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What once was said of Rome, adorned by the hand of Augustus, might now be said of the Middle East, pacified by President Trump: He found it a region of brick, and left it one of marble.

Adulatory and lapidary, eloquent and terse, the statement, when read today, feels as applicable to the accomplishments of the latter, as it did to those of the former. In respect to his highness Augustus, successor to Caesar if not quite his son, it was a veritable truth. His defeat of love-sick Mark Antony on the gentle coast of Greece, and, with it, the consolidation of a rowdy empire over which he now enjoyed undivided control, marked the beginning of that most favored era to which history had yet born witness: the Pax Romana. Emulated by every age, and appropriated by every nation (see, the Pax Britannica, Pax Francia, Pax Americana, et al.), the Pax Romana, as first conceived, has never been surpassed.

It was an age by which two triumphant centuries would be marked, over which one growing and inimitable empire would preside. It would do so until the death of the famed Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, that profound thinker and subtle ruler whose virtues quite exceeded his foresight. Prematurely was he swept away to the quiet depth of his grave, a solitary abode in which, without interruption, his dreams of a meditative eternity could commence. Yet his choice of a son, as opposed to an unrelated man of some demonstrable merit, for the part of Rome’s next king was his lasting mistake. One disastrous decision at the end of a wise man’s life, it chips away at the fine polish of a memory by which, otherwise, we’re still dazzled. It’s the bruise by which his posthumous fame is blemished, and it brought to an end that which Augustus had begun.

More than anything else, when we reflect upon Rome, after passing over such trifles as the rape of the Sabine women, or the defeat of the Carthaginians, or the drama and death of Julius Caesar, we settle in and focus on the Pax Romana. That is the subject of our great relish and our continued study. It not only captures our attention, but forms the outlines of our imagination. It’s become an age upon which we’d like to model our own, and an example of humankind at the height of its cultural perch.

Perhaps, with the passage of time, we might affix to these past few weeks the beginning of a new era upon which, with similar fondness, we’ll gladly look back. We might read of it, in our books of history, as the era during which conviviality was on the ascendant, and goodwill given and returned. We might call it, henceforth, the Pax Arabia, and we might thank for its arrival the efforts of an only slightly less regal, and, undoubtedly, far less stoical President Trump.

Though doubtless the result of many years of hard work, of quiet assiduity, of unnoticed perseverance, and of tireless grit, we’ve seen with rapidity the announcement of multiple peace deals involving Israel and a collection of Muslim states. We see, before our eyes, the brick taking marmoreal form, a scene shifting from the coldness of stone to the alluring warmth of statuary art. Albeit in a crude and incipient way, they mark the beginning of what might be the Pax Arabia to come. It need only be further adorned and protected, embellished and refined.

The first such deal to be announced was between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, a monumental agreement by which, if using its flummoxed reaction as our gauge, the Western world was thoroughly shocked. The UAE, resplendent jewel of the Persian Gulf, sought in a deal with Israel that for which every state yearns: security, prosperity, and everlasting peace. They sought the easing of hostilities for which friends have no patience, and the comity of neighbors by which comfort is ensured. With these aims in mind, they negotiated for and achieved a deal by which mutual advantage could be granted, and private gain procured.

Seeking to imitate the wisdom of its southern neighbor, the small island nation of Bahrain followed suit. Along with the UAE and, before it, Egypt and Jordan, it became the fourth Arab nation to affix its name to this encouraging and growing list. What’s more, it’s expected, in the weeks to come, that perhaps the giant of the region, and the occasional thorn in the humanitarian’s side, Saudi Arabia, will soften its ancient prejudices and do the same. Just four years ago, this would’ve been inconceivable. After all, was this not the country that was once home to the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden? Does this not remain the same country in which Wahhabism (a species of Islam that’s far from Philo-Semitic) continues breathlessly to be preached?

In addition to those states, three more have agreed either to normalize relations, or explicitly to engage with Israel on a footing of peace. Kosovo, Serbia, and Sudan are now counted among the tiny Jewish state’s new friends. The last of the three, itself a temporary home to bin Laden and, by both ethnicity and demography, an overwhelmingly Arab land, is perhaps the most unexpected of the parties that’ve joined to date. The animosity it’s expressed toward Israel was, until recently, never lacking in vehemence and sincerity. Not only did it consider Israel an enemy state, it actively sent troops to fight against it in a series of regional wars. All this, it appears, is now changed.

