Machan's Musings - My Guilty Pleasure
by Tibor R. Machan
Yes, I have one, and I am not sure I can be forgiven for it. I like reading The New York Review of Books, this country’s most erudite liberal "book review" magazine. (It is only nominally a review because too much of it departs very significantly from the substance of the books being discussed and lets reviewers scurry all over the disciplinary landscape, as long as some small bit of what they discuss is related to that substance.) Of course, I like the learned, if highly opinionated, essays included in each issue; some of them are nearly completely unrelated to politics, such as the abundant discussion and disputation about the nature of consciousness and the varieties of fine arts. But even the most explicitly political work is enjoyable to read.
Yet that alone wouldn’t make reading The New York Review the guilty pleasure it is for me. There is one attribute to this publication that is so blatantly paradoxical, so outlandishly contradictory, that each issue I receive provides me the joy of seeing everyone in the editorial department squirm—or turn a deliberate blind eye—so as to be able to live with himself. You see, The New York Review of Books is nothing if not dogmatically egalitarian in its political and economic philosophy. Such legal stars as Ronald Dworkin have, in writing for it, attained near celebrity status in their advocacy of a level playing field in nearly all realms of social and economic life. (His book Sovereign Virtue [2002] lays out his case in detail.) Mandated affirmative action is just one case in point—The Review’s contributors consistently defend it. Yet another indication of its egalitarianism is the scholars it has targeted for debunking, such as the late Leo Strauss and Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Sowell. (Some of the treatments are, however, quite good, as when in a recent piece Professor Mark Lilla of the University of Chicago Committee for Social Thought straightened out many liberals about whether Strauss can be blamed for the current American administration’s neo-conservative zeal in foreign military policy matters.)
The fact is that The New York Review of Books is one of this country’s most elitist publications. One need only read it for about a year to notice that the selection of works to which the editors pay attention is uncompromisingly prestigious. The authors whose books get reviewed invariably have the highest possible academic pedigree, as do the reviewers themselves. The publishers, too, are ranked the highest—virtually no books from non-prominent presses get discussed. And as far as letters to the editor are concerned, only the highest-ranking correspondents manage to get printed—I know, since for about 30 years I have tried to chime in and never managed to get published, despite writing some very good letters, ones that are routinely responded to with considerable interest by The Review’s authors when I send them a copy of my comments.
The pleasure of seeing these adamant champions of equality of results on all significant fronts completely ignore their own counsel is indeed a significant one for me, someone who thinks fairness toward and equal treatment of people in nearly all areas of life (outside the protection owed our individual rights by the legal authorities) is bunk. When this country's premier journal and peddler of the egalitarian line cannot manage for the life of it to live by its own edicts, that is certainly a pretty clear hint that egalitarianism is an impossible dream. I, of course, consider it a dreadful dream, a nightmare, but the editors of The New York Review evidently believe in it with all their hearts and a bit of their minds, and yet they are unable to do what that very social philosophy requires, namely, give a fair chance to those who do not meet their standards, whatever they may be, within the pages of their publication.
Witnessing one’s adversaries being hoist by their own petards is indeed a guilty pleasure of mine (which is why I find the idea of using eminent domain to take U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter’s home, a power he recently helped authorize, so appealing). The New York Review provides that pleasure in each issue by combining a straightforward, uncompromising practical elitism with the relentless and unyielding political and legal message of egalitarianism. This certainly provides abundant evidence of the naiveté and ultimate futility of its socio-political message.
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