Hurrah for Entropy!

When the Hutton story broke and word was that it vindicated Blair and damned the BBC without bothering with the faint praise routine, I immediately thought of an English acquaintance of mine who was surely chewing the carpet with rage or doing his best Redcrosse in the Cave of Despair imitation as he heard the outcome. Not one to intrude on the secret sorrows of another, I turned to The Spectator to read the carpet chewing reaction to the Hutton report, and I must say this is floor covering mastication of the very highest order. (See also the nice Persian in the parlor.)

Fun though these were, and even though this issue has the ever amusing Mark Steyn being, yes, amusing about New Hampshire, entertaining travel articles, and a "Stupid Americans, Tony Blair is not your friend!" riff (a refrain also favoured by the aforementioned acquaintance), the finest article in this issue is, bar none, this one. Yes, New Urbanist proponents, it really is the best article in the issue. (Although as someone who is slogging through How the Dead Live for a book club, I cheered when I read the piece on Will Self.)

Things that actually matter

Yes, yes, you're all up on matters political, but what are you reading? Read any magazine, webzine, and even blog during the summer months, and everyone is in your face telling you what books they recommend, but in winter no one bothers. Why is reading only a topic of general interest only in the summer? Do people not read the giddy year around? Surely the ideal time to curl up with a book is February, when it's sleeting and there's a lovely fire in the grate and a glass of scotch to hand, and not August ,when you can spend time body surfing and poking about the outdoors and calypsoing to "Rum and Coca-Cola."

As a pitiful conformist, I must admit that I do do the summer reading voodoo that I do so well, and every year, when I go foraging for the summer vacation reading pile, I hear the voice of Professor James P. Warren thundering in my ears in his passionate summation to some random classroom diatribe: "When you go to the beach this summer instead of reading John Grisham's latest, why don't you read something decent like Henry James' The Golden Bowl?

You will doubtless intuit from this comment that Professor James P. Warren is an idealist in matters literary. I was one of the biggest dweebs in the long history of "Introduction to American Literature", and I would never consider reading The Golden Bowl at the beach. It is far too long and serious. The secret to a good beach book is brevity and frivolity. After all in Summer we're going to live forever, dancing along the ocean shore or the mountain heights, laughing about the uncle who died from the chestnut blight.

Winter, however, is the ideal time for getting to grips with those massive novels that you always swore you were going to read and never did or did read but remember imperfectly. Despite central heating and the advances of medical science, in Winter, as we slip on icy sidewalks or suffer from the flu, we become aware of our own mortality, and thus more inclined to think about the more serious matter of life. Books that center around the nature of man and the state of the soul, books that seemed downright depressing and dreary in summer become warm and comforting.

I am not alone in this opinion. I have data, anecdotal data to be sure, but it will have to do. A group of friends spontaneously formed a book club around The Brothers Karamazov this winter, and they are, to a person, madly gung ho for the book. At parties while other dance and chatter, they sneak into corners to palaver about characters and scenes and themes, whispering so that those who haven't read as far as they won't hear them. Now go ahead. Try to form a Brothers Karamozov book club in the summer. You'll find that A will be out of town for weeks, B will be too busy with summer soirees, and Caesar will be willing but somehow will never get around to going to the library or the bookstore to obtain the book. (Admittedly the first time I read The Brothers K. was during the Summer, but I was a teenager, and thus by definition peculiar. )

So break out the Cragganmore, or the Lagavulin, or even, if your tastes incline this way, a few a well chilled shots of your favorite vodka and pull out that big long novel you've always been meaning to read. You?ll find it easy going.

And if you can't think of a big long novel you've always wanted to read, well, there's always The Golden Bowl.

Dr. Potomac's Memo

Pity the poor New Hampshirites! Subjected to the quadrennial burden of exercising grossly disproportionate influence of dubious quality on the American political system. I can see as how they -- and we -- would need a break. Anyone else in favor of making, say, Texas the first-in-the-nation primary?

Dr. Potomac reverts to his post following the Iowa Caucus: Senator John F. Kerry is the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination for President. (As an aside, do you think the Democrats are flocking to Kerry in part because it will allow them to chant, "All the Way With JFK!" thus committing Camelot in their hearts?) Pollsters are reporting significant surges for Kerry in most of the February 3 primary states although I should think South Carolina remains a bit of a hurdle for him. The Bush campaign now needs to focus like a laser-beam on Senator Kerry's record and get ready to rumble.

The most significant political problem Kerry faces is how to defeat Dr. Dean in such a way that he is able to keep his vanquished foe in the party and tap the energy of the Deaniacs. Killing him softly is the challenge and it won't be an easy one. Dean's spokesmen are promising to "live off roots and berries" if need be to continue the campaign. This is all very shades of Gary Hart in 1984 who pursued poor old Fritz Mondale all the way to the convention.

Those truly committed to the re-election of President Bush ought to consider making a contribution to the Dean campaign and signing up to hand out literature. Our motto: "Let's you and him fight!"

Well, that's over. Kerry won by considerably more votes than I thought he would; I was thinking a 5-8 point margin. But on they go, leaving us here in NH alone for a few months.

Moving on. Interesting UPI story about Iraqi Oil Ministry documents linking oil money to politicians and businesses in Europe and the Arab world. I am shocked! Shocked that prominent French pols were taking Iraqi bribes! You mean that the French position against the war was not really about morality?

I must read this again and think it over: a spirited defense of Oliver Cromwell as a conservative.

Memo from Dr. Potomac

Well, a fine kettle of fish seems to have been set to a boil in New Hampshire. The ARG tracking poll has Dr. Dean gaining 5 points overnight with a surge among older women who think Dean has been treated unfairly. This cuts Kerry's lead by almost one-third. If true, this amounts to a stampede toward Dean. Oh, to have some exit poll data!

Dr. Potomac notes the new Zogby tracking poll for the New Hampshire primary that has Dean surging to within three points of Kerry. Needless to say, even a close second for Dr. Dean would once again scramble the race for the Democratic nomination setting up a fight between a well-financed but wounded Dean and underfinanced, wounded Kerry. It is too much to hope for but wowza.

Zogby is known for being prescient (as in calling the 1994 GOP takeover of the House and Senate) and also for getting things badly wrong. For instance, the Sunday before the 1998 Senate election in New York, the Zogby tracking poll showed incumbent Al D'Amato closing rapidly on Chuck Schumer in a stunning reversal of fortune. The New York Post ran a screamer (when don't they, you ask?) AL STORMS BACK announcing the poll results and had Republicans, including Dr. Potomac, dancing in the aisles. Unfortunately, the poll was either seriously flawed or recorded a dead-cat bounce with Schumer rolling to a solid victory.

It is worth noting at this point that the Zogby poll is an outlier: USA Today and ARG are both out this morning with polls that show Dean hovering in the high teens/low 20s. ARG's three-day trend line shows only that Dr. Dean has staunched the hemorrhaging -- not even a dead-cat bounce there. In other words, the balance of the polling evidence is that the Iowa Scream is still dead-weight around Dean's neck. This view is reinforced by the fact that Kerry has not shown the least concern about Dean in the past few days, breaking his positive messages only to dope slap Wes Clark for questioning his military credentials.

