FIRlnGLlne HOST: ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. GUEST: SUBJECT: "IS MULTICULTURALISM STILL RABID?"

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUEST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR. SUBJECT: "IS MULTICULTURALISM STILL RABID?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of FIRING LINE program #2734/ 1163, taped at HBO Studios in New York City on April 7, 1998, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1998 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassettes available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC /

2 MR. BUCKLEY: In 1991 Arthur Schlesinger wrote a good book. The Disuniting of America began as a long essay and blossomed into a short book, greatly needed and much celebrated, though not by everybody. Its thesis was that identity politics was taking America in the wrong direction, that the whole idea of the melting pot was, as frequently stressed, to move from pluribus to unum, but that the multiculturalist vogue was in fact introducing not a reasoned toleration of differences but rather the kind of ethnocentrism that writhes at the proposition that Plato and Aristotle were actually white Europeans. The book is reissued in an enlarged edition which stresses the points made earlier and adds fresh examples of what it is we need to defend ourselves against. The question I thought to discuss today was how much, if anything, beyond an agreement to speak to each other in English and to proceed with constitutional decorum, inheres in the one into which the many should expect to conflate? Professor Schlesinger is probably the best known American historian of our time, whose first book, The Age of Jackson, was acclaimed not long after he received his doctorate at Harvard. He has been, in addition to a scholar and historian, a polemicist and an activist on behalf of the New Deal and the politics of Camelot, serving as speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and aide to John F. Kennedy. I begin by asking Mr. Schlesinger whether, in his opinion as a historian, the white racism of the 18th and 19th centuries was a catalytic agent of the melting pot? MR. SCHLESINGER: White racism as a catalytic agent for the melting pot. Well, the melting pot existed. I don't think white racism helped it much, because Anglo-Saxons regarded other white nationalities with disdain and doubt. I mean, w.e.b. dubois, for example, the great black historian, describing his younger years growing up in a small village in the Berkshires, said the race line was "much more against the Irish than against me." And the melting pot worked imperfectly, unevenly. The Irish for a long time had a very hard time in this country. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I'm not saying-- I'm trying to say the contrary, namely, the fact that you have a hard time suggests a criterion. The actualization of a criterion is a prod of the kind that I thought was working in the 18th and 19th century. It's not necessarily something one has to approve of, but the fact that the values of the predominant culture were thought to be supreme had the effect, did it not, of 1

3 communicating to those who didn't abide by those standards that they were wrong? MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I don't think that there was a capitulation involved, I think that there is a modification, an enrichment. So that already when Tocqueville came to this country, he felt that the Americans were distinct from the English. One reason they were distinct from the English was this process of absorption of newcomers, therefore with the resultant modification of pure English inheritance. So I think from an early point it was an interactive situation. But it is true that even the English speakers like the Irish were regarded by the Anglos with a certain scorn, and then when you began to get people from Northern Europe, German-speaking, Norwegian, Swedish, and so on, and more particularly when you got them from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, there was a struggle. The struggle may have been in part provoked by the resistance, but the result of the struggle was a dialectic and a synthesis. MR. BUCKLEY: In your book you correctly and enthusiastically describe the passion felt by people who left Europe to come here. It was a passion to live in a different world. Now that different world had to be characterized by something. Obviously it was a world in which there wasn't an established church, so they didn't have that to worry about, but having landed, they said goodbye to X and hello to Y. Now my question is, was the advent of Y something that in itself was a catalytic agent towards a certain kind of uniformity. MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think the uniformity-- I think there was a certain, as the book argues-- The people coming to this country wanted to escape from something that they didn't like and become something that they did like. And they felt that in America they could worship as they pleased, they could participate in the processes of self government and that their children would have a better chance for an economic future, all these things. To do that they had to become, in some degree, Americanized. And the first generation found this harder to do, because often they couldn't speak English, and therefore- Bilingualism, which is a presence now in our schools, was not unknown in the 19th century--people coming in villages were predominantly German-speaking or Swedish-speaking and so on, teaching in the public schools was conducted partly in other languages. But the second generation, the kids born in this country, were much more Americanized and began to join the mainstream and then began 2