Sadly, we must concede to the reality that marble, while beautiful, can never be immortal. It can be damaged if deliberately abused, and it can crumble under the weight of neglect. Such violence might await the Middle East in the months to come if, as the best of our polls suggest, and the wisest of our pundits assume, America’s executive leadership undergoes a change. The departure of President Trump, and the ascension of Joe Biden, might succeed in stifling the Pax Arabia before it gets an opportunity to breathe.

How quickly, I fear, will the marble devolve to brick, and the fledgling peace into interminable war. Resplendence might be turned to rubble, and the beauty of hope to the misery of despair.

The great ornament of ACB’s judicial philosophy, by which conservatives are dazzled and progressives perturbed, is her adherence to and reverence of the idea of Originalism. Through her hearing, we’ve been treated to a fine education on the term. Originalism, once an archaic and learned word, has become, seemingly overnight, one by which ordinary discussion is enlivened and lay thought provoked. It finds itself roused from the comfort of law school bookshelves, upon which, with few interruptions, it’s peacefully slept, to where it now stands, center stage, beneath the incandescent heat of a tense national debate.

Among most makers of opinion, and some drafters of law, Originalism is not a well-loved idea. A long-abused term, mostly owing to its association with the late, honorable Antonin Scalia, it’s one with which the equally unutterable “Textualism” has become synonymous (though, doubtless, tweed-clad legal scholars would enjoy nothing better than to leap at the opportunity to correct me on the differences between the two). It can be said with confidence, however, that both stymie the momentum of progress, activism, and “liberal” reform by tossing in their way a bothersome road-block. That impediment is none other than the original meaning of the Constitution and the literal text of the law.  

It was, at least until recently, a term with which few Americans, and perhaps fewer Senators, were intimately acquainted, and it’s for this reason ACB was asked to provide the uninitiated with its brief definition. In her response, the aspiring justice said that it’s her devotion to Originalism that leads her to interpret the “Constitution as a law” and to interpret “its text as text” and to understand it to have “the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it.” For the benefit of our shared elucidation, she continued on by saying that the “meaning (of the text) doesn’t change over time” and, with a flourish of humility unfamiliar to the character of the court, “it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it”.

Brava.

If her definition was wanting in that type of Scalian oratorical excellence, of which one might’ve hoped she’d become the silver-tongued inheritor, it provided a concise and easily-understood explanation that none could fail to grasp.

In a word, laws must be interpreted not by the rash exigencies of the moment, nor the predilections of a maddened crowd unencumbered by thought, but by the strength of their original meaning, stolid and resolute then as now. This creates a wall through which neither caprice nor passion can penetrate, upon which a lasting society can be built. Along that vein, text must be treated as weighty, inviolable, and real. Words, when inscribed, weren’t done so to be the empty mutterings of a forgotten time. It was no one’s plan for them to be abused by the ephemeral storms of fancy, nor was it their intention for them to be neglected just because they were old.

They were meant, rather, to carry with them, into the future and beyond, their literal meaning and their objective tone, to which all might pay attention, by which our nation’s legal structure might be preserved.

Astonishingly, in the course of ACB’s confirmation hearing, the exact opposite of this ideology showed its face. And while it’s rare for so stark a contrast to arise, and for so explicit a dichotomy to be drawn between two conflicting points of view, this one jumped to the fore and stole the attention of all. It sallied forth to divert the efforts of a Supreme Court confirmation process to which, in degree of its seriousness, no other public event this year (a year at whose beginning, mind you, the president was impeached) seems to compare.

The ideology of which I speak goes by the name of “linguistic positivism”, two words that read, admittedly, as vainly pretentious and laughably hoary. In some ways, they are, but they mustn’t be thought too old, too turgid, nor too silly to be taken seriously. As if dynamite, they’re two words packed with danger, by which all vestiges of communication, and all remnants of human relations, might be blown to bits.

