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This caused me a few sighs. And so did a passage, relating to America, in A House for Mr. Biswas, V. S. Naipaul’s first novel, and the one that many consider his greatest. It is, indeed, a very great book, and I have only just now read it. I could barely stand to be away from it once I had begun it. To be in the thrall of a novel: That is a rare (for me) and deeply pleasurable experience. (I experienced the same thing with Vikram Seth’s massive A Suitable Boy.) Anyway, in A House for Mr. Biswas, the protagonist works, for several years, for the government’s Community Welfare Department (this is in Trinidad, the author’s native land). Shortly after the war, however, “the department was abolished because it had grown archaic. Thirty, twenty, or even ten years before, there would have been people to support it. But the war, the American bases, an awareness of America had given everyone the urge, and many the means, to self-improvement. The encouragement and guidance of the department were not needed. And when the department was attacked, no one, not even those who had enjoyed its ‘leadership’ courses, knew how to defend it.” May we just revisit that phrase, “an awareness of America had given everyone the urge . . . to self-improvement”? Astounding that such a thing could have been written, and could have been true. (Naipaul was writing in the late 1950s.) Yes, this occasioned many sighs.
The Ninth, of course, is that body of judges in San Francisco dedicated to removing every last vestige of what made America great, and American. (This is the rhetorical lengths to which that panel will drive you.) They now say that the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance in school is unconstitutional. Yes, for all these years when we’ve been saying the Pledge, we have been in violation of the Constitution. Oh, how the Framers would hang us for it! It is no longer possible to parody modern liberalism; and it is almost futile — and tiring — to skewer it. Liberals with a conscience should be embarrassed, but they hardly ever are. We hear, “After 9/11, everything changed.” Clearly, not everything.
She thinks that conservatives in the U.S. are suppressing free speech. Listen to this, if you can stand it: “The most absurd part of my escape from [an] unjust system [e.g., Communist Eastern Europe] is that I have exchanged one system that suppresses free opinion for another.” She continued, “The Republicans in the United States manipulate public opinion and sweep any controversial issues under the table.” And, “It’s depressing. Decisions in America are based solely on the question of ‘how much money will come out of it’ and not on the questions of how much health, morals or the environment suffer as a result.” I can’t decide what’s truest about Navratilova: that she’s stupid, that she’s ignorant, or that she’s ungrateful. This country allowed her to achieve her full potential, become rich beyond her wildest dreams, and be an open, unpleasant lesbian. Makes you trot out the chestnut: “No good deed [e.g., throwing open one’s gate to Martina Navratilova] goes unpunished.” Further, I wonder whether there’s that much difference between Navratilova’s claim that free speech is suppressed here, and the claims of Arabs that, for example, they can’t send their children to hospitals, because Jewish doctors will poison them. All of these are lies spread about the United States. A price, of course, of sole superpowerdom, and those most dreadful of qualities, envy and ingratitude.
The Varela Project has been pretty much stomped on. This is the effort, remember, to force a referendum on whether the present government — in power without an election since 1959 — should continue. Varela is a petition drive to trigger such a referendum, which is allowable under Castro’s own constitution. Cuban democrats borrowed the idea from the Chileans of the late 1980s. It’s how they got rid of Pinochet. The Varela organizers, risking everything, collected at least 12,000 signatures, more than the required 10,000, despite constant harassment from the regime, and the fact that there was no means to publicize the drive, other than word of mouth. (Most Cubans heard of the project for the first time when Jimmy Carter mentioned it during his visit there — one of the few positive things that came from that visit.) Varela did well — so well that Castro was roused to crush the movement. As the Washington Post put it, the dictator “orchestrated a forced march through the center of Havana and dozens of other towns that, by the official account, rounded up 8 million of Cuba’s 11 million people. Then he forced the country’s voting population to line up again . . . to sign a petition that calls for his . . . system to be enshrined as ‘untouchable’ in the national constitution.” The Communists say they garnered 8.1 million signatures, constituting 99 percent of the island’s legal voters. This figure is yet another, redundant proof of the regime’s totalitarianism. (Remember Charles Krauthammer’s “Tirana Index”? You could judge the unfreedom of a country by the returns of its sham elections. In Albania, the dictator Hoxa would win with 98.5 percent of the vote or something. One had to wonder: What about the other 1.5?) The Cuban people, on their forced march, looked tired, sullen, and grim — as could be seen in the news photos published in Castro’s official organ, Granma! Some signers of the government’s petition apologized to dissidents, explaining that they could do no other, that this was survival in Castro’s Cuba. One Communist official, Lucia Abreu, said, “The participation of the people is spontaneous.” This is the old Communist lie; it has been told from at least 1917 on, in countless places, tropical, frigid, and in between. So, Castro declares that his rule is “untouchable.” But with the continued bravery of people like the Varela Project activists — and a little support from free people and governments — he may find that he’s more touchable than he cares to contemplate.
