Saul Bellow is Dead

Roger L. Simon tipped us off to this obituary of Saul Bellow. The Nobel-prize winning author was not too appealing when I was younger, I really couldn't read any of his novels. Too dense, somehow.

This famous quote repeated in his New York Times obituary was off-putting even at the time it was uttered:

"Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" The remark caused a furor and was taken as proof, he said, ""that I was at best insensitive and at worst an elitist, a chauvinist, a reactionary and a racist - in a word, a monster." He later said the controversy was "the result of a misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview."

Who is the Pushkin of Chicagoans? The Dumas of Bostonians? one might respond.

Then, I found one book I really liked: Ravelstein, based on real-life University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom.

I couldn't put that one down, it was just fascinating. Perhaps because I had been around so many neo-conservatives and "Great Books" types. Most fascinating of all was the hostility Bellow generated from certain neo-conservative circles. For example, I attended a panel at the Hudson Institute where Bellow was condemned for writing explicitly about Ravelstein's homosexuality, among other things (Ravelstein also took money from his students, and lounged about all day in a bathrobe). I had the feeling that those present would have banned the book, had they been able to do so. It was really kind of scary and depressing. Practically Soviet-style denunciations for deviationism, from a very dour and drab set of panelists, who didn't like the idea that a neo-conservative was being "outed" as a complicated human being, even as a fictional character. After all, it's a novel. But the panelists seemed to have no appreciation of Ravelstein as literature, only an instrumental view that it didn't serve "the cause."

Yuck.

That Bellow could provoke such a reaction, forcing certain people to reveal how they really thought (or didn't, more accurately put), was a tribute to his power as a novelist.

High Minded Realists v Democracy Revolutionists

In a thoughtful essay, Dmitri Simes and Robert Ellsworth, writing in The National Interest, call for "high-minded realism" as a foreign-policy alternative to President Bush's democracy policy. It's worthwhile reading the whole thing. Here's a sample:

High-minded realists do not disagree with the self-appointed champions of global democracy (the neoconservatives and the liberal interventionists) that a strong preference for liberty and justice should be an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. But they realize that there are tradeoffs between pushing for democracy and working with other sovereign states--some not always quite democratic--to combat global terror. Realists also, following the advice of General Charles Boyd, understand the need to 'separate reality from image' and 'to tell the truth, if only to ourselves'--not to play fast and loose with facts to create the appearance of acting morally.

And they are aware that there are important differences in how the United States helps the world achieve freedom. Indeed, in his first press conference after his triumph at the polls, President Bush used three different terms in talking about America's global pro-democracy effort. He discussed the need 'to encourage freedom and democracy', to 'promote free societies', and to 'spread freedom and democracy.'

'Encouraging' democracy is not a controversial position. Nearly everyone in the world accepts that the sole superpower is entitled and indeed expected to be true to its core beliefs. 'Promoting' democracy is more vague and potentially more costly. Still, if the United States does so without resorting to military force and takes into account the circumstances and perspectives of other nations, then it is likely not to run into too much international opposition. 'Spreading' democracy, however, particularly spreading it by force, coercion and violent regime change, is a different thing altogether. Those who suspect they may be on the receiving end of such treatment are unlikely to accept American moral superiority, are bound to feel threatened, and cannot reasonably be expected to cooperate with the United States on other important American priorities, including the War on Terror and nuclear proliferation.

Roger L. Simon says CSPAN Finds "Balance"

Roger L. Simon reports that CSPAN has decided not to "balance" Deborah Lipstadt with David Irving, after all...

IRS Chief: Charities Cheat on Taxes

Today's Washington Post has a story about IRS Commissioner Mark Everson's complaint that non-profits are abusing their tax-exempt status:

"Charities and other nonprofits exempted from taxes because they serve a public purpose have become a hotbed of tax evasion and abuse, according to the head of the Internal Revenue Service.

