Leave Those Kids Alone!
Before they [set up a lemonade stand], they have a nightmare in which they become small
business owners in "a very strange place called Liberaland." Once the
boys' lemonade business is booming, "Mayor Leach" (get it?) comes
around and squeezes them with a 50 percent tax. Next up is "Mr.
Fussman" of the "Liberaland Civil Liberties Union" (haw haw haw!), who
is offended by the picture of Jesus the brothers hang on their stand
and demands they replace with it a picture of a big toe. Before you
know it, a Hillaryesque "Congresswoman Clunkton"
is demanding the boys force broccoli on all customers, and so on, until
at last the lemonade stand is seized by the state and run into the
ground.
That, my friends, is an excerpt from Nick Gillespie's hilarious review of the new right-wing children's book, Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!
To show childhood political indoctroination afflicts both sides, Gillespie skewers a similarly lame left-wing children's book, entitled Why Mommy Is A Democrat:
"Democrats make sure we are nice to people who are different, just like
Mommy does," explains one lesson. "Democrats make sure sick people are
able to see a doctor, just like Mommy does," says another. "Democrats
make sure we all share our toys," threatens a third. You don't need to
be Phyllis Schlafly
to wonder just where the hell the daddy squirrel has gone to in this
scenario, which reads like a Republican parody of Democratic devotion
to an oddly feminized nanny state. Indeed, Why Mommy Is a Democrat,
though ostensibly written by "lifelong Democrat and political activist"
Jeremy Zilber has the feel of a being a GOP black-bag job. Karl Rove is
supposed to be a political genius, isn't he? Despite (or perhaps
because of) endorsements from such low-wattage pols as the mayor of
Columbus, Ohio, and a Utah state senator, this book can't possibly be
helping the Dems take back the night, much less the White House or
Congress, from the Republicans.
Read the rest of the piece.
Imperial Thoughts
Excellent essay in the New York Review of Books concerning Robert Kaplan's new book Imperial Grunts and the question of American imperalism in the 21st century.
I've read three or four of Kaplan's books and find him to be impressively erudite and a fascinating analyst. However, judging from his more recent articles and some of the reviews I've read, he appears to have lost the plot a little bit. John Gray, the essay's author, shows how.
The Objectivist Farce
Fascinating profile and biography of Ayn Rand from The London Review of Books. I had a (very brief) infatuation with the Objectivist philosopher, reading both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in a one-month span about four or five years ago. At the time I felt that Rand's ideas were revelatory, though after the buzz wore off I quickly realized how patently ridiculous Objectivism really is.
Interesting Rand fact I didn't know- future Most Powerful Man in the World Alan Greenspan was an early devotee of hers as a young economist in the 1950s.
The Great Railway Bazaar
The Great Railway Bazaar was Paul Theroux's first travel book, written when the author was still a minor novelist struggling to make a living in London. Theroux decided to travel by rail from London to Tokyo, and then back across the vast Eurasian continent via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Undertaken in the early 70s, when Theroux was just over 30 years old, The Great Railway Bazaar was a major success that jumpstarted his career as a major American writer.
I've read six of Theroux's travel books this year, and TGRB was clearly my favorite. He doesn't possess the sour tone or stuffy superiority in his later works, and despite some rough conditions Theroux approaches most situations here in good humor. Also, we're treated to a more playful Theroux: drinking heavily, dallying with lowlifes, and even making a desperate wintry pass at a Russian girl on the Trans-Siberian. His later works give no indication that Theroux was the sort of traveler who engaged in such pastimes. Showing his human side greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the book.
Most Theroux readers share a similar opinion of mine: he seems like a sour jerk, and he never seems to really enjoy himself, yet his travel writings draw us in, again and again. Why is that? I cannot speak for anyone else, but Theroux writes the sort of travel books that I want to read. He doesn't overload you with erudition, though he's clearly extraordinarily intelligent with a capacity for learning language. He mixes narrative with historical reflection seamlessly, finding the right balance that eludes so many other travel writers.
What I like best about Theroux is his refusal to pull punches. Many travelers are given to a sort of mawkish relativism- refusing to condemn a place for fear of being considered "biased" or "ethnocentric". Theroux calls a spade a spade, harshly criticizing places that appear to deserve it and bestowing praise on only the spots that most impress him.
