Dean Barnett writes a moving account of some truly amazing young men and women who have answered the call to service for their country. As Barnett notes, many of these young people have taken what he calls "six-figure pay cuts" in order to so serve. These guys are not victims--as the leading lights of the Democratic party would have you believe--but rather heroes who understand somewhere deep inside them (in ways that are apparently better than we have any right to expect given the lack of sufficient public support and political leadership) that this war is a war for the future of civilization and that it is going to be the struggle of a generation rather than of an election cycle. Good for them . . . great for us!

Peter Lawler’s disinclination to blog right now seems to be catching. It’s the height of summer, after all, and there are other--if not always better--things to do. One thing I’ve done that is both other and better is to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Ratatouille with my kids and my young niece. I’m told that Ross Douthat gave it an unfavorable review in the print version of NR, but I haven’t been able to track down a copy in all my travels. If this is true, he couldn’t be more wrong. This is a wonderful movie and, I think there is a serious teaching to it below all the surface delight. It is, in short, a corrective to French egalitarianism and its flip side, French snobbery.

The premise for the plot is the re-discovery and restoration of the central teaching of a late, great French chef famous for his claim that "Anyone can cook." Upon his death, a low (very French) chef who was his underling takes over his restaurant and his brand--driving both into the ground by reaching always for the lowest common denominator (e.g., he puts the great Chef’s name on a line of frozen microwave food with egg rolls, corn dogs, etc.) The rat is disgusted by the garbage eating habits of his colony. He is inspired by Chef Gusteau and wants to introduce reason into the eating habits of his friends and relations. The traditionalists among them--most of all, his father--shoot him down. An accident leads him to take up life anew in--of all places--Chef Gusteau’s restaurant. He assists a young and hapless employee in such a way as to make him a celebrated chef. This witless (though very good) "chef" turns out to be (despite his cooking roots) pretty useless in the kitchen. But with guidance he develops other skills and manages to hold his own in the kitchen. There is also a great "restaurant critic" who is like the political philosopher apart from the political order, examining and pronouncing upon the order, but never fully taking it in. To reignite his passion the rat prepares him a fabulous ratatouille dish--that reminds him of his childhood, his humble origins, and his need for more than pure criticism (or philosophy). In the end, it is clear the central teaching of Chef Gusteau is more deeply understood by all--anyone can cook, they agree, and while not everyone can be a great cook, a great cook can come from anywhere.

If you don’t find a silver lining in the Chernobyl disaster or the Korean War, that can only mean that you are no more than a tepid environmentalist. Alan Weisman is more serious. His book, The World Without Us, reverently chronicles his visit to Chernobyl, where there are no human settlements within a 20-mile radius, “just forests that have begun reclaiming fields and towns, home to birds, deer, wild boar and moose,” according to Newsweek. Korea’s demilitarized zone, similarly free of homo sapiens for 53 years, is “now a mecca for Korean bird watchers.”

Reveries of a world without human beings show us an environmentalism that has the courage of its convictions. The busybodies hectoring us to recycle, drive hybrids and use fluorescent light bulbs are missing the point: Such minor modifications will only slow down the human destruction of the ecosphere. What people smugly and stupidly used to call “progress” necessarily means the degradation of the environment. The ultimate meaning of living lightly on the planet is not living on it at all.

Weisman goes down this road a long way, but not as far as he used to. Once partial to the idea that the world needs the cleansing of human extinction, his reflection on “some of the beautiful things human beings have accomplished,” such as poetry, led him to a “compromise position: a worldwide, voluntary agreement to limit each human couple to one child.” Weisman calculates that this neo-Malthusian solution would reduce the world’s population from 6 billion people today to 1.6 billion by 2100, the size of the human cohort in 1900.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement is not so squishy. It believes that “the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens . . . us.” Accordingly, “When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth’s biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve . . . and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Nature’s ‘experiments’ have done throughout the eons.” The VHEM website takes the trouble to distinguish its position from Hitler’s, Nazism being more of an involuntary human extinction movement.

The VHEM position is “realistic: We know we’ll never see the day there are no human beings on the planet. . . . The Movement may be considered a success each time one more of us volunteers to breed no more.” The VHEM approach demographically guarantees that its hard task will only get harder. Those non-breeding volunteers will have no children to catechize, while the people who do breed will have set an anti-VHEM example for their children simply by virtue of having them.

I saw it this afternoon with my brother-in-law, my son, two nephews, and three nieces. I had roughly the same experience I’d had with the other movies, none of which has particularly moved me.

The books aren’t great literature, but the plots are interesting and complicated enough to hold my attention, and I think, as I’ve said before, that Rowling is edifying in a good way.

I haven’t felt like it.

On Iraq, I’m perfectly happy to give our military until September or November. But I really don’t how things are going, and I’m not up to taking easy shots at political posturing. A withdrawal--or one without a real plan--would be a prelude to chaos, and I think everyone really knows that.

