Of course, this is Townhall’s site; they can do with it whatever they want, and more power to them.

But the content of my brain is mine, and I think I can find other venues in which I can blog if I decide to continue.

There is also another issue. My blog has always been primarily political in nature, and at this point I really have no further interest in the presidential campaign. For a political blog, that’s kind of the Kiss of Death. I don’t think it’s simply an issue with me, either. I’ve noticed a significant drop in the number of comments on other member blogs, as well as on the main columns. It looks to me like many conservatives are disengaging themselves from the rest of the political debate this presidential election year as the available remaining choices are deemed simply unacceptable. The fun is gone. It’s hard to stay engaged in a process in which you don’t care about the outcome.

One thing in life I’ve learned is to never say “never”. I may pop in from time to time to see what’s going on. But for now, at least, this will be my last essay at the Island.

Update 3/5/08, especially for Jimmy C, at his request.

 

While my daughter and son-in-law are taking a cruise this week -- sponsored by his company -- I'm dog-sitting their whiny, needy, gelded, obnoxious and totally unmasculine Chihuahua. I mentioned that I couldn't be seen with this loser of a dog (I'm more of a German Shepherd kinda guy) as it would detract from my macho image, and JC -- exhibiting his streak of pure evil and meanness -- challenged me to post a pic of me and this wharf rat.

 

Because I'm so self-assured in my own masculinity, here it is:

 

 

Next week: me cleaning some of my many guns. (Just kidding. About the pic, not the guns)

 

 

Obviously, the Roman collapse is a huge and complex subject; Gibbons’ definitive book on the subject is 1312 pages, according to Amazon.com, so obviously this essay can’t plumb nearly those depths. Further, many scholars over the last 300 years have advanced various theories as to the reasons for the fall; it’s a complex subject with no easy or pat answers. But there are some very key elements we should consider.

One of the most striking factors in the decline of Rome is the string of incompetent, inept, and/or corrupt rulers in power during this period, and how their actions and decisions led to results that were disastrous for the nation-state. This trend was briefly interrupted by the reign of Constantine, who divided the Empire into an Eastern and a Western component, each autonomous, and moved his capitol to the Eastern Empire in Constantinople in modern Turkey. This part of the Empire survived successfully for a thousand more years, transformed into the Byzantine Empire, and only finally succumbed to the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

The Western Empire, however, continued its steady decline.

Another factor to consider is the effect of uncontrolled influxes of ethnic groups foreign to the native Roman culture. Rome had a policy of allowing conquered peoples to find paths to citizenship, and over time the requirements were gradually but continuously loosened. The movement of the Huns into what is now Hungary but was then a northern province wasn’t a Mongol-horde style invasion as is popularly portrayed in movies, but was actually a more gradual and primarily nomadic occurrence. Though Attila did, indeed, successfully invade Italy, it was to enforce claims to better treatment of his people who were already established within the Empire. Later and more violent invasions, such as that of the Visigoths led by Alaric in 410 AD, were merely the death knell for an empire that had already weakened to the point where it was a mere shadow of its former power.

Yet another contributing factor was that from the height of its powers under Julius and Augustus until its demise, the citizens of Rome demanded – and received – ever more and greater benefits, with ever lessening responsibilities. The circuses sometimes were in operation non-stop to entertain the masses. Military service was no longer required, and the point was reached where the Empire’s military required Germanic and other conquered peoples’ presence to fill out their ranks. This made it impossible for the Western Empire to maintain the control over their far-flung territories that had made the Empire previously viable, further weakening them to invasion, and even simple deterioration of the infrastructure. No longer did “all roads lead to Rome”.

By now, I’m sure the parallels I mentioned earlier are becoming apparent. Let’s examine some American history for context.

In political theory there’s an event known as a “change election” in which a body politic experiences a fundamental shift in its ideological or philosophical underpinnings. Because it takes time for the effect of any election to evidence itself, these events can typically only be identified retrospectively. One that is generally acknowledged is the election of Dwight Eisenhower, and the reason is that during his entire administration he took no action to reverse the policies of FDR that were previously considered unconstitutional, thereby enshrining the Rooseveltian policies as a permanent – and new – part of the American baseline for “constitutional” government action. The reach of government power had been extended under FDR and never reversed.

