Izgad and the Elders of Zion

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an anti-Semitic classic, dealing with a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It was endorsed by that great American hero Henry Ford, who helped publish a translation of the book in this country. More recently there was an excellent documentary, Protocols of Zion, by Marc Levin on the book and its continued influence, particularly in the Arab world. Levin was inspired to make this documentary after having an Egyptian taxi driver explain to him that the Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks.

I was perusing the Wheaton Public Library this evening through their Judaic section when, to my surprise, I came across a copy of the Protocols. Naturally I was greatly offended to see this compendium of falsehoods. Long ago I appointed myself, with unanimous approval, as High Comrade of the Young Elders of Zion and I can assure you that we are absolutely nothing like what you read about in the Protocols (and if we once were then we have certainly reformed our ways and eliminated all Protocol Jews.)

As you can see I do not have a bulbous hooked nose. Our organization offers nose jobs, as part of our health package, to all our Jewish employees. We are also far better dressed. Taking over the world, like mathematics, is a young man's game, no one older than thirty. We are not an exclusively Jewish organization; we have a proud gentile faction, the Shabbos Goys, for the gentiles who run around and do stuff for us in an unstoogelike fashion. It should be noted for the record that the Protocols is a Czarist forgery, plagiarized from several earlier anti-Semitic works.

All joking aside, the proposition of a public library openly having a copy of the Protocols on its shelves posed an interesting challenge to my liberalism. As a good old fashioned fighting nineteenth liberal, the notion of censorship is completely odious to me. I recognize the sort of Pandora's Box one opens with censorship. If I exercise my liberal indignation against the Protocols, other liberals might choose to come after Ann Coulter's books (not that I would consider this a bad thing). Next on the chopping block could be the Bell Curve, which argues that blacks really do have a problem when it comes to performing in standardized tests, and before long the mobs might be coming for this humble blog. As a historian, I see the Protocols as one of the most important primary source documents relating to modern anti-Semitism and the perfect history 101 lesson on how to turn texts against their authors. I wish for young aspiring historians to be able to easily be able to get a hold of this book. (Internet editions are also in abundance.)

That being said I recognize the danger of having this book on display as if it were just a regular book. By allowing this book on the shelf, the government of Montgomery County is saying that this is a book of opinions alongside other opinions. You can be pro health care or against it, pro the war in Iraq or against or believe that there is a secret cabal of Jews pulling the strings behind all of this. If I am to engage in the public discourse of free citizens then I need you to give me the benefit of the doubt about my beliefs and intentions. I may be wrong in my beliefs (As I tell my students, much of history is the story of very smart people with really bad ideas.) and it may be that what I propose will lead to utter disaster. You must still assume that, despite my wrong ideas, I came by them honestly and that I mean them for the best. I cannot prove that I am not part of some sort of dark conspiracy. You just have to give me the benefit of the doubt and let my ideas stand or fall in the free marketplace of ideas. At the very least hate literature like the Protocols should not be treated any better than pornography. If the library is not going to leave pornographic material out where the young and impressionable can easily find it and form their own opinions about it then they should not be leaving hate literature out on the open shelves.

I took this copy of the Protocols over to the two librarians at the side desk to show them what they had. The two ladies were very kind to me. To my shock, neither of them had ever heard of the Protocols. (I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing.) I politely explained to them that I was opposed to censorship and did not want the book removed. I suggested a number of possibilities. The book could be put on some sort of reserved section for anyone who specifically asks for it. (Much the same way that stores keep their pornography behind counters and people have to ask for it. No, I have never tried to ask for some.) Another idea would be to create a separate section for hate literature and put the Protocols there. (Whether this entire section should be behind lock and key is another issue.) It turns out that the book was cataloged under the Dewey decimal system under anti-Semitism and therefore ended up right next to Judaics.

Calvin and Hobbes the Documentary

One of the most influential forces in my childhood was the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Calvin and Hobbes is about the adventures of a six year old named Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes. (Whether Hobbes is a real live tiger or only a figment of Calvin’s imagination is a matter left up to the reader.) Calvin and Hobbes was written in an era before Asperger syndrome was known in the United States and long before I was diagnosed. That being said I do see Calvin as a poster child for Asperger syndrome. He is someone with an adult processing system, even if he applies it to a six year old’s understanding of the world, who does not relate to others. Instead Calvin prefers to live in a world of his own creation full of tigers, superheroes and aliens. The other humans in the strip may see Calvin as a misbehaving child, who simply refuses to comply with what is expected of him. The reader, though, knows better; Calvin is special in his own right, who needs to be judged by a different standard.

