So only a few months after France saw out-of-control rioting comes mass protests by students and unions against a new labour law that would make it easier (horror of horrors!) for employers to fire new employees in the first two years - something that is now next to impossible. As someone from Canada where such a reality is so commonplace as to merit not the slightest mention were France not at present so worrisomely convulsed, it is hard to feel much sympathy for the protesters. France's economy is in desperate need of reform; that such a minor and obviously needed change as this could arouse such indignation reveals a great deal as what has gone wrong with this formerly great country.
A couple days ago in The Washington Post anyways, Claire Berlinski wrote a great op-ed piece about the situation deserving of a read. (Found in its entirety at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032402401.html)
This is the second time in four months that France has been seized with violent protests. And in an important sense, these are counter-riots, since the goals of the privileged students conflict with those of the suburban rioters who took to the streets last November. The message of the suburban rioters: Things must change. The message of the students: Things must stay the same. In other words: Screw the immigrants.
The issue at stake is not, of course, the CPE, which in addition to being unknown in its effects would apply only to a two-year trial period, after which employees would still, effectively, be guaranteed jobs for life. The issue is fear of a real overhaul of France's economically stifling labor laws. While some of the suburban hoodlums have joined in these protests -- after all, a riot is a riot -- it is clear that unless this overhaul proceeds, the immigrants are doomed. If so, last year's violence will seem a lark compared with what is coming.
Curiously, however, no French politician will say this openly. They will not even say these obvious words: France is a representative democracy; if you don't like what your elected leaders are doing, you can vote against them. Some more words you will never hear in France: Students who continue to disrupt civil and academic life will be expelled. Strikers will be fired. We are calling in the troops.
Instead, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is nightly seen on television, earnestly proposing one compromise after the other, even as his supporters scuttle for cover. The powerful barons of the labor unions, on the other hand -- the puppet masters of that golden flock of imbeciles now on the streets -- can scarcely be bothered to give interviews. Compromise? Only when the law is repealed. By then, of course, compromise would be unnecessary. Instead of negotiations, they call for a general strike.
That's because France is still in the grip of precisely the political mentality that has prevailed here since the Middle Ages. As the protesters themselves cheerfully declare: It's the street that rules. Today's mobs, like their predecessors, are notable for their poor grasp of economic principles and their hostility to the free market. Only wardrobe distinguishes these demonstrations from those that led to the invasion of the national convention in 1795, when first the mob protested that commodity prices were too high; when the government responded with price controls, it protested with equal vigor that goods had disappeared and black market prices had risen. Similarly, the students on the streets today espouse economic views entirely unpolluted by reality. If the CPE is enacted, said one young woman, "You'll get a job knowing that you've got to do every single thing they ask you to do because otherwise you may get sacked."
Imagine that.
Update:
On today's Slate.com is an article by Elizabeth Eaves entitled "March Malaise" about the protests. She discusses the law they're ostensibly protesting against, but also offers a interesting, if rather depressing, window into the mentality of the protesters. (http://www.slate.com/id/2138949/)
There appeared to be three kinds of demonstrators. Some, like the group dancing around a bongo drum at the Place de la République, or the dreadlocked kids swigging beer and smoking joints as they ambled through the Place de la Bastille, had apparently come for a big day out. Then there were the casseurs, troublemakers in from the suburbs, looking for opportunities for mayhem. The morning news had reported that police would be monitoring inbound trains to keep the casseurs out of the city center; this would presumably involve targeting black and Arab young men.
The third and largest group was comprised of people out for the cause—or causes. Members of ACT UP Paris marched with signs pointing out that "AIDS is still with us." A Marxist group sold Che Guevara T-shirts. And everywhere, on stickers, signs, and T-shirts, and shouted through bullhorns, the demonstrators declared themselves to be "contre la précarité!"
Against precariousness, instability, uncertainty. I'm trying for the kindest translation here, but even so, the sentiment is hard (for an Anglo-Saxon capitalist) to take seriously. Except, if more than a million French citizens take to the streets to demand that the government protect them from uncertainty, something must be seriously wrong, even if it's not the CPE.
Monday, March 27, 2006
Sunday, March 26, 2006
On Music and Traditions
In the world of classical music (most notably with the piano) there is a long history of performance styles passed down from their innovators by teachers from their general codification in the 19th century. In the non-classical music world, on the other hand, there is an inherent resistance to such a tradition of styles as originality (or at least the pretense of) is of such primary importance. Yet as the innovators in these popular musical styles recede into the past it would be of great service to the musical community, and to the listening public in general, to not let their musical innovations disappear along with them.
One notable example, especially relevant to those who play the electric bass, is the playing of Phil Lesh, the bassist in the Grateful Dead who now performs mostly with his own group Phil and Friends. Though the Dead were (and still are by some) dismissed as an inconsequential group of 60’s “hippy” leftovers, the devotion of their so-called “Deadhead” followers was perhaps matched only by the originality of their sound; a large part of which had to do with Lesh’s unique approach to the bass guitar.
