Utterly Gratuitous Historickal Pedantry Observation

I was finishing up the last chapter of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism (a chapter devoted to the progressivist traps into which well-meaning conservatives can skid if they do not maintain their vigilance), when I came across this line:

Rousseau was right about one thing: censorship is useful for preserving morals but useless for restoring them. A Department of Judeo-Christian Culture would only succeed in creating a parody of real culture. In Europe the churches are subsidized by the State, and the pews are empty as a result. The problem with values relativism - the notion that all cultures are equal - is that important questions get decided via a contest of political powers rather than a contest of ideas, and every subculture in our balkanized society becomes a constituency for some government functionary. The result is a state-sanctioned multicultural ethos where Aztecs and Athenians are equal - at least in the eyese of public school teachers and muticultural gurus. In an open society, best practices win.

- Liberal Fascism at pp 395-396.

"Wait a minute, Self!" I said to myself, "Didn't you just read almost exactly those words about censorship somewhere else recently?" A quick check reveals that I did, indeed. Edward Gibbon says of the Emperor Decius' plan to appoint Valerian as Censor in about A.D. 250 in order to "restor[e] public virtue, ancient principles and manners, and the oppressed majesty of the laws":

A censor may maintain, he can never restore, the morals of a state. It is impossible for such a magistrate to exert his authority with benefit, or even with effect, unless he is supported by a quick sense of honour and virtue in the minds of the people, by a decent reverence for the public opinion, and by a train of useful prejudices combating on the side of national manners. In a period when these principles are annihilated, the censorial jurisdiction must either sink into empty pageantry, or be converted into a partial instrument of vexatious oppression.

- Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 10 (p. 230 of Volume I of my Folio Society edition)

Before sending one of those snide and snooty corrective emails off to the G-Man, I did a little more digging. Alas, Rousseau's Social Contract - to which Jonah alludes - was published in 1762, while Gibbon's opus was published in 1776. I can only assume that Gibbon had Rousseau in mind when he made his observation, although he does not footnote it.

BTW, I still strongly recommend Jonah's book. His history of the common roots of American Progressivism (which colors modern Liberalism) and the various branches of European Totalitarianism, is masterful and eye-opening. There has been a goodish bit of criticism hurled around about his application of these historical commonalities to his analysis of the current Left, but most of it seems to be based on assertions that Jonah never actually makes. (For instance, just because the Nazis were obsessed with organic food, Jonah does not say that Whole Foods is a Nazi operation.) And his final chapter mentioned above, entitled "The Tempting of Conservatives", ought to be required reading for anybody who calls him or herself a person of the Right these days. And if you haven't seen it yet, Jonah's got a blog up over at NRO devoted to the book, in which he tracks its sales, answers its critics and just generally follows up on things.