Author: wulb

 

章诒和女士六十岁时写出的《往事并不如烟》，以汉语世界中已臻化境的上好文字，使许多似乎只可意会、不可言传的境界活生生地跃出纸面。足以传世的精品佳作《往事并不如烟》很快被当局以「内容越线」为名而查禁，尽管比起该书的香港版（书名另定为《最后的贵族》）来，其大陆版要「干净」得多。

章女士的第二本书《一阵风 留下千古绝唱》也同样以「内容越线」为名被查禁。这一次，她的第三本书《伶人往事》遭查禁，当局连「理由」也不给了，干脆就是「因人废书」。也就是说，她的名字上了中宣部的黑名单，「这个人」从此成了被一劳永逸地违宪剥夺出版自由权利的「公民」。这一次，出头当恶人的是新闻出版总署副署长邬书林。由于揽了这件脏活，人们于是怒质他意欲何为，痛斥他「焚书坑儒」，乃一「精神刽子手」。

非与胡锦涛对着干

不过，我对人们怒骂他与国务院对干、与胡锦涛对着干却不敢苟同。人们指控邬书林「抗上」的依据，是温家宝去年十一月十三日在中国文联、中国作协全国代表大会上的讲话。温家宝当众赞扬了巴金的《随想录》，说「我读了受到极大的震撼，感到那是一部写真话的著作」。温家宝还明确地宣示：「在文艺界要提倡讲真话，反映真实的社会情况，鼓励人们去追求真理」。关于温的讲话，不能认为是在虚情假意地说瞎话蒙人，也与大多数与会代表的亲身感受相悖。○六年八本禁书的作者之一、大会代表袁鹰事后专门写文章说，温「同文学艺术工作者谈心，使到会的几千名代表意外地惊喜，顿时缩短了台上台下、领导人与普通文学艺术工作者之间的距离，因而会场气氛自始至终温馨和煦，掌声不断。」我相信袁先生是发自内心的。

当局没想过开书禁

其次，更不能认为温家宝的话中有开书禁的意思。实行书禁乃至搞黑名单因人废书，是中共中央政治局定下的既定方针。如果温家宝等中共高层确有开书禁之心，他只须一句大实话就够了：我们将《中国农民调查》等作品列为禁书是错误的。从今以后，那样的「禁书」可以公开合法地再版，而且，我们决不再以任何违宪方式查禁文学艺术家的任何作品。我敢说，这句会使全体地球人「受到极大的震撼」和「意外地惊喜」的大实话，在温家宝的头脑中，是压根儿没影的事。我之所以特别提到《中国农民调查》，第一是因为它确是一本讲真话的好书。第二是因为作者为了让这本书不致被查禁，甚至不惜背上「拍马屁」的恶名，刻意地在书中恭维了毛泽东、江泽民和胡锦涛。第三是因为这本书的知名度极高，对文学家、艺术家很「有感情」的温家宝不可能不知道它被查禁了。

讲不能越线的真话

那么，温家宝一边维持书禁，一边又提倡讲真话，他的真意到底是甚么呢？要使几千名嘴上被穿铁丝的作家、艺术家们「讲真话」的画面不致显得荒诞的话，那该如何去解读温家宝的信息呢？对此，我的解读是，温家宝以真诚的语调所提倡的讲真话，其实只是提倡讲内容不能越线的真话，也就是讲官方听得进去的真话。他的「希望我们的文学艺术界多出精品、多出人才」，指的也就是内容不能越线的「精品」，说话多有遮拦的「人才」。邬书林宣布○六年有七本书因「内容越线」、一本书因章诒和「这个人」而被查禁，这正是依例行事、与温总理保持一致。同样道理，他也没有与胡锦涛的「和谐社会」理念对干。因为胡的「和谐社会」，乃是国人的行为举止不能越线的和谐社会，而不是人权得到切实保障的和谐社会。你越线，就是不和谐；邬先生出面制止你，就是创建和谐，就是与胡总书记保持一致。据我看，邬先生这回被民间骂痛快了，但十有八九，官运是会更亨通些的。

首发苹果日报

 

研究中共的体制，宣传部是一个重要的入口。作为一个靠谎言和暴力起家的政权，宣传部正是其用来实施“稳定压倒一切”的政策、压制新闻自由和言论自由的有力工具。宣传部的创建，最早是沿袭苏俄体制。在第一次国共合作时期，国民党全面学习斯大林式的组织方式，毛泽东出任国民党代理中央宣传部长，由此开始其“革命生涯”。毛泽东在宣传上的天才胜于其在军事上的天才。国民党败于共产党，与其说败在战场上，不如说败在文宣上。

“笔杆子”和“枪杆子”是一切专制制度最后的堡垒。今天的中共宣传部，是整个中国社会道德败坏的始作俑者，是全世界最大的谎言制造商，是摧残中国知识分子创造力和想象力的刽子手，更是一个集中了大批腐败分子和流氓的庞大机构。这个部门耗费纳税人无数的财富，却干着伤害纳税人利益的事情，对于这样的一头“恐龙”，人人都当像焦国标先生那样鸣鼓而攻之。

宣传部是个腐败部

有人误认为宣传部是一个清水衙门，少有贪污腐败的机会。其实，近期几起宣传部高官的腐败案件显示，宣传部之腐败丝毫不亚于银行、股票、交通、建筑、卫生等“腐败高发区”。

二零零四年七月，成都市市委常委、宣传部长高勇被捕。我在成都曾经见到过西南财经大学的老校长甘本佑教授，高勇正是其学生。这位白发苍苍的老学者为高勇这个“最聪明的学生”的堕落深感遗憾。纯朴的老教授怎么也想不到，四十岁不到、春风得意的弟子，一下子就成了千夫所指的贪官。其实，高勇堕落的根源并非其人品，而是宣传部长这个显赫的职位——由于中共极其看重宣传工作，各级宣传部长均在该级党委“常委”之列，参与决策包括宣传在内的所有重大问题，拥有比那些不是常委的副市长们大得多的权力。

高勇，一九六五年八月生，宁夏银川人。一九八七年西南财经大学工业经济专业毕业，博士。他早年做过四川某省长的秘书，少年得志，“起点很高”，仕途一直非常顺畅。高勇曾在四川凉山彝族自治州做过三年副州长，在中国证监会贵阳特派办，做了一年半的一把手。二零零二年六月回到成都，出任成都市委常委，分管金融工作。二零零三年成都市委、政府换届，他始任职成都市委宣传部部长。

一位知情人透露，自从出任成都市委宣传部长一职以来，在这个“城市形象营销部门”里，高勇还是想有所作为的。作为主要策划人之一，他提出把成都打造成“东方伊甸园”的发展创意，获得四川省委的认同。此外，他还专门请张艺谋拍摄成都城市形象的宣传片。然而，“东方伊甸园”尚未打造成功，高勇本人已沦为阶下囚。看来，这位经济学博士对《圣经》并不太理解——伊甸园乃是人开始犯罪堕落的地方。

