Ben Stein's Diary
Stein, Ben
BEN STEIN'S DIARY THURSDAY Beverly Hills Here it is, late August, early evening. Earlier today I asked Tommy if he wanted to go look at cars. He turned fifteen a few days ago and is eager to get...
...It seemed far too small...
...He is, in many ways, our zeitgeist, the spirit that animates us and our house in these times of his youth...
...To create a body of laws as fine as ours, cited upon a Constitution so perfect, took millennia of accumulated knowledge, to find what worked to at once secure freedom and order...
...I took the wheel and off we went on the streets of Culver City Wow, did that car go fast...
...In very many ways, the dream that Mar-tin Luther King, Jr...
...I feel as excited even shopping for a car for Tommy as I did when I bought my spectacular red 1962 Corvette back in 1971...
...We drove home talking about the WRX, about how and when to shift, and Tommy wanted to know from his dad how you drive a car, and I wanted to tell him...
...Again, there is that unhappy disconnect between town and gown, about what is real and what is important...
...Dads are supposed to make their sons feel big and important, and I hope that did it...
...As you might guess, I am here to watch our son play football...
...He turned fifteen a few days ago and is eager to get started looking for a car, even though it will be a year before he gets his driver's license, at best...
...Students are taught about America's record of racism, and they often bring it up to me when I speak in praise of America...
...The first is a wild disconnect between what is happening out in America and what young people are learning about America...
...We finish taking the car for a ride, and Tommy asks if we can buy the car that nightand just keep it in the garage until he gets his license...
...The best part, he said, was getting to meet ordinary Americans...
...I did have bad shortness of breath...
...This also is a way of his showing he is close to his dad...
...There could not have been an America without it...
...I did not care for the 330i, by the way...
...CMS, sadly, stops at grade nine...
...Deeply...
...Now I realize that "sensible" is not a word free of personal bias...
...Instead, they are often taught that Marx-ism, author of more misery than any system in man's history, is a legitimate way to organize society...
...64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002...
...If they have even heard of reparations at all, they hear of it in the con-text of the "demand" by politicians for reparations for slavery...
...On the talk show I just did a pilot for, black and white producers, men and women, young and old (that was yours truly), got along as if there truly were a colorblind workplace...
...I can very well recall when the only women in a room would be taking short-hand or bringing in the coffee...
...Nevertheless, the car is a possibility...
...But when I see what young people are taught—and what others not so young know just ain't so—I worry...
...Glory to the young, glory to the car, glory to the liquid sky above Culver City...
...Anyway, Tommy is a new boy, the kind of boy, young man, who has a future, and Cardigan did it...
...I used to have a Subaru FF-1—brand new out the door in Santa Cruz, California...
...I have been complaining that there is but little thrill in 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 did not want in any way to cut down on his thrill about the new toy he will have, if all's well, in a year or less...
...Amazingly, it is selling really well, and I have been on a mil-lion shows promoting it...
...The team all shook hands with Avon, a fine crew, and then went to their gym, showered, changed, and had dinner at the Avon refectory in school dress—gentlemen...
...Then it is based upon laws that are founded upon all of humankind's experience, to apply some modicum of justice and order and fairness to the incredibly confused dealings of hundreds of millions of men and women...
...The record of accomplishment of human dignity and opportunity is so shining that it has to be taught, not ignored...
...The sky by now is darker blue-gray, but still with glorious pink sheets running through it...
...The CMS squad took a bus three hours to get here and are now playing in arctic cold, under a magnificent blue-gray sky, on a field with no lights and only a few spectators...
...He wants to eat what I eat...
...Delight...
...It was a darned good car, so I am giving it all a shot...
...Now two things are going on here...
...He was amazingly uninformed about the car...
...For the past few days I have been in New York City doing publicity for my new book, How To Ruin Your Life...
...Blacks and whites and Asians, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, work together in astonishing harmony...
...The pride of his team—every one of whom are proud and spark plugs—and the pride of his old dad and mom...
...When he is in ecstasy, I am in ecstasy...
...Tommy and I go to a Subway—an amazingly good fast food chain—and Tommy eats not only his sandwich, but also a goodly chunk of my meatball sub...
...Men and women knew history...
...WEDNESDAY For some reason of unmerited good fortune, I get to travel around this great country almost constantly...
