The Long View 2007-02-27: The Bush & Jesus Dynasties; D'Souza's Consistency; Big Easy Eloi
Dinesh D’Souza’s reputation hasn’t improved in the last twelve years, but I am intrigued by John’s comment here that now makes me think D’Souza was a populist ahead of the curve.
The Bush & Jesus Dynasties; D'Souza's Consistency; Big Easy Eloi
Hostile reviews of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home continue to pour in, including this one by Scott W. Johnson, which appears in the March New Criterion and in today's Opinion Journal:
Whatever [D'Souza's] earlier attainments, he established himself as a writer of substance with his 1991 book "Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus," a critique of political correctness and multiculturalism...."The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11"--Mr. D'Souza's new book--is something else entirely. The book works a strange metamorphosis. Whereas "Illiberal Education" and "The End of Racism" proved Mr. D'Souza a precocious commentator and gifted polemicist, the new book is crude and sophomoric. Worse than its sophomoric treatment of serious issues is its presentation of a blinkered and politically correct version of the Muslim world. It is a presentation that the young Mr. D'Souza would have scorned. It is as though, having arrived on the scene as Franz Kafka, he has turned himself into Gregor Samsa.
I find fault with the book on critical points, too, but I disagree that The Enemy at Home is discontinuous with Illiberal Education. Rather the opposite: The Enemy at Home simply applies to the international arena the domestic culture-war analysis of Illiberal Education. This is not an idea that libertarian-conservatives find congenial.
* * *
Nobody wants Jeb Bush to get the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Certainly Quin Hillyer of The American Spectator does not want that, as he tells us in this piece, which is not a Jeb-candidacy trial balloon about how Jeb could be nominated. The gist of it is that the redesign of the primary schedule to decide the nomination early could have a perverse effect:
RATHER THAN PROVIDING UNSTOPPABLE momentum to any one candidate, in other words, the widespread voting on Feb. 5 could serve to keep all three "major" candidates and even a couple of minor ones alive. Nobody could claim a mandate, the vitriol would continue to grow, and the dissatisfaction already being..voiced by conservatives might take on pandemic proportions...Meanwhile, a number of states may have qualifying dates for candidates or delegates that post-date Feb. 5. Nine states still won't vote until May. A white night with a big enough name could conceivably jump in the race, sweep all the later contests, and lay claim to be the candidate of consensus and unity. Think of another president's brother, Bobby Kennedy in 1968, and you get the idea...BUT WHY WOULD HE RUN when the name Bush is so unpopular these days?...Perhaps because a lot can change in a year. ...In actuality, though, 2008 may be the best year possible to overcome the argument against dynasties. After all, if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, the anti-dynasticism argument will cut both ways. What better time for Jeb Bush to argue that a political inheritance should not be a disqualifier than when his opponent's entire career as an elected official is seen as a political inheritance?
I rarely quote Dick Morris, but I thought he had a point when he said over the weekend that we are already paying the price of dynastic politics, in which people achieve high office because their family ties have made their names familiar and provided them with political alliances they did not have to make themselves. The electorate is aware of this. I doubt that Senator Clinton can overcome the presumption against dynasty. I am sure that Jeb could not, even were he so inclined. Nonetheless, his name continues to be mentioned.
Of course, it is true that a lot can change in a year. If any of the changes are good, especially in Iraq, the one thing we can be sure of is that President Bush will not get credit for them. General Petraeus might, however. And just what is his party affiliation?
* * *
Here's a tale of Eloi and Morlocks, cruelly told by Mark Steyn:
This was the story of Paul Gailiunas, raised in Edmonton, and his wife Helen Hill, whom he met at Harvard. On January 4th, at their home in the Big Easy's Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood, Ms. Hill was shot and killed, and Dr. Gailiunas was wounded by four bullets while shielding their two-year-old son. The couple had moved to New Orleans from Dalhousie in 2001 because the doctor, according to the Globe, "wanted to work in a Third World environment." His wife was a filmmaker who showed her work at the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center. Dr. Gailiunas also has his artistic side, as a vocalist and guitarist with a band called the New Orleans Troublemakers. According to the paper, "his lyrics explore universal health care, flag burning and early anarchist Emma Goldman." One gets the strong impression the doctor was in favour of all three...[A]lthough the population has halved, the number of murders in the city each month has stayed pretty much the same. Which means, in effect, the murder rate has doubled. ...Some suggest the National Guard be sent in, or that the Justice Department take over the city's police department. But it's hard to believe Dr. Gailiunas or his late wife would have endorsed such proposals. They ran a charitable enterprise called "Food Not Bombs," and Ms. Hill led "filmmaking bees" in agitprop documentary production.
I rather doubt that there is an essential connection between bohemian neighborhoods and high crime. Such connection as there is comes from the fact that bad neighborhoods have low-cost housing for artists to starve in. In the case of New Orleans, however, it has become an article of faith in progressive circles that jazz will never be the same again until every slum is rebuilt, down to the shot-out streetlights in the public housing projects.
* * *
This year's Easter Hoax is a listless enterprise. You can see for yourself Cameron and Jacobovici's case for having found the burial cave of the Jesus Family: go to the website of the Discovery Channel. Again, we are dealing here with an archeological find, made in 1980, of an unremarkable tomb in Jerusalem containing one of several ossuaries known to archeology inscribed "Jesus Son of Joseph." The tomb also contained several other inscribed ossuaries, some with names one might expect to find in the tomb of Jesus's family, and some with names there would be no reason to expect: it lacks several names one would expect to find. Cameron presents a statistical estimate that the particular set of names in the tomb had a likelihood of 600-to-1 of occurring by chance. No doubt that's true, but it would also be true of other combinations of names, and in fact there is nothing particularly suggestive in the set at issue here.
So what has changed since the tomb was discovered in 1980? The Da Vinci Code was published. Still, this is the kind of stunt about which one may not neglect to state the obvious, one element of which was well put by Mark Goldblatt in The New York Post:
Cameron and Jacobovici will mortally offend many Christians. Some critics will personally vilify them, while others question their motives and integrity.
But prominent Christian clergymen won't issue any death warrants, and the Vatican won't call upon "all believing Christians" to avenge the insult. Neither Cameron nor Jacobovici will have to spend the next decade or so in hiding.
Now imagine if they'd gone after Mohammad instead of Jesus . . .
Actually, there is an Islamic angle that is not hypothetical. The Islamic view of Jesus is of just another prophet, whose bones one might well expect to find in a tomb. Indeed, there is more than one "tomb of Jesus" in the Islamic world. We may expect the Cameron and Jacobovici film to become a feature of Islamic evangelization.
Copyright © 2007 by John J. Reilly
Support the Long View re-posting project by downloading Brave browser. With Both Hands is a verified Brave publisher, you can leave me a tip too!
Comments ()