September 3, 2009 at 11:08 A.M. "Errors" were inserted overnight in this essay. I have done my best to correct them. This vandalism suggests the continuing use of government resources in New Jersey to engage in cybercrime and censorship. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "How Censorship Works in America.")
September 2, 2009 at 9:20 A.M. This has been a difficult month in terms of cybercrime. I will continue to struggle. It is reported in today's newspapers that the C.I.A. is stonewalling in response to the U.S. Attorney General's requests for information concerning torture and interrogation techniques, apparently in response to criticisms of the White House by Mr. Cheney. These techniques of obstruction and obfuscation are common in Anne Milgram's office in Trenton.
If an agency of the federal government can ignore requests for information from the U.S. Attorney -- an agency operating secretly within the nation and beyond the boundaries of law -- then we have lost the Constitution along with the rule of law. Where are those reports by Tuchin and Riccioli, Mr. Rabner? Mark Mazzetti, "C.I.A. Resists Disclosure Of Records On Detention," in The New York Times, September 2, 2009, at p. A11. (Deliberate disregard of legal orders combined with crimes like theft, obstruction of justice, and much worse.)
August 14, 2007 at 9:26 A.M. I discovered new "errors" inserted in this essay since my last reading of it. I will now correct them, then re-post the essay, only to find these "errors" again when I next read this work. Frustration and exhaustion are commonly used techniques of psychological torture. They are intended to discourage or eliminate dissent in many societies. How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry? How does a Jew become Eichman, Stuart? For my opposition to antisemitism, see "Martin Buber and Diet Judaism" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist."
My experience is not unique. In recent years illicit governmental tactics are more blatant in America. Due to viruses, the formatting and template of this blog/group and some posts have been affected. I have tried to keep the site going as best I can, despite my daily battles with censors. In light of the events of the twentieth century, it is mind-boggling that any Jewish person would wish to assist with the torture and censorship of others in America -- or anywhere. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
On February 18, 2007 at 1:12 P.M., I re-posted this essay after correcting "errors" in the posted version that were not found in my saved copy or in the print-out of this same text. Spacing may be affected and new "errors" may be inserted at any time.
Please get James Baldwin's The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985 (New York: St. Martin's, 1985). These are some of the finest essays in American literature, as good as the best of Mailer, Vidal, Updike, Morrison, Sontag, Franzen, Foster-Wallace, Lurie, Styron.
I. "Make Love, Not War."
At the center of the raging political and cultural controversies in the United States today is a sharp disagreement about the meaning and significance of the decade of the nineteen-sixties. The fundamental underlying issue, which is often unstated by those who disagree politically and with regard to cultural matters -- usually dividing neatly along party lines -- is whether that decade should be seen as a time of liberation and cultural renewal, or whether the sixties should be viewed as a period of cultural and moral collapse, responsible for the visible decline in standards of public behavior and in the quality of aesthetic and intellectual life in contemporary America.
My answer to this question will please no one, certainly not ideologues of the Left or Right. I think that the sixties have left us with an ambiguous legacy, one that is to be celebrated in some ways while being deplored in others. Those seeking simple slogans and party-lines will be disappointed in this response -- and in anything that I write, for that matter -- since I have no desire to please anyone by my opinions, which are bound to be complex and nuanced when dealing with such a subtle and difficult issue as this.
Do not look for "bumper sticker solutions" to complex issues. And feel free to put that slogan on a bumper sticker.
To the extent that the sixties were about liberation from the straitjacket of outdated sexual mores and vicious racism, while ensuring civil rights for previously excluded people, gender equality, and an end to the Vietnam struggle, then I am an admirer and a proud child of sixties' values.
However, if by the sixties we refer to a "Yippiesque" attitude of dismissiveness towards all values, whether aesthetic or ethical -- or to an irrational anti-Americanism and embrace of nihilism that would undermine the very sixties values of freedom and equality that I celebrate -- then I am not an admirer nor an adherent of this extreme form of so-called sixties' radicalism.
During the sixties both of these strands or sets of messages were woven together. The task for us is to disentangle these strands or "mixed messages" from that period, so as to see whether we can learn what is of continuing value in the radicalism or revolution of that important decade, and what lessons of the sixties are worth preserving now, as we enter a new century and millennium. Just as 1848 is the crucial year to understand the revolutionary spirit of the nineteenth century, so it appears that 1968 is the most important year for appreciating the cultural revolutions of the late twentieth century and beyond.
One glance at the way that people appeared and dressed in the late fifties and early sixties is enough to make it clear that imprisonment in nuclear families, girdles, helmet-like hairdos, suits and ties at the dinner table on a daily basis, and "teen wildness," as defined by the likes of Pat Boone or Perry Como, was doomed from the start -- or at least from the election of President Kennedy as he flashed that friendly smile at the unforgettably attired Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President!" ("Miss Monroe, uh, I don't think that I have ever heard 'Happy Birthday' sung in quite that way before ...")
I have no doubt that President Kennedy had a very happy birthday on that occasion. (I have just corrected this previous paragraph in the same way for the tenth time, possibly, and it will be necessary for me to do so again.)
Sexual freedom was long overdo as the sixties arrived. As a matter of fact, by 1962, everybody was pretty much ready to put down their briefcases and take off their clothes. And they did. President Kennedy's assassination was a collective reminder of mortality, and of the folly in the fifties' creed of deferring life until a mythical trouble-free future time when the mortgage would be paid and the kids would be in college. This new awareness may have provided the final shove into the boudoir for America's middle class white couples. The best chroniclers of the suburban bedroom, incidentally, are John Updike and John Cheever, both of whom, evidently, "got some" during that decade. ('Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
African-Americans, despite the agonies of the civil rights struggle, arrived at sexual freedom long before white suburbia did, assuming that it has even now. In his great essay, "The White Negro," Norman Mailer, controversially, spelled it all out for the "squares":
"Since the Negro knows more about the ugliness and danger of life than the white, it is probable that if the Negro can win his equality, he will possess a potential [sexual] superiority so feared that the fear itself has become the underground drama of domestic politics. Like all conservative political fear it is the fear of unforeseeable consequences, for the Negro's equality would tear a profound shift into the psychology, the sexuality, and the moral imagination of every white alive. [Notice Mailer's most important point:] ... With this possible emergence of the Negro, Hip may erupt as a psychically armed rebellion whose sexual impetus may rebound against the antisexual foundation of every organized power in America, and bring into the air such animosities, antipathies, and new conflicts of interest that the mean empty hypocrisies of mass conformity will no longer work."