I am afraid this means that Albert's bet with dear old dad remains in jeopardy.

This looks like a worthwhile publication: The Electric Review, a self-described high Tory review of politics, art and literature. We approve most heartily. I wish I had found this earlier, in fact. Here is a very interesting 2003 article on why Oliver Cromwell is loved by some conservatives. The author writes: The truth, whatever one thinks of it, is that Cromwell’s reign was nothing but an inglorious little coup d’etat, making no serious constitutional points and leaving little in its wake other than many thousands of cripples, a legacy of economic damage and a salutory if expensive horror of civil war. His decision to kill King Charles was as much an act of desperation as it was one of pique. The tribunal in front of which the King was tried had no legitimate authority, having been cobbled together out of stray members of the Rump Parliament and assorted hangers-on. And even if it had been better chosen, as the Earl of Northumberland rightly argued at the time, how on earth could a sovereign commit treason, when treason was defined as action taken against the sovereign? Charles’s subsequent trial was nothing but an early essay in that sad convention, the political show-trial, and his execution simply an assassination played out with all the tawdry trappings of bogus legality. Or to put it another way, to approve of Cromwell’s role in the killing of Charles I is to approve, tout court, of the arbitrary irruption of military force into normal political life. Whatever else this might be, it is not exactly redolent of Conservative principles. Neither were Cromwell’s assaults on an established and popular religion, nor his limited and half-hearted gestures at social levelling.

Here, here.

In view of the current political focus on the Doc's state, not to mention the Doc's near-obsession with the Old Man of the Mountain, I thought it was only sensible to direct your attention to this interesting article in the web journal of early American History, Common-Place.

Among other things, author Karen Haltunnen places the Old Man neatly within the cultural history of the 19th century, observing that the recently departed rock formation was a classic lusus naturae.

Yes, that's what I said, lusus naturae.

Making the rounds

A lovely article by Theodore Dalrymple explaining why he is leaving the UK to settle in France.

I'd say I'm surprised, but of course I am not. A hard left Brit pol named Jenny Tonge mused that if she were Palestinian, she'd consider being a suicide bomber (sympathy for the oppressed, don't you know). Apparently being killed by these psychopaths does not count as oppression as well, just getting in the way of a just cause. Thankfully, the Liberal Democrats saw this for the insanity it was and asked her to step down.

I don't quite know why this strikes me (perhaps I am hungry), but here is how you make bacon. Thanks to An Englishman's Castle for this tip.

Kofi Annan on the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Whodathunkit?

Dr. Potomac's Memo

While not retracting what I said about the "long race" theory, there has been some interesting conjecture today on the impact of the Democratic Party's proportional representation rules regarding delegate selection. The column, by Robert Moran of the GOP polling group Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, argued that unlike the GOP, which has winner-take-all primaries, Democratic caucuses and primaries divide up delegates according to the percentage of votes each candidate receives. Ergo, if Dean, Edwards and Clark stay in for a prolonged period with each picking up a chunk of the vote in each state, together they could deny Kerry the majority he needs for nomination. I remain skeptical in part because I think the money will dry up for some (Edwards and Clark) and votes for others (Dean) but the ill-conceived Democratic rules -- the likes of which are the bane of parliamentary democracies across Europe -- appear to make this outcome technically possible. Frankly, it sounds like the fevered dream of every political junkie (including me): a brokered convention -- Chicago 1968 on steroids. But who am I to question the wisdom of a highly paid political professional?

Kerry's surge naturally makes Republicans, who had gotten used to dreaming of a Dean nomination, a little nervous. Kerry is, after all, within the 40 yard lines of American politics. He gets Al Gore's electoral base without too much trouble and takes a couple close ones the Bush team was eyeing (like Minnesota) out of play. However, assuming the electoral map reverts to form in November and both parties get all the states they got last time around, Bush still wins and by a wider margin than in 2000 due just to population shifts in the last census. It is difficult to see how Kerry, who in the final analysis is a Massachusetts Democrat, breaks into the South, the Border states or the Mountain West -- with or without Edwards as his running mate. And that assumes that Bush doesn't steal Iowa, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Oregon all of which he lost by a whisker last time around.

Notes from NH II

I came home too late last night after a lovely dinner out at the Inn, so no blogging. That may be a blessing because little has happened. Quite odd really. With all the attention the NH Primary is getting, for those of us living in the state (but in the rural areas) life is little changed.

Edwards signs are appearing more often, as are Kerry. But Dean's supporters have smothered the state with signs in recent days. Last night's debate was a real sleeper. Besides a few blips (Sharpton lecturing on monetary policy, Clark saying Michael Moore can say whatever he wants, Kucinich wandering around a thought on energy policy, Lieberman heroically defending his pro-Iraq record), nothing happened. My students, however, told me that outside it was quite a scene. All the usual suspects, sign-holders, and crazies swamped campus, and fights broke out between the camps. Two people were arrested.

Return of the Uber-Wasp

Just a few days ago I was explaining to a British friend visiting from the UK that, really, the elite East Coast establishment was dead and gone with the Mid-Atlantic accent.

Jonathan Last at the Weekly Standard provides an anecdote from the Kerry Campaign that may force me to substantially revise that opinion:

Earlier today in Nashua, John Kerry tested a populist stance, saying, "This election is not just about which candidate wins, but about whether we will win the fight to put opportunity and security in the hands of the many and not the few." Tonight he's at The Philips Exeter Academy in an auditorium with rich crimson carpeting, ornate moldings and pediments, dozens of formal portraits in big, gilded frames, and 1,500 adoring fans.

Founded in 1781, Exeter is the most prestigious boarding school in America and one of the most expensive, too--a year at Exeter costs more than a year at most private universities. In other words, tonight John Kerry is among "the few." He looks comfortable.

As he should. Kerry begins by reminding the audience that, while his father and daughter went to Andover, and he's a St. Paul's man himself, his wife and chief of staff are both Philips graduates, so really, everyone here is on the same side. He laughs. The audience laughs with him.

Gazing down from their portraits, Harlan Page ("The Seventh Principal of The Philips Exeter Academy, 1895 - 1913") and Sanford Sidney Smith ("President of the Board of Trustees, 1903 - 1920") must surely be comforted.

Kerry's populist appeal should, perhaps, be put on hold.

BBC Bias

Compare headlines:

Boston Globe: "President firm on Iraq, terror, urges more action on economy"

Boston Herald: "President lays the groundwork for his re-election"

Manchester Union Leader: "Bush speech sets reelection themes"

Nashua Telegraph: "Bush Looks to Stay Course"

Concord Monitor: "President defends war, tax cuts"

Washington Post: "Bush Defends Iraq War, Economic Policy"

These are a mix of local and national newspapers, of liberal and conservative editorial policies. Now look at today's BBC lead headline:

BBC: "Democrats Slam 'Go-it-alone' Bush"

They highlight the Democratic response, not the SOTU. And you wonder why so many in the UK and US think the BBC (with a pile of public money) is in the advocacy business rather than news reporting.

