It falls somewhat short of an intellectual version of the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier “Thrilla in Manilla.” But in these early summer dog days, we could do worse than P.J. O’Rourke jousting with William Greider in July 13-27 Rolling Stone.
The double issue–one of 324 magazines whose covers this week have either Jim Carrey (as this does and Newsweek did last week) or Richard Gere (Esquire and Us, among others) pimping for their new movies–includes Rolling Stone’s two political commentators debating the role of government and the conservative revolution creeping about the land.
The ever-entertaining, if at times too-droll-by-half, O’Rourke offers a defense of libertarianism and a broadside at the collectivist overreaching he equates (as does the card-carrying liberal Greider to some extent) with government, albeit a tad defensively.
“Conservatives do not believe in the triumph of the large and powerful over the weak and useless. (Although most conservatives would make an exception to see a fistfight between Norman Schwarzkopf and George Stephanopoulos.) If all people are free, George Stephanopoulos must be allowed to run loose, too, however annoying this may be.”
O’Rourke finds few legitimate roles for government other than waging war. Certainly it should not play any part, he argues, in seeking equality or fairness (which runs counter to his professed concern over the trampling of the poor).
“Once the government has embarked upon a course of making all things fair, where is it to stop?” he writes. “Will tall people have to walk around on their knees. Will fat people be strapped to helium balloons?”
To hear him tell it, the government might want to mow your lawn, which prompts his final question: Is there anybody in the current political pantheon you’d trust to cut your lawn?
Newt Gingrich would carve out “NEWT” in fat letters, while Pryesident Clinton might hem and haw on whether to start with the front or back, finally giving up, going inside, inspecting the fridge and flirting with your baby-sitter.
A conservative, he decides, would high-mindedly conclude that to do it right, do it yourself.
Greider’s response opens by noting that for years O’Rourke “could motor along with hip disdain, pinging and plundering the random insanities that flowed from the liberal orthodoxy.” But now, his guys are in charge and the jokes are a tad stale.
Greider contends that the libertarian credo “is essentially adolescent, attracting “collegiate misanthropes who would rather interact with a computer screen than with other people in the dorm.” It’s satisfying only “if your aim is to shut out all the noisy complications of human society.”
There lies the heart of his case, namely that O’Rourke posits a caricatured government as the central player in society. He forgets other centers of power, notably private industry, and sets up a false set of alternatives by declaring our choice to be either individualism or collectivism.
Free societies have tended to depend on both, says Greider (who asserts that the first welfare state was created by a right-winger, Bismarck). For example, the source of much wealth indirectly has been federal actions: cheap electricity brought by the Grand Coulee Dam that helped lure the aluminum and aircraft industries to the Northwest.
And, ultimately, he finds O’Rourke to be evasive in the face of real power, be it a corporation or large group of citizens.
“Right-wingers are stalwarts about going after poor people or maybe PBS or flaky artists,” Greider concludes. “But they always seem to choke when the issue involves a potential adversary who has real power. Lots of brave talk about abolishing the public libraries. Obedient silence about the malefactors of great wealth.”
“That, I think, is the dirty little secret about libertarians: Down deep, they are actually afraid of power. Afraid it might squash them.”
Quickly: Nice short stories by Saul Bellow and Walter Mosley in an otherwise flat July Esquire (musty, post-Oklahoma City stuff on militias, and Gere’s chums claiming he was victimized by an overly ambitious Cindy Crawford). . . . Either Edgar Bronfman Jr., 40, head of Seagram’s and media mogul du jour (he just bought MCA), is a crashing bore or July Vanity Fair’s profile misses him. . . . July 3 U.S. News & World Report is fine on the possible naivite of our national get-tough-on-crime mania, symbolized by Texas spending a whopping $4.5 billion on new prisons. . . . In July 13 New York Review of Books, columnist Murray Kempton, a stellar chronicler of the delusions of the fellow travelers of the 1930s and ’40s, deflates the premise of a study of newly found Soviet archives, namely that communist influence and activity here were more substantial than believed. . . . And August Deneuve underscores that the domestic-violence rate in lesbian partnerships is no different than in heterosexual ones.
