Harper's Watch!!! April 2005
Many right of center web sites have a bias “Watch”. Some watch for bias
on CBS, others look for it in the New York Times. Apparently there is
a real market for getting people outraged by things they wouldn’t have
encountered in the normal course of their day- it’s a popular feature on
many sites.
To this end I am announcing that Surfeited With Dainties will feature, Harper’s Watch!!! That is, I will scan the table of contents of Harpers Magazine
and find something outrageous and riff on it for all of you. It is a
good fit for a site like Surfeited With Dainties, because it only comes
once a month (at the most). Also, I’ve read somewhere that stress can
cause weight gain - and well, listening to Air America, or reading the
New York Times everyday would be very stressful for me.
This month Harper’s features a serial adapted from John Lukacs’ new book:
Democracy and Populism. This serialized bit is called “When Democracy
Goes Wrong”
He discusses the prophetic chapter of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America entitled
“Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare.” Tocqueville’s thesis is that
in a Democratic age, the people become materialistic and will not want
to imperil their material possessions with a Great Revolution.
John Lukacs finishes his article with these thoughts:
There is reason to believe that, at least for some time, great revolutions will continue to be rare. There is some comfort in this condition. But again, much has changed since Tocqueville’s time. One unfortunate development is the weakening of the power and the prestige of states while their bureaucratic functions remain enormous. But far more important is the decline of healthy appetites for freedom at the very time when an immense coarsening of civilized life has arisen all around us. In this respect - illustrated by their behavior - there is hardly any difference between conservatives and liberals, or between self-designated Rightists and Leftists. Freedom, after all, is not merely emancipation, meaning the relaxation of rules imposed on people by society, church, or state, by the tyranny of a ruler, by a minority, or by a majority. Freedom means the capacity to know something about oneself, and the desire to live according to limits imposed on oneself rather than by external powers. This appetite for freedom is not yet extinct, but the present cultural atmosphere provides something very different, indeed contrary, to its proper nourishment. Great revolutions have indeed become rare. But so too will privacy, security, liberty, family and personal independence.
This actually isn’t outrageous at all. Unfortunately folks, Harper’s Watch!!! started at precisely the moment when Harper’s saw fit to print something that was quite good. I’ll have to go back into last month’s issue in order to educe your outrage. Be on the lookout for Harper’s Watch!!! in the future.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Harper's Watch!!!
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