Though it’s tempting to categorize Reagan’s victory or the 1994 Gingrich Revolution as “change elections”, I don’t believe either qualify, because even though there was some success in rolling back governmental power, it proved temporary and the underlying expansion of government power continues, under both major political parties regardless of which is in power.

The “change election” concept is one we see Obama playing cleverly in his call for “change”, whether consciously or not. The problem is that we also see Republicans essentially doing the same thing, though not as blatantly. Bush and the GOP promoting a plan for a “tax rebate” that’s nothing of the sort, but merely an attempt to buy votes. GOP politicians trying to pre-empt the Democrats by getting in front of them on policies – such as global warming initiatives and oil exploration bans – that should be anathema.

As I’ve written so many times, all one needs do is look at California to see the direction the rest of the country is heading; then look again at the parallels to the Roman Empire I outlined at the start of the essay.

In the last 35 years I’ve seen nothing to change my mind about the similarities in evidence. Worse, I see the process accelerating. In my opinion we’ve actually reached a point in history at which a “change election” is desperately needed if this country’s original principles are to have any chance of being restored, even in a pale imitation of their previous incarnation.

The only glimmers of hope I’ve seen lately are the elections of Bobby Jindahl in Louisiana and Sarah Palin in Alaska. Both ran on very traditional conservative platforms of smaller government and individual responsibility, and both were elected in landslides. Jindahl’s is particularly significant, because Louisiana is traditionally a liberal Democrat stronghold.

These people, and others like them, need to be elevated to the national arena and given the opportunity to make their marks on the national scene. The offerings we’re getting now, from both parties, are just more of the same old same old, and are committed to driving the bus of this country off the cliff. The only thing they argue about is the speed at which we should smash through the guardrail.

Meanwhile, the people sit around ordering their Domino’s while staring at American Idol and the Superbowl.

Bread and circuses.

The first election campaign in which I could legally vote was Nixon’s 1972 re-election, and as a proud conservative, registered Republican, and Vietnam veteran (a very unpopular war) I not only voted for him but participated as a campaign volunteer and poll watcher in Chicago, where I lived at the time. I felt it would be a cold day in Hell before I’d ever consider voting for a Democrat.

I wonder if the snowshoe concession is still available Down There?

For the first time in my life, I am seriously contemplating voting for whomever the Democrat nominee is this November, rather than facilitating the further transformation of the GOP into the Dem-Lite Party by voting for McCain should he secure the nomination. I’ve been saying that for months, now, so I was way ahead of the Ann Coulter curve for those who might want to accuse me of band-wagonism, and I never say things just to hear myself make noise. Those who know me also know I mean what I say when I say it.

There are several reasons for this. First, McCain is no conservative, and has made a career out of sticking his thumb in the eyes of conservatives and even other members of his own party. If I’d spent the last twenty years calling my neighbor names, keying his car, and throwing poison meat to his dogs, I sure wouldn’t be asking for his vote if I decided to run for city council.

I read McCain as a megalomaniacal power monger totally invested in his own self-aggrandizement. He wants to be Emperor, but will settle for President… for now. I also read his disavowal of his pro-illegal alien positions and opposition to tax cuts as… well, let’s just say “insincere”. He claims to have “a practiced hand at reaching across the aisle”, and that scares me. We’ve had waaaaaaay too much of that lately; witness “scamnesty”, Scrips for Seniors, NCLB, the absurd “tax rebate”, and the rest of the terrible policy proposals that have already come out of the White House over the last few years. Further, his “reaching” has given us McCain-Feingold, McCain-Lieberman, McCain-Kennedy; far too much of that “McCain-(liberal name here)” for my taste. If you’re unhappy with Bush, you’ll hate McCain.

