, ?Kirov?! The orchestra is the Mariinsky now. Don?t you know who Kirov was? Don?t you know anything?? I would reply, ?Look, babe, ?Kirov? is what it says on the program, and as long as they perform under that name, in a concert I am reviewing, I will duly write that name. I can?t be more Catholic than the pope. When they change, I will change. If you got a beef -- write to St. Petersburg.? Some of them would reply, ?Well, it?s people like you who force such change: who educate the public and bestir institutions.? And they had a bit of a point.

A few years ago in Salzburg, I did a public interview of Valery Gergiev, the famous conductor who is the head of the Mariinsky Theatre. I asked him about the issue of the name. He said that the theater would get around to removing the name ?Kirov,? even for the purposes of Western travel. He also maintained that Sergei Kirov was (in brief) a kinder, gentler sort of Bolshevik -- more enlightened, not as cruel as others. I held my peace, at least right there on the spot. I wasn?t there to argue, I was there to pose questions of interest.

At some point, the authorities -- Gergiev & Co. -- took an intermediate step, a transitional step: billing the orchestra, for example, as the ?Kirov Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre.? The ?Kirov Opera of the Mariinsky Theatre.? And so on. Well, the other night, I heard the dog not barking: I looked down at my program, and I saw, plain and simple, ?Mariinsky Orchestra? -- no ?Kirov? at all. So, almost 20 years on, the transition is complete. ?Kirov? is out of the picture altogether. Both the name and the man have been consigned to the ash heap of history, never to rise again, I hope.

But there is one more matter -- a tiny matter, concerning transliteration. I have a friend who is a former ballerina, a conservative, and a woman of impeccable taste. She says she likes the old, tried-and-true transliteration: ?Maryinsky.? She says the new one, with those two i?s, looks weird and wrong. Something for another day . . .

People have said, ?Talk about Tiger at the Masters.? I would like to talk, instead, about Nicklaus at the Masters. He is going to be an ?honorary starter? -- that means, he will hit a ceremonial drive on the first tee, then retire to the clubhouse. Snead and Nelson used to do that, too. And Arnold Palmer will do it along with Jack.

I must say, when I read the news about Jack, I winced -- I almost took it personally. And I was a little mad at him. Why was he doing this? Why was he abasing himself? Isn?t the ceremonial job a little beneath this great champion? Of course, those who idolized Snead and Nelson probably thought the same thing, when those two started to hit the honorary shots. And you might say that what Jack is doing takes a great deal of humility -- and is to be applauded.

I will keep thinking about it.

One word about Tiger? Anything can happen at this year?s Masters with him -- anything. He can miss the cut. By a lot. And he can win. And everything in between.

Take a letter from Beaumont, Texas (and does Beaumont have a beautiful mountain, as the name implies?): ?Mr. Nordlinger -- I know you like unusual names, so I thought I?d pass this one along: Boogie Anagnostou. He?s a pitcher on the Rice Owls baseball team in Houston.?

Excellent.

The nickname of the Rice teams reminds me of something -- I just read it. You may remember the name Emily Greene Balch. She was once quite famous: an American intellectual, social reformer, and pacifist. She won the Nobel Peace Prize, half of it, in 1946. She was an unfortunate bolshie, but she was brilliant, and admirable in many ways. She lived and worked to a grand old age -- mid-nineties. She said, ?My grandfather used to say that an old woman was as tough as a boiled owl.?

What a great expression. EGB, by the way, was born in 1867, which gives you an idea of when her grandfather was born.

Care for a little language? In conversation the other day, Paul Johnson used the word ?fazed?: So-and-so was ?fazed? by something. It occurred to me that, much more commonly, the word ?unfazed? is used -- sort of like ?couth? and ?uncouth.? You often hear that something, or someone, is uncouth, rarely that something, or someone, is couth. You know?

Finally, a fine expression -- another one. In a column last week, I mentioned that NR?s current publisher, Jack Fowler, and his immediate predecessor, Ed Capano, are both half Irish and half Italian -- a ?blessed ancestral combination,? I said. A reader writes, ?I believe that, in New York, this is known as ?Gaelic/Garlic.??

Have a great one.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).