高勇突然落马，据传与贵州省前省委书记刘方仁案有直接联系，是该案之余波。由于刘方仁案已水落石出，纪检部门掌握了高勇经济问题的相关证据，因此高勇并没有经过官员落马一般要经过的“双规”阶段，而是直接被刑拘。成都民间传说，高勇的问题，绝非仅仅是在贵州任职期间受贿，他在回成都担任市委常委两年、担任宣传部长一年期间，亦大肆受贿索贿，涉案金额至少达两千万以上。就在高勇被捕的当天下午，他还在大会上滔滔不绝宣讲“三个代表”。办案人员当天搜查其住所，发现仅仅是价值数万的劳力士等金表就收藏了近百枚之多。在高勇厚厚的工作日记中，毫不掩饰地记载了多年来收受贿赂的数目。

在中共政权内落马的宣传部官员中，高勇不是第一个，也不会是最后一个。前重庆市委宣传部副部长、重庆广电局局长张小川被“双规”同样充满戏剧性。张小川去参加市委宣传部会议，已经准备好了一篇慷慨激昂的讲稿，到会时发现院子里有一辆市纪委的车，按理说纪委与宣传会议并不沾边。结果，他的司机一直等他出来，却总也等不到。纪委的司机便跟这名司机说：“别等了，你可以回去了，根据我的经验，你们局长肯定犯事了。”

张小川的“双规”是由宣传部长张宗海宣布的。此后，张宗海还专门召开全市中层以上宣传干部会议。在会上，张宗海“义正辞严”地讲了三点意见，一是不要轻信谣言，二是不要乱传，三是安心做好本职工作。

然而，几个月之后，张宗海也跟他的副手一样被“双规”了。

宣传部是个流氓部

宣传部整天宣传“八荣八耻”，却实实在在是一个藏污纳垢之地。“做一个穿草鞋的记者，做一个穿草鞋的公仆，就是让大家时刻心里装着一双草鞋，装着百姓，装着自己的责任，为了更多的百姓可以不穿草鞋，为了更多的百姓能过上好日子。”这段“感人肺腑”的讲话，是二零零三年九月张宗海在重庆市宣传系统“学习十六大，展示新风采”演讲比赛中的即席讲话。然而，善良的老百姓怎么也没有想到，就是这样一名自称是“草鞋公仆”的宣传部长，就是这样一位在电视和报纸上正义凛然、好话说尽的副省级高官，骨子里却是全然败坏的赌徒、淫棍和酒鬼，以及彻彻底底的大流氓——由流氓执掌的部门，自然就是流氓部了。

据《海峡都市报》报道，张宗海多次与张小川一起挪用公款到澳门赌钱。他们共动用二亿多公款，在葡京赌场贵宾厅一掷千金，共输掉一亿多元。张宗海不仅好赌，更好色：在被宣布“双规”时，办案人员在其公文包里发现三样东西：避孕套、“伟哥”和钞票。酒量颇大的张宗海虽然在重庆有家，但他在重庆五星级饭店希尔顿饭店长期包房，经常带不同的漂亮女人回去过夜。据说张宗海选女人有三个标准:一要大学本科毕业生，二要漂亮，三要没结婚，可见此人心理变态到何种程度。即使在中央党校一年学习期间，他仍然不甘寂寞包养了一名女大学生。中共官员个个色胆包天，使得中央党校也成为“八大胡同”。张宗海还与黔江区某高级酒店总经理等多人保持着不正当的两性关系，这些都是圈子里“公开的秘密”。

除了“伟哥”，张宗海对神佛的兴趣也很大。他每年要花费几十万元在华严寺等名寺烧第一炷香。在就任重庆市委宣传部长前几天，他还在某风景区写下“谒真武观原知万物皆循道，朝观音阁顿悟众生可成佛”的联句，看来他是道教和佛教“两手抓、两手硬”。但是，真武大帝和观音大圣并未保佑其仕途坦荡。办案人员从张家搜出数百万元现金，还发现若干精美神龛。一边拜神佛，一边宣讲“三个代表”，这就是今日中共宣传部官员理所当然的“双重生活”。不独宣传部的官员如此，就连最高级的“伟大的马列主义战士”们也大都如此。

分析这些落马的宣传部长们的事迹，他们中的绝大多数人，天天在台面上宣讲“八荣八耻”，个人私人生活却一塌糊涂，堪称五毒俱全的“现代西门庆”。据重庆广电系统的人员介绍，张小川的儿子原在重庆电视台工作，染上了吸毒的坏毛病，毒性上来时，人经常神志不清。每当他无钱买毒品的时候，就会在广电局大院里大骂父亲。“骂的次数多了，我也记清了，无非是‘你这个贪官，不给我几十万，我就把你的事情都说出去’之类的话。”后来张小川的儿子意外死亡，对张小川的打击很大。为了散心，喜欢出国旅游的张小川出国的次数更多了，“三天两头往国外跑”。出国是需要钱的，公务员的工资收入肯定不足以支撑他出国的巨额花销。那么，他的钱从哪里来呢？控制着传媒这一“朝阳产业”的宣传部，并非一般人所想像的那样“没有多少油水”。张小川曾把沙坪坝区一块广电部门拥有的土地以二亿元的价格卖给一个朋友。而根据市值，这块地皮至少值三亿元，国有资产就这样流失了一个亿。张小川从这一单买卖中究竟获利多少，明眼人不难估计。

宣传部是个刽子手部

中共的宣传部不仅是腐败部、流氓部，还是刽子手部。在过着腐败生活和流氓生活的同时，宣传部的官员们不会忘记党交给他们的“艰巨而光荣的使命”——即“扼杀人类一切的先进文明”、“愚弄中国所有的父老乡亲”。从这个意义上来说，宣传部对内是“洗脑部”、“愚民部”，对外则是中共国际形象的“公关策划部”。

新任中宣部部长刘云山秉承其前任丁关根的作风和思路，以宣传谎言、消灭真话为己任。上任数年来，刘云山的某些讲话和作为，甚至比以“盯紧”、“关紧”、“跟紧”的丁关根还要冷酷。在中共建政之初，那些出任中宣部部长、副部长的高官，一般都是肚中有点墨水的文人和理论家，如陆定一、周扬、胡乔木等人，不管其思想保守或开明，至少还称得上是“专业对口”的“笔杆子”。但近年来中共的几任中宣部部长，已经失去了“学者”和“文人”的伪装，成为赤裸裸的党棍和文化艺术的刽子手。宣传部长的文化水准直线下降，丁、刘等人甚至连写作一篇文字通顺的讲稿的本领都不具备，更不用说拥有什么基本的“理论素养”了。于是，中宣部副部长吉炳轩才杀气腾腾地贯彻胡总书记的教导：“我们的宣传工作要向古巴和北朝鲜学习，他们的经济虽然遇到了一点困难，在政治上却一贯正确。”

丁关根、刘云山、吉炳轩之流的左棍，是中国的戈培尔，也是中国的萨哈夫。他们不会说一句真话，说起谎话来却不用打草稿。最高层选择由这样的人物来担任中宣部部长的要职，显然经过深思熟虑的周密安排：看门的狗自然是越凶越好。今天的中宣部很难再出现一个像朱厚泽那样的开明派了——在最近中宣部传达的“黑名单”上，朱厚泽名列第一。这是一个莫大的讽刺：前中宣部部长成为中宣部最大的敌人。