...A few days ago, we went to Beverly Hills BMW to look at the 330i...
...In fact, I am mindful almost every day that I travel of what my old pal from child-hood Carl Bernstein told me long ago about speaking...
...He could not stop telling me I was shifting too fast or too slow, at too high or low an rpm—always filled with advice...
...The thrill belongs to the car—but also to youth...
...They have no idea how the Roman Empire worked...
...But cars are one of the major areas in which we can communicate where he gets genuinely excited and eager, so I am all too eager myself to start the car chase early...
...No dad in America could be happier...
...I want Tommy to look back on this night as a great night in his youth...
...had when he spoke to the nation in 1963 has been realized...
...It supposedly goes fast, but not too fast, and has safety elements that make it safer than most cars...
...They are sometimes taught that state ownership is a legitimate way to eliminate racism and gender bias, not just a way to allow the few to dominate the many...
...This is Tommy's night...
...They teach about how NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63 America got rich—along with Europe—by exploitation...
...He is still a fanatic fan of computer games, but not the sick addict he once was...
...People have to know that the daily life of the past, in all times and places, was based upon keeping the masses in line with violence and dogma, wringing from them what could be wrung, for any purpose that suited their masters, including killing them...
...Avon goes to twelfth grade...
...I am sad to think of how empty the house will be without him...
...Bless this day...
...Then we got into Daddy's car and our driver drove us through the ultradark, starry New England night back to New Hampshire...
...But now, now, now I get it...
...Bless them...
...He wants to look at the Subaru WRX...
...Glory to the salesman and glory to the father who can share his son's euphoria about buying a piece of metal and rubber and glass that can make a plodding human into a god...
...It is founded first of all upon the Constitution, the greatest work of man's intellect of all time...
...All because CMS made him play, made him develop his potential, and then his own pride kicked in...
...To keep America, to make sure that it lasts, there has to be an appreciation of justhow rare and precious is a nation founded upon consent of the governed, and one where that consent is rapidly extended even to persons recently thought of as property...
...He talks a lot and offers guidance when he feels close to me, and he obviously felt very close tonight...
...Americans are working together better than ever before...
...Little is taught about how the free market is the primary engine for prosperity all across the world and how America was its first great example on a continental basis...
...He has gone to football camp, to lacrosse camp, to wrestling camp, and when he was home, worked three days a week for a couple of hours at a pet-rescue center, where poor dogs and kitties with-out homes are kept and loved until homes are found...
...In fact, he is almost teary-eyed with excitement...
...And indeed, that is a blessed meeting...
...Tommy and his pal Mack—a star also, but with a concussion that kept him from the game today—watched a DVD of a movie...
...To put it bluntly, if we do not understand just how much of a gem America is, we can lose America...
...I can describe it by an analogy...
...This is a revolutionized child...
...In other words, it took some knowledge of history...
...All in all, it has been a great pleasure having him home for the summer...
...No cold water, no raining on his parade...
...Not only that, but everyone all seems to me to get along amazingly well...
...Proud, self-confident, assured...
...In our little neighborhood games in Silver Spring in 1960, I used to play tackle and loved it, but Tommy is a million times better and faster...
...To think that is mostly gone now is euphoric...
...This boy, this powerhouse, is the same child who was surly, refused to leave his room, would not go out for any sports at school in L.A., had no pride in himself at all...
...The weather has been awful and I thought I would die of cold, but I didn't...
...Above all, God bless our son, whose life has been saved...
...This is a smallish sedan with some kind of racing features that make it a "rally car...
...But they are rarely taught that 400,000 American white men gave their lives to win a struggle that freed the slaves...
...SATURDAY New Hampshire Let us now praise the Cardigan Mountain School...
...It's not a huge thing anymore the way it was when I was a child...
...In a way, he is my idol when he is out there on the field...
...If young people do not understand that the "great" revolutions of our era, communism and fascism, were based upon the subjugation of the tens of millions to allow the supremacy of the few, or even the one, we will not be willing to make the efforts necessary to guard this society for generations hence...
...True, I have been driving a standard shift car since 1960 and he has never had a license, but I welcomed his comments...
...A society whose brightest are so indoctrinated cannot and will not last a long time...
