Non ho mai fatto della democrazia il mio vitello d’oro. Quindi non mi scandalizzo se a qualcuno puzza questo barbaro condominio politico che la modernità impone a belli e brutti, a colti e bruti, e perfino a maschi e femmine. E trans. Con l’articolo maschile o femminile. Gradirei, però, che coloro che da qualche tempo arricciano il naso di fronte al pargolo, a quanto pare mostruoso, generato da questo coito universale, cominciassero a parlar schietto e non deviassero il corso della ragione, per spiegar le magagne, verso le zone pericolose dell’antropologia e magari della genetica. Non lo possono fare; parlar schietto, voglio dire; avendola adorata, la democrazia; e fatta adorare al popolo.

La democrazia per funzionare e per essere salda ha bisogno di una vasta logistica materiale ed immateriale, creata ed intessuta pezzo per pezzo per lunghissima pezza nella società. Si può anzi dire che prima di diventare forma di una società, essa debba vivere nei costumi di un popolo. In quell’auspicabile e raro caso la democrazia trionfa attraverso una rivoluzione incruenta che altro non fa che ratificare e ordinare i cambiamenti prima sotterranei e poi sempre più manifesti che insensibilmente ma profondamente hanno attraversato per secoli la società. Non è un caso, per restare in un contesto europeo, che proprio là dove questa metamorfosi dallo stato aristocratico a quello democratico è avvenuta senza troppe scosse telluriche, come in Gran Bretagna, la “forma” democratica conviva ancora con re, regine, pari e parrucche; mentre là dove la democrazia ha trionfato violentemente dentro un corpo acerbo, come in Francia e poi nel continente, la sua carica universalistica abbia annichilito ogni vestigia del passato. E in ogni caso l’avanzata tumultuosa della democrazia moderna è stata caratterizzata fin quasi all’altro ieri dal lungo tirocinio del suffragio ristretto, che ritagliava, per intima necessità in tempi ufficialmente non aristocratici ma nei costumi non ancora interamente democratici – come provano abbondantemente i collassi novecenteschi – aristocrazie di fatto nel corpo della nazione, col nome fittizio di “classi dirigenti”. E non è un caso, però, che proprio nell’Europa continentale, e più largamente nell’Occidente non anglosassone – e massime disgraziatamente in Italia, sembrerebbe – una volta portato a termine questo infinito apprendistato, anche in tempi di suffragio universale rifiorisca periodicamente il mito delle “classi dirigenti”. Cos’è, oggi, questa nostalgia canaglia delle “classi dirigenti” nel nostro paese, se non l’inconfessato desiderio di una democrazia sotto la tutela di una casta di bramini? Beninteso, nel nome della democrazia? Dai montagnardi che sognano un Comitato di Salute Pubblica a “controllo della legalità”; al Partito della Società Civile che mira a guidare, intimidendolo, il paese in forza di qualche centinaio di migliaia di firme di gente “qualificata”; ai vecchi arnesi di una spompata aristocrazia di denari che vorrebbe arruffianarsi anche l’Italia Futura facendo l’occhiolino al politicamente corretto; ai liberali di molta illiberale intransigenza e poco giudizio che oramai sperano solo in un agente esogeno sul quale saltare in groppa?

E’ tutto un gran sospirare, un gran sbuffare spazientito contro questa umanità maledetta che misteriosamente popola la nostra penisola. Uno scherzo di natura che nemmeno l’acribia dello storico ormai riesce a giustificare. Curioso che gente che pratica con generoso esibizionismo la religione della razionalità e che agita ogni santo giorno in faccia al volgo la retorica “dei fatti e dei numeri” arrivi poi a tali astrochiromantiche conclusioni. Non c’è proprio speranza. Un deserto mai visto, nel tempo e nello spazio. Di questo dotto e tranquillo isterismo, dello stesso livello scientifico dei trattati sul buon tempo antico, che farà sorridere qualcuno fra qualche anno e moltissimi fra qualche decennio, nei giorni scorsi abbiamo avuto illustri esempi. Per Giovanni Sartori, firma del Corriere della Sera, dal crollo delle ideologie è stata purtroppo travolta anche quella tensione ideale che vivifica la democrazia, e la insana e sfibrante bonaccia che oggi paralizzerebbe moralmente l’Italia ne sarebbe testimone. Per la sacerdotessa della Stampa, Barbara Spinelli, che vorrebbe ipnotizzarci con le spire suggestive delle citazioni colte intrecciate con quelle allusive dei riferimenti ai fatti di cronaca, viviamo tempi particolari, e particolarmente da noi, chiaro; momenti che secernono veleni. Il peggio di sé non poteva darlo che l’inevitabile Eugenio Scalfari, che su Repubblica, portandosi dietro quale pezza d’appoggio un’opera di Diderot – se non l’avete capito uno dei precursori del suo genio – s’imbarca in un microsaggio di sbrigativa sociologia razzial-progressista, in stile diciamo giorgiobocchesco, sulla natura della truppa berlusconiana. Così parla l’oracolo, prima di accennare ad alcuni casi individuali particolarmente disgraziati, come “l’Alano da riporto” Belpietro (un cane grosso e minaccioso, sembra di capire, senza la maestà e la nobiltà di un cane di razza: divertente, se fossi il direttore di Libero mi farei incidere questa lusinghiera definizione come esergo su un medaglione sotto il proprio profilo, come un imperatore romano):

“A parte il fatto che la nostra attualità è da qualche tempo trita e ritrita e non presenta eccezionali novità, sta di fatto che il tipo umano (disumano) [mio neretto, N.d.Z] delineato da Diderot sta diventando al giorno d’oggi sempre più numeroso. È un settore della società in crescita esponenziale. Nella classe dirigente, ma anche nei ceti sottostanti. Del resto l’uomo del sottosuolo non fa parte della classe dirigente se non in funzione servile. Servile, ma essenziale: ne riecheggia i desideri, ne soddisfa i bisogni, si incarica di condurre a termine le operazioni abiette, è la controfigura dei potenti quando si tratti di questioni troppo delicate e rischiose. Funge anche da buffone di corte; per divertire il suo signore e ricordargli qualche spiacevole verità.(…) Bisognerebbe chiedersi la ragione per cui la popolazione di quel tipo umano (disumano) [mio neretto, N.d.Z] sia tanto in crescita. La risposta è già stata data molte volte: insicurezza, paura del futuro, ripiegamento sul presente, percezione rachitica della felicità scandita sull’attimo d’un presente fuggitivo senza proiezioni verso l’avvenire, indifferenza diffusa verso la sorte degli altri, gelosia verso le fortune altrui, sopravvalutazione dei meriti propri. Furbizia nell’elusione delle regole. Cortigianeria. Crollo (apparente) delle ideologie in favore d’un pragmatismo diventato a sua volta ideologico. Vi basta? Molti di questi elementi psicologici fanno parte da gran tempo dei connotati italici [mio neretto, N.d.Z]. Ma in certi segmenti della nostra storia diventano dominanti e questo è uno di quei momenti. Ecco perché quel tipo umano (disumano) [mio neretto, N.d.Z] è diventato moltitudine.”

Senza voler essere troppo indulgenti verso il miserabile consesso della schiatta italica, direi però che è il momento di darsi una calmata. Se la conditio sine qua non per essere ammessi nella cerchia delle persone equilibrate e raziocinanti è di riconoscere che in Italia siamo alle soglie di una dittatura, o quasi – la qual cosa fa ridere chi abbia ancora la testa sulle spalle – è chiaro come la paranoia antiberlusconiana, che è il riflesso della cattiva coscienza della meglio Italia, arrivi a scambiare per sintomi mortali ed eccezionali cose vecchie come il mondo. Anch’io nel mio ragionamento mi porto dietro una pezza d’appoggio. In una lettera a Louis de Kergolay del 25 ottobre 1842, Alexis de Tocqueville, sempre lui (e che ci possiamo fare se vide meglio degli altri?), scriveva:

Hai mai letto la storia d’Inghilterra successiva alla rivoluzione del 1688? Sono attualmente impegnato in questa lettura e vi trovo un grande piacere, anche se lo storico Smollet è il più pedante che esiste sulla terra. Dopo questa lettura comincio a credere che giudichiamo talvolta con troppa severità il nostro paese e i nostri tempi. Spesso riteniamo caratteristici di noi e della nostra epoca delle storture, delle debolezze e dei vizi che invece sono inerenti alla forma stessa delle nostre istituzioni e alla loro particolare azione sulla parte corrotta del cuore umano. Il ruolo che giocano le passioni egoistiche, la venalità, l’assenza di principi, la versatilità delle opinioni, la demoralizzazione e la corruzione quasi costante degli uomini politici in questa storia costituzionale d’Inghilterra è immenso. La potenze degli intrighi individuali, la piccolezza e particolare meschinità delle passioni creano infinite possibilità, in un’epoca di calma in cui gli eventi sono incapaci di produrre grandi sforzi e di mettere in luce grandi personalità. Se si penetra in questi dettagli, è difficile poi credere che, nel mezzo di queste miserie e di tutti questi vizi in qualche modo incoraggiati dal meccanismo delle libere istituzioni, la nazione possa intraprendere e realizzare le cose prodigiose che ha fatto nel mondo nel corso di questo secolo.

[pubblicato su Giornalettismo.com]

I expect it has been done, and I have just never heard it. Surely someone has mentioned it. When they write, some journalists commit hate crimes. Nonetheless, I fear this is just one of those things we have to put up with.   In Democracy in America, Alexis De Tocqueville  sort of put it this way.   

I confess that I do not entertain that firm and complete attachment to the liberty of the press freedom of the mind which things that are supremely good in their very nature are wont to excite in the mind; and I approve of it more from a recollection of the evils it prevents than from a consideration of the advantages it ensures

If any one could point out an intermediate and yet a tenable position between the complete independence and the entire subjection of the public expression of opinion hateful thought, I should perhaps be inclined to adopt it; but the difficulty is to discover this position. If it is your intention to correct the abuses of unlicensed printing thinking and to restore the use of orderly language good thought, you may in the first instance try the offender by a jury; but if the jury acquits him, the opinion which was that of a single individual becomes the opinion of the country at large. Too much and too little has therefore hitherto been done. If you proceed, you must bring the delinquent before a court of permanent judges. But even here the cause must be heard before it can be decided; and the very principles example which no book person would have ventured to avow are blazoned forth in the pleadings, and what was obscurely hinted at in a single composition act is then repeated demonstrated in a for the multitude of other publications. The language action in which a hateful thought is embodied is the mere carcass of the thought, and not the idea itself; tribunals may condemn the form, but the sense and spirit of the work deed is too subtle for their authority. Too much has still been done to recede, too little to attain your end; you must therefore proceed. If you establish a censorship of the press hate crime laws, the tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have only increased the mischief. The powers of thought do not rely, like the powers of physical strength, upon the number of their mechanical agents, nor can a host of authors rebels be reckoned like the troops which compose an army; on the contrary, the authority of a principle an example is often increased by the smallness of the number of men by whom it is expressed. The words of a strong-minded man, which penetrate amidst the passions of a listening assembly, have more power than the vociferations of a thousand orators; and if it be allowed to speak freely in any public place, the consequence is the same as if free speaking was allowed in every village. The liberty of discourse must therefore be destroyed as well as the liberty of the press hateful thoughts; this is the necessary term of your efforts; but if your object was to repress the abuses of liberty thinking, they have brought you to the feet of a despot. You have been led from the extreme of independence to the extreme of subjection without meeting with a single tenable position for shelter or repose.

The above was “excerpted” from the contents of Chapter 11, Volume 1 (of 2).

Everyone knows that middle-aged sexual predators lurk in chatrooms, posing as insecure tweens looking for a friend; or friend other insecure tweens on MySpace; or that if you don’t lock up your wireless network tight, terrorists are going to tap into it and turn your naivete into massive-scale crime; or that that email with the suspicious subject line is a virus that’s going to delete all your files (even if you do have a Mac); and that if you don’t forward this message of holiday cheer to 42 people by midnight, an axe murderer will sneak into your room at 3 am and— ZZSWAR9ARG7Z

You get the point.  There are dangers hiding behind every hyperlink.

I don’t mean to be flippant (no, that’s a lie; I do, but it’s strictly rhetorical)—the Internet can be a scary place, and scary people use it.  I’m all for parental controls and spam queues.  What I’m not for is the underlying premise beneath Internet fear-mongering—because it’s not always just “Stranger Danger.”

Some of the outcry against danger (or obscenity, or perversion, etc, et al) comes with a call to action that frightens me more than any technological boogeyman—if the Internet is dangerous because it’s so open, because anyone can do, really, anything, why not regulate?

In 1993, SF author Bruce Sterling (“Junk DNA,” remember?) wrote an article called “A Short History of the Internet,” which you can find in its entirely online, and which I highly recommend.  For my part, I’ll focus on just a few key facts, some of the points from the reading assignment for today’s American Studies lecture on “The Internet Revolution.”  So:

1. The very openness and decentralization of the Internet that makes it “dangerous” was built into its most basic structure—from the perspective of a Cold War scientist, you see, a communication network would have to be as decentralized as possible in order to still function after a nuclear holocaust wiped out God-knew-where in the United States.  With this in mind, the less authority—the better (sounds strange for a military-government program, doesn’t it?).

2. And after decades of evolution, that’s what we still have: no authority.  Sterling asks:

Why do people want to be “on the Internet?”  One of the main reasons is  simple freedom.   The Internet is a rare example of a true, modern, functional  anarchy.   There is no “Internet Inc.”   There are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders.  In principle, any node can speak as a peer to any other node, as long as it obeys the rules of the TCP/IP protocols, which are strictly technical, not social or political.

Sixteen years after those words hit shelves in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and that’s still true: it’s simple science fact, and no less amazing for it.

Online, you are what you type, upload, or post—identities are fluid.  It’s true that might mean a fifty-year-old man staring at a glowing screen in his basement could pretend to be a junior high girl on a some Edward Cullen fan site, but it also means that young Peter Wiggin can blog and be seen by the world as an elder statesman.

It’s freedom to be creative without the stigma of age, sex, race, or anything else that might lead someone to prejudge you before looking at your work or ideas: online, you are your ideas.

Blogger and SF writer Cory Doctorow’s name (which I feel I mention every other post) is almost synonymous with Internet freedom.  Publishing his novels under a Creative Commons license for free distribution online (DRM-free, I might add), Doctorow could almost be a character from one of his own books—Alan/Adam/Albert/Avi, for example, from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, spends the time he’s not brooding about his troubled childhood as the eldest son of a mountain and a washing machine, setting up a free, open, wireless network for the people of his local town.

(I did say almost a character.)  In any case, he practices what he preaches, and in all his books shows just how cool our world is.  I’m going to have to quote Makers again– we’re living in the “weirdest and best time” in the history of the world.  Witness the astonishing success of modern anarchy:

“No one needed to draw a map of the Web,” Kurt said, “It just grew and people found its weird corners on their own.  Networks don’t need centralized authority, that’s just the chains on your mind talking.”

I have to give my professor credit—revolution was a good title for the lecture.  Even after our first Revolution, observers (read: Alexis de Tocqueville) noticed a tension in American society between liberty and equality, freedom and democracy.  Oftentimes, they clash (see any debate on social welfare programs—the object is equality of outcome, but at the expense of freedom to use and dispose of one’s property, money).

But no political arguments in this post about liberty and equality: the anarchy of the Internet is one of the only places where you don’t really have to choose.

Retomo a publicação de textos do curso Modalidades do Pensamento Político Moderno. Esta, uma resenha muito singela e pobre de alguns pontos específicos da obra “Democracia na América”, de Alexis de Tocqueville, discutidos na semana passada.

A obra de Tocqueville analisa as origens da Revolução Americana e seus efeitos, para entender como se deu a constituição da democracia como tal naquele país, como uma proposição de estabelecer um comparativo com o que estava em andamento no continente europeu, mais especificamente na França, sua terra natal. Ele enxerga proximidades entre França e EUA, mas vê peculiaridades que caracterizam a sociedade democrática americana em desenvolvimento que não poderiam ser igualadas na Europa, pois ambos são muitos diferentes um do outro.

De início é possível perceber o deslumbramento de Tocqueville com a sociedade americana com “igualdade de condições”, partindo de que todos os membros da sociedade são socialmente iguais, sendo este seu foco, já que economicamente ele crê ser impossível a igualdade. Isto é, a característica desta sociedade democrática não é exatamente a igualdade pura e simples, mas a possibilidade de ascensão de classe, tanto de baixo para cima quanto o inverso. É uma igualdade de condições que cada cidadão possui para desenvolver-se, e que não é inferior na sociedade civil em relação ao Estado, influenciando os costumes políticos e das leis, abarcando todos e de todas as formas: “cria opiniões, faz nascer sentimentos, sugere usos e modifica tudo o que não é produtivo[1]”.

Um aspecto importante é a divisão que ele faz entre a revolução pacífica e a revolução violenta, sendo a primeira de caráter irresistível, avançada apesar dos esforços opostos, sendo, pois, não-humana, ou seja, ela acontece independentemente do que se faça. Em oposição a esta forma há a revolução violenta, que rompe com o passado e modifica o curso dos acontecimentos, sendo, pois, provocada pelo homem. Tocqueville afirma que a democracia é uma revolução social e não meramente uma forma de governo, se caracterizando por um processo histórico de igualização que está mais próximo da revolução pacífica e que acabou por vigorar nos EUA.

Outra questão importante é a ausência da aristocracia nos EUA, por se tratar de um Estado jovem na época, já que seu governo anterior era a representação monárquica da Grã-Bretanha, fazendo com que não houvesse esse agrupamento social, e, conseqüentemente, estando democracia nos EUA em estado puro. Em comparação com a França,e sta constituiu seu regime democrático após uma revolução violenta que buscou destruir justamente as instituições aristocráticas, basilares do período monárquico, que mantinham uma sociedade de desiguais, fundamentada em hierarquias fixas e num sistema fundiário que concentrava as terras entre os nobres (aristocracia) e, principalmente, à coroa. Mesmo com a derrubada dos aristocratas, alguns vícios permanecem, como Montesquieu cita a respeito da derrubada do Antigo Regime francês, em relação ao instauro de uma revolução burguesa e uma recaída ao sistema anterior por repetição de práticas e ausência dos expurgos necessários. Isso, de acordo com o raciocínio tocquevilliano, impossibilitaria uma democracia pura, que privilegiasse os princípios de igualdade de condições.

A liberdade no texto de Tocqueville é tratada no campo da liberdade política, ou seja, numa participação direta e sistemática da população, não meramente representativa. É o que em inglês e chama de self-government, ou, autogoverno, em que a sociedade age para se regular e estabelecer obrigatoriedades, padrões em relação a si mesma. Isto fica claro no fato de que o legislador que faz a regra também está vinculado a ela, isto é, a pessoa que participa das decisões e rumos do país também está sujeita às regras e leis criadas por ela mesma, ao contrário de um monarca que faz as leis para seus súditos cumprirem, estando este acima da lei, de tudo e de todos.

A questão da soberania é tema relevante na obra de Tocqueville, em que ele coloca que a soberania precisa ser limitada, para não pôr em risco a democracia, transformando o governo em uma tirania, com um poder ilimitado que acabaria por impedir a liberdade política citada acima. Aconteceria o que se chama de despotismo, cuja característica principal é a de indivíduos dispersos, já que eles consentiram a uma autoridade central a concentração de todos os poderes, tirando dos homens a atuação política, pois eles se sentem representados pelo déspota.

Tocqueville denomina essa forma de governo de despotismo democrático, justamente por conta desta especificidade que é esse consentimento dado pelos indivíduos, não sendo, por isso, opressivo, sem deixar de ser tirânico. O grupo ou o déspota, então, que recebeu esse poder, toma a voz da totalidade dos indivíduos, privando-os de participação política ativa, levando-os à condição de irreversível infância, de animais passivos, sem capacidade de desenvolvimento, acéfalos politicamente e socialmente.

When Alexis De Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America, he observed  the class distinctions between Americans during the years of 1831 and 1832 .  He was particularly interested in these distinctions as they related to the governance of our society.

What follows are a portion of the contents of Chapter 10, Volume 1 (of 2).

Remains Of The Aristocratic Party In The United States

It sometimes happens in a people amongst which various opinions prevail that the balance of the several parties is lost, and one of them obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, harasses its opponents, and appropriates all the resources of society to its own purposes. The vanquished citizens despair of success and they conceal their dissatisfaction in silence and in general apathy. The nation seems to be governed by a single principle, and the prevailing party assumes the credit of having restored peace and unanimity to the country. But this apparent unanimity is merely a cloak to alarming dissensions and perpetual opposition.

This is precisely what occurred in America; when the democratic party got the upper hand, it took exclusive possession of the conduct of affairs, and from that time the laws and the customs of society have been adapted to its caprices. At the present day the more affluent classes of society are so entirely removed from the direction of political affairs in the United States that wealth, far from conferring a right to the exercise of power, is rather an obstacle than a means of attaining to it. The wealthy members of the community abandon the lists, through unwillingness to contend, and frequently to contend in vain, against the poorest classes of their fellow citizens. They concentrate all their enjoyments in the privacy of their homes, where they occupy a rank which cannot be assumed in public; and they constitute a private society in the State, which has its own tastes and its own pleasures. They submit to this state of things as an irremediable evil, but they are careful not to show that they are galled by its continuance; it is even not uncommon to hear them laud the delights of a republican government, and the advantages of democratic institutions when they are in public. Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.

