Ford's Midwestern virtues.
By Paul J Cella Posted in Culture — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Watching all the President Ford coverage, I am struck by the number of times I have heard praise of his small-town- and Midwestern-values; which is of course a more feeble way of praising his small-town- and Midwestern-virtues, but we don’t use this latter and more vigorous word because the oppression of political correctness has, indeed, enfeebled us. But what is striking about these extravagant tributes to virtues (self-reliance, magnanimity, hard work, patriotism) that are altogether real no matter that our manias obscure them, is that the communities which produce them — a great but dwindling arc of towns and small cities which another Midwesterner, Willmoore Kendall, liked to refer to as the “Appalachia-to-the-Rockies” America — are regularly the target in our national media of derision, contempt, and sanctimonious criticism. These censures come from various quarters: from the entertainment media cometh the contempt; from New York the derision; from Washington the sanctimonious criticism. What they generally have in common is ignorance, and a suspicion ungrounded in experience.
Read on.
And so again we encounter the evidences in our beloved land, of what C. S. Lewis called the abolition of man. We clamor for the very things we render impotent. We praise, in solemn moments, the virtues that all the action of the trends and fashions of our elites are undercutting. Can our Liberals learn nothing of the infuriating complexity of mankind from this fact: that Red America, to them the fount of nigh every prejudice, has given us men who embody the very virtues they avow their longing for in our statesmen and policticians?
The current trend in our social politics is to overturn the authority of the moral ethic which birthed these great virtues; much of this trend, to the extent that it succeeds, takes the form of a usurpation of the self-government of the people, and the imposition of the alien morality of the elite. Now I realize that one of the unshakeable errors of Liberalism is that narrow-mindedness which sees clearly the frailties and inadequacies in other moral traditions, but admits no such liability in the tradition anticipated under the final sovereignty of Liberalism. In other words it is error of Utopia and Progress: the imagined future in all its fanciful perfection, is compared to the extant present and or recent past, in all their complication of human imperfection.
The presence and oppression of this error I am well aware of. But still I wonder: for it does not seem much to ask of our Liberals for the effort of reflection that will reveal, perhaps for the first time, some real rationality and patriotism in the great “Appalachia-to-the-Rockies” movement to resist the imposition of the very moral dissolution, largely concentrated in our big cities, that has wrecked the virtues they so admire in Gerald R. Ford. Ford sustained these virtues despite some real turbulence in his childhood. But he sustained them, quite obviously, in part because of the surrounding goodness and stolidity of his community. We are told that he so “revered” his stepfather, “a paint salesman with an eighth-grade education,” that he took his name. A story is related of Ford, along with a group of high school football players, breaking up the efforts of some other youngsters to spray-paint anti-American slogans on the steps leading to their school. Today the sympathy of our elites would of course rest upon the aspiring revolutionists rather than the outraged patriots.
In short, this question keeps pressing me as I watch the State Funeral: If, during the formative years of the late President, placid and steadfast Grand Rapids, Michigan, had been rather a place afflicted by the standard pathologies of our cities today; if children in the city-center could not play in the streets without confronting drug dealers and prostitutes; if all Grand Rapids’ local mores were replaced by the mores of Hollywood, all her heroes forgotten*, all her sons and daughters turned lose upon the dissolution of the modern world without serious moral guidance or discipline — if all this were true, do you expect that men would stand today by the dozen, before cameras and audiences, to honor the virtues of this simple Midwesterner?
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* How many Grand Rapids high school students today could recall that Gen. George Armstrong Custer hailed from Michigan, and that, at 22 years of age, he led a charge near Gettysburg — with a shout of “Come on, you Wolverines!” — that inflicted upon Lee’s cavalry commander Jeb Stuart one of his first defeats?
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Ford's Midwestern virtues. 19 Comments (0 topical, 19 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I tend to doubt, however, how much a single election can tell us about these trends. For example, the last election, while ostensibly horrible for conservatives, had many elements of a backlash against elite opinion: On democratization, foreign entanglements, protectionism, immigration, and suchlike, there was a clear revolt in those prescincts of the country most traditionally hostile toward these things. The backlash may have worked out as a boon for the Liberals, but its roots were complex, and not at all innocent of conservative aspects. That Washington elite opinion, even on the Right, embraces free trade, does not mean that it is the only genuinely conservative opinion. The Midwest was the cradle of Isolationism as well . . .