Watterson retired from the strip in 1995 largely because he refused to commercialize his strip and allow for tie in products. The only tie in product he ever allowed was a limited edition textbook for special education children and that was because teachers begged him to allow them to formally use his work in their classrooms. There are not many people out there who can say that they turned their backs on millions of dollars over a matter of principle. Considering all this, there is a snowball’s chance in hell of there ever being a Calvin and Hobbes movie ever being made. A documentary on this strip, though, is now in the works, called Dear Mr. Watterson. It is a work by fans of the strip, talking about what Calvin and Hobbes means for them.

Teaser from DMW on Vimeo.

Michael Moore Learns about Patriotism: Some Thoughts on American Carol

Before the film, American Carol, started there was an ad for the National Guard. It featured National Guard troops in action spliced with Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving in a NASCAR race with heavy metal music in the background. I take it as a good sign that I am capable of looking at something like this with a mixture of confusion and amusement. I take it as a sign that I am not some mindless drone of the conservative movement. I am not certain what Dale Earnhardt Jr., who I am sure is a wonderful guy, and a patriot who supports our troops, and NASCAR has to do with the National Guard. The dramatic high point of the ad was a scene in which a Humvee full of American soldiers is driving full-throttle through the dusty streets of a Middle Eastern town when all of a sudden a soccer ball crosses the Humvee’s path. The Humvee breaks and comes to a complete stop right in front of the soccer ball. A soldier gets out and with a nod from his commanding officer kicks the ball over to a Muslim boy, who looks back at the American soldier with a look of awe, gratitude, and respect. Upon seeing this, I broke laughing; this was too over the top to bear. I think it is a problem when you cannot tell the difference between a propaganda piece and a piece of satire.

American Carol bills itself as the first conservative film to come out of mainstream Hollywood and is devoted to sticking it to the liberal establishment. (I would point to Team America: World Police as a film that preceded it.) It is a send-up to Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol and spoofs Michael Moore. It features an overweight radical leftist documentary filmmaker in a Michigan State baseball cap named Michael Malone in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Malone despises all things American, including his tall good-looking all all-American nephew, who is serving in the Navy. He hates America so much that he wishes to abolish the Fourth of July. The night before he is to speak at an abolish the Fourth of July rally, Malone is visited by the spirits of John F. Kennedy, George S. Patton, and George Washington, who teach him the true meaning of patriotism.

I laughed my heart out through the film’s eighty-plus minutes and would have loved to have gotten more. I am not sure what was my favorite bit; a group of black slaves breaking out into hava nagilah while picking cotton or the shootout with ACLU zombies out to deliver injunctions to make it impossible to check the bags of potential terrorists and destroy the Ten Commandments. (This still does not compare to season four of Twenty-Four when the villain, upon finding out that one of his people had been captured, calls a group named Amnesty Global to inform them that an innocent man was being illegally held by CTU. A lawyer from Amnesty Global then shows up with a court order, banning CTU from questioning the person they hold. Fortunately, Jack Bauer ignores this and proceeds to break the guy’s fingers one by one until he gives over the information necessary to save the day and stop a nuclear device from wiping out Los Angeles.)

I feel that I can recommend this film to everyone across the political spectrum, without any sense of guilt, as a hands-down brilliant piece of political satire. I am not saying this simply because I agree with the film’s politics. I enjoyed watching Michael Moore’s films too. Bowling for Columbine was absolutely hilarious and even Fahrenheit 9/11 had its share of good moments. I think that Michael Moore is a brilliant filmmaker whose work can be enjoyed regardless of one’s politics. (I also think that Leni Riefenstahl’s films are genius despite the fact that they are Nazi propaganda.)

While I enjoyed the film I had a number of problems with it. These problems may seem like quibbling on my part but I do see these things as a cause for concern. The film has Patton show Malone an alternative universe where Lincoln had followed Malone in thinking that violence never solves anything and did not fight the Civil War. Malone finds that his family has moved to the South and that he is now a major slaveholder. A very funny bit without any question. The problem is that Patton came from a Confederate family. His grandfather fought under Robert E. Lee. Of all the people that the film could have picked to make their point, Patton might not have been the best choice. Patton also takes Malone to the Munich conference of 1938 where Neville Chamberlin shines the shoes of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. It was great having Hitler strumming a guitar and singing a peace song, but, and maybe this is me being the nitpicky historian, it bothered me that Tojo was put in Munich. Japan had nothing to do with Munich.

