WHO WHOM?
The United States of America was born when the 13
colonies rebelled against the British Empire. But that is
ancient history to the imperialists. Jonah Goldberg writes
in National Review Online:
There's nothing which says
that empires are the worst form of government or social
organization. In fact, the only reason I object to America
being called an empire is that the people who throw the
word around mean it in the most pejorative sense. But I
don't see why that has to be pejorative. Relative to the
other evils that exist in the world, empires are fairly
benign philosophically speaking. I'd rather live in a
country that is ruled by another country, benevolently,
than in an independent country that is ruled by a sadistic
tyrant. It probably was more pleasant living under Roman
rule than under the barbarian kings and chieftains.
Goldberg speaks in the present tense:
"empires." But no empires exist today; there is
only the incipient American empire. When Goldberg speaks
of the past, one wonders if he is joking:
It probably was more pleasant
living under Roman rule.
Quite possibly, if one was actually alive. Julius
Caesar was responsible for—in fact, boasted of—the
death of one million Gauls. That was
one-sixth of the population. Today, we call that sort of
thing "genocide"—a word with which one would
expect Goldberg to be familiar. And what of the survivors?
Another million—one-fifth—were enslaved.
For all the depredations of the British, French,
Spanish and Portuguese Empires, one thing can be said of
them—they brought Christianity to pagan peoples. This
will not be true of the American Empire. America is no
longer Christian; it is multicultural. In recent years,
wherever Christians have faced enslavement, ethnic
cleansing or genocide at the hands of Muslims, America has
sided with the Muslims: in Nigeria, East Timor, Bosnia,
Serbia and Macedonia.
Goldberg says that he would "rather live in a
country that is ruled by another country, benevolently,
than in an independent country that is ruled by a sadistic
tyrant." Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? No
foreign country threatens him. It is good to be the
Imperator.
America’s founding myth was spoken by Patrick Henry:
Is life so dear, or peace so
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it Almighty God! I know not what course
others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me
death!
The chains and slavery of British colonialism were mild
by historical standards. Colonial Americans were
considerably freer than Americans have been at least since
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But one would not expect an
ignoramus like Jonah Goldberg to understand this. One
might expect him, as an American, to understand the
yearning of peoples to be ruled by their own kind. But no,
this also is too much to expect. The Goldbergites are
incapable of imagining of what it would be like not to be
American. To them, there are only Americans and
Americans-in-training. And only wicked barbarians would
dare resist American Caesarism.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
7.24 a.m., February 27, 2003 [Link]
IT AIN’T OVER UNTIL THE FAT MAN
SINGS
This is my first post for five days. No excuses, except
that I’ve been thinking a great deal about many things,
some of which I’d rather not share.
What I will admit to is a wholesale reconsideration of
my worldview. John
Lukacs is correct; the Modern Age has
ended. Among the concomitants of this milestone: the end
of the Right/Left dichotomy, the rise of neo-Paganism and
the reality of American Imperium.
Expect posts on these subjects soon. In the meantime, I
see that James
Leigh is in the news again. I met Leigh two
years ago and wrote about it for The Report—probably
the best thing I ever wrote for that magazine. The
original version of this article appears below. It is, if
nothing else, amusing, I think.
The spy who bored me
The mystery man who met and then didn’t meet Stockwell
Day loves to talk—about himself
The Report, May 28, 2001
I took fright when James Leigh began to cry. There I
was, in the London, Ont., home of the spy who was
hired/not hired by Stockwell "I met him/I didn't meet
him" Day, when he announced he had something special
he wanted to read. It was a "farewell letter."
It occurred to me that male suicides often decide to take
others out with them.
But I didn't snuff it, as Alex says in A Clockwork
Orange, or I wouldn't be here to tell this tale, would
I? I met James Leigh on May 1. He had called me at home a
week earlier, three weeks after the Globe and Mail
reported that he had met with Mr. Day at the behest of MPs
Darrel Stinson and Myron Thompson and had been offered a
$6,500-a-month contract to investigate Jean Chretien. Mr.
Day first confirmed he had met Mr. Leigh but then insisted
there was no contract and that he had only said he had met
him because the Globe had said so. What limited
confidence remained in Mr. Day's leadership promptly
collapsed.
I don't know how James Leigh (not his real name) got my
number or why he wanted to talk to me. He knew nothing
about me but did know that my magazine was connected to
Ted Byfield. He said he had attended St. John's School,
which Ted Byfield founded. He wanted to speak to Ted. I
said I'd try. Ted wasn't available. How about Link
Byfield, he asked.
