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Me
Someone, taking
umbrage at something I had written, asked me the other day, “Who do you think
you are?” I’ve attempted below in a self-interview a brief answer to the
question. There will be no forthcoming autobiography.
Q: You have been
writing on Connecticut politics for more than 40 years, and your blog site, Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a
Blue State, is the oldest commentary site devoted to Connecticut
politics in the state. How would you characterize yourself politically?
A: I like to call myself a contrarian journalist.
Q: Not a conservative?
A: My wife, Andree, and I were good friends with Bill
Buckley, who was, in the view of friends and enemies alike, responsible for the
modern American conservative movement. I don’t think he considered me a
conservative. He liked my columns and agreed with many of them. But
conservatism and its political opposite, neo-progressivism, are political
orientations, not philosophies. My orientation is perhaps more cynical, in a
good sense, than either of them.
Some people may be surprised to learn that Buckley styled
himself a libertarian, though of course not an Ayn Rand libertarian. “Happy Days Were Here Again” – note the
past tense -- is subtitled “Reflections
of a Libertarian Journalist.” I hope I am a contrarian in the fashion of
Sam Adams, Voltaire, many of the founders of the country, and my wife, who is
far more conservative than I am. By the way, those journalists in the state who
falsely pride themselves as being bi-partisan and objective will agree that any
true contrarian journalist in Connecticut must be more conservative than -- to
choose but one Democrat legislator in the state’s neo-progressive General
Assembly -- President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney.
Q: So, can we say you have a warm spot in your heart for
both conservatives and libertarians?
A: If you choose to frame it that way, I have no strong
objection. What I am practicing, however, is contrarian journalism. In a state
brimming over with neo-progressives, the contrarian necessarily is forced into
the arms of conservatives and libertarians. Buckley somewhere talks about his
alliance with Albert Jay Nock, one of his tutors at Yale, a true contrarian and
the author of Our Enemy the State. Elsewhere in
his writings, Buckley mentions that Nock was incapable of having more than one
friend at a time. Buckley was just the opposite. At his house in Stamford –
painted pink, his wife Pat said, “to attract the sailors” – one could find all
manner of people chatting together amiably. A good newspaper, Joseph Pulitzer
once said, should have no friends.
Q: You’ve said somewhere – I can’t remember where – that
Athanasius’ motto, “Contra Mundum,” appeals to you.
A: Yes, “Man Against The World.” There ought to be more of
that in today’s journalism, if only because journalism is the art of depicting
reality, rather than succumbing to political fantasies.
Q: So, the contrarian journalist in Connecticut, if true to
Athanasius’ dictum, probably would find himself or herself flirting with
conservatives or libertarians.
A: That alliance, always
impermanent, is inescapable. One of the problems with neo-progressive
journalists is that they have too many neo-progressive friends, many of them in-office
politicians, and lack the integrity embraced by Athanasius, a solid and
solitary Christian among a throng of dominant pagans.
Q: You don’t like one-party
states.
A: I don’t. Neither should anyone
who prizes liberty and free – meaning wide-ranging – discussions among the
friends of democracy and republican governance. In a room of neo-progressives,
doors are necessarily closed to alternative political visions. Former Governor
of Connecticut Dannel Malloy was famous for shooing out of caucus rooms state Republicans
tainted with contrary notions. Governor Ned Lamont is different. He is not
uncomfortable with free market ideas, an overlooked political strength. Lamont
is, on the other hand, new to state politics, a fever swamp of rival
ideologies. One can always spot an ideology. Strike it with a sledge hammer and
it will give off a tinny sound, like the tinkling of an unexamined prejudice. The
curtsey to leftist notions, however absurd, is the sign of a true ideologue.
Q: And political campaigns leave
you cold.
A: Political campaigning – in
Lear’s words, a hypersensitive concern with “who’s in, who’s out” –is the bane
of modern politics.
Chastised by events over which he
has no control, Lear says to his only faithful daughter, Cordelia:
No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies. And we’ll wear out
In a walled prison packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.
Such is the life of spent
politicians on their way to secular oblivion and straight and true journalists --
“God’s spies.”
God may forgive Lear, the
politician, his sins. But his political enemies will withhold forgiveness,
convinced, as Lear once was, that today and tomorrow are eternal.
Q; And your advice to journalists
would be what?
A: G. K. Chesterton used to say,
“Journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who never
knew Lord Jones was alive.”
Stick in there. Chesterton did,
and he produced about 14 volumes of re-readable and quotable journalism.
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