This is a book review, imperfectly mirrored here, from late 2004.

I have in my hand a copy of The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great. It is a magnificent book, and that is not a statement I make lightly.

It is also directly relevant to where we -- America, conservatives, the Republican Party, any and all of these three -- stand right now.

How?

(Before I go any farther, I note that a less politically relevant review is posted back on my home blog here.)

Virtues is a first-person novel of Alexander's spoken autobiography, basically told in the last short years before his early demise. (His biography can be found here.) The story begins, in classic epic fashion, in media res, with Alexander the head of the greatest Empire ever known, but with his men unable to keep up with his unyielding ambition for kleos, and tracks, from the beginning, haphazardly through Alexander's life, more or less continuously, with returns to the narrative present, each time teaching a different "virtue" in war.

Why is this relevant to the conservative project, to the Republican Party, and America?

It is easy, now, as Americans, to turn to triumphalism: We are unmatched, the world over. No nation could stand against us. Indeed, I'm not entirely sure a coalition of nations could. We are preeminent, not merely in war, but in commerce, in culture, in hegemony. Insofar as the Soviet Union was ever a match for us -- and, as Ronald Reagan long suspected, she was not -- we have outstripped our greatest rival as surely and as well as Alexander outstripped Darius, the Emperor of Persia. Truthfully, the terrorist networks and small dictators we face cannot kill us; they can but badly wound us before we annihilate them. But it is not in the American character to leave a challenge or threat, once identified, standing; we must conquer it.

It is easy, as Republicans, to turn to triumphalism: Our political enemies (whom I stress are assuredly not our actual, life-and-death enemies) are so thoroughly whipped that they are having trouble figuring out what it means to be a Democrat, and why being a Democrat has become electoral poison; utterly isolated, electorally; and, quite frankly, probably headed on a sharp decline for the foreseeable future. We still remember too well the long six decades of the New Deal, when the Republican Party could be easily defined as "Democrat Lite," and, quite honestly, want to do the same thing to our former tormentors. (Fortunately, they seem to be doing it for us: Somewhere, manufacturers of the world's smallest violins are ramping up production.)

It is hard -- even for folks given to constant pessimism, as we frequently are -- for conservatives not to be over-proud, for our opponents have reacted (or at least some have) to abject humiliation by descending into paranoid madness, and accusing over half of their countrymen of the worst sins (they can imagine). As the battles over abortion, marriage, and indeed, our nation's whole cultural attitude are slowly showing, we are winning. We're actually winning. And the Left knows it, and rails in impotent fury.

And in all of those is the danger, both internally and externally. We face the same, twin dangers Alexander did: Of allowing our fire, our inner spirit, our pride, our possession of overwhelming power, to corrupt us from the inside -- a battle Alexander fought to varying degrees of effectiveness; and of allowing that fire to bank, and leave us cold, with no strength to push our majority farther, to accomplish those same ends that Roosevelt managed seven decades ago.

Externally, Alexander's daimon, and his growing embrace of it, lead him to conquests such as no man had ever dared dream. It drove him over ten thousand miles from the place of his birth, in a time when speed of horse or a fast trireme was the best one might accomplish. By land mass, it has had few peers; in the cultures and civilizations conquered, it has had perhaps four equivalents, in the Soviet Union, the Mongol Conquests, the Roman Empire, and China at her greatest reach.

And it drove Alexander to accomplish terrible things, to attack those who not only had done him and his no harm, but who had never wanted to do him harm. Conquest became an end in itself. Alexander lived a constant struggle to live up to the virtues described in Virtues, and while his adherence could yield spectacular successes, his failures could carry terrible consequences.

