In de Toqueville's time America wasn't "great". It was a promising, but very young, nation. And what, exactly, did he mean by "good"? Are we still "good" in that sense? Was J. Edgar Hoover, for a long time a symbol of, uh, probity, "good"? Was Nixon "good"? Was Kennedy (let alone his father) "good"? And I don't mean sexually, though two of 'em, and maybe all three, had their own little adventures.
But Will isn't following de Toqueville; he's whining superciliously about "vulgarians" and saying, quite absurdly, that tolerance of politicians' sexual peccadillos leads inevitably to totalitarianism. How stupid does he think people are? Let's consider radical Muslims, shall we? Their rule is invariably benevolently democratic and just, no?, sexual puritans that they are? Gee, I really, really wish I lived in Afghanistan or Iran! Toqueville woulda loved the Taleban, I bet!
How 'bout Nabokov? His Lolita was a parable of European decadence debauching American innocence and virtue.
This seems to me a rather simplistic interpretation of an extremely complex novel. Humbert Humbert wasn't all bad, and Lolita wasn't all good. For starters. One of my favorite books. |
