Hypocrisy

Hey, conservatives, does this make you mad?

What about this?

My top books of 2013

Note that I'm not saying "top ten", because I don't necessarily know how many I'll want to list. Still, I have a feeling that I won't have trouble with the dividing line between the books I would strongly recommend, those that are just okay, and those that I would steer you clear of.

 Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May

This year we saw Republicans in state legislatures continue to try to keep black voters away from the polls and Republicans on the Supreme Court gut the Voting Rights Act, so this is a timely reminder of the difficulty and heroism of the fight to establish voting rights.

 Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

At a time when conservatives think slaves should have been grateful for the life they had, and Southern conservatives express nostalgia for the Lost Cause and anger at what they like to call the War of Northern Aggression, it is still important to have a clear vision of the reality of slavery in our past.

 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins.

 A new poll just demonstrated that the percentage of Republicans who "believe in" evolution (do you "believe in" gravity? the germ theory? the heliocentric model?) has dropped to a minority. Maybe it's because some of the smart ones are leaving, but it's important to know the facts.

 Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat.

We are constantly seeing new research demonstrating the limited effectiveness and affirmative harms of psychiatric medications. In this book Carlat exposes the moral bankruptcy of the industry in which so many policy makers continue to repose their blind faith.

 Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

New York City is falling apart, Richard Nixon is about to resign, and a French tightrope walker prepares to walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  This novel, which I had some reluctance to read, captures these events and a world we can hardly imagine or remember forty years later.

 The Cost of Haven (Great Cities, #1) by F.F. McCulligan

 My interest in fantasy pretty much begins and ends with Tolkien, but I know that fantasy readers are always on the lookout for a new voice. Here's one that presents a believable world and believable, relatable characters. It's worth reading, even if I, the author's father, say so myself.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

 You really haven't read it yet? Come on, what are you waiting for? Too big a fan of capitalism? 

 Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon.

 I never thought I'd have any interest in a book about the world of horse racing, but this is definitely worthwhile.

A confession of ignorance

I'm not a regular reader of the Washington Post, so I was totally unaware of Richard Cohen until just yesterday. Cohen writes a column on the Post's Op-Ed page and by coincidence I heard about two of his columns within the space of a few hours.

First, the one everybody heard about yesterday. It was about Republican prospects, and particularly Chris Christie's prospects, in the 2016 presidential election. How will someone like Christie, with his personality and allegedly moderate views, in his attempt to get the votes of the Tea Party base of the Republican Party?

You can read the whole column if you want, but here's the money quote:

 People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) 

Yes, that's exactly what he said. Cohen claims that this does not represent his own personal views, and that he doesn't have to repress his gag reflex when contemplating mixed-race marriages, but he describes the holders of that gag reflex as "people with conventional views"; in other words, the norm, the mainstream of American thought.

And that's not all. I also came across, via Matt Yglesias's Twitter feed, Cohen's column about his experience watching the new movie Twelve Years a Slave. I haven't seen it yet but it's on my list. 

It appears to have had a real impact on Cohen and his thinking on slavery, which I suppose is a good thing.

Here's what he says about how it affected his thinking on slavery:

"... slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks. Slavery was a lifetime’s condemnation to an often violent hell in which people were deprived of life, liberty and, too often, their own children. Happiness could not be pursued after that.

Steve McQueen’s stunning movie “12 Years a Slave” is one of those unlearning experiences. I had to wonder why I could not recall another time when I was so shockingly confronted by the sheer barbarity of American slavery. Instead, beginning with school, I got a gauzy version. I learned that slavery was wrong, yes, that it was evil, no doubt, but really, that many blacks were sort of content. Slave owners were mostly nice people — fellow Americans, after all — and the sadistic Simon Legree was the concoction of that demented propagandist, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a lie and she never — and this I remember clearly being told — had ventured south to see slavery for herself. I felt some relief at that because it meant that Tom had not been flogged to death."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-12-years-a-slave-and-arts-commentary-on-the-past/2013/11/04/f0e57a92-4588-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html

And he goes further. For instance, he draws an explicit contrast between Uncle Tom's Cabin and Gone with the Wind. To be fair, he does call Gone with the Wind "irrevocably silly and utterly tasteless", but what does he call Uncle Tom's Cabin? he says "Uncle Tom's Cabin was a lie."

The word most of us would choose is a novel--you know, a story that somebody made up--but in Cohen's view it is Harriet Beecher Stowe, not Margaret Mitchell, who is the liar. I would also challenge Cohen's evaluation of Gone with the Wind: it isn't silly, it is pro-slavery, pro-Confederate propaganda, and judging by the tenacity of the Lost Cause mythology, highly effective at that job.

Cohen eventually comes around to a recognition that slavery was not as nice as it is portrayed in Gone with the Wind, but did he really need to get to age seventy-two to find that out?

And more importantly, does the Washington Post really need somebody with such profound moral blindness writing on its pages? 

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Did I "like" Uncle Tom's Cabin? That's pretty much beside the point.



Uncle Tom's Cabin is a historic, important work, one which was famously credited by Abraham Lincoln for the start of the Civil War.



There is no question that Uncle Tom's Cabin meets Stowe's goal of making the horrors of slavery vivid and concrete. She presents all the evils of slavery and the participants in the slave economy, from the beatings and other tortures visited on the slaves, to the anxiety of the slave at the prospect of a new owner, to the almost unimaginable pain of family separation; she also presents a range of owners, from the seemingly benevolent but cynical and negligent St. Clare, to the vicious Simon Legree. (Unlike Uncle Tom, Simon Legree truly earns the evil reputation popular lore has attached to the name.) She also presents the courage and dedication of Northern allies who assist escaping slaves without sparing sanctimonious and frankly racist northerners, and she presents some believable and memorable characters, sometimes even in minor roles.