Mark, for instance, that opulent citizen, who is as anxious as a Jew of the Middle Ages to conceal his wealth. His dress is plain, his demeanor unassuming; but the interior of his dwelling glitters with luxury, and none but a few chosen guests whom he haughtily styles his equals are allowed to penetrate into this sanctuary. No European noble is more exclusive in his pleasures, or more jealous of the smallest advantages which his privileged station confers upon him. But the very same individual crosses the city to reach a dark counting-house in the centre of traffic, where every one may accost him who pleases. If he meets his cobbler upon the way, they stop and converse; the two citizens discuss the affairs of the State in which they have an equal interest, and they shake hands before they part.

But beneath this artificial enthusiasm, and these obsequious attentions to the preponderating power, it is easy to perceive that the wealthy members of the community entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears. If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchical institutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious.

The two chief weapons which parties use in order to ensure success are the public press and the formation of associations.

When Tocqueville visited America, the Federal Government largely existed for only one purpose, to protect the rights of the people.  That made for a Federal Government far less complex to manage.  Moreover, most of the activities of government were conducted at the local level.  Even state governments, though at that time they had much greater power, did not intrude nearly as much into the life of ordinary citizens as they do today.

The small size of government made government easier to manage and thus more subject to the ordinary citizen.   As a result, the aristocratic elements of society then exercised far less control.

¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Tim Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, has written a new book entitled Counterfeit Gods, with the subtitle being: “The empty promises of money, sex, and power, and the only hope that matters.” He opens up his book with a reference to the global economic crisis which began in mid-2008, after which a string of suicides of some “formerly wealthy and well-connected individuals.”

He mentions that the acting CFO of Freddie Mac hanged himself in his basement. The chief executive of Sheldon Good, a leading U.S. real estate firm, shot himself in the head behind the wheel of his Jaguar. A French money manager who invested the wealth of many of Europe’s royal and leading families, and who had lost $1.4 billion of his clients’ money to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, slit his wrists and died in his Madison Avenue office. A Danish senior executive with HSBC Bank hanged himself in the wardrobe of his 500-pound a night suite in Knightsbridge, London. These are just a few.

Alexis de Tocqueville came from France to America in the 1830s to look over this young country, he made a comment about a “strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants . . . in the midst of their abundance.” What did he mean? He meant that there is nothing in this world that can satisfy the longings of the human heart. He called them “incomplete joys.” That was true then, and even more true today. The pursuit of abundance and affluence (whether pursuing millions, or even just finding joy in padding our retirement or just to that extra vacation we think we deserve).

There is a beauty to this passage of Scripture. Some of you may see this beauty now, others of you will see it, Lord willing. Layer upon layer, we see the glory of the Trinity bestowing the riches of his glory, love, mercy, grace, and power upon His people. Everything in the first three chapters of this letter to the Ephesian church leads to this point. And I must say, everything in the realm of our lives as Christians must lead to this point as well: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think… .”

Given that this Sunday is our Arise and Build Commitment Sunday, this verse can most definitely apply to much of what we hope God will do—more than we ask or think! He is able!

But as we read this verse, one question kept coming into my mind—and it needs to be answered straight away! Are we asking and thinking? I know in my six years as pastor here, Boone’s Creek Baptist Church has occupied the majority of my thoughts! From sermon preparation to leadership training to mobilizing evangelistic and missions initiatives from our neighbors to the nations, praying and hurting for the lost and sick, and wanting Boone’s Creek to be a great church now for the glory of God—this has occupied my thoughts and fed much of my prayers.

And I recognized soon in the ministry, that just because I spent the majority of my time thinking about and asking God things regarding Boone’s Creek, I naturally assumed everyone else felt that same thing I did. But the truth is, there is much in our minds and desired that competes with the Kingdom of God and its desired rule over our hearts. School, work, sports, bills to pay, the economy, elections, matters in Washington, family matters, hobbies. All of these issues vie for our attention! All of these issues require our presence, require our money, but many cry for our attention and we become addicted to things that are not of any eternal consequence whatsoever.

(Tomorrow:  Is our asking and thinking strengthened by submission?)

Originally preached on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at Boone’s Creek Baptist Church, Lexington, KY.   To listen to it in its entirety, click here.

According to a poll conducted by FOX News (not exactly the most liberal media outlet there is), 67 percent of Americans believe it is appropriate for the President to bow to a foreign leader if that is the country’s custom. Only 26% said it is never appropriate. Even among Republicans, 53% said it was appropriate, to 40% never appropriate.

This was in response to President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan last week and the resulting furor. Conservatives have complained about this and Obama’s other greetings when meeting foreign leaders, complaining that he conveys American weakness.

Me? I think that whole issue – not just this case – is much ado about nothing. There are plenty of things worth criticizing President Obama about, but this is not one of them. This is nothing more than the neoconservative meme that Obama is “Anti-American” and the belief in their interpretation of American Exceptionalism (not the original one laid out by Alexis de Tocqueville) – that America and Americans can and must be able to do whatever they want and get whatever they want, and that all other countries are subservient.

I for one think American Exceptionalism is a very short-sighted belief. The United States should not expect, let alone demand, the rest of the world to acquiesce to its whims and desires. There is only one world, and it has to work for all 6 billion-plus humans out there, not just the 300 million in the United States. The same goes for every other country in the world.

And just in case anyone has forgotten, we have far bigger problems to deal with than how President Obama should be greeting foreign leaders. Unemployment is over 10%, a figure that, since late October, includes yours truly. We’re in the middle of two outrageously expensive wars, one of which we shouldn’t have been in to begin with and the other of which President Obama can’t decide how to finish. Health care needs reforming, and President Obama won’t take the lead on one of the cornerstones of his campaign.

How the President greets foreign leaders is not high on my list of things to bitch about.

Heather MacDonald gripes about the common objection to atheism that, without a transcendent moral order, no appeals to moral authority are possible and, ultimately, any atheistic moral system fails.  Heather’s rebuttal runs as follows:

Would someone please provide an actual example of such endless moral regress without the God trump card?  If I may borrow a phrase from my misspent youth, it seems to me that we are “always already” embedded in a moral environment far more complex and sophisticated than the blunt pronouncements of the Ten Commandments (i.e., those not commanding obsequiousness before God).   The question of some original source beyond human law and custom for our most basic principles, in my experience, never comes up.

. . . .

I have simply never witnessed the need to reference to God to establish the validity of our laws against extortion, say.  Real-world moral disputes are more complicated:  Is health care a right?  Who should pay for it and how much should one group pay for another’s health care?  Is economic regulation theft?  Is theft admissible to stave off starvation?  We answer these questions by drawing on our innate and developed moral intuitions and our society’s legal framework.

But this is to confuse public morality with formal morality. We do not subject our laws to the rigors of formal philosophy and morality and epistemology. We must accept certain fundamental truths as given in order to go on with political and legal life. But that is not to say that such formal inquiries are without value. Though we plod ahead from the place of our intellectual beginnings, from time to time it is important to have a look behind us. As Tocqueville put it:

Dogmatic beliefs are more or less numerous according to the times.  They are born in different manners and can change form and object; but one cannot make it so that there are no dogmatic beliefs, that is, opinions men receive on trust without discussing them.  If each undertook himself to form all his opinions and to pursue the truth in isolation down paths cleared by him alone, it is not probable that a great number of men would ever unite in any common belief.

Now it is easy to see that there is no society that can prosper without such beliefs, or rather there is none that could survive this way; for without common ideas there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not.  Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought and held together by some principal ideas; and that cannot happen unless each of them sometimes comes to draw his opinions from one and the same source unless each consents to receive a certain number of ready-made beliefs.

If I now consider man separately, I find that dogmatic beliefs are no less indispensable to him for living alone than foracting in common with those like him.

If man were forced to prove to himself all the truths he makes use of every day, he would never finish; he would exhaust himself in preliminary demonstrations without advancing; as he does not have the time because of the short span of life, nor the ability because of the limits of his mind, to act that way, he is reduced to accepting as given a host of facts and opinions that he has neither the leisure nor the power to examine and verify by himself, but that the more able have found or the crowd adopts. It is on this first foundation that he himself builds the edifice of his own thoughts. It is not his will that brings him to proceed in this manner; the inflexible law of his condition constrains him to do it.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Univ. Chicago Press, 2002  (Mansfield and Winthrop, eds.) at 407-08 (emphasis added).

The “Will” of an individual, here used as who a person wants to be and what they want to do, is ineluctably affected by environmental factors (or institutions – to use a Marxist term), e.g. family, friends, job, school, etc.  The Will is a sort of slave to the system.  People who have little will power are unable to break the chains placed upon them by their environment.  They either willfully submit or are so oblivious to their slave-state that they simply do things because that’s the way their done.

It seems to me that people who live in modern, highly-developed, affluent states seek not challenge or the quest to become themselves; they blissfully submit to the pre-made social structures that rule their lives.  People look to others, rather than themselves, for guidance and direction.  They seek the mundane and the pleasure-filling activities made readily available.  They don’t seek, what Nietzsche calls, the “hero inside you.”  They seek a comfortable existence free from pain, challenge, and uncertainty.  Their minds are passive receptors of pre-made recipes.  Institutions feed the gluttonous appetites for glamor, comfort, and simplicity.  De Toqueville, in Democracy in America identifies it as the government and the institutions of people that prevent them from realizing their full potential.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself along to secure their gratification and to watch over their fate.  That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood:  it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.

What do people demand of this tutelary power?  What does it provide them?

… it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessitates, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances:  what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.  [emphasis mine]

What we’re left with is a general population willingly gutted, stupefied, and sedated.  People are encouraged to be mediocre, to live a life under the continuous influence of vitamin-E.  E standing for Easy.  It is easier, far easier, to obey another than to command oneself.  Nietzsche thought it the ill of the human mind and the barrier to becoming oneself.  De Toqueville saw it as an insidious force that destroyed all notions of community and turned the person into an individual-loving pleasure addict.  I see it as the enemy of everything intellectual and the greatest challenge of my life to overcome. In a Foucauldian sense, I must break out of the carceral.  To recognize my own Will, I must shake the shackles of gravity – my culture, my state, my family – to become who I want to be.