Linguistic positivism is best understood when viewed in relief to those ideologies over which your gaze just passed. Once again, the presupposition of both “Originalism” and “Textualism” is that terms, once defined, aren’t amenable to the vagaries of constant and coerced change. They aren’t to be purchased and sold in the dirty marketplace of the day, changing meanings as they change hands. They are, in a sense, immutable and holy, even if the language in which they were originally written undergoes a natural evolution, or is reshaped in an organic way.

Linguistic positivism rejects the objectivity of words. It thinks nothing of their veracity, their holiness, their sanctity, and the precious truth they convey. Rather, it presumes that there is no greater truth, and no objective reality in which a word partakes. There is no higher ideal, no Platonic form of which it might be reflective. Nor, for that matter, is there a lofty standard that it reaches and comes back to communicate. Words no longer serve in the role of useful symbols, faithful signs by which the realm of the invisible might be brought down to the Earth.

They are, once stripped of all objectivity and meaning, vocalizations of power. They are this and nothing more—power. They’re objects of manipulation by the capable, articulate, and the strong, and they impose their unanchored, ad hoc meaning on the defenseless and weak.

This philosophy is best expressed not by Leftist American politicians, by whom it’s quietly embraced as an unacknowledged friend, but by a figment of a British novelist’s imagination. In his phantasmagoric Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll has his Humpty Dumpty say the following:

“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.

“The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many differentthings”.

“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to master—that’s all”.

He who associates the lovable Humpty Dumpty of his nursery rhymes with the madman Friedrich Nietzsche of his university curriculum, is either a deviant child or a subtle scholar. In this case, he might be both. Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, perhaps better than any character yet drawn, expressed in those lines perfect linguistic positivism, and capped them off with a declaration of a startlingly honest Germanic “will to power”. Really, that’s all linguistic positivism is: the manipulation of speech in the effort to consolidate power. It’s an attempt to tyrannize communication and to gain supremacy over the field of though. It’s Nietzsche’s maxim applied to words, and an incredible danger to the society of man.

With their unexpected amendment to the word “preference” (when used, apparently disparagingly, in speaking of the orientation of one’s sexual aims), the Democrat Senators by whom ACB was questioned attempted to do just that: heighten and secure their power by changing the language in real-time. They sought, by so doing, to claim themselves the clear victors of the field. This maneuver, it should be noted, isn’t without precedence: they and their ilk did exactly the same thing to such varied terms as “court-packing”, “racism”, and “fascism” before it. In at least two of three cases, they enjoyed no small degree of success.

Yet they might not be so successful again. No sooner did ACB conclude her compelling definition and defense of Originalism than the Democrats responded with their limp promotion of Positivism. For the audience watching, it was a rare opportunity to learn the philosophy of the former, and to see an example of the latter. An approving sentiment, so far as I could tell, resided with the first, while the second was left searching for supporters. That, in a nutshell, might be the problem with so radically subjective an ideal; while it might at first inflame individuals, it rarely convinces a crowd to move. The trouble is, unlike the lot of us who have different but reconcilable ideas, these two terms cannot coexist. One must choose between them: Originalism, as expressed by ACB, or Positivism, as offered by the egg-headed Left. My preference, for what it’s worth, rests with objectivity, Plato, and the sanctity of words. Perhaps you choose as your philosopher and guiding light the tottering and broken Humpty Dumpty?  

If ever there lived a perfectly unexceptionable figure, to whom neither aspersion could be affixed, nor criticism attached, it would be President Trump’s recent Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. She is, in many ways, the paragon of an American citizen. So far as they come, she’s a perfect form, an ideal type to which all of us, despite our constant bickering and our irreconcilable diversity, might collectively aspire.

Faithful and fecund, energetic and measured, approachable and brilliant, accomplished and esteemed, respected and beloved, Amy Coney Barrett is the encapsulation of all these traits, and doubtless more. She is, like so few of us, disarmingly comfortable within confines of her own skin. Perhaps this is the consequence of a boundless mind confident in all that it knows, or a tender heart to which a bursting family’s love adds immeasurable strength.

Either way, she’s a remarkable person, and that’s quite beyond dispute. This much is obvious when one judges any part of her personality, or when one receives the opportunity to hear her speak. In so doing, one’s quick to recognize that she has the head of a scholar, the heart of a mother, the humility of a public servant, and the subtlety of a justice engrossed by the law. She is, in a word, delightfully complete and we’re lucky to have her. She’s one of those rare, polished types of which this country, collectively and for many years to come, will persist in being proud.

