Marilynne Robinson is not Rock, and this is not a song. Rather, it is simply a three-word sentence dropped by the acclaimed novelist last fall, when I heard her speak at Skidmore College.
But the following was initially provoked by another writer, Bill Kaufmann. Kaufmann is a hard one to categorize, a guy with apparently new-leftish roots, but who writes books toying with the idea of secession and celebrating Republican isolationism. He tries to bring together opponents of American “empire” left and right, the better to formulate a new sort of “isolationism,” but seems to prefer the conservative tag. Well, back in December, he wrote a little piece run by both Front Porch Republic and The American Conservative, called “The Fighting Bobs,” in which Dylan’s “Masters of War” played a starring role. The piece connected two “Bobs,” Robert LaFollette and Bob Dylan, to a certain Wisconsin/Minnesota tradition of populist politics. Here’s a few tastes:
“The week that Wisconsin voters threw out Russ Feingold, the only step-grandson Fighting Bob La Follette had left in the U.S. Senate, I went to hear an Upper Midwesterner of similar pedigree, Bob Dylan of Hibbing, Minnesota.”
“[Dylan is actually an isolationist] …as…Tor Egil Forland explained in a…paper titled ‘Bringing It All Back Home or Another Side of Bob Dylan: Midwestern Isolationist.’ …Dylan is …old enough to remember when the people of his place looked askance at empire. There were giants in the earth in those days.”
“When the Masters of War (even Jesus would never forgive what you do) requested the presence of American sons at the blood orgies of 1917, 1941, 1950, and 1964, it was the Upper Midwest, with its Non-Partisan Leagues and retro-Progressives and Sons of the Wild Jackass, that brayed “No!” Where are their offspring?”
This elicited a heated comment from yours truly, but I got too gun-shy, and holiday-season busy, to submit it. Didn’t seem in the Christmas spirit. But with “Masters of War” now on my mind again, and with summer crying out for some excuse to rumble with the Porchers, it’s time has come. So here’s my anti-Kaufmann/Dylan broadside, adjusted for the Songbook:
***********************************************************
Ah yes, the “blood orgies” of 1941 and 1950, which could have been avoided without adverse consequences if only Americans had listened to the heroes of the Upper-Midwest, and told their elected representatives and appointed generals (er…their “Masters”) that they weren’t a-marchin’ anymore. Yeah…tell it to, say, a French ex-pacifist resistant during the dark winter of 1941, shivering in some attic fearing arrest at any time, but made hopeful by the news of Pearl Harbor. Or maybe, in our time, you could hip a South Korean grandfather to this? Or an American Korea War vet? T’was all for nuthin’, you’ll tell ‘em? Except for “Imperialism?” Well now, there’s some real populism circa 2010, folks.
Recently, I heard Marilynne Robinson speak, and she said she “misses civilization.” Could it be she misses a time when even a fightin’ Bob, even one acquainted with the roughness of Weird Old America as recorded in folk-song, might be a tad hesitant (see Songbook #8) about sayin’ “I hope that you die” and such? Could it be she’s as wearied as I am by every Tom, Dick, and Harry wanting to recapture the magical “transgressivity” of the “Masters of War” moment? Could it be that like Wendell Berry in Sex, Freedom, Economy, and Community she’s weary of all the “shock art” tactics employed over the last several decades, modeled after such Classic (PBS-fundraiser-worthy) Boomer Moments like Bob’s “Masters” one? Could it be that she laments the way those art tactics, initially only justifiable by a certain political reasoning have worked their way into everyday manners via our comedians, rock-stars, etc.? I confess that I do lack the words to adequately celebrate the Lenny Bruces and Berkley-ites of yore, and all the other “barrier-breakers” who broke down our manners and grammar, but PBS will surely find them for me.
So thanks, Bob. Thanks, “fighters,” who were fighting for… …what was it now? 1962 and 1912 seem so long ago. What was the dream again, and what is it that happens again to a dream deferred? Or wasn’t it actually, for white progressives and lefties at least, a dream that got be-blurred? Half-realized? Changed? Half-forgotten? What happens to young dreamers whose anger gets deliberately stoked by, I mean organized by…oh, but let’s not name any more nameable allegiances and platforms from the days of yore! Let’s not say anything that would be inconvenient for Kaufmann’s trans-ideological “isolationist” angle, nor for Rock’s own mythology.
The key point is that the blanket-damnation of “Masters of War” only did and only does makes sense if using a word like “empire” in the careless way of too many Porchers makes sense. Comparatively speaking, America was all right, even in 1963; moreover, it would have been okay even if it had been deprived of the New Left “rescue” and fought the mistaken Vietnam War through to the (likely-“victorious”-yet-too-costly) conclusion; and furthermore it remains okay enough today, or at least is better than most political communities, even despite the millions of babies we keep killing, acres we keep ugli-fying, young people we keep mis-educating, etc. It doesn’t and didn’t deserve damnation, at least not from anyone not named God, and especially not from remarkably un-peaceful “peace” advocates who seem to find their moral purpose in life by clinging ever more tightly to deluded notions of “empire” the further we get from their hoary 1890s Leninist (See Songbook #5) provenance. I can see why Kaufmann thinks he might be able to win some of these types over to his neither left-nor-right “isolationist” stance, which would at least be better than their typical Lennon-esque leftism. Still, there is something a sick-making about the more general Porcher openness to this denunciatory style regarding America’s wars and war-preparations. This style came out of a sick politics (i.e., it is far more rooted in Lenin than in Jefferson) and has been helping along our descent into a sick culture. It is hateful.
I probably cannot convince Kaufmann on this, but perhaps the Porchers can begin to see their need to start thinking about “empire” in an objective way, so as to understand that a general stand against government bigness and foreign intervention-proclivity has got to distinguish the various sorts and cannot let itself get sounding like Chomskyite b.s. They should read (Norman Podoretz, Why We Were In Vietnam) about why our war in Vietnam is best understood as an earnestly-and-democratically-made mistake (a horrible one, yes), and not as a crime committed by some nefarious conspiracy nor as manifestation of some deep flaw in America. They should read about how thinkers like Michael Doyle, Empires, and Pierre Manent, A World Beyond Politics, conceptualize “hegemony” and “empire,” and how they then carefully apply such terms to the various examples in history, including the contemporary U.S. and the E.U.
Adult populism, please. An abiding effort to speak and think in a fraternal key. For sobriety-tempered spiritedness, and yes, “civilization,” is what even the American lower and middle-classes really long for.
July 3rd, 2011 | 2:44 pm
Carl, I too repect and enjoy much of what you right. Further, I think you’re probably a gifted academic who involves his students in any analysis your doing and takes every opportunity to challenge them in their education. With that said I think the question you’re discussing above needs to take Pres. Eisenhower’s comments a bit more seriously (perhaps they deserve a deeper analysis?), as well as a thorough study of why a number of our leading founders cautioned against treaties with European powers, and finally the nature of a republic.
Dylan’s “Master’s..” is spot on in his effort to explicate the then existing phenomenon of the
“Cold” war, its purveyors, and the efforts of the media to justify the pernicious policies of the central regime. I’m listening to Bob’s “Shot of Love” album as I right..perhaps his finest effort, in its appreciation/acknowledgement of the tension of existence.
Finally I would ask you, what war of the past fifty years or so would you have chosen to sacrifice the life of your first born? Would you have sacrificed his life to ‘save’ Korea, Vietnam, the Iraqis, or perhaps the Afghans?
July 3rd, 2011 | 8:43 pm
I just reread Ike’s Farewell (and Pat Deneen’s piece on it for AmCon). I encourage all to do so. A number of passages don’t fit with Pat’s McWilliamsite gloss, nor with Bob’s framework, so its consonance with their views is significantly coincidental and its usefulness to support their positions, considerably lessened. Its letter and spirit is more pro-technology than Pat acknowledges and Ike favors “the nation” and the Federal government and an enhanced executive more than Bob could countenance. In other words, he lived in the mid-20th century, not the 18th or early-19th. I particularly liked the passage which spoke of “the task for statesmanship” today (1960), in the midst of the Cold War (be sure to note how Eisenhauer characterized Soviet Communism and the threat it posed). Happy 4th to everyone. Be sure to reread the Declaration at your BBQs.
July 4th, 2011 | 11:29 am
Thanks Paul, for giving me the impetus to read this fascinating speech, which is as appropriate today as it was fify years ago. Here’s a link:
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html
Two of my favorite parts:
“We . . . must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
And:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Paul, I agree with much of your comment above but don’t these quotes call into question Eisenhower’s concern with govt’s involvement in the ‘military-industrial complex’ (given that some poly-sci people have added the term ‘congressional’ to military-industrial)? And, I agree that the president perhaps wanted a stronger role for the executive in the federated model than this Paleo, but he isn’t anywhere near the statist/consolidated positions of the progressivists/moderns Clinton, Bush, and certainly not Obama. In fact with this wonderfully courageous speech we can almost begin to measure a gross decline of prudence and virtue in the general gov’t. President Eisenhower was focusing on only two problems, the dangers associated with what can possibly become a perverse relationship between the technologists, military, and legislative/executive leaders and the evils associated with deficit spending.
