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A very perceptive piece by Damon Linker about the recent referendum in the United Kingdom:<\/p>\n
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http:\/\/theweek.com\/articles\/632380\/how-brexit-shattered-progressives-dearest-illusions<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I was struck the other day by\u00a0the British journalist David Goodhart\u2019s distinction in the debate over Britain\u2019s relationship to the European Union\u00a0\u2014 which I saw cited here<\/a> \u2014 between what he called \u201csomewhere people\u201d and \u201cnowhere people.\u201d \u00a0By those terms, he\u2019s referring to residents of the UK\u00a0who feel deeply English, profoundly connected to the traditions of their little island, its history, its culture, its villages, its peculiar\u00a0traditions and institutions, as opposed to those who feel themselves fundamentally \u201cEuropean.\u201d \u00a0(As my Scottish seat mate \u2014 not coincidentally, a backer of the \u201cRemain\u201d side \u2014 approvingly put it to me the other day\u00a0on our flight from Sweden\u00a0into Edinburgh, younger people today feel no more reluctance to move from Scotland to Sweden, where his son has lived with a Swedish girlfriend for the past eight years and worked for a Swedish company, or to Germany, where his daughter works, than Americans feel about moving from Oregon\u00a0to Washington, or from New Jersey\u00a0to Pennsylvania.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I like Goodhart\u2019s distinction, and, although I\u2019ve only seen it referred to at second hand, I think it very insightful. \u00a0It seems to me related, too, in subtle ways, to the decline in the importance of denominationalism in American religion; the relative weakness of the American family, the decline in the marriage rate, high rates of divorce, and the increasing age of first marriages; debates about same-sex relationships and the redefinition of marriage; the rise of the behemoth state in Washington (and in Brussels); and so forth.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I think of this famous passage from the Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who is often considered the father of conservatism in the English-speaking world, which occurs in his Reflections on the Revolution in France<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always been wary\u00a0of people who claim to love \u201chumanity\u201d; too many of them seem to have real difficulty treating their wives, children, landladies, and neighbors even minimally well. \u00a0(See Paul Johnson\u2019s book Intellectuals<\/em> for a parade of notable examples. \u00a0And many others could be mentioned.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always been delighted to find local authors wherever I go. \u00a0Writers who haven\u2019t bowed the knee to Manhattan. \u00a0I always seek out local restaurants and specialties, order local favorites.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Years ago, I read about a tee shirt worn by Larry McMurtry, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist and essayist based in Texas, which read \u201cImportant Regional Writer.\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s how the New York Times<\/em> had described him. \u00a0I liked the implicit thumbing of his nose against the sheer unconscious arrogance of that \u201ccompliment.\u201d \u00a0Why is Texas a \u201cregion,\u201d while New York City apparently isn\u2019t<\/em>? \u00a0Is the Pulitzer Prize not a national award? \u00a0Is Jane Austen a merely regional writer because her novels tend to involve only small domestic stories in relatively rural areas? \u00a0S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard lived in the tiny country of Denmark, and wrote not in French or German or English or Latin but in the somewhat marginal language of Danish. \u00a0But he treats the very biggest and most fundamental of issues.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In this regard, I came across a nice passage a couple of days ago from Hugh Walpole\u2019s 1930 novel Rogue Herries<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018How shall I like this place? \u00a0It is cut off from the world.\u2019 \u00a0There was an odd note of scorn in the little man\u2019s voice as he answered. \u00a0\u2018It is the world, sir. \u00a0Here within these hills, in this space of ground, is all the world . . . \u00a0in every village through which I have passed since then I have found the whole world \u2014 all anger and vanity and covetousness and lust, yes, and all charity, goodness, and sweetness of soul. \u00a0But most of all here in this valley, I have found the whole world . . . \u00a0You will find everything here, sir. \u00a0God and the devil both walk in these fields.'\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My inclination to \u201clocalism\u201d is\u00a0one of the reasons, I suppose, that I enjoy the writing of Wendell Berry<\/a>\u00a0and Victor Davis Hanson<\/a> and the late Russell Kirk<\/a> and that it\u2019s deeply satisfying for me to be here in the Lake District, where so many fine authors have so wonderfully expressed their sense of attachment to particular places. \u00a0(Years ago, I was delighted when a well-received collection of work by Montana writers appeared,\u00a0entitled The Last Best Place<\/em>. \u00a0And, even before that, I was fascinated\u00a0to learn about the group of prominent writers in the 1930s, centered in Nashville, who\u2019ve come to be known as the \u201cSouthern Agrarians.\u201d<\/a>) \u00a0I strongly believe in\u00a0supporting local theater (e.g., our annual tradition of attending the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City and our attendance at the Utah Festival Opera in Logan, and our season tickets at both Hale theaters). \u00a0I\u2019m irritated that plays haven\u2019t really arrived, in the view of some \u2014 even if they\u2019ve already played at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles or the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis \u2014 until they come to the (often quite unimpressive) theaters of Broadway.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I recall talking with a friend in Cairo many years ago who had been born and raised in New York City before he ventured off to do his undergraduate schooling at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and who was then working on a doctorate at Princeton (back up nearly to New York City). \u00a0He told me of the one trip he had made Out West, to visit a girlfriend in Berkeley. \u00a0As he flew over the United States, he told me, he realized that there was really \u201cnothing\u201d between the East Coast and the West Coast. \u00a0It was so absurdly\u00a0like the famous New Yorker<\/em> cover by Saul Sternberg<\/a> that I could barely keep from laughing. \u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d I responded. \u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s really nothing<\/em> \u2014 apart from Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Minneapolis\/St. Paul, Denver, Salt Lake City, and a huge host of similar nowheres.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m deeply committed to federalism for related reasons (but also because it\u2019s clearly the Constitution\u2019s plan), to the idea that the states shouldn\u2019t be viewed merely as administrative departments of the national government in Washington DC. \u00a0(It\u2019s to this extent, and to this extent pretty much alone, that I can feel some ideological sympathy for the Confederacy: \u00a0Great man though he was, I still don\u2019t understand Lincoln\u2019s insistence that states could not secede from the Union. \u00a0If they came together to form it in the first place, why did they not have the right of secession?) \u00a0I admire the Swiss attachment to their cantons, and their relative lack of interest in their federal government, as well as their disinclination to join the European Union in the first place.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n These are,\u00a0of course, very big issues, and I\u2019m just skipping along the surface of them. \u00a0I need to head out into the Lake District!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n