His supporters push McCain as a “war hero” who’d make a great war president. First of all, “hero” status isn’t earned by being shot down and captured. Second, polling of Republicans shows that the war is actually their third priority, after the economy and illegal immigration. McCain’s terrible on both those issues.

Further, in my almost 59 years on this planet, there hasn’t been a day when we haven’t been at war, of one kind or another, in many cases with enemies who were far more dangerous than a bunch of disorganized Islamo-fascists (IF) in the Middle East. The Soviet Union had the power to totally destroy us (as well as all of civilization). The idea of subsuming all other issues to the war issue is very dangerous to this country’s future. The IF can’t destroy this country, but we can certainly do it to ourselves if we sacrifice all that makes us a free and viable society on the altar of war hysteria.

As a California resident I live first-hand the results of what happens when the GOP gives up its core principles and values; California is a cautionary lesson for the rest of the country. You don’t want to live in a Californiated country; it’s not pretty.

Occasionally, the country seems to need a dose of bad medicine to learn what's good for it. LBJ gave us Nixon (conservative for his era) and Carter gave us Reagan. Those who always squawk about "eight years of Hillary/Obama" also need to remember that since FDR, the only Democrat to successfully run for office twice was Clinton, so we're only talking about another Democrat One-Term Wonder.

There’s still time. Despite all the hoopla in the liberal press, McCain didn’t do as well on Tsunami Tuesday as he needed to. With 29 states having already voted (over half) he’s only secured a little over 40% (under half) of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination. He only got 42% of the vote in California, which apportions its delegates. That’s good news. At this rate, Romney could still overtake him, or at the least we may have a brokered convention, and I don’t think that would bode well for McCain, who has made a career out of alienating his fellow Republicans. Further, most of the remaining primaries are closed, which means “independents” can’t participate, bad news for McCain.

The bottom line is that if McCain ends up as the nominee, I predict he’ll lead the GOP to a stunning defeat. He won’t get any support from conservatives, and the base is the source of the volunteer manpower and donations necessary for GOP victory.

In an era when the presidential election’s outcome is determined by a few thousand votes in a few precincts in a couple of states, McCain goes down in flames.

“… I will appoint ‘originalist’ justices to the Supreme Court…”

Giuliani

In this election campaign we hear a great deal about the appointment of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) as being a defining issue in our selection process. Now that the true ideological conservatives have left the race, we hear it even more often than before, kind of like the Bogeyman is used to frighten children into doing what their parents want them to do.

“If Hillary (Obama, Edwards) is elected, we can expect her to appoint three really liberal justices.”

“Giuliani (McCain, whomever) has promised to appoint ‘originalist’ justices.”

Let’s try to take a dispassionate look at what’s really at stake.

First of all, the two Justices most likely to retire are Ginsburg and Stevens. They’re the oldest. Both are very strongly partisan, to the point where they’d probably die in office rather than retire with a Republican President in office. If the Democrat wins the election, and they retire, that President would be able to appoint replacements that we can expect would be philosophically identical, so the current court composition would remain essentially unchanged.

Their polar opposite is Scalia, who would also probably die in office rather than retire with a Democrat President in office.

Three of the younger members – Alito, Roberts and Thomas – are pretty reliably constructionist, are nowhere near retirement, and so will probably remain on the bench at least throughout the next administration.

Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is on the young side and seems to have stepped into the Sandra Day O’Connor role as wild card. However, he does tend to side with the Scalia/Thomas bloc and is less unpredictable than O’Connor, though with a tendency to water down strong decisions.

Breyer is young, liberal, and a Clinton appointee. He’s not going anywhere for quite a while.

Then there’s Souter, a Bush 1 appointee, who was conservative-leaning from 1990 until 1993 when he became a member of the liberal wing of SCOTUS.

We also have to consider also-ran Harriet Miers, Bush 2’s first SCOTUS appointee, a member of his Texas Mafia with no judicial experience at all. Who knows how she would have turned out, as she has absolutely no judicial record to examine.

