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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
October 17, 2004
On aloofness
In the conclusion of his web commentaries on the U.S. presidential debates the National Review's Jay Nordlinger wrote something that truly resonated with me: "Some of our critics are taunting us with 'Bush is going to lose ha ha ha. Face up to reality NRO boys Kool-Aid drinkers.' All that. Frankly I don't talk much about who will win. I talk about who should win. What the people do is their business. I'm not all that worshipful of the people frankly. This is part of the joy of not being a politician. This is the people that voted for Clinton twice; that excused him and reviled Ken Starr; that howled for Elißn Gonzßlez to be shipped back to Cuba; that gave Al Gore more votes; that has tolerated abortion on demand for 30 years; that embraces a popular culture of raw sewage. "I don't know what the American people will do on Nov. 2. But I know what I'll do. I'll pull the lever for George W. with a full and grateful heart." It was a complex string harmonic resonation. It began with sympathetic identification for my own e-mail inbox often groans with those "ha ha ha" comments which are after all intended to be discouraging and tiresome. It is nevertheless sinful to say nothing of counter-productive to indulge discouragement and tiredness. That is why Christians are taught to hope but hope for the right thing. Putting all your hopes in the defeat or re-election of any politician would be extremely foolish; and so far as this world goes what will be will be. But the resonation deepened in that wonderful line What the people do is their business. A person must finally answer for himself and it is a pretence to suggest one speaks for anyone else unless one speaks clearly as an advocate. And Christ alone is the advocate for man qua man. Suppose for the sake of argument that my reader has been captured by the Jihadis in Iraq -- a class of persons I believe to be even less reasonable than the American public. Suppose now that his captors are debating among themselves whether to saw my reader's head off. And let us finally suppose my reader not only present of mind but ungagged and fluent in Arabic and thus able to make an articulate contribution to the debate. The best this hypothetical reader could do would be to present an argument against the proposition. I should imagine even limiting his premisses to passages from the Koran he could make a good one. He could persuade himself that his captors should be persuaded. It might even appear to a hypothetical fair-minded observer that he had won the argument on points. But if the consensus among the Jihadis is that he didn't his head still comes off. It does not follow from his failure to persuade his audience that my reader is responsible for the loss of his head. I wouldn't even blame him had he argued poorly. For what the Jihadis do is their business. This may seem ridiculously obvious but in reading the media especially political commentary wherever the conceit is maintained that "we speak for the people" the point is entirely lost. The people speak for the people. And the vox populi may as easily prove to have been the vox diaboli as the vox dei. Profoundly so in ways we can't foresee for good often comes from evil in this world and evil from good and we cannot see around the next corner. We can only see the good and evil before our eyes. ("Sufficient unto the day.") But now I've swum some distance away from Mr. Nordlinger whom I wanted to praise as an exemplary journalist. He wrote to my judgement the best commentaries on those presidential debates especially on the first and the last explaining in forensic detail and in "live time" without consulting anyone else why he thought President Bush had done so poorly in the first outing and why so well in the third. And he wrote this not only intelligently but honestly wearing his own strong preference for Candidate Bush on his sleeve. Intelligence is innate; anyone might be intelligent. It is pure gift and the greatest and most dangerous fools as likewise the most cynically manipulative are perhaps invariably the most intelligent ones. But honesty requires a very high order of discipline. And that discipline begins with an aloofness a carelessness for public opinion. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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