Gary Wills Loses It

I don't believe, much, in the internet practice of "fisking", christened after the brutal beating given to the uber-lefty correspondent of the Independent, Robert Fisk. It seems pretty sophmoric to me, most of the time I see it done. But Gary Will's rant in the Houston Chronicle deserves a good working over. Here, then, a few highlights.

He begins:

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist.

Of course it does. Karl Rove, evil genius, drinking the blood of bats in order to see into the future, controlling his Bushpuppet with twiddles of his overweight pinkies. This is called squaring the circle, comrades. Since Bush is, of course, mindless, each of his victories shows the mega-IQ of Karl Rove. By 2008, I predict, Karl Rove will be the Smartest Man Ever.

We continue:

He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

This might be called Bryan's revenge for the Scopes trial of 1925, in which William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalist assault on the concept of evolution was discredited. Disillusionment with that decision led many evangelicals to withdraw from direct engagement in politics. But they came roaring back into the arena out of anger at other court decisions -- on prayer in school, abortion, protection of the flag and, now, gay marriage. Rove felt that the appeal to this large bloc was worth getting President Bush to endorse a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (though he had opposed it earlier).

Behold the new rationale, as discussed by Professor Brooks! It was those damn God-Lovers, comrades! Them Jesus lovin' freaks up in the hollers of the Applachians, getting dipped in Goose Crick, blubbering hymns, marrying their sisters, chewing tobaccy...and not one of them has read Gary Wills! True story!

Oh, and those Born-Agains are full of anger, too. Unlike Gary Wills, I suppose, who continues his irenic discourse thus:

Which raises the question: Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values — critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity.

Gary Wills has written books on the intellectual history of the Revolution and the Early Republic, but you would never know it from these sentences. Or, perhaps more accurately, you know what to expect when you read them.

Are we to gather that at the time of the Revolution most Americans did not believe in the Virgin Birth? Or that most of the "founders" did not believe in the Virgin Birth? That people who regarded themselves as "Enlightened" did not believe in the Virgin Birth? That theological commitments, in their minds, inevitably clashed with "a regard for the secular sciences" to the detriment of the theological commitments?

Well, that all depends on what kind of Enlightenment existed here in America, doesn't it? Perhaps the Enlightenment in America was not quite like the God-free French Enlightenment. Perhaps the American Enlightenment was considerably influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment in ways that allowed Americans to maintain a fervent Protestant faith.

Hmmmm. I seem to remember a book that touched on some of these themes. Wasn't the author named...Gary Wills?

[And what's with this Virgin Birth thing? How about feeding the five thousand, or walking on water? What about the Resurrection? You aren't sex-obsessed, are you, Gary? Or is this part of the whole disaffected Catholic thing you've got going on?]

Then comes this:

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in al-Qaida, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

Right. OK. Well. Actually you do find a lot of fundamentalist rage in Europe, often concentrated in the Moslem communities there, to be sure. And do you think it might be exacerbated, just a little bit, by such Enlightened stances as banning headscarves?

But let's get back to the narrative. Europeans hate us because we believe things. Thus...what, exactly? Are we worthy of destruction? That would seem to be the logical conclusion from this farrago of illogic.

We press on:

Bush promised in 2000 that he be a uniter not a divider, that he would make conservatism compassionate. He did not need to make such false promises this time. He was re-elected precisely by pitting the reddest aspects of the red states against the blue. In this, he is very far from Ronald Reagan, who was amiably and ecumenically pious. He could address more secular audiences with real respect.

Newsflash! Gary Wills, author of Reagan's America, card-carrying member of Reagan Haters of Amerika, finds something to love about Dutch.

After such a miracle, Brother Gary, how can you deny the possibility of the Virgin Birth?

To sum up. Here is a classic example of bile and vituperation dressed up with hack scholarship, in this case allusions to historical happenings to give the air of ponderous punditry to the essay. What makes is so bad is that he knows better, but doesn't give a damn. This is precisely the sort of thing that David Brooks was warning the liberals against doing.

They just can't help themselves.

Final thought: if this is the best deep-thinker they can rely on, if this is the oracle of the (intake of breath) New York Review of Books, they really are up the creek