The shortcomings? An overly sentimental religiosity, the frankly incredible purity and redemptive death of Little Eva, and a creaking writing style that many readers will have difficulty enduring.



If it is her best-known work, Uncle Tom's Cabin is not the only anti-slavery book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, including A Companion to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which sets forth documented cases supporting her portrayal of slavery. Probably one is enough, but as a powerful and influential element of American history, Uncle Tom's Cabin merits a read.



View all my reviews

More on Rand Paul

One might think we'd be done with Rand Paul and his support for discriminatory practices, but, sadly, he won't let it go. So I think it's worthwhile to look at the issues a little more closely.

First, a lot of the commentary from the Right has been to claim that in the current day and age, with discrimination a thing of the past, businesses wouldn't return to the use of discrimination even if the civil rights legislation we now have were repealed. They're overlooking, conveniently, perhaps, one crucial fact: discrimination never went away. We still have civil rights legislation, fair housing legislation, equal employment opportunity because we still need them. Take a look at the Justice Department's web page: they're still litigating claims in every area on behalf of the victims of discrimination. The laws didn't make the discrimination go away. What the law does is provide a remedy when discrimination does occur; it's not a magic wand that made discrimination disappear.

Second, Paul and his friends have argued that federal civil rights laws are unconstitutional because they are not among the powers enumerated to the federal government. What this overlooks is that the Supreme Court has held that the Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to legislate to eliminate the badges and incidents of slavery, not just the legal form of slavery as it existed before the Civil War. ''Surely Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment rationally to determine what are the badges and the incidents of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation. Nor can we say that the determination Congress has made is an irrational one. . . . Just as the Black Codes, enacted after the Civil War to restrict the free exercise of those rights, were substitutes for the slave system, so the exclusion of Negroes from white communities became a substitute for the Black Codes. And when racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery. . . . At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. "

Denying the government the power to eradicate discrimination, the residue of the system of slavery carried forward into the Twentieth Century and beyond, is an endorsement of the continuation of the very practices devised to maintain the oppression of black people in the South and across the country.

Third, Paul and his supporters make a big deal of the distinction between private and public institutions. What they overlook is that every business in the country is imbued with state action. For instance, they would like to have the owners of every business permitted to exclude anyone they want, even based on race. If a black person were to somehow get into a whites-only establishment, who would enforce the prohibition? The police, right? If a white person wanted to prevent a black person from taking title to his property, where would that prohibition be memorialized? In the public, government-run, land records. If a customer of a whites-only establishment fell behind on his bills, how would that establishment collect its debts? By access to the government's court system. This is to say nothing of the public roads, public education system, police, and all the other aspects of government activities that make it possible for every business, large or small, to stay in business.

Finally, this latest kerfuffle seems to put to rest any thought that the Left and the Right could merge in some sort of grand coalition of liberaltarians. If you're not familiar with it, it’s a term meant to describe freedom-lovers who share common purpose with the left on social issues and have therefore made a couple of steps leftward, politically—perhaps even far enough to give hope and change a chance in the voting booth.

About those social issues: do you really think American liberals are going to line up with a movement that officially stands for the proposition that racial discrimination should be legal? Don't hold your breath.

Rand Paul claims he doesn't support racial discrimination, and that may be true. Still, it's hard not to be impressed with the patience and fortitude with which he endures the suffering of others.

Nicholas Kristof gets it partly right

Nicholas Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist for the Times, deserves a lot of praise for his concentration on the oppression of women. He is perhaps best known for his writings about teenage girls held in slavery as prostitutes, and his efforts to free them by buying them from their captors.

This week's column takes another step in opposition to women's oppression, pointing out how religion across the world, in various denominations, operates to keep women down.

He writes:

Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer. So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women?

It is not that warlords in Congo cite Scripture to justify their mass rapes (although the last warlord I met there called himself a pastor and wore a button reading “rebels for Christ”). It’s not that brides are burned in India as part of a Hindu ritual. And there’s no verse in the Koran that instructs Afghan thugs to throw acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school.

It's good to see a mainstream news outlet publishing such a point.

So why do I say that he gets it partly right?

Simple. He treats pervasive religious sexism as somehow an aberration, a distortion of the true nature of religion. In fact, as Kristof's own words demonstrate, sex oppression is at the very core of the largest religions in the world. Sexual oppression isn't the entirety of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, but it is a fundamental part of all three:

The New Testament quotes St. Paul (I Timothy 2) as saying that women “must be silent.” Deuteronomy declares that if a woman does not bleed on her wedding night, “the men of her town shall stone her to death.” An Orthodox Jewish prayer thanks God, “who hast not made me a woman.” The Koran stipulates that a woman shall inherit less than a man, and that a woman’s testimony counts for half a man’s.

He is right that there appears to be an opportunity for some religions to abandon their sexist natures, but it is no help to pretend that those who oppress women in the name of religion are not doing so in line with the central principles of those very religions.

Darwin and Lincoln

I've previously written about the fact that these two great men were born on the same day.

Today I came across another item that bears consideration. It is a review of a book that examines Darwin's attitude toward slavery. The thesis of the book is that Darwin's hatred of slavery was as important a force in his life as his commitment to scientific inquiry.

Here's an example: At the end of Voyage of the Beagle are Darwin's most powerful words towards the racism he observed.

chapter 21
"On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate."

Worth a look.