It is generally accepted that Mr. Leigh had given the
Alliance two top-secret documents on Chinese organized
crime in Canada, including the notorious Project
Sidewinder report. He told Link Byfield he
had more. He could prove that the Alliance was spying on
party dissidents. Mr. Leigh had told Maclean's he
had proof he had indeed met Mr. Day. If either of these
claims could be substantiated, I would need a mantelpiece
to display my trophies. I arranged a trip to London.
I arrived at 9 p.m. Mr. Leigh has been linked to
motorcycle gangs, and Maclean's reported
bodyguards. I never saw any. An Oriental woman with no
English led me to the basement. Mr. Leigh, about
six-foot-four and 300 pounds, was supine on a loveseat, a
hotpot balanced on his chest, resting atop a titanic
potbelly. He wore a dark blue sweatshirt, tan shorts,
athletic socks and an Indian Motorcycle cap. He didn't get
up and continued to shovel food into his mouth. Then he
began to choke. The fit lasted, intermittently, for five
minutes. I looked around. White walls, white carpeting,
track lighting. Two notebook computers, two cell phones, a
remote e-mail device. A Sony WEGA TV, DVD player and
speakers. Action-adventure DVDs, including the box set of
that paranoia classic, Alien.
James Leigh is one heavy breather. The LED on my
voice-activated recorder flickered as the air entered and
departed his nose and mouth. "Did you meet Stockwell
Day?" I asked. "Did I meet Stockwell Day?"
he responded. Oh boy, here we go. Mostly he wanted to ask
me questions such as:
"Was Jesus black?"
[Bemusement.] "I don't think so. Jesus was a Jew,
and Jews aren't black."
"Jew is a religion, not a race." What the
Southern Baptists and the KKK don't understand, etc., etc.
"Are people afraid to die?"
"I think people are afraid to die."
"No, people aren't afraid to die. They're afraid
of not having lived."
I realized with horror that I was in the presence of
what the British call a "saloon-bar Napoleon," a
would-be polymath who won't let you escape until you've
imbibed all his "theories"—only once, if
you're lucky. I was not lucky.
The pub bore act alternated with bouts of acute
Attention Deficit Disorder. "Are you tired? How did
you get here? You weren't a St. John's boy, were you?
What's Link Byfield's position? What's your position?
What's your favourite movie? Do you like naked
women?" [Consternation.] I replied, "Uh, yeah.
But not right now."
"Have you ever been to Asia? One night in Bangkok
will change your life."
Occasionally, he communicated a subtle menace.
"You've got to mellow out," he demanded.
"You're a really tough guy to deal with. You're not
really friendly, are you?" I'm not a mellow person at
the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of
times. I had travelled 3,000 miles to listen to some guy
who told his wife that I'm a "reporter from the
Vancouver Gay News," asked me for a job and how to
spell "bankruptcy," referred to me as
"Ted" or "Ken" or "asshole,"
fiddled with his e-mail and his cell phones—and answered
all my questions with questions.
I scraped together his résumé: Canadian-born, ran
away from home at 13, never graduated from high school,
went to the U.S., then Fiji, then Australia, where he
claims he was recruited by American intelligence.
Undercover work in Tonga, Korea and China. Fluent in five
languages, been to 65 countries.
I tried again. "I don't care what the Alliance
says," I said. "Did you meet Stockwell
Day?"
"The Alliance has got me by the balls. They'll say
I'm a liar whatever I say."
"Do you have proof you met with Stockwell
Day?"
"No." Finally, a direct answer.
Mr. Leigh believes there is a conspiracy to destroy
Stockwell Day. Has he proof? No. Was the Alliance spying
on its own dissidents? Yes. Proof? No. He claims he was
given Sidewinder by a reporter. He says this same reporter
fabricated a document for him to pass on, but he refused.
Who's the reporter? "That's the 60-million-dollar
question." Was it (here I drop the name of a certain
national reporter) M? "I'm not telling." He
suggests that he forged the Business Development Bank
documents that embarrassed the National Post and
says he knows who the fourth investor in Mr. Chretien's
hotel is.
We do know that Mr. Leigh was visited earlier by
Canadian Alliance co-president Ken Kalopsis and that an
angry e-mail exchange between Mr. Kalopsis and House
Leader John Reynolds was leaked to the Globe. Mr.
Leigh claims he chucked a cell phone at Mr. Kalopsis and
evicted him and a party lawyer because the Alliance
reneged on a promise to give him and his family new
identities. Mr. Leigh claims that the rumour, reported on
Pierre Bourque's Web site, of a spy posing as a janitor
working in the Alliance offices in the House of Commons is
true. I am dubious, because I had to explain to him who
Pierre Bourque is.