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
anymore; haven't been since the Sixties. Prior to that most of the influences there and everywhere else in "flyover country" were the stolid, self-reliant citizens of the community. Of course there were bad influences there too, but they provided an edifying contrast and bore the oppobrium of the community. Even in the worst places, the frontier and seaport towns, the "bad element" got only tacit acceptance and was made to keep to itself.
Since the World turned upside down sometime in the sixties or early seventies depending on where you were, the "bad elements" have become the dominant influence, celebrated by all the elites and modeled to our young by all the popular media and no matter how you try, you can't escape it anymore.
This is the one area where I can sympathize with Islam; our popular culture is simply poisonous and is pervasive worldwide. Whether Britney Spears, the gangstas, or just the standard MTV punk overdosed on beer and testosterone, if I could suppress it here, I would, and I can't hold it against others for trying to keep it out of their country and their homes.
In Vino Veritas
Plus ca change plus la meme chose. And I am sometimes rather glad that we can throw this is Islam's hyper-puritanical, woman-hating, gay-murdering face. Too bad we can bottle Ms Spears and Ms Hilton and sneak them into the Middle Eastern water supply. A litrtle Western "decadence" (heck, at laest some feminine influence and some sexual satiation among young Muslim men) would go far to ending the nastier aspects of that culture.
All the media care about is that Ford's funeral be elevated to match Reagan's, at least, because Ford wasn't prolife or mean to the Soviets. Why oh why can't all repugs be like HIM??
the Helsinki Accords that Ford signed turned out to be a long-fuse time-bomb on the domestic front of Soviet-occupied Europe. Such at least is the claim of many East European dissidents, and since they were there with their lives on the line, I suspect they know what they are talking about.
Virtue is a debased word in this culture, and it has been comprehensively substituted with "value" for a very simple reason of political experience (at least superficially): a "value" is politically expedient means of identifying yourself with anyone who expresses the same "values." Virtue is a much tougher thing to have, because nobody would ever talk about the virtue of having 1.2 to 1.5 million children each year sacrificed to abortion. Instead we talk about the "value" of "reproductive choice" and the nonexistant "right" to privacy.
It would be really interesting to conduct a thorough Lexis/Nexis search and see exactly how many times the word "virtue" has been used and compare it with the number of times "value" or "values" has been used.
"Values" are something that can change, according to the times. It's a fairly straightforward assumption among liberals that at any given point in human history, "values" are going to change -- even the History Channel talks expansively in terms of "values" when it describes such things as the construction of the Panama Canal and how the work that was done to build it was a reflection of the "values" of the time.
Libs. are awfully good at using the language of "values" to advance their propositions: even though, for example, it might be a virtue to have a sport centered around a firearm like a .50 caliber rifle, which includes hundreds of families who are basically more civil and generous than any I've met in New York City, the cultural "values" dictate that they are, in fact, villains. I have an upcoming post about that very subject, in fact, but I'll give everyone a teaser:
I'd much rather hang out among some of the virtuous people who shoot .50 caliber large-bore rifles for sport and involve their families completely than I would listen to anyone who tells me that "their values" don't let them participate in it.
A few years ago Bill Bennett's The Book of Virtues was notable simply for using the word.
In our modern media climate, there is intense pressure to avoid the word, because its opposite is no longer seen to be Vice, but Hypocrisy. Witness the glee with which the left pounced on Bennett for his gambling issues.
Only those squeaky clean enough to withstand such treatment dare propound Virtue, but humility keeps most from trying.
The Academy is open.
"Virtue" has been comprehensively sacrificed on the altar of "Hyprocisy." As soon as someone -- anyone, it doesn't matter who -- demonstrates any "hypocrisy" their virtues are instantly judged as irrelevant.
Of course, every human being is to some extent a hypocrite. That means that virtues don't exist (according to this view) -- only "values" do.