4 to intermarry with people from other ethnic strains, and in that process you created an American nationality. MR. BUCKLEY: But as I understand it, there was an orientation when you came to America towards something--you mentioned a desire to worship as you liked, a desire for self-government, and there were a few other attributes thought of as being a part of the Puritan ethic- saving, modesty, industry. MR. SCHLESINGER: Modesty was not a major American trait. MR. BUCKLEY: No, in the sense in which you use it, no, you are quite correct. But what strikes me is that the white racism which we correctly deplore, nevertheless had as an aspect to it the enshrining of certain values that would have made simply ludicrous the notion that they would compete equally with the values of Hispanic Aztecs. For instance, you mention freedom to worship. There was certainly freedom to worship, but it was also certainly expected that one should worship, correct? So that therefore there were pressures throughout those centuries in the making of America which can be thought of as urging confirmation in a particular direction. MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, there was-- Gunnar Myrdal-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. SCHLESINGER: --the great Swedish economist who came over and wrote a book a bout the race question, An American Dilemma. He talked about the American creed, and he thought the American creed, though imperfectly observed, was one of the great sources of change in American life. One of the great themes of American history has been the movement from exclusion to inclusion. And really in a certain sense that's the fulfillment of the American creed. The American creed said all men are created equal. Well, this was at a time-- Jefferson the slaveholder wrote the words of the Declaration of Independence. But the potential in these words, the potentiality of the American creed have been gradually, imperfectly fulf"tlled in the course of American history. MR. BUCKLEY: I think we all acknowledge that, but what I am trying to distill in the context of an argument about a multicultural society is that it was never, as I understood it, built into the American culture that all cultures should compete on an equal basis. Some things were 3

5 more right than others, and I find you a little bit uncertain about that except to the extent that you can engender a political majority. MR. SCHLESINGER: Oh, no, I think you have to distinguish between what you have and what is necessarily right for everybody. Obviously America was evolved by predominantly British settlers--our language, our institutions, many of our political ideals, many of our legal practices and so on all came from England. That was our inheritance. That was what we had to deal with and what newcomers had to accept in one form or another, often modifying it while they accepted it. Whether that was in some transcendent way right, it was right for us, not necessarily-- MR. BUCKLEY: It's not something-- MR. SCHLESINGER: --more right than-- MR. BUCKLEY: --that you'd want to opine on anyway, is it? MR. SCHLESINGER: No, no, but you know, whether the Anglo-Saxon values were more right than, say, the Iberian values or the Italian values or Swedish values is a different subject. But they were the values we inherited and the values we had to deal with. MR. BUCKLEY: But in this multiculturalism and identity politics that you deplore, it seems to me you lay out an abstract question. Eight of us in this room believe in X and only three in Y, therefore certain deferences are properly payable to X, without any commitment to the rightness of X over Y. Now I think that the emphasis you put on process may encumber you here. You praise here the ACLU's action in Skokie, which strikes me as putting more emphasis on procedure than is entirely respectable. Just to remind you, the Nazis had some sort of a celebration in Skokie and there was a division of sentiment as to whether they should be given a permit to march. They had roughly the equivalent in New York City, as I remember, and were denied a permit by Mayor Wagner. Was that the Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, something like that? MR. SCHLESINGER: I forget. MR. BUCKLEY: In any event, it seems to me that you worship rather too strenuously at the altar of civil liberties so defined. I don't acknowledge the right of Nazis to march. [laughter] 4