He tells me a top-secret fax was stolen from Mr.
Stinson's office that morning and that the Alliance was
agog. He then reads the fax, which is the aforementioned
suicide note. Excerpts: "Everyone screams out for
fair. That's not fair. Or they weren't fair to me. Exactly
who wrote the book on fair and where do I buy a copy? I
can't find it in my local library and it's not sold at
Chapters..." How very much like the letter Humbert
Humbert makes Clare Quilty read in Stanley Kubrick's movie
of Lolita: "It's getting a bit repetitious,
isn't it?"
Then the phone rings again. It's Darrel Stinson! Or a
man claiming to be Darrel Stinson. Mr. Leigh is still
negotiating for a job! Then he puts me on the phone with
Mr. Stinson, ordering me not to reveal my identity. It
sure sounds like Darrel Stinson (I called him after I
returned to Vancouver, but he did not return my call). I
find myself explaining again who Pierre Bourque is. Mr.
Leigh says this is off the record. I agree, reminding
myself silently that agreements made under duress are
void.
All he cares about, Mr. Leigh tells me, are his
"babies." He says he is prepared to go to China
and give himself up; otherwise, a triad hit squad will
kill his family. I reflect that I know this man's real
name, his wife's name, his address and his phone
number—and this didn't take much investigation. If I
know, the triads can surely find out. But there is a card
on his desk, with various Chinese names and the number of
an Air Canada flight to Hong Kong. He insists I see his
10-month-old child. His wife demurs, but we trudge up
three flights of stairs, to a bedroom where his wife and
her mother are cowering. On the bed is the baby. It is
11:30 p.m. In another room sits his wide-awake
six-year-old son. We trudge downstairs. Mr. Leigh is
crying again. I ask him to call me a cab. "You're a
cab," he says. Oh boy. I try to remember the way out.
I think I could outrun him.
He asks me if I know Ted Byfield's home number. I lie.
He calls directory assistance. He reaches Ted and
reminisces about old times at St. John's. He asks Ted for
a job and then puts me on the phone. I consider asking Ted
to call the police. Ted says goodbye, and Mr. Leigh offers
me a lift to my hotel. "Do you mind riding in a
Mercedes?" he asks. I tell the truth. It's a Mercedes
SUV. On the way out, he makes sure to show off his two new
sundecks. On the way back, he asks me if I like him. I
lie. He asks me if I got everything I needed. I lie. He
asks me if he is not the weirdest man I have ever met. I
tell him it depends on what he means by weird. He lets me
out at the hotel entrance at midnight.
I go to the bar to get something to eat. The Blue Jays
are playing in Oakland. They tie the game in the top of
the 9th, then Alex Gonzalez hits a solo shot in the 10th
to win it. So my day isn’t completely wasted.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
6.54 a.m., February 26, 2003 [Link]
A MINOR MYSTERY
Paul O’Keeffe’s Some
Sort of Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis
is an excellent biography of an exceedingly interesting
man: a very pleasurable read. For Cancon fans, he was also
some sort of Canadian, but he was definitely a champion
smoker, as the book’s jacket demonstrates.
I reproduce the following paragraph from O’Keeffe in
the hope that some reader can explain a mystery to me, a
mystery common to all biographies.
Mrs. Lewis’s final words to
her son in the letter of 25 November suggesting he return
to London by the first week in December might have stood
as a useful injunction for the rest of his life:
Don’t get into debt or borrow
any money.
You will note that it is a letter from Mrs. Lewis that
is quoted here: a holograph, presumably. So why are the
last three words reproduced in italics? Are the
words underlined in the original, and, if so, why are they
not underlined in reproduction? Is this a publishing
convention of which I am ignorant, or is it possible that
some other method of indicating emphasis once obtained?
I once owned a rather enviable Lewis collection,
including several rare volumes. They were lost when I was
forced to sell my books in 1994. (To this day, whenever I
see a reference to how much, for instance, Martin
Amis first editions raise at auction, I
almost howl in anguish.) That is to say I do not have any
of Lewis’s works at hand, but if memory serves, the best
of his many novels is Self-Condemned,
a lacerating (and self-lacerating) account of exile in
Toronto during the Second World War. I’m just barely old
enough to remember "Toronto the Good." It is
long gone, of course, replaced by Toronto the Sikh. Except
in the Atlantic Provinces, I would guess, there’s really
not much left of the Canada into which I came to age. The
remnants, like my books, have been dispersed. Vestiges,
reliable and otherwise, have been deposited in my failing
memory.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
9.22 p.m., February 21, 2003 [Link]
POETRY CORNER
Discovery
Life is a long discovery, isn’t it?