I don't mean to suggest all travel writers should emulate Theroux. There's certainly a place for the Bill Brysons of the world- funny, light-hearted, and pleasant. But serious, long-term traveling is more than merely a vacation. Traveling can be a transcendent thrill at its best and revelatory even at its worst. Theroux, for all of his New England stuffiness, experiences each country deeply. He travels via the most decrepit trains, seeks forgotten corners, and converses with both the mighty and impoverished of each place.
The highest compliment I can give a travel narrative is that after reading, you feel like you've been there even though you haven't left your living room. Theroux's books accomplish this sentiment- in spades.
Also recommended:
Dark Star Safari (Africa)
The Happy Isles of Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Polynesia)
The Old Patagonian Express (The Americas)
Riding The Iron Rooster (China)
The End of Poverty
I just finished Jeffrey Sachs' The End of Poverty. Sachs is something of a celebrity public intellectual. The foreward to this book was penned by Bono, our crusading sunglassed rock star. (Side note about Bono. If he expects people to take him seriously, shouldn't he, you know, adopt a last name and take off those damn sunglasses?)
Sachs believes that the West can help the poorest of the poor escape poverty through a combination of debt relief and vastly increased foreign aid. Countries, you see, are caught in a "poverty trap" that prevents them from "getting their foot on the first rung of the economic ladder". With our help, these countries can escape the trap and begin to grow, ever so slowly.
In the first half of the book, Sachs discusses his work in Bolivia, Poland, and Russia as an economic advisor. In the first two cases, he succeeded brilliantly. In Russia, he failed, catching a lot of flak in the process. Of course, Russia's failures weren't his fault- Sachs blames the intransigent government that refused to listen to him.
And that- Sachs' considerable ego- is one of the weaknesses of his book. He is convinced beyond a doubt that his proposals will work. He dismisses his critics as ill-informed, greedy, and selfish. He smoothly assures us that just giving poor countries more money will solve all of their problems. Like many other neo-liberals (like Thomas Friedman), Sachs can be far too optimistic about human nature.
Many intelligent people have argued persuasively that forty years of foreign aid have made Africa poorer, not wealthier. Sachs barely devotes any space for their arguments, simply repeating his mantra that foreign aid has always been insufficient and that more money is desperately needed.
So, do I think Sachs' proposals should be shelved? Absolutely not. I agree with him that Western countries can afford to increase their amount of foreign aid. After all, the US dedicated 1% of its GDP back in the late 1940s to finance the Marshall Plan.
Secondly, many of his micro-level proposals ought to be tried. Providing anti-malarial bed nets might work- and won't be too expensive. Making it cheaper for Africans to purchase anti-AIDS drugs won't hurt, either. Doing these measures won't cripple our economy. So basically, why not?
And if Sachs is wrong, if increased foreign aid really doesn't work, and if some other variable is the primary explanation for Africa's woes, then we'll be all the wiser. What we're doing now isn't working. For all of his shortcomings, Sachs at least offers a possible solution. I'd say we should go for it, and see what happens.
More Mao
The indispensable Arts & Letters Daily has a round-up of reviews of Mao: The Untold Story. I briefly scanned all of them, and most come to similar conclusions to the review I cited a few days ago.
I do want to single out Nicholas Kristof's review, in The New York Times, as being perhaps the most interesting of all the ones I read. Kristof is an Op-Ed columnist for The Grey Lady, and has written extensively on China in the past. Here is an excerpt of his extremely well-written piece:
Mao is not only a historical figure, of course, but is part of the
(tattered) web of legitimacy on which the People's Republic rests. He
is part of the founding mythology of the Chinese government, the
Romulus and Remus of "People's China," and that's why his portrait
hangs in Tiananmen Square. Even among ordinary Chinese, Mao retains a
hold on the popular imagination, and some peasants in different parts
of China have started traditional religious shrines honoring him.
That's the ultimate honor for an atheist - he has become a god. (emphasis mine)
Well put. Kristof describes Mao as a relentless polemic that refuses to credit the Great Helmsman for anything accomplished during his reign. When something good happened, Mao was lucky or helped by the Soviets. When something bad happened, it was Mao's fault. Mao's brutality is indefensible, but Kristof correctly questions Chang and Holliday's scholarship.
For doing so, right-wing blogger Roger L. Simon attacks Kristof for coming to Mao's defense. Quoth Simon:
The Great Helmsman was a mass murderer beyond comprehension. To excuse
it in on any level is morally repellent and deeply dangerous to the
future of humanity.
