Timothy Garton Ash Reminds Us Who We Are

And what we are.

In the Nov. 22, 2012, issue of The New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash tackles the challenge that he says Western states are failing: How to adapt to increasingly multicultural populations without giving up the liberal ideals on which modern states are founded.

(He's not referring to our American political breakdown of "liberal" and "conservative" when he writes that, but rather to the classic and enduring ideals of liberal Western societies. You know, the ideals that made these countries the richest and most free and powerful nations in the world's history.)

He spends a fair amount of time dealing with how countries are doing exactly the wrong thing in dealing with disparate groups in society. Instead of teaching and enforcing the important overarching ideals (education, tolerance, human dignity), they are selling out those virtues and instead embedding in society the most illiberal aspects of some of these groups (such as "honor" killings and the suppression of free speech). Ash turns that on its head, and in so doing, returns to eternal liberal values that should inform our efforts to incorporate polycultural societies.

Read the article while it's still in front of the NYBooks paywall. Maybe you'll see why Timothy Garton Ash is one of my favorite writers and why The New York Review of Books is one of my favorite publications.

Thomas Mann's Wise Words

On my subway ride to work this morning, I began reading "The Best German Novelist of His Time," an article by Phillip Lopate in the February 24, 2011, issue of The New York Review of Books. Lopate is discussing the writer Theodor Fontane, whose work I have never read. In fact, I hadn't planned on reading this article; I'm way behind on my magazine reading (I'm already carrying around the March 10 issue of NYRB), and I usually find the reviews of novels and the articles about novelists to be the less-interesting part of that excellent magazine. But I guess the Germanophile in me won out, and I didn't have to wait long for my reward.

The fourth paragraph of the article is an extended quote from another great German novelist, Thomas Mann, discussing "The Old Fontane":

Does it not seem as though he had to grow old, very old, in order to fulfil himself completely? Just as there are youths born to be youths only, fulfilling themselves in early life and not maturing, certainly not growing old; so it would seem that there are other temperaments whose only appropriate age is old; who are, so to speak, classic old men, ordained to show humanity the ideal qualities of that last stage of life: benignity, kindness, justice, humour, and shrewd wisdom—in short a recrudescence on a higher plane of childhood’s artless unrestraint. Fontane’s was such a temperament.

What a great quote. What a great insight in one man and into men. One could probably stretch Mann's words too far by trying to apply them to not just people but countries, but it would be a fascinating effort, if done well. Until that occurs, however, I am going to let Mann's words shift around in my head and grow more interesting as their human applications add up.

Mr. Lopate's full article (partially behind a pay wall) is on the NYRB's web site. It's also available in print if you can still find the February 24, 2011 issue around.

Larry Flynt on Obama

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt writes a short item on today's Daily Beast urging Obama to toughen up and, er, "bitch-slap" the Republicans to "put them in their place."

When I interned one summer in the vice president's office back in 1990 (oh, leave me alone), one of my more-interesting regular tasks was to compile a collection of articles from newspapers and magazines for the vice president to read. In one of those compilations, I included an article Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote for the New York Review of Books, in which he called for the end of the national security state in the wake of the Cold War's demise.

You can assume, even without reading the two pieces, that Moynihan's was the better written piece of prose.

The VP didn't take Moynihan's advice then, and I doubt, even if some intern puts Flynt's article in Obama's daily news briefer, that the president will take Flynt's advice today.

The [James] Warren Report

The latest Huffington Post magazine roundup column by James Warren. This week: The Economist, Sports Illustrated, The Nation, The New Yorker, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books, and more.

Which mag will you buy this week?