Notes from NH

It is Wednesday evening, I am sipping on a martini, and thinking over what I have seen today, now only six days from the New Hampshire primary. Not much. Fox News has taken over the college where I teach and made it their "NH Primary Headquarters," which makes for interesting media celebrity watching. I think I saw Major Garrett from Fox today, but I am not sure; I know I recognize his face. Tomorrow night, Fox is hosting the final candidate debate at the college, so all the bigwigs will be around and about.

The only thing I have noticed changing in recent days are (how dull) the political signs studding every roadside. For months, the blue and yellow Dean signs have dominated, so long in fact that many are looking ratty and wilting. In the last few days, however, fresh ones have popped up. Kerry has surprisingly little "signage" outside a half-dozen massive 4 by 5 billboard signs in towns between Manchester and Keene (the one in my town has been vandalized -- one of the r's has been ripped off, so now it says "Ker_y"). Today, however, a handful of new Kerry signs (bright red and white ones, far different from his usual dull blue) appeared in Goffstown, NH reading "Debating Dean? Vote Kerry." The red and blue Clark signs are very common, an easy second place behind Dean. Lieberman and Kuchinich are there as well, with more signs than Kerry I would bet. Edwards signs are nearly non-existent. As I recall, I have seen only two between Keene and Manchester. That may change. In fact, there are as many Bush-Cheney signs as Edwards, although the Bush sign in Dublin, NH has been vandalized with the word "sucks" beneath the President's name. Real classy.

Almost drove off the road the other day in Peterborough, NH: I was behind a Volvo station wagon ... with a Bush bumper sticker. A first for me. They usually are plastered with "Arms are for hugging" and "Hate is not a family value." Then again, those usually have Vermont license plates. This one had a NH plate. God bless.

No sign of the candidates yet. They have stuck to the cities: Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Portsmouth, Keene.

I'll keep my eyes open and report everyday.

Dr. Potomac's Memo

Tuesday night showed us yet another way to lose a major party presidential nomination. In 1972, Ed Muskie took himself out of the race by crying in front of the Manchester Union-Leader headquarters which had unjustly attacked the candidate's wife. In 1988, Bob Dole lost the New Hampshire primary after snarling, "Stop lying about my record," in complaint of George H. W. Bush's anti-tax attack ads. This year it was Dr. Dean's post-caucus weird-out. At the moment the spotlight was burning the hotest, Dean brought his mental health into question with a not-so-presidential tantrum that revealed adangerously imbalanced inner-child. "Buyer's remorse" doesn't begin to describe how Democrats from Al "Hands of Stone" Gore to the union leadership of SEIU and AFSCME to Dean's starry-eyed precinct workers must feel.

Albert has suggest that Dean survives to fight another day. Others, like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson are arguing for a long race now that Dean has been dethroned. I beg to differ. John Kerry is 7/8ths of the way up the greasy poll now. The Washington Post reported this morning that Kerry enjoys a 70 percent favorable rating in New Hampshire which offers a lot of room for mind-changing among electibility-minded Democrats previously smitten by Dean. So, let's give Kerry a win in New Hampshire that effectively knocks Dean out of the race and exposes Wes Clark for the empty uniform he is. The long-race theory then holds that Kerry has "nowhere to go" because he mortgaged himself, literally, to win Iowa. This ignores the fact that once critical mass is reached (in Fred Barne's phrase) momentum trumps organization and a campaign begin to live off the land. Think Sherman's March to the Sea. Everyone, except Kerry, is off balance trying to absorb the abrupt change in terrain. Kerry, on the other hand, is vote scooping in a Democratic electorate that now has a potential nominee who has shown he can take a punch and is broadly acceptable to the country. If the Democrats ever needed a reason to love the Iowa flatlanders, this is it. Residual common sense has rescued them from the fate of nominating a rage-monkey for president.

The Kerry surge calls for some rather quick recalibration on the part of the Bush team. We now are up against a prize fighter instead of flaky weirdo. Kerry voted for the war and for the Iraq reconstruction package which, along with his Vietnam service, goes a long way toward innoculating him agains the charge of being soft on national security. As a liberal Democrat, he will have boatloads of proposals for government fine-tuning the economy and improving health care and education. Those are the pluses. The minuses are, well, that he is a U.S. Senator with thousands of votes to be scrutinized, misrepresented and exploited, and a rather wooden speaking style ("Sad-tree," as Albert's father describes him.) The infamous return of his Congressional Medal of Honor and dissembling over that event will be up for re-examination. The bottom line, however, is that President Bush must now run on his own accomplishments rather than against Dean's obvious loopiness. That will be a much tougher race to make.

I was going to do a bit of a shout out for the Eve of St. Agnes but as Enoch Soames has beat me to it, I'll simply send you along to his page. I found Keats' little letter quite amusing, as he can be a bit of a sugarplum himself, especially when compared to the more mature charms of Messrs. Donne and Herbert, but nonetheless what a sugarplum he was.

If you're looking for more to read on this bitter chill evening, after the SOTU, and in light of the musings below on the anti-American English, I happily refer you to an Irish writer's musings upon the nature of Americans (and also the English), namely Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost.

As the good Doctor has expressed on many occasions his fondness for cocktails, perhaps he would care to make Infusion his signature scent. As for me, I'm going to stick with Channel No. 5.

Morning After

Wow, was that ever a good game...I mean primary. Caucus.

I'm still sticking with my Grand Narrative of Election 2004. Sure, Howard has shown that he is as crazy as a bedbug with that "concession" or "victory" speech. But Howard has staying power. Dr. Potomac will no doubt be soon sending me a memo on how things will shake out. I anticipate that there will be much discussion of Michigan.

We now rely upon the Doc to give us the view from the icy ground of New Hampshire. Surely he can take time from his busy schedule to attend at least one Clark rally...

Oh, go ahead Doc, poor salt in our wounds.

It was a dead boring game, as well. But it is simply further confirmation that God has a wonderful plan for Philadelphia, which involves a hell of a lot of chastisement. What, however, we have done to deserve becoming the Buffalo Bill's of the 21st century, I can't imagine.

As for the other great athletic contest, the Democratic Primary, I don't care what Andrew Sullivan is saying: Dean is going to win the nomination. I have to nail my colours to the mast because I just bet the pater familias a princely sum to that effect.

Remember that a guy by the name of Clinton lost Iowa, and then New Hampshire...and still won, back when pundits like to smugly opine that no man had ever won the presidency without winning New Hampshire. Yah, well, like most of the statistics they fill time with during a football game, that meant: absolutely nothing.

What will happen is a great big media feeding frenzy, great frothing of water, much churning of blood, talk of John Edwards' surge, Wes Clark's lunacy, John Kerrey's stoic determination, blah, blah, blah...and then Howard Dean will still have the nomination.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

What a glorious morning, eh? For Patriots fans that is. For Eagles fans, well, not so good. Two trips to the Super Bowl in three years, three trips in eight years. One of the four best defenses ever, and if they win in two weeks (making it 15 games in a row) they'll be regarded as one of the best NFL teams ever.