Per fortuna che i dottori della legge di Strasburgo e i loro tifosi non si sono ancora accorti che facciamo festa di domenica. O che contiamo gli anni – più o meno – dalla nascita di “quell’uomo”. Chissà dove potrebbero arrivare con la loro stupida coerenza! Possibile che non suoni un campanellino d’allarme nella testa dei guardiani della legalità? E’ possibilissimo, purtroppo, se costoro hanno solo aggiornato, e non abbandonato, i nefasti sogni di perfezione delle vecchie ideologie. Anche quando, nel migliore dei casi, prendano le sembianze ingannevoli di un marchingegno istituzionale minimo, grazie al quale lo stato altro non sarebbe che una piattaforma logistica di base sulla quale i concetti di male e bene scivolerebbero come sulla superficie liscia di un corpo duro, ma che consentirebbe il libero gioco delle libertà individuali: fatte salve, ahinoi, alcune basilari “regole d’ingaggio”. Sulla carta. Sennonché senza una qualche fibra morale che la vivifichi una società non sta in piedi. La conflittualità diventa distruttiva. Dopo un po’ se ne rendono oscuramente conto anche i partigiani dell’assoluta neutralità dello stato. Solo che non lo confessano. E allora, così come per far quadrare i conti una tassa tira quasi sempre l’altra, pure per mettere pace tra litiganti irresponsabili una regola d’ingaggio tira l’altra, a gran vantaggio in ambedue i casi dell’ipertrofia statale. Per cui all’uomo tenuto ben lontano dai concetti di bene e di male, che l’opinione pubblica non ha dibattuto, perché invitata a non farlo; privato di una tensione morale che egli non ha coltivato, perché invitato a non farlo; la nuova società propone, anzi, impone come surrogato un affastellarsi di corsi di educazione: prima civica, poi sessuale, un giorno anche sentimentale. L’uomo torna bambino. Come si vede d’altra parte ogni giorno dalla smisurata suscettibilità di questi nuovi cittadini, spesso non a caso organizzati in branco: ai simboli, alle parole, ai gesti. Ma magari non altrettanto alla violenza contro l’individuo e la proprietà. Lo spirito della legislazione diventa tanto più occhiuto, minuzioso e manifestamente precettistico, quanto più il sentimento della comune appartenenza s’indebolisce. Laddove una scarna legislazione che rinsaldi sempre di più la difesa e i veri diritti della persona – non i capricci, le ipersensibilità e le permalosità – mette al riparo l’individuo dagli ondeggiamenti della massa; e in questo, senza essere invasiva, senza materializzare uno stato etico, indirettamente mantiene e confessa il suo fondamento etico; quella farraginosa del Corano laico ottiene l’effetto opposto. (Tutto ciò bisogna tenere a mente, ad esempio, quando si affronta la questione dell’aborto, le cui implicazioni si diramano ben oltre lo status dell’embrione.)

In questa parodia dello stato liberale, così come concepito ad esempio da certi zelanti devoti del “patriottismo costituzionale”, che è potenzialmente la versione più moderna e accattivante di uno stato criptogiacobino, l’uomo, incapace di camminare con le proprie gambe e non a caso bisognoso di “educazione permanente”, è ridotto ad una marionetta che viaggia nel traffico della società rispettando scrupolosamente i segnali vecchi e nuovi che spuntano ad ogni incrocio suppostamene pericoloso. Vengono in mente le parole a riguardo del socialismo pronunciate in un discorso parlamentare 160 anni fa da Tocqueville:

…il terzo [tratto caratteristico, di tutti i sistemi che portano il nome di socialismo] è una sfiducia profonda nella libertà, nella ragione umana; è un profondo disprezzo per l’individuo considerato in se stesso, allo stato di uomo; ciò che giustifica l’idea che lo Stato non deve essere soltanto il dirigente della società, ma, per così dire, il maestro, il precettore, il pedagogo di ogni uomo; deve sempre porsi a lato di lui, al di sopra di lui, attorno a lui, per guidarlo, mantenerlo, trattenerlo; in una parola, è una graduale confisca della libertà umana…

L’importanza della religione quale collante e stabilizzatore sociale era ben presente sia ad un conservatore-liberale credente come Alexis de Tocqueville, sia ad un conservatore-reazionario ateo come Hippolyte Taine, per rimanere nella Francia dell’ottocento. L’epoca dello stato confessionale è passata, e giustamente, giacché si presume che dopo il lungo tirocinio l’uomo “occidentale” sia in grado camminare da solo. A patto di rimanere umile. Emanciparsi da Dio, o quantomeno da una morale che a una verità se non trovata almeno ricercata con sofferenza faccia riferimento, è il sogno ricorrente e pericoloso delle epoche di crescente libertà. Esse si portano dietro il riflesso di queste libertà, come un marchio di nascita, e insieme anche il veleno per distruggerle. Perciò la saggezza di quel “One Nation, under God” non sta nell’esortazione alla militanza cristiana, ma alla temperanza. Un monito allo Stato sovrano, Terra di mezzo tra lo Stato di Natura e il Regno di Dio, né Stato di Natura né Regno di Dio.

[pubblicato su Giornalettismo.com]

Bill Clinton said something today on the health care bill that made me shudder:

“The point I want to make is: Just pass the bill, even if it’s not exactly what you want,” Clinton told Democrats. “When you try and fail, the other guys write history.”

One thing I hope is generally true of conservatism and libertarianism is that there ought to be no cause that is worth saying this about.  Liberals tend to think governance is about bringing grand new legislation into the world.  Conservatives and libertarians tend to think preserving the rule of law, preserving order, and preserving basic, traditional rights implicit in the very fabric of our political order, are the only true objectives of government.  In fact, this is the proper understanding of “limited government”—government that is not limited in its objectives cannot possibly be limited in any other sense.

As I’ve worked my way through Tocqueville’s Democracy in America—beginning and pausing a few months ago, and resuming a couple of weeks ago—the health care issue has lent unending points of contrast to the America Tocqueville visited in the 1830s and the America of today.  A hundred and seventy years will yield striking changes, of course, but given our founding documents and basic organization of government are still largely unchanged, the difference in the modern posture towards government is disturbing.  For example, as Tocqueville notes:

In the eyes of democracy, government is not a good; it is a necessary evil.  Officials must be accorded a certain power; for without this power, what use would they serve?  But the external appearances of power are not indispensable to the operation of affairs; they needlessly offend the public’s sight.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Univ. Chicago Press, 2002  (Mansfield and Winthrop, eds.) at 194.

In the health care debate specifically, this government-as-a-necessary-evil attitude has been completely reversed.  Here’s Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias yesterday:

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the fact that in a unicameral United States of America, we would now have passed both a comprehensive health care reform bill and also the most important piece of environmental legislation in the history of the world. Now that’s not the world we live in. Instead we live in a world where neither of those things has passed and where their prospects aren’t clear. But think back on this point the next time you hear someone say Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not centrist enough, or else that Obama is struggling with his agenda because he’s not left-wing enough.

Health-care reform passed with 50.5 percent of the vote in the House. Cap and trade passed with 50.8 percent. Neither margin would’ve been nearly enough in the Senate. Whether or not you think Nancy Pelosi had a couple more votes in her back pocket, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t have 41 more votes, which is what she would’ve needed to pass health-care reform if the House worked by the Senate’s inane rules. Pelosi really does seem like a great speaker, but a lot of the ire directed at Harry Reid would be more appropriately aimed at the rules he labors under.

In other words, these kids seem wistful over America having traded a wise and skillful aristocracy for our American democracy.  Tocqueville again:

Aristocracy is infinitely more skillful in the science of the legislator than democracy can be.  Master of itself, it is not subject to getting carried away in passing distractions; it has long designs that it knows how to ripen until a favorable occasion presentes itself.  Aristocracy proceeds wisely; it knows the art of making the collective force of all its laws converge at the same time toward the same point.

It is not so in democracy: its laws are almost always defective or unseasonable.

Id. at 222.

The problem with Klein saying things like we should pass clumsy and ineffective and bloated laws because “once the programs [are] passed into law, they [will] slowly and continually improve[]” is that democracy, by design, does not work that way.  Society may prosper despite far-reaching, complex and often counter-productive legislation, but America’s famous prosperity was certainly not earned because of such legislation.  Moreover, such legislation could not even hope to inure to Americans’ benefit where “the general tendency of the law” compliments—or at least does not injure—the Americans’ natural genius in industry and economic activity.   The Democrats’ health care plan is the opposite—by design.  As Bill Maher, for example, has repeatedly said, health care is no place for the profit-motive.

In other words, America is able to prosper despite not having an efficient law-making political organization precisely because this means Americans are left unencumbered by the very thing efficient law-making political organizations produce: large and expensive legislation that cramps innovation and industry.

As for Bill Clinton’s unseemly aristocratic push for health care legislation, here is one final thought from Tocqueville:

Those charged with directing the affairs of the public in the United States are often inferior in capacity and morality to the men that aristocracy would bring to power; but their interest intermingles and is identified with that of the majority of their fellow citizens.  They can therefore commit frequent infidelities and grave errors, but they will never systematically follow a tendency hostile to that majority; and they cannot succeed in impressing an exclusive and dangerous style on the government.

Id. at 223.  Given the steadily declining support for a public option, statements like Clinton’s and Eric Massa’s clearly indicate they are “systematically follow[ing] a tendency hostile to th[e] majority.”

It would be said indeed if Tocqueville’s America has passed, and we are instead left with Clinton’s and Obama’s and Pelosi’s America, where legislators are kings, and Americans have traded their self-rule for the warm blanket of a welfare state.

UPDATE: Gallup reports the scales have officially tipped: more Americans now reject the notion that health care is the federal government’s job.

Worse still:

Fifty-four percent of respondents to the latest CNN poll disapprove of Barack Obama’s performance on the economy, a 17-point swing in six weeks.  That isn’t the worst of the poll, either;  57% now disapprove of Obama’s performance on health care, a 19-point swing in that same time.

Would if our present predicament were like what threatened democratic peoples in early industrial history, where folks tended towards political apathy in order to avail themselves of the flood of opportunities in the market:

There is, in fact, a very perilous passage in the life of democratic peoples.

When the taste for material enjoyments develops in one of these peoples more rapidly than enlightenment and the habits of freedom, there comes a moment when men are swept away and almost beside themselves at the sight of the new goods that they are ready to grasp.  Preoccupied with the sole care of making a fortune, they no longer perceive the tight bond that unites the particular fortune of each of them to the prosperity of all.  There is no need to tear from such citizens the rights they possess; they themselves willingly allow them to escape.  The exercise of their political duties appears to them a distressing contretemps that distracts them from their industry. If it is a question of choosing their representatives, of giving assistance to authority, of treating the common thing in common, they lack the time; they cannot waste their precious time in useless work.  These are games of the idle that do not suit grave men occupied with the serious interests of life.  These people believe they are following the doctrine of interest, but they have only a coarse idea of it, and to watch better over what they call their affairs, they neglect the principal one, which is to remain masters of themselves.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Univ. Chicago Press, 2002  (Mansfield and Winthrop, eds.) at 515 (emphasis added).

Instead, our situation is inversed.  Where early American life was characterized as a whirlwind of productive activity, and where an American’s political energies were threatened with all manners of distraction by the unending surge of economic opportunities presented to him, today we throw up our arms in despair at the idea that something so trivial as economic reality should deny us any of the fruits of free human industry.  Faced with this frustration, we cease to explore the opportunities our freedom provides, and instead explore what might be yielded through the force that democracy provides.   After all, one’s lot may be rendered the greater if, through his vote, he renders his fellow’s less.  And the yield of his labor likewise will increase if he can, again through his vote, force his vendors to accept less of his yields for more of theirs in return.

In this way, we find ourselves at the same evil in the relationship between industry and political will that Tocqueville described immediately before the passage quoted above:

The nature of absolute power in democratic centuries is neither cruel nor savage, but it is minute and vexatious.  Although despotism of this kind does not ride roughshod over humanity, it is directly opposed to the genius of commerce and the instincts of industry.

