American Prospect and Retrospect

By Aziz George B. Sayigh | Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Lengthened Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty First Century
Roger Kimball & Hilton Kramer, eds.
Encounter, 2004

Lengthened Shadows offers a survey of American institutions in the twenty-first century—from war and diplomacy, music and poetry, architecture, education, religion, law, and multiculturalism. These engines of American society are explored in ten uncommon essays, originally published in The New Criterion from September 2003 to June 2004, each dissecting an angle of American cultural and political life. Despite the broad scope of the book, it delves deeply into the institutions in question, offering historical perspective as well as predictions and ideas for the future. As the events of 9/11 continue to impact our society and with murky swirl of controversy clouding the future, Lengthened Shadows' timely, genuine exploration sheds light on the important questions of the day. This is both retrospect and prospect.

The book opens with Keith Windschuttle's The Burdens of Empire, an essay that places America's seemingly unprecedented power and influence in the context of past world powers. He explores the roots of America's intellectual anti-imperialism and how that has affected its foreign policy, tempering the imperial tendencies of this powerful nation. Windschuttle acknowledges, "imperialism's long-standing bad reputation is now being quickly reappraised." Good historians are pointing out imperialism's contribution to advancing the human condition, as well as the oft-repeated negative effects. Nevertheless, Windschuttle believes that the strain on an empire is too much, and with no rival imperial force the United States should limit itself to military intervention.

On the subject of the military, Frederick Kagan, in The Art of War, explains that redundancy (i.e. overlap) has in part given the U.S. the most dominant military in the world. For example, our rapid victories in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq each required slightly different and seemingly overlapping methods and technologies. In an effort to cut costs while at the same time retaining our relative dominance, the United States has decided to focus primarily on Network-Centric Warfare (NCW), or long range, precision guided munitions, which could serve many military purposes at once, thereby eliminating redundancy. The idea is that the United States is already so dominant at NCW that it could "lockout" any competition in that field and thereby dominate all other militaries.

The problem, however, is that when you dominate in only one thing, you are both easier to defend against and to catch up to, especially as more time passes (Kagan cites Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany). Furthermore, NCW cannot win people over, find enemies hidden throughout the world, or passively hold ground like an army can, clearly all issues in Iraq today. Kagan concludes that in the military "redundancy is a virtue" and efficiency a weakness, and that the United States should strive to be as strong as possible in every military aspect.

What of modernism, a style defined by breaking from tradition, in the twenty-first century, when it has become the tradition? Hilton Kramer, editor in chief of the New Criterion, writes Modernism & Its Institutions, an essay exploring the future of modernist visual arts. He presents the aforementioned fundamental question facing modernism, and how modernist museums, art galleries, and publications are dealing with their own "self-immolation." He also mentions the postmodernism nihilistic assault, and claims that modernism will continue to yield results even in the face of these challenges.

Michael Lewis, in Architecture After Modernism, explores the trajectory of architecture after the impact of utilitarian modernist architecture. The first order of the day, Lewis emphasizes, is "settled traditions of decorum, custom, and above all a belief that architecture is a high and noble art." Eric Ormsby similarly ponders the uncertain future of American poetry in Of Lapdogs and Loners: American Poetry Today. He humorously analyzes the collection Poets Against the War, explaining that there is bad poetry and then there is bad poetry "that positively suppurates self-righteousness." He does mention that he admires Seamus Heaney and Charles Wright, among other active poets, and that there may be hope yet.

Jay Nordlinger is more optimistic in his analysis of the state of classical music. In Tending the Gardens of Music, he mentions that classical performers continue to excel and be well remunerated despite lower demand and poor music composition these days. He reminds us that the pendulum of music swings back and forth, and that viewing classical orchestra's as museums, just like a museum of any kind of art, is quite fine.

Mark Steyn, in his excellent essay Expensive Illiterates, points out that American education is increasingly emphasizing sensitivity and "positive messages" rather than facts and actual debate. This "flight from facts to feelings," Steyn explains, is a key factor in the statistical decline of American students, despite all the money being spent on them. Whether a school is replacing a Thanksgiving celebration with an Indian American talking about his feelings (incidentally from a tribe that had nothing to do with the first Thanksgiving nor New England), forcing unrelated Kwanza or Great Spirit references into a Christmas play, or using an exclusively pro-gay clergy in a discussion on "Homosexuality and Religion," schools are sacrificing the facts for their positive message, leaving the children only with vague, fluffy feelings.

Steyn also mentions the American fetish of pointing out our failings and hypocrisies—we love to remind ourselves that our founding fathers were "racists, murderers of Indians, representatives of class interests." However, "to understand the blemishes on the record, you first have to understand the record." Otherwise you have people reflexively taking the side opposite America in every argument. By the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, the social studies teacher of Steyn's neighbor had informed her class that the United States killed more civilians in the fire bombing at Dresden. This self-loathing naturally serves as a launching pad for America's enemies, both foreign and domestic. Fundamentalist Muslim madrasahs, often serving as a recruiting mill for terrorists, focus extensively on America's wrongdoings. As heinous as the schools are, how can we expect them to be anything less when we ourselves emphasize all our faults, often out of a desire to be "sensitive" to anyone that could have conceivably been wronged by us.

Robert Bork, in Olympians on the March: The Courts and the Culture Wars, emphasizes the extent to which subjectivity invades the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, which should of course be as objective as humanly possible. The growing trend violates some of the most important premises of the American justice system. First is the Constitution. Out of a desire to spread their enlightened philosophy to the lower slopes of human existence, judges often reason "backwards from desired results to spurious rationales," thereby making the Constitution a superfluous afterthought. Another premise regularly violated by the Courts is that justice should be blind. The most notorious example is during the Warren Court, when the Supreme Court was on its socialist bent and "the less favored in life" became "the more favored in law."

As socialism became discredited because of its failures around the world, the "new left" of the sixties emerged, with its emphasis on personal autonomy rather than equality. Just like other fads in history, this one eventually found its way into the courts, and now we have the so called "activist judges" representing neither the Constitution nor the opinions of the majority of Americans. Part of the problem, Bork argues, is that too many people see the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, as nearly infallible—they may disagree with some conclusions but rarely question the reasoning, which has been more often of late some "primitive and sophomoric version of moral philosophy." Bork is not entirely pessimistic—he notes that "some young professors have appeared who take the study of the Constitution quite seriously" and that perhaps this may find its way back into the courts.

These articles offer an equivocal view of the future, emphasizing that to overcome the external and internal forces that threaten us requires an active role by all those who do not want to see the denouement of American civilization. But there is still hope, and that is the important thing. Above all, while these essays strike important notes of elegy and outrage, it is tempered by resolve, good spirits, and hope for resurgence. Roger Kimball reminds us of Ben Franklin's famous dictum: "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." They are as true today as they ever were.

American Prospect and Retrospect

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