You only get your wisdom bit by bit.
If you have luck you find in early youth
How dangerous it is to tell the Truth;
And next you learn how dignity and peace
Are the ripe fruits of patient avarice.
You find that middle life goes racing past.
You find despair: and, at the very last,
You find as you are giving up the ghost
That those who loved you best despised you most.
—Hilaire
Belloc
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.16 p.m., February 21, 2003 [Link]
BE IT EVER SO HUMBLE
Remember, Colby, it's not a crack
house—it's a crack home.
Considering that we both spent time in Edmonton's
notorious "Flop House," a crack home would be a
step up, come to think of it.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
7.53 p.m., February 21, 2003 [Link]
GOOD FOR WHATEVER AILS US
According to William of Occam, explanations should not
be multiplied beyond their necessity. Or as Armando
Iannucci puts it in today’s Daily
Telegraph:
The pro-war lobby adopts an
increasingly erratic set of scattergun arguments
("This is about eliminating a very real threat to our
security. No? Right, forget the real threat business, this
is about eliminating a potential threat, and potential
threats are worse than real ones, potentially. Not buying
it? OK, this is about upholding international law, then.
Oh, come on! Right, sod the international law bit, this is
about upholding moral standards. Right, forget morality. I
don't care if the Pope and the Archbishop of Timbuktu and
God say they're against it, they're all just plain
wrong.")
Elsewhere on the Telegraph editorial page, as if to
further prove Iannucci's point, Bill
Deedes advances yet another erratic
argument—OK, maybe Saddam isn’t Der Führer, so
how about Il Duce?
If we're seeking lessons from
the past to help us deal with Saddam Hussein, then the way
we dealt with Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia in 1935
is—as the Prime Minister understands—the place to
look…
Then, as now, our
difficulties were compounded by the duplicitous behaviour
of the French.
In 1935, after many brave
words and much wriggling, we fudged it. So Mussolini took
all he wanted in Abyssinia, without hindrance. He and
others drew conclusions from this display of impotence. In
1936, the same year as Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia
was completed, the Spanish Civil War began. Germany and
Italy felt free to play a military role in that affair,
without reprisals. Then, it has always seemed to me, our
slide towards the Second World War became unstoppable…
The crisis in 1935 came
closest to where we are now after October 4, when
Mussolini launched his attack on Abyssinia. Britain's
eagerness to set in motion the machinery of the League
against Italy ran into immediate difficulties with France.
Pierre Laval, the French foreign minister, was unwilling
to antagonize Mussolini.
Old men forget, and Lord Deedes has evidently forgotten
why Laval was unwilling to antagonize Mussolini—because
he did not want to push him into an alliance with Hitler
against France. Mussolini was as alarmed by Hitler’s
ambitions as anyone, and it was largely British stupidity
over Abyssinia that isolated Italy and resulted in the
Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936, which secured Hitler’s
southern flank, made the "slide" toward the
Second World War "unstoppable" and,
incidentally, doomed thousands of Italian Jews.
What purpose is now being served in pushing Saddam
Hussein into the arms of Osama bin Laden?
I wondered in 1999 what purpose was being served by our
war on Serbia. Certainly there were American domestic
considerations. (I dubbed it the "War of Clinton’s
Pants.") But it seems to me now that perhaps a more
important purpose was in laying down a marker—the claim
by the United States that it exercises plenary power in
the interpretation of international law.
It is therefore useful to remind those that cite Serbia
as a forensic precedent for Gulf War II that the former
was flagrantly illegal. Walter J. Rockler, an American
prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, wrote in
the May 23, 1999, Chicago Tribune:
"We have engaged in a
flagrant military aggression, ceaselessly attacking a
small country primarily to demonstrate that we run the
world. The rationale that we are simply enforcing
international morality, even if it were true, would not
excuse the military aggression and widespread killing that
it entails. It also does not lessen the culpability of the
authors of this aggression. At Nuremberg, the United
States and Britain pressed the prosecution of Nazi leaders
for planning and initiating aggressive war. Supreme Court
Justice Robert Jackson, the head of the American
prosecution staff, asserted ‘that launching a war of
aggression is a crime and that no political or economic
situation can justify it.’"
Rockler added that the war on Yugoslavia violated not
only the principles enumerated at Nuremberg but also the
UN Charter, the NATO charter and the Geneva Convention.
(The war also violated the Helsinki Accord.)