Eschewing the finger plucked, “playing the root” style of most electric bassists, Lesh crafted a distinctive, contrapuntal approach (usually always using a plectrum), that was of crucial importance to the development and delivery of the Dead’s sound. Whereas nearly all other popular music groups in the history of the genre have played their songs (as well as their set-lists and indeed entire concerts) as similarly as possible each time they performed, the Dead, influenced as they were by directions in modern jazz, self-consciously tried to never duplicate themselves: “to never play a song the same way twice” was their unofficial motto. Not only did individual songs find themselves being constantly re-invented, however, but their concerts as well. Planned set lists were avoided in favor of getting on stage and figuring things out as they went along, which often meant (and deliberately so) not the usual practice of individuated 3-5 minute songs, but rather long stretches of unbroken music involving improvised segues between their always already partially improvised songs. Lesh’s relation to this can best be understood through a brief digression into the specifics of his playing style, and how different it is from the vast majority of other electric bassists.
The traditional approach to playing the bass in popular music can perhaps best be understood as having a primarily vertical role. As all beginning bass players are usually—and, I agree, should be—taught, the function of the bass, as the lowest pitched instrument, is to define the harmony; meaning that all other notes played at the same time are related by the listener’s ear to the note played by the bass. Thus, a piano player playing an A minor chord (A, C, E) with his left-hand and soloing using an A natural minor scale with his right can find both the chord and the scale he is playing instantly re-defined as soon as a bass player plays an F note; causing the A minor chord to be heard instead as a F major seventh and the A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) to respectively become a F Lydian mode (the fourth modal inversion of a C major scale).
Lesh’s style, in contrast, is best understood as functioning much more in terms of the horizontal elements of music. Instead of focusing primarily on defining the vertical harmony by emphasizing the roots and fifths of chords, his playing acts very much like a bass lead guitar in melodic counterpoint to the higher melodic lines; whether sung or played instrumentally. Using thirds and sixths (all the notes of the chord/scale in fact) to a much greater degree than most bassists—often beginning a melodic pattern on a higher pitch and then working down to the chord fundamental—he is able to realize more melodic, and thereby contrapuntal, bass lines than are usually found in popular music.
The problem with this approach, and the justification for the traditional emphasis on roots and fifths, is that it leads to aural instability—harmonies lacking definitive grounding. As the Grateful Dead showed, however, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
As explained above, the Dead’s performances were uniquely characterized by long stretches of music (often lasting an hour or more) made up of alternating rehearsed (at least partially) and non-rehearsed (i.e. improvised) sections. A notable early example of this would be their second set performance from November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore West Auditorium in San Francisco (the entire concert has been officially released as Dick’s Picks 16). The set list (“>” indicating a musical segue) is: “Dark Star>The Other One>Dark Star>Uncle John’s Band Jam>Dark Star>Saint Stephen>The Eleven>Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)>The Main Ten>Caution (Do Not…)>Feedback>We Bid You Goodnight.” Notice the recurrence of the same song more than once. This is a common happening for the Dead that means not the same song played twice (or three times as “Dark Star” seems to be here so indicated), but rather different portions, verses or even just the tonal/modal and rhythmic qualities of a song being segued into (and eventually out of) as their temporary improvisational “space.”
In a context like this, Lesh’s melodically-horizontal—yes contrapuntal—bass playing fits perfectly. Indeed it would be hard to imagine the Dead’s musical explorations developing as they did with a more conventional bassist. Though the bass in popular music lacks the inherent “star” quality of the lead instruments (usually vocals and lead guitar) it is arguably of more crucial importance in determining the overall “sound” of an ensemble due to its functionally structural role: helping to define both the rhythmic and harmonic basis (no pun intended) of a song . The harmonic instability due to Lesh’s more horizontal style is then precisely what gives the Dead’s music its sense of momentum, of directionality that is so integral to their extended playing approach. Paradoxically, the other interestingly unique aspect of his playing is his sometimes playing of chords—something most bassists avoid because of the bass’s low pitch and its difficulty when not using a plectrum. (For an excellent example, see the officially released Dick’s Picks 12, first disc, track 7, from approximately 1:06 to 2:23.)
Alright, you might be saying, but why is this important for other bass players with their own styles and methods? The answer is that the more conventional vertical style of bass playing, while highly effective in some contexts, presumes an end result—music with stable, “grounded” harmonies—that should by no means be accepted as necessary or even always desirable. In fact, I would argue, the emphasis on the importance of stable harmonies and the subsequent necessity of therefore playing “vertically” reveals a musical mindset that is characterized by its own kind of stability—utter predictability. For other than musical groups influenced by the Dead (the now defunct Phish, String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic among others) and those now involving former members of the Dead (Ratdog with Bob Weir and the previously mentioned Phil & Friends), live popular music is for the most part now typified by a total avoidance of risk-taking.
