Tuesday, March 9, 2004
James Carroll compares George W. Bush to Otto von Bismarck today in a new take on the same-sex marriage as civil rights debate. Carroll credits Bismarck with inventing German antisemitism for political gain in the 1870's, calling the new trend a "surprising reversal" - never mind that it was nothing new, and barely a reversal, else what did Jews have to be "emancipated" from? Having stapled Bush to Bismarck's coat-tail, where does Bismarck's "Kulturkampf" lead us to? Why, the Final Solution, of course.
Look, I'm not thrilled about the prospect of a Constitutional Amendment against same-sex marriage, but I'll say this, I don't believe George Bush's position is pure politics. I at least think he believes as a core belief that there is value to the idea of the label "marriage" being applied only to male/female relationships. My question is, where is John Kerry's appearance in this column? Kerry, as I understand it, has a virtually identical position on same-sex marriage - he's against it, yet somehow, as per usual, the Democrat gets the pass. And something else: I don't believe he believes it. If you want to compare the two to figure out who's position represents a core belief, and who's taken a purely cynical stance for political expediency's sake I'll take George W. Bush for sincerity every time, and that means a lot to me and my vote this time out.
All of this is to say nothing of the over the top attempt to draw parallels between the position of American Homosexuals and their (correct) desire to have their relationships recognized as equivalent in all respects to traditional marriage and Jew Hatred in pre-Nazi Germany. Bush certainly did not create the idea in people's minds that "marriage" (per se) is for a male and a female, nor is he using overheated or hateful rhetoric to make his point and fan the flames, nor is it particularly hateful to take such a position in the first place. His position is reflective of the same one many people of conscience may take. One need not demonize them in order to disagree with them. One may feel either way on the issue, but both sides have, in their own way, a point. Labeling anyone who tries to defend traditional values against just any new idea to come down the pike - who'd like to see radical new changes in society vetted a bit before adopting them whole-hog - as demagoguing along the pathway to extermination is, shall we say, "less than helpful." But hey, never let it be said that James Carroll ever missed an opportunity to compare GWB to a German imperialist...
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / The risks of waging 'culture war'
His first target was the sizable Catholic minority in the new, mostly Protestant German state, but soon enough, especially after an economic depression in 1873, Jews were defined as the main threat to social order. This was a surprising turn because Jewish emancipation had been a feature of German culture as recently as the 1860s. By 1879, the anti-Jewish campaign was in full swing: It was in that year that the word "anti-Semitism" was coined, defining not a prejudice but a public virtue. The Kulturkampf was explicitly understood as a struggle against decadence, of which the liberal emancipated Jew became a symbol. What that culture war's self-anointed defenders of a moral order could not anticipate was what would happen when the new "virtue" of anti-Semitism was reinforced by the then burgeoning pseudo-science of the eugenics movement. Bismarck's defense of expressly German values was a precondition of Hitler's anti-Jewish genocide.
One need not predict equivalence between the eventual outcome of Bismarck's culture war and the threat of what Bush's could lead to. For our purposes, the thing to emphasize is that a leader's exploitation of subterranean fears and prejudices for the sake of political advantage is a dangerous ploy, even if done in the name of virtue. No, make that especially if done in the name of virtue.
And if there's one thing we can't have, it's leaders who actually advocate and are up front about what they consider "virtuous." Dangerous stuff, that.
http://victorhanson.com/index.html
VDH has his own blog
Too bad and Carroll wrote a stinging article about Mel's movie and Constantine's Rome. This diminishes his opinions in my eyes somewhat as a lunatic leftist.
He is an ex-priest and scholar at Harvard.
Check out this page on his book though.
Constantine's Sword -
http://www.fsbassociates.com/hmco/constantine.htm
Yeah, that recent interview he gave on The Passion was good, but unfortunately that didn't change the fact that he's been one of the Boston Globe's chief idiotarians - anti-Bush, anti-Sharon. Do a search on "Carroll" in my search box for a couple of examples.
Oh, and thanks for that pointer, mal. Saw that. Been meaning to add a link.