Thus men of democratic times need to be free in order to procure more easily for themselves the material enjoyments for which they constantly sight.

It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive for these same enjoyments delivers them to the first master who presents himself.  The passion for well-being is then turned against itself and, without perceiving it, drives away the object of its covetousness.

Id.

We are now closer than ever to making this philosophical shift away from the traditional American industrial model vis-a-vis health care, and to unwittingly “driv[ing] away the object of [our] covetousness.”  With the plan now passed by the House—with a cost estimated as high as $3 trillion to re-appropriated from one group of Americans to another—something like 15% of America’s economy is threatened with becoming the subject of political sentiment rather than industrial and productive realities.  We are prepared to take the products of a free industry by force—to presume to instruct a tree how high and in what seasons it may bear its fruit—to have our fill of the medical miracles produced as a result of decades of free innovation.  And we are prepared to paralyze the potential for future innovation in order to force down costs and redirect resources as politicians see fit.  Like so many other zombified countries before us, we are strapping on bibs as we prepare to feast on the health care industry’s lifeless corpse.

Here’s hoping the health care bill dies in the Senate.

An occasional round-up of things I can’t get to properly or that I’ve already gotten to properly

Cambridge University will soon get the letters and leftovers from Siegfried Sassoon, the WWI-era poet who was nearly hanged for treason. Josette Bajout, who gave Tintin his orange hair for Herge, has died. Charlotte Grimshaw sits down with The Guardian. Roberto Bolano gets the revisionist treatment already. T.S. Eliot’s letters are reviewed. An ode to the God of Manga. Jeanette Winterson is interviewed. Paul Barker likes suburbia. Caravaggio gets his due. Malcolm Gladwell. Mary Karr writes about alcoholism. More on Claude Levi-Strauss. Alexis de Tocqueville’s letters home from America get their first English language printing. The Independent diary.

Quick links for Friday morning:

• First things first: if you’re only going to follow one person on Twitter, it should be Old Hoss Radbourn.
• A new book of Tocqueville’s letters home from the U.S. give a new perspective on the author of Democracy in America.
• Chuck Klosterman discusses twelve albums that counteract writer’s block.  The highlight is his comment on a Replacements live album from 1985.
• Leonard Cohen has been honored with a plaque in the Chelsea Hotel.
• Although this is old news, I just learned last night at the opening of the Southern Historical Association’s annual meeting that historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown introduced Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes.  The world works in funny ways.
• And, if you’re looking for a hypercritical, borderline nonsensical article about Bob Dylan, this piece in the Weekly Standard is for you.

Alexis de Tocqueville was twenty-five when he and his friend first came to America, after thirty-seven days at sea. The trip that would eventually yield the timelessly insightful and, some say, prophetic De la démocratie en Amérique began as an investigation of the country’s prisons. Nevertheless, in his letters home, Tocqueville was already sketching general observations of our customs, unearthing truths about American ways of life that Americans themselves did not – and, in some cases still don’t – recognize. In the Autumn volume of The Hudson Review, Frederick Brown offers a new translation of those writings, including this excerpt from a letter Tocqueville sent to his mother on May 14, 1831, shortly after arriving in New York:

This entire coastline of America is low lying and nondescript. Hardly a tree remains standing in a region densely wooded two centuries ago. We sailed between Long Island and Connecticut, and approached New York at sunrise, entering the port from behind. I don’t know whether our view was colored by the experience of 35 days at sea and our recent passage down a drab coast, but I assure you that cries of admiration went up when we beheld the city’s surroundings. Picture a sea dotted with sails, a lovely sweep of notched shoreline, blossoming trees on greensward sloping down to the water, a multitude of small, artfully embellished candy-box houses in the background—and you have the entrance to New York by way of the Sound.

I was so struck by what I presume to be the commodiousness of these little houses and their excellent situation in the landscape that I shall try to obtain the design of several especially pretty ones… I have already been informed that they are not expensive; we have nothing comparable in France…

Here we are in New York. From a Frenchman’s perspective, it looks disarmingly weird. There isn’t a dome, a steeple or a large edifice in sight, which leaves one with the impression that one has landed in a suburb, not the city itself. At its very core, where everything is built of brick, monotony rules. The houses lack cornices, balustrades, carriage entrances. Streets are ill paved, but pedestrians have sidewalks.

Lodging was a problem at first because foreigners abound at this time of year and because we sought a pension, not an inn. At last we found one that suits us perfectly, on the most fashionable street in town, called Broadway. As luck would have it, M. Palmer, the Englishman I mentioned earlier, had already found accommodations in this boarding house. Our shipboard friendship and especially the interest he is taking in our mission have led him to oblige us whenever and however possible. Best of all are the amenities offered by Americans. They beggar description. Men of every class seem to compete for the honor of being most cordial and useful. The newspapers, which report everything, announced our arrival and expressed the hope that people would come forward to assist us. They have outdone themselves. All doors are open and welcoming hands extended at every turn. I, for whom diligences and inns have always been the tiresome appanage of travel, find these new conditions most agreeable…

No doubt you would like to know, my dear Mama, how we spend our days. We rise between 5 and 6 and work until 8. At 8 o’clock the breakfast bell rings. Everyone convenes punctually. Afterward we visit several establishments to interview men with knowledge of matters that concern us. We return for dinner at 3 o’clock. Between 5 and 7 we put our notes in order. At 7 we go out and socialize over tea. This way of life is most agreeable, and I believe eminently sane. But it flouts all our assumptions. Thus, we were quite surprised at first to see women appearing at the breakfast table with faces carefully made up for the day. We are told that this is customary in all private houses. Paying visits to a lady at 9 in the morning is not thought improper.

At first we found the absence of wine from meals a serious deprivation, and we are still baffled by the sheer quantity of food that people somehow stuff down their gullets. Besides breakfast, dinner, and tea, with which Americans eat ham, they have very copious suppers and often a snack. So far, this is the only respect in which I do not challenge their superiority; they, on the other hand, reckon themselves superior in many ways. People here seem to reek of national pride. It seeps through their politeness.

More of Frederick Brown’s translations of Tocqueville’s letters can be read at The Hudson Review’s website.

L’intellectuel germanopratin par excellence

“Sorte de croisement entre Yves Montand et Jean-Paul Sartre“, BHL est résumé en trois mots par l’américaine Marianne Wiggins (1) : “grand, riche, beau et marié à un ancien mannequin. Selon elle, “son aura de philosophe a fait de lui un habitué des plateaux de télévision, mais il est aussi un journaliste accompli doublé d’un réalisateur de documentaires. Il n’est donc pas étonnant que le mensuel américain The Atlantic Monthly ait eu l’idée de génie d’engager M. Lévy pour marcher sur les traces d’Alexis de Tocqueville, qui, au XIXe siècle, avait parcouru notre jeune nation, puis rédigé son grand classique De la démocratie en Amérique (…) Tocqueville était un magistrat, un juriste imprégné de pragmatisme et d’idéaux moraux. M. Lévy est un intellectuel à paillettes, un beau parleur un peu snob (…) Même s’il reconnaît avoir eu pour compagnon de voyage Sur la route, l’ouvrage de Jack Kerouac, il devait également avoir sous la main la collection complète des Vanity Fair. Les Américains typiques sont pour lui rien moins que Barry Diller, Norman Mailer, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty. Tocqueville avait certes rencontré John Quincy Adams, Sam Houston, Daniel Webster et Andrew Jackson, mais aussi des fermiers, des artisans et des petits commerçants, et il avait débattu avec passion du système éducatif américain, de la poésie du pays, de sa langue et même de sa conception du mariage (…) La méthode de travail de Bernard-Henri Lévy consiste à faire jouer à des célébrités le rôle d’oracle local. Jim Harrison pour le Montana, Charlie Rose pour la Caroline du Nord, Sharon Stone pour Los Angeles. Parsemer un article de noms de célébrités rend sa lecture plus aisée et plus agréable, le problème, c’est qu’American Vertigo aurait pu s’appeler “Célébrités en Amérique” ou “Dans l’intimité des stars”. 

Encore plus sévère, l’Allemand Johannes Willms – qui s’appuie sur la lecture de Le b.a.-ba du BHL, enquête sur le plus grand intellectuel français, de Jade Lindgaard et Xavier de La Porte – trace un portrait au vitriol de notre BHL : “L’homme est une icône ambulante. Il est aussi connu en France que cette femme à la poitrine opulente par laquelle le peintre Eugène Delacroix a symbolisé la Liberté, celle au chemisier grand ouvert, qui franchit une barricade le drapeau tricolore à la main. Bernard-Henry Lévy – qu’en France on appelle BHL – a deux choses en commun avec cette créature emblématique : l’attitude narcissique et la chemise blanche ouverte jusqu’au nombril (qu’il porte sous un costume sombre). La tenue, qui met en valeur son torse de héros au bronzage permanent, fait son petit effet. C’est un élément non négligeable car, à l’âge de la télévision, l’apparence est le message. Le narcissisme et la chemise blanche ne sont donc pas une marotte mais un logo. Or l’effet que BHL a habilement construit pour accroître son prestige d’unique star des intellectuels français semble s’être épuisé. Une biographie vient de paraître, quatre autres sont en cours d’élaboration et toutes entendent détruire la magie, dépouiller BHL de sa chemise déjà grande ouverte et le présenter dans la “vérité” de sa nudité (…) [Son] réseau de connexions diverses si typique de l’“exception culturelle” française explique également pourquoi BHL reste toujours la star des intellectuels français : tous les médias d’une certaine importance, ou presque, sont à ses pieds, et ses rares détracteurs ont du mal à se faire entendre (…) Reste à voir si tout cela suffira à lui faire passer sans dommages la tempête qui se prépare avec les autres ouvrages, en particulier ceux de Philippe Cohen et Nicolas Beau, deux journalistes connus pour leur pertinence et pour leur virulence. Il serait de toute façon grand temps de démythifier ce comédien qui, en se faisant passer pour un intellectuel, ridiculise l’ensemble de cette corporation.”

Dans un article consacré à un ouvrage de BHL, Comédie, un autre journaliste allemand, Rudolf Walther (3), n’y va pas de main morte : “le cœur du livre est en réalité un monologue que mène BHL, le médiatique, avec un Lévy prétendument authentique et purifié. Inutile de souligner que ce dernier n’a pas souvent droit à la parole. Dès les premières phrases, la catharsis est annoncée : “Je les connais bien. Le théâtre. La bassesse. Ces gens qui vous tendent la main comme pour vous prendre le pouls.” Ce que l’auteur ne dit pas, c’est qu’il s’est précisément servi pendant vingt ans de ces gens-là pour sa propre mise en scène. Les “nouveaux philosophes”, tant dans leurs propos que dans leurs publications, n’ont jamais atteint un niveau d’élaboration critique ou théorique très élevé. Devant les caméras en marche, ils dictaient leurs commentaires sur les émissions de la veille, un “dialogue” avec les médias qui a fini par se tarir. Aujourd’hui, ils se contentent donc de soliloquer.” Ce qui ne l’empêche pas que “BHL ne travaille que là où le sang coule ou, du moins, là où tourne une caméra.” Fermez les guillemets !