有了宣传部这样一个“刽子手部”的存在，要实现新闻自由和言论自由，还遥遥无期、任重道远。不过，一个让人欣慰的事实是：今天的中宣部不得不躲到幕后进行种种黑箱操作，他们再不敢像毛泽东时代那样，振振有词地传播谬误和毒素、并率先展开对知识分子的大批判。他们也无法像邓小平时代那样，在媒体上铺天盖地地批判方励之、刘宾雁、王若望等“资产阶级自由化分子”。他们不得不承认，中国民间已经形成了一套自己的评判体系，那些有良知的知识分子，官方越要将其批臭，他们在民间就越香。这些官僚们也知道世界民主大潮不可抵抗，为了维护自己的特权和利益，只好通过“打电话”、“开小会”的方式来实现禁书、禁报、封杀作者的恶行。他们不敢像昔日一样光明正大地下发文件，刀笔吏们开始害怕在历史上留下丑恶记录了。在执行来自更上层的命令时，他们心里也感到理亏、感到底气不足。这些丑陋的蝙蝠们躲在黑暗里，挥舞他们黑色的翅膀；而在不久的将来，在灿烂的阳光照耀在这块土地上时，这些蝙蝠们终将现形于光天化日之下。

胡适说过：“我深信思想信仰的自由与言论出版的自由是社会改革与文化进步的基本条件。”毫无疑问，中共的宣传部是所有热爱民主自由、追求真理真相的中国公民的敌人。一天宣传部不退出历史舞台，一天这场战斗就不会结束，如美国哲学家米克尔约翰的著作《表达自由的法律限度》一书的中文译者侯健所说：“自由的历史首先表现为言论自由的历史，充满冲突、流血和悲剧。”我愿意为实现每个人的言论自由而付出任何代价，我也愿意为推倒中共宣传部所构筑的无形的“柏林墙”而贡献自己的力量。

——二零零五年一月九日初稿，四川成都
二零零六年八月改定，北京家中

首发民主中国

 

最近海外多家媒体从多种角度得出同一个结论：胡锦涛2007年不好过。他们有点幸灾乐祸，跟等着看笑话似地。哈哈，我不这么悲观，心理也不那么阴暗。我敢说，只要胡锦涛肯听我的，他的2007不仅不难过，反倒很好过，甚至有可能是他成就不世功业的绝佳年份。

常人看来，曾庆红伸手要国家主席这一关不好过，可是在我看来很简单就过了。胡可以这样说：“对不起哥们儿，今后国家主席的产生只能通过人民选举……”怎么样？四两拨千斤，不仅好过，且成大功。十七大遴选接班人，这一关也难过。可是如果换个念头：“我何必费那牛劲？人民群众的眼睛是雪亮的，交人民选去，人民选谁谁干，我才不操那闲心呢。”这关难过吗？一点都不难，垂拱而治，太轻松了。

最新一期美国《国防周刊》说，美、日拟订计划，若中国攻击台湾，两国将采取联合行动，共同对付中国。中国单挑美国，或单挑日本，尚且不是对手，何况是两国联合？这一关也够难的。可是若心眼活络一点，也可一跃而过：“台湾又不是我胡锦涛的祖业，我干嘛死守着它？再说，即便是我祖业，该放弃的也得放弃。老嬴政家的祖业在哪里？老爱新觉罗家的祖业在哪里？老朱元璋家的祖业在哪里？老袁世凯家的祖业在哪里？老蒋家的祖业在哪里？”

有人说了：“07年台独可能有实质性的发展，如此也不攻击？”当然不攻击。台湾独立不独立，是生活在台湾岛上2，300万人民的事，干我胡锦涛何事？再说，人家本来就一直独立着呢。焦国标教授就曾经高屋建瓴指出过：“陈水扁不是你们北京的陈省长，人家是中华民国民选的总统。”精辟！太精辟了！我攻击台湾，美、日才打我。我不攻击台湾，美、日就不会打我。既然不会打我，07年没理由不好过。一个五世同堂的大家庭，如果子孙们不想再在一个锅里搅马勺，那就分火各爨〔音“篡”，烧火煮饭也〕，“鼻涕流嘴里各吃各人的”，有什么大逆不道的？我看不出来哪儿不好。

有人可能如此谴责：“你这个南唐的胡后主！你这扶不起的胡阿斗！”胡主席不用和这些人一般见识。他愿这样谴责，由他谴责去，言论自由嘛。你看人家大英帝国，一个日不落的大帝国，殖民地说想独立，呼呼啦啦几年、十几年，全让它们独立了。再看西班牙、葡萄牙放弃中南美洲，法国放弃非洲、越南，瑞典放弃挪威，都非常简单，闹个三年五年、十年八年，实在劝不醒，想独立，那就来个“劝人不醒，不如一耸”，放手让它们自己过去吧。哪象北京，人家台湾都分治半个多世纪了，还这么动辄威胁人家，意淫人家，干么呀？你中华人民共和国连一天都没统治过台湾，却至今还咬住屎橛子打滴溜，硬说人家是你的一部分，不承认是一部分就得打架，滑稽不滑稽呀？

说白了还是中国传统文化是个大坏种。君子报仇十年不晚，世代结仇成了美德。儿子几十年后报了父亲的仇，那叫孝，那叫义，那叫爽，那叫没白活。反观人家西方基督教国家，一分钟的仇都不记，有仇也不报，要爱仇敌，“不可含怒到日落”。瞧人家活得多轻松，多阳光，多实惠呀。上帝手里一杆秤，谁有罪错，自有上帝惩罚，不劳你报仇。50多年里，两岸人民承受无穷灾难，谁造成的？就是这种思想观念造成的。倘若当初老蒋、老毛都足够文明，他不说反攻大陆，他不说解放台湾，跟两个国家一样和平相处，该发展什么关系发展什么关系，两岸人民绝对比敌对几十年幸福无数倍。

现代国家，国土是人民，那块土地上的人民说怎么过，就应该怎么过。沙祖康曾经说：“一寸国土比生命还宝贵，比谁的生命还宝贵？比你儿子的生命宝贵吗？把你儿子装大炮筒子里，一炮楔到台湾，台湾就回来了、就愿意不愿意把你儿子楔过去？”“台湾是中国的一部分。”几十年来北京都是老和尚念经，有嘴无心。老毛有嘴无心，老邓有嘴无心，老江有嘴无心，老胡要与老辈子划清界限，要有嘴有心，明明白白承认“台湾不是中（华人民共和）国的一部分”。

不要怕那些历史的庸人、传统的奴隶骂你是民族罪人。恰恰相反，民主台湾在谁任内独立，谁就是中华民族第一伟人。胡若能承认台湾独立，他就是中华民族最伟大的解放者──思想的解放者、传统的解放者。老胡要立下雄心壮志：第一，亲手埋葬“王土”、“大一统”观念，正正经经承认台湾独立，唯一的交换条件是台湾必须答应第一个与我北京建交，今后中国、台湾，互为犄角，守望相助，做好兄弟，就跟英国与美国似的；第二无论如何任内把大陆弄民主喽。

谈了半天胡锦涛，再来几句陈水扁。2007年您该干啥干啥，甭听它国台办在北边儿瞎咧咧。1998年朱镕基比国台办咧咧得凶，台湾人民谁买他的账呀。不用担心北京打你，也不用担心美国不认你。北京打不了你。美国不认你，我，姬姓古国──焦国──总统焦国标，认你！届时你就等着接受我儿子作为首任驻台湾国大使递交的国书吧。

（2007-01-17德国科隆）

民主通讯

 

