Kermit Snelson on Tue, 18 Feb 2003 00:27:01 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] RE: <nettime> unamericana digest [porculus, pocock] |
Let's not get too excited about the possibilities of aesthetic activism against "American ugliness." It would put us in rather awkward company: namely, the intellectual architects of the war itself. Most serious antiwar activists are aware of Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington and his 1996 book _The Clash of Civilizations_, which anointed Islamic law as America's official post-Soviet enemy. However, few of them realize that this move was strictly tactical. To identify Huntington's strategic enemy, one must read his first book, published in 1957. In this career-opening book he openly names this strategic enemy, against which he has continued his activist crusade to this very day. What is this enemy? Tiresome, monotonous, discordant, motley, garish Main Street USA. Literally. As you will see, these are the very words he uses. Back in 1957, this aesthetic, anti-American vision succeeded only in getting Huntington fired from Harvard. But times have changed. Nearly fifty years later, this vision is being backed by the full force and fury of Rumsfeld's Pentagon in what amounts to the first internal military rebellion against the culture and Constitution of the United States since the Civil War. And this is perfectly logical, because Huntington's book openly draws upon the intellectual, cultural and military traditions of the Confederacy. Nobody in the world will or should take my own word for this, so I'm posting here the concluding passage of Huntington's book. I hope that more than a few will decide to go to the library, read the whole thing, and draw their own conclusions. If we are to oppose this war effectively, thereby avoiding deadly traps like anti-Americanism, we need to understand the cause in which it is really being waged. That Huntington's statement is authoritative and current on this subject cannot be doubted. Not only is he personally one of the architects of the present war, but his 1957 book is now (according to Amazon.com) the number two bestseller at the United States Military Academy. Kermit Snelson ============== The Worth of the Military Ideal [1] Just south of the United States Military Academy at West Point is the village of Highland Falls. Main Street of Highland Falls is familiar to everyone: the First National Bank with venetian blinds, real estate and insurance offices, yellow homes with frilly victorian porticos, barber shops, and wooden churches -- the tiresome monotony and the incredible variety and discordancy of small-town commercialism. The buildings form no part of a whole: they are simply a motley, disconnected collection of frames coincidentally adjoining each other, lacking common unity or purpose. On the military reservation the other side of South Gate, however, exists a different world. There is ordered serenity. The parts do not exist on their own, but accept their subordination to the whole. Beauty and utility are merged in gray stone. Neat lawns surround compact, trim homes, each identified by the name and rank of its occupant. The buildings stand in fixed relation to each other, part of an over-all plan, their character and station symbolizing their contributions, stone and brick for the senior officers, wood for the lower ranks. The post is suffused with the rhythm and harmony which comes when collective will supplants individual whim. West Point is a community of structured purpose, one in which the behavior of men is governed by a code, the product of generations. There is little room for presumption and individualism. The unity of the community incites no man to be more than he is. In order is found peace; in discipline, fulfillment; in community, security. The spirit of Highland Falls is embodied in Main Street. The spirit of West Point is in the great, gray, Gothic Chapel, starting from the hill and dominating The Plain, calling to mind Henry Adams' remarks at Mont St. Michel on the unity of the military and the religious spirits. But the unity of the Chapel is even greater. There join together the four great pillars of society: Army, Government, College, and Church. Religion subordinates man to God for divine purposes; the military life subordinates man to duty for society's purposes. In its severity, regularity, discipline, the military society shares the characteristics of the religious order. Modern man may well find his monastery in the Army. West Point embodies the military ideal at its best; Highland Falls the American spirit at its most commonplace. West Point is a gray island in a many colored sea, a bit of Sparta in the midst of Babylon. Yet is it possible to deny that the military values -- loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication -- are the ones America needs most today? That the disciplined order of West Point has more to offer than the garish individualism of Main Street? Historically, the virtues of West Point have been America's vices, and the vices of the military, America's virtues. Yet today America can learn more from West Point than West Point from America. Upon the soldiers, the defenders of order, rests a heavy responsibility. The greatest service they can render is to remain true to themselves, to serve with silence and courage in the military way. If they abjure the military spirit, they destroy themselves first and their nation ultimately. If the civilians permit the soldiers to adhere to the military standard, the nations themselves may eventually find redemption and security in making that standard their own. Notes: [1] Huntington, Samuel P., _The Soldier and the State_, Harvard University Press, 1957, pp.464-6 (conclusion) _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold