September 13, 2016
Writing a Silly Eulogy
Jonah Goldberg fails in his attempted praise
of PS.
By Paul Gottfried
Although I’ve never made a secret of my opinion of Jonah’s
pseudo-scholarship or my annoyance with his self-importance as a
“conservative” thinker, I now feel sorry for this guy. Let me explain!
Jonah has just posted
a eulogy for longtime conservative advocate Phyllis Schlafly, who
died on September 5 at age ninety-two. Phyllis, who was kind enough to
have had me on her radio program, embodied what was the gold standard of
American conservatism in my youth. She favored traditional gender
distinctions, although she was clearly not averse to women like herself
practicing law and standing up for conservative principles.
She was also an American patriot but was opposed to military
interventions that she didn’t think served the national interest. Phyllis
worked in an ammunition factory throughout World War Two; and although a
non-combatant participant in that struggle did not think women should
serve in combat roles or be drafted into military service. As Jon B.
Utley, publisher of The American Conservative, stresses in
a moving
eulogy, Phyllis Schlafly was devoted to America but was neither a
feminist nor war-enthusiast. She also showed other habits of the Old
Right. For example, she never used the term “liberal democracy” to
describe her country but insisted that the Founders had set up a
“constitutional republic.” Our governing powers, if properly exercised,
would be distributed between the states and the federal government as
well as among the federal branches.
Like her friend Pat Buchanan, Phyllis was an immigration restrictionist
and took that controversial stand not only to protect American jobs. She
also believed that the American government, as originally designed,
required a certain civic culture to remain what it was intended to be.
Phyllis never held that signature neoconservative view that the US should
be treated as a “global democracy” or “propositional nation.” The stable
constitutional government required what Aristotle called an “ethos,” a
shared disposition of mind. It was not diversity, but a self-disciplined
and self-reliant citizenry that allowed the US to prosper as long as it
did, within a framework of ordered freedom.
Although Phyllis was hardly an uncritical admirer of the Republican
nominee, one of her last achievements, which she struggled to complete
while being ravaged by cancer, was
a
short book making The Conservative Case for Trump. Jonah
doesn’t find this tract especially palatable, and he lets us know at the
outset: “I had my disagreement with the legendary conservative activist,
particularly of late.” Jonah also suggests that his stated feelings about
Trump were reflected in Phyllis’s “squabbles” with her daughter and with
some of her erstwhile friends, who shared Jonah’s dislike for the GOP
nominee. But Jonah’s “disagreements” with Mrs. Schlafly do
not stop with Jonah’s Never-Trump posture or with his predictable
identification with Republican establishment candidates. Although the
teaser to his eulogy indicates that Phyllis Schlafly’s life shows that
“conservatism matters,” in point of fact Jonah and the subject of his
eulogy agreed on very little. His muddled eulogy is the kind of word
cluster that I might have composed for George Soros if circumstances had
forced me to produce such a text. (I do, by the way, like Soros’s
name, which means a “brewer” in Hungarian, “sor” being the Magyar word
for “beer”.)
This lack of agreement underscores the total disconnect between what
self-described conservatives believed in the past and where the
neoconservatives and establishment Right have been moving for about the
last thirty years. Phyllis led the successful struggle against the Equal
Rights Amendment and did so with particular dedication in her (and then
my) state of Illinois. But Jonah, who favors all kinds of
“anti-discrimination” legislation for women, is not really moved by this
well-known accomplishment. He, therefore, damns with faint praise what
Mary Ellen Bork chooses to emphasize in celebrating Phyllis’s life in
First Things.
After all, it’s hard to talk up someone for opposing what one would have
been happily endorsed in substanceif not specifically as an amendment.
Jonah
calls on us not only “to celebrate the fruits of feminist success at
home,” but to carry our feminist success “overseas.” Phyllis was also
famously against the legalization of gay marriage; while Jonah and his
collaborators at NR have
supported this measure. In Jonah’s
“conservative” worldview, “it’s progressed that gay activists and
left-wingers are celebrating the institution of marriage as essential.”
Although Phyllis criticized Obama’s decision to pull our troops out of
Iraq, while exposing the remaining soldiers to extreme danger, she also
emphatically opposed the invasion in 2003. Jonah thought that invasion
was at worst
“
a worthy mistake”, and has generally provided neoconservative
justifications for American intervention all over the planet. Finally, I
find no evidence that Jonah’s views on immigration are the same as those
of Schlafly. Unlike her, he wishes to
increase the legal immigration from Latin America so that we can
become more diverse.
I certainly don’t want to disparage what Jonah has accomplished as a
eulogist. I’ve no idea how given what he believes or publicly professes
he could have written anything more convincing. He is a well-paid
spokesman for something that has very little to do with his subject’s
fixed principles. Jonah may be more in line (and I’ve no doubt that he
is) than Phyllis Schlafly (or I) with where we’re now moving as a
country. And I’m sure he can appeal to Millennials much more effectively
than the women whom he attempts to eulogize. But that’s still no reason
to believe the two were ever on the same page or that Jonah could praise
his subject without appearing to be uncomfortable and even ridiculous.
Let’s imagine that Barack Obama set out to celebrate Thomas Jefferson as
an ancestor of the present Democratic Party. What exactly would Obama be
able to say that was not utter nonsense? And those listening who had not
entirely drunk the Cool-aid would know the obvious, namely that the
connection that Obama strained to make between the democratic localist
Jefferson and his own party of government centralization and unlimited
social engineering was entirely made-up.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/09/paul-gottfried/celebrating-phyllis-schlafly/
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