"Neoconservatism and the Arab Revolutions"

Here's a teaser from Ross Douthat's review of discussion among neoconservatives about what the U.S. military should do or not do in the Arab crescent currently in tumult. He takes pains to highlight the present disparity between neoconservatives and the Israeli government, which are often mistaken for one another.

The New York Times columnist frames the ideas in a way that clearly belie his own empathetic position to neoconservative sensibilities. But he concludes, so true to form, with a soft-touch but clear rejection of the idea to wage intervention with any involvement of U.S. boots on the ground.

Douthat starts and ends as follows:

"[Here is] a good piece exploring the divide that’s opened between American neoconservatives and many Israelis over the revolutions and protests currently roiling the Middle East — with neocons welcoming the fall of Hosni Mubarak and the promise of democratic change throughout the region, even as the Israeli leadership classes wax more pessimistic about the likely consequences of replacing despots with more popular regimes. “Could there be a starker illustration of just how mistaken the neocon-Israeli conflation always was?” Kirchik [the author of the linked piece] asks, and he’s right: The last few weeks should bury, once and for all, the foolish idea that neoconservatism’s rhetorical commitment to democracy promotion is just a smokescreen for Likudnik dual loyalties or U.S. imperialism.

...

"... The last time we imposed a no-fly zone on a weakened Arab tyrant who we hoped would soon be toppled by his own people, the year was 1992 and the tyrant in question was Saddam Hussein — and we have been at war in Iraq, in one sense or another, ever since."

Douthat on Christianity and Christmas

Ross Douthat of the New York Times takes on some of the more prickly cultural aspects of present-day American Christianity in his latest column. His prose begins with a certain whiff of cynicism before plateauing to a more insightful double book review of sorts on the state of the Christian faith, in a season when it is so consciously thought of (even if this mainly takes the form of shopping and social-event planning). Douthat begins:

"... This is also the season when American Christians can feel most embattled. Their piety is overshadowed by materialist ticky-tack. Their great feast is compromised by Christmukkwanzaa multiculturalism. And the once-a-year churchgoers crowding the pews beside them are a reminder of how many Americans regard religion as just another form of midwinter entertainment, wedged in between “The Nutcracker” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” 

Boom!, cracks the columnist's irony. But Douthat's real thesis emerges late and tucked in among other thoughts of the third paragraph.

These anxieties can be overdrawn, and they’re frequently turned to cynical purposes... But they also reflect the peculiar and complicated status of Christian faith in American life. Depending on the angle you take, Christianity is either dominant or under siege, ubiquitous or marginal, the strongest religion in the country or a waning and increasingly archaic faith.

He goes on to describe the arch of American Christianity's progress to the state we find it in today. Borrowing the metaphor of "a shock and two aftershocks," namely the cultural revolution of the 1960s, followed by the religious conservatism that arose through the 1980s-era "moral majority" and the culture wars of the 1990s. The second aftershock is taking place now, "a backlash to that backlash — a revolt against the association between Christian faith and conservative politics... in which millions of Americans (younger Americans, especially) may be abandoning organized Christianity altogether."

On the European side of things, the near-empty churches and chapels scattered over the European continent seem to have experienced this exodus of the young decades ago. Not since before World War II has Christian life on the Old Continent known any semblance of thriving culture that includes a sizable contingent of the young. Perhaps the U.S. (and Canada, too) is slowly edging toward a European likeness, where Christianity is marginalized as a practice and sometimes openly mocked by opinion leaders in a manner not tolerated States-side.

Douthat ends with a provocative final thought, which bears an uncanny relevance to Europe if one chooses to read it that way. I'll make my conclusion by borrowing his:

"... Believing Christians are no longer what they once were — an overwhelming majority in a self-consciously Christian nation [or civilization]. The question is whether they can become a creative and attractive minority in a different sort of culture, where they’re competing not only with rival faiths but with a host of pseudo-Christian spiritualities, and where the idea of a single religious truth seems increasingly passé.

Or to put it another way, Christians need to find a way to thrive in a society that looks less and less like any sort of Christendom — and more and more like the diverse and complicated Roman Empire where their religion had its beginning."

UPDATE: In an event pregnant with symbolism given the above, the Obama family made a highly unusual church visit this past Sunday.

Douthat on Moderate Islam, Eurabia

Just dug up this thought-provoking pair of posts from Ross Douthat on moderate Islam and Eurabia, or the concept of European Islamification. Consider these part of the level-headed, rarefied side of conservative criticism in the Ground Zero mosque controversy. 

Christianity, Diversity and the Academy: An Echo

Not much commentary from my end on this one, just a pair of posts that deserve to be shared: Ross Douthat takes on the incongruities of modern diversity notions at elite American universities, most recently here, and here from late July. Very much related to the Supreme Court ruling on the Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez, described by the Pew Research Center in this somewhat outdated, but at least objective, piece.

A quick Google search revealed this article from the Brown Spectator on the Christians-as-peculiar notion prevalent on many college campuses. 

Comments welcome. 

French and American models of meritocracy

Here's some food for thought on the meritocratic systems in France and the US, culled from the latest post on Evaluations, the blog of NY Times editorialist Ross Douthat. Very much related to his insightful and provocative recent op-ed on access to the Ivy League by rural white America, which has been causing a decent stir... But back to French-US meritocracy:

"...So the meritocratic elite is not as left-wing, nor the “country party” as principled in its conservatism, as Codevilla wants to believe. Nor are our meritocrats quite as intellectually-challenged as [Codevilla would] like to think:

Much less does membership in the ruling class depend on high academic achievement. To see something closer to an academic meritocracy consider France, where elected officials have little power, a vast bureaucracy explicitly controls details from how babies are raised to how to make cheese, and people get into and advance in that bureaucracy strictly by competitive exams. Hence for good or ill, France’s ruling class are bright people — certifiably. Not ours. But didn’t ours go to Harvard and Princeton and Stanford? Didn’t most of them get good grades? Yes. But while getting into the Ecole Nationale d’Administration or the Ecole Polytechnique or the dozens of other entry points to France’s ruling class requires outperforming others in blindly graded exams, and graduating from such places requires passing exams that many fail, getting into America’s “top schools” is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile … our ruling class recruits and renews itself not through meritocracy but rather by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is their commitment to fit in.

"This is overdrawn... Elite colleges do seek high grades and sterling standardized test performances (SAT scores are still the coin of the meritocratic realm), and they do select for the brilliant and the driven — not with quite the same ruthless efficiency as the French, perhaps, but pretty ruthlessly all the same..."