That any claim that I could make to having virtues (which I do know that I have) wouldn't survive long if I chose to run for public office. I'd make it about ten minutes before someone told me I was a hypocrite, and therefore shouldn't even try. Somebody would come up with the time I rode a bicycle down to the corner store to buy an issue of Penthouse and it would be all over. Or else a Conservative would tell me that I once handed out a leaflet at a NOW gathering and therefore I was a hypocrite.
In our modern political culture, hypocrisy has been elevated to the most important litmus test, and the threshold is very low. I personally think that's why we have so few people who are willing to run for public office -- it's too brutal. Every Tom, Dick and Harry out there is just sitting behind their computer screens with itching trigger fingers so that they can pull the trigger on the hypocrite.
I think the result of that is going to be that the country becomes ungovernable.
I really do believe that Presidential elections in this country are a sham in the sense that every child in America is taught that in principle, anyone here in America can grow up to be President.
It's not true, and I really don't think it ever was true, but it's especially less true now. In my opinion the possibility of an average American citizen who doesn't come from a political dynasty or have the behind-the-scenes support of a political dynasty cannot ever become President in this country. It's literally a job for which average citizens in this country need not apply.
In order to become a viable Presidential candidate in our two party system you need an enormous amount of concentrated political backing, which in this country basically amounts to being born into a political family.
For example, consider my own example: What are the chances that at 36 years old -- no matter how sound my policy ideas might be -- I could ever be elected to the Presidency? They are less than Zero. I am a polack, I was for a long time a lapsed Roman Catholic, and I've been arrested three times. Regardless of how good my *ideas* might be I might as well be constructing snowmen in hell if I were to try to run.
Dave Brooks had it right when he opined a couple of years ago that America loves their royalty. And I will make you this prediction right now: whoever is closest to "royalty" on the Republican side will wind up with the nomination in 2008, all of the debate we're going to engage in between now and then will not matter one iota.
However, two points:
(1) A royal system does have some things to recommend to it. Hilaire Belloc famously called American politics a monarchical system as far back as the 1930s; this judgment he did not register as an accusation.
(2) Until a thing is accomplished which, though endeavored and partially accomplished, is not yet completed -- namely the reduction of the Legislative Branch to impotence -- the fact that most men can never be President does not mean most men can never acquire political power. It is still true, I think, that most men, given determination, intelligence and some luck, can get elected to Congress, or failing that, to a State Legislature.
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And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
And that's not one of my virtues; it's born of a little bit of frustration right now, frustration that comes from what I perceive as a paucity of good people running for public office. We don't have enough, and I think we have too many people willing to knock good people down at the first whiff of "hypocrisy" and that troubles me.
I think there are very few people in this country who can survive the relentless "hypocrisy" testing that we increasingly believe is our most reliable indicator of character and fitness for public service. I don't know anyone I love or respect -- including my father, much less myself -- who could survive a rigorous and thoroughgoing "hyprocisy" vivisection across their entire adult lives, even though my dad is a man of impressive character.
A closely related point is the shifting definition of "integrity". Integrity means being "integrated", as in "integrated schools". All parts show in all areas, so there is no private weakness.
But to a liberal, integrity means "devotion to being a liberal". That's why they attribute integrity to W.J. Clinton, to the Reverend Jackson, and even to Mary O. McCarthy (NYT's CIA leaker).
Virtue? Not any more. As you say, integrity is now about "values".
The Academy is open.
Is never more evident than when a leader is buried. Its just like the way they praised Reagan at his funeral when they never had a damn thing good to say about him when he was alive.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
So when it is apprehended in someone who has that rare trait, some will try to ridicule what they lack. This envy and ultimate self-loathing, in such people, is more pronounced in the more materialistic and self-centered cloisters of our citizens, concentrated largely but not exclusively in Blue America. President Ford is dead, and no longer has something to be coveted and derided when not attained.
Excellent work as always, Paul. I wanted to write something over the last few days about this decent man but knew someone here would do it better and more eloquently.
I should have known it would be you among many others.
the dilemma of fighting for the heartland while simultaneously slapping "us" down like a bunch of rubes continues to vex the liberals much more than the conservatives...though these so-called cons of the 110th (read closet moderates) appear to struggle with it as well.
'08 is not that far off...we'll know soon enough who figures us out first...
What we do in life echoes in eternity.
-Maximus Decimus Meridius