More from Dr. Fleming on culture

To refine a bit on cultura. It comes from the Latin verb colere, which means to tend or take care of. In farming, it is the tending of fields (but also by extension to settle in a place or inhabit a house); in religion, it is doing what is necessary–e.g., worshipping, respecting–towards the gods. It can also be applied to virtues or studies. Thus culture is not simply high art as bought and consumed by rich people, but culture consists of our most serious and worthy pursuits. The English word was given a particularized meaning by Tylor and became more or less synonymous with “what anthropologists study.” It is very useful, if we stick to a literal understanding, but the fuzzier it gets–and the more abstract–the more dangerous. On this point, Frank is quite correct. If we say that every political and legal problem has a cultural root, then, we are saying that the American mores have been corrupted and not just on the surface.

I don’t think anyone here would underestimate the evils done by activist judges and corrupt politicians, but such men do not get elected by accident. It has been a long decline, since, say the 1850’s, to say nothing of the 1790’s. In the first 60 years of the republic America was not governed by angels or demigods, and corrupt fixers like Van Buren could even get elected president, but the damage they did was limited not by our intelligence–which has never been the strong suit in our country but by the American character that could often distinguish between the false and true or at least between a talented and public-spirited humbug like Daniel Webster and the sort of shabby liars that filled the Grant administration. This is a long story, but the closing of the frontier, combined with mass immigration, have produced an American character that has some virtues but is quite distinct from the old American. We still produce an occasional trouble-maker like Edward Abbey, but Abbey in his lifetime was already an anachronism. The Americans of 1835 would not have stomached a ruling class (including judges) that mistreated them in the way we are mistreated today, nor would the opposition consist of loud-mouthed yahoos. It would have been led by the sort of people who led the revolution.

Finally, I hope no one is going to be sucked into the McCain camp on the strength of his choice of an inexperienced and dizzy hockey mom as VP candidate. It is true that Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama–but, then, so do I. I have nothing to say against Mrs. Palin, who is probably a fine person and a good mother, even if she does name her children things like Bristol, Track, and Trig. She says she is pro-life, though what she has done to protect life I don’t law, and opposed to gay marriage and civil unions. When Alaska passed a law limiting spousal benefits, she vetoed it, apparently on the advice of the attorney-general, but friends also say that because of her homosexual and lesbian friends, she is sensitive to their rights. I wonder if she knows any one who has had an abortion. I am not saying she his a hypocrite, only a ditzy journalism major who does not seem to have thought through the issues.

The idea that Mrs. Palin might become president does inspire a bit of glee, but only in the malicious sense that Mencken once said he could never leave America, because in a country full of clowns, he could pose as a wise man. She is a satirist’s dream, but in that she is only slightly more qualified than Biden and McCain.

Legalizing abortion was a terrible thing to do, not because we should run around wringing our hands over the fact that millions of babies we don’t know are being judicially murdered, but because a million plus mothers a year are killing their own children. Changing the laws will deter some of them, but only some. The problem is not so much the law: What if they passed a law legalizing cannibalism? If millions of Americans took to eating each other, wouldn’t there be a deeper problem? Similarly, I don’t know if there are laws against coprophagy, but with or without a law, we don’t eat excrement, and if it were legalized, even our contemporaries might think twice about taking up the habit. Judges are chosen by presidents and approved by senators, who with the presidents are elected by the people. I do not say all Americans are guilty or even most, but it is an exercise in futility to think that McCain-Palin can change our world for us, even if they wanted to.

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