What does all of this tell us as we consider it? The first thing that’s obvious is that judicial appointments are always a crapshoot. Souter started out conservative and swung liberal. But more importantly, a President who doesn’t have a firm basis in conservatism is unlikely to appoint dependably originalist (conservative) Justices. Bush 1 appointed Souter, Bush 2 wanted to appoint the unknown quantity Miers until his feet were held to the fire by conservatives. Even conservative icon Reagan didn't do too well with Kennedy. However, all the Justices appointed by Democrats have remained staunch liberals in their rulings and decisions.

So what does all this tell us about the election? First, a campaign promise is always open to “reinterpretation” once the candidate is in office. One man’s “originalist” is another man’s “too conservative to appoint”. Experience shows us that “less than conservative” Republicans tend to appoint less-than-originalist Justices. But there are no hard and fast rules; O’Connor and Kennedy were Reagan appointees.

I predict that if the Democrat wins the White House, he/she may get two appointment opportunities: Ginsburg and Stevens. The net result is the balance of the Court remains unchanged.

If the Republican wins the race, he will probably get no appointment opportunities in his first term, barring ill health or death. If he should win a second term, he may STILL get no appointment opportunities barring ill health or death.

The only way the SCOTUS issue becomes important to the campaign is if a Republican wins, and if either Ginsburg or Stevens (or both) leave the bench due to health issues or death, and if that Republican lives up to his promise to appoint truly originalist judges, AND if those judges end up actually performing as advertised.

That’s a lot of “ifs”.

A Light-Hearted Peek Through the Looking Glass

I believe there are some basic tenets of Liberalism that, if clearly understood, may help us deal with our deluded brethren and sisteren in a more humane and understanding manner, a worthy goal at this most wonderful of Seasons. For those of a liberal bent who might be reading this essay and not understand my reference, I mean the Christmas and Hanukkah Season, of course!

For those who may be inclined to chastise me for not mentioning Kwanzaa (as well as for probably spelling it wrong), my bad. I don’t know anything about it, don’t know anybody who observes or practices it, admit I probably spelled it wrong, and, frankly, don’t much care.

Now, if we look in the animal kingdom, we find that elephants exile their males to solitude once they reach early maturity. Elephants are a matriarchal society. If we look at liberals, we see that it is a philosophy driven by female supremacy. “Wimminhood” is a totem, any male who acts at all masculine is driven away by the herd, so I must conclude that liberals share genetic traits with elephants.

The irony is that the political symbol for the GOP is the elephant! Of course, as the GOP becomes less conservative, the irony also lessens. But the Democrats scored a “Bingo!” with their selection of the jackass as their party symbol!

To the liberal mind, man is basically an animal who, if left to his own devices, will yield to his basic atavistic nature and turn into a slavering, raping, pillaging, polluting beast… in other words, a conservative.

Because they believe this, they believe Government must take total control of all aspects of life, define what is acceptable in thought, deed, and action, and leave as little as possible to individuals to decide for themselves. Can’t have toooooo much of that there freedom a-goin’ on out there!

They have a very pessimistic view of human nature, and feel it’s not to be trusted at all under any circumstances; that left to its own devices, human nature will turn toward unsavory desires, like freedom, scorn of governmental control, a desire to selfishly keep the money one earns, and a yen for target shooting and big SUVs.

Liberals are endowed with ESP. For example: “’The Arctic is screaming,’ said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.” (link). As a lawyer, John Edwards used to “channel” the voices of dead fetuses. Hillary Clinton used to “channel” Eleanor Roosevelt. This is a very handy skill. It allows liberals to speak for dead people and inanimate objects without fear of contradiction, because normal people can’t talk to dead people and inanimate objects.

Liberals suffer from a syndrome known as “collectivist mania”. Anyone who sticks out from the herd must be driven down like a Whack-a-Mole. Rich people and other achievers are despised, so every step is taken to “level the playing field”, by which they mean using all the powers at their disposal to bring the entire country down to the lowest common denominator. That way, everyone can be equally miserable, but not suffer any loss of self-esteem.