America, Canada and Britain were guilty of war crimes
against Serbia—the deliberate terror bombing of
civilians. U.S. Lieutenant General Michael C. Short
boasted in the May 24, 1999, Washington Post:
If you wake up in the morning
and you have no power to your house and no gas to your
stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be
lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you
begin to ask, "Hey, Slobo, what's this all about? How
much more of this do we have to withstand?"
Here we see American international law for the new
Imperium: We are constrained by nothing except our own
convenience. A very useful marker indeed, you must
admit.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
2.36 a.m., February 21, 2003 [Link]
STRAIGHT FROM THE DIGGER’S
MOUTH
From a disgruntled reader:
I was disappointed to hear
you repeating the tired mantra of the socialists that the
U.S. is going to invade Iraq only for the oil. It would
seem that [Eric]
Margolis's reflexive paranoia regarding
Americans is contagious amongst journalists.
Oh dear, there’s that nasty word "paranoia"
again. I replied that I had never claimed that the U.S.
was going to invade Iraq only for the oil but
rather that stealing Iraq’s oil was the only
half-decent argument for invasion that could be made. I
added that George W. Bush, as evidenced by his State of
the Union address, is a genuine imperialist.
And Rupert Murdoch, as evidenced by his life, is a
genuine capitalist. He is also an American citizen by
choice. Roy Greenslade of the Guardian has compiled
the peripatetic tycoon’s thoughts on the oil/invasion
nexus:
Murdoch is chairman and chief
executive of News Corp., which owns more than 175 titles
on three continents, publishes 40 million papers a week
and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain, Australia
and New Zealand…
It isn't always clear exactly
what Murdoch believes on any given issue, but this time we
know for certain, courtesy of an interview in the
Australian magazine, the Bulletin (which, by the
way, he doesn't own). To cite the report of that interview
in Murdoch's own Sydney Daily Telegraph, the
"media magnate...has backed President Bush's stance
against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein." Indeed, his
quotes are specific. "We can't back down now, where
you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam...I
think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I
think he is going to go on with it." Then came words
of praise for Tony Blair. "I think Tony is being
extraordinarily courageous and strong... It's not easy to
do that living in a party which is largely composed of
people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort
of pacifist. But he's shown great guts as he did, I think,
in Kosovo and various problems in the old
Yugoslavia."
Most revealing of all was
Murdoch's reference to the rationale for going to war,
blatantly using the o-word. Politicians in the United
States and Britain have strenuously denied the
significance of oil, but Murdoch wasn't so reticent. He
believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to
cheaper oil. "The greatest thing to come out of this
for the world economy...would be $20 a barrel for oil.
That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."
He went even further down
this road in an interview the week before with America's Fortune
magazine by forecasting a postwar economic boom.
"Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will
benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus
than anything else."
Final score: Ambler 1, Disgruntled Reader 0.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
4.03 a.m., February 20, 2003 [Link]
A SUITABLE CASE FOR
TREATMENT?
Over the past week, several readers have inquired as to
whether everything is quite all right with me. Well, no,
actually. I appreciate your concern, but there’s really
nothing to be done. I’ve alluded since November to a
crisis, and the crisis continues. I can’t really be any
more specific than that, except to say that that the
recent coincidence of Valentine’s Day and President’s
Day has aggravated my state.
I understand that my own analysis is by definition
subjective and might not be a fair view. So I decided to
seek professional help. More like semi-professional. OK, I
took an Internet quiz. I heard about it from the popbitch
list, and it’s hosted on a site called 4degreez.com, and
if that doesn’t sound authoritative, I don’t know what
would. And hey, it asks 71 questions, which is a lot more
than most of these tests do.
Here are the results:
So, moderate for "narcissistic" and
"paranoid," high for "schizoid."
Let’s get the first two out of they way, shall we? A
certain degree of narcissism is essential to my
profession, I would think, and as for paranoia, when your
worst fears have lately been realized, this is hardly a
fair cop. That leaves "schizoid." Sounds grisly,
doesn’t it? Here is the definition:
Schizoid
People with schizoid personality disorder avoid
relationships and do not show much emotion. They genuinely
prefer to be alone and do not secretly wish for
popularity. They tend to seek jobs that require little
social contact. Their social skills are often weak, and
they do not show a need for attention or acceptance. They
are perceived as humourless and distant and often are
termed "loners."
This seems a reasonable enough diagnosis, except that I
don’t think I’m perceived as humourless. But why
should a desire for solitude constitute a "mental
illness"? It takes all kinds, doesn’t it? What
Freud called "the psychopathology of everyday
life" is simply the human condition. I’m sure
there’s any number of chemical "treatments"
for my "disorder," but I prefer to remain
desolate and sick of an old passion.
