A Cry from the Far Middle

by P. J. O'Rourke

  But are these Positive Rights really “rights”? It’s the right question to ask. Idealists ought to ask it. They’d be better off changing their terminology. Idealism should be expressed as moral obligation not political cant. This particular respecter of Negative Rights is more likely to be moved by “Please” than “You’re a Nazi pig.”

  When liberals, progressives, and democratic socialists quit demanding rights and begin invoking duties—our society’s duty to fund education, proved health care, and pay living wages even to congressmen—then I’ll start listening.

  For Extra Credit: Why Do We Call Rights “Negative” and “Positive”?

  Part of the confusion between the two types of rights comes from their bassackward names. Negative Rights produce mostly positive effects while Positive Rights can have negative consequences.

  Blame the nomenclature on Russian-born philosopher, political theorist, and Oxford professor Isaiah Berlin (1909–97). He coined the terms “negative freedom” and “positive freedom” to describe how our desire to have a political system that (negatively) provides us with liberty clashes with our desire to have a political system that (positively) provides us with stuff.

  Berlin was a great champion of “negative freedom” but he was not a native English-speaker.

  Sympathy vs. Empathy

  Is It Better To Hold People’s Hands or Bust into Their Heads?

  The difference between sympathy and empathy is the difference between understanding what others feel and feeling what they feel. Whether you’re sympathetic or you’re empathetic can make a big difference. Especially if you’re neither and treat everybody like a cat treats an injured mouse. You’ll end up eating cat food, emotionally speaking.

  Sympathy and empathy both would seem to be good things. Modern moralizing, however, tends to favor empathy over sympathy. The sympathetic formulation “Our thoughts and prayers are with you” is mocked. More to current taste in virtue is the empathetic saying—often cited as a wise Native American aphorism—“Never judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”

  Yet it bears mentioning that, as the comedian Emo Philips says, “Never judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do judge him, you’re a mile away and you have his shoes.”

  Also, after lacing up the other person’s footwear, a lot depends on where you’re walking to. If you’re walking a mile to his trailer home from his minimum-wage midnight shift job that’s one thing. If you’re walking a mile to the nineteenth hole across the fairways and greens of Augusta National that’s another, even if the shoes pinch.

  Sympathy and empathy play important roles in business and politics. And politics is a business. But let’s delay discussing politics for a moment. Right now everybody on every side of every political issue is so pissed off that the finer emotions, such as sympathy and empathy, have been pushed into the dumpster at the trailer park or the sand trap at Augusta.

  Let’s first take an example from business. Facebook and Amazon present a paradigmatic contrast between sympathy and empathy.

  Leaving aside Facebook’s current reputational and regulatory problems and Amazon’s 50 percent dominance of online commerce and much larger market capitalization, Facebook is by far the more extraordinary business success.

  That’s because Amazon is, with all its e-bells and e-whistles, just a store that delivers—which the corner grocery had a boy doing a hundred years ago.

  Facebook came out of nowhere from nothing, a product nobody knew existed that filled no stated need or obvious want and suddenly everybody had to have it.

  The idea behind Facebook was Harvard’s Face Book, a campus publication containing the pictures and names of everyone in the Harvard dorms. Zuckerberg was immediately sympathetic to the idea that everyone would “like” to know other people.

  Whether there was any empathy involved, I have no idea. Maybe Zuckerberg was lonely. Or—captain of his prep school fencing team, founding Facebook with his dormmates, member of Alfa Epsilon Pi fraternity—maybe he wasn’t. But no empathy was necessary. All that was needed was understanding what others feel.

  Amazon is different. Jeff Bezos empathized with his customers. He put himself in our place, which is sitting on our butts in front of a computer thinking, “It would be a hassle to go out and shop.” Whether he has any sympathy for us, who can tell? Sympathy is beside the point.

  As it is with the business of business, so it is with the business of politics. For an example here, let’s cool off and go back in time to a period that we can view with relatively dispassionate eyes.

  George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton present a paradigmatic contrast between sympathy and empathy.

  Bush was a deeply sympathetic man. He cared about other people’s feelings. And he was no dummy. He understood why people felt the way they felt.

  On the other hand, Bush never seemed to have the imagination or temperament to practice empathy—to project himself into other people’s lives. In fact, George may have thought that would be rude, too intrusive, too inappropriately personal.

  Meanwhile, Bill Clinton was the most inappropriately personal man on earth. He had no problem projecting himself into other people’s . . . underwear. Not to mention lives.

  Clinton was Mr. Empathy. “I feel your pain.” And when he said that he probably—in his overimaginative theatrical brain full of shallow adolescent sensitivity—meant it. For a moment. Until it was somebody else’s turn for Bill to feel their . . . whatever.

