The Goldberg File
By Jonah Goldberg
April 12, 2013
Dear Reader (including those of you still languishing behind the veil of ignorance),
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So earlier this week MSNBC released one of its "Lean Forward" ads, this time with a woman named Melissa Harris-Perry. Before we get to all that, a word about the ad campaign itself. In one sense these ads are like the question, "You want extra?" from the masseuse at a shady Vietnamese massage parlor -- proof that all pretense at propriety is exactly that, pretense. This is supposed to be a news network. Moreover, it is supposed to be a news network that constantly boasts of its professional and philosophical superiority to Fox News (and it's true; except for ratings, influence, quality, and profit MSNBC kicks Fox's butt). And yet, they run testimonials to state power with a frequency that rivals North Korean TV. But in another sense these ads are the "extra" itself -- a rather sad and perfunctory attempt to satisfy urges that barely rise above the masturbatory. The self-love oozes from the screen as the hosts' inner-15-year-olds realize this is their chance to prove they're as great as their favorite social-studies teacher told them they were! Thanks to the magic of Hollywood, they preen for the cameras with an almost post-coital glow as they deliver their little sermonettes that amount to pointless verbal onanism. Hey, look. There's no-necked Ed Schultz at a diner, looking like he's having one last cup of coffee before he has to work up a sweat burying the corpse of a dissident union official still moldering in the trunk of his ten-year-old Coupe de Ville. And there's Rachel Maddow (looking a bit like that aforementioned dead union official) trying to give her Stakhanovite commitment to infrastructure projects a romantic hue. All Your Children Belong to Us And now there's Melissa Harris-Perry. By now you've heard of or seen the ad, but just in case rel=nofollow target=_blank>here it is. In short, she thinks the idea that your kids are, well, yours is outdated and counterproductive. Rich Lowry, praise be upon him, offers a fine summary of what Harris-Perry is getting at here. Actually, no disrespect to the guy who signs my paycheck (who is not only a powerful man, but a handsome one) but Harris-Perry herself was more than clear enough about what she's after. The thing is only 30 seconds long, very highly produced, and straight to the point. This is important because Harris-Perry is now simultaneously insisting she won't apologize and insisting that she didn't say what she so obviously said. In the ad she's talking about the role of government, government investments, and ridiculing the idea of "private" ownership of kids. "We have to break through," she urged, "our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families." Now she claims she was talking about civil society and voluntarism? As the guy who took Obama to his first stable said when the president was about to step in some equine feces, "Oh, that's horses***." The Wayback Machine Like Sisyphus said on day 12,092 of his sentence, "forgive me for getting a little frustrated here." The whole point of her commercial was to explain, in the condescending tones we usually expect from baristas with two graduate degrees, This Is How The Smart People See Things. And, on that level, I am utterly unsurprised she was surprised by the controversy. The notion that we need to solve the "problem" of private ownership of children is an ancient idea among progressives. The whole reason the ad made it on air is that Harris-Perry doesn't know anyone who thought it was controversial. Lots of folks have been citing Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village, (which I've actually read for reasons that have to do with original sin and the tragic nature of the universe) but the more relevant text is actually Clinton's address to the United Methodist General Conference in 1996. "As adults we have to start thinking and believing that there isn't really any such thing as someone else's child . . . For that reason, we cannot permit discussions of children and families to be subverted by political or ideological debate." This quote can be found in Liberal Fascism -- along with many, many, pages on this eternal progressive dream of grabbing the kids. For instance, from page 326:
But, as that aforementioned Vietnamese masseuse likes to say, wait, there's more. Clinton's line actually gets closer to the point I make in The Tyranny of Clichés, out in paperback at the end of the month. ("We knew that was coming" -- The Couch). In Tyranny, one of my main arguments is that liberals are -- what's the right word? Oh, that's right, lying when they say they aren't ideological. Well, here's Hillary Clinton blithely telling the world that we need to get beyond the antiquated idea that you have more claim on your kid than anyone else and, then, in the same breath insisting that anyone who disagrees is being subversively "ideological" or "political." Think about that. It's like saying, "We as a country must move beyond the idea that the avant-garde of the proletariat as represented by the Politburo doesn't have the uncontestable right to invoke prima nocta and steal the virtue of your maiden daughters," and then claiming, without missing a beat, that any objections to this eminently reasonable and pragmatic point of view amounts to nothing more than political or ideological subversion. (Am I going to get any credit for that Leninist-Braveheart mash-up?). Seriously, according to Clinton, you are a subversive if you think your kid is yours. And let's be clear: The collective ownership of the "village," that Clinton, Harris-Perry, et al. have in mind, is ownership by the state, guidance by the state. Mussolini's definition of fascism was the idea that everything is within the state, nothing outside the state. For Clinton & Co. everything is within the village; nothing is outside of it. Anyway, I don't want to go all Red Dawn here ("Wolverines!" -- The Couch), but I'm pretty sure we have a Second Amendment precisely to recognize the fact that my kids are mine. Moreover, it really needs to be pointed out that as a matter of policy and pragmatism, the idea that collective ownership of kids is smarter, better, or more enlightened than private ownership of kids (i.e. traditional parenting) is incandescently stoopid. Of course, the government has an obligation to step in when there's criminal abuse or gross irresponsibility. But there's no way, bureaucrats can do a better job of caring for kids than actual parents can. As I say in pretty much every speech I give: The government cannot love you. And, by extension, it sure as Hell can't love your children, never mind love them more than you do. Lowry, in his philosopher-king wisdom, beat me to one of my favorite stories about Phil Gramm. He once told a woman, "My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do." The