ORGONITES & TARTUFFEITES: Oh, what a tangled, political web we have woven!!!

[Source: Tartuffe by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-1673); Project Gutenberg EBook #2027; first written and performed in 1664. Oh,déjà vu!]

CLEANTE [brother-in-law of Orgon]
That is the usual strain of all your kind;
They must have every one as blind as they.
They call you atheist [or anti-American] if you have [differing views];
And if you don't adore their vain grimaces,
You've neither faith nor care for sacred [democratic] things.
…
What! Will you find no difference between
Hypocrisy and genuine [governance]?
And will you treat them both alike, and pay
The self-same honour both to masks and faces
Set artifice beside sincerity,
Confuse the semblance with reality,
Esteem a phantom like a living person,
And counterfeit as good as honest coin?
Men [& women], for the most part, are strange creatures, truly!
You never find them keep the golden mean;
The limits of good sense, too narrow for them,
Must always be passed by, in each direction;
They often spoil the noblest things, because
They go too far, and push them to extremes.
…
Just so I think there's naught more odious
Than whited sepulchres of outward unction,
Those barefaced charlatans, those hireling zealots,
Whose sacrilegious, treacherous pretence
Deceives at will, and with impunity
Makes mockery of all that men hold sacred;
Men [& women] who, enslaved to selfish interests,
Make trade and merchandise of [freedom],
And try to purchase influence and office
With false eye-rollings and affected raptures;
Those men [& women], I say, who with uncommon zeal
Seek their own fortunes on the road to heaven[ly prosperity];
Who, skilled in prayer [and profiteering], have always much to ask,
And live at court to preach retirement;
Who reconcile religion with their vices,
Are quick to anger, vengeful, faithless, tricky,
And, to destroy a man [or woman], will have the boldness
To call their private [or public] grudge the cause of heaven;^[1]
All the more dangerous, since in their anger
They use against us weapons men revere,
And since they make the world applaud their passion,
And seek to stab us with a sacred sword.
There are too many of this canting kind.
Still, the sincere are easy to distinguish;
And many splendid patterns may be found,
In our own time, before our very eyes.
(Molière’s Tartuffe, Act I, Scene vi)
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[1] Or manifest destiny, or true democracy, or patriotism

The Romance of Ayn Rand

(OR: Ayn Rand Romanticized)

Mark Sanford, the recently beleaguered Republican governor of South Carolina, presented his pitch for the current relevance of Ayn Rand in Newsweek, November 2, 2009. He wrote, “What strikes me as still relevant is [The Fountainhead’s] central insight—that it isn’t ‘collective action’ that makes this nation prosperous and secure; it’s the initiative and creativity of the individual” (p. 54).

Hmmm! It makes one wonder which American patriot defeated the British Empire in pursuit of a more prosperous and secure future? What individual hammered out the U.S. Constitution in the solitude of his study? How railroad barons found means to lay thousands of miles of track without government/tax payer concessions, land grants, and subsidies? How Goldman Sachs (or any number of other juristic persons) would cope without shareholder collective investment and apathy? How capitalists—not to mention aspiring home-owners—would survive without access to the collective pool of credit capital or the collective sharing of risk through insurance? Or what role corporations (those ubiquitous collections of individuals—managers, consultants, shareholders, and employees) have in prosperity and security?

It seems rather naïve at best for both Rand and Sanford to romanticize the rugged, obsessive individualism of Howard Roark (The Fountainhead) and of John Galt (Atlas Shrugged). Yes, the individual Roark may dream and design, but without “others” submitting their wills and energy to his creative, inflexible realizations, he would have had no buildings at all, let alone the one he chose to dynamite when his architectural vision was compromised.

Mr. Sanford seems to view it as mainly ironic that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is based on the individual’s absolute freedom while in practice she “exercised a dictatorial control over her followers … denounc[ing] anyone who expressed opinions even slightly diverging from her own” (p. 55). This seems way beyond ironic or even flawed. It seems to manifest a colossal disconnect that strips her of every relevance, unless it is the relevance of exposing deep hypocrisy and the human propensity to lust for power and control even when touting the virtues of freedom. Rand’s intolerance of diversity and lack of self-awareness seems strongly prescient of current Republican disconnects about their own complicity in the present state of dire affairs and their own Roarkness/Galtness. Too often passionate freedom-advocates seem to practice it in the Rand-sense. “You are free to agree with my vision and if you do not, I will seek the destruction of your vision.”

So why, in Mr. Sanford’s view, is “this a very good time for a Rand resurgence” (p. 55)? Do we need more justifications for the “Virtue of Selfishness”^[1] or of idealized self-interest or of individualized tyranny? Do we need more Ayn Rands (or Roarks or Galts) claiming a genius that qualifies them to be “supreme arbiter[s] in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man’s life on earth” (p. 55)? Do we need more romantic notions that aggressive individualists and free-marketeers know best; that the genius of industry giants is untainted by baseness; that order, fairness, and equity are the natural selections of strictly free-markets? Do we need less government regulation of the markets, especially financial ones? (Or do we really need more appropriate regulation?) Do we need to champion the primacy of the individual or to balance individualism with the social contracts of living in collectives of families, communities, nations, and global stewardships?

Sanford seems to prefer the deluded romance of Rand’s rugged individualism to the delusions of paternalistic government. If they are both delusions of primacy—one of individualism, the other of collectivism—perhaps we are just arguing over two caustic extremes which can only be neutralized to the safety of both individual and society when managed in reasoned, ethical, and judicious balance.

