Babbling Brooks

One of the more tiresome features of the New York Times Op-Ed pages is those days when its house conservatives, David Brooks and Ross Douthat, play moralist. Although there are differences between the two in age and religion, they both share a disquieting tendency to extol the virtues of sacrifice without ever conveying the depth of what they ask.  In their world, people should stay in marriages that make them unhappy, give birth to children that they feel they cannot raise, and endure lives that are bereft of hope or pleasure.  Never is there a sense conveyed of the true meaning of such sacrifice, of the fact that our lives are quite finite, and that there is often a kind of permanence in these sacrifices, that happiness foregone is frequently lost for good.

This is not to argue against a sense of duty in life and of an understanding that there are things bigger than ourselves in the universe.  However, I'd like to see people like Brooks and Douthat actually acknowledge the weight of sacrifice and what it means and how sometimes it taxes people beyond endurance.

Today Brooks scolds Charles Darwin Snelling, an 81-year old man who killed his wife, who had suffered for years with Alzheimer's disease, and then committed suicide.  This same man had written an uplifting essay for Brooks about the redemptive nature of having spent the last six years of his sixty-one year marriage caring for his wife as she slipped away from him. Four months after the essay was published, Snelling committed the murder/suicide.  Brooks is offended that Snelling failed to "respect the future" (and, one senses, annoyed that one of his star essay writers failed to live up to his uplifting words).   I guess it doesn't occur to Brooks that perhaps Snelling saw the future all too clearly and that it led to a cul de sac of harrowing decline, death, and aloneness.  I wouldn't presume to speak for Snelling, but I can certainly imagine that he might well have felt unending pain and exhaustion, that his struggle of so many years may have seemed futile, that the disappearance of his companion of six decades, even as her heart still beat, was unbearable.      

When I was reading this sad tale, I was reminded of this passage from one of Camus' Notebooks: "One must love life before loving its meaning Dostoevsky said.  Yes, and when the love of life disappears, no meaning consoles us for it." 

It is perhaps unfair to expect profundity in daily newspaper columns (or blog posts for that matter).  But it seems to me that if one is going to venture into territory like this, one should possess a tad more gravitas than does Mr. Brooks.  

Comments

[Sir Charles]

Testing.

[oddjob]

Present. ;)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Back -- at least briefly. Maybe I can at least control my ranting a bit, but Florence v. County of Burlington is too important not to weigh in on.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And the new captcha format is common all over the place. We're lucky, the picture is about twice the size it usually is on other blogs, but still annoying.

[Sir Charles]

Hi oddjob.

Hey Jim -- welcome back.

Man I hate the captcha change -- I have the hardest time reading those distorted letters.

[oddjob]

Florence v. County of Burlington

Is that the one where the SCOTUS conservatives have convinced themselves that getting stripped naked in front of a law enforcement officer at his/her demand, over the most minor of charges, is just fine?

What kind of perverts do we have on the Supreme Court that they could think something like that???

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

It is indeed that case.

I think Atrios actually pretty much nailed it. These guys -- and they are all guys -- cannot really imagine that they would be subject to this indignity, but it's okay for all of the lesser folks who might.

They are partisan hacks completely detached from reality.

[low-tech cyclist]

Brooks' column is a piece of trash.

If you look at life through the calculus of autonomy, then maybe Snelling made the right call. Maybe his moments of pain from here on out would have outnumbered his moments of pleasure. But if you look at a life as one element within a mysterious flow...

If you think that "look[ing] at life through the calculus of autonomy" produces the wrong answers, then maybe you should stop supporting a party that believes each individual should be on his or her own, and would happily reduce even further what little aid someone in Snelling's position could expect from the rest of us in taking care of his spouse as she became ever more difficult to take care of.

If you believe that somehow we're all in this together, then be on the side of those who would make it real, rather than reducing that notion to some mystical claptrap that doesn't do anybody any good.

The scary thing is, Brooks is what passes for a deep thinker these days in many people's minds. Gah.

FWIW, looks like the captcha won't even load for me on Firefox 8.0.1. Fortunately, it seems to work OK in IE 7. I think I can deal with opening IE if I have anything to add to the discussion here.

[oddjob]

They are partisan hacks completely detached from reality.

It's garbage like that decision which reminds one of the value of having more wise Latinas on the bench.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

[written before any follow-up comments.]
OK, this is OT, but, my apologies, I can't see why anyone would open a NYT -- or the website of it -- and even notice the babblings of the likes of Brooks when there was this.

I suppose we all come to our liberalism by different routes, one reason why we occasionally get involved in petty squabbles over the relative importance of various parts of the picture as a whole. My approach -- trying to reassemble the jigsaw puzzle that was my mind at the time -- seems to have come from an initial legalistic position. For me, liberalism starts with the idea of 'equal justice for all.' (No, it never has existed in any but an imperfect form -- like any ideal -- but the fact that it was so much a part of the "American idea' when I was growing up was the important fact -- and it is what has given me -- and allowed me to keep -- a patriotism that has survived the blunders we have made.)

