Inhaling and Ingesting Microscopic Chinese Communists

     Could anything else explain White House Communications Czarina Anita Dunn's fascination with Chairman Mao?  Let's set the record straight, here.  She was not reading Mao's Little Red Twaddle, in the way that someone with an historical imagination might read Mein Kampf, or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or even something far more innocent but ephemeral and embarrassingly silly, like the books put out by our posers from both political parties.  She read Chairman Mao with the girlish glee of an admirer, holding him forth for the students whose commencement she graced.  They too were to embark upon their own private wars, letting nothing so annoying as traditional morality, or the wisdom of their parents, or the precepts of their churches, or devotion to an old and venerable way of life, or love for their forefathers, prevent them from making their own decisions, deciding for themselves what would be right or wrong, and so on -- the silly speech can almost write itself, and so blitheringly imbecilic is political discourse in our day, that much of it, all but the misty praise of history's greatest mass murderer, could have come from a self-styled conservative.

     Yet there is a connection between Miss Dunn's choice of Mao for hero, and the culture-destroying politics of the far left.  Like Mao, the far left honors no heritage, and looks askance at what the west calls the natural law, and what can be found in shining moral admonitions in Confucius -- the single figure Mao tried hardest to discredit.  The Cultural Revolution was, in fact, a colossal human disaster, far worse than even the slaughter of some sixty million of Mao's own people; for Mao sought to murder their way of life, too, ancient and honorable as it was; and he left China with little but the bad Marxism born in the west, and a soulless hankering for western goods.  Sixty million people had to die, for what?  That Mao could consolidate his power, and sever China from her heritage.  Perhaps somebody should give Anita Dunn a copy of the Analects, and ask her to consider whether wisdom and piety subsist in recognizing one's limitations, and in acknowledging, gratefully, the gifts one has been given from one's father and mother, one's village and nation, and -- though Confucius is no theologian -- God.

Comments

[Ranee @ Arabian Knits]

Thank you Mr. Esolen. This is exactly why communism is so abhorrent. It aims to eradicate all evidence of past goodness in any society (not simply Christianity or even religion), because it demands a singular devotion that rivals God's jealousy. God still allows us to love our ancestors, and even our traditions. We simply must not love them over Him. Communism must destroy all that is good and true from the past, because it cannot claim its supremacy and ownership of common good if any other evidence is available to point to another source of it. I read somewhere that under communism the only thing known for certain is the future, it was the past that was always changing.

[Juli]

Why "Czarina" for the WH communications director?

[Kamilla]

Juli, Czarina is the feminine form of "Czar".

Great and scary post, Tony.

Kamilla

[laura]

My husband and I recently sat through a sermon by a young Philipino American priest. Indeed it turned out as we spoke to him he was raised in our little corner of Virginia. This young man complete with artistic goatee gave a vacuous sermon on the the Cold War and its parallels to the lack of ecumenism to be found among different faiths. You see, the Vatican and Switzerland were wise and stayed out of the Cold War, which was about nothing really. And we are all human beings, just the same only misunderstood. The villians of the Soviet Union and Communist China never really existed. They were thrown up there to maintain distrust and animosity. I'm sure you can all imagine how his thoughts moved from that history lesson to the wonderful program of local ecumenical outreach and fellowship.
I must say it took of whispered coaxing on my part for my husband, a former Naval Intel officer, to stay for the rest of mass. He asked the priest on the way out if he was familiar with Pope John Paul's longstanding opposition to atheistic communism. To which the priest replied that it was all just politics. Now my husband was sure the seminary had failed the priest; I believe his entire education had failed him. Or perhaps had not failed but in fact had succeeded in rewriting history.

[Matt]

>>Why "Czarina" for the WH communications director?<<

Juli: Some find it necessary to sneer at any Democrat.

Tony Esolen: Ms. Dunn says that the line about Mao and Mother Teresa being her two favorite political philosophers was intended to be ironic as neither was a political philosopher. Even the kids at the high school ceremony got that. She says she used it simply to illustrate a larger point about the importance of challenging conventional wisdom.

[Ethan C.]

But Mao *was* a political philosopher. Remember the Little Red Book? So, Matt, presuming you are correct, wouldn't that be a rather equally sloppy, if not quite as nefarious, intellectual mistake?

And out of curiosity, Matt, what would you think if, say, G.W. Bush's communications director had cracked that Pol Pot and the Dalai Lama were his favorite political philosophers? Would you have appreciated the joke?

[Juli]

Kamilla, I realize that. Why identify the WH communications director as a czar? Do people think that the informal label of "czar" started w/the Obama administration?

