I was shocked to learn today (H/T to FB friend Shal Marriott) of the death (on February 26, 2022) of Paul Cantor, the American literary critic who was the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor in the English Department at the University of Virginia. Paul was 76.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945, he would go on to write extensively on a wide range of topics, from Shakespeare and English Romanticism to pop culture. I was introduced to his work through our mutual friend Stephen Cox, with whom he edited a fine 2010 anthology, Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture.
I contacted Paul for the first time in December 2021 to invite him to submit a review essay to The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, an invitation which he enthusiastically accepted. I found him to be an amicable and hilarious guy. He admitted to being a “frustrated stand-up comedian,” who was looking into “booking a lounge in Vegas.” His sense of humor was clearly fueled by his Brooklyn roots. As a native of the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, he would have had plenty of material to work with. He attended P.S. 208, Meyer Levin Junior High School, and Samuel J. Tilden High School, where he became co-captain of the Math Team before going on to earn an A.B. and Ph.D. at Harvard University in English literature.
He took long subway rides to see Ayn Rand lecture at Hunter College in the 1950s. He said that it “was very exciting to see Rand speak. She had a real flare for the dramatic.” He also attended the NYC seminars of Ludwig von Mises.
In his work on pop culture, Paul had examined TV series as varied as “Gilligan’s Island” and “The X-Files.” He told me that he was already working on essays dealing with “Shark Tank”, “Pawn Stars”, and “The Profit”. I would have been honored to have had his work appear in JARS.
My very deepest condolences to his family and friends.
After a recent discussion on Notablog that examined cancel culture and comedy, I was watching the film “Touch of Evil” (1958), starring Orson Welles, and I got a kick out of the fact that Welles—who also directed and wrote the screenplay for the film—incorporated a jab at his own weight gain, by way of dialogue with Marlene Dietrich:
Hank Quinlan (Welles): “I’m Hank Quinlan.”
Tanya (Dietrich): “I didn’t recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars.”
“And Orson Welles, thirty years ago you were handsome and now we’re gonna put Goodyear on your face and fly you over the beach for a half hour.”
Welles laughed out loud … but Welles clearly had had the first laugh, and the last laugh. For Welles, as for another star in another film: “It was my joke, you see? They were laughing with me, not at me.”
At a time when laughs are hard to come by, this gave me a much-needed chuckle today.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I have read quite a few articles by libertarians and fellow travelers who are understandably concerned about US intervention overseas. An article at antiwar.com highlights US hypocrisy in its stance toward the Putin regime, while other writers express the hope that President Biden will show the same restraint that JFK showed during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I am fully on board with those who point to the hypocrisy of the US government when it comes to the actions of other governments across the world.
But something more needs to be said.
In the wake of 9/11, as a New Yorker and a libertarian, I felt like a man without a home: I understood fully that US foreign policy had created a boomerang effect, which led to the deaths of 3000 people in this country. Among those were family, friends, colleagues, neighbors. (Ironically, the first attack on the World Trade Center took place 29 years ago on this date.) I was utterly horrified that some libertarian friends of mine could not understand my outrage at Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, whom I held responsible for that attack. I wanted justice, but I didn’t have a blood lust against an entire group of people—like, say, the Randians, who wanted to atomize the entire Islamic Middle East. I was against the Iraq War and the PATRIOT Act, advocated the withdrawal of the US presence in the Middle East, an end to US foreign aid and the US propping-up of regimes in that region, while simultaneously seeking justice for those who lost their lives on that horrific day.
It’s always important to keep context, but if you can’t see that the United States government is not the only entity on the planet with a record of human rights abuses and horrific policies abroad, then, well, you’re blind to the global context in which we live. This doesn’t imply anything about what the United States should or should not do with regard to Russia and Ukraine. But it does mean that those of us who are concerned about human rights should speak up—whoever violates those rights across the world. And my heart breaks for those in both Russia and Ukraine whose rights and lives are being trampeled as other global actors (Putin and company) act like the thugs they are. (And my heart breaks as well for all my Russian American and Ukranian American neighbors, who are deeply concerned over the current state of affairs; indeed, the New York metropolitan area has the greatest concentration of Ukranian Americans and Russian Americans in the United States.)
Indeed, in Russia, Putin continues to clamp down on dissent, with further restrictions placed on social media—something that I was warned about by Russian colleagues days ago—further proof, regardless of country, that intervention without leads necessarily to an erosion of human freedoms within.
Is there a wider context with regard to those actions by Russia, which reflect a history of bungled US and Western diplomacy? Of course. But that context does not change the moral outrage that so many of us rightly express, with regard to the actions of Russia in Ukraine.