So my pillars include the (racial) civil rights movement I witnessed -- and maybe especially the fact that the movement, politically, started in the courts, with Brown and the preceeding decisions that led up to it. And they include the fight against McCarthyism, and the heroes such as Murrow and John Henry Faulk, and again, a legal hero in Joseph Nye Welch.

But the strongest pillar of all has the names Mapp, Escobedo, Gideon, and Miranda written on it, and the names of the writers of those decisions. And also the names of the various Jehovah's Witnesses, who won their rights against the power of the community. And the Minnesota newspaper publisher whose suit began the incorporation of the first and other amendments under the 14th.

What struck me then, what keeps me going on, was the nature of these people who won their rights. Unlike the Civil Rights fighters, who were always on the 'side of the angels,' whose position was strengthened by their deportment, unlike a Faulk who was not just punished but slandered -- the people in the decisions above were far from admirable. The four criminal defendants were all at least petty criminals or worse, and most of them were guilty of what they had been charged with -- but it didn't matter. The Witnesses were not just fools but far more bigoted, and far more intrusive, then. They didn't knock on your door, they set up a phonograph in the town square. And the Minnesota publisher was defending opinions that were hardly mine.

It didn't matter. Rights were rights, and we all shared them, we did not, in any way, need to deserve them. (Maybe that is why I have ranted so often about the Democrats' use of 'pity parties' to defend abortion and gay rights. If a woman has a right to an abortion she has that right, period. If she got pregnant deliberately and willingly, if she changed her mind, even if she chose to abort her fetus for reasons we consider unworthy, ugly, or 'icky' it doesn't matter. Her right is no less valid than is the poor pitiful, ignorant, abused, family-raped little girl we use as our poster child. And our rights as gays were won not by the Ken Kellers' or the Andrew Sullivans, or the Tammy Baldwins, but by a group of drag queen hustlers hanging out in a mafia-run bar, following on the steps of a group of radical left wing to communist forerunners -- at least for the gay men and Mattachine, not sure about Bilitis.)

That was the idea that inspired my liberalism -- that everyone has rights, and that those rights will be protected without the possessor needing to show he was 'good enough' to deserve them. (And the delcious 'cherry on the cake' was always the "Shuffling Sam" case, where the Supreme Court would intervene in a court as minor as the one where Sam Thompson was convicted.)

And this may be why I see 'economic justice' as merely a corollary to the main idea -- and thus can defend union rights and still admit the many flaws and missteps, the corruptions and greed and selfishness to the point of bigotry that I have also witnessed from unions.

(And, just to overdiscuss something -- gotta be me after all -- of course rights are not absolute, and there are rights to public safety, privacy, and peace and quiet. I could never walk the last steps of Justices Black and Douglas and argue that even libel and slander laws were unconstitutional -- any more than I could join with the GGs of today that would abandon all precautions against a real danger.)

And yesterday we had Florence. Do you see why, second only to Citizens United this is the single most disturbing decision I've seen from this court.

Two quotes from the NYT:

Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.

A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.

But the response -- from Justice Kennedy -- is the horror.

Justice Kennedy responded that “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” He noted that Timothy McVeigh, later put to death for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was first arrested for driving without a license plate. “One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93,” Justice Kennedy added.

(Another pillar of my liberalism is that 'facts and evidence matter' so I am forced to ask how allowing McVeigh or the terrorist to be strip-searched would have revealed anything about his future plans. And, again quoting the NYT:

Justice Breyer wrote that there was very little empirical support for the idea that strip-searches detect contraband that would not have been found had jail officials used less intrusive means, particularly if strip-searches were allowed when officials had a reasonable suspicion that they would find something.

For instance, in a study of 23,000 people admitted to a correctional facility in Orange County, N.Y., using that standard, there was at most one instance of contraband detected that would not otherwise have been found, Judge Breyer wrote.

More later, i guess -- maybe even pointing out my King Charles' Head of the Disaster of 2010 -- and how unlikely it is that the composition of the court could change in our favor as long as there is still the 60-vote rule and no chance of our getting that many until 2016.

[nancy]

Typepad rolled out the new captcha with some explanations about how to make its use less annoying. Maybe the usage tips found in comments back-and-forth will help some of you out.

Jim, you've very much covered it all. The decision is terrifying and one wonders what more it sets in motion.

[kathy a.]

the strip-search opinion is terrible. sadly, not that surprising -- the fourth amendment has been eroding for a long time, and "institutional security" seems to trump all these days. i agree that a number of the justices just cannot imagine they'd ever be in that position; and do not wish to imagine what it feels like to be detained and strip-searched for NOTHING -- for a fine that had already been paid, not for a criminal matter.

lost a more thoughtful comment. also, had to go to IE since firefox won't load my comments. grr.

[jeanne marie]

WTF? (I don't see how we are going to avoid violence. The comments are scary.)

{thanks for the tip kathy, on firefox to IE}

[kathy a.]