On another note, I've never been one to appreciate the need or appeal of motivational speakers or sayings. Some people need it, I suppose, but I've never needed someone to explain to me that work gets you closer to goals, that you need goals, that failure is necessary, etc. Not only are those things trite, they seem completely obvious and rather silly to point out. Yet everywhere there are little "buck-up, you-can-do-it" signs, quotes, and "human interest" stories (which annoy the hell out of me -- are there such things as stories that are not of "human interest?"). Well, Louis Bayard says it all for me in the Post. They are founded on the faith that our dreary existences can, with a well-timed nudge, be made worthy of even the most rigorous high-school-reunion inspection. But ask yourself. Is your life richer for Scandinavian sayings and the truisms of steel magnates or the tossed-off crumbs of Victorian essayists? Are we now a better people? Why haven't all the millions of desk calendars and motivational brochures and Successories posters eliminated poverty, racism, war, Paris Hilton? Why isn't each and every one of us leaving big honking footprints in the sands of time?

Could it be that, despite all the unsolicited inspiration we're getting from every side, some fundamental part of us remains . . . unimprovable?

Perhaps, instead of the MQs (motivational quotes, as Bayard calls them) we should have DORQs (Dose of Reality quotes) from the Book of Ecclesiastes posted on doors and desks:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

Would people stop striving and mope, or just understand the context of striving and battle on?

Chronicles of Wretched Excess, con't.

An incredible story in the Monday, January 5 Washington Post. I should have linked to it long before. It's a parody, I think, except it's written as a straight news story.

It's titled "Dream Homes Come with Rural Wake-Up Call: Lured by Large Va. Lots, Many Find Big Challenges." If you grew up in the country, even on a hobby farm, it's a hilarious, hilarious piece. And kind of sickening, too.

As best as I can make out, certain suburbanites are a little unhinged when they get out to the depths of Loudoun County. They discover that it's dark, for one thing. And there are lots of, you know, strange noises. It's hard to feel secure when it's dark and strangely noisy, especially when it costs so much money to install a security system for an 8,000 square foot house with a wraparound deck and fifty windows. The golf game suffers, because the landscapers for $20,000 left you eight acres of lawn, and it takes a while to mow. And those lawns just don't look right; they're all...crooked.

Really, you cannot make this stuff up. America! What a wonderful country! The human comedy never stops!

Note the picture, btw, of the spacious home of one of these uneasy denizens of the countryside. It's the same kind of hideous crap that they build in the inner suburbs. Sigh. I guess it was too much to expect that developers or their clients would get taste during their move to the outback. They could by checking out this splendid site, that of an architect who believes in beauty more than he does in square feet.

We should offer some sort of prize for the person that can think of the best name for these ten acre estates. David Brooks has come up with Bobo's for the Charlottesville or urban hipsters, Sprinkler City for the vast exurbs, and Patio Man for the conservative denizen of Sprinkler City. Who are these people? Rural Retreaters, perhaps? Naw, there's got to be something better than that...

Well, I am not sure that the cool, reflective prose of Lord S. in 1902 is any great comfort to me. But I will concede the point that, like most English and continental intellectuals, he was ignorant of America.

LeCarre is not such a cut and dried lefty. I strongly suspect (having read all of his stuff) that he started out a British conservative anti-American. Certainly most of his characters conform perfectly to that mold, with a worldview in which Americans are boorish vulgarians rather than enemies of the proletariat and hindrances to world revolution. I think he shows how chaps of this type (like the recently deceased Auberon Waugh) can make common ground with lefties that they used to despise.

While Le Carre and Waugh were "anti-American," let's be sure and specify their type. The former is of the left-wing variety, anti-colonial, anti-imperial, "no blood for oil" lunacy; the latter is of the right-wing variety, aristocratic, anti-democratic, even reactionary. One is driven by ideological hatred of the great anti-socialist power, the other by fear of excessive democracy and dumbed-down rule of the mob. There is a qualitative difference here.

And let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lord Salisbury was pro-Confederate in the Civil War based on fears of another 1848. His biographer David Steele writes: He was prey, literally, to contemporary nightmares about the possibility of new and more terrible upheavals in a Europe which had not forgotten the June Days of 1848 in Paris. He saw aristocracy in the Old South (as did Gladstone) and preferred that to the raucus democracy of the victorious North, the example of which would cause the real political struggle of our age ... between classes who have property and the classes who have none. A reasonable fear considering European history over the next 100 years, but one based on a misunderstanding of the nature of both North and South.

He also saw in America an imperial competitor, again a perfectly reasonable assumption. In later years, he regretted that the British did not intervene in the Civil War because it could have split the US into two parts, and cut American power and aspirations down to manageable proportions. He wrote in 1902, It is very sad but I am afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us ... Two such chances are not given to a nation in the course of its career. Hardly the ravings of a loony anti-American zealot.

In short, I think we can learn a lot and still enjoy the company of Waugh, Salisbury, Eliot, and others. Le Carre and his ilk, however, do not darken my door.

And while I do love Waugh, Nathaniel Hawthorne has always been my "literary hero." You should know that.

Hating Yanks

Here's a taut little essay by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The New York Times on "anti-americanism" entitled "Smiley's (Anti-American) People." It's prompted by the recent release of a John LeCarre novel which is more of vitriolic screed than fiction. Some rather naive reviewers, like the one in this Sunday's Washington Post Book World, have expressed a rather touching shock at the level of LeCarre's anger at the United States post-9/11. They obviously think that since he writes about spies, he must be some sort of hawk. And just as obviously they haven't read much of his stuff, which as Wheatcroft observes is "a writer who has enjoyed much success in America despite an aversion to American power dating from his earliest books, who has no very subtle political understanding, but who all too accurately voices the bitterness of national impotence and decline." Just read the first couple of pages of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy if you doubt this.

As Wheatcroft makes clear, this attitude is a very strong current in British conservatism. Lord Salisbury, enshrined in our links section in the form of Salisbury Review genuinely hated the United States, and remained a supporter of the Confederacy long after its destruction. Dr. Curmudgeon's literary hero, Evelyn Waugh, is a shining example of this kind of thick stupidity. Writing to Graham Greene, he made the astonishing claim that "Of course, the Americans are cowards. They are almost all the descendants of wretches who deserted their legitimate monarchs for fear of military service."

Oh, buh-ruh-thaaah.

As Wheatcroft notes, for decades "The Americans were supposed to take this in good humor: it is poignant that the greatest of presidents was assassinated while watching an English comedy called 'Our American Cousin,' which mocked the former colonials for their uncouth ways."

After four years in England, I think my humor ran dry. They are going to have to get used to their jokes being treated with a little less respect from this Yank.

Support Dr. Curmudgeon & Co.

Some blogs have fund-drives. Here at Dr. Curmudgeon & Co. we frown skeptically on such PBS imports. We prefer to support ourselves by selling things.

So why not buy this splendid new monograph, Capitalism, Politics and Railroads in Jacksonian New England? It's really much more exciting than it sounds. The author, who has a rather curmudgeonly sensibility, takes on grand shibboleths of American history. For example (as the blurb for the book puts it):

The great consensus between Jacksonians and Whigs was capitalism. No one opposed markets.