African-Americans are natural existentialists, according to Mailer, because they have been forced to live with the realities of danger on a daily basis. African-Americans are forced to discover their courage and find their freedom in the passion of the moment, and in the assertions of a self-made imperative against the attempted imposition of a false and stereotypical identity.
To be an African-American -- male or female -- is to understand Hemingway's definition of courage as "grace under pressure" very early in life.
This radicalized existentialism is also a protest against the ever-present possibility of early death. Sex matters because it is freedom -- if only briefly -- from an oppressive social order, and not because of any inherent physical superiority in African-American males.
This claim to physical difference is another racist myth, which is really an attempt to demean people of color. Sexual bliss is the only paradise that we are likely to experience. Yet that bliss is not about physical attributes or sexual gymnastics, sexual ecstasy (or love-making) is about the achievement of connection and meaning through "touching" or contact with another human being. It is essentially spiritual.
There is nothing all that new in this universal yearning for eros as freedom and as the "home-coming of the soul," as Opera fans will know. Think of the first act love duet in Verdi's Otello. Listen to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, "Bess, you is my woman now..." begins an aria and duet with all the lyricism and lush melodic power of the best of Puccini. From this music to earlier work by Scott Joplin, followed by Luis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, the connections between African-American music and European Romantic Opera come down to the expressions of eros and tragedy in accessible music. They are easily found by anyone who cares to look and listen for them. (Read Oscar Wilde's short story "The Nightingale and the Rose," then listen to any good recording by Miles Davis: What "associations" or comparisons can you make?)
The real "black superiority," if it exists (and I think that it does in some areas), is spiritual and it is acquired, because it has to be, by young people who refuse to be destroyed by racism. More than athletics, spiritual and aesthetic life is an arena for African-American genius. In the film Bulworth, Amiri Baraka sings it for the audience: "We don't need no ghosts now, we need spirit."
Such superiority is indeed what "psychobabblers" describe as a "defense mechanism." People develop spiritual resources when survival requires them to do so. No wonder these thoughts are dangerous and hateful to some powerful people -- an entire worldview based on race is challenged and opposed by me in every word that I write. Some of those words will have to be lynched, brutalized, scarred ... like me. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "America's Holocaust.")
Eros is life-force, as Marcuse and Reich, along with many others have demonstrated. Eros cannot be confined within the prison-house of politically correct panaceas nor in the nostrums and platitudes of Christian fundamentalist repressions. To deny the life-force in you is to embrace death whereas to choose love or life-force -- which is creativity -- is to choose transcendence over violence. For this reason and many others, I am in favor of gay marriage rights. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison" and "Is there a gay marriage right?")
It is impossible to miss the presence of eros in African-American music, which is the source of just about all of the good music in the United States, including Rock music today. As a Cuban-American, I am aware that Afro-Cuban music comes from a similar territory of the soul. Anyone who has not discovered the voice of Ibrahim Ferrer or the sounds of "The Buena Vista Social Club" is in for a treat. Next you may want to listen to Perez-Prado's "Mambo Number 5" or Nat "King" Cole's Spanish-language recordings of classic Cuban ballads from the forties and fifties. Anything by Celia Cruz and the Fania All Stars is recommended. And the relationship between jazz and rap should be obvious to the most casual observer and listener. If poetry is alive anywhere in contemporary America then it must be in rap and in the street corner "poetry slams" that are "real" literature by anyone's estimation.
To the extent that the credo "Make Love, Not War," is attributed to the sixties' cultural revolution, then it is my mantra in life, now and always. Love is better than hate. It really is not much more complicated than that. Freedom is as necessary as air to breathe, and with love and freedom, we can create satisfying work and express what we have within us as opposed to wallowing in a tempting rage and violence.
We have it within our power to contribute to our communities, constructively and creatively, by focusing on energies of connection rather than division. We can choose to feed the hungry and heal the sick, or we may lash out at perceived enemies, but we cannot do both at the same time. Whether you like it or not, I am going to write my story and put it out there somehow. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
More than focusing on revenge for past slights, insults, and torments, we can give -- and in giving, we receive -- while always insisting on justice. We can hope to do good work that will be useful to others, deriving satisfaction from that feeling of usefulness. This is my interpretation of Dr. King's message and of the meaning of the civil rights movement that he led on behalf of all Americans, but also as an example for humanity.
I can hear the fashionably cynical chuckle of the nihilists and postmodernist professors, "Make Love, Not War!" is too simple, my boy. It is impossible in this time of false images and media domination of the subject. My answer: "Why, then, are you trying to get laid like everybody else? Who floats your boat when things get tough on the tenure committee? Do you not live your life in search of love and beauty in opposition to hatred and violence? And if you do, then why be so hostile to sharing such ideals and to the existence of hope for the young?"
To borrow James Baldwin's question, "Would you care to explain to my twelve year-old nephew that it is hopeless to work for peace and social justice in order to build a better world?" I thought not.
To see the world from the point of view of an American "street kid" (which is what a part of me will always be), whether you are male or female, whether you like it or not, is to possess -- to that extent and for the rest of one's life -- a black or African-American "sensibility" in what is still a racist "white" society.
If you are a hipster of any complexion or ethnicity in America then you are, unavoidably, a black man or woman and you did not know it. Congratulations.