That most performers want to do the best they can each and every performance is an obvious truism. Yet in the past unrepeatable human action, with its inevitable foibles and imperfections, guaranteed that not only would every performance not be perfect, but that indeed sometimes they might fail altogether. In the case of music, the “perfections” that are made possible with all-digital (therefore totally manipulable) recording software such as Pro Tools, and (for live performances) real-time pitch correction effects — the TC Electronics “Intonator” being one of the most popular— (among other things) as part of already completely choreographed shows, however, reveals a performance reality defined by its mechanization and necessary elimination of as much subjective initiative as possible.
The political or broader sociological significance of this should not be hard to see. Art is, I would argue, by definition an expression of human subjectivity; a placing of an order, or at least understanding, around an expression or physical state. For our civilization to have therefore realized an artistic (at least as defined functionally) performance reality that is so fundamentally at odds with this essence of art should be of at least some concern to intelligent people.
An instrumental performance practice that helps counteract this mind-numbing predictability should therefore not be taken lightly, or easily forgotten. And though I think it important to try to develop one’s own “voice” on an instrument, this should not be taken as an emphatic, self-justifying quest for originality. Though it does sometimes happen, the vast majority of legitimate musical (and more broadly artistic) performances have, in fact, nothing, original about them. If originality is supposed to be the criterion of art then few things would indeed so qualify. It is rather the exemplification of a certain skill that is generally sought in artistic performances. When true originality does occur, it is by incremental evolutions—syntheses of what has come before—rather than the supposed inspiration of a lone tormented genius—an overall nefarious idea, still sadly with us, due to the continuing influence of Romanticism, especially in the popular music world, and its veneration of Beethoven’s famous “Heiligenstadt Testament” that was written by him in 1802 at the outset of the hearing loss that would eventually render him completely deaf.
I am by no means here arguing that Lesh’s style should be slavishly imitated by other bassists. Whether anyone could ever, in fact, realize a convincing copy of his playing is itself perhaps doubtful. Yet, that should not discourage musicians, bass players in particular, from learning what they can from one who has made such an original, and so far more or less unique, contribution to the performance practice of an instrument less than sixty years old; as well as to seriously consider what kind of extra-musical political and social effects their performances might have on themselves and on those who listen and watch.
One notable example, especially relevant to those who play the electric bass, is the playing of Phil Lesh, the bassist in the Grateful Dead who now performs mostly with his own group Phil and Friends. Though the Dead were (and still are by some) dismissed as an inconsequential group of 60’s “hippy” leftovers, the devotion of their so-called “Deadhead” followers was perhaps matched only by the originality of their sound; a large part of which had to do with Lesh’s unique approach to the bass guitar.
Eschewing the finger plucked, “playing the root” style of most electric bassists, Lesh crafted a distinctive, contrapuntal approach (usually always using a plectrum), that was of crucial importance to the development and delivery of the Dead’s sound. Whereas nearly all other popular music groups in the history of the genre have played their songs (as well as their set-lists and indeed entire concerts) as similarly as possible each time they performed, the Dead, influenced as they were by directions in modern jazz, self-consciously tried to never duplicate themselves: “to never play a song the same way twice” was their unofficial motto. Not only did individual songs find themselves being constantly re-invented, however, but their concerts as well. Planned set lists were avoided in favor of getting on stage and figuring things out as they went along, which often meant (and deliberately so) not the usual practice of individuated 3-5 minute songs, but rather long stretches of unbroken music involving improvised segues between their always already partially improvised songs. Lesh’s relation to this can best be understood through a brief digression into the specifics of his playing style, and how different it is from the vast majority of other electric bassists.
The traditional approach to playing the bass in popular music can perhaps best be understood as having a primarily vertical role. As all beginning bass players are usually—and, I agree, should be—taught, the function of the bass, as the lowest pitched instrument, is to define the harmony; meaning that all other notes played at the same time are related by the listener’s ear to the note played by the bass. Thus, a piano player playing an A minor chord (A, C, E) with his left-hand and soloing using an A natural minor scale with his right can find both the chord and the scale he is playing instantly re-defined as soon as a bass player plays an F note; causing the A minor chord to be heard instead as a F major seventh and the A natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode) to respectively become a F Lydian mode (the fourth modal inversion of a C major scale).
Lesh’s style, in contrast, is best understood as functioning much more in terms of the horizontal elements of music. Instead of focusing primarily on defining the vertical harmony by emphasizing the roots and fifths of chords, his playing acts very much like a bass lead guitar in melodic counterpoint to the higher melodic lines; whether sung or played instrumentally. Using thirds and sixths (all the notes of the chord/scale in fact) to a much greater degree than most bassists—often beginning a melodic pattern on a higher pitch and then working down to the chord fundamental—he is able to realize more melodic, and thereby contrapuntal, bass lines than are usually found in popular music.