Liberals believe inanimate objects have inherent moral codes. For example, guns are evil; incredibly uncomfortable small cars suited to Barbie-doll-sized people are good.

Liberals are schizophrenic. Any unborn baby can be killed and thrown away, but no depraved murderer should be painlessly put to sleep. Somehow, “society is debased” when a murderer is executed while at the same time remaining morally superior as tens of millions of unborn babies are slaughtered. Of course, this is understandable when you bear in mind liberals believe felons should still have voting rights. Convicted murderers are potential Democrats; unborn babies are too young to vote. Worse yet, they might turn into conservatives.

Hopefully, this primer will help you make it through the Holiday Season without going postal on your liberal friends and neighbors for being so blindly obtuse. Now you understand why they are the way they are. If you’re “lucky” enough to have an actual liberal in your family, when you’re preparing that holiday feast always remember that most liberals believe “free range” food is politically correct, so make sure to roast a wild turkey. And save some Wild Turkey for yourself; you’ll probably need it.

Many issues are truly subject to state, rather than federal, authority. That’s the essence of our Federalist system of governance.

But regardless of the level, does any government in this country allow the unjustified killing of another human being?

Simple answer: No.

So then the abortion issue really becomes: when does an unborn person become a "human being"?

THAT is the issue the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) should have really addressed in Roe, rather than making up non-existent "rights" to "privacy", because if in this day and age we are going to redefine what the term "human being" means, we have to do that at the national level. SCOTUS was clearly trying to dodge having to assess the scientific and moral implications of their ruling.

If we're going to leave it up to the states, then why did we pass national laws addressing Civil Rights? Was it because Blacks and other minorities were being oppressed by some specific states?

Well, yes, of course it was!

At one time, Blacks were considered no more human than unborn fetuses are today.

I'll be honest, based on my own reconsideration of this issue in writing this essay, I have changed my mind that abortion is a state issue. SCOTUS should have put in the effort to define when a fetus becomes a human being enjoying one of the “unalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, namely: Life.

In essence, what we’re saying right now as a nation is that it’s okay for each individual state to determine for itself the definition of “human being”, which would by logical extension return us to the pre-Civil War era; the Civil War was fought to establish the principle of equal rights for all human beings, uniformly and universally recognized throughout the country.

Moreover, this is the same rationale used by the Nazis to justify not only the Holocaust, but also human experimentation... the single most ghastly abomination arising from the concentration camps of World War Two. They determined that Jews, Gypsies and other "non-Aryans" weren't really human beings.

Once that first step has been taken and we have a legal definition of when life begins, then the states can take jurisdiction as to how to address violating that right. Each state has its own laws as to how murder is treated within its borders; murder’s not a Federal offense and is left up to the states to address through their own criminal justice systems. But one thing is unanimous, and that’s the definition of murder as the unlawful taking of a life. And the states are not allowed to determine for themselves the definitions of “life” or “human being”.

There was a time when this issue did not need to be addressed, but medical advances have now made it mandatory that this status be legally defined, just as we, as a national society, define when a person is legally dead and organ harvesting can begin. While we’re at it, we also need to make a firm determination and definition, at a national level, of the issues raised by the Terry Schiavo case.

As we become ever more medically capable of sustaining life at both ends of its cycle, it becomes increasingly mandatory for a firm determination of when the right of life is applicable to particular medical states.

To do any less is to perpetually kick this can down the road, and never find resolution for the issue.

As the internecine debate rages over the GOP candidates for the nomination, and becomes particularly rancorous over Giuliani’s run, I find myself arguing more frequently with Giuliani supporters who seem to find one or two issues persuasive enough to justify his election. The following exchange is typical:

Poster:  “I’m supporting Rudy because I’m an economic conservative. It’s that simple. If you agree with me that both the economy and national security are what will matter to America in the long run, then consider what a great job Rudy can do in those areas.”

Me:  “Though I agree those are important, I’m animated by my concern for long-term conservative values, and the threat Rudy poses to them. As I think about it, my core concerns encompass yours, but yours don’t necessarily encompass mine.”