I do not draw, as some would, an analogy to Iraq here. Even if we assume Iraq was no immediate threat to us, only the most benighted would argue that she intended no harm to us. Rather, I make this point:

If it is true, as Victor Davis Hanson and others have argued, that democracies are the most dangerous of adversaries, because though slowly roused to war, once roused, they are absolutely unrelenting, then we must be terribly careful in the next several years. As easy as Alexander found it to march across untold leagues, dispatching his enemies virtually without fail, we would likely find it easier (Afghanistan proved winnable for us, where it could not be for Alexander); as we have the moral weight of democracy behind us, perhaps even more compelling than the dream of kleos that spurred Alexander's army forward time and again.

It may be right to subdue much of the world, and force them, as best as we can, to choose between benighted primivism and some sort of self-determination that won't have them attempting to blow us up; the old post-Westphalian realism seems to have accomplished precisely nothing in that regard, and pure Wilsonian liberalism has been as ineffective. But each step must be taken carefully, remembering our basic principles, not only so that "the terrorists will not have won," but so that we do not forget ourselves in the winning. History is replete with nations and individuals who bet large, won large, and lost themselves. In Virtues, Alexander pushes his men past the point of exhaustion, because he becomes more and more convinced that this is his destiny; in the process, he loses much of who and what he was. As the world, and our country, become more unipolar, it behooves us to watch that example very carefully.

In short, this book is a good primer for non-policy wonks who want a graphic illustration of the promises and pitfalls of power. For the rest of us, it's a great read, and a great reminder. For a conservative given to some gloating these days, it's a (needed) reminder that under heaven, nothing is permanent.

This post dates to early 2005.







It is the great fallacy of the book reviewer to criticize a book for what it is not.

So I'll get to that in a minute.

I'm a bit late posting this review, as real life overwhelmed me the last few weeks, but one essential point that struck me about Brian Anderson's South Park Conservatives: The Revolt Against Liberal Media Bias has not left me since I finished it: I can't for the life of me figure out if I like this book or not. I enjoyed reading it, but ultimately came away not sure whether it was like a huge meal at a cruddy Chinese restaurant: Tasty at the time, but so quickly digested that it was ultimately not filling.

Part of that's because at 191 pages (including index) it's about a quarter as long as I'd prefer in a book of any type; partly it's because the orange and purple color scheme is disorienting; partly it's because no title should have an asterisk.

South Park Conservatives is a light, witty, quick, and enjoyable read. Many of the readers of this site will be intimately familiar with the background story of the demise of the Left-liberal paradigm it tells: RatherGate, Bias, The Ten Billion Tons of Missing Explosives, whatever it was that Howell Raines was doing while he was supposed to be making sure his reporters actually covered their stories, and so on. To the non-blogosphere denizen (you know, the majority of America), this is a quick, concise, useful read that also dips into the rise of talk radio, FoxNews, conservative publishing in the mainstream houses, the (surprising) rise of conservatism in academia, and, yes, the ever self-effacing blogosphere. It's written in a conversational style that's significantly easier to read than, well, anything I've ever written. It's extensively footnoted. It's short, clearly written, and should take no more than three hours to get through (it took me a little over one, but one of the few gifts I was given was a quick reading eye). I'd heartily recommend it as a gift to someone who has better things to do all day than follow politics and the death of the liberal paradigm -- which, again, is to say most Americans.

Now for the complaints.

There is no punch to this book. I think this reflects the book's greatest weakness: It is fundamentally caught between being a somewhat academic overview and summary of the rise of alternative conservative media and being a good old-fashioned polemic. The former mandates no punch, no excitement in its delivery. The latter positively demands it. The reason, I think, that I couldn't figure out whether I liked the book or not is because reading it was like being brought to the top of a roller coaster, then... finding out you're on a plateau. The ride down is enjoyable, but it would be better if they skipped the level part in the middle.

Arguably, and here's where we get into the criticizing-the-book-for-what-it's-not part, I suspect that my problem with this book is that I'm too familiar with the subject matter, and I'd rather the book skip to being a full-fledged polemic or a more thorough recounting of the rise of mass media conservatism (What happened behind the scenes? How the the GOP leadership react? How many were influenced by Goldwater but not Reagan, and the other way around?). South Park Conservatives is deliberately a tweener, a lighter read aimed much more at introduction than investigation or argument.