JM -- it strikes me as pretty silly for the circuit to order a response regarding the president's remarks outside of court and about a different case. the government is represented in the 5th circuit case, and is not saying the courts lack power to review. obama did not say that, either. tempest, meet teapot.

[Joe S]

Brooks wrote a piece in the Atlantic, maybe 10-15 years ago when he lamented the new meritocracy at Princeton to the old aristocratic Princeton where there were lots of rituals which caused physical pain meant to make the elite stronger. Brooks also bought into that T. Roosevelt thinking on war improving character (National Greatness Conservatism). Brooks seems to really think without pain and struggle, we become somehow lesser.

I think we need to all chip in and give David Brooks some time with a dominatrix. It may do him some good by meeting his needs so that he doesn't have to sublimate his desires for pain into his writing.

[Joe S]

jeanne marie, I don't think there's going to be much violence because the White Conservatives have too much to lose. You can lose your Mcmansion, winnebago, and country club membership by resorting to violence. Conservatives will limit themselves to temper tantrums on Fox. Southern conservatives tried the other way in 1865, and none of them are going to do that again.

[oddjob]

However, as 1963 demonstrated all it takes is one, regardless of what happens in the main.

[nancy]

However, as 1963 demonstrated all it takes is one, regardless of what happens in the main.

Well since the topic has drifted into feverland, what can one say when a Foxblonde is up to this, and blantantly so.

We own a copy of William Manchester's Death of a President, now out of print I believe. Re-reading the section about warning JFK of the dangers of traveling to Dallas at all is still chilling to this day.

What are these vicious, yet vacuous, people thinking about casual suggestions to violence and then spreading it around? Heather Childers (somehow I'm guessing that's a 'professional name') should be fired and put on the FBI watchlist to boot. Not to mention her twitter-linked companions.

[kathy a.]

oddjob and nancy -- yeah. i worry about that, too.

[Sir Charles]

I have been having comment problems myself. Let me see if this will post.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Since pro sports frequently gets and deserves a reputation for homophobia, someine should give credit to one league which has been strongly pro-gay, the NHL. If you have never heard of the You Can Play Project it is worth checking their videos out. And -- don't have the cite, sorry -- at a recent Ottawa-Toronto game in Ottawa, there was a 'proposal on ice' only this one was between two women (and the Senator crowd cheered the one who said 'yes' even though she was wearing a Maple Leaf jersey).

Btw, the Bruins locker room must be interesting. The gigantic Captain, Zdano Chara, made one of the videos, but the Goalie is so right-wing (but libertarian/Sovereign Citizen) that he wouldn't attend the Stanley Cup ceremony and meet Obama. (He's a great goalie too, second only to Lundquist, but the thought of them being ousted from the playoffs cheers me imensely.)

[oddjob]

I pay as little attention to the Bruins as possible. (Vividly remembering when the Broad Street Bullies took the Stanley Cup from the Bruins back when I was 13 or 14 will do that. :) )

Since the Bruins & Celtics both play their home games in a building that also houses the train station from which I regularly commute I've been able for some years to watch their fans wait to get into games while I'm waiting to board a train home. I've always been struck at the collective difference between the two groups. Bruins fans are definitely noisy, but the Celtics fans are not. I've always found that odd since I assume there's probably a fair bit of overlap between the two groups.

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

I grew up a passionate Bruins fan -- I remember being close to tears when the Montreal Canadiens (the Yankees of the North) knocked off their finest team ever in the playoffs when I was 11 -- so I was quite disappointed to hear that the heroic Tim Thomas was an utter wingnut. Bobby Orr remains to this day possibly the single most exciting athlete I've ever watched.

oddjob,

I have never been to the new Garden, so I don't have a sense of what the crowds are like now. In the 1970s, when I went to games fairly often (although the Bruins were a brutally tough ticket in their heyday) I can't say that there was much difference between the crowds. They were both very passionate. My sense of sports crowds generally now is that they are more upscale -- ticket prices are ungodly -- and less passionate. When I was in my mid to late teens, I had a friend who would go into Boston every year and buy a full complement of playoff tickets -- he would then sell some of them to the rest of us at face value. As I recall, they just weren't that expensive. I had no trouble buying at least two or three games worth from him with my princely stock boy's wages. Needless to say that is not the way the world works anymore.

[oddjob]

By no means!

The Celtics fans may be slightly more upscale, but I'm not sure I'd say that. Mostly it's just that while they wait for the Garden to open the Bruins fans are in fairly boistrous conversation among themselves (very occasionally peppered with "LET'S go BRU-INS!") while the Celtics fans talk, but in the same more or less measured tones you'd expect from any other random gathering of people.

And yes, the Canadiens are still hated. I always know when they're in town because in amongst the Bruins fans I hear smatterings of Quebecois French. Quebec is close enough for Canadiens fans to travel to Boston games, especially now that they only have to drive to Portland, ME and then take the Downeaster the rest of the way.