The antebellum conflict was not about whether America should be a market society, but what shape those markets should take; not about whether government should have power over private rights, but to what extent states could impose on private citizens.

Believe me, you won't find that in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s worldview of Jacksonian America.

Buy the book at Amazon, and keep this blog in business.

And if it is charitable giving you're interested in, you might consider dropping a couple of grand into the pot at Africa Fighting Malaria. At the very least you should inform yourself on the greatest public health threat in the world.

Dean on Harding

I am always pleased to see books or articles on Warren G. Harding with lines like, Dean makes a convincing case that Harding has gotten a bum rap - he was not the best President, but surely not the worst. There is breathing room here, a long overdue concession to poor old Warren.

Dean gives Harding some credit: Bureau of the Budget (which he scoffs at, but it was a major and influential administrative reform), Washington Naval Conference, the little-known Birmingham civil rights speech of 1921 (Harding was the only president to give such a speech between Lincoln and Kennedy, and was a sharp departure from Wilson).

There should be more, particularly in economics. Harding's choice of Andrew Mellon for Treasury secretary was brilliant. Harding and Mellon cut taxes and spending, set the stage for the genuine economic recovery of the 20s, and were inspirational examples to later supply-siders in the Reagan years. At one point in that decade Mellon was hailed as the greatest Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton.

So, I'll take what I can get. I blogged a bit on Harding last spring and summer, and I am not sure I'll add more now. Dean does seem to offer some hope.

The candidates we deserve

It is -11 outside right now. We let the dog out to do his business, and he stopped walking after a few minutes and alternated lifting up his front paws because of the pain caused by the cold ground. The other day, a Boston classical music radio host (I hesitate to call him a "dj") said that since hot summer days are called "scorchers," can we call days with biting winter winds "biters?" If so, today is a major biter.

Yesterday I linked with a Boston Globe article noting the line of obsequious musicians hanging to the Democratic presidential candidates. Note how the candidates all profess a love of pop, country, and rock-n-roll music, some of that love politically motivated to show "the common touch." A rather odd cultural logic that says if the voters have lousy taste, I will too. Anything to get a vote.

I wonder what would be the reaction if a presidential candidate, when asked, said that Johann Sebastian Bach was his favorite. Instead of the loud, thumping beats of 70s rock at his rallies, "Orchestra Suite No. 2 in B minor" was piped into the hall, calling attention to supporters that the candidate has arrived. Instead of blowing a sax onstage, perhaps amateur guest-conducting the BSO.

And wouldn't we fall off our chairs if when asked the requisite question, "who is your favorite philosopher?" this candidate said Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, or Hume? Yes, I am greatly influenced by Hume's ideas that knowledge is primarily based on experience and that a society's customs and habits are the accrument of that experience. Common sense, observation, and experience in daily life tell us that excessive taxes and regulation smother entrepreneurial drive, that weakness abroad leads to greater terrorism and disorder, that a stupid, vapid culture will lead to a stupid, vapid citizenry. Common sense and past experience should be our guide in all things and we should always take the "long-view," both in understanding how we got here and in how our decisions today will affect those many years from now. The debate would move on, and the next candidate would say Christ was his favorite philosopher because he taught us to love and tolerate everything, everywhere, at all times, except intolerance and anti-bike path Episcopalian pastors.

Wouldn't the sheer novelty of it, the heroism of it, the bold counter-cultural implications, be alluring? How odd that to love Bach and Hume (or know who they are -- or how their names are spelled) is counter-cultural and unorthodox today.

Undoubtedly the press would laugh and say the Bach-Hume candidate was a snob, an aspiring aristocrat, withdrawn from the concerns and tastes of the average voter. To which I reply, good.

A new book on Warren G. Harding has appeared, written by none other than John Dean...yes, that John Dean.

Here's a review.

Announcing a new book on Harding in the presence of the Doc, Stalwart Supporter of Marion, Ohio's Favorite Son, is of course like chumming the water after you've seen a Great White Shark. I look forward to the Doc's attack.

A whole hoard of singers are backing the Democratic motley crew. Where are the "Musicians for Bush?"

Schoolchildren became upset when a royal shooting party blasted away at pheasants during their recess. Apparently several of the wee folk witnessed the scene and teachers complained. I was wondering, was this a problem in 1610 with James I, or perhaps 1908 with Edward VII, with shooting parties killing (and likely later eating) their "catch?"

A system of rewards

I should also note, before I forget, that historian Robert Remini in the session that the Doc and I attended had a thoughtful and very proper attitude towards self-reward. He was urging the audience of historians to become better writers, and said he realized early on that he was going to have to write nine pages a day, no matter how bad it might be. "If I wrote my nine pages," he said, "I got a martini. No nine pages, no martini. These days," he said, "I get my martini whether I've done the nine pages or not."

Historical prose could greatly improve if this simple advice were to be followed. We would be a merrier, happier band of compadres, and have loose elbows from all the shaking. And our image would be greatly improved. We no longer be seen as academic drudges, but as vigorous cosmopolitans of the word processor and the database (technological changes being what they are).

It's about time!

Lileks has returned.

And there was much rejoicing...

Yes indeed, back in New Hampshire after a few days of socializing in my old haunts. Unfortunately for my compatriot who joined me at the "Biography and History" session, he may have missed the most interesting part.

During the audience Q&A session, one historian began asking the panel about Robert Dallek's recent book on President Kennedy, and mentioned in passing Christopher Hitchens' comments on the same. Joseph Ellis, a distinguished American colonial historian (recently infamous for other less savory reasons), glibly and smilingly replied, "Christopher Hitchens is a son of a bitch ... but he's an intelligent son of a bitch." Some in the audience laughed. A bit later he issued a rather sheepish apology.

C-SPAN was there. You'll see it.

Dr. Potomac's Memo: Special Post-Christmas Double-Bumper Edition


Is W Better than Reagan?
Shortly after 9/11, I took note as a whisper went up among Bush Administration political appointees that described the Boss as "better than Reagan." Better than the Gipper? On what basis could one possibly compare President Misunderestimated with the Great Communicator?

So, for the past several weeks, I have treated myself to a careful reading of Lou Cannon's, President Reagan: the Role of a Lifetime. (For the gentle readers not familiar with Cannon, he is a reporter who followed Reagan's career from his early campaign for governor of California, his presidential bids in 1968 and 1976 through his presidential terms.) It turns out that all W's men just might be right, and I'll tell you why.

Reagan's great strengths - his optimism, his ability to connect with the public, his ideological clarity, especially concerning the role of government and the communist threat -- are universally acknowledged, even by long-time adversaries. The core of these strengths is that, in Cannon's phrase, Reagan "carried American within him." In his beliefs, life and work, Reagan literally embodied all that Americans believe is good about their country. This foundation gave him the ability to firmly and consistently call for a limited government that fulfilled its primary mission to protect the lives and freedoms of its citizens.

W. has clearly absorbed the ideological lessons of the Reagan era: tax cuts to prime the economy and limit the expansion of government; a strong national defense deployed to protect American lives and interests. Reagan and W., like the hedgehog, know the big things that must be done to keep American strong and free.