In my experience it is not (for the most part) African-Americans who react with hostility to such a claim. They are usually amused by it. The typical response from African-Americans is something like: "You don't know what you're letting yourself in for!"
I know what they mean. Many whites still find a person's CHOICE to identify with the African-American experience, for the lessons to be found in that experience about coping with suffering, both unbearable and offensive. Not surprisingly, much the same may be said about identifying with the Israeli experience -- with the history of the Jewish people -- and for the same reasons. There is nothing and no one more despicable (to me) than a Jewish Nazi or an African-American racist. ("The Audacity of Hope" and "Israel heightens Gaza Crisis.")
"None of you white guys want to change places with me," Chris Rock says in his concerts, "and I'm rich!"
Again: To choose the company of oppressed people -- to prefer slaves to their masters -- is to call into question an entire philosophy of racial supremacy. This challenge against racism is an unforgivable offense to some powerful people in New Jersey. My essay on the work of Amiri Baraka has been hacked into and defaced at least fifty times, so far. Mr. Baraka was "poet laureate" in New Jersey, forced to leave his position because people cannot understand the difference between a poem and a police report.
Terry Southern said that a hipster is someone "who has deliberately decided to kill a part of himself to make life bearable."
Well, every African-American person who has to function in a white society, whether professionally or socially, has to do exactly that. To be a hipster is to be an underdog, a dreamer, an outsider, a romantic -- African-American culture is highly romantic. It is "to rage against the dying of the light," as Dylan Thomas, a "white negro" himself and a Brit, expressed it.
Mailer was right to see himself and outsiders like him and me -- you too, if you're white, since you are reading this! -- as "White Negros" in the American context, that is, as persons of an indestructible African-American sensibility, however you may feel about it. Congratulations, again, folks. Incidentally, you may wish to recall Toni Morrison's description of President Clinton as "our first African-American president." One begins to see what she means.
Peter Gabel, in his wonderful recent book The Bank Teller and Other Essays on the Politics of Meaning, speaks of the theme of the last forty years of American history as the "struggle between desire and alienation." I am on the side of a "Streetcar Named Desire." So were the sixties. I believe that African-American culture expresses that side of the American psyche -- love and life-force, desire, passion as methods of survival -- better than any other. To desire is to hope. This choice of desire over alienation is not a difficult decision for me. When you listen to Barack Obama speak of hope, think of this source which, I am sure, few people in this country (even in Senator Obama's staff) thought of when discussing his primary campaign theme:
Our "purpose," Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez writes, "is to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord, to think through our faith, to strengthen our love, and to give reason for our hope from within a commitment that seeks to become more radical, total, and efficacious."
A Theology of Liberation (New York: Maryknoll, 1993), p. xiii.
Father Gutierrez includes gay men and lesbian women in this teachings concerning love and hope in Catholicism. This shared insight concerning "hope" for those with nothing else is why President Lula of Brazil offered a handshake to Mr. Obama that very few other American public officials would receive.
Secretary of State Clinton and Vice President Biden are among the politicians getting that handshake because they understand one important thing. People who have nothing still have love and they can, therefore, hope. With hope, you can get up in the morning and deal with your reality, whatever it is. Without hope, you won't bother to get up in the morning.
I trust that Marilyn -- and every person I love -- will continue to hope. Never give up, Marilyn.
This moment between Obama and Lula (a brother's handhake) captured in an already historic photograph was the recognition of solidarity between rich and poor, suffering and struggling people, powerful and powerless segments of our world. The image means a lot to people in many parts of the world.
Do you begin to see why "President" Obama has a credibility that many other American politicians do not have in the developing world? That handshake should be on t-shirts.
You are witnessing a form of censorship and psychological torture directed against someone who has experienced much worse with the cooperation of political power in America. What does this tell you about U.S. society today? ("Is This America?" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
The first draft of this essay was written during the presidential campaign. I have changed the title of "Senator" to "President" several times when describing Mr. Obama, only to discover that the correction has been nullified when I next review the essay. This is meant to be amusing or discouraging. I will continue to write. I will no longer make this correction, but I will transform the inserted "error" into a weapon against those engaging in cybercrime. Lo que no perdonan es la dignidad ... (Fidel Castro in "Memories of Underdevelopment.") (No accents available when I wrote this essay.)
In reacting against Mailer's essay, James Baldwin (who did not like it, though he agreed with much of it) and Gore Vidal (who did like it, though he rejected most of the rest of Mailer's work) agreed on the importance of sex as liberation. In his classic essay, "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" James Baldwin says:
"... to become a Negro man, let alone a Negro artist, one had to make oneself up as one went along. This had to be done in the not-at-all-metaphorical teeth of the world's determination to destroy you. The world had prepared no place for you, and if the world had its way, no place would ever exist. Now, this is true for everyone, but in the case of a Negro, this truth is absolutely naked: If he [or she] deludes himself about it, he will die." (emphasis added).
Sexual liberation always implies political liberation. By the same token, attempts to suppress sexual freedom and sexual forms of expression, always becomes a mechanism of wider social control. This is especially true when it comes to the sexuality of women, about which we are still shrill and divided as a nation. It is time to recognize (and to ask why we have not yet done so) the equal sexual need of women, a need for meaning as well as satisfaction. This is the sort of feminism that I respect, the insistence that women be seen as fully equal PERSONS, for it is a feminism that does not involve any effort to demonize men nor excessive attention to the bogus issues of political correctness.
Political correctness is a distraction from fundamental questions of power to which women must turn their attention.
The feminism that I admire is concerned with social justice, power, and freedom as belonging (equally) to women and men. Political correctness issues are derivative from the resolutions of those fundamental questions of power in society. The terms "masculine" and "feminine" must not become prisons that determine sexual possibilities, or the form and scope of desire, or the range of emotional options for either men or women. The theoretical work of Judith Butler, can be brought into dialogue with the writings of my earliest teachers on this subject Susan Sontag, Angela Davis, Erica Jong, Germaine Greer, not to mention Myra Breckinridge.