Postscript (28 February 2022): Folks should take a look at Thomas Knapp’s take on this crisis as well. He is absolutely correct in expressing his sympathy for the noncombatants who get caught in the crossfire of this dispute between nation-states. Check out: “Don’t Look to Politicians for Peace.”
When I was a 6-year old kid, they were showing “King Kong” on the big screen at our neighborhood theater, in a double-bill with “The Thing from Another World.” I got through the latter film with no problem, and then the screen went dark, and the kids in the audience were screaming louder and louder and louder: “KONG! KONG! KONG!”… and I think my sister and my Uncle saw that I was becoming a bit unhinged, not having a clue what was going to come on the screen.”Are you okay?,” they both asked. And I said that I thought it was a little “loud” (a euphemism for “I’m scared to death”) … and they gently said, “Well, maybe we will come back another day…”So, I was spared Kong-related post-traumatic stress. Though I did eventually see the film on the big screen, I first saw it in repeated rotation on “Million Dollar Movie” (WOR-TV, in NY). “King Kong” was actually the debut film on MDM back in 1956 …
“The Judgment Age”… or maybe, the “Snap-Judgment
Age”… either way, Pastis is just touching upon a very touchy subject.
In my ongoing Facebook engagement with my very dear friend Ryan Neugebauer, the discussion turned to these touchy subjects—to issues of social justice, cancel culture, the limits of comedy, and the effects of the 2020 riots in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
As Notablog readers know, I’ve addressed many of these issues before in my own Notablog posts. See, for example, my discussion of the Floyd murder—and it’s aftermath (“America: On Wounded Knee”), my examination of the attack on statues and monuments (“On Statues, Sledgehammers, and Scalpels”), and my exploration of the commonality between Rand’s view of racism and Critical Race Theory (“Ravitch, Rand, and CRT: The Ominous Parallels?”).
A professional psychotherapist, Ryan comes from a dialectical left-libertarian perspective. In a very personal, wide-ranging Facebook post, Ryan grappled with many of the issues mentioned above. That post is not public, but is worthy of a larger audience, in my view, for the thoughtful compassion it exhibits and advocates. Here’s what Ryan had to say:
***
This should be prefaced by the fact that
all of my positions are constantly evolving, so what I am going to write is not
the final word on anything (nor should it be). I welcome all helpful, critical
feedback.
Where to start? It’s difficult because
there’s so much in all of this and so many people feel very strongly
about where they stand on these issues. So, I think it might be helpful to
start elementary by discussing a foundation for handling any issue, social
justice or not.
My foundation is a “Dialectical
Left-Libertarian” one. The dialectical part is based in Chris Matthew Sciabarra‘s “dialectical
libertarianism”, where he conceptualizes dialectics as “the art of
context keeping”. In a 2005 article of his for the
Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), he states: “If one’s aim is to
resolve a specific social problem, one must look to the larger context within
which that problem is manifested, and without which it would not exist.” Kevin Carson, in further describing Sciabarra’s
approach, states that: “Individual parts receive their character from the
whole of which they are a part, and from their function within that whole.”
Despite my differences with him—I’m not as much of a free-market propertarian and not big on the “nonaggression” principle—I love Gary Chartier‘s description of the “Left-Libertarian” here. Wikipedia describes it as “a political philosophy and type of libertarianism that stresses both individual freedom and social equality.” That Wikipedia article mentions Anthony Gregory and says that: “Gregory describes left-libertarianism as maintaining interest in personal freedom, having sympathy for egalitarianism and opposing social hierarchy, preferring a liberal lifestyle, opposing big business and having a New Left opposition to imperialism and war.” Ultimately, the Left-Libertarian framework has a concern with social authoritarianism, whether from government or culture or both, and a concern with economic injustice and dependence on wage labor relations. The core concern is with individual freedom & flourishing.
Now that I have sketched out that
foundation, I would like to talk about an important communication concern.
Whenever you are discussing issues with someone who disagrees or who holds a
very different framework than you do, you have to “know your
audience”. You have to get in touch with their concerns and learn how to
frame your responses in a way that speaks to those concerns. You don’t want to
be dismissive and you don’t want to get them wrong. Otherwise, you will
probably do a lot of talking past each other or find yourself in tense and
hostile space. Therefore, if you are a Leftist talking to a typical American
Conservative, you have to address their concerns with societal stability,
government overreach, and family values. If you are a Conservative talking with
a typical present-day Leftist, you have to address their concerns with social
equality, economic justice, and environmental protection. If you are instead
interested in beating these people over the head with how right you are and how
trivial their concerns are, you will have ended any hope for reaching them.