'We can see that tax abuse is increasingly present in the sector,' and unless the government takes effective steps to curb it, such organizations risk 'the loss of the faith and support that the public has always given to this sector,' Internal Revenue Commissioner Mark W. Everson said in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee detailing abuses his agency has found.

Mark Steyn on the Terry Schiavo Aftermath

In The Chicago Sun-Times:

Once you get used to designating living, breathing bodies as 'non-human entities,' it's easy to bandy them ever more carelessly -- as they do in the eminently progressive Netherlands, where their relaxed attitude to pot and prostitution led to a relaxed attitude to euthanasia which looks like relaxing the Dutch people right out of business. It's all done quietly over there -- no fuss, no publicity; you go in to hospital with a heavy cold and you're carried out by the handles. (By 'handles,' I mean a coffin, not a ceremonial phalanx of Monteagles and Princetons.) But that's not the American way. This is a legalistic society, where grade schools can't have kids knocking a ball around without getting a gazillion dollars worth of liability insurance. I was in Price Chopper the other day and they had a little basket of Easter samples on display accompanied by a page of full print outlining the various sub-clauses of the company's 'tasting policy.' That's America. In Holland, you can taste a cookie without signing a legal waiver, and, if you get food poisoning from it, the doctor will discreetly euthanize you to avoid putting your family through the trauma of waiting six hours for the stomach pump to become available. That's not how the American cookie crumbles. Euthanasia here will be a 10-year court culminating in slow-motion public execution played out on the 24-hour cable channels.

The Republicans did the right thing here, and they won't be punished for it by the electors. As with abortion, this will be an issue where the public moves slowly but steadily toward the conservative position: Terri Schiavo's court-ordered death will not be without meaning. As to 'crack-ups,' that's only a neurotic way of saying that these days most of the intellectual debate is within the right.

If, like the Democrats, all you've got are lockstep litmus tests on race and abortion and all the rest, what's to crack up over? You just lose elections every two years, but carry on insisting, as Ted Kennedy does, that you're still the majority party. Ted's quite a large majority just by himself these days, but it's still not enough.

Roger L. Simon: Volcker Committee "Slimed" Witness

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter: "But I do know this. Mouselli had an 'identity confidentiality agreement' with the Volcker Committee while it conducted its investigation. One the eve of release of the report (March 25), the Committee asked that he waive it. After being assured that they regarded his testimony as 'reliable and credible' and would report it as such, Mouselli agreed to the waiver. Then the Committee slimed him, using ex-Baathist officials to do their dirty work. How shameful."

This book looks interesting...

Walter Isaacson reviews Stacy Schiff's 'A Great Improvisation': Our Man in Parisin the NYTBR:

After a year of playing both seductive and coy, Franklin was able to negotiate a set of treaties with France that would, so the signers declared, bond the countries in perpetuity. One French participant expressed the hope that the Americans ''would not inherit the pretensions and the greedy and bold character of their mother country, which had made itself detested.'' As a result of the arrangements made by Franklin, the French supplied most of America's guns and nearly all of its gunpowder, and had almost as many troops at the decisive battle of Yorktown as the Americans did.

Schiff scrupulously researches the details of Franklin's mission and skillfully spices up the tale with the colorful spies, stock manipulators, war profiteers and double-dealers who swarmed around him. Most delightful are the British spy Paul Wentworth, so graceful even as he is outmaneuvered by Franklin, and the flamboyant playwright and secret agent Beaumarchais (''The Barber of Seville'' and ''The Marriage of Figaro''), so eager to capitalize on the news of the American victory at Saratoga that he was injured when his carriage overturned while speeding with a banker from Franklin's home to central Paris. Least delightful is the priggish and petulant John Adams, ''a man to whom virtue and unpopularity were synonymous'' and whom Schiff merrily tries to knock from the pedestal upon which he was placed by David McCullough.

John Paul II Remembered...

From Reuters:

Another of the Pope's major achievements was to bring the Catholic Church to an historic rapprochement with Jews after 2,000 years of hostility when the Vatican formally recognized the state of Israel in 1993.

