Pluralism: America's Hope and Refuge

A Trump supporter and a Trump opponent in New York City, arguing about immigration policy, February 7, 2017 (Mike Segar / Reuters)

On American polarization, the Met Gala, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, a paparazzo, and more

In these days of polarization, I think of another P-word: “pluralism.” In December 2020, I wrote, “The answer to our problems, according to French, and to his friend Madison, is pluralism. We don’t have to love one another (though that would be nice). We do have to live with one another (if only at a distance).”

David French wrote a book called “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” My review of it was titled “The Great American Divorce?”

I will do a little more quoting, where pluralism is concerned:

Everyone knows that the First Amendment protects individual liberty, or should know it. But we should also remember that it protects the right of association, says French: the right to form groups and communities that reflect distinct values.

Here is French himself:

. . . it’s this right of voluntary association that is the lifeblood of true pluralism. Its message to Americans of all races, religions, creeds, and sexual orientations is clear: Not only do you have a place in this society, it is a place secured even against the oppression of hostile majorities. You and your community can thrive in this American republic.

Back to my review, for a few paragraphs more:

Related to pluralism is federalism: Let California be California, Texas be Texas; let Oregon be Oregon, South Carolina be South Carolina — with this caveat: The fundamental rights of every citizen must be protected.

“If you are a citizen of a pluralistic, liberal republic,” writes French, “you need to defend the rights of others that you would like to exercise yourself — even when others seek to use those rights to advance ideas you may dislike or even find repugnant.” Call it a golden rule, as difficult to obey, sometimes, as the original one.

Many will defend the baker who does not wish to customize a cake for a gay wedding. Many will defend the NFL kneeler. Will anyone defend both? French will, and has.

Pluralism is the answer (or hope). Federalism is the answer (or hope). But then, did we not fight a civil war over what states have a right to do? To be continued, one way or another . . .

• “Losing the Country, One Minor Irritation at a Time.” That is the headline over a piece by Noah Rothman. Catching headline, isn’t it? Rothman begins,

It was an idea so irredeemably stupid that political media’s incredulous coverage of it betrayed an unspoken assumption that it would never be enforced. And yet, for no discernible reason, every indication suggests New Jersey’s ban on single-use receptacles will come into force this week. Its most measurable effects will be to make life marginally more expensive and less convenient.

One more paragraph, which is the nub of the thing:

This is just one of the many minor inconveniences that are contributing to a major headache. In the name of this, that, or the other urgent crisis, Democrats are forcing their eccentric lifestyle choices on the broader public. Individually, they are hassles that could be absorbed without producing any broader political effect. Cumulatively, however, the increased cost of and burdens around daily life are becoming hard to ignore.

Well put.

• What is the tenor of our politics, currently? Listen to J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican: “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this fentanyl?” Fentanyl is an opioid. “It does look intentional. It’s like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn’t vote for him.”

This sells, ladies and gentlemen. And I’m not talking about the opioid.

(I am writing on the day of the Republican Senate primary in Ohio. The results are not yet known. The race has been a Trump-off, essentially: a round of more-MAGA-than-thou.)

• Lately, I have read a lot of “hot takes” on the Met Gala in New York. This gala seems to have become a hate object, for many people. Bill and Pat Buckley were fixtures at the gala for years. Pat reigned as chairwoman. They were like the king and queen of the prom. And now . . .

We are drowning in culture wars and the attendant populism. I wish Bill were here to write a column on the subject — or a book.

• Matt Labash is writing marvelous pieces, as usual. (He is an old friend and colleague.) I particularly recommend “Against Performing Monkeys: The case for Neithersideism.”

Labash asks,

Why should I have to pledge my troth to chiselers, demagogues, and performing monkeys? To partisan gasbags and green-room gangsters and social-media harlots? AOC vs. MTG — to take but two party mascots — ain’t really a choice I’m interested in making, no matter how many partisan hacks stick a gun in my back and tell me it’s my God-appointed duty to do so.