“Social justice is a communal effort dedicated to creating and sustaining a fair and equal society in which each person and all groups are valued and affirmed. It encompasses efforts to end systemic violence and racism and all systems that devalue the dignity and humanity of any person. It recognizes that the legacy of past injustices remains all around us, so therefore promotes efforts to empower individual and communal action in support of restorative justice and the full implementation of human and civil rights”.
I feel like that’s a difficult thing to oppose for most people. You may see differences on the specifics, but at least the spirit of it is hard to oppose for most. Personally, I am absolutely committed to this conception of social justice.
In contrast, there are people called
“social justice warriors” (SJWs) or “woke” individuals,
more often used in a pejorative sense these days (though some own one or both
of these terms in a positive sense). A Wikipedia entry on the
matter describes social justice warrior as “a pejorative term and internet
meme used for an individual who promotes socially progressive, left-wing and
liberal views, including feminism, civil rights, gay and transgender rights,
identity politics, political correctness and multiculturalism”. That’s a
mouthful and not very helpful. On that description alone, I would count for a
significant chunk of it (I take issue with the varying ways “identity
politics” and “political correctness” get used though). In regard
to “woke”, one article states:
“The dictionary defines it as ‘originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now
chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’.” That article
goes on to say: “It has become a common term of derision among some who
oppose the movements it is associated with, or believe the issues are
exaggerated. It is sometimes used to mock or infantilise supporters of those
movements”. This gets at the key point of all of this: application.
Two people could both advocate strongly
for social justice but take very different approaches to it. When people
are derided as “SJWs” or “woke”, it is sometimes
used to indicate the degree of aggressiveness or rigidity surrounding their
advocacy for social justice. And to be fair, there is no shortage of examples
of people who advocate for social justice in the lousiest of ways. You have
people (taken from my own personal interactions) who say ridiculous things like
“science is white male supremacy” or “the only legitimate
pronouns are they/them” or “all Trump supporters are fascists”,
etc. They often make very extreme or harsh claims that don’t stand up to the
slightest of scrutiny. When they get pushback, they often get even more aggressive
and dogmatic. Much like very dogmatic religious individuals. I will say without
hesitation that I don’t defend these approaches and find them counterproductive
to social justice efforts. Putting aside their inaccuracies or foolishness,
they push people away from seriously important causes. Therefore, a Dialectical
Left-Libertarian approach would want to find ways to communicate effectively
with others and ensure that any actions are not harming the push towards
greater freedom and flourishing for all.
And here we get to “cancel
culture”. First, we must point out that “cancel culture” to the
degree that it exists, happens on both the right-wing and left-wing.
McCarthyism was institutional cancel culture from the Right in a very extreme
way that present-day cancel culture accusations can’t put a candle to,
especially with the “wild west” of the World Wide Web at our
fingertips. Just watch the movie “Trumbo” (2015) to see how bad
it got in one area: cinema. That said, it is more often discussed in
association with the Progressive Left these days, so we will focus on its
widespread association today. Dictionary.com
describes it as “the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling)
public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered
objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being
performed on social media in the form of group shaming”. It has more
broadly been associated with shouting down speakers, physically shutting down
events, getting speakers cancelled from universities, and preventing certain
media or materials from being consumed. This topic overlaps with the topic of
“comedy” mentioned above.
From a Dialectical Left-Libertarian
perspective, one should be concerned with how the things associated with
“cancel culture” aid or curtail the project of increasing freedom
& flourishing for all. Some actions are perfectly legitimate, such as
boycotting when harmful actions are done. That signals that we want the
boycotted to do better and potentially to do restitution before we are to
support them in any sense again (if at all). However, shutting down speakers
and banning books I am much less comfortable with. This more often than not
leads to negative pushback and people seeking out or defending the shutdown or
banned entities more. In my opinion, this happened with the awful Milo Yiannopoulos. The aggressive
demonstrations against him drew more attention than his talks could on their
own. It was the highlighting of his comments on adult sexual relationships with
13-year-olds that led to everyone distancing from him and him losing his
limelight. You rarely hear from him today (please let’s keep it that way!).
Nonetheless, most people I have spoken with across the political spectrum have
been uncomfortable with a lot of these previously mentioned “cancel culture”
tactics. They may support the underlying causes and some specific
implementations of the various tactics, but they don’t like the normalization
of the tactics against everything perceived as wrong or offensive. Maybe there
are times when stopping someone’s speech is necessary, especially without
question when it treads into dangerous territory of inciting violence. However,
it’s hardly clear that it should be something we are comfortable with
normalizing.