The problem with this approach, and the justification for the traditional emphasis on roots and fifths, is that it leads to aural instability—harmonies lacking definitive grounding. As the Grateful Dead showed, however, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
As explained above, the Dead’s performances were uniquely characterized by long stretches of music (often lasting an hour or more) made up of alternating rehearsed (at least partially) and non-rehearsed (i.e. improvised) sections. A notable early example of this would be their second set performance from November 8, 1969 at the Fillmore West Auditorium in San Francisco (the entire concert has been officially released as Dick’s Picks 16). The set list (“>” indicating a musical segue) is: “Dark Star>The Other One>Dark Star>Uncle John’s Band Jam>Dark Star>Saint Stephen>The Eleven>Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)>The Main Ten>Caution (Do Not…)>Feedback>We Bid You Goodnight.” Notice the recurrence of the same song more than once. This is a common happening for the Dead that means not the same song played twice (or three times as “Dark Star” seems to be here so indicated), but rather different portions, verses or even just the tonal/modal and rhythmic qualities of a song being segued into (and eventually out of) as their temporary improvisational “space.”
In a context like this, Lesh’s melodically-horizontal—yes contrapuntal—bass playing fits perfectly. Indeed it would be hard to imagine the Dead’s musical explorations developing as they did with a more conventional bassist. Though the bass in popular music lacks the inherent “star” quality of the lead instruments (usually vocals and lead guitar) it is arguably of more crucial importance in determining the overall “sound” of an ensemble due to its functionally structural role: helping to define both the rhythmic and harmonic basis (no pun intended) of a song . The harmonic instability due to Lesh’s more horizontal style is then precisely what gives the Dead’s music its sense of momentum, of directionality that is so integral to their extended playing approach. Paradoxically, the other interestingly unique aspect of his playing is his sometimes playing of chords—something most bassists avoid because of the bass’s low pitch and its difficulty when not using a plectrum. (For an excellent example, see the officially released Dick’s Picks 12, first disc, track 7, from approximately 1:06 to 2:23.)
Alright, you might be saying, but why is this important for other bass players with their own styles and methods? The answer is that the more conventional vertical style of bass playing, while highly effective in some contexts, presumes an end result—music with stable, “grounded” harmonies—that should by no means be accepted as necessary or even always desirable. In fact, I would argue, the emphasis on the importance of stable harmonies and the subsequent necessity of therefore playing “vertically” reveals a musical mindset that is characterized by its own kind of stability—utter predictability. For other than musical groups influenced by the Dead (the now defunct Phish, String Cheese Incident and Widespread Panic among others) and those now involving former members of the Dead (Ratdog with Bob Weir and the previously mentioned Phil & Friends), live popular music is for the most part now typified by a total avoidance of risk-taking.
That most performers want to do the best they can each and every performance is an obvious truism. Yet in the past unrepeatable human action, with its inevitable foibles and imperfections, guaranteed that not only would every performance not be perfect, but that indeed sometimes they might fail altogether. In the case of music, the “perfections” that are made possible with all-digital (therefore totally manipulable) recording software such as Pro Tools, and (for live performances) real-time pitch correction effects — the TC Electronics “Intonator” being one of the most popular— (among other things) as part of already completely choreographed shows, however, reveals a performance reality defined by its mechanization and necessary elimination of as much subjective initiative as possible.
The political or broader sociological significance of this should not be hard to see. Art is, I would argue, by definition an expression of human subjectivity; a placing of an order, or at least understanding, around an expression or physical state. For our civilization to have therefore realized an artistic (at least as defined functionally) performance reality that is so fundamentally at odds with this essence of art should be of at least some concern to intelligent people.
An instrumental performance practice that helps counteract this mind-numbing predictability should therefore not be taken lightly, or easily forgotten. And though I think it important to try to develop one’s own “voice” on an instrument, this should not be taken as an emphatic, self-justifying quest for originality. Though it does sometimes happen, the vast majority of legitimate musical (and more broadly artistic) performances have, in fact, nothing, original about them. If originality is supposed to be the criterion of art then few things would indeed so qualify. It is rather the exemplification of a certain skill that is generally sought in artistic performances. When true originality does occur, it is by incremental evolutions—syntheses of what has come before—rather than the supposed inspiration of a lone tormented genius—an overall nefarious idea, still sadly with us, due to the continuing influence of Romanticism, especially in the popular music world, and its veneration of Beethoven’s famous “Heiligenstadt Testament” that was written by him in 1802 at the outset of the hearing loss that would eventually render him completely deaf.
I am by no means here arguing that Lesh’s style should be slavishly imitated by other bassists. Whether anyone could ever, in fact, realize a convincing copy of his playing is itself perhaps doubtful. Yet, that should not discourage musicians, bass players in particular, from learning what they can from one who has made such an original, and so far more or less unique, contribution to the performance practice of an instrument less than sixty years old; as well as to seriously consider what kind of extra-musical political and social effects their performances might have on themselves and on those who listen and watch.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
On Liberalism
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats
Recently The New Republic published a response by Leon Wieseltier to an article by Stanley Fish that appeared in The New York Times Opinion pages concerning the global protests over the publication of the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Both deserve to be read as exhibitits in the debate over liberalism vs fundamentalisms of all sorts. First the Fish article:
(Found in its entirety at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/12fish.html?ei=5090&en=8c94e41b68113a9a&ex=1297400400&partner=rss&pagewanted=all)
The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction — implied in the First Amendment's religion clause — between the public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere — the personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship — that one's religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior...
Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give — ask for deference rather than mere respect — it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of every newspaper in the country.
One of those arguments goes this way: It is hypocritical for Muslims to protest cartoons caricaturing Muhammad when cartoons vilifying the symbols of Christianity and Judaism are found everywhere in the media of many Arab countries. After all, what's the difference? The difference is that those who draw and publish such cartoons in Arab countries believe in their content; they believe that Jews and Christians follow false religions and are proper objects of hatred and obloquy.
But I would bet that the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle — free speech — they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself a morality — the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.
Got that? The protesters--because of their deeply held beliefs that bring them to burn down embassies, Christian churches and offer money to those who would kill the cartoonists who drew the pictures as well as those who published them--should be respected more than those liberals who defend the right to free speech, because they, as opposed to the "wishy-washy liberals," really believe in their religion and prove it by their aggressive actions. Fish is, for those who don't know, what some might still call (though it's SOOO cliche...) a post-modernist for whom there is no truth, only "discourses" within "relations of power." Rejecting liberalism as but a bourgeois ideology, POMO has had a long love affair with violence as Michel Foucault, one of its founding fathers, revealed in his, at least initial, exuberantly positive reactions to the Iranian Revolution (discussed very well in an article in The Boston Globe found online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/06/12/the_philosopher_and_the_ayatollah/?page=1) even though as a homosexual it meant that his life would have been at risk had he been an Iranian citizen.
Though those of a POMO persuasion and those on the Left have some common ground in their critique of capitalism and of established positions of power, POMO's lack of belief in any truth often leaves it susceptible to a dangerous fascination with those who are full of a "passionate intensity" though of the most violent and reactionary kinds. So it was with Foucault and Khomeini, and so it is again with Fish and the anti-cartoon protesters. Wieseltier responds:
Forgive my tardiness, but last month The New York Times published an article that compared liberals unfavorably to fundamentalist mobs. The piece appeared on the paper's fun op-ed page, on the occasion of the "cartoon riots" that were provoked by the publication in a conservative Danish newspaper of scornful images of the Prophet--no, that's not accurate. The riots were provoked by Muslim politicians and diplomats for whom the Western blasphemy was an Allah-sent opportunity to divert the attention of various Muslim societies from what ails them. What would modern Arab satrapies do without medieval Muslim masses? A bloodletting, then, followed by brandy and cigars; and the robed zealots in the streets are glad to do the work of the suited cynics in the private planes. Scores of people died in the cartoon riots. It was not the cartoons that killed them; it was their conviction that violence is a variety of cultural criticism. The intensity of their feeling about their faith was all that they (and in their view, anybody else) needed to know in the world.
And there in the Times was Stanley Fish, extolling them precisely for this. How contrarian. Fish is the author of a book called The Trouble With Principle--now there's a danger!--and has made a handsome career as a cheap button-pusher; he is one of those intellectuals who prefers any kind of radicalism to any kind of liberalism. (The flourishing of such intellectuals is itself a great tribute to liberalism.) In this particular prank, the kind of radicalism that Fish preferred was the Islamist kind. He lauded the "strong, insistent form" in which the rioters maintained their convictions. They believed that there are ideas "worth fighting over to the death." This, he declared, "is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors." Liberals, by contrast, believe only in such "abstract" principles as free speech, which makes them contemptibly indifferent to "the content of what is expressed." He adduced as his example of this timidity the culture editor of the Danish newspaper, for whom what seemed to matter was not the substance of what his paper said but its right to say it. In the liberal "religion of letting it all hang out," Fish sneered, "everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas)
is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously."
This is an ancient slander against liberalism. "I'm liberal," declares a character in one of Frost's poems, and explains: "I mean so altruistically moral / I never take my own side in a quarrel." That is a benign version of the complaint that liberalism is invertebrate, purely procedural, lacking in fervent beliefs about what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil. There were malign versions as well. Fish's exhilaration at the vitality of the crowd, his contempt for the restraints of reason, his discovery of personal integrity in physical violence--in another time, these were the ejaculations of fascists. Fish's piece has that ni droite, ni gauche quality. It put me in mind of some rhapsodic pages in Among The Thugs, Bill Buford's report on his arousal by the violence of English soccer hooligans: "Violence is one of the most intensely lived experiences and, for those capable of giving themselves over to it, is one of the most intense pleasures.... What was it like for me? An experience of absolute completeness," and "being in a crowd in an act of violence ... [n]othingness is what you find there ... [n]othingness in its beauty, its simplicity, its nihilistic purity," and similar garbage. One is supposed to admire the honesty of such confessions, I suppose. But why should the drama of the confession matter more than the substance of the confession?