That led to the realization of a third dream in March 2000 when he made a long-desired trip to the Holy Land, visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories and calling for peace at every stop along the way.

In a momentous gesture that brought tears to many eyes, he left a personal note in the cracks of Judaism's sacred Western Wall in Jerusalem asking for forgiveness for the past sins of Christians against Jews.

Natan Sharansky's Case for Democracy

Sharansky's Case For Democracy

Michael Ledeen noted at his AEI panel on the democratic revolutionary movement last week that Richard Perle assigned those present to readNathan Sharansky's The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror in order to understand what President George W. Bush is up to.

Well, I read it, and I see why Perle likes it, because the core argument of the book is that the Jackson-Vanik amendment was responsible for the collapse of the USSR as well as the release of dissidents and refuseniks like Sharansky. Since Perle was an aide to the late Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, and was involved with the issue, it must be nice to read such a grateful testimonial.

Obviously, Sharansky's account of his suffering and the importance of the Helsinki accords and Jackson-Vanik amendment are compelling.

The problem comes in applying the lessons to the current situation. Because Sharansky notes that his mentor, Andrei Sakharov, called for changing the fear society of the USSR to a freedom society (Sharansky's terms) in order to compete with the West in a comptetitive race to the future. That is, the USSR and the USA shared the same Western enlightenment goals of human progress, scientific and technological development, and education. The prestige enjoyed by scientists and academicians in the former USSR gave Sakharov the status to make his views widely known -- Sharansky had also studied physics. Thus, the USSR and USA were ostensibly headed towards the same end, just by different means. In the case of the USA the means required freedom, in the case of the USSR the means required fear. Dissidents in the USSR shared the same goals as their American adversaries.

This is not true of some anti-American dissidents in unfree societies today.

Sharanky describes his prison life with harrowing accuracy, and what really sticks out is that Sharansky describes his fellow inmates, whether Russian Orthodox, nationalists, democrats, or Jewish refuseniks as committed to non-violence, tolerance, and other values even Voltaire would understand and support. That is, supporting Russian dissidents meant supporting allies of freedom and democracy.

When it comes to Israel, Sharansky does an excellent job of describing the hostility of the "Human Rights" NGOs to the Jewish state. And he talks at length about the importance of ending the fear societies in the Arab world, for the sake of their Arab populations. He says the West should champion oppressed Arab advocates of freedom societies. No argument there.

But there is something important missing from the book--and from Perle, Ledeen, et al. when they talk about supporting democracy.

What is to be done with those opponents of the fear societies who don't want freedom societies, who don't want progress, who don't value science, who don't believe in tolerance? What is to be done with those, who under the cover of "democracy" are actually advocating tyranny--who want to turn back the clock to the Middle Ages? That is, Islamist extremists who are poised to exploit "democracy-building" projects through the practice of "taqqiyeh"?

For example, what should Russia do about Chechnya? Sharansky does not discuss this. Yet is was the Chechen crisis that caused the collapse of the liberal democratic consensus in Russian politics. Given a choice between security and democracy, the population chose security--because "democracy" led to an Islamist extremist rogue state, governed by Sha'aria, tield to the Taliban and Bin Laden, that practiced kidnapping, drug-dealing, and oppression--and then launched attacks on neighboring Russian lands.

If an independent Chechnya turned into a disaster, eventually leading to the Second Chechen War, what might prevent a new state of Palestine from following that dismal path?

So, while convinced in principle that America should support democracy, helping those who seek to build a freedom society rather than a fear society, I think Sharansky and his advocates need to better work out some distinctions between those who are truly commited to democracy -- including the protection of minorities -- and those who might use it as a tactic toward seizing power, making matters worse than they are today.

Sharansky is well worth reading, and I'm glad Perle mentioned it. The book is well-written and thought-provoking. But it marks the beginning of a discussion, not the end.

