The American Spectator February 1996
Clarence Thomas attributes the death of heroes to the rise of radical
egalitarianism in the 1960s amongst our cultural elite. This reminded
me of a book review by Terry Southern of Nova Express by
William Burroughs (1964): “an absolutely devastating ridicule of
all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life:
the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic
obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy.” Southern
and Burroughs were definitely the cultural elite Thomas referred
to.
What a wonderful list, from thirty years ago, of all the bad things
that the American left wanted to eliminate from the American right.
The left, however, was successful in only one of their endeavors, the
elimination of hero worship. The left itself is now the embodiment of
“all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American
life: the abuses of power... aimless violence, materialistic
obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy.” Evidently,
it co-opted all these from the right.
Why was the left successful only in eliminating hero worship? Was it
truly important to them because they thought to gain a shadow of
immortality by their own personal radiance overawing the discredited
individuals of the heroic past? Or were they successful simply
because of the tendency towards mediocrity inherent in egalitarian
societies? Allan Bloom thought this latter to be true; he also showed
the open path back to heroism: “In a democracy where men already
think they are weak, they are too open to theories that teach that
they are weak, which, by making individuals think that controlling
action is impossible, have the effect of weakening them further. The
antidote is again the classic, the heroic - Homer,
Plutarch.”
I applaud Clarence Thomas for pursuing the revival of heroism, he is
a hero in my book already. Oswald Spengler advised: “Let a man
be either a hero or a saint. In between lies, not wisdom, but
banality.” If only more Americans would make such a choice, the
smothering banality of public discussion today would dissipate.
- Reilly Jones
The American Spectator August 1998
I enjoyed John O’Sullivan’s reasoned pitch for the
expansion of NATO. He makes a persuasive case for safety above
all. However, it is not the case that America is “isolationist
in the abstract” or by “instinct.” America has grown
throughout its history by embracing refugees from undesirable civil
and moral polities from abroad. Consequently, we will keep our own
counsel and go our own way to maintain fidelity to our heritage.
With the Cold War won, we need to establish some distance from
Europe. After the world wars, it palmed off a bad coin on America, a
coin with nihilism on one side and socialism on the other. This coin,
once in circulation, produced our current system of government,
recently termed “anarcho-tyranny”: the politically
motivated, unequal judicial application of law, from amongst a nearly
bottomless grab bag of fuzzy statutes and regulations at all
levels.
It’s time to take a breather from “foreign
entanglements” and assimilate the waves of immigration from
abroad and multiculturalism from home. What is America any more? This
is a more fundamental pursuit than engagement for engagement’s
sake. Why not be an independent superpower with independent
interests? Why is competition good domestically but bad
internationally? A world of competing superpowers is far more
adaptive and robust than a stagnant slide into a global monoculture
which is the natural result of placing safety above all.
- Reilly Jones
The New Criterion January 2000
Recently, we attended the Portland Opera’s performance of
Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare with our fourteen-year-old
son. Our experience paralleled many of the points made in Roger
Kimball’s article on “Sensation” at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art (November 1999). If Giulio Cesare has recently
become a worldwide “repertory work,” as the magazine
Opera asserted in its August number, then patrons should be
aware of the kinds of grotesque liberties that the “arts
community,” in Portland at least, feels licensed to take in
performing this work.
Rather than presenting the glorious music of Handel and the powerful
historical drama with the seriousness that the text deserves, Robert
Bailey, general director of the Portland Opera, and Ken Cazan, the
stage director, presented it as a crude farce designed to titillate
the dissolute and offend the respectable. Mr. Bailey explained that
this was done “to attract the next generation of opera
fans” and to present “opera as a truly relevant and
contemporary art form.” In his own words, this meant using a
“humorous approach” to “overt sexuality.” He
asserted that a “lighthearted approach to brutality suited the
plot and echoed the media of today.” Rather than the lofty
pathos of traditional baroque opera, the staging created an
atmosphere which encouraged laughter at the threat of rape, laughter
at simulated sado-masochism and oral sex, and laughter at the
brandishing of automatic weapons and at handguns held to the
head.
We left early and presented the opera with a written request for a
refund, disregarding the “No Refunds” legend printed on the
tickets and sending copies of our letter to the company’s major
public and private benefactors. When the refund was summarily
refused, we pursued the matter through Oregon’s Department of
Justice. A performance billed as “baroque opera”
automatically assumes the high-minded nobility and grandeur
traditionally associated with this period. Bailey’s admission
that the opera deliberately set about to “deliver the
unexpected” and take a “bold departure” from tradition
damaged his defense. Indeed, the kind of ludicrous, pornographic
“departures” championed by the Portland Opera amounted to
consumer fraud.
The Civil Enforcement Officer, “on behalf of the public at
large,” wrote to the Portland Opera suggesting that their
organization consider changes in their advertising practices for
performances in order to avoid complaints in the future and sent them
a copy of the Unlawful Trade Practices Act, ORS
646.608. Ultimately, the opera did refund our money because
they wouldn’t defend the indefensible before the Portland public
in the local media. It is thought the “arts community”
today is impervious to criticism based on standards of taste, but our
experience shows it is still subject to sanctions against fraud.
Though it often pretends otherwise, not even the arts community can
remake language on a whim.
- Reilly & Kerri Jones