It is certainly true, as Fish worries, that a liberal order exasperates certain types of "strongly held faiths." The believers in an open society always have some adjusting to do. Yet not all strongly held faiths are alike. Often the aforesaid adjustments are made, for the sake of principle or social peace. And a faith held so strongly that it acknowledges no legitimacy to other strongly held faiths, so that it seeks to suppress or to destroy them--surely such faiths must not be allowed to hide their depredation behind our toleration. They deserve all the exasperation that we can visit upon them. Moreover, not all strongly held faiths are held for reasons worthy of respect. (I mean intellectual respect. About political respect, there must be no doubt; but political respect is not a promise of intellectual respect.) Usually they are just the unexamined promptings of tribe and tradition. But then Fish is not exercised by the intellectual quality of the bellicose dogmatisms that he wishes upon us. Quite the contrary. What excites Fish about fervent belief is the fervor, not the belief.
For this reason, it is Fish's geeky paean to people who are happy to hurt other people, his anti-liberal envy of muscles, that is perfectly contentless. He recommends the radicalism of the Islamist protesters, but he does not care whether there is no God but Allah or whether Mohammed is His Prophet. The philosophy means nothing to him. He wants only the action. He mocks liberals as editors, but he is himself just a spectator. And he is demanding his thrills. He is living vicariously through the absolutism of others. Those are not the jollies of a democrat.
Liberals are not editors, even if some editors are liberals. And fairness is not lifelessness. And free speech is the beginning of a liberal order, not the end. And rights are not the enemies of passions, and passions are not most stirringly represented by violations of rights. Where does Fish--not to put too fine a point on it, but in this respect he resembles some of our most virulent enemies--get the idea that liberals cannot fight? From the Democrats, perhaps; but that is liberalism's problem, not liberalism's fate. Anyway, Fish is not seeking political satisfaction, he is seeking emotional satisfaction in politics. And the history of emotionally satisfying politics is often a tale of crimes and abuses. The refusal to burn a book or a flag or a person, the renunciation of brutality in political expression, is not a sign of infirmity of purpose. Not at all. I wish to assure Fish, by example perhaps, that liberals can be--in the name of Kant, in the name of Jefferson, in the name of Mill--assholes. (Found at http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060320&s=diarist032006)
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
"The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats
Recently The New Republic published a response by Leon Wieseltier to an article by Stanley Fish that appeared in The New York Times Opinion pages concerning the global protests over the publication of the cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Both deserve to be read as exhibitits in the debate over liberalism vs fundamentalisms of all sorts. First the Fish article:
(Found in its entirety at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/opinion/12fish.html?ei=5090&en=8c94e41b68113a9a&ex=1297400400&partner=rss&pagewanted=all)
The first tenet of the liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously. This is managed by the familiar distinction — implied in the First Amendment's religion clause — between the public and private spheres. It is in the private sphere — the personal spaces of the heart, the home and the house of worship — that one's religious views are allowed full sway and dictate behavior...
Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism's museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give — ask for deference rather than mere respect — it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of every newspaper in the country.
One of those arguments goes this way: It is hypocritical for Muslims to protest cartoons caricaturing Muhammad when cartoons vilifying the symbols of Christianity and Judaism are found everywhere in the media of many Arab countries. After all, what's the difference? The difference is that those who draw and publish such cartoons in Arab countries believe in their content; they believe that Jews and Christians follow false religions and are proper objects of hatred and obloquy.
But I would bet that the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle — free speech — they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself a morality — the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.
Got that? The protesters--because of their deeply held beliefs that bring them to burn down embassies, Christian churches and offer money to those who would kill the cartoonists who drew the pictures as well as those who published them--should be respected more than those liberals who defend the right to free speech, because they, as opposed to the "wishy-washy liberals," really believe in their religion and prove it by their aggressive actions. Fish is, for those who don't know, what some might still call (though it's SOOO cliche...) a post-modernist for whom there is no truth, only "discourses" within "relations of power." Rejecting liberalism as but a bourgeois ideology, POMO has had a long love affair with violence as Michel Foucault, one of its founding fathers, revealed in his, at least initial, exuberantly positive reactions to the Iranian Revolution (discussed very well in an article in The Boston Globe found online at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/06/12/the_philosopher_and_the_ayatollah/?page=1) even though as a homosexual it meant that his life would have been at risk had he been an Iranian citizen.