On the presidential campaign, I’ve already advised the Democrats that Hillary would be better than Obama, and Richardson better than both. That’s from the old-fashioned running the country perspective, but from an electibility perspective I’d also go with an experienced Hispanic candidate with no obvious baggage. I would add that a top operative in Richardson’s camapign is a Berry College graduate, Wendy Davis, who’s run plenty of campaigns and is allmost always better than her candidate. But this time, comparatively speaking, her candidate is good. Most of all, of course, I like Rochardson because he looks like a regular, saggy older guy, and the turnout from the one "community" of voters I’m sure I belong to is excellent. I don’t think the Democrats have been looking for my advice.

Neither have the Republicans. But on their side, the credible candidates right now are Romney, Giuliani, and Fred Thompson. I think each of them has some potential for greatness, as well as personal and electibility flaws. I don’t anything new to add on those fronts. The campaign is boring at this point, and there’s no point to venturing a new opinion until something real happens (or is said). Giuliani--despite his impressive group of expert judicial advisors--is still tonedeaf on the Const. He might be the least flip floppy of the flip floppers, though. And from a "war on terror" perspective, my judgment is that they’d all might be fine. It’s impossible to tell which of the three would run most strongly in November 2008 right now.

On the new libertarian consensus issue revived by the good Lindsey book. He’s right. There is one. And I predicted it. I said in my books which you can buy that after the Cold War people would start to notice that Marx, purged of some wackiness, was an optimistic, techno-student of Locke, and that anyone who harbored any reservations about the progress of individualism (as opposed to egalitarianism) would be labelled a reactionary. It’s true enough that the country has been moving steadily in the individualistic direction on all the social issues (with the exception of abortion). Our prosperity and freedom seem to have resulted in a bourgeois bohemian reconcilation of unprecedented productivity, the overcoming of prejudice and repression, hedonistic self-fulfillment, common decency, designer tastes on coffee and other good things, and environmentally conscious postmaterialism. Even the Crunchy Conservative option so favored by Dr. Pat and Mr. Dreher presupposes unprecedented afflence or the techno-overcoming of scarcity, and the Crunchies, as Marx predicted, are able to farm without really being farmers and raise a sheep or two without really be shepherds, just as they have a mind. And our evangelical churches are often mighty therapeutic and consumer oriented.

Next month, we’ll be spending some time in the Old Country: Oma and Opa Knippenberg want to show their grandchildren where our side of the family came from, so we’ll be spending a little time here, here, and here (my dad actually grew up here, but, as they say, "da gibt es keine Sehenswuerdigkeiten"), some more time here (one side of my mom’s family) and here (O & O were married here), as well as here (the other side of my mom’s family), and, finally, a little jaunt across the border to here and here. I have no plans, however, to attend this event, despite the fact that we’ll be in the vicinity.

The Knipp kids are preparing by boning up on their German (if someone says to them, auf Deutsch, that the boy is standing on the table, they’ll understand him perfectly) and by learning something about the places we’ll be visiting. The Knipp dad is reading this, this, and this, among other things.

While I’m away, needless to say, I won’t have regular access to the internet, but I may be able from time to time to blog about einige Sehenswuerdigkeiten und einige Abenteuern.

In a July 19 editorial, the Washington Post stated that

If Pakistani forces cannot -- or will not -- eliminate the [al Qaeda] sanctuary, President Bush must order targeted strikes or covert actions by American forces, as he has done several times in recent years. Such actions run the risk of further destabilizing Pakistan. Yet those risks must be weighed against the consequences of another large-scale attack on U.S. soil. "Direct intervention against the sanctuary in Afghanistan apparently must have seemed . . . disproportionate to the threat," the Sept. 11 commission noted. The United States must not repeat that tragic misjudgment.

Having written about the subject many times before, I didn’t get too excited by the remark--reported by David Brooks--about freedom being God’s gift to humanity.

By contrast, Ross Douthat--agreeing with those paragons of prudence, Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan--is pretty nearly beside himself:

I’m fed up with the President’s messiah complex, and I don’t bloody well want to hear any more about Bush’s "theological perspective" that freedom is the Almighty’s gift to all mankind, and so history’s on our side in the Middle East, and yada yada yada.

That’s a lot of weight to put on a couple of lines from Brooks’s account of a conversation, which amounted to this:

[The President’s] self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources. The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.”

This assertion--which Ramesh Ponnuru rightly characterizes--doesn’t compel us to any particular foreign policy. The President said as much in an important, but much maligned speech he gave a few years ago. Here’s how I characterized it at the time:

For Bush, this line of argument is not altogether new. He has long asserted that freedom is "God’s gift to humanity." What is different, I think, is his assertion of the scope of America’s ideals and interests and his acknowledgement of great flexibility in their promotion. Stated another way, this is a most statesmanlike affirmation of principle and prudence.