最近一期的美国《时代周刊》，刊登封面文章，题为《中国：一个新王朝的开端》（ China：Dawn of a New Dynasty），评说中国崛起，并预言中国将在新世纪里主导世界。依据是：中国经济和外交实力持续上升，其海外投资和对全球资源的需求，左右了世界经济。

且不论《时代周刊》的这一结论是否正确。但文中的许多论点，却大有争议。文中认为，虽然中国军费开支在10年内增加近300%，但“中国并不至于像二战前的德国或日本那样破坏世界和平”，还说，“北京也将容忍两岸关系的不确定性”、“对台湾动武的机会很小”、“中美不至于因此开战”，等等。文章作者因此建议，美国应该与中共合作，谋求共同利益，甚至应该把中国拉进“ G8”（具有工业化和民主化特征的八强集团）。

这里所谓的“中国”或“北京”，当然是指“中共”。美国另一本叫做《经济学人》 的杂志，也曾把中共穷兵黩武，仅仅解读为“一个大国的虚荣心”。 《时代周刊》的说法，与此呼应。

如果中共扩充军力的动机是如此简单，那么又如何解释当今世界上，众多邪恶的背后，都有中共的影子？北韩和伊朗发展核武器，中共容忍，并反对国际社会制裁；苏丹发生大屠杀，中共提供武器，幕后支持，之后又反对联合国通过任何有关苏丹问题的议案；津巴布韦出现专制复辟，国际社会一片谴责，中共却大加称赞，并慷慨援助；包括最近，美国驻希腊大使馆遭受恐怖分子袭击，发射的火箭，就来自于中国。中共未必与这起恐怖攻击相关，但至少表明，中共的蛛丝马迹，随处可见。至于从前的阿富汗塔利班政权、伊拉克独裁者萨达姆、柬埔寨红色高棉等，无一例外的，都受到中共的垂青和支持。

外交为内政服务，中共与流氓国家的拉扯，意在组建国际灰色阵营，与以美国为首的文明世界分庭抗礼，进而抗拒“和平演变”，维护自身的独裁统治。 《时代周刊》的那篇文章，显然 以中共是否对美国和国际社会构成威胁，来鉴定中共的危险程度。却忽视了一个重大事实：中共的威胁，本来，更多的，就不是朝向外部，而是朝向内部。

过去五十多年里，中共军力的两次最大调动和使用，都是枪口朝内，以中国民众为靶子。一次是“文革”，毛泽东自恃军权在握，打倒政治对手，制造全国性动乱，并调动军队大规模“支左”，直接介入“文革”；另一次是“六四”，邓小平调动三分之一的正规军、共计三十多万军人，包围北京，血洗手无寸铁的学生和市民，扑灭民主之火。

如今，中共暴增军费，不断为军人加薪，主要目的，还是为了讨好军队，倚为自己统治的柱石，随时准备镇压抗争民众。发生在 2005 年底的汕尾血案，就是最新的例证。

中国经济发展，以牺牲人权为代价。如果这等模式成功，就意味着，将可能有更多的国家，群起效仿这种模式：以钱为本，草菅人命。如果国际舆论对这种劣质模式视而不见，甚至赞赏有加，无异于助纣为虐。

如果中共崛起为强权，毫无疑问，那是一个恶的强权。中美争霸，一个恶的强权，一个善的强权。世界将因此分成两极，恶的一极和善的一极。前者张扬独裁，后者推广自由。这不仅将再现苏美对峙的冷战态势，而且，因为中共更加借助经济手段，比苏联更具有迷惑力和欺骗性，因而更具有长远的毁灭力。对人类来说，犹如新的梦魇。

《时代周刊》那篇文章， 显然出自美国左派之手。由于对中国不熟悉，尤其对中共不了解，美国的多数“中国通”，都是“中国不通”，往往做出对中国的错误解读。

事实上，出自于共产党国家的人，对共产党的态度，往往比其他国家的人，来得更为憎恨和否定；对民主价值的认同，表现更为坚定。比如，前苏共总书记戈尔巴乔夫，抨击苏共将俄国推到“人类文明的最低点”；前苏共政治局委员叶利钦，亲自宣布共产党在俄罗斯为非法组织；前北韩中央书记黄长烨，出逃后，坚决反对国际社会对金正日让步，呼吁尽快推翻平壤独裁政权；现任德国总理默克尔（梅克夫人），来自原共产党统治下的东德，却更主张向全球推广民主、遏制独裁，她的鲜明立场，与来自原民主西德却具亲共色彩的前总理施罗德，形成鲜明对照。

这一切，耐人寻味。正好应验了那句中国古话：“不入虎穴，焉得虎子？”这实在值得美国的“中国通”们或“中国不通”们思考。

首发自由亚洲电台

 

改革共识荡然无存

“改革，已经没有共识！”——这是近期以来公共知识分子回顾2006作为改革争论年的一个深沉的感叹。《南方都市报》以“纪念邓小平南巡15年”为题连续发表公共知识分子的评论文章，这个系列到目前已有三篇（并被网易连载），作者分别是秦晖、徐友渔、孙立平。三位作者从历史与社会的角度肯定了改革的功绩，并希望重建改革共识，以期通过这种共识向宪政民主趋近。

秦晖认为中国经济体积的膨胀，不输于剧变后苏东国家，并且首次肯定了改革时代政论片《河殇》的“球籍”讨论的意义；徐友渔则立足于“反左”并抨击新儒学政治，希望改革的利益分配达到帕累托最优状态（——非原话，我的总结）；孙立平则认为改革的负面（成本）造成了社会断裂，只有坚持深化改革才能优化社会结构。

就我来看，三位公共知识分子的认识仍局限于“体用之学”即工具理性，囿于意识形态压力风险，没能真正地为趋近民主宪政的路径贴上指示牌。我认为：基于传统文化中管晏主义与曹魏无赖政治的改革，以及作为政权续存必要的经济效绩追求的改革，确实是到了该停下来的时候，不能再“边改边走”或曰“摸着石头过河”。

从纯学术角度讲，我根本不赞成左派的“经济文革”，也不赞成右派的“改革万能”论。当然，我也认为中国真正意义上的改革，是1988年价税财金联动方案以前的国家行为之历程；1989年六四事件之后，也就是江泽民主政以来，改革成为利益集团的分肥机制；其间，邓小平南巡，无非是提出一个底线问题：不管什么样的执政方式，经济增量不可放弃。

本文试就改革中的三大关键词——“法治”、“媒体”、“国企”作出本质揭示性分析，以便为改革的道德批判提供一个基本框架。

一、法治——既没羊头更无狗肉

“改革”已经失去认同，它并非执政党主观愿望如提高执政能力所能挽回的。因为：（一）以党内民主推动政治改革即社会民主的模式，根本没法律化，比如像国民党那样以宪法形式规定的由训政转宪政之路径；（二）执政党内某些利益集团的“罪恶冲动”往往被解读成整体意识，而大大抵消了整个体系对政治改进的善意效果。

改革——市场经济——法治，是我们所追求的政治逻辑，或者说法治是市场经济的品质标志。但是1989年以后的所谓改革表现在法治方面是：在一端，我们生产了大量法律次品，执法的利益集团化倾向已经十分明显；在另一端，没有任何一种力量（包括共产党权力核心）来阻司法腐败的趋势。改革以来的司法状况，再以1999年为分界线，中国“治法”的道德水平堕入了中国有法制文明（如从子产铸刑鼎以来的2600多年）以来最坏的时期。中国历史上的执法文明倘有“天理、国法、人情”三大综合制约因素，执法者尚可挂羊头卖狗肉地，那么今天，既没有了羊头更无狗肉！