Though those of a POMO persuasion and those on the Left have some common ground in their critique of capitalism and of established positions of power, POMO's lack of belief in any truth often leaves it susceptible to a dangerous fascination with those who are full of a "passionate intensity" though of the most violent and reactionary kinds. So it was with Foucault and Khomeini, and so it is again with Fish and the anti-cartoon protesters. Wieseltier responds:
Forgive my tardiness, but last month The New York Times published an article that compared liberals unfavorably to fundamentalist mobs. The piece appeared on the paper's fun op-ed page, on the occasion of the "cartoon riots" that were provoked by the publication in a conservative Danish newspaper of scornful images of the Prophet--no, that's not accurate. The riots were provoked by Muslim politicians and diplomats for whom the Western blasphemy was an Allah-sent opportunity to divert the attention of various Muslim societies from what ails them. What would modern Arab satrapies do without medieval Muslim masses? A bloodletting, then, followed by brandy and cigars; and the robed zealots in the streets are glad to do the work of the suited cynics in the private planes. Scores of people died in the cartoon riots. It was not the cartoons that killed them; it was their conviction that violence is a variety of cultural criticism. The intensity of their feeling about their faith was all that they (and in their view, anybody else) needed to know in the world.
And there in the Times was Stanley Fish, extolling them precisely for this. How contrarian. Fish is the author of a book called The Trouble With Principle--now there's a danger!--and has made a handsome career as a cheap button-pusher; he is one of those intellectuals who prefers any kind of radicalism to any kind of liberalism. (The flourishing of such intellectuals is itself a great tribute to liberalism.) In this particular prank, the kind of radicalism that Fish preferred was the Islamist kind. He lauded the "strong, insistent form" in which the rioters maintained their convictions. They believed that there are ideas "worth fighting over to the death." This, he declared, "is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors." Liberals, by contrast, believe only in such "abstract" principles as free speech, which makes them contemptibly indifferent to "the content of what is expressed." He adduced as his example of this timidity the culture editor of the Danish newspaper, for whom what seemed to matter was not the substance of what his paper said but its right to say it. In the liberal "religion of letting it all hang out," Fish sneered, "everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas)
is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously."
This is an ancient slander against liberalism. "I'm liberal," declares a character in one of Frost's poems, and explains: "I mean so altruistically moral / I never take my own side in a quarrel." That is a benign version of the complaint that liberalism is invertebrate, purely procedural, lacking in fervent beliefs about what is true and what is false, what is good and what is evil. There were malign versions as well. Fish's exhilaration at the vitality of the crowd, his contempt for the restraints of reason, his discovery of personal integrity in physical violence--in another time, these were the ejaculations of fascists. Fish's piece has that ni droite, ni gauche quality. It put me in mind of some rhapsodic pages in Among The Thugs, Bill Buford's report on his arousal by the violence of English soccer hooligans: "Violence is one of the most intensely lived experiences and, for those capable of giving themselves over to it, is one of the most intense pleasures.... What was it like for me? An experience of absolute completeness," and "being in a crowd in an act of violence ... [n]othingness is what you find there ... [n]othingness in its beauty, its simplicity, its nihilistic purity," and similar garbage. One is supposed to admire the honesty of such confessions, I suppose. But why should the drama of the confession matter more than the substance of the confession?
It is certainly true, as Fish worries, that a liberal order exasperates certain types of "strongly held faiths." The believers in an open society always have some adjusting to do. Yet not all strongly held faiths are alike. Often the aforesaid adjustments are made, for the sake of principle or social peace. And a faith held so strongly that it acknowledges no legitimacy to other strongly held faiths, so that it seeks to suppress or to destroy them--surely such faiths must not be allowed to hide their depredation behind our toleration. They deserve all the exasperation that we can visit upon them. Moreover, not all strongly held faiths are held for reasons worthy of respect. (I mean intellectual respect. About political respect, there must be no doubt; but political respect is not a promise of intellectual respect.) Usually they are just the unexamined promptings of tribe and tradition. But then Fish is not exercised by the intellectual quality of the bellicose dogmatisms that he wishes upon us. Quite the contrary. What excites Fish about fervent belief is the fervor, not the belief.
For this reason, it is Fish's geeky paean to people who are happy to hurt other people, his anti-liberal envy of muscles, that is perfectly contentless. He recommends the radicalism of the Islamist protesters, but he does not care whether there is no God but Allah or whether Mohammed is His Prophet. The philosophy means nothing to him. He wants only the action. He mocks liberals as editors, but he is himself just a spectator. And he is demanding his thrills. He is living vicariously through the absolutism of others. Those are not the jollies of a democrat.
Liberals are not editors, even if some editors are liberals. And fairness is not lifelessness. And free speech is the beginning of a liberal order, not the end. And rights are not the enemies of passions, and passions are not most stirringly represented by violations of rights. Where does Fish--not to put too fine a point on it, but in this respect he resembles some of our most virulent enemies--get the idea that liberals cannot fight? From the Democrats, perhaps; but that is liberalism's problem, not liberalism's fate. Anyway, Fish is not seeking political satisfaction, he is seeking emotional satisfaction in politics. And the history of emotionally satisfying politics is often a tale of crimes and abuses. The refusal to burn a book or a flag or a person, the renunciation of brutality in political expression, is not a sign of infirmity of purpose. Not at all. I wish to assure Fish, by example perhaps, that liberals can be--in the name of Kant, in the name of Jefferson, in the name of Mill--assholes. (Found at http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060320&s=diarist032006)
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Winston on the Iron Curtain
(To the melody of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band")
Well it was sixty years ago today/That Winston Churchill he began to say/Joseph Stalin was going out of style/And he's never going to raise a smile/So may I introduce to you/The act you've known for all these years/The Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri!