When it comes to comedy, I can’t help but
think about this George Carlin interview
[YouTube link]. He talks about the importance of comedy targeting people in
power and those that abuse others. He appears to have a concern with those who
target the marginalized in society, even if he wouldn’t want to ban any comic’s
ability to make such jokes. However, there is an ethical question regarding
when comedy can “go too far”. On this question, I mentioned in a
recent Facebook livestream that I laughed very hard at Lisa Lampanelli’s comedy routines [YouTube
link]. They were very offensive without question. And her packed, very
diverse audiences were always laughing very hard.
However, in the chat section of the livestream, I responded to a dear friend by saying: “On the one hand, few of us can deny that we find her comedy hilarious. People of all backgrounds in her very diverse audiences were on the floor. On the other hand, there does seem to be a limit of ‘going too far’, but that’s going to vary with each person and their values. So, what’s the way forward? A messy, difficult one that probably has no absolute standards.”
So, in short, I don’t know what the reasonable limits of comedy are. I imagine the answer isn’t “everything is permitted” or “nothing offensive can be permitted”. If that’s the case, and we can’t fall back on simple standards of condoning everything or condemning anything offensive, then we have to make the tough calls, risk being inconsistent or wrong, or, in dialectical fashion, look at the context and see that something may not be right under one context rather than another. But I won’t claim to know where to come down on everything. I just know that I reject the rigid extremes here. Check out one approach to this subject by George Carlin [YouTube link; especially 9:42 to 11:50). I have issues with it, but I still like hearing his perspective as a comedian who was sensitive to these issues. Just like me, he doesn’t get the final word.
You might ask: What should we do about
all of this? Well, that’s easier said than done. And I am not going to claim to
have all the answers here. However, I think we have an obligation to stand up
for those who are oppressed and should not remain silent just because it is
easier or more comfortable. I think we should organize and seek to increase
inclusivity and justice in our culture and governance institutions. We should
have more than deconstruction and disruption. We need a positive way forward.
We need an opening of society. No such opening will come without significant changes
to our society, including, importantly, to the economy. Supporting gay marriage
and transgender inclusivity in schools isn’t going to help the homeless gay or
transgender individual. Those things matter but they are not the only things
that matter. At the end of the day, unless we start having more open and honest
conversations about these matters, rather than avoiding discussing them (common
with the right-wing) or shutting down anyone who doesn’t measure up to peak SJW
performance (common with the Progressive Left), we will not make the progress
we want on these various important issues.
What about the 2020 demonstrations and riots following the killing of George Floyd by police? First, let us point out that the killing of George Floyd took place in May, just two months after the COVID pandemic took off in the United States. So much of society shut down, many had died or were dying with COVID, people were out-of-work with little to do, finances were rough, tensions were high, we were in a heavily divided election year, and had a president who played on the discord for his own gain. Whew! That’s a lot! This was far from the first wrongful killing of an African American man by US police. But it was the first one that gained major attention post-pandemic. Once it happened, the long history of anger and frustration surrounding this ongoing problem with police erupted into mass protests and riots across the country. My knee-jerk reaction was to come out in full support of anything fighting against this despicable institution. However, I dialogued with a lot of people who disagreed, including African Americans themselves. Several pointed out the harm it caused to so many minority neighborhoods. It’s one thing to protest, demonstrate, and disrupt powerful institutions (like Wall Street and the police). It’s another to burn down and destroy small businesses, the local pharmacy, and homes.
Some may say this is the price of activism and standing up for what is right. I’m not so sure that’s the case. I wouldn’t disagree that it is the price of a very immoral and bankrupt system. But it’s true that once people take to the streets en masse, you often get people who take advantage of the disruption to cause reckless damage with little concern for the lives and well-being of others. Most protesters and most people were not in support of such destruction. An important point is that we should be more angry with the cause of the discord than the discord itself. In contrast, the reactionary who is fine with things being as they are gets more upset with the discord. The reactionary would just love for everyone to go home or protest in ineffective ways that don’t stress the system and incentivize it to change for the better. I certainly don’t want to come across as defending that. However, I think we need to do better than raising our fists and getting excited over watching the local pharmacy burning to the ground. I reject the idea that we must defend every action that happened during the summer of 2020. I also reject the idea that that was the most effective way to address these matters. Regardless, I also know that such social upheavel is difficult to manage or plan ahead for, so we should put more of our resources and thinking towards making our society better so that we don’t warrant such upheaval in the first place. My Dialectical Left-Libertarian approach applied to the 2020 George Floyd protests/riots would want to ensure that any actions were in line with increasing freedom & flourishing for all, especially those most marginalized. If a given tactic or action leads to the destruction of the very lives and neighborhoods that we seek to strengthen and empower, then something is very wrong.