再残酷一点说，如果我们这个社会真地在改革共识荡然无存之后，新的价值体系又未能有效建设起来，因此引发了法国大革命式的“人民执法”的极端，那么第一个被送上断头台的肯定不是“我们的国王”而是“最高的大法官”。

二、媒体——粗鄙的高尚

即便《南方都市报》乃至《南风窗》、《百姓》等那类的所谓开放媒体，除了个案报道以外，他们根本不可能提出一种价值理性――超乎制度之上的道德企求，而后在这种道德企求下来为制度的改进划出一条清晰的路线。

搁置价值理性，不予讨论，仅就“策略性”、“技术化”而论，媒体仍没有讨论以下重大问题：（一）“人民资本主义”是否可能，尽管这本身并不涉及“党的领导”被动摇等重大法律风险；（二）在宪法尊严方面，全民公决入宪、宪法改进提案，仍是自我限制（与审查）的区域；（三）在社会价值维护方面能否涉及形而上的整合，比如法轮功与共产党的冲突能否由媒体承担一部调解责任。

媒体，作为第四权力，显然能担负以上三项责任，但是没任何一个媒体甘冒“被灭掉的风险”而去作为。至少来说，媒体被灭掉比之于异议人士的身陷牢狱，是成本较小的促进社会转型到民主宪政的选择。并非以小人之心度君子之腹，其实就是那些被“反共媒体”所高调赞扬的媒体个案，仍不乏“道德捍卫者”们的经济计算因素。也就是说，有限度地乃至手腕油滑地涉及敏感话题，最本质的意义还是发行量问题，与真正的社会正义相去甚远。如果说“改革”在彻底贬义化的时候，有谁的收益与风险之比最小，那肯定非媒体莫属。因为他们完全不用为可能的“经济文革”与“重新公平”而忧虑，在炒作社会痛苦而不是提出价值重建的方面，他们理所当然地成了“粗鄙的高尚”拥有者。

摆在中国公共知识分子面前的难题，仍然是：（一）怎样选择更积极的态度、更理性的方式，促使执政党完全落实言论与出版自由。

比如说，卢跃刚事件的出路（而不是后遗症），那就是给他一份自己筹资办报纸的权力，说什么、编什么、发什么，由他自己去负责，以及预测刑事后果而不是政治处分。（二）把更多的煽情与伤痕表达转化成理性批判与价重建，甚至争取执政党权力核心的理解来为可能发生的社会灾变作预警。而这个预警机制本质目的不是为了“一党专政”的延续，而是避免政治公共品的全部毁灭，乃至于中国现代以来勉强构建的“民族——国家”形式一夜崩亡。

三、国企——被贱卖的人民血汗资本

在国际上自里根的新自由主义经济改革作为凯恩斯主义的反动出现以来，自由主义在中国语境中也有相当影响。就作为经济学者的我本人来讲，也认为经济学的主要功能是保卫经济自由。然而不幸的是：我们本该有更好的私有化道路可走，但是在也许是宿命的力量主导下，我们迅速地滑向了“权贵资本主义”即权贵私有化。

国企，作为人民的血汗资本被廉价地出卖了：全民所有——国营（含地方国营）——国有，这一个绝对应当明晰产权边界的变化程序，产权即“每个人民都有的那分权益”被虚置了。不从根本上讨论这个问题，以后再美好的改革设想也不过是“皮之不存，毛将焉附”。所以，叫停改革，启动人民资本主义方案才是中国经济义理或曰新改革的唯一的出路。

现实中，权益获得者仍然认为自己承接了一项功德无量的义务。

一位功成名就的私营企业主，他原任某地方国营的工厂厂长。当时，他从车间技工干起，后来跑业务，再后来由供销科长而业务副厂长。在他为工厂尽力的同时，他自己也办了一个同类的小工厂。他的理由是：（一）工厂里的订单完不成，自己家建厂“为厂里担点担子”；（二）自己给厂子出力太多，也该自己办个“小厂子儿”补偿一下。

后来呢，厂子破产了，工人没人卖得起厂子，一大堆银行贷款要还，于是他出了20万元现金，购得屯时值156万的厂子（以银行贷款余额为值）。他的道德说辞是：1，如果我不买这个厂子，资产闲置，于国于民不利，按家乡话说来是“吃了总比烂了好”；2，银行应该满足，毕竟他们还拿回了20万块钱，否则最后5万块钱也没人要了；3，我没坑工人，因为我是从银行手里拿到的，好比大清江山不取自大明而取自反贼。事实上，厂子的工人也没人找他闹过事儿，最多是去地方政府请愿利益集团私有化的社会成本全部转嫁给了政府这个公共品，进而实现了资本家对社会的双重剥夺：其一，他直接地剥削了工人；其二，政府溃崩（比如社会骚乱），与该企业并无利益关系的社会公共要承担没有公共品可用的痛苦。

然而，无论权贵私有化的事实多么残酷，“经济文革”或“重新公平”都是不可取的，如是，只有两项选项：（一）如上所言，把现存的本为全民所有的国企完全人民资本主义化，比如中国石油的全部净资产除以13亿，将资产券发派给每个个人。（二）继续鼓吹一种改革论调，用30年到50年或更长一些的时间，以社会达尔文主义方式消灭掉底层社会的40％至70％，中国的人均资源量则徒然上升，达到一个“理想化境界”。也就是说，国家不再是人民的“父母”，变换成理性极为清晰的“外科医生”，为一个“资源可承受”状态的实现，将大部分底层作为社会肿瘤摘除掉。

江泽民时代的所谓改革即所谓三个代表之意识形态，实际上已为这种“理性的”社会达尔文主义提供了“伦理基础”。

新世纪新闻网

 

笔者有幸买到一本《往事并不如烟》首发本。在深圳收教所的日子，我的接见权利被剥夺，亲友送的书籍至今还扣押在收教所。唯有一次例外。这本书连同其他八本书，我委托一个将释放的难友在我书籍寄存的朋友家取到，然后，释放难友特意接见另一位尚在狱中的难友，辗转三人之手，才到我手里。囚室之内，灯光昏暗，闷热异常。我再次读了《往事并不如烟》。我用收教所的劳改出口产品──塑料包装袋手提绳，裁制了一段稍超过书籍长度的浅棕色塑料绳子，当作书签。书籍在难友中传阅。有一湖北籍武大毕业的年轻难友邓廷健，爱惜书籍，特意给这本书裹上了报纸封皮。这本书传到一位江苏籍设计师难友手中，封皮破损、污秽，他又重新包裹了一层封皮。

书上有我和别人随手写在书页边角的读书心得，用签字笔、圆珠笔，粗大的记号笔写下的，五颜六色。这本书是我出狱时被允许带出的少数个人物品之一。至今书上的封皮报纸和绳子书签，都原封不动地保留着。《往事并不如烟》超越了文字的意义，除了给予我知识上的见识外，书中人物的多舛命运与我囚禁的不自由，很容易让我产生亲密的支撑力量。于我更是一件非常珍贵的纪念品：书中的文字记载着历史和真相，而书本如同信物见证着我的磨难和生命。倘若有机会，章诒和女士能亲笔签名，这本书一定会成为一件宝贵文物。