Well it was actually sixty years ago yesterday that Churchill made his famous speech that gave a name to the Soviet Union's swallowing up of Eastern and Central Europe and that dominated global politics for the next four decades. On the BBC International News website, Willian Horsley has a great article discussing it in its original context of post-war 1946 and for today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4776444.stm)
It was a heroic but troubled time. The world was in turmoil after the most terrible conflict in human history.
On 5 March 1946 Churchill was no longer the UK's prime minister but he still enjoyed a giant reputation around the world.
So US President Harry Truman himself travelled 1,000 miles to Fulton, Missouri, to hear Churchill give a speech after receiving an honorary degree at Westminster College there.
It would become one of the most famous speeches of the century.
Churchill had been mocked in Britain in the 1930s for warning of the menace of war from Nazi Germany, but had been proved right in the end. Now he was about to do it again.
After expressing his admiration for the valiant Russian people and "my wartime comrade, Marshall Stalin", he spoke the words which came to define the oppression, fear and confrontation of the Cold War era:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
"Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia - all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow."
It was vintage Churchill - grave, eloquent and ruthlessly honest.
It was a plea to America, already the world's greatest superpower, to acknowledge the harsh reality about Stalin - that on his orders the Russians were in the process of imposing totalitarian rule by communist governments in all the countries under their military control.
America had long been reluctant to accept this conclusion. But by the following year President Truman had decided on a policy of containment of Soviet power.
In 1948 any remaining doubts were removed by the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade, when the Russians tried but failed to starve West Berlin into submission.
Churchill was indeed prescient of the two great totalitarian dangers of the 20th century: Nazism in the lead-up to World War II from Hitler's accession to power in 1933 and Stalinist Communism's - and what survived of it even after Stalin's death in 1953 and Krushchev's 1956 famous "Cult of Personality" speech - engorgement of so many countries in Europe after the war. Though George W. Bush sometimes pretends to such insight, the paucity of his historical understanding, combined with rhetorical skills of the most insufferable kind and a now-proven fundamental lack of seriousness when dealing with issues of global importance make a politician - no statesmen - of Churchill's calibre that much more missed today. If only there was someone in the USA, still the world's superpower whether anyone likes it or not, who had even a glimmer of Churchill's character I would feel much more hopeful about the future of this world.
Well it was sixty years ago today/That Winston Churchill he began to say/Joseph Stalin was going out of style/And he's never going to raise a smile/So may I introduce to you/The act you've known for all these years/The Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri!
Well it was actually sixty years ago yesterday that Churchill made his famous speech that gave a name to the Soviet Union's swallowing up of Eastern and Central Europe and that dominated global politics for the next four decades. On the BBC International News website, Willian Horsley has a great article discussing it in its original context of post-war 1946 and for today (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4776444.stm)
It was a heroic but troubled time. The world was in turmoil after the most terrible conflict in human history.
On 5 March 1946 Churchill was no longer the UK's prime minister but he still enjoyed a giant reputation around the world.
So US President Harry Truman himself travelled 1,000 miles to Fulton, Missouri, to hear Churchill give a speech after receiving an honorary degree at Westminster College there.
It would become one of the most famous speeches of the century.
Churchill had been mocked in Britain in the 1930s for warning of the menace of war from Nazi Germany, but had been proved right in the end. Now he was about to do it again.
After expressing his admiration for the valiant Russian people and "my wartime comrade, Marshall Stalin", he spoke the words which came to define the oppression, fear and confrontation of the Cold War era:
"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
"Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia - all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow."
It was vintage Churchill - grave, eloquent and ruthlessly honest.
It was a plea to America, already the world's greatest superpower, to acknowledge the harsh reality about Stalin - that on his orders the Russians were in the process of imposing totalitarian rule by communist governments in all the countries under their military control.
America had long been reluctant to accept this conclusion. But by the following year President Truman had decided on a policy of containment of Soviet power.
In 1948 any remaining doubts were removed by the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the Berlin Blockade, when the Russians tried but failed to starve West Berlin into submission.
Churchill was indeed prescient of the two great totalitarian dangers of the 20th century: Nazism in the lead-up to World War II from Hitler's accession to power in 1933 and Stalinist Communism's - and what survived of it even after Stalin's death in 1953 and Krushchev's 1956 famous "Cult of Personality" speech - engorgement of so many countries in Europe after the war. Though George W. Bush sometimes pretends to such insight, the paucity of his historical understanding, combined with rhetorical skills of the most insufferable kind and a now-proven fundamental lack of seriousness when dealing with issues of global importance make a politician - no statesmen - of Churchill's calibre that much more missed today. If only there was someone in the USA, still the world's superpower whether anyone likes it or not, who had even a glimmer of Churchill's character I would feel much more hopeful about the future of this world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)