Il serait toutefois faux de faire des journalistes allemands les critiques les plus sévères de BHL. Introduisant une traduction d’un article de l’écrivain consacré à l’Allemagne, Jürg Altwegg (4) rappelle l’apport du philosophe français : “il s’est fait connaître du grand public par sa mise en scène de la “nouvelle philosophie”, qui, dix ans après Mai 68, allait entraîner la fin de l’hégémonie marxiste dans la culture française et marquer le déclin du communisme. La contribution de Lévy à la critique du stalinisme et du marxisme a paru sous le titre la Barbarie à visage humain [Grasset]. Dans la foulée d’André Glucksmann, qui, dans les Maîtres penseurs [Grasset], revisitait les précurseurs du national-socialisme dans la pensée allemande, Lévy élargissait, dans l’Idéologie française [Grasset], l’approche antitotalitaire à l’analyse du terreau dont s’était nourri le régime de Pétain. A sa parution, en 1981, le livre souleva de fortes vagues et ouvrit les yeux sur la France de Vichy.” Faisant allusion à l’article de Lévy sur l’Allemagne d’après la chute du mur, le journaliste écrit : “Pour les lecteurs allemands, l’article de Bernard-Henri Lévy est plus qu’un résumé des récents débats : c’est un miroir français, un regard extérieur, plein de sympathie, plein d’injustice aussi, et non dépourvu de sens critique. Il montre qu’il existe un débat politique transnational sur le passé. Et qu’une sorte de conscience intellectuelle européenne est en train de voir le jour.”(1) Marianne Wiggins – Los Angeles Times – 02-02-06

(2) Johannes Willms – Süddeutsche Zeitung – 09-12-04

(3) Rudolf Walther – Tages-Anzeiger – 22-01-98

(4) Jürg Altwegg – Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung – 25-02-99

Hippocrates:

“Everything in excess is opposed to nature.”

Aristotle:
“True happiness flows from the possession of wisdom and virtue and not from the possession of external goods.”

Adam Smith:
“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”

Alexis de Tocqueville:
” Materialism, among all nations, is a dangerous disease of the human mind; but it is more especially to be dreaded among a democratic people because it readily amalgamates with that vice which is the most familiar to the heart under such circumstances. Democracy encourages a taste for physical gratification; this taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and materialism, in its turn, hurries them on with mad impatience to these same delights; such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold back.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt:
“The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.”

Bertrand Russell:
“It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”

In the previous two posts I have explored global government spending, with specific emphasis on military, education and healthcare as well as the size of corporations and their relation to the size of national government. In this post I will present some interesting information with respect to consumerism.

What we are seeking is a little perspective as relates to understanding the problems and challenges (or opportunities depending on your point of view) that are facing all of humanity.

According to the World Bank Development Indicators released in 2008 based on data from 2005:

• The World’s richest 20% consume 76.6% of private consumption
• The World’s middle 60% consume 21.9% of private consumption
• The World’s poorest 20% consume 1.5% of private consumption

According to the Human Development Report 1998 Overview (data used from 1995):

• The top 20% consume 45% of global animal protein produced while the poorest 20% only 5%
• Top 20% use 58% of total energy while the poorest 20% use less than 4%

According to The World Fact Book estimates from July of 2009 the following population figures will be used for deeper analysis:

• United States of America             307,212,123
• Russia                                               140,041,247
• Japan                                                1277,212,123
• Germany                                            82,329,758
• France                                                64,057,792
• United Kingdom                              61,113,205
• Italy                                                     58,126,212
• Canada                                               33,487,208
• Total                                                873,446,224

Let’s explore consumer spending in the G8 nations. This will be done using data from Euromonitor International from 2007.

Clothing and Footwear – First number is total spent while the second is per capita:

• United States of America                  429.8B                 $1,399
• Russia                                                    55.9B                   $399
• Japan                                                     75.1B                   $599
• Germany                                               85.7B                   $1,045
• France                                                    61.6B                   $962
• United Kingdom                                 87.7B                   $1,437
• Italy                                                        84.5B                   $1,456
• Canada                                                   31.3B                   $937
• Total                                                  911.6B                 $1044

Electronics – First number is total spent while the second is per capita:

• United States of America                 162.0B                 $1,399
• Russia                                                    24.5B                   $175
• Japan                                                     17.7B                   $139
• Germany                                               30.0B                   $364
• France                                                    27.1B                   $423
• United Kingdom                                 44.3B                   $725
• Italy                                                        10.8B                   $186
• Canada                                                  12.0B                   $358
• Total                                                  328.4B                 $362

Vices (Alcohol and Smoking) – First number is total spent while the second is per capita:

• United States of America               205B                     $667
• Russia                                                  14.5B                   $103
• Japan                                                   77.5B                   $609
• Germany                                              64.0B                  $777
• France                                                  43.3B                  $675
• United Kingdom                                59.8B                 $978
• Italy                                                       34.6B                  $595
• Canada                                                 30.2B                  $901
• Total                                                  528.9B               $664

Household Goods (furniture, appliances, carpets, cleaning products and services) – First number is total spent while the second is per capita:

• United States of America               456.9B                 $1,399
• Russia                                                  51.0B                   $175
• Japan                                                   86.2B                   $139
• Germany                                               121.7B                 $364
• France                                                   43.3B                   $423
• United Kingdom                                 59.8B                   $725
• Italy                                                        34.6B                   $186
• Canada                                                   67.1B                   $358
• Total                                                  1054.2B               $362

Recreation (discretionary spending) – First number is total spent while the second is per capita:

• United States of America               881.0B                 $2868
• Russia                                                     44.9B                   $321
• Japan                                                   275.8B                 $2170
• Germany                                              170.0B                 $2064
• France                                                  130.0B                 $2029
• United Kingdom                                210.0B                 $3436
• Italy                                                       88.5B                   $1523
• Canada                                                 74.8B                   $2234
• Total                                                  1,875B                 $2,081

Just in these 5 consumer spending data points almost $4.37 Trillion USD is spent. As of today the United States Census Bureau estimates that the world population is 6,793,000,000 which means that the G8 represent only 12% of the global population. Moreover, the total consumer spend on these 5 areas could pay for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals more than 29 times.

Advertisers will spend almost $500B on all mediums this year to get your attention and drive your desire to consume. Due to this reach is it any wonder that global spend on the following is estimated to be:

$1,000,000,000,000 on tourism
$100,000,000,000 on bottled water
$90,000,000,000 on chocolate
$18,000,000,000 on cosmetics

It is estimated that 58,000,000 cars will be made this year. Bringing the total number of passenger vehicles on the Earth to approximately 620,000,000. It takes approximately 20 – 30 hours to make the average American car. Meaning the labour cost is approximately $2,100 or roughly the equivalent of the consumer price for a Tata Nano.

I am not advocating a position that is anticonsumerism. However, I am clearly advocating that the hyperconsumerism as brought on by hyperindividuality and a clear lessening of community that we as a society, a global society, have lost sight of those things that are most important. I believe firmly in the principles as set forth in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter:

“WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.”

With this preamble in mind I am going to speak about wages around the world and the Gross National Happiness or GNH.

Thich Nhat Tran
“Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of you life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.”

Be Inspired Today!

The New Currency
SDM

Complexitatea şi bogaţia unei opere este, cel mai adesea, o bună măsură a valorii şi perenităţii acesteia. În cazul operei lui Edmund Burke, a lui Benjamin Constant şi a lui Alexis de Tocqueville, această observaţie nu are nevoie de precizări suplimentare. Totuşi, atunci când sunt aduşi în discuţie aceşti trei mari gânditori politici, care au trăit şi scris în epoci diferite, persistă o profundă ambiguitate, ba chiar o confuzie,  cu privire la mesajul lor filozofic fundamental, o confuzie care a luat amploare în a doua jumătate a veacului XX. Aşadar, sunt aceşti filozofi politici reprezentaţi ai liberalismului sau ilustrează gândirea conservatoare şi conservatorismul?

Ambiguitatea în ceea ce priveşte mesajul central al filozofiei lor politice derivă din procesul  istoric prin care, atât ideile lui Burke, Constant sau Tocqueville, cât şi evenimentele capitale care le- au subdeterminat opera şi gândirea, sunt în permanenţă interpretate şi reinterpretate pentru a oferi noi răspunsuri sau puncte de sprijin pentru înţelegerea şi evaluarea  unor noi evenimente, a unor noi idei, a unor noi fenomene social-politice. Acest lucru poate fi observat limpede la autorii conservatori anglo-saxoni din a doua jumătate a secolului XX, care au făcut din cei trei gânditori europeni – şi mai ales din Edmund Burke - nişte precursori ai conservatorismului american şi britanic din această perioadă. Cu toate acestea, o scurtă privire asupra ideilor şi biografiei celor trei este suficientă pentru a demonstra – fără a diminua câtuşi de puţin complexitatea şi unicitatea gândirii fiecăruia – că atât Burke, cât şi Constant sau Tocqueville au fost, s-au considerat ca atare şi sunt unii dintre cei mai mari filozofi politici liberali.

Edmund Burke, deşi a fost transformat de Russel Kirk în părintele conservatorismului american, a fost în epocă un membru al partidei Whig şi nu al Tory, gruparea politică a conservatorilor. În această calitate, s-a implicat în disputa constituţională privind prerogativele monarhului, susţinând limitarea puterii regale; a avut un rol decisiv în eliminarea unor legi care restrângeau libertatea comerţului cu grâne, una dintre cauzele principale pentru care vor lupta liberalii manchesterieni de mai târziu; a criticat abuzurile East India Company (un monopol mercantilist) faţă de populaţia de pe subcontinentul indian; în sfârşit, fiind el însuşi pe jumătate irlandez, a susţinut emanciparea catolicilor, s-a împotrivit pedepsei capitale şi a criticat utilizarea curentă a toturii în cadrul pedesele aplicate în epocă.

Dar aproprierea lui Burke de către conservatori se face în temeiul opoziţiei sale faţă de Revoluţia franceză, uitându-se că începutul Revoluţiei a fost primit cu încântare şi entuziasm de politicianul englez, care vedea evenimentul ca pe o bătălie în favoarea libertăţii.  Numai odată cu excesele iacobine cvasi-totalitare ale revoluţionarilor francezi Burke devine un critic al mentalităţii constructiviste – cum va spune Friedrich A. Hayek, discipolul său spiritual din secolul XX -, autoritare şi sângeroase ale Revoluţiei.  Că Burke nu a fost, în plan politic, un conservator – fie şi în cel mai restrictiv sens al acestui termen – stă dovadă sprijinul său pentru Revoluţia americană şi pentru doleanţele revoluţionarilor americani – taxele prea ridicate percepute de Coroană în colonii.