6 MR. SCHLESINGER: I am surprised, Bill, that you deplore liberty. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: In order to maximize liberty, one sometimes has to. MR. SCHLESINGER: But I think it is dangerous to set precedents which can be used against your own side. MR. BUCKLEY: The slippery slope business. MR. SCHLESINGER: I quote Louis Menand in the book, The censor always rings twice. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: It's a nice aphorism. On the other hand, I don't think it has much historical resonance. It seems to me that to engage in such efforts as we engaged in in the last 40 years to defeat the Soviet Union required the formulation of an implicit consensus. You understand yourself to have worked in that direction through the founding of the ADA. I went to greater lengths. But that-- MR. SCHLESINGER: How far would you go in abridging the First Amendment? MR. BUCKLEY: I would consult what Wilmoore Kendall called the consensus, i.e., certain kinds of behavior aren't tolerated. We ran into that with polygamy in Utah. That was a very concrete form. But I think that we've had in our century situations in which the body politick is entitled to say, No, we don't want that; do that somewhere else. We can't-- MR. SCHLESINGER: Aren't you getting close to what De Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority? MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, you are, which is a problem. You mentioned the Beauharnais decision, from which we retreated, right? But the Beauharnais decision, which identified group libel, was not entirely misdirected, was it? MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think it was. I think the Constitution was written for individuals, not for groups. It talks about individuals, not group rights. I think down this path, if you go far enough, you end up with Salman Rushdie. 5

7 MR. BUCKLEY: That's just simply show business again. I think the human intelligence should be able to rescue you from that. For instance, take the business about burning the flag. You are against a law that would forbid the burning of the flag because you think that the individual should be free to burn the flag. MR. SCHLESINGER: The difference-- MR. BUCKLEY: I am against it on the grounds that empirically it's silly. MR. SCHLESINGER: I think empirically it's silly, but if you started an abolition of everything that's silly-- MR. BUCKLEY: No, no, no, I think it's silly to have a law that says you shouldn't burn the flag because the law is simply for all intents and purposes unenforceable, but I don't resent the idea. MR. SCHLESINGER: I am not in favor of burning the flag, but as Holmes said in interpreting the First Amendment, the First Amendment does not mean only freedom for the speech with which we agree. What virtue would there be in that? It's freedom for the speech that we hate. And it seems to me that ever since John Stuart Mill we've always understood that often even the speech we hate may have some useful consequences. MR. BUCKLEY: What I am struggling to say is that in my view of it, a free society can and should set limits that say, Okay, you are free within the very, very broad limits, but you are not free to do certain things. You are not free to agitate in favor of Nazis. Now you point out that what good do these laws do? They have them in Canada, they have them in Germany and they still have Nazis in both places. The answer is, often they don't do a lot of good, but I regret that you decline even to attempt a formulation. MR. SCHLESINGER: I think the answer to speech with which you disagree, speech that you loathe, is more speech, not less speech. And I think all this has worked fairly well in this country. I just-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, 1-- MR. SCHLESINGER: --shudder at the possibility of setting up restrictions on speech. If speech leads to violence, we have plenty of 6

8 laws to take care of violence. But what do-- Both on the practical question, the alleged dangers of uninhibited speech, and on the theoretical issue that, in the longer run, argument is a better way to deal with these matters, I see no great grounds for-- As Tocqueville said, By enjoying a dangerous freedom, Americans make the dangers of freedom less formidable. MR. BUCKLEY: Again I would say empirically most of the time I think this is correct. But just as I think it is an intellectual scandal that you can't define obscenity, I think it is wrong to refuse to define that which you consider to be impermissible. Now impermissible is- Take the subject of anti-semitism. Anti-Semitism was culturally pretty much endemic before the war. Now it pretty much ended after the war, not as a result of the Beauhamais decision or any ancillary legislation but the general public attitude towards it: You can't do that. MR. SCHLESINGER: Hitler killed anti-semitism. MR. BUCKLEY: Hitler killed anti-semitism. And something went a long way in killing black racism. There wasn't a Hitler involved, but there were other things. But in any case, you have a situation which, I think it's fair to say, is impermissible. At Harvard or at Yale you really couldn't publish a monthly advocating anti-semitism or genocide or anti-black, and I think that's good. MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think it's a matter of taste though. You wouldn't pass laws forbidding them. I think it's a matter of taste and the growing consciousness that we all have of the-- I mean, America has been a racist country through most of her history--it's the country that killed red men, enslaved black men, imported yellow and brown men for peon labor. We did it thoughtlessly, without consciousness of what we were doing: The only good Indian is a dead Indian, and so on. Now we've become much more conscious of the fact that, as Paul said, we are all members one of another and therefore we assess people as individuals rather than as groups and try to give them the obligation that we would give to any other individual. And I think that's come about not through laws suppressing speech, but through the arguments which free speech makes possible. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but in part, to say my first point again, is the anthropomorphis of the white man. The reason they were against red Indians was on the grounds that they were thought to be barbarians. 7

