Which part, I asked, of world history are you studying?
“The part that’s happening right now,” said Nick. “Our teacher believes that the best way to learn history is to start at the present and move forward. He says this allows us to rid historicality of Western-hegemonized false narratives in male gender perspectives.”
What?
“Beats me,” said Nick. “Anyway, I’m supposed to read The Third Way by Anthony Giddens.”
The director of the London School of Economics?
“I guess so.”
Let me take a crack at that. Max went to the London School of Economics. I’ll get the inside skinny on Giddens from Max.
“Uncle Peej, the last time you wrote a book report for me I got an F. Or I would have gotten an F if my school gave Fs. I got an Inappropriate Socialization and a Has Issues and had to lead the football team sensitivity sessions for a month.”
Nick, I said, would you rather read The Third Way or practice backing the car out of the driveway?
Book Report: The Third Way
Not to be dense about this, but I had no idea there was an actual political theory behind the whoreson activities of modern left-wing politicians. Of course I recognized a pattern of behavior common to Britain’s New Labor, America’s New Democrats, Europe’s New Social Democrats, and—for all I know—Rwanda’s New Hutus. But I thought this was an example of the universal applicability of the political strategy, “Fake right, run left.” And I was aware that Anthony Giddens had written a book. But so had Dennis Rodman and former president Bill Clinton’s former pet cat. I assumed that The Third Way was merely a repackaging of socialism in order to sell it to a public that wasn’t having any. In the 1950s there was a breakfast cereal called Sugar Pops. During the earthy, all-natural 1970s the name was changed to Honey Pops. Now, in the health-conscious new millennium, the label reads Corn Pops.
But then I was forced to read The Third Way. And, to my surprise, I was impressed by Anthony Giddens—not impressed enough to finish all 155 pages of his dreary book, but impressed. Giddens explains the difference between the Third Way and the traditional left. Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, and Gerhard Schröder (and Anthony Giddens!) confess to a belief in the marketplace. Granted, as a Road to Damascus experience, this is like being blinded by the realization that you’re headed in the Damascus direction. Not believing in the marketplace is akin to not believing in gravity. No amount of Marxist theory or utopian social experiment will change the fact of the marketplace, just as no amount of theoretical physics or laboratory experiment will get me to finish reading The Third Way. A physicist may have all sorts of ideas about antigravity, and he may even demonstrate his ideas in a particle accelerator. But if he drops a cement block on his foot—ouch.
Old-line Marxists must be feeling a pain in their toes. Disbelief in the marketplace was the very heart of traditional leftism. Yet Blair, Clinton, and Schröder are traditional leftists. They want politics to interfere in every possible aspect of life. But they are leftists who have abandoned the central tenet of leftism. If the leftists don’t believe in leftism, what—as it were—is left?
This is where The Third Way comes in. On chapter 4 is a boxed précis titled THIRD WAY VALUES. A number of these little boxes appear in the Giddens book. It’s an almost endearing touch—obviously meant to lighten the workload of the young assistants who actually do the reading for Blair, Clinton, et al.
Here are the values, six of them:
“Equality.” A nice nostalgic touch, equality being the essential false vow of socialism since at least Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in 1381. Of course, nowadays you’d reach Wat at peasantsrevolt.com, where he’d be promising the masses e-rebellion home delivery.
“Protection of the vulnerable.” And the vulnerable are—as you realize if you’ve been watching daytime television and reading modern therapeutic literature—all of us, all the time. Unfortunately, what we seem to be most vulnerable to is Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, and so forth.
“Freedom as autonomy.” As opposed to freedom as an old unmatched sock. Although either definition of freedom is incompatible with the previous two values, since you can’t put one sock on the feet of everybody, and we’re all vulnerable to cold feet.
“No rights without responsibilities.” Moderate voters read this as meaning “Throw the bums off welfare.” The bums, more accurately, understand it as “If you want an old unmatched sock, it is your responsibility to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
“Cosmopolitan pluralism.” Hard to say what this means, but seeing when the book was published, it could have been a plea to mayor Rudolph Giuliani to let various colorful New York characters out of jail in time to vote for Hillary Clinton.
“Philosophic conservatism.” In the accompanying muddled text, Giddens claims to be referring to an emerging political consensus about loving nature or some such. But consider how the word philosophical is used today: “He’s philosophical about his wife leaving him.” “He’s philosophical about losing his job.” The meaning of philosophical is “doesn’t give a damn.”
So here is the broad—philosophical, if you will—outline of the Third Way, a sort of clarion call to whatever. But the Third Way also focuses on specific issues, hundreds and hundreds of them. Some of these issues are heartfelt (or perhaps, due to the cement block, toe-felt) by the traditional left. But other issues seem to be raised just to show that, when the Third Way is at work, everything is an issue. Interesting how they sound when they’re grouped together: women’s rights, gay rights, animal rights. Try matching these rights with Anthony Giddens’s just-cited fourth value, “No rights without responsibilities.” I invite Democratic congressional candidates to go on the hustings in 2002 and hold forth on women’s responsibilities, gay responsibilities, and the responsibilities of animals.