Ca şi Burke, Benjamin Constant este un critic virulent al exceselor Revoluţiei, dar şi un apărător al ideilor liberale afirmate în prima etapă a acestui eveniment fundamental al istoriei europene şi mondiale. Constant – un cartofor şi un libertin – este cel care îmbogăţeşte gândirea liberală în lumina acestor evenimente teoretizând două mari pericole, de importanţă egală,  la adresa libertăţii individuale : despotismul monarhic sau autoritarismul unui grup restrâns cât şi despotismul maselor sau al democratiei absolute şi nelimitate. În aceasta constă valoarea şi perenitatea distincţiei făcute de Constant între libertatea anticilor şi a modernilor.

Ca personaj politic, Constant a întreţinut relaţii inconstante cu oamenii şi grupările politice ale timpului, dar niciodată cu ideile liberale. A fost un critic virulent al lui Napoleon, după care a încercat o reconciliere cu acesta în schimbul adoptării unei constituţii care ar fi limitat drastic, după o interpretare originală a  modelului britanic, puterea împăratului; a încercat o apropiere faţă de Ludovic al XVIII-lea, după ce acesta a anunţat adoptarea Cartei, dar a fost epurat de conservatori din guvern imediat după Restauraţie; în sfârşit, va susţine “Revoluţia din iulie” în 1830 şi pe “regele-cetăţean” Louis-Phillippe d’Orléans împotriva vechii dinastii a Bourbonilor.

Alexis de Tocqueville este cel care, în multe privinţe, preia ştafeta de la Contant în contextul francez. Este membru al partidului liberal, susţine ca deputat abolirea sclaviei şi reformarea administrării coloniale, este un participant activ la Revoluţia de la 1848, un critic al mişcăriii socialiste şi ministru de externe în guvernul provizoriu instalat în februarie; în sfârşit, când Ludovic Bonaparte va lua puterea prin lovitură de stat, eveniment care încheie aventura liberală franceză de la 1848, Tocqueville se va număra printre opozanţi, va fi arestat, încarcerat şi scos din viaţa publică.

Tocqueville a fost un aristocrat dintr-o familie veche, dar a susţinut întotdeauna poziţii liberale. Ca şi Constant, el întelege că Revoluţia din 1789 a reprezentat un amestec de idei bune şi de idei rele, dar că procesul declanşat cu această ocazie este inevitabil.  Vechiul Regim, centralist şi absolutist, a fost din nefericire înlocuit cu un regim caracterizat prin aceleaşi neajunsuri, cu singura excepţie că suveranitatea nu mai era monarhică şi divină, ci proclamată în numele poporului. Aşa cum îi demonstrează şi călătoria sa în Statele Unite, democraţia nelimitată, ca orice fel de putere politică nelimitată, nu este nepărat de preferat puterii nelimitate a unui singur om. Chestiunea de fond nu este cine deţine puterea, ci cât de mare este această putere şi cât de mult poate ea afecta libertatea indivizilor.

Tocqueville, Constant şi Burke, ca orice alţi mari gânditori, nu pot fi reduşi la o singură trăsătură de penel. Ei au încercat să înţeleagă evenimentele epocii lor, la care au participat din plin, reflectând în acelaşi timp asupra idealurilor umane universale. Cu siguranţă nu împărtăşeau aceleaşi idei asupra tuturor lucrurilor. Cu atât mai puţin aceleaşi gusturi, capricii sau moravuri. Libertinul Constant nu ar fi fost probabil invitatul preferat al lui Tocqueville la masă, şi invers. Dar în ce priveşte filozofia politică, este greu de ignorat convergenţa gândirii lor şi mesajul eminamente liberal al acestora, în sensul de baza, clasic, al acestui termen.

Bogdan C. Enache

Från 2006. En första sketch (vilket bland annat märks genom en referens till wikipedia) till en kort uppsats (bytte dock ämne). Handlar om en mycket spännande fråga tycker jag. Jag kan dock inget om den. Misstänker att jag blev alltför excalterad och förmodligen har övertolkat Augustinus/Galileo. (Min recension av The Cambridge Companion finns här.)

In The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville there is a paper called “Democratic Religious Experience” which I found eye-opening. Joshua Mitchell’s essay concerns some of Tocqueville’s sociological insights pertaining to religion. His perspective is grand: using Tocqueville’s ideal types of Aristocracy and Democracy, and the corresponding types of persons (i.e. “Democratic Man”, etc.), Mitchell tries to understand religion in the democratic era.

The standard modernization theory, and the “fable of liberalism” as Mitchell calls it, holds, of course, that religion will disappear with better material conditions and education. Tocqueville, the prime storyteller of fable of liberalism, did not, however, agree with the secularist part of the story of modernization. As Mitchell writes,

“Tocqueville’s observations of religious practice in the United States, which lacked an aristocratic past, led him to conclude that the supposition of any number of European Enlightenment thinkers about the fate of religion in the democratic age must be turned around:  the United States ‘anomaly’ is actually paradigmatic, and the Europe of his own day is anomalous. Disbelief, Tocqueville says, is an (historical) accident; faith is the only permanent condition of mankind.”

Faith might be permanent, but it will certainly take different forms and expressions in a Democratic society. This was what Tocqueville tried to explain, and Mitchell in turn uses typically Tocquevillian psychological mechanisms, and his idea of the condition of social equality as driving force, to explain some developments of modern religion. Specifically, Mitchell identifies the three phenomena biblical literalism, personal unmediated experience of God, and the idea of man’s radical depravity, as typically “democratic”.

The idea of literalism as a modern phenomenon, rather than ancient, had not crossed my mind before. It is a striking idea, and though I am not in the position to estimate its truth, I find that it at least brings clarity to some paradoxes in the history of ideas.

Let me digress. I remember reading a volume of Galileo Galilei, his “Copernican Letters” (as they have been titled in Sweden at least). In those letters Galileo defend the position that the results his scientific investigations are not in contradiction with the Bible. He argues against those literalist interpreters who claim him to be implying that the Bible is false. Galileo defends himself, and what is particularly interesting is that he does so by referring to older authorities of the church in support of his position: the Church Fathers, and in particular Augustine.

With the view I held at the time I read Galileo, those old authorities seemed to me to be the more modern, the more progressive position, while the literalist position was the backward and ancient one. What I did was to equate the more allegoric approach with the approach of modern revisionist Christianity; there appeared to be a similarity between the non-literalism of modernist Christianity and the allegorical interpretations of Augustine — and the literalists facing Galileo simply seemed to be simply a regression to even older forms of beliefs.

That was wrong. What I should have thought, (and I believe I actually would have thought this had I taken time to reflect thoroughly on the issue ) was that literalism is basically just as modern as Galileo’s new science. In fact, from a sociological and psychological perspective they seem to share some important intellectual inclinations. Man in the age of equality, i.e. the Democratic Man, has certain habits of mind and inclinications in the way he thinks and takes decisions. Particulary, he does not find patience with symbolism, mysticism, and allegory. One result of these inclinations is represented by the new science. But for those who remain religious, the road will lead in another direction: they will feel the same inclination towards simple unmediated contact with truth, and the same impatience with too elaborate and far-fetched interpretations; and hence, out of convenience of mind, so to speak, they will read the Bible in a strict literal way — if the Book contains truth, its truth is literal. Strict literalism is, so to speak, an expression of logos, not mythos as one might have thought. (Or, if you rather will, an expression of mythos perverted by logos.)

Augustine and The Church Fathers, who were living in a more aristocratic society than Galileo and his critics, had other intellectual inclinations. They were more inclined toward allegorical reading of the Scripture. There are, however, two different dimensions to this question (and here I certainly have left Mitchells domains) . In the article on biblical literalism Wikipedia has a “History” sub-heading. It contains only two sentences:

“Biblical interpretations that were considered literalist have changed through history. For example: Saint Augustine, (4th century), claimed that the entire Bible should be interpreted in an as literal as possible way, but his own interpretation of the book of Genesis was made in such a way that would be considered ’allegorical’ by some modern readers.”

This highlights that though literalism as an aim might be constant, the standards for what constitutes a literal interpretation might change. And the modern literalists, while perhaps having the same aim as Augustine, have a much narrower view of which interpretations are literal; they have, so to speak, a more literal conception of what literal interpretation meant. This is what I above have called “strict” literalism). What Galileo is doing in his Copernican letters is, if I remember correctly, simply to remind his critics that his interpretations of the Bible (which were consistent with his scientific results, but accused of being too allegoric) were actually in line with what Augustine would regard as literal. That is, Galileo did not, I think, really dispute literalism as such, but rather propose a wider view of what counted as literal (and he also, crucially, argued that the results of science could be used in the very process of establishing what the Scripture actually was saying).

[…]

End of digression. To return to Mitchell: from a Tocquevillian perspective the ambition of literalism, and literalism as hermeneutic principle, might be described as democratic. One factor to reckon with in the explanation of “fundamentalism” in modern societies is . . .

“what could be called the epistemological prejudice that attends the emergent conditions of social equality. This prejudice, which we see already beginning to form in both the Enlightenment thought of Descartes and the Protestant thought of Luther, involves the desire to strip away the mystifications of knowledge, the desire to find the “clear and simple” truth of the matter, whatever it may happen to be.

The religious expression of this desire is scriptural literalism. In Tocqueville’s estimation, it is neither an accident nor an anachronism that scriptural literalism emerges in the democratic age. Scriptural literalism is a response to the problem of complexity, a need to find the plain and simple meaning of things when the exigencies of life provide scant time to dwell on the nuances and mysteries that are evident enough — provided there is adequate leisure time to notice them. In the democratic age, when such subtleties appear through the lens of impatience to be little more than mystifications, literal interpretations will always be appealing.

[…]

Whatever the other grounds for the incompatibility of the Fundamentalist Christianity and modern democracy may be, the two are in accord with respect to their epistemological prejudice in favor of literalism. Said otherwise, the impulse towards fundamentalism is a religious articulation of the democratic age. Notwithstanding its occasionally sharp opposition to the secular world, the impulse towards fundamentalism accords with the democratic epistemological prejudice in favor of simplicity and plain meaning. Far from being anti-modern, this impulse is only fully possible within the democratic age itself.

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Alle tre e mezza, quando sono arrivato, l’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio stava già suonando in quest’altra, piazza, quella che probabilmente verrà legata a lungo al ricordo della manifestazione di sabato.
Come da previsioni, un pomeriggio romano magicamente tiepido, a tratti caldo. E come da previsioni, le più ottimistiche previsioni, un afflusso imponente: la carica delle trecentomila teste pensanti.
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Palloncini, bandiere, striscioni, cartelli a non finire, distraggono dall’ascolto dell’ottimo gruppo musicale internazionale, che ricordo protagonista qualche anno fa di una bella serata di un ‘Caterraduno’.
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Il primo intervento è del segretario della FNSI, Franco Siddi, che chiede per cominciare un minuto di silenzio per la tragedia di Messina.
E la piazza, già ‘al completo’, in pochi attimi attenua fino a spegnere del tutto la propria variegata voce.
E tace, davvero, lunghi momenti: un popolo di gente educata, pensante, abituata a controllarsi, senza gli immancabili imbecilli di turno. Ne resto piacevolmente sorpreso, prima che il “Grazie a tutti !” scateni l’applauso esorcizzante ed autocelebrativo purtroppo immancabile.

