5.02.00
Elian's Symphony

5.01.00
1,293,567 Casualties

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A Thin Blue Line at Antioch

4.27.00
Florida Marlins: America’s Team

4.27.00
PC Dictatorship & Double Standards

4.27.00
Who Is Al Gore Kidding?

4.27.00
Another Foolhardy Antitrust Theory

4.26.00
Elian In Cuba

4.26.00
It's About Freedom

4.26.00
Filling the Void

4.26.00
Is Miami Another Waco?

4.26.00
He Needs A Mom

4.26.00
Gay Rights vs. Everyone's Rights

4.25.00
The Supreme Court's Partial Birth Anxiety

4.25.00
Forbes the Switcher

4.25.00
A Sad Unity in Little Havana

4.24.00
Mr. President, You're No JFK

4.24.00
Elian's Best Interests?

4.21.00
Presidential Columbine Politics

5/02/00 3:05 p.m.
Elian's Symphony
Clintonism has buried the heroic anti-fascism of the cultural Left.

By John Marks, a classical-music record producer

hat a week it was. Federal shock troops brandishing assault rifles storm a private residence, perhaps without a valid search warrant, and certainly violating the spirit if not the letter of the stay order by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. While "negotiations" were underway. (Was anyone considering the message that would send? From this point forward, only fools will negotiate in good faith with Clinton's federal government.)

Less noted and discussed, but arguably as much a cultural watershed, was the Washington Post's report that the parent corporation of RCA's legendary classical-music recording operations had decided to end the classical department's separate existence, let go more than 100 employees, and run classical music as a sideline of the pop department.

Are these events connected? Not in the usual sense of cause and effect. But in the deeper sense of synchronicity, I think they are. They are manifestations of the same force. What it comes down to is that Clinton sees no fundamental difference between a child growing up under totalitarianism and a child growing up in a free democracy. Record- company executives see classical music as a product that has failed to pay its own way, not as part of what keeps a society healthy and free. Both are cases of valuing power over principle.

Think back to that legendary, glittering night nearly forty years ago: Pablo Casals playing Bach at the White House. The significance was political as well as cultural. Truth be told, the significance was probably more political than cultural, as JFK had to be informed in advance what instrument Casals played. But without question JFK knew that Casals had stood up to Franco, and that Casals embodied the heroic anti-fascist left. And, despite his many character flaws, JFK embodied the anti-Communist left.

Pondering the careers of some of the most celebrated classical musicians of the middle years of this century, one is reminded time and again that the cultural consensus of classical liberalism was accepted and endorsed by the "man in the street." Everyone knew Toscanini was a great conductor, and most people knew that he had stood up to Mussolini, refusing to play the Fascist anthem at La Scala. Menuhin refusing to play in Nazi Germany, the same thing. The tide of refugee artists, musicians, and scientists fleeing not only active persecution but pervasive thought control. To come here. For freedom.

The remarkable popular acceptance of classical music in the middle years of this century might have started out as aspirational striving, but by the time war had broken out again in Europe, it was more a matter of recognizing in the greatest music the universal strivings for freedom and justice.

The happy accident that the rhythmic motto of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (da-da-da-daaah) was also the Morse code for "V" for "victory" notwithstanding, in a large sense the Second World War was a war between the worldview of Beethoven and the worldview of Wagner. Beethoven's music is more important than it sounds... ultimately it is more important to the structure of society than to the world of music.

What Beethoven expressed in his greatest music is that the only transcendent value in a worthy society was the individual: that governments exist to serve the needs of individuals, and not the other way around. To the extent that Napoleon can be called a fascist, Beethoven can be called the first heroic musical anti-fascist. What do you think Beethoven would do upon learning that the Cuban Constitution claims that children are the property of the State? I think that he would write something both mournful and thundering.

If Clinton were merely a cultural boor, his influence would not be so pernicious. But he has managed to immobilize and silence the last vestiges of the anti-fascist left. Where have the trade unions (whose help to Solidarity was so pivotal) been in all this? It used to be that you could count on at least a solid minority of the Democratic party to protest claims of moral equivalence between democracy and totalitarianism. If Clinton's home-grown brand of applied fascism has managed to reduce freedom to something only one political party cares about, we are in very deep trouble.

They may succeed in sending Elian back. Power combined with evil often wins, for a while at least.

If they do send Elian back, I have a modest suggestion. In addition to your prayers, every year on the anniversary of Elian's kidnap by Reno, Clinton, and Castro, listen to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and ask radio stations that reach Cuba to play it too, and ask them to announce that it is for Elian. Like a blade of grass pushing its way through concrete, the message will get through.

John Marks is a classical-music record producer. You can subscribe to his free weekly newsletter on the arts and culture by sending a blank email to jmrcds-subscribe@topica.com.

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