Women should not be stigmatized for active and intense sexual lives; neither should men become objects of ridicule for choosing to limit sexual life, for the sake of fidelity in a loving relationship, or very few relationships over a lifetime. The crucial question is whether such choices are expressive of the persons making them.
The work of Michel Foucault has been found helpful by feminist scholars seeking to explore these issues in a context of entrenched sexist repressions (impositions of power) that become pervasive and invisible, even within feminism. My greatest concerns as a father raising a daughter -- a daughter taught to be free and strong -- was to cope with all of the subtle bullshit in culture aimed at diminishing my child's status as a PERSON, who is a woman. I wanted to be the person she asked to iron a shirt that she would wear for a party. I intended to be the person to whom she brought her clothes for washing. It was my goal to play in the park with her and help with schoolwork. Nothing means more to me than having done those things for many years. ("Not One More Victim.")
Deleting a letter from one of my words or inserting any other "error" in this essay has no effect on these arguments, except to demonstrate (once again) your inability to respond in a meaningful way to what I am saying. Lois McNay, "From the Body to the Self," in Foucault and Feminism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), pp. 83-116. One way of highlighting the arbitrariness of traditional sexual roles is to reverse them. (See my story "The Taming of Somebody.")
The goal for men and women who love one another is simply a sharing in freedom. This is true however each of them defines freedom. I learned from John Lennon that artistic creation, poetry and painting as well as music, and early child-rearing, might be more satisfying work (and yes, home and child-care is work) for a man than more traditional forms of "office work." John never regretted his decision to turn over his finances to Yoko Ono, who was actually good with money, devoting himself to mastering the intricacies of diaper-changing, a subject on which we might have compared notes, in order to make his own art.
A woman burdened with familial responsibilities -- against her will -- must always be much easier to control (for this reason, I am pro-choice) than someone without such concerns. She will dress conservatively, so as not to alarm the boss and in order to inspire confidence in the "client"; she will be "unprovocative," so as to be deemed safe in the boardroom; and she will only invoke her sexuality, discreetly and unoffensively. Just the opposite is the case when it comes to the sexuality of men: aggressiveness is encouraged as a sign of "drive" and "ambition." It is time to be free of such nonsense. In defense of Henry Miller's frank eroticism and plea for artistic freedom, Erica Jong writes:
"[Miller] understood that we would rather relegate sex to a commodity -- alternately condemned and slavered over [we disapprove of "sex workers" and yet instill in our daughters, through our media, a desire to achieve the appearance of an impossible sexuality much too early in life!] -- [rather] than try to understand its deep and pervasive power in our lives. He became, like so many prophets -- the victim of his own predictions. He railed against America's sexual schizophrenia and he was rewarded by being banned, burned, pirated, deprived both of his [earnings] and [of] his power to reach his potential audience. He railed against the conformity and ugliness of America's treatment of the non-conformist, the poet, the artist, and became the victim of that treatment. Ironically, he was silenced first by ... feminists pursuing sexual honesty and gender fairness. It fell to him both to express and to exemplify the role of the creative artist in a world that has increasingly little use for dissent, for art (except as a saleable item), for honesty, for any kind of entertainment or information but that which lulls the senses or sells a product -- from a president to a war to a pair of jeans." ("Quills" and "Shine.")
The sixties as liberation from sexist or racist, religious or ethnic, militarist and marketing stereotypes, in the quest for authenticity and freedom, for a more honest and just society, must be seen as the great cultural revolution in our lives. But the struggle went too far when the impulse to destroy, out of frustration at the lack of comprehension and the slow pace of change, led to the neglect of the principles and hopes that had inspired cultural revolution in the first place. It may sound naive and unrealistic -- which has no bearing on its undeniable truth -- yet this is the greatest wisdom of the sixties and we owe it to the Beatles, spiritually, "all you need is love."
April 1, 2010 at 12:20 P.M. besides the obscene phone calls earlier this morning, a call was received from 732-649-6125 at 11:54 A.M.
August 14, 2007 at 10:04 A.M. New "errors" and defacings of these writings have taken place. I wonder why Barack Obama's photo was blocked in my essay on Cornel West's writings? Perhaps Bernard Kerik's photo in my 9/11 essay will be next. I previously posted this section of my essay, but hackers altered it. Luckily, I kept a copy of my original text, which I will now re-post.
February 17, 2007, at 11:58 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected. I fully expect to have to do the same "correcting" again in the future.
II. "Love is War."
The conservative reaction when it came was hot and heavy (no sexual innuendo intended). Richard Wolin quotes Michael Kramer of The New Criterion:
"We are still living in the aftermath of the insidious assault on mind that was one of the most repulsive features of the radical movement of the Sixties. The cultural consequences of this leftward turn in our political life has been far graver than [is] commonly supposed. In everything from the writing of textbooks to the reviewing of trade books, from the introduction of Kitsch into museums to the decline of literacy in the schools, [from] the corruption of scholarly research to the effect on the life of culture has been on-going and catastrophic."
What conservatives object to is a sixties-inspired hostility to the very idea of intellectual and aesthetic standards, loss of civility, loss of respect for all authority -- including the notion of legitimate authority in some areas of life, in culture and academia, for example -- and a visceral hatred for the founding principles of American society and its institutions, which are alleged to be implicated in "evil" worldwide and nothing more. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
I think there is a deeper suspicion on the part of conservatives concerning the "realities" of human nature. They are proud of their worldly "realism," which is the most unrealistic thing about them.
"Love is not enough," conservatives warn, "because most people are not to be trusted with power, or will be grasping and self-seeking, incapable of altruism or respect for duty and the claims of others."
It is difficult to be an optimist about human nature after the events of twentieth century. Politics in America -- in fact, the Constitutional experiment as a whole -- is a wager on the possibility of human goodness. It is the expression of an Elightenment hope that persons can be made or become good, through the elimination of what makes them evil, social injustice, corruption, bad government, all attempts at indoctrination and conditioning. American law is trust in reason. In a better social setting, better persons emerge. The obvious philosophical sources are Rousseau and Marx, but also (this may surprise you) Kant and Jefferson. The word that you will most encounter in reading American law is "reasonable."