My last point applies to all these topics. There is a real problem with forgiveness, compassion, and flexible thinking in many social justice circles. Though I have hit on the dogmatism and rigidity already before, it is necessary to bring it up again because it is linked with an increased difficulty with forgiveness and compassion. Many people in these circles become so charged, rigid, and intense, that they start to treat others who fall short of their views with callousness, indifference, and aggression. You could be largely in line with them on most things—but fall short anywhere (how dare you, imperfect human!) and get prepared to be cancelled, attacked, smeared, and thrown away without a moment’s thought! We need to distance ourselves from some people or get them out of our lives—especially when they are actively hostile and don’t care. It’s not our responsibility to engage and try to “reform” everyone. But people like the ones being addressed here go to such extremes. They tend to lack compassion for others and look for things to condemn them for with no forgiveness on the horizon. That’s a toxic phenomenon that has no potential for building a just world. If we can’t forgive and show compassion, we fall into permanent war with nearly everyone. Permanent war is not preferable or sustainable, and it doesn’t have seeds for building a free and flourishing society for all. So, if we are to advocate for social justice, we are going to need to get in touch with compassion and forgiveness. If we don’t, we won’t get social justice. Instead, we will get social isolation and decline.
Like I have said many times at this
point, this is not my final word or the final word on any of
these matters. However, I wanted to cover these various contentious issues and
find a way to apply my Dialectical Left-Libertarian approach to them. Let’s
continue the project of “context-keeping” for freedom &
flourishing together by continuing to dialogue and finding out better ways to
approach very difficult issues and topics.
And don’t forget! You (which includes me) most likely didn’t always hold the views you do now. You most likely didn’t always advocate for social justice for all. You most likely suffered (and maybe continue to suffer) from serious ideological blindspots. Before you beat people down with the social justice stick, think instead about the compassion and support you would have liked to have had during a previous stage of your life. Then attempt to give that to the person in need. If they reject it and get hostile, move along. At least you tried rather than writing them off. And who knows, maybe a social justice seed was still planted and will sprout down the road.
***
In the Facebook thread that followed, I stated:
I
am so very impressed with the careful way in which you laid out your case, and
even more impressed with the ways in which you have applied the whole notion of
context-keeping, so essential to dialectical thinking, to the process of
exposition. If people cannot articulate their views in ways that even attempt
to “reach across the divide”, they will forever be speaking in an
echo chamber. And if they surround themselves with nobody but people who think
likewise, they will find themselves caught up in the righteousness of their
ideas without any concern for how those ideas are to be implemented in a
pluralistic society. In other words, people need to exhibit the very charitable
and compassionate ideals they claim to extol in the communicative process. If
folks can’t even do that, then they are likely never to achieve those
charitable, compassionate, or just ideals. To “know your audience”,
as you put it, is essential, therefore, not only to the ability to communicate,
but also essential to effectively making your point.
I also think that it is important to
note, as you do so clearly, how we all need to have active minds that are open
to our own self-acknowledgement of an evolution in our thinking—intellectually,
psychologically, and emotionally.
I cannot take issue with anything you’ve said above. A job so very well done. It does not solve every problem—nor is it intended to—and if it leads to “pushback”, so be it. And if that “pushback” only goes to prove the points you have made (something that I’ve seen in threads on my own Timeline), so be it. It is just refreshing to see honesty, self-awareness, and compassion shedding light on topics that too often generate heat. …
Since this is a very touchy subject, there are many people who are literally afraid to discuss this issue; hence, they engage in the self-censorship of silence. And that, perhaps, is the greatest casualty of the phenomena that you so bravely address.
Since I’ve devoted so much space to
Ryan’s post, I’ll let him have the last word here:
That’s
a very fair point. To speak positively about social justice in most right-wing
spaces gets you hit with nasty comments, accusations, and demands that you
answer for every extreme taken by someone in the name of social justice. To
speak critically about social justice in most left-wing spaces gets you
cancelled, accused of being a fascist or racist, told you are simply speaking
from a place of privilege, or some other dismissive or harsh response. Very
unfortunate. Maybe we can work towards undoing that with more of these type
discussions. ❤