Unfortunately, that does not segue at all into my last quibble. I like South Park. I loved Baseketball. I think Parker and Stone are hilarious. I'm hardly a culture scold -- you can't love Major League as I do, or cry at cavalry charges like I do, and get overly exercised about vulgarity and violence all that regularly.

But.

I think Michelle Malkin is spot on about the book when she says:

Anderson argues that Comedy Central's cartoon series, South Park, embodies the "fiercely anti-liberal comedic spirit" of the "new media" from Kaus to Coulter. The cartoon, he writes, reflects a "post-liberal counterculture" that is "particularly appealing to the young, however much it might offend older conservatives." ...

My discomfort with South Park's increasingly mainstream vulgarity is not a matter of nitpicking. We're not just talking about a stray curse word here or there. As liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich points out, South Park "holds the record for the largest number of bleeped-out repetitions (162) of a single four-letter expletive in a single television half-hour." That's probably about the same number of profanities uttered at John Kerry's infamous New York City celebrity fundraiser last summer, which Republicans rightly condemned for its excessive obscenities.

Rich is wrong about most things, but he's painfully on target in noting the incongruous pandering now taking place by some in the cool-kids clique on the Right. Conservatives criticize Hollywood relentlessly, but as Rich notes, "the embarrassing reality is that they want to be hip, too."

In fact, I'd go a tad farther. The title, South Park Conservatives stems -- as Anderson notes -- from Andrew Sullivan's coined "South Park Republicans." Obviously, there is not a perfect overlap here, and while it might be perfectly accurate (if wildly exaggerated numerically) to refer to a subset of the GOP's voting bloc as "South Park Republicans," I would submit it's difficult at best, and insulting at worst, to combine "South Park" and "conservative." And it's a particularly bad idea to take any term Andrew Sullivan has ever devised ("An Eagle has landed. Now let him soar.") and apply it to conservatives without a wry grin.

South Park is, decidedly, anti-P.C., and Anderson even notes a few decidedly praiseworthy parts of seasons past (my favorite was the NAMBLA meeting episode, though the divorce one was pretty good, too). But while, to royally screw up a pretty fantastic formulation, there may indeed be pearls in what you toss before the swine, I also have to agree with Malkin that "'politically incorrect' is not always a synonym for 'conservative.'"

If we can say that there are any unifying principles in conservatism, one must be a decent respect for tradition and the wisdom hard-earned by generations of men and women living with the same existential problems (and then some) that we experience now. South Park has more or less none of this. One easy example is language: It has been the experience of generations that certain words and phrases must be off-limits in polite conversation; that arguments, no matter how snide and nasty, must be kept out of the gutter, for fear that the whole discourse (and the acceptance of the rationale of discourse over violence) might disintegrate. Were I to enumerate South Park's failings in this regard, I'd run this site's bandwidth charges through the ceiling and violate the posting rules to the point of banning myself in shame. For this reason, if no other, it is at best a well-intentioned mistake of the first order, and at worst an obnoxious insult to tie conservatives and conservatism to South Park.

And of course Malkin is also right that only we under-40 curmudgeons are going to be so terribly offended by this, because so many conservatives want to be cool. We were on the outside looking in for so long; isn't there something nice about being inside, where it's warm, and there's cocoa, and my goodness, the ladies are gorgeous in here? (Relatedly, I suspect this is also why the very idea of "South Park Republicans" hasn't been laughed out of polite discourse by now: The idea that there's a brand new cohort with a brand new perspective on life who are gonna rock this joint is a peculiar symptom of our live-in-the-moment politics, and is assuredly neither conservative nor terribly plausible, but no one wants to say so, because then we wouldn't be cool.)