Are "reason" and "reasonable" understandable in exclusively racist and sexist terms?
I refuse to accept such a claim. Out of "the crooked timber of humanity," it is at least possible to carve subjects abiding by the moral law, endowed with rights that are reflective of their dignity. This is a Kantian-Jeffersonian sentiment that I share. It demands that we respect the creative and intellectual work of critics. Conservatives as well as liberals are encouraged to read Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (new York: Vintage, 1992), pp. 1-20 and Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 118-173 ("Two Concepts of Liberty"), finally, you will thank me for this classic: Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," in Russian Thinkers (London: Pelican, 1979), pp. 22-81. If you are still confused about these arguments, please consider this Kantian observation underlined by me at age nineteen:
" ... no theories can possibly fit the immense variety of possible human behavior, the vast multiplicity of minute, undiscoverable causes and effects which form that interplay of men and nature which history purports to record."
Ibid., at p. 35.
Theory provides only the foundations or "groundwork for the metaphysics of morals." Theories allow us to make meaningful (or "interpret") our facts. Allan Bloom's best work is a protest against the sixties' alleged betrayal of eros:
"The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment, is a complex phenomenon. It seems to result from a combination of causes -- our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by 'the death of God' and of the subordinate god, Eros."
Love and Friendship, p. 15.
Some of the more irresponsible statements of leading sixties radicals might be quoted to support the case for the Right. It was not unusual to find even so intelligent a critic as Susan Sontag bemoaning the "malignancy," "evil" and "greed" of the American administration. Jane Fonda's well-meaning pacifism was manipulated by the Vietnamese Communists in ways that she may now regret. Other examples are available. There is nothing "un-American" about eros or the satisfactions of libido, about dumping the Brooks Brothers' suit and opting for cheaper and more comfortable fashions. Listening to Hendrix and patriotism are entirely compatible, so is opposing a particular policy of the government, while loving America.
Ms. Fonda's greatest achievement in the sixties was reminding us that protest for civil rights and love of America were and are compatible. I am sure that Jane Fonda would have fought, as she said in the sixties, in the war her father fought in -- World War, II. I suggest that we take on the conservatives on the meaning of America and patriotism. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Is Bloom's veiled attack on feminism as the murderer of eros and romance justified? I think not. However, there are tendencies in feminism -- and throughout American culture -- that are hostile to excellence, beauty, classicism, Romanticism, especially chivalry -- and these tensions are damaging to love in our times. Chivalry (like every other inherited value in our civilization) is subject to reinvention. ("Master and Commander" and "The Taming of Somebody," then please see the films "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" and "The Crying Game," then the Mel Gibson classic, "Gallipoli.")
Gender freedom and unfettered sexual preference are entirely compatible with a commitment to social justice in the United States and in the world, both are expressions of patriotism because they are celebrations of freedom.
The Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate is one of the bravest works of art ever created in Cuba which serves as an illustration of this point about the ubiquity of post-sixties' freedom. It is not a film that could have been made prior to 1959. Although it appeared much later, it is a product of the flowering of the director's (Tomas Alea Gutierrez) sixties' sensibility.
September 20, 2009 at 10:57 A.M. "errors" were inserted in this essay, again, after my previous review of the work a few days ago. For a discussion of the tactics and goals served by psychological torture methods, see the introduction to "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory." Please see also: "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles."
A Cuban-American community that tolerates or seeks to protect a mass murderer has lost all credibility on human rights issues in Cuba or any other country. If it is true that Mr. Posada-Carriles is responsible for placing a bomb in a jet airplane that caused the deaths of 77 persons -- many children and old people, Cubans as well as non-Cubans were among the victims -- then his continued presence in America stains all of us with moral blame. Mr. Posada-Cariles should be deported for trial to Venezuela. No more phone calls today? I call upon Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ms. Iliana Ross-Lehtinen, Mr. Robert ("Bob") Menendez to join me in demanding the arrest and deportation of this alleged "terrorist" (Posada-Cariles) and the freeing of Mumia Abu-Jamal. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.")
Those of us who are critics of the human rights record of the current Cuban government should also acknowledge and applaud human rights and creative achievements, such as Strawberry and Chocolate. For purposes of comparison and as a measure of just how impressive is the film's mere existence, see a work addressing the same themes by a critic of the regime Before Night Falls. A culture that produces Strawberry and Chocolate has come a long way in the struggle for liberation whatever legitimate human rights criticisms may be raised against it.
The sixties mood was international. It was defined at one extreme by Paris, in May of 1968 (read the autobiography of Angela Davis for an eyewitness account of those years), but also by the violence of the Democratic convention in Chicago. People said and did silly things during the sixties, which may have had something to do with all of the new substances being ingested during that decade. Young peoples' anger and frustration is understandable. Vietnam clearly was a terrible and tragic disaster for all concerned, not least for the damage to America's own sense of community and prestige in the world. The delays in the implementation of civil rights legislation and the disregard of Supreme Court decisions striking down racist laws, eventually required federal enforcement, conveying (I hope) a false impression of the extent of corruption in American institutions.("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
It occurs to me, since I am now reading Janet Todd's excellent biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, that there is an analogy between Ms. Wollstonecraft's experiences living through the key events of the French Revolution in Paris, at the end of the eighteenth century, and Angela Davis, also in Paris during the events in May, 1968. These philosophers were afforded a "front-seat" at the fulcrum of historical events at a crucial moment in the development of Western thought. Wollstonecraft was present at the maturing of Enlightenment thought (Modernity); Davis was a witness and participant at the alleged demise of Modernity and emergence of something new (postmodernism). An interesting dissertation in intellectual history would compare and contrast these women's experiences leading to some conclusions concerning revolutions and women. A young feminist scholar may wish to take up this challenge.
