Exciting Week
Tuesday was my birthday. I took the chance to go down to the city. I
was planning on getting to the fashion district and purchasing some
white bucks, partially to help inspire the creation of a long planned
exhaustive essay on white buck shoes. But I stopped by my
friend’s apartment and ended up on a reality television show instead.
The next night I went down to the city again, to meet an acquaintance at
Cooper Union. There was to be a meeting. “Is there a new
blacklist?” was the question. McCarthy’s ghost was ceremonially
summoned to scare the audience. Four brave souls of the right showed up
to remind these relics of the New Left what dissent means. Our feelings
alternated between disbelief and raw anger. A cold shiver, then
laughter, then booing, then knowing glances shared amongst ourselves.
Afterwards we repaired to bars on the Upper West side. I got soused.
Someone took pictures of me looking like a fool with a wine glass.
Someone who just met me described my thinking as that of a “slave”. I
think we disagreed on the Enlightenment. I’ve never while drunk found
disagreement over something so profound (yet to most people so arcane)
, to reveal itself within the first five minutes of conversation.
Later, he and I found reason to agree on the mating habits of NYC
women.
Then tonight after work I went and saw Roger Scruton, the eminent
English philosopher, speak at NYU. There I met John Zmirak.
Afterwards I found myself in Cafe Dante sitting two feet away from the
cordial Scruton. The four of us that accompanied him there peppered him
with questions - one unrelated to the next, about foxhunting, Kant,
James Joyce, House of Lords and the free market.
I’ve had a hell of a week. I will, as soon as time permits, write
more extensively about each of these events - although I can’t report
everything from our subversive activities on Wednesday.
If I knew, when I was younger, that conservatism could mean the mocking
of authority, soused dancing on the Upper West Side, and the most
withering scorn on the right side of Voltaire - I would have signed up
ages ago.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in The Big Bagel
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