The Long View 2008-07-02: The Happy Anarchist; Respectable Demography; The Second Coming of Schundler

A fascinating aside on machine politics in the early twenty-first century:

Readers may be surprised to hear that there is still a “Democratic Machine” in Jersey City, or indeed anywhere. In the classic sense of the term, there isn't. Certainly it is not a mass organization, commanding the street-fighting loyalty of the bulk of the population. What we have noe are networks of facilitators: not necessarily incompetent or without concern for the public interest, but who look on politics chiefly as a branch of the construction, health, and education industries.

In a way, what happened to the machines was what happened to movie studios at about the same time. The studies still exist, too, and they are important, but not in the same way as in the first half of the 20th century

The Happy Anarchist; Respectable Demography; The Second Coming of Schundler

The many friends and well-wishers of the Canadian journalist Mark Steyn were pleased last week when the federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the hate-speech charges that had been brought against him (and MacLean’s magazines) for the views he expressed in American Alone. Although Steyn is apparently on sabbatical (and still awaiting the judgment of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, which accepted a similar complaint and heard the case), he was kind enough to excerpt for his website a bit of the feds’ decision:

The Steyn article [in MacLean's, taken from America Alone] discusses changing global demographics and other factors that the author describes as contributing to an eventual ascendancy of Muslims in the 'developed world', a prospect that the author fears for various reasons described in the article. The writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike….Overall, however, the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature as defined by the Supreme Court… there is no reasonable basis in the evidence to warrant the appointment of a Tribunal.

Polemical? Colourful? Emphatic? Such terms might have been used by Justice William O. Douglas about Lenny Bruce (except for the “u” in “colourful”). The Canadian court's dismissal is a model of moderation. However, if you are interested in protecting garden-variety civil liberties, this decision must cause you to reflect that the anarchist doctrine of “the worse, the better” is not without appeal.

No one would wish that Mark Steyn had been dragged to Parliament Hill and his blasphemy-oozing hands cut off as warning to insolent kufr (or, more seriously, that MacLean's had been put out of business by a heavy fine). Nonetheless, the problem with bodies like the Human Rights Commission is not that their decisions were always ridiculous or oppressive, but that there are such bodies at all. A benevolent a benevolent tyrant can be worse than a tyrannical tyrant, if his benevolence reconciles his subjects to tyranny when there is a better option.

* * *

Meanwhile, Steyn’s demographic obsessions have now become mainstream. Last Sunday, the New York Times Magazine ran a piece entitled No Babies?, by Russell Shorto. The article is not at all critical of the Demographic Doom thesis, though we note that the author seemed keen to avoid discussing the possibility that the issue could have much application to the United States. (Canada was scarcely mentioned.) We also note a certain reluctance in the article to suggest that the phenomenon might have implications for cultural policy that would be uncongenial to some Times readers:

On the surface there are economic explanations for why this phenomenon [of lowest-low fertility levels] has occurred in southern Europe. Italy, for example, pays the lowest starting wages of any country in the E.U., which causes young people to delay striking out on their own. And as the British politician David Willetts has noted, “Living at home with your parents is a very powerful contraception.” But the deeper problem may lie precisely in the family-friendly ethos of these countries. This part of the self-definition of southern European culture — the “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” ideal — has a flip side. “In all of these countries,” Billari said, “it’s very difficult to combine work and family. And that is partly because, within couples, we have evidence that in these countries the gender relationships are very asymmetric.”

Maybe this analysis is adequate, but I suspect the difference between north and south has more to do with changes in the average age at which people marry. This is a case for Demography Matters, surely?

* * *’

Finally, I hear that Bret Schundler, former well-regarded Republican mayor of Jersey City, will be running for the job again in 2009.(The mayoral election is in the spring, to depress turnout. That is not a joke.). Schundler, like current New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, is a youngish financier who set out to Do Good in public service. His mayoralty was contemporary with the reforming Republican administrations of Giuliani in New York and Riordan in Los Angeles, and was often mentioned in the same laudatory press accounts.

As is normally the case with Jersey City mayors who aspire to a higher state in this life, Schundler failed in his race for the New Jersey governorship in 2001, in part because campaigning was impossible after 911. Another part of the reason was that the Republican establishment stabbed him in the back. In any case, more recently, he has been involved with The King’s College, an evangelical institution located in the Empire State Building.

Bret Schundler is not invariably held in high esteem, as we see here. As for his opposition in general, it was characterized to me as an alliance of the local Democratic political machine and of various cultural-left groups. The latter object to Schundler's pro-life views.

Readers may be surprised to hear that there is still a “Democratic Machine” in Jersey City, or indeed anywhere. In the classic sense of the term, there isn't. Certainly it is not a mass organization, commanding the street-fighting loyalty of the bulk of the population. What we have noe are networks of facilitators: not necessarily incompetent or without concern for the public interest, but who look on politics chiefly as a branch of the construction, health, and education industries.

In a way, what happened to the machines was what happened to movie studios at about the same time. The studies still exist, too, and they are important, but not in the same way as in the first half of the 20th century

Copyright © 2008 by John J. Reilly

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