When first she captured the nation’s attention, however, Democrats thought they saw on her body of thought and work an enticing Achilles’ Heel. Like Paris from afar, bow-strung Trojans from the dais, they sought in 2017 to cripple her confirmation to the Seventh Circuit of Appeals. To do so, they shot through the air a nasty and indecent slew of arrows, by which many of us, noncombatants in the field, were similarly pierced. All sensitive Americans felt their impact. They attacked the depth of her commitment to her religion, assailed the sincerity of her devotion to her creed, and insinuated that, because of the tenets of her faith, she’d be unable disinterestedly to occupy a judicial seat.

Infamously, this sentiment was expressed by the elder Senator of California, Diane Feinstein. In but a few grating words, an utterance by which, in the approach of her concluding years, her political legacy might be defined, she chastised Barrett by saying that the “dogma lives loudly in you”. Three years hence, the line has been repeated over and again. The “dogma”, of course, to which Feinstein so contemptuously referred, was and remains the Catholic faith, a denomination of which America, originally mostly Protestant, has always been somewhat suspicious. The presumption, then as now, was that a Catholic was nothing but an incorrigible papist, whose bonds of affection toward the state could never be as strong as those she held toward Rome.

The thought was that, between a Catholic and an American, there could be neither congruity, friendship, nor trust. The two, in a word, were mutually exclusive. A Catholic was, by the very dictates of her creed, inescapably monarchical, theocratic, haughty, and mean. She was prejudiced, unwelcoming, brainwashed, and incapable of seeing the world as it is. Her vision was narrow and captive to the hazy impediments of her cherished stained glass.

An American, on the other hand, was republican, democratic, self-willed, and free. She was inclusive, open, and secular, and absolutely impatient of authority disseminated from across the ocean. She saw the world for what it was, and hoped not for salvation in a life to come, but for prosperity in that in which she participated every single day.  She looked not up, toward the Vatican on the hilltop, but around her with a leveling equality and a Bible in her hand.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth; a Catholic, no matter how fully absorbed by her dogma, or overtaken by her creed, can be just as fine, patriotic, and pure an American as any Protestant, or any other. No candidate for public office, be they elected by the general suffrage, or nominated by the executive’s whim, should be made to answer for his or her faith. That’s a personal matter, never a political one, and it ought not to hamper one’s privilege and ability to secure a governmental seat.

Article VI of the Constitution is rather explicit on this point. “All judicial officers”, says it, “shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”. With that point, the conversation ends.

Yet the imagination is unrestrained. It flies away from me with elusive hypotheticals around which I can’t hope to throw a leash. One can imagine, not so many years from now, a situation similar to that which we see today, but with a different religion, and with the parties flipped.

What if, for example, a Democrat president nominated a Muslim-American to a vacated Supreme Court seat? We’ve yet to witness so unique a nomination to so lofty a chair. That doesn’t mean, of course, that an eminently-qualified Muslim-American jurist won’t soon emerge from our national trove of brilliant legal minds, ingratiate himself to the political instincts and personal trust of a Commander-In-Chief, dazzle the two-dozen senators from whom his confirmation is to be secured, and claim his position among a robed group of nine, a peculiar coterie to which the Constitution has guaranteed employment for life.

When this day arrives, and arrive it eventually will, I ask whether or not the scribblers of the intelligentsia would tolerate a Republican senator noting, in a hostile and an accusatory tone, that the “dogma lived loudly” within him? Would they not stiffen their spines with every muscle of indignation at the thought of a Muslim nominee being scrutinized on account of his faith? Would they not rush to his defense, extol the virtues of his Islamic creed, and censure the ranking senator by whom the comment was made? Would they not condemn every pundit who entertained the fear that his fidelity to the Constitution might be weakened by an association to the Qur’an? Would they not excoriate every conjecture holding that his allegiance to Sharia Law might supersede his oath to prioritize that of this land?

The answer, I think, is obvious. One’s faith ought not to be a consideration when seeking the public’s trust. All that’s required is that she, as a Catholic, or he, as a Muslim, be “bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution”. If only they be constitutionalists, I care not for their religious beliefs. Let every religion of the world be represented among the nine—it matters to me little. So long as they can read the text of our Constitution as written, and appreciate the tertiary role to which—as the third of three branches—they were originally relegated, it is of no concern.

In this miserable year of outrage—atop which the heavy cloak of censorship has been draped, around which the iron fetters of conformity have been cast—few classic works of art and literature have escaped the censure of the Left. Few great works move about our culture, as once they did, liberated and free, inviting of any viewer, companionable to any reader, and congenial to the taste of every person inflamed with a propensity to think.

Now, such works are restrained and thwarted, bullied and abused. They’re contextualized, sterilized, scolded, and debased. Most ominously of all, however, they’re outright canceled—an irrevocable fate with which countless have been met.

To close observers of history and seekers after truth—of whom, like a dying species, there are but few—the fact that this is happening isn’t likely to surprise; such cherished and eminent works, upon which we confer the honorific of “classic”, to which we affix the title of “immortal”, are particularly susceptible to the cancelation of the Left. They are the prey of the those whose radical parentage stretches back to the wild fecundity of Karl Marx, by whom they were given birth and are still inspired.

From his genius, a thousand philosophies—each more injurious than the last—have spawned. His ideology, flavored by an Eastern herb, was absorbed into the thinking of the founding father of Bolshevism, Vladimir Lenin, and his Oriental successor, Mao Zedong.

All three men, Marx, Lenin, and Mao, disdained the cultural achievements of which a prior, though surely less enlightened age was the author. This was an age, or, properly speaking, a collection of centuries long since passed, whose lingering and nettlesome memory they hoped to expunge. All three wished to erase from the pages of their respective histories the imprints of an obsolete time prior to their own, during which a certain “false consciousness” was promulgated, and an imminent utopia stalled.

As such, the works on which their redactions were employed—those same classics to which we, conservatives in the best use of the term, devote our love, with whose protection we’re entrusted—became objects of their violence and abuse. Artifacts of the old world, they became targets of annihilation in the new. Ornaments of our heritage became blemishes on a body struggling for the universal fraternity toward which the “new man” strove.

To this end, every communist-aspirant agreed. Classic works of high importance and continued relevance would become elegant morsels upon which their cultural revolutions would feast. They’d become the delicious, previously-untouched forkfuls into which they couldn’t help but jab a knife and sink their teeth.

It seems, in the second half of the year 2020, the fully-matured hour of their feeding has arrived. They’ve entered into the stage of their uninterrupted repast, to which there appears to be no end. They’re in the process of consuming everything with which they come into contact, whether edible or not. And Leftists, as we’ve come to learn, are an insatiably hungry bunch. Employing a “torched-earth” policy and a “clean-plate” agenda, they’re a people from whom no elegant dish, not even one garnished by Shakespeare or Homer, Milton or Livy, can be concealed, and no cultural adornment hidden once they feel their stomachs growl and their indignation leap.

One such classic work, more detested and, therefore, more satisfyingly devoured than the rest, is Margaret Mitchell’s, Gone with the Wind. A faithful daughter of the South, Mitchell was infatuated with that subject from which, given the timing of her birth at the turn of the century, no one of her age was very distantly removed. Burdened by the weight of what was, to her, a distressingly recent end to America’s great internal war, she wrote Gone with the Wind with unusual novelistic force and personal interest. It became, in time, not only her life’s crowning glory, but her career’s sole literary contribution. Its subsequent depiction on the silver screen was once thought a testament to America’s cinematographic genius—a unique brilliance in an industry with which, still to this day, no other nation can compete.

It is, in some ways, a troublesome book, as it is a troublesome film. It’s far from a source to which we might turn in hopes of finding moral guidance and philosophical improvement. It’s not a work in whose image the mien of society should be set, to whose outlines we should conform ourselves. Its depiction of the Black race is objectionable, to say the least, as is its sanguine coloring of Southern fortitude and Confederate pride. The former is low and degrading while the latter is embellished to the point of excess. It treats its subject in far too cavalier a way, and views through rose-tinted glasses the brutal nature of a troubled past.