The Third Way, however, advocates special rights for special groups, not because these rights make sense but because they don’t. Special rights for special groups is an idea that’s dangerous to a peaceful society—as has been well proven in the Balkans, Lebanon, Ireland, India, the United States, and practically every other place in the world. And that’s the point. A peaceful society doesn’t need as much political machinery as a society where everybody hates everybody’s guts.
Increasing the amount of—and the need for—political machinery is the unifying theme behind all Third Way thinking. I quote Giddens, brazenly saying in his book, “The state should expand the role of the public sphere.” Ecology is a splendid way to do so. What could be more complicated—and hence more needful of political mediation—than making sure the whole of nature keeps working, that the entire universe continues to operate? In the past an omnipotent God was required to do this. Gosh knows how many Parliamentary white papers and regulatory bureaucracies it will take now. (And forget what the striking coal miners of yore would think of a Labor Party that cares most about the pit ponies.)
Bribing the minorities, healing the earth, preventing the privatization of social insurance, making educational systems as academically bad and as freighted with inappropriate social responsibilities as possible, providing universal medical care, universal day care, universal home care for the disabled, the partially disabled, and those of us who are okay in the morning but tend to be a bit unsteady after lunch—these are no-brainer methods of expanding the political machinery. Not that the Third Way isn’t brainy also. For example, the British Labor/U.S. Democrat handling of the illegal drug issue is masterful in its cunning. Our Third Way men are social liberals—with all the hanky-panky that implies. What we do in our private lives is private. We can take all the drugs we like as long as we don’t admit to it publicly. But publicly, Labor and Democratic politicians are careful to denounce drugs as bad and a danger. This allows them to promote extensive political programs educating us about the dangerous badness of drugs. So, now we’re empowered to take drugs by the social liberals plus we’re informed by the social liberals that drug-taking is a naughty thrill;
therefore we take drugs. And oh, how the political machinery gets busy. The Third Way has to arrange for all of us to have our sentences suspended and go to drug-treatment facilities and get some of that home care for the disabled, too, because—as any social liberal will tell you—addiction is a disease.
Chairman Mao pulled something similar with his “let a hundred flowers bloom” speech, except Mao just killed the victims of his phony permissiveness tactic. He didn’t make them fill out National Health Service paperwork while going through detox.
Sometimes Third Way policy positions are too deep for the uninitiated to plumb. Conservatives were flummoxed by Bill Clinton’s interventions in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere. But Clinton had found a way to conduct “peace by other means.” He was purposely using military force solely as an instrument of pointless moralizing, on missions that neither defended American security nor extended American geo-political power. Clinton thereby was able to harness warmongering’s increase in political power and prestige without losing the support of smug lefty pacifists. He was Franklin Delano Gandhi. (Plus this kind of military conflict doesn’t create any Republican war-hero generals to run against your party in future elections.)
But why is the Third Way so intent on this expansion of political machinery? If they know socialism is imaginary, what are they pursuing in its stead? What do they want to accomplish? Well, Anthony Giddens has another little boxed précis on chapter 4 of his book, THE THIRD WAY PROGRAMME:
“The radical center.” Let’s compromise and kill half the Kulaks.
“The new democratic state (the state without enemies).” Hmm, there’s me.
“Active civil society.” No more sleeping in church.
“The democratic family.” Dad and the canary vs. Mom and Junior. Rover has the tie vote. Looks like we stay home and do yard work instead of going to the Hamptons.
“The new mixed economy.” Easy on the vermouth.
“Positive welfare.” Would you like a large entitlement check? Are you positive?
“The social investment state.” We’ll use my high school diploma to make a down payment on a beach house, and we’ll buy a Range Rover with an inner-city literacy program.
“The cosmopolitan nation.” Goat cheese in Cedar Rapids!
“Cosmopolitan democracy.” Nope, just smelled like goat cheese; actually it’s the 2002 Democratic congressional campaign.
Does that clarify everything? No? Then you should do what I do whenever I become truly confused by political ideas. Pretend the entire world is our school and all the prominent people are students in my class. What’s everybody up to? The popular kids are out having fun. The smart kids are reading Adam Smith. The ambitious kids are working nights and weekends. The talented kids are playing sports and rehearsing for the school play. I’m drinking beer behind the Dairy Queen. And the insufferable twits? They’re running for student government.
“Gee, thanks, Uncle Peej,” said Nick, “but I’m not sure if that’s exactly what Mr. Sturbridge had in—”
Any other makeup work to do? I asked.
“A composition for my Creativity class.”
On?
“Creativity.”
Started it yet?
“No,” said Nick. “I was thinking I’d write about how the Bible could have been more creative. You know, in the ‘begats’ sections, for instance. There’s a bunch of begats in First Chronicles, chapter six, and it’s way dull, especially if you consider what a begat involves. The chronicler could have done a lot with this material.
“Eleazar begat Phineas doggy-style. Phineas begat Abishua standing up behind a tent. And Abishua begat Bukki totally by mistake, after a party. Bukki begat Uzzi on the back saddle of a camel when he was taking Uzzi’s mom, who was sixteen, home after she’d been baby-sitting for Bukki’s kids. Uzzi begat Zerahiah and there was a huge custody fight, except this time both parents told King Solomon to go for it, and his majesty split Zerahiah like a melon. That was when Zerahiah was fifteen and by that time he’d already begotten Meraioth.
“But Zerahiah’s mother claimed Meraioth was Bukki’s kid and everybody believed it, because Bukki was such an old goat. Meraioth begat Amariah, which surprised all twelve tribes of Israel, who were sure Meraioth was gay. Amariah begat Ahitub, who was called Ahitub because his mother hooked up with Amariah in the ritual bath. Ahitub begat Zadok, or that’s what Ahitub’s wife said, even though Ahitub had been away on a caravan for eleven months before Zadok was born. And so on,” said Nick.
“But then I was thinking that was maybe a little—”
Too creative.
“Yes,” said Nick.
So do what I do when I’m stuck, I said. Consult Bartlett’s, pick a random quotation on the subject, and trash it. Let’s have a look. C…R…E…nope, Muffin has torn that page out of the index. We’ll try “art,” that’ll do. Here’s “canons of a.” Sounds interesting. Page 697, number 15. Hmmm, I’d hoped Bartlett’s was misspelling canons. But it’s an Alfred North Whitehead quotation, and he’s always a sack of crap.
The canons of art are merely the expression, in specialized forms, of the requirements for depth of experience.
“That sounds like something we’d hear in Creativity class,” said Nick.
Two indisputable canons of art, I said, are that all movies need a car chase and all plays need a sword fight. Shakespeare was generally mindful of this and Hal Needham always was. Other stage and screen auteurs, however, have shown themselves to be aesthetically ignorant or maybe just lazy. Why don’t you write some sword fights and car chases? You can insert them into various plays and movies that lack a certain—well, sword fight or car chase.
There’s one of those artsy video-rental places downtown—all sorts of theater performances on tape and talky-weepy subtitle movies. Then you can practice parallel parking outside while I visit the Pig and Whistle next door.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
By Joseph Stein (based on the stories of Shalom Aleichem)
From ACT I, SCENE 10
As the wedding dance reaches a wild climax, the CONSTABLE and his MEN enter, carrying clubs. The dancers see them and slowly stop.
CONSTABLE: I see we came at a bad time, Tevye. I’m sorry, but the orders are for tonight. For the whole village. All right, men.
The RUSSIANS begin their destruction, turning over tables, smashing dishes and windows.
TEVYE: As the good book says, Oh, no, you don’t!
PERCHICK: Specifically, the good book Das Kapital. The Masses will resolutely struggle against imperialist hooliganism and exploitation!
PERCHICK pulls rusty old Cossack swords, pitchforks, ancient muskets, and other weapons from under a bed and distributes them to the villagers. The RUSSIANS retreat.
CONSTABLE:(over his shoulder): Boy, are you going to be sorry when you find out how Stalin feels about Jews!
TEVYE (sings):
If things weren’t such a bitch, man,
Daidle deedle daidle
Digguh deedle daidle dum,
All day long I’d biddy biddy bun,
If workers controlled the means of production!
WAITING FOR GODOT
By Samuel Beckett
From the beginning of ACT I
VLADIMIR: What do we do now?
ESTRAGON: Wait.
VLADIMIR: Yet, but while waiting?
ESTRAGON: What about hanging ourselves? (Audience fidgets hopefully.)
VLADIMIR: From a bough. They go toward the tree. I wouldn’t trust it.
ESTRAGON: We can always try.
VLADIMIR: Go ahead.
ESTRAGON: After you.
VLADIMIR: No, no, you first.
ESTRAGON: Why me?
VLADIMIR: I don’t understand.
ESTRAGON: Is this more amusing in French or what?
VLADIMIR: I don’t know. Je ne sais pas, as the French say it.
ESTRAGON (searching behind tree): Look, here is a pair of swords. He picks swords up and hands on
e to VLADIMIR.
VLADIMIR: We’ll have a sword fight.
ESTRAGON: Exactly.
VLADIMIR: A coup droit!
ESTRAGON: A parry de quatre!
VLADIMIR: A parry de sixte!
ESTRAGON: A riposte!
VLADIMIR: A flying cut-over!
ESTRAGON: This is no use. These are metaphorical swords.
VLADIMIR: You’re right.
ESTRAGON: Let’s hang ourselves after all. They do. Audience applauds.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
By Arthur Miller
LINDA (calling): Willy, you coming up?
WILLY (uttering a gasp of fear, whirling about as if to quiet her): Sh! Sounds, faces, voices seem to be swarming in upon him, and he flicks at them, crying: Sh! Sh! Suddenly music, faint and high, stops him. It rises in intensity. He rushes around the house. Shhh!
The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.) Page 17