Ginny

Shannon’s take on the small role “moral values” (at least as seen by left apologists) played is clearly backed by the polls; Brooks’s sense of the red/blue divisions is thoughtful. I would argue that values were important but these values are deep and elusive–the positions on taxes and the economy, on Iraq and terrorism are consequences of values. Let’s step back.

In the nineteenth century, England built an empire on which the sun never set. That was the realm of Queen Victoria, whose passion for Albert and the children they bred defined Victorian “family values”. The emphasis upon celibacy for lower and middle class women may, indeed, look like hypocrisy in the time of Jack the Ripper and Hardy’s forlorn women, but it also built the foundations of a solid, middle-class society growing out of the hard work and faithful union of lower class parents. The customs, growing more rigid as Queen Victoria aged, protected lower class women from the seductions of upper-class men, who slowly were taught that a gentleman did not take advantage of his position. These quaint social rules had economic and social (and I suspect pragmatically happy) ramifications. (See Himmelfarb.)

Victorians were concerned with values – loyalty, duty, hard work, truth, justice—because they were an empire. What they did, they knew, was freighted. They did horrible things in the name of that empire, but they also spread the rule of law; they abolished slavery (slowly perhaps but not as slowly as we) in their colonies, they respected women, they enfranchised (more slowly perhaps than we but not so much later) an ever larger pool of people. Perhaps they smugly and arrogantly (we see its remnants today in the Guardian’s desire to instruct the benighted ex-colonists of Clark County) assumed entitlement – well, no “perhaps”, they did. Nonetheless, as Dinesh D’Souza often acknowledges, being a British colony brought a certain luck. The Brits held themselves responsible, keeping that moral compass in mind; they sensed that when they lost their way they were likely to take a chunk of the world with them.

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A couple of weeks ago, Reason took a survey of the voting preferences of various libertarian luminaries. One of the most luminous, Pinker, argued with some reasonable (if, I thought, disproportionate) examples of the irrational homeland security policy. He told us he’d vote for Kerry because Bush uses too little reason. Well, maybe. But this weekend I’m struck by examples of how little reason the “scientific” community uses in approaching Bush and, well, how “reasonable” Bush is. Indeed, I wonder if these “reasoning” Bush-haters realize how tattered the public’s respect for such professional judgments is likely to be after these last few months. And how this loss of authority is likely to play out in the future.

As Shannon Love has noted, The Lancet, a respected science journal, wants to affect our votes. I figure we all do (and should) vote from an American perspective. Sure the Brits stood by us (and the Iraqis); they deserve a polite response. They do not deserve the respect a commentator asked for – that by the nature of the journal we should respect its conclusions. But if any other nation has earned our ears about this election it is probably Iraq. If we should vote against Bush for the reasons The Lancet raises, we should hear an amen from the Iraqis. I’m not sure that’s the word they’d choose.

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This Sunday’s Booknotes on C-SPAN 1, at 8:00 and 11:00 p.m., is an interview with Chris Wallace, discussing his work, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage.

With the indispensable contributions of Richard E. Neustadt– author of the seminal Presidential Power, former adviser to presidents Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson, and founder of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government– Wallace has chosen nearly twenty notable acts of presidential courage in our nation’s history, including: George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion, Theodore Roosevelt and the Russo-Japanese War, Harry Truman and the Berlin Airlift, and George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. More.

If you haven’t sufficiently od’d yet, this is C-SPAN’s “All Politics Weekend”. You can view speeches from all the main candidates as well as other “election-related” programs on C-SPAN1, while C-SPAN2’s Booktv concentates on “election-themed” books. Given that concentration, the schedule demonstrates variety. For instance, at Saturday at 4:45, Stanley Renshon and Justin Frank discuss their psychological profiles of Bush. Then, Peter Singer critiques Bush’s ethics (Sunday at 5:30). (Well, perhaps these should be taken seriously; what do I know?) A variety of pundits, election analysts, and cultural critics all focus upon the nature of the elections, the nature of our divided country, and the nature of the candidates. For those of you that masochistically want to revisit the last election, on Saturday at 8 in the evening and Sunday at 11 you can catch David Boies discuss his memoir, Courting Justice; despite its Oct. 13, 2004 pub date, it covers more than the Bush/Gore case.

The complete schedule is not yet up. So far, it seems clear that some sessions are likely to illuminate either issues or our current, divided culture. Others, of course, may either reassure you in your choice or lead you to throw things at the tv. Have fun – and watch that blood pressure.

Looking ahead, the next “In-Depth” author, David Hackett Fischer, will submit himself to the 3-hour phone-in monthly session on Nov. 7. That interview will be run throughout Sunday and be repeated early Monday morning. He will be discussing works that deal with issues often discussed on this blog. We can hope the election will be over by then and we can be charmed by his historical perspective as we discover our (at least my) lost proportionality during this political season.