On the stereo: Nick Lowe, Labour
of Lust, "Cracking Up":
Everybody all around me
Shaking hands and saying howdy
I don't think it's funny no more
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
3.21 a.m., February 20, 2003 [Link]
NO FOOL LIKE AN OLD FOOL
An email from Mark
Cameron invited me to read about
"Novak on Iraq and the Vatican." That sounded
interesting. I’d like to know what Robert Novak has to
say on this issue. So I opened the message only to find it
was Michael Novak holding forth. Gosh, I wonder
what Michael Novak would say about Iraq and the Vatican?
Would he perhaps give his assent to the exciting new
developments in Just War theory promulgated by fellow
neocon George
Weigel? No need to answer that question.
As Anne Muggeridge wrote in her book, The
Desolate City: The Catholic Church in Ruins:
Novak had, and retains…the
knack of exactly expressing the hidden agenda of whatever
ideology he considered the coming power.
Or, as she told me when I spoke to her in 1986 about
her book, Novak is a "trimmer" who somehow
always ends up on the "winning side."
Novak has expressed his regret for his activities as a
Vatican II reformer, even unto admitting he "deserved
to be shamed." No, what Novak deserved was perpetual
sackcloth and ashes. What he got instead were the fame and
fortune due him as Rector of the First Church of American
Democratic Capitalism.
A more subtle (shall we say) thinker—indeed anyone
with eyes to see and ears to hear—would have realized
that something had gone terribly wrong with American
capitalism by the 1980s. He would have realized that where
it had once been possible to say, "What’s good for
General Motors is good for America," this was no
longer the case. That where once capitalists had
acknowledged (even if only under duress) obligations to
their employees, their communities and their nation, they
now boasted openly of owing obligations only to their
shareholders. (And as we have learned from Enron, et
al., even this was a myth.) But not Mike Novak; he is
an enthusiast first, last and always.
Novak was in the vanguard of those that made American
Catholicism a faith fit for neoconservatives. The Pope,
you see, had made peace with capitalism. This made him a
"Great" Pope indeed. I must confess to being
mystified by those that were drawn to the Church by virtue
of latter-day Papal teaching on economics. It is
obvious—or so it seems to me—that specific economic
systems are hardly crucial to the economy of Christian
salvation.
But America is no longer a stage grand enough for
Michael Novak. He now vies (with Weigel) for the honour of
becoming Rector of the First Church of American Imperium. Writing
(where else?) in National Review Online, Novak
begins with some ethical sleight of hand:
Let us first note that war is
not always to be evaded. Sometimes it is morally
obligatory.
It would have been morally
wrong, for instance, for the United States to have fallen
back and defended only the continental United States
during World War II. Agreed?
Note the clever manner in which Novak insinuates that
American involvement in the Second World War was a
crusade. But, as Novak well knows, the United States
entered the Second World War in response to an attack on
its territory, its troops and its military materiel. (That
Franklin Roosevelt had lusted after war for years, had
sought unsuccessfully to provoke Germany into giving him a
casus belli, had committed acts of war against
Japan and then refused to take action to prevent the
attack on Pearl
Harbor he had been warned of from numerous
sources is neither here nor there, I suppose.)
Having established to his own satisfaction that America
occupies the moral high ground, Novak then makes the
argument that having blundered previously, Rome must
blunder again:
The Vatican itself encouraged
the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo, and has expressly
approved the war against the terrorists, although not the
war against Iraq.
But in what way is the regime
of Milosevic in Kosovo less horrific than the barbaric
practices of Saddam Hussein in Iraq? (There are many
personal testimonies to the unendurable tortures Saddam
has inflicted on tens of thousands of families in Iraq.)
What are the differences
between Iraq and Kosovo? For one thing, it is very
important that war against an Arab sovereign such as
Saddam not be construed as a religious war. It is actually
far better for the Pope in advance to be visibly opposed
to a war in Iraq, even while pleading for Iraq's
compliance with the UN resolutions.
The present point is that war
can sometimes be morally obligatory, to defend the weak
and the defenceless against remorseless aggression.
