THE WANDERER, APRIL 13, 2006
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
Cynthia Strikes Again
When I heard that a black congresswoman had slugged
a security guard and accused him of racism for asking her
for identification, I immediately suspected it was -- who
else? -- Cynthia McKinney, the firebrand Georgia
Democrat.
I was right.
McKinney seems to be obsessed with the idea of
racism, which she views as the explanation of every
irritation that afflicts her. The capitol's chief of
police, perhaps aware of her notorious temper, said the
officer had acted properly. Even white people are
supposed to show their identification before being let
into the office building where the incident occurred. Or
is the universal rule itself racist? In the name of
security, we are all being harassed nowadays, but the
harassment is strictly nondiscriminatory.
Since racial discrimination is now illegal, racial
lynchings are relatively infrequent, and racial prejudice
is decried on all sides, why are charges of racism more
frequent now than ever before? Am I the only one who
suspects that the victory of social justice over racism
has been a little too lopsided? Isn't that what
McKinney's serial tantrums suggest?
This may seem a little thing, but it's surely a sign
of the times. Certain hypersensitivities have been
nourished by success. To hear McKinney squawk, you'd
think this was the Golden Age of Racism.
Pummeling the Profs
Or is it the Golden Age of Anti-Semitism? Judging by
the number of people who are accused of it, you'd think
the Nazis were riding high these days.
Last week I wrote about the smear campaign
(http://www.sobran.com/wanderer/w2006/w060406.shtml#hard)
against Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who
are being accused of you-know-what for their long article
about the baneful effects of the Israel lobby on American
foreign policy.
Now it would seem almost self-evident that different
countries have different interests, that what is good for
one country may sometimes be bad for another, and that a
lobby working for Country A inside Country B may be
detrimental to the interests of Country B. But these
rather unexceptionable truths, when applied to Israel,
suddenly become "anti-Semitic." When you criticize
Israel, you are persecuting Jews.
The latest neoconservative smear, as I write (and
there is no reason to think it will be the last), is an
op-ed piece in THE WASHINGTON POST by Elliott Cohen
subtly titled "Yes, It's Anti-Semitic." Cohen denies that
the Israel lobby is unusual or especially powerful. Which
must come as news to every staffer on Capitol Hill, where
every elected representative quivers when the lobby
growls.
Clearly, Mearsheimer and Walt have hit a nerve. The
question is why Cohen and other neocons are so brazenly
denying the obvious and indeed inescapable facts about
Israel and its lobby. Do they think they're as powerful
as Stalin, who really could utter sheer nonsense and make
short work of anyone who dared to dissent? Things aren't
quite =that= bad yet!
But the neocons may figure it's now or never. The
American public is sick of Iraq and in no mood to attack
the real neocon target, Iran. Bush's poll ratings are
still low, and the neocons themselves are in bad odor for
the first time. Even most pro-Israel Jews are leery of
the rabid neocons and their equally rabid Christian
allies. If the United States can't be goaded into
aggressive action against Iran soon, the opportunity may
never come again.
So to the neocons, this must seem the moment to
gamble all that's left of their shrinking influence. They
have little choice. And a scholarly article, with
academically prestigious credentials, exposing their
influence and methods, is just what they don't need right
now. Their situation is desperate. They face the dreadful
danger of peace.
In TIME magazine, meanwhile, another leading
neocon, Charles Krauthammer, explains why war on Iran is
urgent. Containment worked with the mighty but relatively
rational Soviet Union, he argues, but it won't work with
Iran. The Soviets didn't want to die, but the Iranians
do; they are suicidal fanatics who would welcome an
apocalyptic showdown with the infidel, look forward to
martyrdom, drool at the thought of all those virgins in
Paradise, and so forth. In that case, one wonders, why do
the Iranians seem rather anxious to avoid war right now?
Well, there is more than one kind of fanatic, and
some are closer to home than Tehran.
Darwin's Dilemma
The late David Stove, who died in 1994, was a noted
Australian philosopher, an atheist, and a fearless
thinker. His last book has just been republished by
Encounter Books in New York. Its scathing wit has me
howling with delighted laughter.
The book is DARWINIAN FAIRYTALES. Stove treats
Darwin himself with some respect, but he thinks the
general Darwinian position is nonsense, especially as it
has been presented by Darwin's successors. He doesn't
even bother much with the scientific evidence; he just
says its account of human nature is plainly false, indeed
"a ridiculous slander on human beings."
And you don't need biology, the fossil record, or
learned speculation to tell you this; just look around
you!
A bloody competition for survival of the fittest?
How much of our lives does this describe? Why does our
species engage in so darned much cooperation? Why are
there charities, hospitals, and laws against the kind of
violence on which, Darwinism tells us, our existence
depends? Why do people protect their own children, if
life is a Hobbesian "war of every man against every man"?
Has human nature changed? If so, just when did =that=
happen? How =could= it happen, if man is what Darwinism
says he is?
Do you know any people who resemble Darwinian Man?
(Excluding in-laws and tax collectors, of course.)
Stove has great fun with "Darwin's Dilemma" -- the
utter inconsistency between its theory of men as
competing unto the death and the fact of real men as
cooperating to preserve the "unfit" -- the sick, the
weak, the poor, the elderly. Some Darwinians even deplore
these acts of mercy on grounds that they are eugenically
destructive! If Nature wants to kill some people off,
they ask, why should Grace get in her way? But they
forget to ask how Grace got into the act in the first
place. Darwinism has no room for Grace.
I can't improve on Owen Harries's comment on this
book: "David Stove took no intellectual prisoners. A
deadly serious (and hilariously funny) enemy of
intellectual cant and the higher pretensions, he wrote to
kill."
If that makes him sound a bit like Darwinian Man, I
can only say that he slays me. A thrilling writer and
thinker.
+ + +
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