9 By the way, they largely were, I think. But it was the assertion of a paradigm that I think in fact accelerated in effect the abolition of a contending culture. You don't agree. MR. SCHLESINGER: I am not sure I understand what you mean. What do you mean by an assertion of a paradigm? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you're saying the ways by which we culturally identified the Indians, their savagery and this, that, and the other, are just ruled out. Our paradigm is in effect the white partisan paradigm, and the assertion of this, I think did a lot to engender the ambition to contend against the challenge. MR. SCHLESINGER: Yes, it was the rationalization which justified in our mind the killing, the containment and reduction of Indians. Also as we began to contemplate it, as early as the 1880s when Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, and Ramona and so on, we began to feel that maybe we shouldn't be treating Indians the way we had been treating them. So I think all those things, you have action and you have reaction. MR. BUCKLEY: Wounded Knee was 1890, something like that? MR. SCHLESINGER: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Well now, you talk here-- You give an example of the kind of thing that you contend against, Henry Louis Gates. He writes, and he identifies voodoo-- It wasn't economics, was it? MR. SCHLESINGER: No, no, he's talking about voodoo as something - Voodoo religion. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, voodoo religion, yes. And there were a lot of protests-- MR. SCHLESINGER: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --by a lot of majestic academic figures. MR. SCHLESINGER: Saying this was an attack upon people, deep religious faith who believes in voodoo, and they even compared him to George Bush. He used the phrase "voodoo economics" about Ronald Reagan. [laughter] 8

10 MR. BUCKLEY: Then he retreated and became president. [laughter] But when Gates used that word to describe those particular religions, he was doing what I consider to be the correct thing, i.e., he is prepared to use a word of absolute derision. But on the John Stuart Mill playing field, you would not endorse that kind of rhetorical tactic, would you-- MR. SCHLESINGER: Oh, sure I would. MR. BUCKLEY: --even though you would defend it in here. MR. SCHLESINGER: Oh, sure. I am a great believer in the tradition of Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Mr. Dooley, and so on. MR. BUCKLEY: So-- MR. SCHLESINGER: You and I both are strong believers in derision, Bill. MR. BUCKLEY: In what? MR. SCHLESINGER: In derision. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, sure. Sure. I deride the right things. [laughter] But there you had an example of somebody using very forceful language to express his contempt for certain tribal religions, and there was this protest. Now that protest seemed to be saying what? That all religions should be thought of as equal? MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think it's the feeling that if you say something that hurts someone else's feelings or another group's feelings, that this should be forbidden. Salman Rushdie was a man who wrote a book which offended pious Muslims. They accused him of blasphemy and a price has been put on his head and he can't go any place without bodyguards paid for by the British taxpayer and so on. But I mean, blasphemy, I suppose is the ultimate form of extreme speech. George Bernard Shaw once said, "All great truths begin in blasphemy." And it seems to me that the hurt-feelings standard would have silenced Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Mr. Dooley, H.L. Mencken, Bill Buckley. MR. BUCKLEY: To what extent--we only have a minute left--but to what extent does taste govern members of an academic community? 9

11 . \.. MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think political correctness is a curse. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. SCHLESINGER: I would also add that political correctness is not a monopoly of the left. There is also political correctness on the right, and I think both of them are curses. I think any notion that there are tltlngs which you dare not say or should not say because they hurt someone's feelings, that's not a sufficient reason to stop free expression. MR. BUCKLEY: Obviously not legal, but in terms of academic discipline, not sufficient reason either. MR. SCHLESINGER: I think I can understand why academic administrators would want speech codes and so on. It solves problems for them. But I do think that members of an academic faculty should do much more than they do in defense of taste, decorum, tolerance, mutual self-respect and so on. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, Professor Schlesinger, author of The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society; thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 10