I think I heard a clap of thunder after reading this sentence. Why do conservatives have such a Manichean view of everything? To oppose the Iraq war is to love Saddam Hussein. To oppose tax cuts for the wealthy is to be a Marxist. To say Mao promoted gender equality in China (which he did) is to excuse the death of tens of millions of people. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Such an opinion also infantalizes the Chinese. If Mao was nothing but a complete butcher, the people who revere him must be idiots, duped into believing the myths promoted by their government. What nonsense. I have met a man who lost three siblings to starvation during The Great Leap Forward. I have met a doctor who was forced into internal exile during The Cultural Revolution. The Chinese people are well aware of what happened in their country during Mao's reign.
Understanding the Chinese relationship with Mao's legacy is essential to understanding contemporary China as a whole. The paragraph I flagged from Kristof's piece best approximates my opinion of Mao's enduring popularity.
Simon's bloviations may earn him kudos from the right-wing echo chamber, but they do nothing to advance the debate.
Another Mao Review
The New York Times has a slightly negative review of Jung Chang and Jon Holliday's new Mao tome, Mao: The Unknown Story. Echoing the previous review that I cited, critic Michiko Kakutani notes that the authors failed to provide a cultural context for Mao's popularity.
I don't want to comment on Mao before reading the book (which I plan to do anyway), but I do think historical factors are very important in understanding why Mao continues to be revered in China.
Prior to Mao's ascension, China endured a century of humiliation, marked by foreign incursions (like The Opium Wars), a weak and feckless empire (the late Qing rulers), and hopeless corruption under the ruling Kuomintang after the Qing fell.
Worst, Chiang Kai-Shek seemed more interested in fighting Mao than the invading the Japanese, then a fascist state intent on dominating all of East Asia. Mao united all of the peasants as Communists and simply overwhelmed Chiang after World War Two ended. When he declared the founding of the PRC in 1949, China was finally free of major foreign influence for the first time since the early 19th century.
Mao's ruthless and disastrous rule of China has been well-documented, but you cannot deny how grateful the Chinese felt at the moment of their liberation. To repudiate Mao, Khrushchev style, would deprive the Chinese state of its raison d'etre. As a result, we're left with Deng Xiaoping's crafty "70-30" declaration: Mao was 70% good, and 30% bad. Sure- it's ridiculous and arbitrary, but it is also believed by every Chinese person I've ever spoken to about the subject.
Yes, Mao's portrait looms over Tiananmen Square. But we needen't worry too much- Maoism is long gone in China. China's relationship with its founder is akin to a child of a rotten mother- yes, she was a horrible woman at times, but without her I wouldn't have existed at all.
Jung Chang on Mao
Be sure to read Arthur Waldron's review of Jung Chang and Jon Holliday's new Mao biography, Mao: The Unknown Story. Chang is the author of Wild Swans, a book nearly everyone who has been to China has heard of and many have read. She was born in China and raised during The Cultural Revolution, a period she documents vividly in WS. After her emigration to England, she has become a vocal opponent of the persistent Mao cult in China, providing the motivation for this new book.
I'd be very interested in reading it but alas, it won't be sold here.
Great News
My favorite bookstore, Kepler's, will re-open its doors after a five-week hiatus.
Guns, Germs, and Steel
I just finished reading Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, the sort of book that ought to be disseminated to high schools nationwide. I cannot tell you how delighted I was to read such a book, as it successfully tackles world history's big question: why did white Europeans come to dominate over everyone else?
To give you the answer would spoil the fun of reading it. What I enjoyed most about GGS was its taut refutation of biological (read: racist) factors in the fate of human societies. Sadly, such theories tend to persist among the small-minded in the world and I doubt one book could convince all of them of their bigoted error. It's a start, at least.
I also enjoyed Diamond's focus on geographical determinism, defining intelligence roughly as control over one's environment.
So I consider Diamond's question answered: that's why the world turned out the way it did. Now there exists its correlary: what the hell to do about it? To find the answer, I'm turning to Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty. Sachs believes he knows how to bring humans out of poverty through the generosity of rich countries. It's a nice theory, but I'm skeptical. The burden's on Sachs to persuade me that his ideas deserve weight and funding.
After all, Bono did write the foreward to the book. Uh, Bono, could you get back to being just a rock star? Bob Geldof, you too.