对宣“因人禁书”的国家新闻出版署副署长邬书林等人，我没有丝毫愤怒，甚至完全能够理解。希冀兽类守法，具备人的良知、耻辱感和操行，太高看他们的德行了。仅仅用文字表达愤怒，无法触动和感化罪恶。要做的就是掌握确凿证据，把他们关进法庭的笼子里，让他们暂时复原人形。让他们明白一个常识：任何权力都不能剥夺一个受难者对一批受难者回忆和书写的权利。公权力无权剥夺公民的宪法权利。书写是无权者的权力。隐忍，不是妥协，也不是作者用尊严交换写作空间。我震惊于这句包含许多信息的话

“这次，我在乎，很在乎！邬先生，告诉您：我将以生命面对你的严重违法行为。祝英台能以生命维护她的爱情，我就能以生命维护我的文字。”

这是一个刚强的花甲老人最为严厉的警告。这是一个青少年时期被制度宠爱，而又被关押戕害十年的坚贞灵魂。这句话从她的心中爆发而出，我不知道还有什么话比这更有份量、更严重的。地狱归来的灵魂，更珍惜生命尊严，会以决绝抗争。

在强权面前每一个卑微的个体，都不会任由兽类一再突破底线。写作和出版自由，是宪法赋予公民的基本权利，宪法权利至高无上。邬书林等人公然违背宪法，这是破坏社会和谐最严重的行为。当局处心积虑掩盖清洗右派和艺人的历史真相，是非常愚蠢、幼稚的劣行。延安肃反、反右、文革时期惨绝人寰的兽性屠杀，都没有吓住人民对真相的记忆、传播，何况互联网发达的今天。哪怕只有一个人记载了罪恶，历史就会还原被掩藏的史实。历史可以淡忘，但是遭受制度阉割者和施加罪恶者都不能被遗忘。做恶者必自毙。这是一个朴素的自然法则。

我向诒和女士表达声援和崇敬，支持章诒和女士进行宪法诉讼。

（2007-01-20）
民主论坛

【2007年1月24日狱委讯】据博讯了解，清水君(黄金秋)的家人在2006年12月1日乘车去探望他。因为会见限制3人，这次见面他父亲没有进去，只有清水君的哥哥、姐姐和母亲得以探望。  据称，在摄像机和录音监视下，清水君的家人轮流和清水君通过电话交谈，一共30分钟。 家人表示，清水君的身体和精神状态都好。目前，清水君关押在江苏，从事制作信封的劳动。里面具体情况如何，还无法知道。 清水君的家乡在山东，家人乘车需要2－3天的路程。

 

Pessimism vs. Existentialism

By ROBERT C. SOLOMON

Pessimism is back. That will not surprise anyone who has been keeping track of the nation’s pulse over the past several months  or perhaps the last several years. Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech, which may have cost him a second term, would not be at all inappropriate today. Our famous American optimism faces a mortal threat in the combination of an unwinnable war, a collapsing dollar, a sagging economy for most people, trouble on the job front for graduating students, and lowered expectations generally. And that’s aside from the recent scandals among our religious, corporate, and political leaders, and the pervasive suspicion that results.

So opined Adam Cohen recently in the International Herald Tribune, and so, too, according to a recent book by Joshua Foa Dienstag, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit (Princeton University Press, 2006). In his defense of pessimism as an appropriate and realistic philosophy, Dienstag points to the usual suspects: Arthur Schopenhauer, of course, the great 19th-century pessimist; but also Friedrich Nietzsche, and Albert Camus and the modern movement called existentialism.

I do not disagree with the diagnosis, but I am disturbed by the continued reference to existentialism as a pessimistic, negative philosophy. It is often considered such. Only a few weeks ago I heard a radio commentator declare that the “nothing really matters” lyric from Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was truly “existential.” And I still hear pundits and some of my university colleagues decry existentialism as the source of our nihilistic gloom, the reason why our students don’t vote and why they experiment with dangerous drugs. I listen to such comments with a mix of amusement and horror because I like existentialism and I think that existentialism, not pessimism, is what America needs right now.

Existentialism is said to be all about “the death of God,” the meaninglessness of human life, and the anxiety those provoke. It is in the face of such anxiety that one needs the courage to make meanings, to be oneself. The theme gets dutifully traced back to Søren Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and forward through Martin Heidegger, Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Tillich, and Viktor Frankl, always with a touch of heroism but surrounded by the darkness of despair and ultimate meaninglessness.

In the early years of existentialism in postwar Europe, the emphasis was indeed on gloom and hopelessness. The books and articles that made the biggest splash  William Barrett’s Irrational Man, for instance  were those that bemoaned the death of God and the despair and meaninglessness that are implied by that cosmic absence. That was challenged in the 60s by the celebrations of hipness in the United States at the hands of Norman Mailer, in Advertisements for Myself, and some of the Beats. The heady optimism that ruled America in those years leavened the Old World gloom and turned meaninglessness into a challenge, recasting the death of God into a sense of liberation. Even in Europe, existentialism came to present itself as a positive philosophy, a philosophy of hope, in works like Camus’s essay “The Rebel” and Sartre’s lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism.”

It is my contention that the whole movement has been misinterpreted, turned upside down by three generations of critics and commentators. Needless to say, the perception of existentialism as an atheistic philosophy has had a lot to do with that, since there have been a lot of people with a vested interest in the idea that a world without God could not possibly have maning. But apart from that dubious contention, such interpretations display real ignorance of the fact that one of the leading existentialists, Kierkegaard, was a devout Christian, and many existentialists since  Karl Barth and Martin Buber, to pick just two  weren’t atheists at all.

Why does existentialism have so much trouble shaking its nihilistic and gloomy image? To be sure, its leading promoters are rarely pictured with happy faces, but then how many philosophers in history have ever been depicted as smiling?

Yet few philosophers have displayed such unmitigated joy in their writing as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. The latter wrote: “At long last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open again. Perhaps there has never been such an ‘open sea.'”

Even Sartre, not only in his plays and novels but even in his heaviest philosophy, seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself. But when it comes to understanding the content of what they are doing, interpretations of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche seem utterly wedded to the thinkers’ supposedly intimate concern with despair and nihilism. A perennial question (students love it for both term papers and doctoral theses) is whether Nietzsche was a nihilist or not.

The answer is a straightforward no. Nietzsche warned Europe of the encroachment of nihilism, which he associated with the Christian denial of life. Nevertheless, the association of Nietzsche and nihilism lingers, despite the fact that his whole philosophical effort is to provide an alternative to nihilistic thinking.

Kierkegaard  dutifully cited as author of The Concept of Dread  is often considered the modern inventor of the Absurd  a century before Camus. However, the ultimate indeterminacy of human existence and the need to make genuine choices (including the decision to believe in God, Kierkegaard’s famous “leap of faith”) lay at the heart of his whole philosophy, and those concepts were anything but negative. “Christianity is certainly not melancholy; it is, on the contrary, glad tidings  for the melancholy,” he wrote. Furthermore, Kierkegaard never lets us forget that it is only through such acts of choice that we make ourselves into authentic “existing individuals.” He even talks of “bliss.”