There are three primary areas of government policy:

   1.  Economic/Fiscal
   2.  National defense/Foreign policy
   3.  Social/Domestic

The term “neo-conservative”, or “neo-con” (meaning literally “new” conservative), was originally devised to denote one whose stances on Policy Areas #1 and/or #2 were conservative, while remaining liberal on #3. At the time, this was a “new” type of self-labeled conservative, hence the name. Unfortunately, many people started attaching an anti-Semitic connotation to the term – possibly because some of the notable people involved in the movement were, in fact, Jewish, like Irving Kristol, Horowitz and Medved – so I’ve started using the term “faux-cons” (“false” conservatives) instead.

But essentially, the conflict between faux-cons and traditional conservatives centers on Policy Area #3. Traditional conservatives, or “paleo-cons” (“old-style” conservatives) hold that #3 is at least as important as the other areas, and in fact encompasses issues of constitutional rights and limitations that are essential to the continuation of the nation in its historic form. Issues such as judicial activism, entitlement spending, gun rights, racial quotas, affirmative action, environmental activism, same-sex “marriage”, right to life, criminal justice, the death penalty, and many more, are all encompassed in Policy Area #3.

These are issues that go the definition of the moral fabric and social contract of our country, and to many paleo-cons are of even more import than anything else, as they define what our society, in fact, is.

To paleo-cons, success in Policy Areas #1 and #2 is virtually worthless if the country loses the battle on #3 and turns into a socialist country like many in Europe. The further irony is that when one adopts strong conservative positions in Area #3, the virtual default positions in the other two Areas are also conservative.

This is why Giuliani is running around trying to convince voters that he’s really a conservative on Policy Area #3, regardless of his history as a very liberal mayor, and throwing around conservative buzzwords like “originalist”. He’s trying to win over, or at least assuage the concerns of, true paleo-cons. This is also why a Giuliani Presidency is such a danger to this country; if Policy Area #3 becomes irrelevant, then we will have changed into a European-style country, or California.

The real challenge is to stimulate a broad consensus that paleo-conservatism, as typified by Reagan, the Contract With America, and Bobby Jindahl’s recent election as Governor of Louisiana, is the only reliable way to win the cultural war in this country, and settling for half measures will lead to our ultimate failure.

The enemy: willing to hijack aircraft and turn them into flying bombs, killing themselves and thousands of others, innocent civilians; willing to blow themselves up in bazaars and theaters, killing themselves and innocent civilians; torture and behead captives, and hang the naked bodies from bridges; fight as guerrillas and irregulars, wearing no uniforms and blending into the populace; don’t obey the rules of laws or conventions of war; believe death in battle leads to martyrdom; religious fanatics, who believe Allah is on their side; will do anything to impose their theocracy on the rest of the world.

Us: Going through a national hand-wringing exercise about getting the enemy’s face wet.

Well, if I were a Vegas odds-maker, I know how I’d peg the outcome of that fight! And I may well be right in the long run.

Obviously, I’m referring to the national debate – and hysteria from so many, not all on the Left – about “waterboarding”.

Contrary to popular perception, military conflicts are only rarely won by wiping out the enemy to the last man. It’s so rare, those occasions are immortalized in history, an example being the Spartans at Thermopylae. The term “decimate”, thought by most to mean “massacre” or “wipe out”, actually means to “reduce by one tenth”; in other words, kill 10% of the enemy.

Military conflicts are won by making the continuation of warfare so unpalatable to the enemy that he surrenders or sues for peace or simply vacates the battlefield.

In World War II we did it by firebombing German cities such as Dresden, killing tens of thousands of civilians, men, women and children. We defeated Japan by dropping two nuclear devices on their cities after firebombing Tokyo, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

Of course, now we’re more cultured and civilized. We’re worried about getting the faces of Islamo-Fascist terrorists wet.

Nobody ever won a war by “out-nicing” the other guy. Wars are won by making the cost of continuing the war so high, the enemy doesn’t want to play anymore. In the culture of the Middle East, strength is respected; power is respected; will is respected; force is respected. “Nice” is derided and viewed as a sign of weakness.