As such, it’s not a historical documentary by which we’ll be usefully instructed, upon which we should rely for a blueprint of liberal reform. It’s not a work that will provide us with a map directing us toward the equality that should be exercised in the treatment of all women and men, regardless of their genitals or the color of their skin. It’s not a work from which we should derive our lessons as they pertain to the racial issues in which, mercifully to a far lesser extent, we’re still engulfed, of which we’d very desperately like to be freed. We need not turn to it to deliver us this freedom.

Nevertheless, it is a classic work, from which perspective can be gained, by which the mind will be expanded, and in which satisfaction will be found. It’s certainly worth remembering that always, in any work, but especially those with which you disagree, something will be learned. That said, one must allow this process to happen, which begins, deliberately, with the opening of one’s mind. In the meantime, the artistic achievement is irrefragable, and, on that merit alone, its value must be granted and its many hours (rife with overtures and entr’actes) embraced.

Yet some platforms would rather whisk it away into the dustbin of obscurity, into the closet of American shame, out of whose endless depths and moldy corners, so few works succeed in climbing. HBO Max, the streaming service for the flagship network, famously removed the film from its repertoire at the start of this year. Having bathed in the plaudits of the bien pensant for so valiant and “woke” a move, it later re-instated the film, but not without a helpful caveat. For the convenience of the viewer, and the amelioration of his soul, a prologue was added before its credits rolled. Its intention was to contextualize the events to which he’d soon be exposed, while also signaling to him the pertinacity of its virtue, and crying out to him the sincerity of its tone.

By those on the Left, these two moves were cheered: its initial removal, and its subsequent contextualization. When, months later, Netflix released the French film, Cuties, I expected the outrage and the calls for censorship to be much the same. I thought, naively, that some new standard of aesthetic judgment had been reached, a way of looking at morally questionable films at which, with but one viewing, our instincts of propriety might cringe. Admittedly, the subject matter in each film is different (Cuties deals with quasi-pornographic depictions of prepubescent girls, while Gone with the Wind treats of the romance of the old South), but if the latter was deemed an intolerable affront to decorum, by which indignation was provoked, so too must be the former.

Much to my surprise, the outrage over Cuties never came. The clamors for its removal were heard only among those stationed on the Right, while those on the Left, keenest to cancel, were slowest to speak. Silence in the reception of this film might’ve been bad enough, but many positively lauded it. It became, strangely enough, a kind of feminist masterpiece, a paragon of progressivism over which leftist critics enthused. Sparkling columns were written on its behalf, and neither award nor trophy was denied it. It was, at least among one set of viewers, universally beloved and fiercely defended.

While Cuties has escaped the censure of the Left, Gone with the Wind has endured it. While the former has climbed the mountain of our acclaim, the latter has fallen into the pit of disrepute. It is an odd environment, indeed. If ever cancellation was to be administered, one would think now the appropriate time, and Cuties the appropriate film. Yet it stands above criticism and beyond reproach, while Gone with the Wind fights for its life.

Last night, during a Vice Presidential debate to which millions of American eyes were fixed, by which thousands of newspaper columns are this morning being filled, a strange thing occurred: incivility yielded to courtesy, boorishness to refinement, irascibility to restraint, shouting to decorum, and chaos to calm.

In all, it was an encouraging improvement over last week’s Presidential debate, a contentious debacle and an ugly affair to which this—a seemingly polished sequel with fresher actors, better questions, and a less immoderate moderator—was doubtless superior. But not everything abandoned in the old was unwelcome in the new. One component, in particular, conserved itself so effectively as not to succumb to the hostility of a long, October week. That which persisted, and likely always will, was each candidates’ stubborn refusal directly to answer questions put to her or him. This, we can attribute to their shared grasp of the language of prevarication, that type of elusive and obscure speech in which every politician is fluent, through which every citizen can see.

We criticize politicians not for their occasional employment of this adopted tongue, by which, sadly, their native voices tend to be overpowered and drowned out, but for their heavy reliance on and constant use of its verbiage, as though there existed no other words to which they might give voice. The simplicity of truth, and the charm of earnest expression, it turns out, create for us a language not only intelligible to the clever, but agreeable to all. To prevaricate is to insult the voter and to degrade oneself, while always concealing that which we deserve to hear—the honesty of conviction and the beauty of truth.

Both candidates, Kamala Harris, the challenger, and Mike Pence, the incumbent, can be justly accused of having prevaricated far too much, if my opinion is to be entertained. And, if you’ve not yet aborted your reading of this piece, your indulgence of exactly that must be assumed. But he who spoke with more consistent candor, with a greater allegiance to veracity, with more studied and various points, with more facility of reason, and with a disarming sincerity of tone, was the current Vice President, Mike Pence. In a word, he prevaricated much less than the formidable combatant (a description given to us by the media of which, I dare say, she’s yet to have provided much proof) by whom he was opposed.

As it happens, for those reasons and others, he might convincingly be declared the evening’s final “victor”—a title of which, as most people unclouded by their biases would agree, he’s justly deserving. To arrive at an alternate conclusion, out of which Harris emerges the night’s sole winner, would be to display either errant judgment, incorrigible prejudice, or shameless bad faith. In short, it would be to indulge in a fiction. It would be to adopt a narrative for which, so near an election, we really haven’t any time.

That’s not to say, of course, that Pence was wholly innocent of prevarication: to be in such a state, would be akin to claiming that man, after the temptation of Eve and the fall of her mate, might conceivably exist without the inherited blemish of sin. No man, neither living nor dead, could ever make the claim to be so immaculately clean. It’s ridiculous, then, to imagine Pence departing the stage as unsullied as the prelapsarian. One can’t picture him without those dirty stains by which his profession is distinguished, and his public record marked.

Yet on every topic, including that of the pandemic, with which the debate opened, by which he was putatively “bulldozed” (as an early-morning headline from The Washington Post claimed), Pence succeeded in winning point after point. There was no question from which he completely retreated, and he very seldom yielded ground. He withheld his use of honeyed political double-talk by which sound-bites are sweetened, but no one listening is informed. And while he, like Harris, couldn’t escape every prevarication and all opportunity to conceal, his answers were more cogent, mature, and forthcoming. Be it on our fractured relations with China, our novel approach toward the Middle East, our economic state of affairs, our combustible issue of climate change, or our impending addition to the Supreme Court, Pence provided intelligent explanations for which his careful preparation and agile wit must be commended.  

Harris, one must suppose, was equally well-prepared for the debate, but the evidence for that assumption isn’t supported by the grade of her performance. Overall, she seemed only distantly acquainted with the topics with which she was confronted, to which she very seldom offered an enlightening point of view. Her wit, if so it be called, appeared to be coerced and unnatural, ponderous and slow. It lacked the dexterity of movement and the liveliness of genius with which we’ve come to associate other famous political names. It hadn’t the spirited ferocity nor the prosecutorial strength of which she’s said, unlike all other public speakers, to be in the utmost possession. She lacked that incontrovertible honesty and inimitable poise with which she, as the purported “foil to Trump”, ought to be flush.

She looked neither light on her feet, nor gracious in her affect. She failed to endear herself to the anxious curiosity of a discerning public, whom she insulted, time and again, by avoiding the questions it deemed fit to ask. Fully apprised of the fact that she was on “split-screen”, and, thus, continually visible to the detection of all, she couldn’t resist turning her face in such a way as to reflect the unappealing shouts of her soul. Such contortions served as a conduit through which, in the absence of words, her condescension might best be communicated, and that message was never lost on the audience upon whom, repeatedly, it landed with a crash. As she provided no substance when encouraged to talk, these disdainful grins and scornful shakings of the head spoke with much greater clarity than did she.  

She avoided completely the question, posed by the incumbent, on whether or not she’d advocate the packing of the Supreme Court. This question, despite her evasion, will persist in the weeks to come. She provided a facile lesson on her approach toward foreign relations, simplifying them as a matter of enemies and friends. She then included in that dulcet category of “friends” those who were signatories to the Iran Nuclear Deal, among whom, aside from the Europeans, we count such nefarious actors as China, Russia, and Iran. No mention of Israel, the sole democracy in that region, was made, and no clear plan for its future treatment was laid bare.

That said, we can find contentment in her efforts, much more in those of Pence, for the very fact that they were better than those of their running-mates. Despite their propensity to prevarication, and their incomplete willingness to speak with candor, Pence and Harris provided us with a debate to which Donald Trump and Joe Biden could only aspire.