Victor Davis Hanson: Bush Was Desperate After 9/11

Victor Hanson admits that Bush's "Democracy Revolution" agenda is a Hail-Mary pass born of fear and desperation:

Only democracy was new. And only democracy -- and its twin of open-market capitalism -- offered any hope to end the plague of tribalism, gender apartheid, human-rights abuses, religious fanaticism, and patriarchy that so flourished within such closed societies.

It was not just idealism but rather abject desperation that fueled the so-called neoconservative quest to try something new.

Hanson's confession rings true, yet reminds one that while necessity may indeed be the mother of invention, "abject desperation" does not always lead to the correct solution to any particular problem.

Not to quibble with Hanson, but neither democracy nor capitalism are new to the Middle East, and they are no guarantee against terror. For example, Lebanon had both, before it was destroyed in a calamitous civil war, a base for fanatics, extremists, terrorists, and so forth.

Inside the Pew Charitable Trusts

Martin Wooster takes on the big foundation's multi-million dollar lobbying campaign: "What is striking about this confession has less to do with campaign-finance reform--a bust anyway--than with the stealth politics of Pew and foundations like it. There are certain do-good entities, and Pew is one of them, that enjoy a charmed life: On NPR and in David Broder columns, to take a couple of leading indicators, they are treated as benign truth-tellers, so high-minded as to be beyond politics. But they are, naturally, as partisan as any 'special interest' could be."

Bush Wins Nobel Peace Prize (April Fool!)

In a surprise announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced that George Walker Bush, President of the United States, has been selected to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005.

In its announcement, the Norwegian Nobel Committee cited Bush's lifelong commitment to world peace, democracy, and human development. He was congratulated for swiftly sending two US Presidents to South Asia with Tsunami relief; overthrowing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein; increasing trade with Africa; supporting democracy in formar Soviet republics of Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan; and improving relations with the EU, Russia, and China. In addition, the Nobel Prize Committee said President Bush deserved special recognition for his work to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, noting "the American President's steadfast support for a Palestinian state living in peace with her Israeli neighbor."

President Bush will receive his award in Oslo this October from the King of Norway.

Instapundit on the Sandy Berger Scandal

Instapundit.com seems to think Clinton's former National Security Advisor is a crook who got off with a slap on the wrist: "So Berger stole, and destroyed, classified documents as part of a politically motivated coverup. Let's just be clear about that. Criminal penalties, aside, the man's career in public life should be over, and he certainly should never have access to classified documents again. Unfortunately, the penalty he'll actually receive looks rather light -- certainly lighter than most folks who stole and destroyed classified documents would undergo. That makes it all the more important that the details of his misbehavior get plenty of attention, and that they're remembered long-term."

House of Fools

Richard Perle's comment yesterday that he couldn't imagine anyone choosing slavery over freedom set me to thinking about Andrei Konchalovsky's stunning Russian dramaHouse of Fools. In the tradition of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and King of Hearts, it has a different mentality. For in this film, the mad are not sane and the sane are not mad. Rather, the mad are really mad. The sane are really sane. But the situation and the suffering they face when put into each other's worlds is the conflict that makes the movie. What they have in common is their humanity. Mad and sane, Russian and Chechen, they are all human.

House of Fools is set during the first Chechen War (1996), in a small mental hospital on the border of the breakaway republic. As fighting nears, the doctor and nurse abandon the patients--a cross-section of the Russian public including everyone from dissidents to poets to Armenians and Muslims--ostensibly to find a bus in order to evacuate the hospital. Left to their own devices, the patients run amok. Then, the Chechens arrive, occupying the hospital. Some Russian troops follow, return a dead soldier, and sell the Chechens ammunition in exchange for drugs. The Chechen and Russian commander discover that they had been comrades-in-arms in Afghanistan, so the Russian lets the Chechen keep the dollars he had promised him ("for your mullah"). A beautiful and sensitive mental patient falls in love with one of the Chechen fighters, and tries to marry him--betraying her personal icon, Canadian singer Bryan Adams, to whom she has erected a shrine in her hospital room. (Canadians are saints, apparently, and heaven is a song and dance party on a passing train).