...I get to see an America that is radically changed from Carl's and my childhoods, and mostly in better ways...
...I can easily remember when the only black in the room at a business meeting would be a janitor...
...There are broad vistas here, and the sky is glowing in the way it does whenrain might be on the way—except that it never rains here any longer...
...No, I say, but maybe if he gets on the honor roll, we can get it when Tommy turns fifteen and a half and can get a learner's permit...
...When I go to colleges, I see an America where the races get along almost perfectly, laughing and joshing together in a carefree torrent of youth...
...He is running aggressively through the line, tackling backs, sacking the quarterback, catching an onside kick, generally acting as a spark plug to his team...
...But from what I gather talking to the young people I meet, very little is taught about how the American Revolution was and is the light of human freedom across the world...
...Back to the present tense...
...I think, symbolically, he thinks he is partaking of me and my carbuying ability by eating half of my meatball sub...
...I sat at their table and watched as Tommy bantered easily with the boys from his squad and with Avon boys who had gone to Cardigan last year...
...in 1972, it cost $1,900...
...Anyway, tonight Tommy has had a major shift in emphasis...
...If young people do not understand that this changed only slowly and with great sacrifice, first in England and then in America, and that we are a stark departure from the way society "always" worked, young people will not value America the way they should...
...Alas, as I see it in my travels, at some point in the recent past, history simply stopped being taught or known in any sensible way...
...Now, he has immense pride in his school, in his team, in himself...
...I am in ecstasy...
...But some points seem to me to be ineluctable...
...Tommy is deeply stirred...
...Young people and old have to know that through most of man's history, societies were organized for the few to exploit the many...
...Many boys from Avon cheerily came over...
...And the dealer tacked on a ridiculous number of extra charges for trivial things like alloy wheels...
...Bless pride in oneself...
...But when I talk to many young—and old—Americans, they know almost no history at all...
...And I ing, almost above the ground—and so am I. A thought comes to me...
...We all talked about cars and schools and I was happy...
...Tommy ate respectfully and politely...
...I am a resourceful fellow, and I have some savings, so maybe we can get him a BMW...
...It is not a thrill for me, who is fifty-seven and has bought many a car...
...The Subaru dealer is down in Culver City, not far from the magnificent studio lot that used to be MGM (more stars than there are in the sky, the studio used to claim, and now my spell check does not recognize it...
...The doc said I just had bad heartburn, which is truly my curse, so I survived...
...When I tell them that America rescued all of western Europe after World War II only to have much of it turn hostile to us, that we rebuilt Japan and did not ask for one penny of reparations, young people are dumbfounded...
...It turned out he was from Boston, had come to Hollywood to become a star and also a writer and director, and was working—as so many fledgling stars do—as a car salesman...
...The coach shouts out, "Stein, get in there...
...When I tell them that nothing like this has ever happened in human history, that one race would lay down its lives by the hundreds of thousands to free another, they look at me as if that were a perspective they had never even thought of...
...Still, it amused Tommy to do the car shopping, and he spent the rest of the day bragging to his friends about what he had done...
...I have to say it again, I am sorry...
...It is astonishingly evident in the reading of documents by Americans of the nineteenth century, even ordinary soldiers in the Civil War, that they knew ancient history, medieval history, the mod-ern history of their times, and upon this knowledge was the great edifice of America founded...
...He walked dogs and groomed kitties and did it with a minimum of complaint...
...No air conditioning...
...The future needs more appreciation of America...
...Tommy has become the boy I always wanted him to be...
...At the same time, universities are saying that this is a hopelessly flawed and racist state...
...He has actually been delightful all summer...
...The thrill belongs to the young—and it is shared and magnified when the parents feel it too...
...We do truly have an America where men and 1women are judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin, and this, to me, seems like a miracle, to have been accomplished in such a short time...
...Warm and balmy, with enough clouds to offer a glorious pink sunset...
...Tommy is left tackle and he is playing likea champ...
...College courses teach about the grievances of interest groups and racial groups and gender groups...
...I can so clearly recall the keen feelings of rejection I used to have when I drove by the restricted country clubs of suburban Maryland in my youth...
...It took me to a cardiologist recommended by my pal Justin Feld-man...
...The kids yell, "Good work, Stein," "Nice job, Stein," and I, his old dad, am on the sidelines in tears that freeze on my old cheeks...