And there is also a very carefully nuanced "theology of history," affirming "a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of liberty," but also acknowledging that "it is human choices that move events" and that "[h]istory has an ebb and flow of justice." The responsibility rests on us, not as God’s chosen nation, but as creatures of the Almighty, to make good use of the freedom God has given us and everyone else. "From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?" We must be concerned not only with the external effects of our actions, but with the character that produced them.

***

We will, the President says, "seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture," but not "primarily" by force of arms. "Our goal… is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way." In so doing, our "influence is not unlimited," but it "is considerable." We can call attention across the world to the difference between "oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right." And we’ll make it clear that "success in our relations" requires the decent treatment of one’s citizens, not as a grudging diplomatic concession on the eve of a presidential visit, nor as a matter of governmental grace or largesse, but as the fruit of a policy whose purpose is to encourage the flourishing of an independent civil society whose institutions undergird political freedom. In other words, America will stand with the oppressed, call attention to indigenous democratic reformers, admonish "the rulers of outlaw regimes" that their injustice cannot stand, and encourage and support those of our authoritarian friends who are moving, however gingerly, down the paths of democratization and liberalization.

Freedom will be the lodestar of our policy, but not in a ham-handed and merely preachy Carteresque way. There will be a lot of talk, but not just talk. There will be a lot of action, but not just military action. Embassies across the world will be busy maintaining lines of communication with the local democratizers and other representatives of "civil society."

What Sullivan calls a "Fuhrerprinzip" [sic]--thereby implicitly endorsing Keith Ellison’s honest or dishonest pandering to the MoveOn.org crowd--is connected with GWB’s view of God-given freedom: with it, comes God-given responsibility. Individuals are called to make a difference, to promote liberty, but how they do so depends, as I noted in my earlier post, on their practical and prudential judgment of the facts on the ground. Sullivan, Dreher, and Douthat to the contrary notwithstanding, this isn’t messianism, it’s the foundation of political responsibility.

We can, of course, reasonably disagree with the President’s judgment of the particular facts, not to mention with the choices he and his subordinates have made, but his principles are as American as apple pie.

Will strike our house this weekend. We’ll likely see the fifth movie on Friday (too busy to see it sooner) and then begin the book the moment our pre-ordered copy arrives. My wife has first dibs; then she’ll read it aloud to my son. I’ll get the leavings. My daughter, only nine, has seen the movies but was too young for the first rounds of book-reading. She may be up for a second cycle, if my wife is.

We’ve also looked at some of the Potter scholarship, having been most persuaded by this fellow that Rowling is writing in the tradition of the Inklings. I may sometime get around to this law review symposium and this scholarly effort to read Rowling as a libertarian of sorts (the cartoon version, so to speak, is here).

Jonathan Chait can’t get his mind off the Iraq war, even when he’s talking about what he regards as the conservative obsession with ideas. As I noted last year, Chait isn’t too keen on big ideas. As he puts it now,

conservatism is more of an ideological movement than liberalism. Conservatives insist that, unlike liberals, they’re "acutely conscious of their intellectual forebears," as David Brooks once put it. Such boasts are usually decorated with references to Kirk, Hayek, and other philosophical patron saints of the right.

Like communists, conservatives have a tendency to believe that every question can be answered by referencing theory.

***

I admit that liberals don’t generally look to our intellectual forebears to tell us whether the Iraq war is going well. But, then, we don’t have to. We can read the newspaper.

I have just received copies of my new book from the University of Chicago distribution people. You can order it on amazon or directly from the publisher, St. Augustine’s Press. Contrary to what the amazon page says, it’ll show up there in a few days at most.

It’s a beautifully produced hardback for under $18 (on amazon). The dustjacket itself is worth the price, featuring a stunning reproduction of Edward Hopper’s classic American painting NIGHTHAWKS.

And the back cover features rave advances notices from Dan Mahoney, Father Schall, "Dr. Pat" Deneen, Yuval Levin, and Ralph Hancock

The book covers an amazing array of contemporary concerns in clear and accessible ways, almost free from distracting scholarly conventions.

Here are the chapter titles: Two Views of Americanization, A Friendly Critique of Pure Crunchiness [vs. Crunchy cons], Against the Lobotomites [against whom I ally with Tom Pangle], The Socratic Philosopher and the American Individual [on Bloom’s CLOSING], Stuck-with-Virtue Conservatism, McWilliams and the Problem of American Political Education, Real Men Prove Darwin Wrong Again, Murray and Brownson, Toward a Consistent Ethic of Judicial Restraint, Is the Body Property?, Modernity and Postmodernity, Tocqueville at 200, Where’s the Love?, Tocqueville on the Doctrine of Interest, Disco and Democracy [on Whit Stillman], An American Fantasy: Love, Nobility and Friendship in CASABLANCA, A Story about Nothing: The Two Kinds of Nihilists and ONe Kind of Christian in Flannery O’Connor’s GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE.