Conservatives on South Park's self-censorship

Nina Shea, in National Review, and NYT's Ross Douthat both wrote critical articles this week on Comedy Central's decision to censor an episode of South Park because of recent threats due to a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed. At issue in both pieces was the fact the threats had worked in silencing free speech.

While I agree with them on this particular point, it troubles me that they failed to express what Stanley Fish calls the "rhetoric of regret." Nowhere in either piece do they declare "distaste and even revulsion" for the contents of the show. On the contrary, Douthat praises it in glowing terms: "Across 14 on-air years, there’s no icon “South Park” hasn’t trampled, no vein of shock-comedy (sexual, scatalogical, blasphemous) it hasn’t mined. In a less jaded era, its creators would have been the rightful heirs of Oscar Wilde or Lenny Bruce — taking frequent risks to fillet the culture’s sacred cows."

As in the previous post, Carson Holloway's critique of a similar argument by Brett Stephens is instructive here. Shea and Douthat, like Stephens, fall into an "understandable but unfortunate human tendency: the desire to distinguish ourselves as completely as possible from our enemies[Radical Muslims], even to the extent of defining our own identity in opposition to theirs. We see our enemies’ vices with perfect clarity, and we spontaneously desire to distance ourselves from them as much as we can. The problem with this impulse, however, is that, as Aristotle reminds us, virtue is a mean between two vicious extremes. Thus, in fleeing unreflectively from the failings of our foes, we may run right past the virtuous mean and into an opposed, and vicious, extreme[Degraded Popular Culture]. "

I would add Aristotle does not think opposing vices are always equal e.g. a brash action is better than a cowardly one. Thus, Radical Islam's repression is worse than South Park's vulgarity, but that doesn't change the fact the latter is still a vice.

Holloway gives a few instances of what he means here: "In the depths of the Cold War, for example, America, despite its need to distinguish itself from Communist collectivism, did not dismantle its social safety net and embrace a thoroughgoing individualism that held that every man was on his own. Similarly, our revulsion at Nazism’s militarization of society did not lead us to reject the draft as a necessary tool of national self-defense. By the same token, we should not let our (quite proper) rejection of radical Islam’s repressiveness lead us to embrace an equally problematic permissiveness."

That South Park's creators were censored under the threat of physical harm is terrible, but to say that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to see South Park censor itself more often.

Is Lady Gaga's Freedom worth fighting for?

Brett Stephens opens up his Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal with the following pop quiz:
"What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?"

The question "Why do they hate us?" has been debated since the 9/11 attack. The following video outlines the 2 most plausible answers, our foreign policy or our freedom:


Stephens agrees with Dubya that the answer is 'our freedom.' Unlike Dubya, he then goes on to say what this freedom is FOR. Not only does he spell out its legitimate use, he also says this use is worth defending: “If America wants to tilt the balance of Muslim sentiment in its favor, it needs to stand up for its liberties, its principles and its friends—Israel, Playboy, and Lady Gaga included.”

Carson Holloway offers the following critique of Stephens' view: "In any case, it is strange to hold that Playboy and the sexually permissive culture it represents are manifestations of American principles and American liberty. Both the magazine itself and the sexual behavior that it encourages would have been actively suppressed by American law and mores even as recently as sixty years ago. Are we to understand that America then was not a free country? This would be news to the Americans of that time, who understood themselves to have just finished a tremendous national exertion intended precisely to preserve a free society—a society distinguished from others, they might have held, by a commitment to ordered liberty, and not to unrestricted license."

A critic of Holloway might respond that whatever our Forefathers thought freedom once WAS, it is no longer what we believe freedom is for TODAY. Justice Kennedy says what one generation sees as a perfectly reasonable limitation of its freedom is found by the next generation to be tyrannical.

I suspect the average American would agree with Stephens that such music videos should not be banned, but would disagree that it is worth defending. He does not want to seem puritanical so he is against censorship, yet he is not willing to get killed over something so base. Has there ever existed a society in history which has put itself on the line for such a freedom? This is probably why President Bush had to couch his terms in such elevated and lofty rhetoric in his 2nd Inaugural Address; most Americans would not have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq if it was to defend our right to consume massive amounts of MTV.

The Long Season of Lent 2010

I have mentioned before my antipathy towards "studies show" arguments, but I'll make an exception this time since these two statistics have not been given much traction in the public square. A Mercatornet article and a blog post by the NYT's Ross Douthat both cite stats from a comprehensive study completed after the 2002's Long Season of Lent:

"The largest body of information has been collected in the United States, where in 2004 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an independent study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. This is not a Catholic university and is unanimously recognized as the most authoritative academic institution of criminology in the United States."

Douthat relies upon this study to make the following claim: "The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’s overemphasis on therapy. " And he reiterates the point again here: " "It’s part of the basis for my column’s claim that something in the moral/cultural/theological climate of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a spike in sexual abuse."

Despite a balanced column, it was this claim which generated the most responses on his blog-probably because it lays part of the blame at the door of the Sexual Revolution, which is accepted by many people today. To back up his claim, he presented the following chart from the John Jay study:


Massimo Introvigne, author of the Mercatornet article mentioned above, also uses the study to bring up another stat which has not been discussed: "So, does the John Jay College study tells us then, as one often reads, that 4 percent of American priests are paedophiles? Not at all. According to the research, 78.2 percent of the accusations involved minors who had advanced beyond puberty."
And again here: "While it may hardly be politically correct to say so, there is a fact that is much more important: over 80 percent of pedophiles are homosexuals, that is, males who abuse other males." Introvigne links homosexual practice, which is gaining widespread acceptance, with the crisis.

Since both numbers contradict our notions of political correctness, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they haven't been given much attention.

Do Crunchy Cons forget we're Aliens in America?

I mentioned in an earlier post that leading Front Porcher Patrick Deneen and Postmodern Conservative's Peter Lawler would be speaking here in Dallas. They both gave spirited talks, which I won't try to summarize here; instead, I'll focus on some questions I was able to ask them during Q&A.

To Professor Deneen, I asked, "You have written that Modern Liberalism is the logical fulfillment of Classical Liberalism, but the Progressives of the 20th century (Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey) explicitly rejected the Founders' vision. For instance, they cite Hegel and Darwin in opposition to the Founders.

Deneen answered that both schools of thought had in common the Cartesian/Baconian project of the "conquest of nature" for the "relief of man's estate." American Conservatives follow Classical Liberals and are hostile to the Green concern for the environment because they think it undermines our ability to harness or manipulate nature to make our lives more comfortable e.g. driving pollutant producing SUV's. But they draw the line when it comes to biotechnology e.g. stem cell research, because they see HUMAN nature as untouchable. Modern Liberals see this line as arbitrary and so complete the Baconian project by trying to re-design human nature as well.

Deneen believes the only solution is to return to a more holistic view of nature, one which respects the both the environment and mankind. While Deneen does not self-identify as a "Crunchy Con" one can see why Rod Dreher is a fan of the Front Porch.

I then asked Lawler if he thought the American Conservative's positions on the environment and biotechnolgy were compatible and he answered emphatically YES! Conservatives are right to see human nature as distinct from nature as a whole. The Na'vi might be one with nature, but human beings are not. We are not the missing piece to the Earth's puzzle. Indeed, Lawler believes our restlessness is a clue to who we are. And shopping at Whole Foods or participating in an agricultural coop will not resolve our restlessness. Our awareness that we are homeless, that we are "lost in the cosmos", is a sign of our distinctiveness.

Dreher and other Crunchy Cons blame the modern capitalist system for ruining the environment and thus our ability to enjoy it. They want to return to a pre-modern past in which we can frolic in an idyllic garden. Lawler thinks this is selective nostalgia because Crunchy Cons forget how back backbreakingly difficult agricultural life was back then. Nature is not as beneficent as the Na'vi claim. But more importantly, the real cause for our misery is not the product of a particular political/economic system; it is simply an aspect of the human condition itself. Echoing Augustine, the Postmodern Conservative believes human misery can only be managed, not solved.