And now a word to die-hard individualists: Of course, many rugged, creative individualists have contributed to making the world a better place, but perhaps not even a handful have done so without the support of collectives of some sort or other. There would be no kings or queens without subjects (and their collective taxes). No George Washington without compatriots. No enduring capitalists (or managed corporations) without laborers. No thriving playwrights without actors and audiences. The list is endless. Endless too, is the unromantic remembrance of individualists and their supporters who have amassed power and then horrendous histories of death, destruction, slavery, and injustice. There would have been no Alexander the Great without his armies. No early cotton kings without slave ships, captains, crews, and traders. No Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots, or Saddams without compliant (though often terrorized) comrades and citizens. Obsessive, inflexible visions, whether individualistic or collective in nature, always bend toward tyranny. [See the DéjàVu Times blog post, Sep. 29, 2009, “Are We There Yet (at the T-point)?”]

A rose-tinted, monocular view of the Rands, Roarks, and Galts of this world and their idealistic, naive, inflexible descendants reveals less than half the picture. (Once again we come close to encountering the 3-monkey stance of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” concerning the rugged individualist.) At least Gov. Sanford acknowledges the need for limited government, though he stops well-short of confessing the collective sins of the Republicans in that regard, while he laments those of the Democrats. Still his call to remember the primacy of the individual through a Rand resurgence seems firmly planted in the romantic fictions of idealized heroes and of espoused, but unlived philosophies. Of course, government and society needs the "annoyance" and perhaps frequent rebellion of informed (not propogandized) citizens challenging the status quo, but we seem ever ready to merely substitute one form of tyranny for another, especially in the name of freedom.

Perhaps the governor’s call to remembrance would have been more enlightening to focus on Rand’s scorned “second-handers”:

“the opportunistic Peter Keating, who appropriated Roark’s architectural talent for his own purposes, and Ellsworth Toohey, the journalist who doesn’t know what to write until he knows what people want to hear—” (p. 54).

If there is any real-world relevance and déjà vu to Rand’s fictions, Keating and Toohey seem the unvarnished, unromantic progenitors of many present-day elected officials, aspiring politicians, corporate managers, and every-day common folk (like this blogger). The heroism of those who seem to stand alone against injustice, corruption, and error appeals to our better natures because our worse natures tend to think in collectives of ideology and status quo; to speak in endless, scripted talking-points; to single-file in tight corporate- or party-line; to sing the tunes written by lobbyists and CFOs; and to fall in domino-fashion to the intrigues of self-indulgence.

Sanford laments this sad mindset of the world’s Keatings and Tooheys, but does not seem to have party- or self-awareness

1) that much of Rand's romanticism lies in comparing the best aspects of individualism to the worst aspects of collectivism;
2) that the Roarks and Galts of this world are men of such extreme individualism they basically refuse to live except as a law unto themselves, and thus, in similitude of Ayn Rand, as dictators of private fiefdoms they construct around them—without recognition of the contradictions and without diminishing the high-sounding rhetoric of free mind, will, and expression for every soul; and
3) that unrestrained individualism is also the fertile ground of its own tyranny.

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[1] Title of a collection of essays and papers written by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, published in 1964; subtitled: A New Concept of Egoism.

By Smaller Means: The demise of giants, elites, and superpowers

Professor J. Rufus Fears^[1] in his lecture series, The Wisdom of History, alleges that Lesson/Law One of history is, “We do not learn from history.” This short phrase sums up the tragedy within many past and current events and the woeful reflections of this Déjà Vu blog.

Why is it that so many “giants,” elites, and superpowers consider themselves the exception to the déjà vu of “By Smaller Means”?

Consider this small sampling of “smaller means”:

1. Gideon and his 300 rout the hosts of the Midianites, Amalekites, and children of the east (circa 2nd century BC; see Old Testament Judges 6-8).
2. David slays Goliath (circa 1000 BC; see Old Testament 1 Samuel 17).
3. The allied city-states of Greece conquer the mighty Persian navy of Xerxes at Salamis (480 BC).
4. The fatal sickness^[2] of battle-hardened Alexander the Great at age 32 (323 BC).
5. The victory of the outclassed Thierry against the superior warrior Pinabel as described in the French epic poem, Song of Roland (circa 1100s AD).
6. The victory of a vastly outnumbered English army over the French one at the Battle of Agincourt (1415 AD).
7. The victory of French forces over superior numbers of British forces in the Battle of Carillon (aka: 1758 Battle of Ticonderoga) during the French and Indian War.
8. The fragmented 13 colonies of the barely-united states defeating, against impossible odds, the vastly superior forces and navy of the British Empire (1775-1783 AD).
9. IEDs used in almost every theater of war since 1943 (from Germany to Vietnam to Ireland and beyond) by insurgents, guerillas, rebels, etc, against superior armies and armaments.
10. Revelations of infidelities of Gary Hart (1987), Bill Clinton (1998+), James McGreevey (2004), Eliot Spitzer (2008), John Edwards (2008), Mark Sanford (2009), John Ensign (2009), David Letterman (2009), etc., etc,. etc.

Yes, giants, elites, and superpowers can prevail for a time, but when obsessions, hubris, expansionism, imperialism, etc. become dominant, “smaller means” often bring downfall, whether sooner or later. These various “smaller means” are like bits and helms to which the giants, elites, and superpowers seem blissfully ignorant (even when self-imposed), until their whole lives or agendas are turned in directions they had no intention of going.

Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. 4 Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. (New Testament James 3:3-4)

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[1] University of Oklahoma
[2] some allege poisoning