At this point, one is tempted to leave off, as
Novak’s combination of fatuity and cynicism has
engendered nausea. Kosovo was a "humanitarian
intervention," was it? It is possible—perhaps—to
believe that Tony Blair and William Cohen were not lying
through their teeth when they accused the Serbs of
"genocide." What is not possible to believe is
that delivering the Orthodox Christians of Kosovo to the
tender mercies of that "Muslim drug gang," the
KLA, is to be counted a success. Furthermore, Novak’s
insinuation that the Pope’s "visible"
opposition to war in Iraq (he must mean
"invasion" here) furthers the interest of
"Christian" America is worthy of Daniel
Goldhagen or John Cornwell. And finally, Novak’s
combination of the phrases "morally obligatory,"
"weak and the defenceless" and "remorseless
aggression" in the context of justifying the invasion
of a wretched, fourth-rate power by the most powerful
nation on earth beggars belief.
As does this sentence:
The whole point of this
intervention is to side with the Iraqi people against this
most cruel torturer and tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
The "whole point"? Has Novak gone mad, or
does he merely believe that the rest of us have lost our
wits? Until Tony Blair’s U-turn
of last Saturday, the point of "this
intervention" was to rid the world of the Hitler du
jour. Something about "weapons of mass
destruction," what what?
Novak asserts that while Iraqi civilian casualties are
inevitable, "immense" casualties would be
"inadmissible." And also unlikely, because
the rules of engagement of
the United States forces, like those for all of NATO
today, insist that troops must never fire deliberately
upon civilians or civilian centres? In that case, any
civilians that do happen to be casualties are purely
accidental, usually because of weapon malfunction.
(Like the "weapon malfunction" that resulted
in the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade?)
But guess what?
I read in many news reports
that Saddam Hussein is doing is best to raise civilian
casualties, by planting weapons systems and soldiers in
the midst of the civilian population, and forcing other
civilians to ring military installations so that they
might become victims (for showing on television). In other
words, Saddam understands the logic of U.S. strategy, too.
Americans want no Iraqi casualties, while he wants many.
Heavy civilian casualties are his only hope.
It is at this point that one can only conclude that
Michael Novak is a truly stupid man.
Novak admits, "There is no provision in just-war
theory for ‘preventive war.’" Ah, but,
"There is no provision for war by non-state actors
such as al Qaeda, either." Just as there is no
provision in logic for explaining someone who persists in
asserting—against all known evidence—that al
Qaeda is an agent of Saddam Hussein.
In any event,
For future purposes, just-war
theory needs some work, to account for suddenly existing
realities.
Like the suddenly existing reality of the Bush
administration’s desire to rule the world, perhaps?
No, Novak means
the capacity of non-state
organizations to inflict grave and lasting (even
unprecedented) damage to civilian populations. And to do
so in total secrecy, clandestinely, without a single sign
of "imminent" attack ("imminent" is a
condition that looms large in traditional theory).
And it is at this point that one begins to wonder
whether Novak himself believes this rubbish. First, the
United States is not proposing to invade al Qaeda; it is
proposing to invade Iraq. Second, it is ludicrous to speak
of "total secrecy" and "without a single
sign of ‘imminent’ attack" when the Bush
administration has claimed to see so much evidence of
imminent attack that it moved to condition
"Orange."
One last example of Michael Novak, logician:
September 11, 2001, provided
another traditional reason: self-defence…What Saddam has
is the weapons, but not a delivery system; what al Qaeda
has is the delivery system but not the biological weapons.
Yes, and if Michael Novak had some ham, he could have a
ham and cheese sandwich, if he had some cheese.
Novak and the neocons will likely get their invasion.
George W. Bush doesn’t need Catholic support; he has the
evangelicals, and that is enough. It is possible that
Novak is correct, and that the invasion will be "a
piece of cake," a "slam dunk" or whatever.
But what is Novak’s record as a prognosticator? Not so
good. As a promoter and propagandist of Vatican II, he
predicted a golden dawn. Well, it wasn’t long before its
"spirit" became the "smoke of Satan."
But more important, what consequences would need to follow
an invasion of Iraq for Novak to claim victory?
In an October 2001 essay
in Crisis, "Reconsidering Vatican II,"
Novak concedes that its notorious spirit destroyed the
"progressive" religious orders. Which is an
interesting way to describe the collapse of the
Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, Oblates of Mary
Immaculate—every major male and female religious order
that existed in 1962. He does not mention the collapse of
vocations to the secular priesthood, the collapse of mass
attendance throughout the Western world or that the
majority of Western Catholics are now ignorant of the very
rudiments of their faith. (Nor does he mention the
greatest scandal in Catholic history since simony, as the
full extant of the criminal conspiracy of the
oh-so-"collegiate" American bishops—acting in
concert with "their centre, their servant, and their
leader, the bishop of Rome"—was not revealed until
2002.) And he does not mention that heresy and apostasy
are now so rife that the Church cannot with any honesty be
described as "One, Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic."