These small historical bloopers could be laughed off if it were not for the fact that it is part of a larger assault on academia. The film clearly has a gripe with academics. Malone even gets to visit a peace studies course at Columbia University where the professors break out into their hippy selves and sing about how it is 1968. While I have my problems with academic culture, I am not comfortable with this sort of head-on attack, mainly because I suspect that what lies behind it is not just a rejection of the academic culture as it exists at present but also a rejection of academia of any sort. Whatever problems I may have with academic culture as it exists at present I am a believer in the academic process. Universities, even the radical leftist parts, have an important role to play in our society. I am not certain, though, that the filmmakers share my concern. If they did they would have bothered to get their history right.

As an academic on the right side of the political spectrum, I believe that radical changes need to be made to the university system. I think that the hard-left culture that dominates campuses is a problem. That being said, I do not think that the solution is for a right-wing takeover. I fear that too many on the right are not just against liberal academics but would seek to destroy all academia.

Ben Stein’s War: A Review of Expelled

I am a practitioner of Orthodox Judaism and a believer in evolution. My view as to the role of religion and science has been heavily influenced by the work of Rabbi Natan Slifkin and Dr. Francis Collins. Because of this I am fairly hostile to intelligent design and its promoters. So I came into Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled, with apprehension. I think Win Ben Stein’s Money was the greatest game show in the history of television, featuring Ben Stein’s dry wit and the spectacle of him putting his money where his mouth was, matching himself against the show’s wining contestants. I have tremendous respect for Ben Stein’s intelligence and the thought of him taking the stand on behalf of intelligent design was disconcerting to say the least.
Expelled is a film that will have a lot of people saying a lot of different things about it. Religious conservatives will likely declare it to be a stunning refutation of Darwinism and pretty much everyone else will see it as a pile of rubbish. Be careful about accepting at face value what you hear about this film; this is one of those films that one must see for oneself. The film is very open ended and one can imprint almost anything you want onto it; this is a weakness of the film, but also just might be its saving grace.

Judging just from the film, I am not certain were Ben Stein stands on the issue of intelligent design. He is clearly critical of what he sees as a Darwinian establishment that, from his point of view, has used strong arm tactics against all those who would dare to challenge Darwinian orthodoxy. Proponents of intelligent design are portrayed sympathetically as scientists who are the victims of a totalitarian Darwinian establishment, which seeks to quash all dissenters. This point is emphasized by frequent cuts to footage of the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. To be fair to Ben Stein he specifically denies that the theory of evolution caused the Holocaust. He just believes that evolution was a key enabling factor in the rise of the Nazis. Further than this I am not certain. Is Ben Stein an actual supporter of intelligent design or is he simply defending their right to dissent? For that matter what does Ben Stein mean when he uses the terms intelligent design and Darwinian evolution; does intelligent design mean that evolution came about through a creator and does Darwinian evolution mean that evolution happened without a designer?

This lack of clarity severally weakens the film, turning it into a hodgepodge of vague generalizations. We are given a parade of people representing either “Big Science” on the one hand or who are dissenters from it. The film never really clarifies what each of these people hold. I think the film would have benefited if each interviewees were asked if they believed in God and if so what sort of God they believed in and to what extent they were willing to accept the theory of evolution.

I believe that this film, despite itself, is useful precisely because it illustrates the problem that has plagued the whole debate over evolution, which unfortunately, all too often, has descended to rhetoric, vague generalizations and accusations. While Expelled has all of these same flaws, I did not find it to be mean spirited and Ben Stein, to his credit, conducts himself with a high level of class.

This ambiguity over what the intelligent design debate is supposed to be about plays itself out very nicely over the course of the film. In the film, the head of the Discovery Institute, which has spearheaded the intelligent design movement, denies that there is anything religious about his group’s work and that they are simply critical of certain elements of traditional Darwinism. Advocates of intelligent design claim that they are not arguing for the existence of God. Believing in some sort of High Power, might offer a solution to some of the issues they raise, but that is simply speculation and has nothing really to do with their work as scientists. On the other side, Richard Dawkins, one of the most outspoken opponents of intelligent design, when interviewed, is perfectly willing to acknowledge the possibility that life was seeded by some being of “higher intelligence,” but that this being must have also come into existence by some sort of naturalistic process. So what is everyone arguing about? I guess it is that intelligent design advocates claim that Darwin is flawed. But there are a lot of ongoing debates within the scientific community as to many of the details of evolution via natural selection, such whether it happened gradually or whether it happened through relatively sudden shifts. The advocates of intelligent design do not seem to be actually rejecting Darwinian evolution so what is all the fuss about?

Despite the fact that I disagree strongly with what I think the film is trying to say, Ben Stein still manages to be entertaining. Maybe this is just me trying to see the good in what Ben Stein has produced here, but I do think that he has accomplished something worthwhile.