Just as Supreme Court Robert Jackson observed that the Constitution “is not a suicide pact”, neither are the Geneva Conventions of 1949, particularly as they don’t apply to non-uniformed irregular combatants of a non-signatory body nor spies.

But once again, the Left has succeeded in redefining the terms of the debate. History lesson, all: in 1968 the Media Elites of the Left declared the Vietnam War a lost cause. It didn’t have to be, because we had just enjoyed a terrific military victory, the Tet Offensive. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top military strategist for the North Vietnamese, in his autobiography, was quite clear in giving full credit for the ultimate victory of the Communists to America’s Left.

They must be sooooo proud, to be the most effective weapon in the enemy’s arsenal!

This is a real problem, folks. This is not a good sign for our longevity as a nation.

The other night I rented and watched a movie that came out in 1964 named The Carpetbaggers. It was based on a Harold Robbins book of the same name, and had an (at the time) all-star cast headed by George Peppard, Carol Baker, Martin Balsam, Lew Ayres, and Martha Hyer, among others. It was one of the “blockbuster” movies of that year. I remember seeing it when it first came out and, being fairly young, not understanding all the nuances. Though tame by today’s standards, at the time it struck me as gloriously trashy.

The central character, Jason Cord, was allegedly loosely based on Howard Hughes. This is also the book and movie that brought us that great character Nevada Smith, secondary in this work, but later turned into a really rip-roaring original Western starring Steve McQueen in the title role.

In that era Robbins’s books were considered a guilty pleasure. He was always controversial; his sex scenes were always bordering on being censorable (yes, believe it or not, censorship did actually exist at one time!); his style was a unique mixture of potboiler and literature; his central characters were colorful and sinful, rich, sometimes debauched, in many cases with undertones of heroism. Stiletto, A Stone for Danny Fisher, The Betsy, 79 Park Avenue, The Adventurers and many others, several of which were also turned into movies.

But here’s the really interesting thing that occurred to me as I thought about all of this: back in those days there was an underlying sense of justice and morality that still pervaded the arts. In The Carpetbaggers Cord is ultimately redeemed by facing his inner torment and by the love of a faithful and loyal “good woman”, his wife Monica. In The Third Man Harry Lime (Orson Welles) is killed in the end, as he (Welles) is also in Touch of Evil. In the Nevada Smith McQueen spinoff, Smith finds redemption through the spiritual ministrations of a priest played by Raf Vallone.

These are classic themes, going back to Shakespeare (Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth) and beyond (Oedipus Rex comes to mind). They appeal to the basic human desire to find a sense of order in a disordered world; the hope that in one way or another good will prevail over evil, or at the least evil will be punished.

But the trend seems to be changing. In The Godfather, Parts 1 and 2 (we’ll omit Part 3 from the discussion, as it wasn’t based on the book at all but was simply an attempt to cash in on a lucrative franchise, and frankly was a lousy movie), based on the Mario Puzo novel of the same name, innocent Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) is dragged by circumstance into the family Mafia business, and by the end has been transformed into a despotic monster, guilty of fratricide among many other sins, but rather than having experienced redemptive salvation or suffered punishment, is the ruler of all he surveys. This represents a tidal change in the traditional morality of American cinema. We see the same thing in the series of movies featuring the character of Hannibal Lechter. Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood with an all-star cast and based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, is yet another example. Sean Penn’s character, after mistakenly killing the wrong man in revenge for his daughter’s murder, remains unrepentant and unpunished.

There was a time when studios would refuse to make films that ended this way. The studio heads were strong subscribers to traditional morality, and the viewing public voted with their feet. The times, they are a-changing.

This strikes me as a mixed blessing. It certainly makes for more complex and interesting films in many ways. But I can’t help but consider what this also says about our society as a whole. Does cinema reflect the society in which it’s produced? What power does it exert in actually shaping that society? Is it a coincidence that over all, G-rated family fare is still the most profitable genre?

Interesting questions to ponder.