And Away We Go

And Away We Go
by Erik Jay

When Tim Loughner invited me to do a weekly column, we discussed with great specificity what the subject matter should be. With all the fine freedom-focused writers at "American Partisan" -- I mean, really, just look at that masthead! -- there didn't seem to be a need for another conservative/libertarian curmudgeon or curmudgeoness holding forth on the hot headlines of the hour. What to do?

Then Tim visited the weekly 'zine -- "What Next? The Journal of Contentious Persiflage" (http://erikjay.com/wnx.html) -- at my itty-bitty website, and noticed a few features on what could be called cultural issues. He suggested I concentrate my energies there: TV and film, print and net publishing, books and music, theater and such.

"Culture Shock" was born. And here we go!

But first, a few ground rules. I want to be perfectly clear about where I'm coming from, given that my tendency to hyperbole results in my being misunderstood quite often, by allies and opponents alike. So, it seems quite appropriate to spend a few words to buy your understanding.

First of all, I am neither a censor nor a particularly censorious type. That I am going to vent my spleen in this online column rather than in a letter to my state assemblyman, congressman, or senator should suggest that I believe in persuasion, not legal prescription or proscription. You'll never hear me say "there ought to be a law" and only occasionally that "there ought to be a lawsuit" -- but I will probably encourage you from time to time to undertake some moral, philosophical, spiritual, or political suasion of your own. Of course, I can't make you do even that, and I don't want to.

Also, I am a realist about man's condition: I don't consider him perfectible, not while he's breathing anyway. Since I value congruency, I must accept this (in my view, God's) judgement about my own condition, too: Who the heck am I to tell you how to live? What incredible audacity one must have -- Ted, Jesse, Al, Hillary: are you listening? -- to arrogate to oneself or one's in-crowd the power to treat others like insensate clay rather than sentient individuals. I refuse to join with anyone, left or right or center, in wielding power over others' most intimate choices. I am not qualified; neither are you.

Allow me a slight, illustrative digression. (Interestingly, I am one of the few writers I know of who can actually START an article with a digression. Think about how hard THAT is!) About fifteen years ago, while I was still living in California's Silicon Valley where I had landed as a toddler in the late 1950's, one of my father's relatives from Sweden visited for a few weeks. I think her name was Eda, and she was an 18- or 20-year-old backpacking college kid Amtrak-ing her way around the states. I drove up to San Francisco one day to pick her up and bring her to my home for a few days.

It didn't take her fifteen minutes to launch into the sort of condescending anti-American diatribe so common to Europeans (and college faculty); perhaps my long hair, and the fact she knew I was a writer and composer and musician and artist, led her to presume that I would agree with her. After all, self-loathing does seem to be a common characteristic of leftist hipsters, which I have certainly looked like at certain times of my life. (I'm a GQ kind of guy now...) Anyway, off she went: Americans are stupid, Americans are couch potatoes, Americans are warmongers, Americans don't know what good bread is, Americans are slobs, Americans don't speak Swedish! And McDonald's is the ultimate American cuisine!

I took it for a few minutes. Then I had had enough, and straightened her out, almost point by point. I recall mentioning that Sweden had had the courage to be neutral in the face of Hitler's threat to the world; that Saab made great fighter planes that her country happily sold to anyone, probably aware that they would carry bombs and not commercial passengers; that Sweden's much-vaunted "third way" had created the best-dressed drunks in the world and brought their economy to its knees; that she had some nerve, anyway, treating her hosts to such an insipid tirade.

I managed to finish up my corrective declamations while simultaneously putting her at ease. I told her she was entitled to her opinions, but that she was forgetting some crucial points. Whereas the regulatory welfare state of her homeland had created a fairly affluent environment, it was a sadly undifferentiated one -- few highs and lows, a lot of averaged-out experiences, a great muddle in the middle. On the other hand, I concluded, a freer people (too bad the word has to be qualified, but that's reality) have the leeway to choose, and they don't always choose the best. Liberty is like that: You get the best and the worst, the bitter and the sweet, the high and the low, the refined and the reprobate. And that is more consonant with real life, and with my own conception of God's plan, than a regulated, controlled, choice-free lifestyle.

Yes, we have a lot of garbage in our culture. That is the price for having the freedom also to create and enshrine the finer things of life in our national character as well. And that is the tack I plan to take in this column, which will be original and exclusive to "American Partisan" each week: I will exercise judgement and discretion, certainly, and my feelings will be clearly stated. But I will not presume to tell you how to think, or that your disagreement is impermissible, or that there is no other acceptable view. I will try to persuade, of course, but I have arrogated to myself no mechanism of coercion, and will not.

Finally, I will never advocate that the government, at any level, be empowered to deprive you of your decisions, nor protect you from their repercussions. I accept as a fact of life, of MY life, that liberty requires of us great forbearance, and that the same liberty that unleashes man's creative genius also enables man's junk-producing mechanisms. That's just the way it is.

And so.... and so, next week, I'm going to take a look at this CBS mini-series, "Jesus", that began airing last Sunday, the 14th. I can't believe a major network would really allow a biblically accurate story of His life to run for... six weeks, is it? I mean, my first thought was that they must be doing something to dilute it, or defame Him. What's going on here?

Don't worry. "Culture Shock" is on it! See you next week!

www.american-partisan.com