Posted on 06/03/2004 1:50:17 AM PDT by The Raven
I have been paying attention to the graduates of Ivy League universities. Every one I see the past few weeks is beautiful. They are tall and handsome and gay-spirited; they are strong and laughing and bright. I ask them what they are going to do now. I am repeatedly told things like, "I want to go into TV." And "I'm going to drama school." And "I'm going to journalism school." It occurs to me that all young people who graduate from elite American universities now want to go into communications. It's a whole generation that wants to communicate.
But what do they want to communicate? They don't seem to have a clue. For this is a question that involves the area of Deeply Held Beliefs, and as far as I can see it the deeply held beliefs of these particular graduates is a uniform leftism whose tenets involve reciting clichés. They believe racial and sexual diversity is good, peace is better than war, religious fanaticism is bad. But they don't want to spout clichés--that's not why they went to Cornell. And they know their work will not draw attention if it is marked by tired and essentially noncontroversial ideas. No one thinks war is sweet, there's no market for racial segregation or male chauvinism.
SNIP
I wondered if the loss of a kind of national manliness, or force, tends to coincide in modern nations with a rise in expertise in the delicate arts. Then I thought: I wonder if in general one can say of Western nations that the loss of one tends to be accompanied by a rise in the other. In the case of England I think that is so. I have wondered for 30 years if I would come to think it of America. I have not. But the rise of the young graduates who all want to communicate but have no idea what they want to communicate has me thinking about it again.
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European bureaucrats continue to resist references to God or Christianity in the new constitution they are drafting for the European Union. This is a fascinating battle and revealing of our age. They are in the final drafting stages. Tuesday's New York Times reported, "The issue of whether the most ambitious document in European Union history should include a reference to the Continent's Christian heritage is . . . an emotional, theological wrangle over the meaning of culture, history and faith. The paper quoted France's foreign minister, Michel Barnier, as saying his country would not bow to pressure to inject religion into the document, noting the final draft should be "secular." The constitution is expected to be finalized in two weeks in Brussels. It seems to me the question is not, "Will the architects of the new Europe bow to the reality of God and include him in the central founding document of their vast new union?" The question is, "Will a group of atheist and agnostic European bureaucrats be forced to mention a deity in whom they do not believe in order to appease lesser and ignorant people who unfortunately have a lot of votes?" Europe is a post-Christian society on a continent devoted to the material except when it is considering astrology, witchcraft and worshiping rocks.
SNIP
Is it better if the drafters bow to pressure and, like hypocrites, add a few soulful sentences in which they do not believe so as to fool the dumb people who do? Maybe not. Maybe they should be what they are. It's less confusing that way. And the nonelites of Europe will perhaps more readily see what they are, and understand what they're getting into when they join the EU.
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SNIP
I have come to hate the banners. No, I don't smoke. I just believe in the right of people to be human, to be imperfect and messy and flawed. I don't dislike the banners because they're prissy bullies, though that is reason enough. I dislike them because their work forces us to look at the shift in values in our country in our time. As I watched the NBC report, I actually thought to myself: I want to make sure I understand. If you smoke a cigarette on a beach in modern America you are harming the innocent. If you have a baby scraped from your womb, you are protecting your freedom. If you sell a pack of cigarettes to a 12-year-old boy you can be jailed, fined and sent to Guantanamo Bay with the other killers. If you sell a pack of contraceptives to a 12 year old boy in modern America you are socially responsible citizen.
For reasons that call for an essay of their own, and as we all know, the banners of cigarettes are on and of the left, and the resisters of the banners are on the right. Once the banners of liquor were of the right and its legalizers of the left. The banners of drugs were on the right and the legalizers on the left.
Why did the left change its stance on what it calls personal freedom regarding cigarettes and cigars? What was the logic? And please, if you are on the left, would you answer this question for me? How come the only organ the left insists be chaste is the lung? What is this pulmocentrism? Why are lungs so special? Why can't you endanger your own lungs? Why don't you care as much about livers? Don't the Democrats have a liver lobby?
I think that it is true that there is no individual human on earth that I hate. But when I think of the banners I think of what the old news producer told the bureaucrat who fired him in a cost-cutting campaign in "Broadcast News." At the end of their meeting the bureaucrat asked in unctuous tones if there was anything he could do to help. The producer thought. "Well, I certainly hope you die soon," he said. A great cinematic moment. I wish the banners would go away and stop bothering our country.
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The presidential election began to take shape this week, almost in spite of itself. Did you notice? In a series of interviews and speeches President Bush made it clear he is running on three things: Iraq, and its profound promise for a better world in spite of the struggle; faith-based social reform, which is to say the allowance of the reality of God in certain publicly financed organizations aimed at helping the young and the stressed; and the legitimacy of his tax cuts, both their practical benefits and their inherent justice. This seems to me pretty smart as a way to go, and clear.
John Kerry, meanwhile, emerged with a new approach: future terrorism on U.S. soil is the great issue of our time, and Mr. Bush has not done enough to make America safer. It is smart of Mr. Kerry to get to Mr. Bush's right on this, and it will make the administration sharper. Mr. Kerry's is also an unanswerable challenge: There will of course be terror events down the road, and deadly ones, and it will always turn out that the government could have done more, for it always could have.