So, what makes W. better? A single word, I think, that W. would have meditated on extensively at Harvard Business School: management. Lou Cannon's Reagan is a man extremely ill at ease with management. He refused to adjudicate stark policy disagreements between his senior advisors. Rather than choose between the Weinberger and Schultz views of the world, Reagan, tried to find a compromise between them leading to debacles like Lebanon.

We haven't seen anything like that under W's leadership. State and Defense snipe, certainly, but in the final analysis, W. lines up with the Rumsfeld view of the world and Powell falls in line. Reliable sources tell me this President spends an extraordinary amount of time on personnel decisions precisely because he recognizes that his choices of senior officials are his best, and at times only, opportunity to shape the policy of his Administration. Finally, W. insists at all times on results. The Government Performance and Accountability Act of the Clinton Administration is getting a real work-out in the Bush Administration. A bureaucracy used to justifying itself by process alone is being forced to produce tangible, measurable and verifiable results. Frankly, it is difficult conceiving of the Gipper, who in his heart despised government, caring much about either its inputs or its products. W. has decided that if Americans are going to pay this much for government they are jolly well going to get something in return.


The Promise of Dean
I am reaching a Zen-like state of serenity about next year's elections and it is more than just the sizzling economy, galloping stock market, and photos of Saddam Hussein's dental check ups. No, the really great news is the sure eye and steady aim Dr. Dean has demonstrated in blasting way half the toes on both feet.

This week the country has been treated to an exposition on religion a la Dean. On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that Dean would be speaking more about his religious faith. He explained, in those raspy, Deanian tones that are condescending even, one suspects, when he reads aloud from the backs of soup cans, that he would be descending from the Olympian heights of New England to share his religious views with the nation, and especially the rubes of the South. (One could almost hear the low moan rise across Dixie, "Oh, GAWD, here he comes again.") Not content to leave bad enough alone, on Wednesday, the Governor averred as how these very same religious beliefs, about which he has such strong, quiet, manly feelings, have led him to support civil unions for gays. Hmmm.

It requires examination to determine how the political strategy of Wednesday Dean disembowels that of Sunday Dean. Sunday Dean was, apparently, trying to reposition himself among whatever white evangelicals are still voting in the South Carolina Democratic primary. He may also have been looking down the road to November when he would need a slice of the "soft" evangelicals of the Midwest - the ones who voted for Clinton, and you know who you are - to carry, say, Missouri.

Now, let us suspend our disbelief momentarily and assume for the moment that a sustained, year-long effort by Dean to persuade evangelicals of his deep religious convictions would dull the senses of enough of the white evangelical vote to make him competitive in the border states and the Midwest. Governor Flub-a-Dub eviscerated his own strategy by revealing to those evangelicals on Wednesday a theology flexible enough to sanction homosexual relationships ("From a religious point of view," says Dean, "if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people"). The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that Dean shares the Washington Post's view that evangelicals are "poorly educated and easily led." You can be sure these voters will return the compliment when the opportunity arises.

As for me, it is heaven, nirvana, really, to see to see cultural arrogance, religious ignorance and an astonishing absence of self-discipline creating such a political washout for Democrats. Dean is poised, if that is the word, to bring on an electoral college disaster for his party and hand over a number of Senate seats in the process. The election can't come too soon.

Live from the AHA

Here's a good article from Sunday's Washington Post on the goings-on at the American Historical Association's annual meeting, where the Doc and I have been busy boozing and schmoozing, as one is wont to do at such professional meetings. Yesterday I dragged him out of the bar and to an actual session (pros like him disdain going to a session to hear colleagues speak; they prefer to drink, or voraciously wander the Book Fair), this one on "Biography and History". It was quite a line-up they had doing the talking-head routine. The Doc's idol Robert Remini was there, and so was my idol John Lukacs. After Lukacs got done speaking for 15 minutes in his light Hungarian accent, the Doc turned to me and said, "I don't care what he said, I'm completely hypnotized."

More on the AHA when the Doc and I get back to our regular blogging stations...

Why do I think Mark Steyn is a demi-god?

It's not just because he's a straight man who knows his musicals. He also such a smooth writer, like a nice neat shot of a quality single barrel bourbon.

So go sip his latest in the Daily Telegraph. "Go ahead, burglars, make my day." (Jan. 6, 2004.) is well worth the registration hassle.

The Lost Cause, Again

The Doc is doubtless even now descending from his ice-encrusted New Hampshire eyrie, part of his progress to the sunny plains of the South, where he will eventually arrive at Washington, DC to sample the delights of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association.

I can tell you though, as I am now in those sunny plains myself here in the Athens of Virginia, that it is pretty darn cold here as well. And I am not all that enthusiastic about the AHA, though it will be nice to see the Doc and other compadres. It will mean that the entire company of Dr. Curmudgeon will be gathered together in DC...we will have to have Dr. Potomac foot the bill at some suitable restaurant.

In light of the AHA meeting, I can promise you a profusion of historical blogging, and here's the first of several.

In the last week or so, there has been a magnificent barrage of essays dealing with the "Lost Cause" myth of the Confederacy. The most substantial of these was by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard. Entitled "When Lincoln Came to Richmond: Dispatches from an unlikely culture war" it is a hilarious and pointed piece of reportage on the controversies surrounding the placement of a statue commemorating Lincoln's visit to Richmond shortly after its capture by the Union Army.

Sponsored by the historical memorabilia equivalent of the Franklin Mint, the "United States Historical Society", the statue was resolutely opposed by the Army of Northern Virginia Chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. They enlisted the help of a libertarian economist named Thomas DiLorenzo, author of a book entitled The Real Lincoln which like most books with "Real" in the title has a very loose affiliation with reality.

Ferguson's essay (and do read the whole, lengthy thing) culminates with a depiction of the Sons of Confederate Veterans baying for the blood of the American Caesar, and a "professional" conference uptown at the Virginia Historical Society that covered Lincoln's legacy. He describes the panel thusly:

Harold Holzer, a specialist in Lincolniana from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, used to write speeches for Mario Cuomo. William Lee Miller, an ethics professor from the University of Virginia, was a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and later worked for Lyndon Johnson. The third panelist, Ronald C. White, is dean of the San Francisco Theological Seminary, which is a self-explanatory job title.

It's no surprise, then, that the Lincoln who emerged from their discussion was a cross between Adlai Stevenson and Mario Cuomo, if both had gone to San Francisco Theological Seminary.

Going back downtown to watch the unveiling of the statue, he runs into one of the unreconstructed Virginians:

I found Leak in the line of protesters along the driveway, dressed festively in a top hat and a cutaway morning coat over his polo shirt and khakis. His signs showed the professional Kinko's touch: "No Honor for War Criminals," and "Jefferson Davis was Our President." A friend next to him held another sign: "Your Hero Killed Five of My Ancestors." Behind us, a few of the Sons began singing "Dixie."

"And how was the love-in at the Historical Society?" Leak asked. "Did you learn about the greatness of the great man?"

"They think he was a wimp," I said.

Leak looked away, then back at me. "Jesus," he said. "Even I don't think he was a wimp."

