On slurs, ‘post-liberal,’ ‘workers,’ ‘mom,’ ‘dad,’ ‘supposably,’ and more
Meyers Leonard is an NBA player, a center for the Miami Heat. Recently, he was fined $50,000 and suspended for a week. Why?
While playing a video game, and talkin’ trash, he used the word “kike.” Somehow, a video of this activity circulated. (I’m not entirely sure how this works. The world of video games, and their culture, is foreign to me.)
Leonard apologized profusely, saying he had no idea what the word meant. No idea that it was a slur for “Jew,” etc.
My mind wandered back to 2008. Having written about this issue before, I did a little Googling. Ah, yes: Here’s what happened.
In September of that year, I got an e-mail from a non-fan, who said, “So, when are you going to denounce your best buddy Lynn Westmoreland?” I thought, “Who’s she? The daughter or niece of the late general?”
(For the very young, that would be William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces in the Vietnam War.)
Google set me straight: Lynn Westmoreland was a he, and a congressman from Georgia (Republican). He had referred to Senator Obama and his wife, Michelle, as “uppity.”
Holy smokes.
When people objected, the congressman claimed he did not know that “uppity” was a traditional putdown of black Americans. This was kinda hard to believe. When I wrote about the issue in Impromptus, I got mail from people who said, “Jay, I like to think I don’t live under a rock — I like to think I’m not sheltered — but, honestly, I had no idea that ‘uppity’ was ever used that way.”
Were they lying, these correspondents of mine? I doubt it. You never quite know what people know, and don’t.
• In recent years, people have liked to describe themselves, and others, as “post-liberals.” I find this term puzzling. As I see it, they are anti-liberals, or illiberals. Such people, we have always had with us, and always will. In fact, they constitute the vast majority of mankind.
Liberalism — meaning, classical liberalism, rather than, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — has no “pre-” and no “post-.” It has friends and enemies. (A relative handful of the former, teeming multitudes of the latter.) You can no more be “post-liberal” than you can be post-freedom, or post–human rights.
I mean, you are or you aren’t. You’re fer or agin.
In a discussion of this topic last week, a reader drew my attention to a speech by Calvin Coolidge. The president was speaking on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in the summer of 1926. I’d like to quote a big ol’ chunk, and I don’t think you will be sorry.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Well said, Cal. They called him “silent,” but when he spoke — it was worth it.
• Almost every day, you can read about what our two political parties should be — whom they should represent; what segments of the population they should appeal to; what tribes or classes they should go to bat for. “The workers” are especially popular.
Said Kevin McCarthy, the GOP leader in the House, “The uniqueness of this party today is, we’re the workers party.” Said his fellow GOP congressman, Jim Jordan, “The Republican Party is no longer the wine-and-cheese party. It’s the beer-and-blue-jeans party.”
You know how it goes. By the way, what is a “worker”? Who gets to be a “worker”? Not everyone who works, obviously. How about the South Asian immigrant who owns and operates a motel in Kentucky — a “motel Patel,” to use the vernacular? The guy who sleeps on a cot behind the counter for ten years — barely leaving the premises — while his children prepare to be doctors, lawyers, and engineers? Is he a worker?
Not really — not from politicians’ mouths.
In any case, almost no one ever says that his party should go to bat for America at large: all of us, in our star-spangled, sea-to-shining-sea glory.
America includes day laborers, entrepreneurs, bluebloods, fresh-off-the-boaters, married people, single people, Wall Streeters, Main Streeters, homeowners, renters, farmers, hipsters . . . Each is an American, each a citizen, each a human being.
Who will bear the interest of the country at large in mind?
Over the years, I have fantasized about a party — a political party, I mean (not the kind with soft jazz and streamers): a party that pledged to defend the Constitution; subdue our enemies, foreign and domestic; and keep our sorry behinds free.
I don’t think the government — certainly the federal government — should be in the business of social work. I don’t think it should have thumbs perpetually on scales. I don’t think it should play favorites.
In my view, the government should treat Americans as Americans, with individual rights, and get on with the fundamental business of government — which is work enough. Let civil society do its own work, which is manifold.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Or is this thinking so old, it has cobwebs on it?
• “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop,” said Herbert Stein. This observation achieved the status of aphorism. I thought of it when Congress passed its $1.9 trillion “stimulus” bill. (Easier to call it simply 2 tril?)
We, through our representatives, spend trillion after trillion. The national debt grows, the federal budget deficit grows. This can’t go on forever. There will be a reckoning. How bad will it be, and who will pay, and how?
In general, I think people give too little thought to posterity. We’re spending like there’s no tomorrow, yet there will be a tomorrow. We may not be here, but others will. What are we doing to them?
A lot of issues are important in America: “wokeness” and the “cancel culture”; our position in the world; whether we should be a protectionist, isolationist nation or a free-market, world-minded one. But none of it will matter one whit if we crumble economically — if we “go the way of Greece,” as Mitt Romney used to say.
Years and years ago, I heard Kevin Williamson say, more than once, “Getting our financial house in order is our No. 1 issue. If we fail to do that, nothing else matters.” More and more, I understand him.
• “Everyone has a mother,” Jeb Bush once said. I loved that. It was after she had said something, publicly, that caused him some embarrassment.
I remembered it after reading a headline — a sports headline, related to golf: “Hovland’s mother points out mistake that leads to penalty.”
Yikes.
The story begins,
Viktor Hovland wound up missing the cut at The Players Championship by two shots with a 2-over 74, and he could trace that to a two-shot penalty in the opening round for returning his marker on the 15th green in the wrong spot.
Hovland didn’t realize he had done that.
Apparently his mother did.
Jiminy Cricket. Let’s have some more:
Golf Channel reported on the broadcast Friday that Hovland’s mother was watching from Norway and called to ask him after his round if was going to get penalized. Hovland had no idea what she was talking about when his mother shared what she saw. Hovland contacted the PGA Tour, video was reviewed and he was docked two shots.
“Everyone has a mother” . . .
# A little New York story, if you don’t mind:
A Manhattan private school aiming to use more “inclusive language” is encouraging its students to stop using the terms “mom,” “dad” and “parents” because the words make “assumptions” about kids’ home lives.
I forwarded the story to a friend of mine, a graduate of the school — one of the wisest people I know.
Commented my friend,
What strikes me most about this story, and so many similar ones, is how much these policing practices deprive people of the opportunity to exercise actual virtue — to make the effort to learn about one another and to practice toleration or consideration in the particular case.
• I’ve been talking a lot about words in this column — bad ones, good ones. Want to end on “supposably”? It has just been accepted into the dictionary — accepted by Dictionary.com.
Ay caramba. But once a dictionary has “impactful” — possibly the ugliest word in the English language — everything else seems . . . whatevery.
Catch you later, my friends.
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