...Wow, was Tommy excited...
...Think of this country as a magnificent structure of human intelligence...
...That is, America is working bet-ter than ever to live up to its dream, but the undercurrent of criticism is also getting louder...
...Tommy's thrills are my thrills...
...But it is a thrill for Tommy—and his thrills are my thrills...
...That capital continued to grow after America was founded...
...This attacks the basic foundation of the society by telling young people that the society is not worth preserving...
...They are stunned when I suggest that reparations have already been paid in blood by the soldiers from Indiana and New Hampshire who laid down their lives for African-American freedom...
...I tip the salesman sixty dollars, because I felt sorry for his situation, and then Tommy and I go off to find dinner...
...But there is something almost as deep that is frightening to me at many a turn...
...They are frequently taught that our own society is a cesspool of racism and oppression and colonialism...
...Bless independent schools...
...Now, the boss I am reporting to for the event is likely to be an African-American...
...The days when a car offers total immersion in happiness do not last long...
...I get to speak to young people in colleges and high schools, to groups of financiers at conferences, to appear on talk shows, and to interview people myself for programs to educate executives...
...I am in ecstasy...
...It took a lot of years to reach the Enlightenment, and all of that time, mankind was building up immense capital of human knowledge of history...
...The only bad moment was when I was getting yelled at by a very mean and not terribly scrupulous Alan Colmes, but he turned out to be a friendly guy once the lights were off, so it was all fine...
...Anyway, this morning, off I went in a car to New Haven, Connecticut, my old stomping grounds, to get another car, and thence to Avon, Connecticut, to the football field of a private school called Avon Old Farms...
...We found the dealer and my son started to get agitated and anxious, but in a good way, a cheerful, expectant way...
...Again, this would have been unheard of forty years ago, when there were so few blacks in colleges anyway...
...To think that the blacks who only worked in wealthy neighborhoods as maids and seamstresses and gardeners now own those homes in Beverly Hills and Chevy Chase and Bronxville—that is exhilarating...
...Tommy's team, Cardigan, won 26-6, and then, the best part...
...That was one of Tommy's dream machines...
...When he was home, he was vastly more polite than I had ever seen him, had a better sense of humor, and was more responsive to requests for help around the house...
...When we step out into the parking lot, he is sailthen it's there...
...The assistant coach shouts out "Tommy, get in there...
...He talks nonstop about gearshift ratios, rpm speeds, "kits" that he can get in some desert hideaway to make his prospective car look better and go faster, and he is glowing with excitement...
...Some-how, it may be that simply the sight of how well America works day by day erases the non-sense that young people are taught in schools and rebuilds the human capital needed to keep the society strong...
...That, too, is changed, and women work interchangeably with me at all levels...
...They know almost zilch about Stalin's Russia or how the modern Communist Chinese state, work-place of the world, was born in an orgy of mass murder...
...Yes, he is on the varsity of Cardigan Mountain School, his school in New Hampshire...
...By and large, I love what I see...
...They know little or nothing about how the Aztec world worked by bloody repression...
...For one glaring thing, racial and gender inequality is largely gone...
...When he is happy, I am happy...
...It may well be too pricey for us, especially since my game show has now been told (through us, its makers) that it has only one more season...
...The second thing, closely connected to the first, is that at the finest and best schools—and I think of my alma mater, Yale (where I went to law school, not college) and my other alma mater, Columbia, where I went to college and proud of it—young people are being taught what I would call "antihistory": history that falsely teaches that America is more blameworthy than praiseworthy, and that sys-terns that are evil are not...
...We found a young salesman who found us a WRX...
...If America is to last as long as it deserves to, if it is to be kept flowering, the next seventy-five years need to be more about praise of what has gone right and less about complaints about what, in the story of America, are tiny eddies in an onrushing river of human progress...
...It is a beautiful night...
...This country is becoming more free, more open, more than ever the land of opportunity...
...If America is praised, that is condemned as "triumphalism" and "exceptionalism," words that are well known on college campuses even though my spell checker does not recognize them...
...When I think that at law firms and country clubs where Jews were once strictly verboten, they are now members, simply taken for granted—it brings tears to my eyes...
Vol. 35 • November 2002 • No. 6
