By Roger L Simon
I admit to
having moral narcissism on the brain, having just published
a book on the subject, but the announcement by conservative
columnist George Will that he has left the Republican Party and has
registered "unaffiliated"
in the state of Maryland is such a pure example of MN that I wish I had had
a chance to add a few pages about it, maybe even a chapter.
Most of the examples
in I
Know Best are from the liberal-progressive side, so it would have
been good for balance at least to have included such an esteemed conservative
as Will -- a man who has now turned Lesley Gore's 1963 hit "It's My Party" on
its head by declaring in a speech at the Federalist Society that "this
is not my party."
Was it ever his
party?
I thought it belonged to all its members. But never mind. How does
Will's proclamation demonstrate moral narcissism and why does that matter?
Allow me to be a little narcissistic myself and quote from my book:
What you believe, or claim to believe or
say you believe—not what you do or how you act or what the results of
your actions may be—defines you as a person and makes you “good.” It is
how your life will be judged by others and by yourself. In 19th-century France, the
gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin told us that “You are what you eat.” In
21st-century America, almost all of us seem to have concluded that “you
are what you say you are. You are what you proclaim your values
to be, irrespective of their consequences.” That is
moral narcissism.
So George Will has
proclaimed himself to be free and above the Republican Party -- most
specifically the Republican Party whose current standard bearer by millions of
votes is Donald Trump, a man Will obviously abhors. As the columnist said
in his speech, Republicans should “make sure he loses. Grit their teeth
for four years and win the White House.”
Will definitely gets
to be "good" -- according to my definition. But what about those
consequences, the pesky results of his decision? PJ
Media's Nicholas Ballasy asked Will some interesting questions
after the speech, among them whether he was bothered by Hillary Clinton
choosing one or possibly several justices for the Supreme Court, changing the
nature of the court for decades.
Will replied,
“Sure, but I’m also concerned with the fact that I do not really believe
Republicans think clearly enough about what they really want in judges.
Republicans have given us Earl Warren, Brennan, John Paul Stevens, Burger, who
was kind of mediocre, Blackmun. Having a Republican president is not an answer
in itself."
Really? Nothing is
indeed perfect, but as Will well knows, Trump has announced a
solid conservative list of potential Supreme Court nominees far in advance of
his nomination, something never done before, to my knowledge. Anyone
rational (i.e. not coming from a place of moral narcissism) would certainly
place his bet with Trump over Hillary Clinton when it comes to Supreme
Court appointments.
Another crucial area
a rational conservative would place his bet with Trump over Hillary is
immigration, especially immigration from countries that are hotbeds of
terrorism. If you don't want more San Bernardinos and Orlandos or something
even worse, wouldn't you gamble on Trump too? Ditto if
you want lower tax rates, fewer regulations, a free market economy and the
preservation of the Second Amendment -- all standard-issue Republican
positions. Most of us want to get these things accomplished now --
especially with the willy-nilly Islamic immigration, greater even than Obama's,
that Hillary is proposing. We have no desire to wait for years
for an unnamed savior, as Will urges if only we would grit our teeth. By
then the odds will be stacked even further against conservatives than they are
at present, quite possibly to an extent that it will be impossible for the
right ever to win.
Obviously feeling
embarrassment (he should), Will now asserts his real reason for departing the
Republican Party was Trump's attack on the Latino judge. Indeed, Donald
was depressingly unsophisticated in the way he went about that, but I suspect
Will's actual motivation for abjuring Trump -- and the Republican masses
who voted for him in such record numbers -- is actually more a matter of
class.
We might call Will's
class the Moral Narcissist Bourgeoisie (MNB) that resides so
comfortably in Washington, irrespective of political party, dining at
the best restaurants and enjoying the cultural benefits of the city while their
real estate values mount into the stratosphere, only to appear in all their
excellence before the great unwashed on the Sunday shows. It's a
terrific life if you can have it, but because of Trump -- and
even more because of Brexit -- it is under threat.
What we have on our
hands is a genuine class war, but the classes don't line up as before. It's not
entirely about money. It's now the elites versus the people and it's
not just local, it's global. Those who choose to line up with elites
might want to keep in mind the words of a man who was pretty elite himself --
William F. Buckley: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United
States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to
the faculty of Harvard University."
But Will's okay. He
went to Princeton.
Roger L. Simon is a
prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of
PJ Media. His new book—I
Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't
Already— is just published by Encounter Books June 14,
2016. You can read an excerpt here. You
can see a brief interview about the book with the Wall Street Journal’s
Opinion Journal
here. You can hear an interview about the book with Mark Levin here. You can
order the book here.