Mr. Kerry is also applying a kind of argumentative prophylactic: If al Qaeda hits before the election, he warned you. He is planting seeds so that your first thought, on the day of an event, is not I will support my president in this time of crisis but Bush didn't keep us safe, fire him!
But Mr. Kerry continues to have a major internal structural problem. It is that he can always tell you his position, or his latest position, but he can somehow never quite explain to you the thinking behind it. He continues to seem unable to explain the philosophy and logic. It leaves one assuming his problem is that his thinking relies on an old and cliché-riddled leftism that is not so much thought through as declared and imposed.
It is a paradox. Mr. Kerry is more naturally articulate than Mr. Bush. He is facile with words and speaks in structured sentences and paragraphs. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, speaks in bursts, in little gusts of words. And yet Mr. Bush manages to communicate why he is thinking what he is thinking, what logic is guiding him, what philosophy is guiding him. When he speaks of the practical and moral benefits of faith-based approach to federal spending, you understand why he stands where he stands. He explains it. His words are plain but serviceable. They do the job.
Mr. Kerry doesn't give you the feeling of comfort you get when you understand someone. He's going to have to become a candidate who can explain why he stands where he stands if he wants to go beyond the impression he currently gives, which is that he's a haircut with a person attached.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Excellent, very thoughtful article on a variety of subjects, and I particularly appreciated Noonan's comments on Kerry's speaking.
Great quote about Kerry:
"he's a haircut with a person attached."
I was listening to Kerry on the radio the other day (it's even worse than watching him on TV).
At least on TV you have the haircut to look at, on the radio all you hear is a monotone voice with absolutely no inflexion.
I just read that he might add Gephardt as VP. Talk about a "snooze" alert, a Kerry/Gephardt ticket. I pity the Dems that will attend the rallies, LOL. They'd better bring some No-doze along or at least hit the local Starbucks before they attend.
>>"he's a haircut with a person attached."
The guy has zero optimism. You name the subject - he sees something wrong.
The campaign is "Bush is Bad," Iraq is bad, the world is polluted, companies are bad, the economy is bad....etc, etc.
LOL. I have that same problem too with listening to any length of soundbite from Kerry on the radio.
But, I think Noonan's quote, "he's a haircut with a person attached." reaches beyond his looks and the monotonous inflection of his voice, it's Kerry himself personally, he's a transparent suit with no agenda other than to tear apart President Bush.
Wonderful. I love her book 'When Character Was King' also. She inspires and encourages me.
Bump for excellence.
"It seems to me that if a person cannot communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up."
On the subject of Kerry and terrorism, his big idea is to appoint a "Terrorism Czar." Hey, we appointed a drug czar and an energy czar, and today, gas is cheap and nobody takes drugs! So we know this will work!
The devilish thing about this tactic is that it actually gets Christians to join the fight. Christians think that fighting for complete and total religious "freedom" (actually anarchy) is a fight for their own rights. In actuality, this will be the death of religious freedom. We will, like Europe, try to scour all gods and God from our society which will lead to the loss of all freedom and law.
A phrase that deserves a rich and lengthy career. Though it might be a bit over-generous.
Kerry has a face for radio.
Elite American students don't want to design, engineer and make stuff. They want to communicate? For their 15 minutes of ego fame? Where is the connection to real world? The material world that for much of the world's population is not very pleasant.
It occurs to me that all young people who graduate from elite American universities now want to go into communications. It's a whole generation that wants to communicate . . . But what do they want to communicate? They don't seem to have a clue. For this is a question that involves the area of Deeply Held Beliefs, and as far as I can see it the deeply held beliefs of these particular graduates is a uniform leftism whose tenets involve reciting clichés.. . . But they don't want to spout clichés--that's not why they went to Cornell. And they know their work will not draw attention if it is marked by tired and essentially noncontroversial ideas . . .
Mr. Kerry . . . is facile with words and speaks in structured sentences and paragraphs . . . [but] doesn't give you the feeling of comfort you get when you understand someone.
. . . Mr. Kerry . . . can always tell you his position, or his latest position, but he can somehow never quite explain to you the thinking behind it. He continues to seem unable to explain the philosophy and logic. It leaves one assuming his problem is that his thinking relies on an old and cliché-riddled leftism that is not so much thought through as declared and imposed.
Everyone seems to be focusing on the Kerry aspect of this piece. I think the really interesting point is the one about the graduates of the elite colleges all wanting to go into communications, but without a clue what they have to say. Much can be done with this by someone more clever than I. For many years (20 at least), I have noticed in society in general an increasing concern with process at the expense of substance -- from Churches more concerned about how to create a Mission Statement reflecting all of the constituencies in the group, than with actually accomplishing any mission (let alone Mission Work -- but I digress) to corporations spending vast amounts on training and communication. MacLuhan's Medium is the Message redux. In my experience, this change has come about with increasing concern about consensus (and people's feelings), with the feminization of the workplace, politics and education. It is no surprise that in academia, women tend to the lest substantive, more subjective, studies, where men gravitate more to the mathematical and concrete. Hmmm.