And then, the statue is unveiled! Naturally it is sentimental shlock:

"It's so small!" said a lady next to me. And it was--though life-sized, it looked smaller than life, diminutive almost. Lincoln sits tilted forward on a bench with a faraway look in his eyes. Tad is next to him, looking up expectantly, presumably waiting for his father to say something. The effect is supposed to be contemplative, but really it looks as if son has caught dad puzzling through a senior moment. ("Four score and . . . and what? . . . damn! . . . four score and . . .") The bronze bench on which they sit extends on either side, leaving space for tourists to pose for pictures, and soon the statue was engulfed by the crowd, as everyone jostled to get close.

What Ferguson captures beautifully is how both the lunatic Lost Cause fringe and the (non-historian) professional academics are both operating within the same context of historical knowing. Both sides practice advocacy history. They both willfully project their ideologies and context upon a historical figure. Whether they admit it or not, they find a history incapable of being truly known in all its variety and puzzling contradictions to be useful, eminently useful, to their political goals and their passions of the moment.

Particularly fascinating is the continuing "Road to Damascus" experience that people describe to Ferguson. They often tell him that they used to believe the conventional story of the Civil War, but then they found out (trumpets in the distance) the real story. It's much like the Park Ranger that Thomas Hibbs describes in his new essay on touring Ford's Theater, The House that Booth Built. Tipping his hat to Ferguson's piece, Hibbs describes the Ranger as follows:

Suffering from the crudest of childhood educations, our Ranger confessed that he had been taught in grade school that Lincoln was the great emancipator and that Booth was crazy. He then proceeded to a laundry list of Lincoln offenses — suspending habeas corpus , refusing to release prisoners of war, and causing the number of the dead to far eclipse the number on display at the Vietnam Memorial. Each of these accusations was preceded by a rhetorical "Did you know...?" and followed by the exclamation, "Nobody told me that!" No mention here of the unprecedented historical context of civil war, of the constitutional crisis precipitated by the threat of secession, of the opposition from the North to Lincoln's plans of postwar restraint toward the south, or of the possibility that Lincoln was exercising political prudence in his handling of the issue of slavery.

No history, in other words, since without contemporary context you have no history. As Hibbs writes further:

Having slipped from one crude conception of Lincoln to its polar opposite, from the grips of one shallow myth to another, our Ranger had no time for the complexities of history. Instead, he busied himself with reviving the memory of Booth. Booth, we were assured, was not insane; he was a successful actor, who had been provoked by Lincoln's misdeeds. Indeed, he never planned to kill Lincoln even after the war, until Lincoln had a band play Dixie at a public ceremony commemorating the end of the war. "Lincoln shouldn't have done that," our Ranger thundered. "Can you guess who was in the audience that day?" Again, we have a series of partial truths now peddled as the real truth in place of the mythic truth of this man's grade-school education.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, sure that the Park Service is behind an insidious plot to destroy the "real history" of the Confederacy, should breathe a little easier. Partial truths appeal to everyone, regardless of their uniform, race, color, or creed.

And so no acolytes of the Lost Cause will be paying much careful attention to Mac Owens' review of the historical framework of the movie Cold Mountain. Following up on his excellent review of Gods and Generals, Owens declares Cold Mountain to be the anti-Gods and Generals, complete with Southerners who support the Union, a South tortured by war, a Confederate Army plagued by desertion, a South engaging in its own internal civil war.

Such an analysis, alas, is only interesting to those who want to read history. From the sound of it, there don't seem to be too many out there.

Gunston Hall Liberty Series

There's a worthy series held every year at Gunston Hall, the plantation of George Mason, one of the most important political theorists of the late 18th century...I don't think that's much of an exaggeration.

Anyway, here's the info on their latest series, which is on slavery, both 18th century and modern. Looks like there are some interesting presentations. If you live in the DC area, drive down I-95 and support the ongoing mission of Gunston Hall.

George Mason's Gunston Hall Plantation FREE Annual Liberty Lecture Series
Slave Societies: 1700s to the Present

Where and why does slavery exist in the world today? This thought-provoking series will begin with an exploration of current societal conditions that contribute to the enslavement of men and women. Ensuing discussions will consider slavery, the law, and human rights in Virginia during George Mason's day and in the nation during Reconstruction.

Wednesday evenings in February at 7:30
Gunston Hall Visitors' Center.
Admission is free.
Registration recommended, not required.
Teacher recertification available. Students welcome.
For information, call (703)550-9220.

Feb. 4
Slave Societies Today
Jolene Smith, Free the Slaves, Washington, DC


Feb. 11
Involuntary Migration of Africans to the New World: Case Study, Virginia
Robert C. Watson, Hampton University


Feb. 18
Slavery & the Law in 18th-C. Virginia
Philip J. Schwarz, Virginia Commonwealth University

George Mason, His Slaves, & the Law
Terry Dunn, Gunston Hall & Colonial Williamsburg Foundation


Feb. 25
The Black Citizen in a Free Society: The Thirteenth Amendment & the Promise of Freedom
Lois Horton, George Mason University

Each program begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Ann Mason Room of the Gunston Hall Visitors' Center.

Off to DC for a few days, back on Sunday. Keep warm.

A few things

We have been speaking of bad language here a lot lately. Here is John Derbyshire's take. A bit more optimistic than I.

Kathleen Parker on Howard Dean getting down with Jesus Christ. Job in the New Testament. That's a funny one.

And John O'Sullivan on the deplorable Bush immigration plan. At this rate, why even have borders? Ugh.

Blair as Cromwell? It's been almost a month, but since the Doc was dredging up Peter Hitchens' past comments the other day, why shouldn't I? I was fascinated by Hitchen's comment that Blair's was the most left-wing government since Cromwell.

First of all, I'm not sure I like to use the term "left-wing" for the mid-17th century, but passing lightly over that, I think the only basis on which that comparision can be made is Blair's emasculation of the power of the upper house, which to be sure is constitutionally unwise, but hardly regicide and the imposition of republicanism. Compared to the Atlee government, Blair really does seem to me almost Thatcherite. There are very few people in his government, at the level of decision making at least, who would believe that Aneurin Bevan was right when he asserted that he could create a National Health Service that could be run right from his desk.

Now that--social equity imposed and controlled by centralized managerialism--is left wing!

Scottish Advertising Yet that little tidbit about Scottish advertising, and the Doc's response to it, tell us everything you need to know about current British attitudes towards their past. Far from being hidebound, or past obsessed, your intellectualoid Brit wishes nothing more than to forget the past. When the English Tourist Board changed its adverts after 9/11 from ones which attempted to get Americans to come to hip, with-it Cool Britannia to ones which showed Beefeaters, tea-time, and castles...Well! The BBC was horrified, let me tell you. People in Britain will say, "Oh, Cool Britannia was a slogan of Blair's, and it's gone." No it isn't. Blair never invents things for himself; he is a master of taking the nation's pulse, and Cool Britannia was a simple evocation of the unease which many of the educated elites feel towards their overwhelming historical past.

Why they can't feel like children on the shoulder's of giants, rather than children in danger of being squashed by giants size 48's, is a question to be answered at another time. But this Scottish advertising campaign is just another datapoint indicating that, alas, such is the case.