Make no mistake about it, there was and is corruption in local settings throughout the nation -- especially in some of the least enlightenned jurisdictions with a history of corruption in politics, like New Jersey, but there are powerful forces for legality and the defense of Constitutional principles -- even within those jurisdictions. It is the ultimate test for American institutions whether concern for human rights and the protections of the Constitution are only a matter of "lip service," or something for which the nation will continue to make the ultimate sacrifice. I will always bet on the U.S. national commitment to the Constitution and to "doing the right thing," in Spike Lee's terms, which -- slowly and falteringly to be sure -- is what the United States does to the best of its ability, over the long run, in my opinion. Sometimes after a much needed shove in the right direction from protesters. (See Mr. Lee's "Malcolm X.")
We live in a nation where state governments too often are tainted by corruption. Decisions by organized crime-political bosses, and not the law, explains what happens in some county courthouses -- including some that are closer than you think, like in New Jersey -- "occurences" which can then be denied, publicly, by officials. Anthony Suarez, Esq.?
This reality of "power through intimidation" is more important than anything that takes place in public hearings or in courtrooms that is aimed at public consumption. These realities are countered by an ever-vigilant federal and local law enforcement establishment, attempting the difficult task of protecting against itself together with the misuses of power by other forces in society.
Perhaps it takes a "law-enforcement-military-industrial-complex" to guard against misdeeds by the "political-industrial-corporate-complex" in society. Think of this as the principle of "fighting fire with fire." You cannot consistently object to giving greater resources to the Justice Department and FBI, while at the same time asking those agencies to protect against corruption and the misuse of power by ever-more powerful and subtle forces in society. Trust (but verify) and give them the tools they need.
Over the long run, America will always be a safer and more free society. The framers designed a self-correcting system for fallible human beings, so that, if we are fortunate, there is always someone observing and reporting on the (mis)uses of power. They never imagined that they were constructing a Utopia and were far from starry-eyed about human nature. By this understanding of American politics, the institutions of society -- like each of us -- is engaged in a never-ending project of self-correction. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Ronald Dworkin has spoken of American law working itself "pure." The metaphor seems most applicable to our Constitutional tradition. ("Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation.")
A healthy part of the spirit of the sixties is shining the light of public scrutiny into those dark places and smoke-filled rooms of the past and present where political decisions are made, "unofficially" of course. We can use some of that light right now. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")
H.L. Menken described America's Supreme Court Justices as "nine old metaphysicians" burdened with the project of achieving ever-better definitions and understandings of our great Constitutional principles and values, through a sometimes painful process of conflict and advocacy, argument and reflection. In that process, the sixties were a crucial decade of growth and maturity for both Court and nation. My "feeling" is that we are living through a similar time right now. Oliver Wendell Holmes more accurately described America's Supreme Court as a "gathering of nine scorpions in a bottle."
As a child in the late sixties I recall the traumatic effect of seeing newsreels depicting the violence in the streets. The fear of becoming the next victim of police wielding billyclubs was very real for me. In a way, those fears may have been confirmed by many of us who never realized to what extent the police might become criminals and the violence perpetrated upon us might become much more subtle than anything we saw on television then. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
Foucault's writings on the pervasiveness and internalization of power may be cited at this point. Terry Eagleton's book on "ideology" comes to mind, so does much of the work of Antonio Gramsci on "hegemony" and Lukacs on "class consciousness." Yet we also absorbed a fear of the police in the late sixties that is not always warranted in today's reality. It is the police who protect us from the police, while keeping us from hurting one another, which is no easy job. The extent to which this is accomplished -- while preserving civil liberties in the majority of cases -- is a great achievement of the U.S. political and legal system which merits recognition, with all exceptions granted. There are lots of exceptions to the norm of legality and transparency in government, especially in America's "Soprano State."
This is not to deny the constant struggle against insidious racism that wears a friendly smile and appears as a friend concerned for our welfare. That political protest was and still is possible in America, and that a largely peaceful (and very rarely, anything but peaceful!) revolution in politics and in the courts literally transformed society over a short period, I think, for the better -- making it a more open and less racist nation -- is one of the most powerful things to be said for the greatness of American society.
It is true that such phenomena as "Star Trek" programs are now deemed college courses, allegedly, over and above Shakespeare seminars. And the dismissals of the crowning achievements of Western civilization as merely the works of "Dead White European Males" is a dismal and unsettling side-effect of the sixties' revolution for many traditionally-minded intellectuals, or just for rational people.
With the freeing-up of the curriculum in universities, strangely, many formerly prized works were displaced or declared irrelevant overnight. This is ill-advised and sometimes disastrous for the education of young people. The art created by white males in other epochs is an invitation to a conversation -- an opportunity to improvise -- extended to young people, including African-Americans, today. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
The disdain for philosophy spoken by teachers (or "others") and repeated by trusting young people on their way to colleges and universities is distressing and sad (for me) because of all that is denied or surrendered by those young people before they can appreciate the error of their ways:
"It is easy to deride philosophy as the search by a blind man in a dark cellar for a black cat that is not there. But there is one argument for philosophy to which I do not know any answer, namely that it is unavoidable, and that if one must do it, it is better to do it well. Almost every issue we talk about runs out into philosophy in the end. We try to get clear what in a given case we ought to do, and the question arises how we know when anything is our duty -- and that is ethics. We wonder whether we can hold on to a certain religious belief, and the question arises how we can know that any belief is true -- and that is epistemology. We start wondering about the meaning of the great little words of the language -- 'I,' 'time,' 'space,' 'cause,' 'life,' 'mind,' 'God,' -- and at a step we are in metaphysics. The question is not whether we shall think about these things, but whether we shall think about them in a disciplined and responsible way or in a loose and hit-or-miss way. 'Metaphysics,' said Bradley, 'is the finding of bad reasons for what believe on instinct.' Philosophy is not at enmity with common sense or science. It is the attempt to carry through to the end lines of reflection that arise in those fields inevitably."
Brand Blanshard, "In Defense of the Humanities," in The Uses of a Liberal Education, pp. 71-72 (emphasis added).
For those still upset at my views expressed in "Why I am not an ethical relativist," see: Tom Stoppard, "Professional Foul," in Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul (New York: Grove Press, 1978), pp. 43-93. (Is it all relative?)
What Shakespeare, Mozart, Da Vinci and Austen or Plato and Kant are saying to you is this: "Here's my music, now you take it and play yours." No wonder they want to destroy this essay and essayist. When disdain for the achievements of the past is combined with a lesson of hatred directed at fathers, uncles, or all men (primarily), something has gone seriously wrong with so-called "feminism." Or is it "feministing"?
Legitimating obnoxious behavior is also unnecessary, as are ridiculous "politically correct" attempts at censorship. (See the film Blast From the Past for an amusing defense of what used to be called "manners," but which is now known simply as "being old-fashioned.")
How polite you are or should be depends on how politely you are treated by others. Never resort to violence. On the other hand, make it clear to people that you are to be respected in order for others to be respected by you. "By any means necessary!"
Let us admit that there are indeed "timeless" cultural and intellectual standards. Some artists and thinkers are better than others, even if they happen to be (in some cases), much-dreaded white males. In referring to Jonathan Franzen's recent novel The Corrections, one brain-dead critic said that "it is an important book right now, but ten years from now it won't be." Well, if it is really an important book right now, speaking to the human condition, then it will always be an important book. Look up Shakespeare, Sophocles, Cervantes or Fitzgerald -- Aren't they still "important"? I sure think so. And so does Harold Bloom, who refers to academic nay-sayers on the subject of the canon as: "The School of Resentment." This may be a good time to insert another "error." ("Barack Obama and 'The New Yorker.'")
There is indeed such a thing as truth (Terry Eagleton says so), including ethical truth. Try denying this while remaining logical. Everybody knows this at some level. Except for professional philosophers, of course, who are usually beyond rationality. ("Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security" and "Miami's Cubanoids Protest AGAINST Peace!")
"What is rationality, Glaucon?"
"Who the hell knows, Socrates!"
And they're off.
Philosophy does not require solemnity. If we decide to live by the sixties' maxim "Do Your Own Thing" and your own thing turns out to be crime, then the State has the right to punish you for it, without itself committing a crime of course. This is not only legal, but ethically correct, even when the crime is corrupting local politics or stealing from the public treasury, time-honored traditions in certain parts of the country -- like Jersey City -- you will deserve what you get if you are caught and you probably will be. There is nothing anti-sixties in this notion. The State must not become a criminal in order to punish crime. OAE? Only in New Jersey does law enforcement commit crimes to punish the innocent. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Also, the role of the United States in the Vietnam conflict simply did not fit into the picture that most people had absorbed of the United States and its mission of extending the scope and applicability of human rights in the world. Evidence of U.S. torture of persons within and outside of its borders -- which is still dismaying and even more so now! -- has forced us to recommit the nation to the cause of human rights in this country and throughout the world, especially when it comes to the rights of the most powerless members of society, such as the mentally-ill or incarcerated persons, also members of minority groups and the poor. Again, the problem of racism is always with us. ("New Jersey Covers Up Immigrant's Torture and Murder.")
If the United States or local governments are involved in the deliberate torture of persons, including psychological torture anywhere (even in prisons) and nothing is done about it, then we are no longer the society that we hope to be or have thought ourselves to be in the past. For then, we will have betrayed our most fundamental principles. I do not accept that this is the case. The United States will always "do something" about such evil. We will not be silent, as a people, or cease our protests until it does. I will not be silent. This is one legacy of the sixties.("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")
A puzzled generation of parents in the sixties sighed: "We did not question authority." And their children a generation later abandoned idealism all-too quickly, finding it necessary to sell stocks and bonds or insurance in order to preserve the "lifestyle" for themselves and their children to which affluence has accustomed them, helping to underscore -- in the public's mind anyway -- the immaturity and ephemeral quality of many of the sixties' gestures of defiance, like the burning of draft cards and bras.
"We were so impractical then," everyone says. "We need more than love. We need a Mercedes Benz and two weeks in Barbados." I say : No, we need love, but it would be nice to have the car and the vacation, after we are all fed and sheltered.
"That's just idealism," you say. My answer is: "I hope so, because we need ideals." Boy, do we need ideals. The tension in the American dialectic between need and desire is eternal. At the moment, we have forgotten this distinction and debate.
Before anyone points to Bill Gates or "The Donald" and starts whining about how evil the rich are, let me emphasize the Rawlsian point that those gentlemen have made it possible for millions of poor people to live better lives, to eat and learn in ways that would have been impossible without them by increasing the total wealth in our society. Rather than demonizing the wealthy, let us hope that there will be more of them, paying their taxes (sometimes!), and creating revenues and opportunities for others.
You tell me that wealth should be better distributed. I answer that it would not exist at all, there would be nothing to distribute, but for its creators. If the scriptures are correct that the "rich and the poor are with us always," then let us encourage the rich to make the rest of us richer while they are at it.
In the immortal words of Mae West, "I've been rich and I've been poor ... and rich is better."
Sixties' values do not require us to hate the rich. As for the ethics of wealth, much depends on the uses to which that wealth is put. Is it possible to hold on to the idea of standards in intellectual work and in the arts, while democritizing universities as well as publishing and the media, so as to make "culture" available for, and reflective of, all people in our society? Can we be civil to one another and respectful in disagreement? Can we recognize the difference between legitimate authority conferred by the democratic process and assumptions of cultural power that are illegitimate and to be trashed? Can we criticize those aspects of American society that are in need of reform while admitting that we live in a great country for which we must be grateful? Can the two U.S. political parties stop their bickering and mutual attempts by politicians at personal destruction long enough to cooperate in accomplishing what needs to be done for the country? I still hope so.