Noonan ping.
A good rant regarding the anti smoking zealots:
"NBC reported Monday night that there is a new movement in California to ban smoking on public beaches. This is much more serious than the fact that if the law passes young people on beach blankets will no longer be able to break the ice by asking, "Got a light?" The NBC report came on right before I watched Tom Selleck chain-smoke through "Ike." It looked like such a liberated thing to do, smoking without care or guilt.
There is a great lie out there that they didn't know smoking was dangerous in Ike's day, but of course they knew. They knew because they coughed, they knew because their lungs ached, they knew because when they smoked it produced phlegm, they knew because doctors told them smoking aggravates tuberculosis, they knew because they have brains, and they knew because smokers were addicted and there is some rough knowledge within the human soul that when you're addicted to something it's probably not good for you. They knew it was dangerous. Hitler was dangerous too. The world was dangerous. They were planning the biggest amphibious invasion in all of human history. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
I have come to hate the banners. No, I don't smoke. I just believe in the right of people to be human, to be imperfect and messy and flawed. I don't dislike the banners because they're prissy bullies, though that is reason enough. I dislike them because their work forces us to look at the shift in values in our country in our time. As I watched the NBC report, I actually thought to myself: I want to make sure I understand. If you smoke a cigarette on a beach in modern America you are harming the innocent. If you have a baby scraped from your womb, you are protecting your freedom. If you sell a pack of cigarettes to a 12-year-old boy you can be jailed, fined and sent to Guantanamo Bay with the other killers. If you sell a pack of contraceptives to a 12 year old boy in modern America you are socially responsible citizen.
For reasons that call for an essay of their own, and as we all know, the banners of cigarettes are on and of the left, and the resisters of the banners are on the right. Once the banners of liquor were of the right and its legalizers of the left. The banners of drugs were on the right and the legalizers on the left.
Why did the left change its stance on what it calls personal freedom regarding cigarettes and cigars? What was the logic? And please, if you are on the left, would you answer this question for me? How come the only organ the left insists be chaste is the lung? What is this pulmocentrism? Why are lungs so special? Why can't you endanger your own lungs? Why don't you care as much about livers? Don't the Democrats have a liver lobby?
I think that it is true that there is no individual human on earth that I hate. But when I think of the banners I think of what the old news producer told the bureaucrat who fired him in a cost-cutting campaign in "Broadcast News." At the end of their meeting the bureaucrat asked in unctuous tones if there was anything he could do to help. The producer thought. "Well, I certainly hope you die soon," he said. A great cinematic moment. I wish the banners would go away and stop bothering our country."
You've raised some good points. I would submit that the fundamental problem you've described in anecdotal terms is the desire of the modern world to deny God.
The college graduates who gravitate to communications arts realize that there is a lot of money to be made in the movie and TV business. And these students are probably the kind of kids who come from wealthy families. If you never had to work in your life, what else could you do for a living? Be an attorney?
But the mention of MacLuhan is important. Greater minds than MacLuhan have identified the societal problems that result from the lack of a proper educational foundation in philosophy and theology that directs the student to an appreciation of God Almighty. This has been the root of all problems in the modern world since the "Enlightenment". It can be summarized as the attempt of Man to become God. All of the evils of the modern world are a result of this human vanity.
MacLuhan's insight of "the Medium is the Message" was a description of how modern mass communications distorts our perception of reality. The explanation of this phenomenon was actually developed to a greater degree by Heidegger, who outlined in detail the metaphysical nature of human interaction with communication instrumentalities, such as radio. Heidegger showed how our relationship with reality, or the nature of being, is distorted when our minds encounter the time and space irregularities of hearing (or seeing) events that occur over our normal spatial horizon. This interaction subverts our ability to follow a sequence of events in a coherent and logical manner.
If you have not enjoyed a Scholastic education, with its emphasis on the rules of logic or knowledge of God, then you are easy prey for the deceptions of mendacious propagandizers. These college kids are easy marks, but they have nothing to say. They have no intellectual foundation of substance to draw from when participating in the propaganda machine. They simply regurgitate platitudes and bromides.
This problem also surfaces when we see our children interact with the Internet. The amount of factual information that is available to kids in easily accessible databases is unbelievable. But because of a lack of a strong educational foundation, they have lost the ability to discriminate between the worthless and the valuable. The hypertext environment of the Internet jerks them around from one input to another in a discordant manner. They all appear to have attention deficit disorder.
It seems to me the fact that Noonan doesn't know this is further evidence of the failure of our educational system. She is a Catholic, as was MacLuhan and Heidegger. She should know better.
Peggy ping.
What they are saying is that when another attack occurs, Bush will be at fault because he didn't spend enough money domestically. Therefore, any deaths are his fault.
Because Graham was on the Intelligence Committee, I believe there was evidence that AQ was planning another attack, although very vague on specifics. To my everlasting scorn, the democrats are planning NOT to help in another attack, but to take advantage of it. May God confound their evil plans.
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