Worried over dipping population numbers, Scotland has hired public relations experts to concoct a jazzy new national slogan for the 21st century. The new slogan will be part of a wider advertising campaign to get people to visit and settle, and see Scotland as a modern, cutting-edge spot. Message to the Scots: no one wants to visit there for modern conveniences, the latest fashions, or the newest technology. Run in the other direction and blitz the world on how Scotland is the quietest, quaintest, most charming place on earth. If I saw an ad telling me Edinburgh was a modern city, I'd reply to the television, "well why the heck would I want to go there?"

And maybe it is the curmudgeon in me (or too many years driving in Boston and DC), but if I saw demographic numbers dipping and population bleeding away, I'd say "good." The less crowding, traffic, and sprawl the better. Harumph!

Say a prayer for David Brudnoy, one of the most intelligent and civilized radio hosts in the business, quite sick but hopefully recovering.

The Boston Globe Ideas section had two articles of note yesterday. First was a very short "interview" (three questions and answers) with conservative philosopher John Kekes of SUNY-Albany. Kekes replied to a question about the primacy of social justice: The belief that social justice is the most important political value is dangerous because its single-minded pursuit often makes it incompatible with the pursuit of other values -- freedom, prosperity, order, security, criminal justice, and so forth -- that are just as important. It is a dangerous mistake to privilege equality at the expense of everything else. Willmoore Kendall said likewise when asking Americans to read the Preamble carefully; it does not privilege in its list of purposes, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Social justice (whatever that means) is but one of many.

Second, an alternatively hysterical and depressing article about the latest MLA conference in San Diego, where literature took a backseat to politics (how shocking). And when I say politics, I mean hatred of George Bush, the Iraq liberation, and the war on terrorism. If you thought by politics I meant pluralism or dialogue, shame on you. The article relates, In more than a dozen sessions on war-related topics, not a single speaker or audience member expressed support for the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan. The sneering air quotes were flying as speaker after speaker talked of "so-called terrorism," "the so-called homeland," "the so-called election of George Bush," and so forth.

All the expected po-mo silliness was on display: "shock and awe" as an imperial rhetorical strategy, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell as Aunt and Uncle Toms, Donald Rumsfeld as illiterate (ironic considering that most literary theory is unintelligible), and so on. They even voted by a wide margin to uphold their right to continue criticism of Bush and war, apparently fearing the Patriot Act was about to shut them down.

But there is redemption. The article concludes: The closest public challenge to the prevailing geopolitical views at the MLA came when one professor asked a panel that had derided American responses to 9/11 and Iraq what a good response would have looked like. She didn't get much of an answer, left the session, and declined to elaborate on her question.

But a young professor of English who followed her out the door to congratulate her did offer some thoughts on politics at the MLA. Aaron Santesso of the University of Nevada at Reno described himself as being "on the left" and sympathetic with much of the criticism of the war in Iraq. But he said that the tenor of the discussion "drives me nuts." "A lot of people here don't want the rhetoric to just be a shrill echo of the right," he said.

Just a few years ago, he noted, the Taliban was regularly attacked at MLA meetings for their treatment of women and likened to the American religious right. Now, there is only talk of how the United States has taken away the rights of the Afghan people.

Santesso said he gains a good perspective from his students, most of whom he characterized as "libertarian conservatives." Most of the debate at the MLA, he said, "would completely alienate my students."

Plenty of English professors share his views, Santesso said. And some of his colleagues are even conservative. They just avoid coming to the MLA.

Bully for them.

A few weeks ago I noticed Peter Hitchens' column opposing the vote for 16 year olds: Can a 16-year-old's opinion be worth as much as that of an experienced copper, a woman who has successfully brought up children, anyone who has run a business, a skilled surgeon or a veteran schoolteacher? Of course not. So why should they all have only one vote? An interesting and controversial suggestion, it hints at a return to weighted votes and giving greater voting power to those of greater experience, knowledge, or age. It suggests a narrowing of the vote rather than an expansion.

In a related vein a few years ago, George Will, opposing the "motor-voter bills" racing through the various legislatures, suggested that voting should not be facilitated and made easier by the state but harder. This way those who take the vote seriously (and you assume have a greater knowledge and interest in current affairs) would vote, and those too lazy to leave their driver's seats would have better things to do.

Last night, both of these came to mind while I was reading the Saki short story "Hermann the Irascible," where a plague devastates Britain and several generations of the Royal Family succumb, leaving a lowly German prince named Hermann on the British throne. A good progressive and democrat, he feels for the suffragettes and instructs the Prime Minister to introduce a new law in the Commons. First, every public office no matter how local or small will be open to the vote, not only at elections for Parliament, county councils, district boards, parish-councils, and municipalities, but for coroners, school inspectors, churchwardens, curators of museums, sanitary authorities, police-court interpreters, swimming-bath instructors, contractors, choir-masters, market superintendents, art-school teachers, cathedral vergers, and other local functionaries whose names I will add as they occur to me, the new King instructs the PM. Second, while men will have the option to vote, women will be forced to vote in all elections. If they refuse (and are not able to document a medical emergency), they will be fined 10 pounds.

The law passes but is tremendously unpopular. Voting dominates women's lives. There seemed no end to the elections. Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their work to vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard before, and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and waitresses got up extra early to get their voting done before starting off to their places of business. Society women found their arrangements impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending the polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became gradually a masculine luxury. As for Cairo and the Riviera, they were possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous wealth, for the accumulation of 10 pound fines during a prolonged absence was a contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could hardly afford to risk. Enfranchisement, the goal for so long, soon loses its luster.

Riots, protests, violence, and disobedience ensue as the "No-Votes-for-Women League" gains popularity, chanting "We Don't Want the Vote." When this fails, a "Great Weep" is planned and women across Britain disturb the peace by crying loudly. Relays of women, ten thousand at a time, wept continuously in the public places of the Metropolis. They wept in railway stations, in tubes and omnibuses, in the National Gallery, at the Army and Navy Stores, in St. James's Park, at ballad concerts, at Prince's and in the Burlington Arcade. Finally, the government gives in and, in a victory for women, disenfranchises them.

Perhaps somewhere in this very funny tale lies the best reply to those who constantly seek expansion and enhancement of the franchise. If voting is the ultimate good rather than how you vote (the quantity of decision-making rather than the quality of the decision), open everything to the vote, expand the franchise, and make voting compulsory, subject to fines for missed elections. This is logical. If voting and "having a say" is that important, give it to more people and make them vote -- make them have a say. What is more progressive: motor-voter laws that merely make voting easier, or compulsory voting that makes voting legally compelling? Give more people the vote and force them to do it. What was it that Mencken said, Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

I am only half in jest. As I said last month, Shouldn't the government, at the least the responsible members, be more interested in qualitative improvement of the franchise rather than quantitative expansion? Lowering the voting age suggests otherwise.

How many academic conferences have I been to where panels and papers have inane cryptic po-mo titles, sometimes indecipherable even to specialists. Well, here is a fun way to "po-mo" (used as a verb) any book and author you choose. Sad thing is, these are frighteningly believable. Thanks to Roger Kimball at Armavirumque for this great link.