Bottom line: South Park Conservatives is a nice airplane book for the veterans of politics and the blogosphere of the last couple of decades; a great beach book or present for our friends, relatives, fiance(e)s, mistresses, coworkers, and captive employees who need a cleanly written primer on those years; and a frustrating, exciting, maddening, enticing hint of what lies behind the story of the naissance of conservatism in the mass media.

A Review of The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander The Great, by Steven Pressfield



I begin by noting that, no pun, historically, I have hated historical novels. Loathed them. They take liberties with historical events, facts, and timelines. They write today's prejudices on worlds so long removed from ours, that our underlying assumptions might make no sense at all whatsoever to a man of that time. They are, usually, at best fantasy novels set in a definite time period, and, at worst, cheap polemics.

If it can be fairly said that I have detested historical fiction, there is simply no word in English for how I feel about first-person fiction. Perhaps it was too many epistolary novels in undergrad. Perhaps it is because of the awesome conceit attendant with writing from some great historical figure's voice, when one is clearly reading the author doing a particularly bad sort of impersonation -- like the joke in the Eighties that whenever someone claims to be reincarnate, one is always Cleopatra reborn, rather than one of the camp whores who followed Hannibal's army up and down Italy, or Napoleon, rather than a stable hand who once tended to one of Napoleon's horses, and who died of syphilis some years later.

I have since changed my mind.

When I was asked to review The Virtues of War, I honestly had no idea I'd be reviewing first person historical fiction. I would have said no, had I known. It would have been my loss. Fortunately, I'm also a classics geek, so I said yes.

Before I received Virtues, I decided to do some background reading, and so picked up Gates of Fire, one of Pressfield's earlier novels (this time, on the battle of Thermopylae). It, too, was an historical novel. It, too, was a first-person novel. It was incredible. (A good review of Gates of Fire can be found here.)

In fact, I was so taken with Gates of Fire that I actually approached Virtues with some trepidation. Gates of Fire was one of those rare novels in which you know the ending ahead of time, but still feverishly turn every page, trying to find out how it turns out. Truthfully, in such a case, I've never read a novelist's second effort that climbed the same height as the first.

Virtues is at least as good as Gates of Fire. Indeed, it may even be better. I won't know until I've re-read it (which I rather intend to do, just as soon as I get done writing this review). But before I gush too much, let me get my picked nits out of the way.

First, Pressfield takes, alas, some historical liberties, which, to his credit, he discloses up front. I'll spare you those, as Pressfield lays them out in some detail in the preface, and as they don't detract seriously from the novel's integrity. We'll count that as a minor strike.

Second, and this stems in no small part from the novel's structure and chief concerns, hints of Alexander's private life are virtually non-existent. While this hardly detracts from the novel's purpose, it does put a crimp on understanding why Alexander is who he is. We get cursory looks at his youth; at his relationship with his mother; at the awful pressure of growing up in the Macedonian court. His wives are mere phantoms. All but his comrades-in-arms, indeed, are mere phantoms.

Finally, and this is the recurrance of my old tic, Alexander is just a bit too aware -- of history, of the likely (and usually correct) course of the future, of, indeed, everything. It works to great effect, placing the reader in some historical context (for example, why the men of Thebes, rather than Sparta, are the dominant military power of the age of Philip); but it irks, slightly, to get obvious historical foreshadowings, such as Alexander's certainty on how his Empire will dissolve. And it tends, slightly, to bog down the narrative in pedantry. It also shades into Alexander as super-mortal, a god among men; while Alexander, and those around him, might have viewed him that way, gods don't die in their early thirties.

That is every single bad thing I have to say about this novel. Otherwise, this is a work of art; a beautifully written, delicately and expertly crafted, perfectly structured testament to the ability of an author to imagine a subject, and to share it with his readers. If that sounds like overkill, consider this passage (chosen at random):

All that being said, how does one make decisions? By rationality? My tutor Aristotle could classify the world, but he couldn't find his way to the village square. One must dive deeper than reason. The Thracians of Bithynia trust no decision unless they make it drunk. They know something we don't. A lion never makes a bad decision. Is he guided by reason? Is an eagle "rational"?