woman, in full Melissa Harris-Perry mode, responded, "No, you don't." Gramm shot back, "Okay, what are their names?" The Horror in Philadelphia One reason the jocularity in this "news"letter is restrained is that this has all been a prelude to discussing the Kermit Gosnell case. The sheer vileness of the whole story is hard to get your head around and it's certainly hard to make with the yuckety-yucks knowing that in a few paragraphs you're going to be talking about a den of barbarism where educated adults cut the spines of live babies and rationalized it with the Orwellian abracadabra phrase "reproductive health." And the Iron Maiden, I suppose, was all about ensuring good posture. My friends Kirsten Powers, David Freddoso, and Mollie Hemingway have already spelled out what should be obvious to all: The press is outrageously ignoring this story. My own theory, as I rel=nofollow target=_blank>explained last night on Special Report, is that they are embarrassed by it. Partial-birth abortion is supposed to be a myth concocted by pro-lifers to scare people away from "reproductive health." If then-state senator Barack Obama had his way, Kermit Gosnell wouldn't be on trial for murder, he'd more likely be on trial for some serious health-code violations or, perhaps even more likely, he'd be getting an award from Planned Parenthood. Getting Past the Idea that It's Someone Else's Fetus The most remarkable thing no one has remarked upon, as far as I can tell, is the disconnect between the Melissa Harris-Perry view about socializing children and what I think we can call the Melissa Harris-Perry view about privatization of snipping the spines of babies. If we all own everyone else's children, then Kermit Gosnell killed -- barbarically slaughtered, actually -- Harris-Perry's babies. Why isn't she angry about that? One of intellectual liberalism's favorite justifications for "social justice" is the so-called "original position." This thought experiment is at the heart of John Rawls's arguments for an interventionist state. Imagine you are a soul, amongst many other souls, waiting for a body in the real world (soul is my word). Now imagine you had a say in how society would be organized and designed. But here's the hitch: Your discussion of what would constitute the best society must be held behind what Rawls calls a "veil of ignorance." In other words, you have no idea whether you will be born black or white, rich or poor, gay or straight, healthy or weak, etc. Since you don't know what card you'll draw in the great game of life, you'll want the game to be as fair as possible. While I have problems with this that aren't all that relevant to this discussion (Hint: The whole idea that we can "design" societies in this manner is one step removed from immanentizing the eschaton) what is infuriating is that Rawls abandons this entire framework in order to celebrate abortion rights. In Political Liberalism, Rawls says in effect that women's equality trumps both the social need for children and the necessity of respecting human life. Now, I don't know about you, but if I was standing in some metaphysical waiting room, hoping for my one shot at a life on earth (and in Rawls's view, any life at all), before I had my fingers crossed in the hopes of landing a life as a rich, handsome, and smart guy with a great sense of rhythm, I would first hope that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't blow my one shot in Kermit Gosnell's "clinic" getting a few seconds to take in the splendor of a urine- and blood-soaked hell-hole before he grabbed his scissors. The pro-life view, contrary to a billion versions of The Handmaid's Tale, is not statist. It is anti-statist. For the religious, the pro-life view holds, at least in part, that every life belongs to God, not government. For the more secular, it holds that the government is not qualified morally or technically to decide which human beings count as human beings and which do not. Philosophically and practically, the progressive view that children belong to us all isn't pro-life, but it is obviously and thoroughly anti "choice." In the Harris-Perry view, a woman can't simply choose what she should do to her baby, nor can the doctor. It's up to all of us. And who knows, maybe we need more workers for the salt mines? Maybe the Social Security trust fund needs more dues. Maybe the army needs cannon fodder, or the medical schools need spare parts? The point is that in the fully realized progressive vision it's not your decision to make. If all your children belong to the state, so do all your fetuses. Various & Sundry Okay, so onto cheerier stuff, like Dana Perino rapping. As I mentioned above, The Tyranny of Clichés is coming out in paperback on April 30. I don't want to debase myself, but I would also really love to pay off my second mortgage. So, balancing these two desires, let me just say: Please, oh please, oh please buy it. It's less than ten bucks on Amazon if you pre-order it today. If it helps to rationalize it, consider it a cheap subscription price to the G-File. Heck, if it helps rationalize it, think of it as the Necronomicon. Anyway, if everyone (allegedly) reading this "news"letter bought a copy today, it would become an instant No. 1 bestseller and guarantee that I will be able to continue producing these high quality G-Files well into my dotage. Did I mention that Mark Hemingway wrote that The Tyranny of Clichés "might be the best and most fun-to-read primer on the tenets of conservative politics since P. J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores." Okay, enough with all of that. The other night in the greenroom for Red Eye, Joe DeVito and I were talking about a lot of weird things. One of them was how perhaps the Internet's most dubious achievement was letting sexually weird and deviant people realize they are not alone. I don't mean gay people, or transgendered, or any of that. I mean people like this. (Warning: Yuck.) In the old days, it would be very hard to find a date who'd totally be in to putting on a Dora the Explorer costume and having sex with a dude in a Cookie Monster outfit. Now, that's one Craig's List ad away. Similarly, before the Internet Age, I sincerely doubt the Chinese would have gotten so into putting pantyhose on dogs. Speaking of things Cosmo would never, ever, do -- he would never leave with a burglar. This is a list of ten American habits Brits will never understand. It's interesting, but "aversion to security cameras everywhere" sadly isn't on it. Eleven rejected Canadian flag designs. Eleven classic Letterman acts. The Couch was particularly intrigued with this, but given the conversation about weird sexual desires, I find it a little troubling these people are out there. And lastly, here's the video " rel=nofollow target=_blank>MVI_3406.AVI" -- which sort of says it all! It's funnier if you turn on the captioning. |
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