[Rob G]

"Some find it necessary to sneer at any Democrat"

Wrong. This has zilch to do with party politics. If some GOP knucklehead had 'joked' in this way about, say, Mussolini or Hitler you'd have seen the same reaction here.

'Do people think that the informal label of "czar" started w/the Obama administration?'

No -- it's just that he has multiplied the "office." How many czars are there now -- 30? 35?

[Juli]

According to Wikipedia, 32 to GWB's 31 - but again, it's not a title and in some cases it was newly applied (again, informally) to a post that had long existed under its own title. Nor does it necessarily mean a position that doesn't require Senate confirmation. The term was first used by FDR but really revived by GWB, for whatever reasons.

It's a silly term, imo, and I understand concerns about unbalanced power of the executive branch, but the current ranters about Obama's "czars" (eg, Glenn Beck) might have a shred of credibility if they had ranted about GWB's, but they're pretending that (a) every position referred to at least once as "czar" is a newly created position and (b) the proliferation of "czars" started with Barack Obama.

On top of that, why "czarina"? Would you call her the WH "communications directress," and if so, was the same silliness applied to female members of Bush's administration?

[Rob G]

Personally, I find the whole "czar" thing to be fairly stupid. If memory serves it came into prominence with William Bennett as "drug czar," under either Reagan or Bush Sr. Didn't like it then, don't like it now. I don't recall hearing about it much under Dubya from either the Right or the Left, however.

[Juli]

I agree that the term is silly. According to Wikipedia, the application of the term really picked up with GWB; other presidents after Roosevelt and Truman had appointed a "czar" here and there.

I just don't remember hearing objections to "czars" per se during GWB's administration, though there were certainly concerns (on both the right and the left) about expanding executive power. Does Glenn Beck just assume his viewers/listeners won't do their homework?

[Rob G]

"Does Glenn Beck just assume his viewers/listeners won't do their homework?"

I don't listen to him, so I don't know. Anyways, in my view expanding executive power is bad news no matter which party the pres happens to be part of.

[Juli]

God knows I try to avoid GB, but apparently he's all in froth about "czars."

[Susan Davis]

This czar/czarina discussion ignores the whole point of Prof. Esolen's post. Are y'all as indignant about calling a woman who's a reigning monarch a queen instead of a king?

[Tony Esolen]

Folks, just replace Mao with "Hitler". After all, Hitler was behind the 8-ball in the same way that Ms. Dunn says Mao was, and look what he accomplished. It was not ironic; it was breathless and admiring, and, whether Juli wants to hear it or not, it sure had that starry-eyed coed naivete about it -- to give Ms. Dunn the benefit of the doubt; I'd rather not believe she really is a thoroughly aware Maoist. On the other hand -- I guess I have rubbed shoulders with too damned many apologists for Mao and his ilk, in academe, to think for a moment that her comment was entirely innocent. Besides, the rest of the comment gives the lie to any claim of innocence: she was in entire sympathy with that destruction of traditional culture which he undertook.

Does anybody remember what happened to Trent Lott when, at a birthday party, he made the offhand comment that the nation might have been better off if Strom Thurmond had become president in 1948? Now that was clearly meant as a piece of silly flattery, but it cost him his position as Senate majority leader. Pardon me for thinking that Chairman Mao was many times wickeder than Strom Thurmond ever was. Sixty million times, perhaps?

[Kamilla]

Tony,

For some reason, Stalin is coming to mind. Particularly his phrase, "useful idiots".

Kamilla

P.S. I don't suppose Tsaritsa would have been any more palatable?

[Rob G]

I heard on the radio this a.m. the interesting fact that Anita Dunn's husband is part of the legal team that's defending Obama against the Birthers.

"I'd rather not believe she really is a thoroughly aware Maoist. On the other hand -- I guess I have rubbed shoulders with too damned many apologists for Mao and his ilk, in academe, to think for a moment that her comment was entirely innocent."

If she's naive enough about Mao to drop a comment like that, she's stupid and has no business working in the White House. On the other hand, if her comment wasn't naively innocent, and she does bear some warm fuzzies for the Chairman, then not only is she stupid, but she's bad, and has even less business working in the White House.

[Rob G]

In other words, I agree with Tony -- she shouldn't get a pass either way.

[Tony Esolen]

Speaking on the phone with Alice Von Hildebrand yesterday ... She said, "Imagine if someone had said, 'My two favorite political philosophers, Hitler and Saint Francis of Assisi!" Then, "Hitler was but a child compared to Mao." There's a wiser mind than I'll ever have, too.

[华子]

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