  But did Bill have any sympathy for other people? We’ll have to ask Hillary. You first.

  Bush’s calm, reasonable, and self-controlled attitude toward the mild recession at the end of his administration was interpreted as cold-hearted. His apparent lack of empathy cost him his reelection.

  Clinton’s ability to act the part of Empathizer in Chief won him the White House.

  Yet, in retrospect, we see one of them as a kind, decent man who loved America and Americans and who did his best for his fellow citizens. And we sympathize.

  And we see the other as having nothing but the most sympathetic possible feelings—for himself. Just an old, conceited, rich crony capitalist from whom nobody ever wants to hear anything again. And we don’t empathize with him at all.

  As emotions go, sympathy is more sympathetic than empathy. Trying to understand people’s feelings is steadier, more sensible, and less self-dramatizing than trying to project oneself into their underwear or steal their shoes. Nevertheless. Empathy may be a better business tool than sympathy, as George H. W. Bush learned in his loss to Bill Clinton.

  And where do you think Facebook and Amazon will be in ten years?

  When I mention Facebook to my college-age daughter she doesn’t just roll her eyes at me like I’m the extinct social media brontosaurus that I am. She also gives me a look of alarmed exasperation as if I’d suggested she give up Uber and start hitchhiking.

  “Facebook is creepy,” she says. “The ads stalk you. The people stalk you. All your data gets hacked.”

  As for where Amazon will be in ten years . . . Excuse me, the delivery man is at the door.

  Patriotism vs. Nationalism

  The difference between patriotism and nationalism is the difference between the love a father has for his family and the love a Godfather has for his family—the Bonanno family, the Colombo family, the Gambino family, the Genovese family, the Lucchese family . . .

  Patriotism is a warm and personal business. Nationalism is another business entirely, the kind of business Tessio talks to Tom Hagen about after Tessio’s betrayal of Michael Corleone.

  Tessio: “Tell Mike it was just business.”

  In 1945 George Orwell wrote an essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” for the British magazine Polemic. The essay is long and too detailed in its analysis of Nazi, Stalinist, and Trotskyite political ideas that were put out with the
trash long ago (although sometimes, unfortunately, recycled). But—in severe condensation—what Orwell has to say is:

  Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism . . . By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people . . . Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other [ideological, theological, ethnic, racial, etc.] unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

  Sinking your own individuality into anything is not a prescription for happiness. Even if what you’re sinking it into is beer. Maybe especially if it’s beer. But being a White Nationalist—or Black Nationalist or Hindu Nationalist or Islamic Nationalist or Gay Nationalist or Whatever Nationalist—is worse than being drunk.

  At least if you’re drunk you’re not part of a mass movement. (Although I have seen something close to the sinking of individuality into a menacing unit at O’Rourke family Irish wakes. But too many O’Rourkes fall down or pass out, so it ends up being more mass than movement. Also, we have to sober up and go to Mass the next day.)

  What makes the units that comprise mass movements worrisome is just what Orwell points out. You lose your individuality. When you lose your individuality, other people—who aren’t part of your mass movement, who aren’t nationalists in your “nation”—lose their individuality to you. They cease to be people and become “other people.”

  You don’t see these Others as individuals, and it becomes easy to be afraid of them, hate them, regard them in a jealous way, and want to exert power over them.

  As Orwell goes on to say:

  As soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged . . . the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when “our” side commits it . . . one cannot feel that it is wrong, Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

  Nationalism turns people into assholes or—as they’re called everywhere in America except the part of New England where I live—Patriots fans.

  Yes, we call ourselves “Patriots,” but everybody knows we’re really “Patriot Nation.” It’s Chicago Cubs fans who are patriotic.

  Cubs fan: “I hope our team beats all the other teams.”

  Patriots fan: “What other teams? There aren’t any other teams. And if there are any other teams I hope they die in a plane crash!”

  I am myself a native patriotic Ohioan—“Round on the Ends and ‘HI’ in the Middle!” I am devoted to that particular place and to the Ohio way of life, which I believe to be the best in the world.

  But I have no wish to force other people to go on family vacations to the birthplaces of all seven U.S. presidents who were born in Ohio (William Henry Harrison, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Taft, and Warren Harding), eat salads with miniature marshmallows in them, mist up when they hear Chrissie Hynde sing “My City Was Gone,” argue about whether WKRP in Cincinnati or The Drew Carey Show was the best TV program ever, and get suicidal if something goes wrong in “The Game” and Michigan beats Ohio State.