So, too, in celebrating “the open sea” of possibilities that greets us after the death of God, Nietzsche aspires to a mood of unmitigated cheerfulness. Even Heidegger and Sartre, the grand old Mr. Cranky and Mr. Grumpy of German and French existentialism, respectively, aim not at despair but at a kind of rejuvenation. Sartre, in particular, claims, in response to a question about despair, that he has never experienced it in his whole life. (That may throw into question his credibility, but it’s nonetheless instructive as to his broad philosophical outlook.)

Perhaps the wartime experiences of Mr. Cranky put him beyond the reach of any celebration of life, but Mr. Grumpy insists that existentialism provides an experience of incredible freedom, a feeling of responsibility that is not so much a “burden” as a matter of finding one’s true self-identity. If nihilism and despair play any role in this picture, it is only as background against which existentialism is the ecstatic resistance. Responsibility and choice, picking oneself up by the bootstraps, are what this positive version of existentialism is all about.

We hear so much about “the burden of responsibility” that we forget the basic lesson of existentialism: that responsibilities enhance rather than encumber our existence. Call me naïve, but most people take on responsibilities becaus responsibility puts them in charge of their lives and defines just who they are. Most people who enter public service, for example, do not do so because of a selfish lust for power and wealth. They usually want to change things for the better, make a contribution, and even the most corrupt and vile politicians will confess a lingering hope that that is how they might be remembered. As Sartre constantly reminds us, we are what we do.

In short, existentialism is not a philosophy that allows us to feel sorry for ourselves in the midst of our malaise. It is a philosophy with which we can come to grips with these terrible times and actually change them. The recent midterm election was encouraging. What it suggests is that America is collectively recouping its existentialist roots, not because of national pessimism but because of what I hope is the beginning of a cooperative optimism and the sense that things as they are cannot stand.

Why does existentialism matter? Who cares about the viability of a European philosophy that may have once been the fetish of sophisticated poseurs and profligates but has little relevance to anything today? My answer is that philosophy is always relevant, that, as the proto-existentialist Johann Fichte once said: “What system of philosophy you hold depends wholly upon what manner of man you are.” And if I am right that existentialism defines an important stream of American life and thought, especially its individualism and insistence on self-reliance, that means that we should become both aware of and critical regarding what that philosophy is and what it portends.

Robert C. Solomon was a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He died on January 2 while traveling in Europe.

Who needs another book on Hitler? Even one by Mailer?

The Castle in the Forest
By Norman Mailer
Random House. 467 pp. $27.95

Imagine a different April 1945. Red Army troops pull a bedraggled Adolf Hitler out of his bunker rabbit hole.

Before long the dentist is yanking back Hitler’s head to inspect his teeth. For several years the former Führer alternately rants and ruminates to world media, his trial for crimes against humanity lumbering to its inevitable verdict.

As Hitler stands on the Nuremburg gallows, surprisingly statesmanlike – by then totally overexposed to newspaper readers, radio listeners and newsreel buffs – a few Jewish witnesses to the execution chant “Mazel tov! Mazel tov!”, for which they’re later rebuked.

Would Hitler still have attracted hundreds of biographies, studies, histories, and novels after World War II? Would Norman Mailer, at 84, think the little painter worth another round in his first novel in 10 years?

Doubtful. By escaping his up-close and personal moment with the non-Nazi world through suicide, Hitler forced that world to investigate his uniquely destructive life and times. For decades, the publishing world churned out books to the refrain “Hitler, We Hardly Knew Ye!”

But eventually we did – through 900-page biographies, multivolume histories, pinpoint studies of everyone who ever crossed his path. The world learned what it needed to know. Which makes continuing books about him more suspect.

Yet “even today,” we’re told by the narrator of The Castle in the Forest, Mailer’s imaginative but misbegotten approach to young Adolf, “the first obsession remains Hitler. Where is the German who does not try to understand him?”

All over Germany, would be the answer. Been there, done that. Many Americans feel the same.

Similarly, the narrator later claims “the world has an impoverished understanding of Adolf Hitler’s personality. Detestation, yes, but understanding of him, no – he is, after all, the most mysterious human being of the century.”

Nonsense. Hitler is history’s most overanalyzed psychopath.

So why a novel putatively about Hitler until age 16? The answer seems to be that Mailer, as often before, wants to associate himself with a subject of paramount historical importance. Hitler remains the ultimate touchstone, to writers of his generation, for meditating about evil.

Fair enough. An immortal like Mailer deserves the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, a third factor gets in the way. The more you read Castle, the more you feel you’re reading a book about Norman Mailer.

Surprise?

The narrator of this bizarre intermingling of Hitler’s family and, one surmises, Mailer’s thoughts on his own sexuality and big brood, asks the reader to call him D.T., short for Dieter. At first he presents himself as an SS officer in 1938. He worked under Himmler, assigned to look into Hitler’s family background.

About 70 pages in, however, we learn that D.T. is really a “higher devil” who works for Satan himself (a.k.a., the Maestro and Evil One) in the eons-long clash with the deity German-speaking devils call the D.K., for Dummkopf. (That German-speaking devils use a two-letter abbreviation for a single German word is one of many quality-control problemsin Mailer’s effort to evoke German atmosphere.)

The narrator entered Dieter’s body, just as he’s entered others for centuries. It’s how Satan’s cadres get close to “clients,” swaying their choices. As part of his mission, Dieter segued back to Adolf’s childhood.

With that dubious setup, The Castle in the Forest turns out to be not all that much about little Adolf or “Adi.” Instead, it devotes most of its attention to Hitler’s (partly imagined) family roots. At the center is Hitler’s father, Alois, his much-younger third wife, Klara Poelzl (Hitler’s mother) – Alois’ putative niece, but perhaps his daughter – and how Alois views his young bride and children.

As the Wizard might say, pay no attention to that Provincetown paterfamilias behind the curtain with nine kids, many women and exes, and the much-younger wife for 30 years.

Alois is, at mid-book, “a man in his late middle age who dangled a wizened pup between his legs,” with “a total of eight kids alive or dead,” though you “could add a few not exactly accounted for… .”

Expect Castle to offer penetrating insights about Adolf? Hold off. The narrator’s few observations on young Adi stay pedestrian (“He was outrageously in need of love and damnably vulnerable”).

Meanwhile, we hear lots about Alois’ beekeeping and prodigal sexuality, beginning in the days when “he made love to each of the three women he could look upon as regulars,” including a 19-year-old waitress.

“She had kept the formal entrance to her chastity intact,” writes Mailer, in the style of 1950s paperback pornography, “but the same could not be said of her neighbor.” (Don’t ask.) We hear much about Alois’ “Hound” and its ability to poke.

Here is Alois, in his 50s, as he takes niece Klara from her room to his bed: “Half her body was on fire, but half was locked in ice, the bottom half. If not for the Hound, he might have stalled at the approach to such a frozen entry, but then her mouth was part of the fire and she kissed him as if her heart was contained in her lips, so rich, so fresh, so wanton a mouth that he exploded even as he entered her… .”

More Hitler material please!!! Saddam material!!! Anything but this!!!

Indeed, after such repeated priapic passages and plenty of scatological attention to “Adi’s pip-squeak of an anus” and “Adolf’s bowel movements,” one begins to feel that the Lech in Winter, the diaper-changer of nine, can’t pull himself away from sex and excretion to think about much else, even his official high historical agenda.

“I remain a devil, not a novelist,” admits the narrator at one point.

You said it.