I want to link Dr. DeNeen’s brilliant and insightful essay as well:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/ikes-last-stand/science-of-tyranny/
And, these remarks well summarize Pres. Eisenhower’s warning:
“What makes the Farewell Address so extraordinary is that Eisenhower acknowledges that liberty depends not only on America’s ability to develop appropriate scientific and technological responses to great international threats, but also on America’s capacity to govern the consequences of the scientific imperative itself. Eisenhower saw clearly that America’s resistance to the temptations of power was giving way to the demands of a permanent garrison state. The project of defending American liberty would require a massive expansion of government—particularly the executive—and the extensive influence of military players in the political process would increase the need for “secrecy and dispatch.” But more, the dependence upon science would decisively tip the scale toward liberty conceived as the overcoming of nature, premised upon an unrelenting expansion of power.”
and:
“No section of Eisenhower’s address gives more compelling witness to this fear than his warning that the military-industrial-scientific complex’s demands would require the transformation of the university. His prophecy—which has become history—not only portended the death knell of “free ideas,” but the demise of the university’s historic role in providing reflective cautions about the pursuit of forbidden knowledge. Instead, the academy has given itself over to forms of inquiry with the ultimate aim of overcoming human nature.
Today every research university measures itself against its peers by calculating comparative amounts of federal grant funds; meanwhile, the un-useful liberal arts decline in esteem, size, even presence. This demotion overturns a tradition that located liberty’s source not in the untrammeled expansion of scientific knowledge, but in the liberal (and civic) arts—those subjects that educated free citizens in the discipline of self-goverment.”
My only critique of DeNeen’s essay is that he neglected to address, arguably the most important remedy for the crisis. Namely that the ground of this American republic was not some secular immanist’s perversion of science/technology but rather an existential knowledge of and appreciation and seeking for the divine. Given the elements of the Puritan Revolution that survived into the founding era, the remarkable pneumatic effects of the sundry “Awakenings” phenomenon, Americans within the republican mode established an order which is, itself, grounded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This ‘order’ has come under attack from the very beginning and, I would argue, has survived so long for the simple reason that it reflects the power of God’s truth. It is apparent, I think, that as a people, steeped in the virtues and prudence of the olde republican order, we are required to engage the derailed progressivist/statists and recapture those uniquely American symbols of freedom, liberty, and the value of human life.
July 5th, 2011 | 8:10 am
I like Ike, and I take his or a more developed theory of a “military industrial complex” seriously. I won’t dismiss it out of hand as a factor in our nation’s history, even our foreign policy history. My own father’s career owed not a bit to the Sputnik scare translating into science-promotion.
And Robert, you’ve selected some telling quotes, and your own last paragraph is great.
I do assert, however, that my songbook posts (particularly #s5 and #8) have shown that “Masters of War,” and songs like it, do not get it right. Very much the opposite of “spot-on,” and with powerful poetic rhetoric to obscure the facts. And such songs err in a way that created a gap for new sorts of hatred (and crudity) to enter into our culture.
And which, if you think about it, has harmed the American university and intellectual life more? The Clark Kerr style research/science focus, or the New Left and New Cultural Style (The necessary Free Speech Mvmt at Berkely quickly moving into a “Foul Speech” Mvmt) counter-reaction to it? Would that we had more universities where the conflict was b/t A) techno/research/beholden-to-m.i.establishment types and B) traditional liberal arts types, with the former dominating! Because what we really have is A) in conflict with the truly dominating force, C) New-Leftoid/Multiculti “humanities” and administrative-do-goodism, with B) barely having a place at all. So I can say that Dylan and his intellectual and political mentors screwed up our cultural life more than the grim likes of Kerr ever would have or did.
July 5th, 2011 | 4:31 pm
Carl I truly enjoy your posts and the insight provided. On Dylan we don’t agree. I see him, primarily, as a critic of modernity, and one who seeks love (a philosopher?).
Could it be, that as a young man you’ve lumped together some disparate figures from a past that you’ve only read about? I don’t remember any ‘crudity’ in his songs, at least up to his Jesus period…after that I’m not sure.
Re: his association with the New Left, I would remind you he really angered that old communist, Pete Seeger, with his electric guitar at Newport. So much so that Pete threatened to cut the electric feed to the stage.
I wouldn’t be so quick to try and label old Bob. Many have tried, I’m not sure anyone has succeeded.
And, Ima thinkin’ that, indeed, a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
July 10th, 2011 | 7:49 am
Re: the ‘Cold War’ you might enjoy “Gnostic Wars: The Cold War in the Context of a History of Western Spirituality,” by a German academic, Dr. Stefan Rossbach. It’s a brilliantly researched examination of the causes and conduct of the Cold War.
My review’s here:
http://www.voegelinview.com/gnostic-wars-review.html
July 10th, 2011 | 11:12 pm
“It is hateful.”
Right. It is obliterating a quarter of a million Japanese civilians that is loving.
October 28th, 2011 | 11:02 am
” “It is hateful.”
Right. It is obliterating a quarter of a million Japanese civilians that is loving.”
The contention was not that war is an amiable activity but that pacifists are themselves shockingly bellicose about their pacifism.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact