About two-thirds of the way through that fine 1992 film, A League of Their Own, star catcher Dottie Hinson has had enough of the grind and is ready to quit. “It just got too hard,” she tells Jimmy Dugan, a former major league home run leader now relegated to managing the Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. “It’s supposed to be hard,” Dugan spits back. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great.”
Some years ago, at a lunch honoring Midge Decter, who died this past May 9, I quoted the fictitious Jimmy Dugan while trying to capture something of the character of Marjorie Rosenthal Decter Podhoretz, “Midge” to her parents and all those privileged to be her friend. Doing the “hard,” with the courage born of conviction and the skill born of a broad and penetrating intelligence, is what made Midge Decter great — and unique. And while it’s a cliché to say it (especially about a gimlet-eyed editor who would skewer a cliché at 40 paces), we won’t see her like again. The combination of circumstances and personality that made her a giant are not replicable. And that is not pleasant to contemplate, because America today badly needs the wisdom and example of a Midge Decter.
Writing of Midge in The New Criterion, Roger Kimball nicely captured her multifaceted personality and its impact on so many of us: “She was above all a sort of spiritual godmother, warm and encouraging to the young, unsparing to the pompous and wrongheaded, gifted with a laser-like ability to distinguish what was genuine and what was fraudulent.” And while Midge was a happy Jewish warrior for cultural sanity, sound politics, and a society that lived freedom in solidarity, she was also clear-eyed and unsentimental about the enduring effects in public life of what her Christian friends — and there were many of them — called “original sin.” I once complained to Midge about some political perfidy or other, some betrayal of principle or trust, and she replied, with a kind of grim smile, “Think low, George. You’ll rarely be disappointed.”
As a matter of prudential judgment, she was right: the human capacity to muck things up is virtually limitless. But while hard experience and the cardinal virtue of prudence might dictate “thinking low” and not expecting too much in the political arena, Midge also challenged us to aim high: to live and organize and argue for the good things, the permanent things, the noble things. Thinking low didn’t mean aiming low. And while Midge fought hard, she also fought clean, with a joie de combat and brio that kept those of us fortunate to be in her orbit energized.
Midge loved the United States of America and was deeply grateful for what the country had meant to her forebears, for tens of millions of other descendants of immigrants, and for women. When soft, psychologized Fifties liberalism morphed into radical Sixties self-indulgence and the detritus of all that began to show its toxic effects in American public life in the Seventies, Midge was one of the first to insist that politics is always downstream of culture. And if you didn’t like the options politics was presenting, you’d better look to disturbances (and worse) in the culture to understand why things weren’t what they should be.
Midge was one of the intellectual progenitors of neo-conservatism in American public life. That movement, always lacerated from the left, is now deprecated by MAGA types. And I expect Midge found it a sadness that ambition was warping the judgment of otherwise intelligent politicos who talk nonsense when kowtowing to the populist throng (Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, and Ted Cruz come to mind). A good spanking from Midge Decter, who never, ever kowtowed, whether to woke cancel-culture barbarians or their right-wing mirror images, might have done some of today’s aspirants to conservative leadership some good.
Her work in directing the Committee for the Free World was vindicated by the Revolution of 1989 and the Soviet crack-up of 1991. But Midge also knew that history hadn’t ended and that new dragons would emerge, as indeed they have. She also knew that it was the height of irresponsibility, including moral irresponsibility, to imagine that those dragons could be safely ignored by American foreign policy.
A true daughter of Israel who loved her Christian friends and helped them make better Christian arguments in the public square, she now rests in the bosom of Abraham. As Elisha asked of Elijah, may we be blessed with a portion of her spirit.
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George is inimitable in his ability to eulogize a great conservative and in the same breath use it to skewer Trump and Trump supporters. He comes across as so elitist that I’ll take Midge’s words of advice and apply it to his comments: “Think low.”
Appears to me that the forever pompous, elitist Mr. Weigel is using Midge Decter to trash Pres. Trump, Trump supporters etc. A little reminder Mr. Weigel, without President Trump Roe would not have been repealed.
This was a lovely tribute until the name calling.
“…And I expect Midge found it a sadness that ambition was warping the judgment of otherwise intelligent politicos who talk nonsense when kowtowing to the populist throng (Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance, and Ted Cruz come to mind).”
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That seems rather unfair I think. Ambition can indeed warp judgement but Christian charity doesn’t first assume that in others.
The populists got more positive things done in six years than the Reaganites or neocons ever did.
Absolutely true.
Midge Dector was a daughter of Israel. That is one of the few true statements true in this column. Her relationship to the land of her birth was rather more like that of a parasite to its host.
Dector and her husband, Norman Podhorertz, were probably the main neoconservative enforcers from the 1980s through the early 2000s. They ingratiated themselves with, or bought off, the leaders of the conservative movement, such as William Buckley, and eventually effectively seized control, silencing or expelling anyone who dissented from their ideology. The paramount issue, of course, was and continues to be US foreign policy in the Middle East. They got much of what they demanded – two wars against Iraq, upheaval in Libya and Syria and unwavering support of the US for the state of Israel, but they wanted, and still want, much more. They have pushed for war with Iran for over twenty years now and are still determined to overthrow Assad in Syria, at which time Islamists will come to power and it will be Christians to wall. The proxy war being waged in the Ukraine right now is due in no small part to their ethnic animosity towards Russia.
The Podhoretzs and their allies purged their enemies from mainstream conservatism and virtually banned any criticism of Israel from rightwing discourse. They ruined the career of Joe Sobran, perhaps the most brilliant political writer of his generation, tried to do the same. with less success, to Patrick Buchanan and damaged many other writers and public officials with their smears. Their legacies are the thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Arabs and the millions who have been wounded or otherwise had their lives turned upside down as a result of the wars for which they agitated so fervently and long.
A lot more could and should be said. Time, and the editors, of this site permitting, I will.
I am always astonished by American Christians who think it is ok to abandon Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and let it be laid waste by the islamics who take pride is destroying art in churches, and statues of Buddha. Women, education and other western ideas of the post 700AD era far equally badly with this crowd. The Palestinians have resolutely refused agreements which did not involve licensing them to eradicate Israel, which ALONE accounts for the total lack of social and economic progress for Arabic people in that part of the world which is Non-Israeli. I had an opportunity not too many years ago to visit Israel on a church pilgrimage and was saddened by the defacement of the art and mosaics with which the Christians had formerly adorned these ancient houses of worship.(Days after my return home, Israel was pelted with rockets in an unprovoked attack). Muslims must secretly believe their ideas are weak indeed if they must resort to suppression of other beliefs to maintain control of their populace. I would point out that any soldiers killed in the middle east were killed by Arabs. This while we tip-toe around in a war situation with hand-wringing rules of engagement. As a 9/11 widow, I have no particular good feelings about the Islamic beliefs which find their expression in control and violence. My husband was in the TRADE TOWERS on 9/11, an accountant and no threat to anyone. Arabs have brought their destruction on themselves by their unceasing hate. Maybe you have missed seeing this hatred up close. Not to worry. As the current President refuses to control our border, and middle Eastern terrorists are known to have crossed over to our country, the reality is that ANY American might yet fall victim to their activities. If you think that an impossibility, I suggest you think again. No one is immune to their violence. Upon my husband’s death it was his Jewish-American friends who pulled together an educational fund for my children. 20 Years later they remain my friends. I have little patience for willful myopia where Israel is concerned, and less for the anti-semitism which is often disguised in some quarters by a lack of support for their right to exist. Thank God for Donald Trump, who was unafraid to move the US embassy to Jerusalem ( and somehow the world didnt end) and who worked out the Abraham Accords in an effort to bring peace to the region.
Opposing the Iraq wars and the whole neoconservative Likud agenda equates to abandoning Israel and denying its right to exist. I won’t even bother mentioning the rest. How can one argue with such logic?
I’m so very sorry LJ. I lost my husband to cancer just a month after you lost yours on 9/11. May they rest in peace.
I am thankful for what Donald Trump accomplished also while in office. God continues to show us how He can write straight using crooked lines.
God bless you & your family today.
Ive always liked Pat Buchanan and drove many miles with my family to cast a vote for him in a straw poll.
I thought Joseph Sobran was a brilliant writer but really to be fair he was more the cause of his own downfall. Perhaps his failing health was to blame.
I totally support the right of Jews to live in a homeland God gave to them and where they can live in safety and dignity without being blamed for everyone else’s shortcomings.
Thank you for signaling your virtue. Perhaps I can safely assume you also supported all the Middle Eastern adventures that Decter and rest of the neoconservatives promoted over the last thirty years plus. Those were all about letting Jews live in dignity without being blamed for everyone else’s shortcomings. Ten million dead would not be too a high a price to achieve that noble goal. Perhaps you also are quite happy to sacrifice your grandsons to ensure Israel’s dominance – sorry, I meant security! – in the Middle East, but I’d rather not have my son die to make AIPAC’s dreams a reality. Come to think to of it, I don’t want any more American boys to kill and die for Israel. That must make me anti-Semitic.
Tony I’m a devout Catholic & I believe in what Sacred Scripture states in Genesis 12:3: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and IN THEE shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed”
The Jews are God’s chosen people. They are not God’s *perfect* people any more than we are.
I’m much more of a pacifist than anything else but yes, protecting the lives of Jews in Israel-or anywhere else- is a hill I’m willing to die on.
Getting involved in endless wars for our access to oil & other natural resources? No, I’m not in favor of that. And that’s really what it’s been more about.
You are absolutely wrong. I refer you to books by Walt & Mersheimeir (two Ivy League academics with impeccable mainstream credentials) and Stephen Sniegoski, as well as countless articles in magazines and websites across the ideological spectrum. The evidence is conclusive. More importantly, I have lived through the era and have seen it with my own eyes. The refusal of far too many devout Catholics to face reality because of political correctness and sentimentality is a (probably, the most) serious problem. It prevents the action that urgently needs to be taken.
Try not to totally dismiss Palestinian terror since 1949.