Add to this many stylistic problems. Early on, the narrator tells us in regard to Hitler, “To borrow from the Americans, given their rough grasp of vulgarity, I am prepared to say: ‘Yes, I know him from asshole to appetite.” Here, as often, neither the German tone nor American syntax rings.

Structural choices in the novel also make little sense. At one point, the narrator launches a 47-page digression about “Nicky” and “Alix” (Nicholas II and Alexandra) while conceding: “I know by now that not even a loyal reader can stay true to an author who is ready to leave his narrative for an apparently unrelated expedition.”

Amen.

As The Castle crumbles, the narrator appears to know he’s in trouble: “[I]t must be obvious by now,” he declares, “that there is no clear classification for this book. It is more han a memoir and certainly has to be most curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel.”

Mailer reportedly plans to continue the saga, taking Hitler into manhood. Halten Sie, bitte! Do we need Hitler refracted through the libido of a horny old writer – with magnificent past accomplishments – who’s still a prisoner of sex?

Norman, wonderful Norman, a request. Before the eyes, ears and legs aren’t the only parts gone south, give us that unvarnished, tell-all memoir. It would instantly become a key history of late 20th-century America.

Call it Me, Myself and I, or even Ich und Mich if it makes you happy. But leave Hitler alone. He needs no further advertisements. Neither do you.

Peter Calamai
Science writer

Asking Steven Pinker, Harvard researcher and best-selling author, to pass the salt turns out to be very educational.

Not about sodium and high blood pressure, but about how we use language and what that reveals about human nature.

Pinker specializes in the psychology of language and also in shaking up the scientific establishment. Five years ago he ignited an academic firestorm with the best-selling book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which argued that innate behavioural differences exist among individuals and between men and women.

The 52-year-old cognitive scientist, born and raised in Montreal, is again challenging conventional wisdom with The Stuff of Thought, a book about language due out in September. He’ll deliver a lecture in Toronto on the topic Wednesday, as part of 15th anniversary celebrations for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

“We have to do two things with language. We’ve got to convey a message and we’ve got to negotiate what kind of social relationship we have with someone,” Pinker says in a telephone interview from his home in Cambridge, Mass.

Even something as seemingly straightforward as asking for the salt involves thinking and communicating at two levels, which is why we utter such convoluted requests as, “If you think you could pass the salt, that would be great.”

Says Pinker: “It’s become so common that we don’t even notice that it is a philosophical rumination rather than a direct imperative. It’s a bit of a social dilemma. On te one hand, you do want the salt. On the other hand, you don’t want to boss people around lightly.

“So you split the difference by saying something that literally makes no sense while also conveying the message that you’re not treating them like some kind of flunky.”

The Harvard psychologist classes the salt request as an example of indirect speech, a category that also includes euphemisms and innuendo. Two other key themes for Wednesday’s talk are the ubiquity of metaphor in everyday language and swearing and what it says about human emotion.

For Pinker all three categories of language provide windows on human nature, and analyzing them can reveal what people are thinking and feeling. The approach builds upon his earlier thesis that human nature has distinct and universal properties, some of which are innate  determined at birth by genes rather than shaped primarily by environment.

Known as evolutionary psychology, this field of study looks at human behaviour through the lens of natural selection, treating our mental faculties for things like language as the result of an evolutionary adaptation, just like the process that produces the human eye. This approach runs the risk of being hijacked by advocates of biological determinism  our genes dictate what we do  or even the proponents of eugenics  the breeding of a master race.

Pinker is familiar with such dangers, having navigated the determinist shoals in both The Blank Slate and an earlier book, How the Mind Works. His current focus reaches even further back, to his first book for the general public, The Language Instinct, and to an even earlier academic tome about how children acquire verbs.

“I have a chapter on verbs in this book because verbs are how we talk about causation, who did what to whom, who’s responsible for someone’s death. The answer to that is very much like who gets to be the subject of a verb. I argue that we have a sense of causal agency or responsibility that both governs our language and governs our moral and legal reasoning.”

While verbs are undoubtedly pivotal, readers and listeners are more likely to be drawn by Pinker’s apparently exhaustive investigation of swearing, which challenges even a classic work in this field, Shakespeare’s Bawdy by Eric Partridge.

“As it turns out, people swear in five different ways. That’s why it took me a while to figure this out,” he says.

A family newspaper can’t reproduce most of Pinker’s instances of earthy language, without resorting to a surfeit of  ‘s. Not to mention *s, !s and even XXXXs. His analysis of the subject matter and the impact of swearing, however, is a safer matter. Mostly.

“The subject matter of swearing is something that people don’t like to have taken lightly. Sex is a big deal. An atmosphere in which you bring up sex at the drop of a hat seems to many people to remove some of the inhibitions about thinking about sex. Casual speech about sex occurs in an atmosphere that would tolerate casual sex itself and there are a lot of reasons why people get upset about casual sex.”

Using sexual terms in swearing, something like motherf—er, evokes revulsion over the implied depravity.

In addition to sex, Pinker lists four taboo subjects that dominate swearing: religion, excretion, despised groups, and disease and infirmity.

These change over time and differ from one society to another.

“There were curses like `a pox on you’ in English, but we don’thave much of that anymore. In Yiddish, for example, the word for cholera, choleryeh, means curse.”

Then there’s the difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Pinker spent the first 22 years of his life in Montreal graduating with a B.A. in psychology from McGill, so he has no trouble in cursing in French.

Yet he says that the root difference has more to do with Catholicism than with language. Before the Reformation, English swearing was rich in religious taboo words. It still is in nominally Catholic societies, like Quebec.

Pinker cautions that his work looks at what swearwords across languages have in common rather than the swearwords of any one language.

The most common denominator is taboo words that arouse strong negative emotions. Hearing or reading these words triggers activity in the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain believed to invest our thoughts with aggression, fear, threat recognition, and other negative emotions.

But why does the amygdala light up, why do we get upset when someone swears at us, and why do societies pass laws against swearing on the airwaves?

“People know there is a difference between what you do and what you accept. There is a difference between me knowing that people swear, me hearing people swear and me swearing, and everyone accepting that this is something you can do as much as you like.”

While swearing may garner public attention, perhaps the more surprising aspect of Pinker’s work traces the pervasiveness of metaphor in language. Not flowery poetic allusions or rhetorical similes but concrete-to-abstract transitions so common in everyday speech and writing that we often don’t even recognize them as metaphorical.

Consider this sentence:

“He attacked my position and I defended it.” It uses the metaphor of argument as war. Or how about “this program isn’t going anywhere,” which uses the metaphor of progress as motion.

Says Pinker: “Look at almost any passage and you’ll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It’s not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it’s just that that’s the way language works.

“Rather than occasionally reaching for a metaphor to communicate, to a very large extent communication is the use of metaphor,” he says.

“It could be that 95 per cent of our speech is metaphorical, if you go back far enough in language.”

Why? Here, the teacher part of researcher and author Steven Pinker comes to the fore, offering a boring explanation and an interesting explanation, both with an element of truth.

The boring explanation is that using metaphor is a quick-and-dirty way of expressing a new idea without the trouble of coining [notice the metaphor] and propagating a new word.

“But that presupposes that the mind itself works metaphorically, that we see the abstract commonality between argument and war, between progress and motion. And it presupposes that the mind, at some level, must reason very concretely in order that these metaphors be understand and become contagious.

“And that’s the more interesting part of the story.”

Except, perhaps, for the revelation about asking for a salt shaker.