Amen, brother.

He further says,

As a lifelong “conservative” — whatever that means anymore — I tend to detest wokeism and thought police and indoctrinating ideologues posing as do-goodniks.

And:

As a lifelong honest man (or close enough), I also dislike liars, hypocrites, and nihilists willing to burn all their purported principles down in the service of partisan advantage. Like say, when they actively try to overturn a democratically-held election that they handily lost.

At the end of his piece, Labash quotes Orwell, writing in 1942:

I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.

This ain’t goin’ away, ever, till the world does.

• There is a lot to admire about Singapore. Some years ago, in a public interview, I asked Paul Johnson, “Who are the truly impressive figures of our age?” He first named Lee Kuan Yew. Yet there is a dark side to Singapore — a nastiness, at least in the minds of some of us. I will quote from a news story last week:

Singapore on Wednesday executed a Malaysian man convicted of drug smuggling after a court dismissed a last-minute challenge from his mother and international pleas to spare him on grounds he was mentally disabled.

• “Why Is No One Talking About Elon Musk’s Ties to China?” That is a good question, and it is the headline over a column by Jianli Yang. You can make money without being in bed with the CCP. Maybe less money. But still a boatload, I would think.

• Irving Kristol once defined a neoconservative as “a liberal mugged by reality.” I thought of the expression “mugged by reality” when reading this news article, headlined “California promised to close its last nuclear plant. Now Newsom is reconsidering.”

Good.

• We have a funny justice system, and part of that funniness is presidential pardons.

In Donald J. Trump’s final hours as president in January 2021, he pardoned his onetime chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who faced charges that he had conspired to swindle donors to a private group that promised to build a wall along the Mexican border.

Yes. That news article is here. It continues,

But three men charged with Mr. Bannon were not pardoned, and two of them pleaded guilty on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Yes. The whole thing is unequal. Justice is so . . . arbitrary.

• Mark Esper was one of Trump’s secretaries of defense. Did you see this news?

. . . Esper charges in a memoir out May 10 that former President Trump said when demonstrators were filling the streets around the White House following the death of George Floyd: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

(Article here.)

This news has been greeted with yawns, when it has been greeted at all. It is a sign of our times that what Esper says is dog-bites-man.

• Mitt Romney issued a tweet:

Desperate polls call for desperate measures: Dems consider forgiving trillions in student loans. Other bribe suggestions: Forgive auto loans? Forgive credit card debt? Forgive mortgages? And put a wealth tax on the super-rich to pay for it all. What could possibly go wrong?

He is still Mitt Romney, after all these years — totally out of step with an age of populism, pink-hued and brown-hued. Bless him.

• George H. Nash is an eminent historian, of modern American conservatism, not least. I cannot recommend highly enough his latest publication: “Conservatism and Its Current Discontents: A Survey and a Modest Proposal.” This is something to read and to keep in some permanent file. Nash writes with a combination of scholarly objectivity and due feeling. We owe this fellow (and long have).

• Ron Galella, the paparazzo, has died. In the headline over its obituary, the New York Times describes him as a “celebrity-hounding photographer,” which he certainly was. He stalked Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (Got some wonderful pictures of her too, bad a character as he was.) The Times’s obit is written by Paul Vitello, and it contains some first-rate sentences, including this one: “There was Robert Redford skulking down the street in business attire and sunglasses, betrayed by his five-alarm handsomeness.”

• “It’s a joey! Bronx Zoo announces birth of rare tree kangaroo.” You can see photos in the article, plus a video. Marvelous thing, that joey.

• I would like to share an article about abortion. I wrote it in 2016. “’No More Baby,’” it’s called. It may interest you.

• A music podcast? The latest episode of my Music for a While.

• A music chronicle, in the new New Criterion? Here.

• I saw this and went, “Uh-oh.”