Saul Bellow writes: "The heat of the dispute between Left and Right has grown so fierce in the last decade that the habits of civilized discourse have suffered a scorching. Antagonists seem no longer to listen to one another. It would be a pity if intelligent adversaries were not to read Professor [Allan] Bloom's book [The Closing of the American Mind] with disinterested attention." ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" then "Whatever" and "Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")
American intellectual life has indeed suffered as a result of the necessary sixties' revolution in sexual mores and inclusiveness. Civility has suffered in some necessary and also some unnecessary ways.
What can we do to keep what is best about sixties' values and discard what is not so great?
Let's start by trying to understand one another.
III. "Love is War Against War."
One of the things that love -- or just caring about and for people -- teaches is that there is always so much that needs to be done, in a practical sense, if people's lives are to be made better. Foucault said to an interviewer: "You want something to do? Very well then, start with prison reform and an end of torture."
There is always a need for more education and health care, food and water, housing, and an end to avoidable military conflict and yes, an end to torture.
The largest issues on a global level have not changed much since the sixties. And the militants who get distracted by "ego issues," such as the political correctness nonsense or the more irrational forms of knee-jerk anti-Americanism, are as counterproductive as the reactionaries -- and more stupid, too.
Cynicism about love itself has become fashionable, as I say, together with ludicrous forms of ethical and cultural relativism, as a reaction to the sixties, from both Right and Left. "Love is a battlefield," sang Pat Benatar in the eighties. Many self-styled "radical feminists," in particular, now seem to agree. The trashing of romantic love, but (evidently) only among heterosexuals, by Shulasmith Firestone, being a case in point.
Kate Millet's attack on Mailer and Miller falls into the category of overstated and overgeneralized criticism leading to absurd results. Mailer's counterattack in The Prisoner of Sex scores a knockout. I will pass over in silence Andrea Dworkin's and Susan Brownmiller's alleged claim that all heterosexual intercourse is a form of rape by a man of a woman. Hatred directed at men is just as deplorable as hatred directed at women. Feminists must be among the first to recognize this. Andrea Dworkin stated that "intercourse is a means of physiologically making a woman inferior"; that romance is "rape embellished with meaningful looks"; and that "all men are shits and take pride in it." (O.K., when she's right, she's right.) Ariel Levy's "The Prisoner of Sex," in New York, June 6, 2005, at pp. 34-35.
Scholars and political activists, who happen to be women, should be among the first to say that such statements are not acceptable and do not represent mainstream views among women, activists, or liberals. Everyone should refrain from censorship. Imagine those same statements made by a man about women. The abandonment of "values issues" by the Left in the United States, so that no one will be offended, is a colossal blunder that has already cost Democrats more than one election. It will continue to do so, until people in the party realize that leaving ethical values out of politics is like baking a cake without flower, eggs, sugar or water. It is the best way of allowing the far Right of the political spectrum to define values for the nation. Peter Gabel writes:
"There is only one way to combat the power of the religious Right, and that is to recognize that they are addressing something real and valid in people's experience and to challenge them on the merits. If the spiritual/emotional/intuitive dimension of reality is acknowledged as an aspect of the world [that is real and important, and] that can be known, then we no longer have to stand idly by and listen to these lunatics tell us that God doesn't want us to sleep together before we're married or that the Bible must be read as literally true."
The Bank Teller and Other Essays on the Politics of Meaning, pp. 64-65 (emphasis added).
Democrats and liberals also have values. In the sixties people knew that.
Leftists should not be afraid to enter into ethics debates that voters insist are important to them. To put this in terms of a bumper sticker for political pundits: "You can't beat something with nothing." Mere criticisms of the values of the opposition will not win elections if you fail to articulate, persuasively, values of your own and also to acknowledge the reality of the need for those values. Ms. Clinton's "advisers," please remember this next time: "On the one hand, but on the other hand ..." is not going to do it (it will not "be sufficient") in the future for most voters. Right Senator Bob? ("Senator Bob Struggles to Find His Conscience" and "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")
Please do not try to prevent Secretary of State Clinton from speaking of values and principles. Ms. Clinton is exactly the American public official who should speak of values to the world. The Obama administration (thank goodness) is not afraid of values issues and debates. I have been trying to make the point that we not only need values, but that we cannot escape valuing. This need for values is something for the next Democratic candidate for the U.S. Presidency to bear in mind.
Ethical relativism, hostility to the symbols of the nation and disdain for patriotism -- core values that are dismissed as "corny," hatred of American institutions as "evil," will not win elections. This is fortunate. Both Mailer and Miller, regardless of their opinions, are simply better writers than Kate Millet, but neither one is a better critic than, say, Toni Morrison.
Recognition of standards of excellence -- even in moral life -- allows us to make comparative judgments.
Duncan Kennedy agrees that not all hierarchies are evil. Of course, this may have something to do with the fact that he is a tenured Harvard Law Professor, but it's the thought that counts.
Love is always the best force to call upon to clear the battlefields and halt the carnage. We do not need more hostility and hatred -- nor more "macho" posturing by women, BY WOMEN! -- who should know better. Women especially should appreciate the ways in which so-called feminine "quiet" power can be so much greater and more effective than aggression, as a response to aggression. Maybe that very idea of love's ubiquity is one of the most important lessons of the sixties. ("Skinny People Dressed in Black.")
I remember former Texas Governor, Ann Richards (I would've voted for her for anything!), who responded to a hostile and aggressive male heckler with a beatific smile: "Does your mamma know you go 'round saying things like that?"
The heckler was silenced, with a laugh, and he probably voted for her.
We need new forms of loving activism now, more flowers placed in the muzzle of a rifle, and much less violence. In the spirit of that great decade, we always need more peace and love.
Are these the thoughts that you wish to suppress and censor in America? Any more death threats aimed against me? How about another inserted "error" in one of my writings? All such tactics are and can only be the ultimate "cop out."