(I should note, before continuing, that the line between that which is strictly anti-Israel and that which is blatantly anti-Semitic is blurring more and more. Some critics of Israel say, “We can’t criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic!” I say, “The way to criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic is to do so without being anti-Semitic.”) I have done a piece on this general subject for the forthcoming NR (entitled “Rude Awakenings”). But I hope you will indulge me in a couple of more words here. Do you know that it has become a common stunt on campus to set up “checkpoints,” in imitation of Israeli checkpoints? (To be sure, no one is trying to get through with explosives — that would be realistic.) Michael Granoff, a lay official of the Hillel Foundation, says, “Can you imagine if Jewish students attempted to imitate what Palestinians do?” An Israeli group called Upstart Activist is urging something close to that, as it happens. It is advising students on how to perform “guerrilla theater” and the like of their own. Among Upstart Activist’s suggestions are “chalked outlines,” “mock funerals for terror victims,” and “mock Palestinian jails.” That would be a sight.
SFSU, sadly, is the site of the worst known outbreak of anti-Semitism on an American campus. Jewish students were subjected to a mob attack by a pro-Arab, anti-Israeli group on May 7. The Jewish kids had just participated in a peace rally — a nicely left-liberal affair, on Malcolm X Plaza, near the Cesar Chavez Student Union. Laurie Zoloth calls SFSU’s campus “extraordinarily left-wing” — and she doesn’t do so disapprovingly, believe me. At their rally, the students sang peace songs and wore T-shirts with the word “PEACE” written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. All very gentle and all-inclusive. And for their trouble, they had to be escorted to safety by police from the howling, death-threatening mob. The details have to be read to be believed. And you can read them in a now-famous report that Zoloth sent to her colleagues on the faculty. This letter made its way, by e-mail, literally around the world, prompting an enormous reaction. Zoloth received thousands of e-mails, from every corner. I urge you to read the letter in its entirety, but I will quote a little from it:
And so on. Zoloth says that, if anything, her report was “understated.” And yet, people find it difficult to believe. One director of a Hillel chapter confided to me that, on reading the report, he could scarcely believe it. “Do you think it’s really true?” he asked. If a Hillel director has trouble grasping the ferocity of this thing . . . As Zoloth says, she and her band — and the truth — had one thing going for them. Three, actually. Her prompt report. The resulting journalistic interest. And — very fortunately — police videotapes. Incontrovertible. Otherwise, the entire episode might have been swept under the rug, as some are attempting to do anyway.
An article in the Jerusalem Post detailed some of the grislier anti-Semitic acts on SFSU’s campus. I especially “like” this nugget from 1994: “A mural depicting Jewish stars covered in dollar signs had to be sandblasted from the Malcolm X Plaza, under the guard of police dressed in riot gear. Previous attempts by the campus administration to destroy the mural by painting it over were foiled when protesters removed the cover-up paint. The mural was commissioned by the Student Union Governing Board, which approved the final version without seeing it. It was drawn up by a member of the Pan Afrikan Student Union, who said at the mural’s dedication: ‘We don’t owe white people an explanation.’” No, indeed.
And then there was this lovely appeal, circulated on campus: “Muslims and Non-Muslims can boycott Israel financially by pulling their money out of their savings and checking accounts and investing in gold. Even keeping cash in a jar at home is better than letting it sit in the bank where the Zionists can lend it to themselves to finance their war crimes. Remember, the US government is borrowing money from YOU in order to give it to Israel. Then, the Jewish bankers collect interest on the loans and make even more money. Don’t let them get away with this. Keep only enough money in your account to pay your bills.”
Others would have their own “Kronstadts” — events that tear the veil, that remove scales from eyes. For some, it would be the Kirov assassination; for others the show trials; or maybe the Hitler-Stalin pact (a biggie, wouldn’t you think?); or Khrushchev’s “secret speech” — that was damn late. I believe that, on campus and around the country and world, little Kronstadts are occurring, with respect to the Arab world, the place and purpose of Israel, the uniqueness, greatness, and indispensability of the United States. This is just a thought. I had my “Kronstadts,” to the extent they were necessary, long ago. Others get theirs in due course.
Oh, glory. Glory. |
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y colleague Mike
Potemra noted something interesting (a frequent occurrence). The Oxford
English Dictionary has added a new sense of the word “America,”
a figurative sense, to wit, “a place which one longs to reach; an
ultimate or idealized destination or aim; an object of personal ambition
or desire.”
You
hate to be a weary conservative. You hate to shake your head and mutter,
“The country’s not what it was, and it never will be.”
But then something like the latest Ninth Circuit outrage comes along,
and you have to — you have to play the fuddy-duddy, the curmudgeon,
the nostalgist.