Rationality is superstition by another name.

What's great about that is not only the clear sentence structure -- it reads like someone would think -- but the way you would expect a warrior-king tutored by Aristotle, aimed squarely at a superhuman destiny, who traced his lineage through his mother to Achilles, to think. It's also a glimpse into a mind that is becoming ever-more obsessed with its destiny, and with a certainty that the gods themselves drive a man to greatness. Done incorrectly, this sort of prose can lend itself to mendacious trash like The Thin Red Line -- musings on the Platonic oversoul in the middle of an amphibious assault; done correctly, as here, it provides a textured background, a landscape on which the rest of the story unfolds.

And what a story. Alexander was the son of Phillip of Macedon, who had subjugated the Aegean peninsula, brought low the Thebans and Spartans, and planned on finally finishing off the Persian Empire once and for all. Phillip died at the hands of an assassin, and left behind a power vacuum into which his son (Alexander III, on ascension) stepped. Thereafter came, with the possible exception of Genghis Khan's empire-building, the fastest, most incredible creation of an Empire ever. Alexander marched, with the Macedonian phalanx and heavy cavalry, through Asia Minor, through the Middle East, through Central Asia, and into India, before being suddenly struck down with either a sudden illness or poisoning (historical sources differ). No army stood successfully against him; no general on an opposing battlefield truly thwarted his will. It is said of Alexander that he wept when he realized there were no worlds left to conquer. His name is legend even today. He was, in short, the sort of man coughed up only once every hundred or thousand years, if that; it is no wonder that he is called "the Great."

The novel is, as you might have guessed, Alexander's narrative (to his brother-in-law, a page in his camp) of his youth, his rise to power, his phenomenal march across the Persian Empire and beyond, and, inevitably, his demise. The novel begins on the banks of the last great river he will cross; the book carries a feel of imminent mortality, which only grows stronger as the narrative progresses, and Alexander wrestles more and more with his daimon, until it comes very close to consuming him. In a sense, it's almost as if his inner spirit, his daimon, consumes him from the inside (as Alexander is long fearful will happen), and this is the sickness that takes him. If Acton's axiom of absolute power has any truth, it is true not only on the spiritual, but on the physical level, as well; Alexander's flesh begins to revolt against him as his men cannot keep pace with his unyielding ambition. He rages. He grows feverish. He cannot speak. He is overcome and kills one of his oldest comrades.

To say that the military details are lovingly rendered is to engage in understatement. Pressfield brings the sort of love normally only an amateur historian can bring to the topic -- details about speed of hoof, armored cavalry charges, positions for lances, armor, tactics, and campaigns -- and somehow doesn't bog down the novel in the telling. Needless to say, I re-read those sections several times.

What really impressed me, at least as much as the storytelling and the narrative pace, was the structure of the novel. The novel is broken into Books, each of which describes an heroic virtue (such as "Contempt for Death") about which the Book loosely revolves. Impressively, without once conspicuously altering the narrative flow of the novel, each Book plays up that virtue through subtle emphasis and selective storytelling. The result is a novel that communicates those virtues; highlights Alexander's devout adherence to those virtues; and unsparingly demonstrates his ability to breach those rules, either by making a vice of them, or by ignoring them altogether. One cannot come away from Virtues without having absorbed, at least in some measure, those virtues. For example, is not our best brought out by striving against our enemies, and thus against ourselves; and should we not love our enemies for making us better?

A desire not to spoil the novel precludes further review. Suffice it to say, for the first time in something like four years, I have read a novel (other than Gates of Fire) that actually moved me in the reading. The best novels stay with you in your dreams and in your waking moments when you finish. I have dreamed of Virtues every night since I picked it up.

Even if Pressfield didn't bother to have Alexander slice the Gordian knot.

I heartily recommend Virtues, whether your penchant is for fiction, history, martial virtues, or, simply, a good time.

(A more political review can be found here.)