But Michael Novak is very much a glass-half-full kind
of guy. He believes that Vatican II was, all things
considered, a good thing. Why?
Without that emphasis on the
collegiality of the bishops around the world, there would
scarcely have been the effort to select a non-Italian
bishop-a Pole from the Eastern bloc [as Pope—or
"Bishop of Rome," as Novak would have it.]
By their fruits ye shall know them. By this measure,
John Paul II is the worst Pope since the Reformation and
Vatican II the worst ecumenical council since…ever.
Americans had better pray the Iraq invasion turns out
rather better than what Michael Novak is prepared to
regard as a success.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
2.31 a.m., February 19, 2003 [Link]
ALIENATION GUARANTEED
An email from "Alejandra" at posimasmajicas@mixmail.com
crossed my desktop Valentine’s Day. It touted a product
called "Real Love Majic," which promises to
"override the free will of another individual."
Furthermore,
Love Magic has many forms and
has many purposes: to find love, to keep love, to rid one
of unwanted love, assure faithfulness.
The goal of Love Potion is to
help you control the one you love by making them love you
back, unable to live without you, and faithful to only
You!
A tempting offer, but I demurred. It smells of
witchcraft, and—call me cynical—I have serious doubts
about its efficacy.
Now I have never been much cop at finding love, keeping
love or assuring faithfulness. But I do know how to rid
oneself of love, unwanted or otherwise. A shortage of the
readies. Works every time.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
12.38 a.m., February 18, 2003 [Link]
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Chris Matthews muses
to Joan Walsh of Salon:
I keep wondering: Is there
such a thing as a neoconservative who doesn't have a
column? I'm serious about this. Is it required to have a
column to be a neoconservative? I don't know anybody who doesn't
have some kind of column who's a neoconservative.
He’s right, of course. So I ask myself: why didn’t I
jump on this gravy train? I was a subscriber to Commentary
back in the 1970s. I could have been a contender. What the
hell was I thinking? Patti Smith was right—the only way
to sell is out.
(To access this interview, readers must watch a
15-second ad. Go ahead; it’s worth it.)
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
11.45 p.m., February 17, 2003 [Link]
EXTERMINATE THE BRUTES!
Is it just me, or has the Trent Lott affair become the
Reichstag fire of American regional relations? Behold Mike
Shropshire in Slate:
If the Daytona 500 isn't the
largest all-Anglo assembly this side of Liverpool, it is
certainly the drunkest. It's an around-the-clock intox-a-thon.
Retribution weekend. For racing fans, the opening of the
NASCAR Winston Cup season represents emancipation from
pissant micromanagers, HMO rip-off professionals,
PalmPilots, child-support collection pests, and
mothers-in-laws who lurk in the shadows like Hannibal
Lecter. And while you're at it, pass me another one of
them room-temperature cans of Old Milwaukee.
Oh, Lawdy! When dem Anglos done git together, it
ain’t no fit sight for decent folk, no Sirree!
Say, what kind of name is Shropshire, anyway? You might
be trying to pass, but you’re not fooling me, brother.
You knew that NASCAR races were Klan rallies without
the hoods, didn’t you? You didn’t? Well, let
Shropshire enlighten you:
About those NASCAR writers: A
few of them go a quarter-ton, at least. The food-line
fare, courtesy of the Lowe's home-improvement people, was
gut-measurement appropriate. The writers carried off
massive servings of synthetic cholesterol, coated with
Ragu pasta sauce, and were soon back for seconds and
thirds. During the course of the afternoon, I asked one of
them to describe the benefits of covering the sport
full-time, as opposed to say, ACC hoops. "No night
games, no nigras and no goddam coaches," he
cheerfully explained.
Trent Lott could not have put
it more eloquently.
How long before proven attendance at a Winston Cup race
becomes an automatic disqualification from high office?
I grew up with NASCAR. I grew up in an environment that
condoned sporting events that we know were wrong and
immoral, and I repudiate them.
Let me be clear: NASCAR racing is immoral.
I have seen what it did to families, to schools, and to
communities. I have seen personally the destruction it has
wrought on the lives of good people. I know personally
what it means to talk about the harms of NASCAR.
The President was right when he said that every day
NASCAR exists is a day that America is unfaithful to our
founding ideals.
I lived through the troubled times in the South, and
along with the South, I have learned from the mistakes of
our past.
I have asked and am asking for people's forbearance and
forgiveness as I continue to learn from my own mistakes
and as I continue to grow as both a person and a leader.
- Kevin
Michael Grace,
10.42 p.m., February 16, 2003 [Link]