Applaudirò tante volte, nelle oltre tre ore della mia permanenza in mezzo al Popolo della Piazza.
Lo farò per volontà di dare il mio contributo di sottolineatura alle frasi più significative, benché sicuramente non nuove, pronunciate da quel palco, ma anche, di tanto in tanto, partecipe di qualche sporadica ondata di emozione collettiva.

Franco Siddi non è Beppe Grillo. E, come lui, gran parte degli oratori si riveleranno incapaci di infiammare un pubblico, a sua volta più eterogeneo rispetto a quello dei due ormai storici ‘V-day’.
Ci saranno anche momenti di noia, di caduta di tensione, già in quel primo pur onestissimo ma troppo lungo discorso, e di iniziale perplessità rispetto alle aspettative, le più ottimistiche aspettative, di un’atmosfera continuativa di gioiosa battaglia civile.

Mi limito dunque a citare (e linkare), senza dilungarmi in un’inutile cronaca, i soli momenti di particolare intensità, artefici di quelle ’sporadiche ondate emotive’.

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Roberto Saviano viene accolto da un applauso interminabile; quando finalmente riesce a parlare, con quel suo tono pacato e riflessivo, ringrazia, e ringrazia di poter tornare a vedere “tanti visi e tanto sole”.

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Segio Lepri, novant’anni, storico direttore dell’ANSA , con voce ferma, agile e chiara, e grande lucidità di pensiero, confronta la situazione attuale con gli anni del fascismo.

Il concomitante corteo dei precari della scuola fa tappa, come previsto, in Piazza del Popolo, e la sua rappresentante, una ragazza con gli occhiali di nome Antonella Vaccaro, chiede quattro minuti ‘di tempo autogestito’.  Lei sì, allenata probabilmente da decine di megafoni, arringa ed infiamma la folla di veemente partecipazione, chiedendo alla stampa di dare voce al disagio e alle proteste del mondo del lavoro anzichè concentrarsi solo sulle ‘escort’ presidenziali. Termina con le richieste del movimento, ultima delle quali “le dimissioni, per manifesta incapacità, del ministro Gelmini”, fra un boato di consensi.

C’è spazio anche per protagonisti della musica e dello spettacolo.

Come Simoni Cristicchi, che si rivela uno straordinario trascinante showman dal vivo, fra toni sarcastici e urlati, atmosfere di musica popolare e rap, battute e versi di poesia dialettale.

Come Marina Rei, che ripropone, dopo alcune battute del famoso inno “Libertà è partecipazione” di Gaber, la sua strillata intensissima “Donna che parla in fretta”, suonando contemporaneamente la batteria, come fece al concertone del primo maggio.

E infine come Neri Marcoré: un piacere profondo ascoltare le sue considerazioni, il suo tono pacato, intelligente; ed una straordinaria sorpresa il visionario brano di filosofia politica che ci fa riscoprire, scritto da Alexis de Tocqueville fra il 1830 e il 1840 (tratto da “La democrazia in America”).

Fra le tante presenze illustri in mezzo al pubblico (all’inizio mi sono visto letteralmente sfiorare dal passaggio di Eugenio Scalfari), c’era anche quella di Giulietto Chiesa, come ci fa sapere lui stesso in questo breve articolo.
Dove, fra l’altro, scrive: “Il momento più alto del pomeriggio, in assoluto per me, è stato quando Neri Marcorè ha letto un brano di Alexis De Tocqueville, attorno al tema della dittatura della maggioranza e della facilità con cui un popolo sazio può essere costretto in una ’servitù facile’.”

Sono felice di condividere il vissuto con uno dei miei opinionisti preferiti. Uno che sentii dal vivo, già un paio di anni fa, criticare i sindacati per il loro cronico disinteresse nei confronti dei gravi problemi dell’informazione, a vantaggio di esclusive battaglie sulle condizioni di lavoro.
Come già dicevo nel post precedente, la perplessità più grave che avevo nei confronti di questa manifestazione era proprio sulla credibilità degli organizzatori, il mondo dei sindacati e dei partiti, in tanta misura corresponsabili, per omissione di una qualsiasi strategia di contrasto, con la degenerazione mediatico-democratica a cui siamo progressivamente giunti.

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E tutte quelle bandiere, CGIL e PD, a ben pensarci un qualche retrogusto fastidioso lo davano.
Ma è inutile ormai piangere sul latte versato, ed è forse inutile anche cercare di capire per quale ragione solo adesso le cose stiano cambiando, anche perché magari si arriverebbe a conclusioni ancora più amare.
Le due grandi organizzazioni hanno finalmente sottoscritto e dato vita ad un’importante testimonianza popolare di protesta, ed è positivo il consenso che hanno saputo generare da parte di tanti altri gruppi impegnati nella società civile, organizzazioni e singoli cittadini, insomma un popolo.

Solo così, smussando un po’ gli angoli e confluendo tutti in una popolazione unita da poche ma chiare direttive, si può sperare di influire davvero sulla realtà. E’ questo che sicuramente spaventa la Jena e i suoi servi.

La CISL non c’era e non ha dato nemmeno, come invece ha fatto la UIL, una sua sostanziale adesione alle tematiche della manifestazione.
Ritenevo la posizione della CISL il fatto più vergognoso di questo tre ottobre.

Ma non avevo ancora visto l’intervento al TG1 di Minzolini…

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L’immagine finale è tratta da:

http://www.sarx88.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

For me, Democracy in America is a book to dip in and out of, not a cover-to-cover read, not even in the flowing new translation of Arthur Goldhammer (which I strongly recommend).

I suspect that historians and political scientists feel differently; that they read Tocqueville’s careful and extended analyses with as much pleasure as I do the anecdotes and first-hand observations. The latter, alas, are in much shorter supply than one might expect given Tocqueville’s yearlong stay and extensive travel in North America. It’s a testament to his integrity, I suppose, that he relied so little on subjective impressions, giving precedence to verifiable facts and deductive reasoning.

Democracy has little in common with the travel narratives of Frances Trollope or Charles Dickens, writers who toured the States in roughly the same period. There are several FAQ-like sections, especially at the start, and these can be tedious reading, though Tocqueville’s contemporaries in Europe probably found them the most useful. There are also several theoretical sections, usually structured as comparisons of aristocratic and democratic societies, and these too can be tedious, though not because they are overstuffed with fact. Quite the contrary; they remind me of nothing so much as Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. Except that they’re far less silly.

But I don’t want to mischaracterize my interest. If cover-to-cover reading has never worked for me, I’ve never failed to find something of value when I dip in and out. For instance, in the midst of a very long chapter on the Constitution, I found this lovely aphorism on the limits of electoral politics:

The legislator is like a navigator on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the ocean from swelling beneath his feet.

And in a chapter on government I found a piquant observation on how things often get done:

Administrative instability began as a habit, but now I would almost say that people have developed a taste for it. No one bothers about how things were done in the past. No one seeks to adopt a method. No archives are assembled. No one collects documents even when it would be easy to do so. If  a person chances to have documents in his possession, he is likely to be careless with them. … In America, society seems to live from day to day, like an army in the field.

Which may or may not be true of the government anymore, but it’s certainly true of my English Department.

Volume 2, Part 1, which deals with the “Evolution of the American Intellect,” relies much more on deductive reasoning than verifiable fact than Volume 1, as I see it because Tocqueville is much more concerned with working through his subjective impressions. The first half of the book (published in 1835) deals with the land, its people, and their institutions — their political institutions — and Tocqueville’s impressions here seem to derive as much from his study of the facts as from his travels. The second half (1840) takes on the more amorphous topics of culture and ideology, and in this portion I see him giving freer reign to his own judgments.

One can deal with culture and ideology in a lot of different ways. Tocqueville’s way is more qualitative than quantitative, more theoretical than empirical. Though both halves of his book engage in speculation, the speculations in Volume 2 are largely derived from narratives, not facts — and not the sort of narratives one would record in a diary or letter. They have the character of myth, not memory, if I can say so without disparaging Tocqueville’s commitment to thinking about American as actuality.

Let me give a concrete instance of what I mean. In the chapter “The Literary Aspect of Democratic Centuries,” Tocqueville supports his contention that content will take precedence over form in a democratic society — and that the forms themselves will be coarse but original — by appealing to contrasting theoretical models, basing these on untested assumptions followed through to their logical conclusions. He makes no bones about this method:

Imagine an aristocratic nation in which literature is cultivated. Works of the intellect, like affairs of government, are controlled by a sovereign class. Literary life, like political existence, is almost entirely concentrated in that class or in those closest to it. This suffices to give me the key to everything else.

And later:

Let us now look at the picture from the other side.

Let us imagine ourselves transported to the heart of a democracy in which ancient traditions and present enlightenment have fostered a sensitivity to the pleasures of the mind. Ranks in this society have mingled and combined. Knowledge, like power, is infinitely divided and I daresay widely dispersed.

In other words, If you imagine “X,” I can prove “Y” — or at least postulate it.  Which is a beautiful method, if you think about it. Or at least an appropriate one for the topic: an argument founded on imagination, used to predict the future of Utopia…

The thing is, I love Tocqueville’s “Y,” but I almost always get bogged down in his “X” … his “X” and its meticulous suturing to “Y.” What I’d like for spare moments of reading is a book shorn of “X,” a Tocqueville quote-book (I have one, actually, for Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and its great; I read from it all the time).  Or better yet, maybe, a red-letter edition. You know, like those red-letter Bibles that give the sayings of Jesus in colored ink. That way I could read the “X” whenever I had the time or inclination.

Am I being a philistine here? Let’s just say I’m a product of my society, just as Tocqueville imagined me:

Taken as a whole, the literature of democratic centuries cannot present the image of order, regularity, knowledge, and art that literature exhibits in aristocratic times. Form will usually be neglected and occasionally scorned. Style will frequently seem bizarre, incorrect, exaggerated, or flaccid and almost always seem brazen and vehement. Authors will aim for rapidity of execution rather than perfection of detail. Short texts will be more common than long books, wit more common than erudition, and imagination more common than depth. An uncultivated, almost savage vigor will dominate thought, whose products will exhibit a very great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will seek to astonish rather than to please and to engage the passions rather than beguile taste.

He adds:

Some writers will no doubt want to try a different path now and then, and if their gifts are superior, neither their faults nor their qualities will stand in the way of their attracting readers. But these exceptions will be rare, and even those whose work on the whole departs from common usage will always return to it by way of certain details.

Which I interpret this way: even if I do succeed in reading Tocqueville — reading him from front to back — I’ll remain a skimmer in essence, reading for what skimmers retain. Which I can accept. As portrait or judgment.

Gotta love a book that reads you while you’re reading it.