In the end, fighting resumes, so the wedding is not completed.

Then a band of Russians takes over the hosptital, chasing out the Chechens. Blood and death everywhere. The gates of the hospital are open, the patients could escape--but they decide to stay, and wait for the doctor to return. He does, and the patients remain in their "House of Fools," as the Russian soldiers leave.

What is striking about this film is that the Russian mental patients find life in the hospital is preferable to life outside. That is, where Jack Nicholson chooses freedom in Milosz Forman's film, Yulia Vsotskaya chooses to stay in confinement rather than go into the raging war between Russians and Chechens. The Russian hospital is a true asylum, a shelter from the violence and fear of the outside world. And while the American hospital is run by sadistic nurse Ratched, Dom Durakov's Russian hospital is commanded by a kindly doctor, who really does have his patients at heart.

So, whether one chooses freedom or security, it seems to me, depends on what is happening outside. Compared to the Chechen insanity, the mental hospital, as crazy as it is, is better. Now, it is pretty clear that the hospital is a symbol of the old USSR, the doctor leaving the collapse of the old system, the insanity that followed the chaos of the "bandit captialist" period, and the Chechen War--the Chechen War. The cast of characters is just so Russian--poets, dancers, dissidents, whores. The old saying that Russia has two problems--Roads and Fools--this is about the fools that are Russia,and humankind.

I can't recommend "House of Fools" highly enough. It is the Clash of Civilizations on a truly human scale. It is tragic, comic, and profound in turns. And should be required viewing for all "democracy revolutionists..."

Bush's plunge in polls

... tied to domestic issues - The Washington Times: " Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, Gallup also found that only 35 percent of Americans approve of his handling of Social Security, compared with 56 percent who disapprove. While other surveys show greater approval of the president's Social Security stance, he generally polls worse on domestic issues than foreign."

Bottom Line: Bush is squandering his second honeymoon on an unpopular domestic agenda. If he can't deliver, it may even weaken his hand in foreign policy matters, because weakness is contagious. My 2 cents: Bush should pick a couple of battles he can win.

Victor Davis Hanson Talks to Saudi Arabia

VDH's Private Papers has an interesting interview by Idris A. Ahmed, editor of Al-watan, a Saudi newspaper, where Victor Hanson contemplates the state of the world without the United States (something some people in Saudia Arabia might be praying for?)...

Roger L. Simon: Oil-for-Food Cover-Up?

Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter suggests the Volcker report may be just that: "To my knowledge the committee has never gone to Nigeria, or anywhere in the developing world, to pursue its investigation. They have restricted themselves to the more comfortable venues of New York, Paris, London and Geneva. But the heart of Africa and the Middle East is where the information on Oil-for-Food can be found."

You Say You Want A Revolution...(II)

John Fund, in today's Wall Street Journal, calls for an uprising--against President Hillary Clinton, after she's elected in 2008...

More on Kofi Annan from Roger L. Simon

He's not happy that the media is reporting that Annan has been "exonerated:"

The NYT has a superficially stern but also superficially naive editorial on the Volcker Committee interim report this morning. They assert that the panel "largely exonerated Mr. Annan of personal corruption in the awarding of a contract to a company that employed his son." But that's not quite true. They must realize the committee found no evidence of such corruption so far. Quite a different thing. And the Times' writers (you can be sure this was a thoroughly vetted editorial) were also aware (it is briefly alluded to near the bottom of the editorial) that three years' worth of Oil-for-Food documents were shredded by Annan's deputy. You don't have to be Woodward and Bernstein to smell a rat here.

That they do not call for Kofi's resignation is also interesting. The Times itself moved quickly to change executive editors when it was found that a reporter, Jayson Blair, had fabricated stories. Yet Oil-for-Food, even at the level that it is currently understood, is far worse than a few made up tales. It concerns mass thievery, the starvation of children and the very nature of Security Council decision-making leading up to war. If this isn't a firing-offense, what is?