Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah Goldberg, available in Kindle, hardback, and audiobook formats through Amazon.com and other outlets. (Link is to Amazon.) The audiobook is highly recommended; if you are not currently a member of Audible.com you can get the book for free if you sign up for an Audible.com membership; access that page here. Visit the author’s website at jonahgoldberg.com.
I have a very simple goal in writing this post, linking to it on Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps sending out a separate e-mail blast: I want to do my small part to make Jonah Goldberg’s new book #1 on the NYT best-seller list. Right now he’s #4 on the combined print/e-book list and #5 on the hardcover-only list. (James Comey’s compendium is #1 on both of those lists; I somehow think I won’t bother with that one.) In order for this much-desired result to occur, people have to buy the book. I re-activated my Audible.com account in order to get the audiobook, all 16 hours and 2 minutes of it. It was well worth my time.
So what’s the deal with this book that has such a depressing title? It’s really hard to boil down its ideas, as they are so rich and deep, so I’m giving you some representative quotations and then a brief summary:
“We drown in information, but we starve for knowledge.”
“The gut has taken over the mind.”
“Ideas matter, and character matters.” (This is an idea that the estimable Jonah has repeated over and over again in his columns on National Review.)
“There are no permanent victories.”
“We cannot get rid of human nature.” (If I had to pick just one quotation from the book to give you an idea of its ideas, this would be the one.)
“America talked itself into existence.”
“The inevitable entropy of human nature.”
“The only thing that gives the Constitution real and lasting power is our commitment to it.”
“We cannot be forced to live up to our commitments, but we can be persuaded into it.”
“There is no such thing as a stable orbit.”
“Decline is a choice. Principles die when no one believes in them any more.”
I can’t give page numbers since these items are from the audiobook; I hope the wording is accurate, as I wrote the quotations down as soon as I could. (If you’re out digging in the dirt it’s hard to find a pen and paper at hand.) And I would strongly recommend that you do indeed access this book via audio, as Jonah himself reads it. For someone like me who follows his work obsessively, it’s a real treat to finally hear him read this opus that he’s been talking about for months. In one of his podcast episodes he described the weirdness of having a “director” for his reading at the studio, someone who kept telling him to feel his ideas, or some such. (I’ve been working on an audio version of my own book, and I can tell you that it ain’t easy! Oh, and by the way—I find it just about impossible to call Jonah by his last name, just as I find it impossible to call Gretchen Rubin by her last name. It sounds so cold! And I know these people—right? As if they’d recognize me on the street!)
Let me address one of Jonah’s ideas that he himself unwittingly rebuts: the idea that human nature is the way it is because we evolved to be so. But human nature is in so many ways counterproductive; what he’s really saying, and commending the Founders for saying, is that man has a sinful nature that cannot be cured. This is the real divide between conservatives and what I will call “progressives” (as opposed to proponents of “liberal democracy,” which is a good thing): True conservatives recognize that man cannot be changed by mandate; there is no perfect solution to our problems, because we cannot be perfected. Jonah briefly quotes Immanuel Kant, and I looked up a fuller quotation to include here:
Each of them [that is, humans] will always abuse his freedom if he has none above him who exercises power in accord with the laws. The highest ruler should be just in himself, and still be a human. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked wood as a human is made can nothing quite straight ever be fashioned. Only the approximation of this idea is imposed upon us by nature. (emphasis mine)
Jonah’s thesis can be stated thus: Liberal democracy, capitalism, and the rule of law are profoundly unnatural states that must be constantly shored up. Left to himself, man falls into the traps of tribalism and authoritarianism. Like everything else worthwhile, ideals of government, society and culture require that attention be paid. And this attention must be paid in ways that go decidedly against stubborn human nature, because they require an ability to look at issues from an objective and unselfish viewpoint. Hard, hard, hard!
Well, I don’t want to go on and on so much that you think you don’t need to read the book. You do. And let me hasten to assure you that the book is not dry or gloomy in the least. It’s lively and listenable (or readable). When you get to the last chapter you’ll be rewarded with a fascinating analysis of how the concept of God is completely necessary in order for society to have any hope of functioning at all. (I’m not putting that very well; you’ll have to read it for yourself.)
I hope all this finger-wagging hasn’t put you off. Honestly and truly, folks, this is one of those books that everyone, no matter what his/her politicial/religious/cultural leanings, should read. It would lay a sort of common foundation for how we could talk to each other about the mess we’s in. (And Jonah by no means blames the current mess on Trump, whom he sees as much more of a symptom than a cause of our situation, although he’s certainly not a fan, nor is he one of Barack Obama, whom he sees as a very similar figure to Trump in his cultivation of the cult of personality. But if we don’t pull our socks up and get back to some basic truths, there will come a day when even the most progressive Democrat or the most rabid NeverTrumper will long for the return of the Man with the Orange Hair. Thus spoke Zarathustra.)
Hey, if you buy the book and think it’s a waste of time, let me know. I won’t promise to refund your money, understand, but you can let me know anyway. Be sure to take advantage of the free Audible.com offer if you qualify. And then go forth and persuade everyone in your circle to read the book too. C’mon, folks! We can do it!