  I don’t want Ohio to conquer the world, or even Michigan. I don’t want everyone in the world to become an Ohioan. We’d run out of miniature marshmallows. And, come to that, I haven’t personally lived in Ohio for almost fifty years. But I’m still a loyal Buckeye.

  Reading further in Orwell’s essay I discover, to my surprise, that the way I feel about Ohio means I’m making a moral effort.

  Nationalistic loves and hatreds . . . are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it’s possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias [Boo, Wolverines!] . . . The emotional urges which are inescapable . . . should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. [Okay, okay, Tom Brady played for Michigan.] But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort.

  So become a patriot and you, too, like me, can turn into a more moral person than Michael Corleone turned into—not to mention those fearful, hateful, jealous, power-hungry people who root for Michigan.

  Big Brother (and Everyone Else) Is Watching You

  Thoughts on Rereading 1984

  I confess that until recently I’d given George Orwell’s 1984 short shrift in my personal memory hole of frightening books. “Yeah, yeah,” I thought, “a ‘telescreen’ that watches you while you watch it. Big deal. It’s called a pop-up ad.” And I thought, “At least Winston Smith can smoke anywhere he wants.”

  I’d forgotten what a powerful, terrifying, and tragic novel 1984 is. I forgot because I had read the book a couple of times and was under the impression that I understood it.

  1984 tells the story of a totalitarianism so total that it’s not satisfied with eliminating Smith, a decent, conscientious individual, but must eliminate his decency, his conscience, and his individuality before it kills him.

  When I read 1984 in high school I thought, “This is what the commies are doing in the Soviet Union.”

  When I read 1984 in college I thought, “This is what the Man is doing in AmeriKKKa.”

  But when I read it as a mature (that is to say, old and worried) adult I was shocked. I realized, “This is what we’re doing to ourselves!”

  In 1984 Winston Smith can’t turn off the spying, intrusive telescreen. Our situation is much worse. Winston had only one telescreen. We have dozens of the things—desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, game boxes. And we, of our own free will, refuse to turn them off.

  We don’t live in Winston Smith’s horrible world—yet. But we seem to be doing everything that Orwell foresaw to create that world.

  Everything and more. The nation of Oceania where Winston lives is a one-party state like Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R. We’ve topped that. We’ve got two parties in our one-party state.

  Both the “progressive” Democrats and the “conservative” Republicans are intent on making 1984 come true.

  The LeftRight Party is the party that rules America. Members of the LeftRight Party practice the doublethink that Big Brother demands in 1984. As Orwell explains it, doublethink is “to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” (Ask former Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the dueling Republican/Democratic House Intelligence Committee memos on the Mueller Russia probe.)

  Orwell captures totalitarianism’s interference in every aspect of existence in the first sentence of his book: “. . . the clocks were striking thirteen.” Whenever the authorities start meddling with ancient and customary traditions something is wrong. So it was when President Jimmy Carter tried to put America on the metric system. And so it is today with an ancient and customary tradition we used to have, that the president of the United States was someone you would welcome into your home.

  1984 has a “Two Minute Hate” where everyone has to stop what they’re doing and despise Emmanuel Goldstein, “Enemy of the People.” We voluntarily stop what we’re doing and spend lots more than two minutes despising Donald Trump on MSNBC. Or, if that doesn’t suit us, we despise Nancy Pelosi for hours on Fox News.

  Winston Smith “set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen.” This is nothing compared to the expression of smug and idiotic blowhard certainty that it is advisable to wear when facing the cameras on MSNBC or Fox.

  Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite history. He obeys the party sl
ogan, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Some LeftRight Party members tear down monuments to Civil War soldiers who died bravely having no idea they were wrong, while other LeftRight Party members dress in red baseball caps that declare they’ll make America what it always has been.

  In 1984 a language, Newspeak, has been invented to replace English. The purpose of Newspeak is “to limit the range of thought” by removing all previous mental associations and nuances of meaning from the vocabulary. The people of Oceania will be forced to use this language. Members of the LeftRight Party have been much more creative. They’ve invented not one but several languages that limit the range of thought. And they have gotten people to speak those languages without using force. Thus no one is crippled or blind or deaf anymore, much less a moron. They are all “differently abled.” And no one even tries to discover the truth because the “lamestream media” is full of “fake news.”

  Orwell has a party member say, “Orthodoxy means not thinking.” Members of our conjoined twin LeftRight Party aren’t thinking twice as much.

  “The heresy of heresies was common sense,” thinks Winston Smith. With double the heresies we have half as much sense.

  In 1984 the party teaches that “Sexual intercourse is to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.” But now we’ve got both #MeToo and chastity education in the public school curriculum.