Michael Novak, Philosopher Of The Deplorables, RIP

By Jerry Bowyer

Originally published on February 23, 2017 on Forbes

Much has been written about the recently departed theologian, philosopher and economist Michael John Novak: His brilliant mind, his intellectual journey from left to right, his mastery of a wide range of topics, his courage in breaking from the liberal establishment.

But when I heard that he had gone into hospice care, what first came to my mind about Novak was how he treated me personally. During 30 years as an interviewer on radio, television, and now as a contributor to Forbes.com, I've had the honor of interacting with a large proportion of the conservative intelligentsia. What I've noticed is that despite populist rhetoric from the right and gratuitous complaints about how "coastal elites" are contemptuous of "flyover country," conservative elites are too often themselves contemptuous of the people who live between our continental parentheses.

Here's a good example:

Years ago I was asked to speak at an event held by a top-tier conservative thought leader. I was one of several speakers. My remarks were well-received by the audience, and afterwards, as the attendees were standing around in clusters sipping wine and discussing the speeches, I heard some friends of the thought leader ask him (with reference to me), "Where did you find this guy?" To which he answered, "Pittsburgh. Who knew?"

Who knew? Michael Novak. That's who knew.

He grew up first in Johnstown and later right here in McKeesport (we have a McKeesport mailing address, but actually live just outside of it): both gritty steel towns. When Obama went to a San Francisco fundraiser and talked about how people desperately cling to God and guns, he had just recently been here. Johnston and McKeesport are both what used to be called "ethnic."Small houses with statues of Mary in the front yards.

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Michael's people came from Slovakia and Michael came from those people who came from Slovakia. They were solid, cold war, union democrats. In our last interview together, Novak called them "tough center-left" in contrast with "Brie and Chablis" liberals. As Novak moved left so did his people, who eventually came to be known as "Reagan Democrats" in the 80's. Last year they were given another name, Deplorables, and many of them chose to respond by embracing yet another moniker, Trump Voters.

He loved those people: their pierogis (don't you dare pronounce the "g"!) and their statues of Mary in the front yard and their stubborn unmeltability. It wasn't just personal prejudice in favor of the Slavic immigrants: he stood up for the other unmeltables: those with vowels at the end of their names and their home-grown tomatoes and arugula (decades before these became foodie badges of honor). Those with vowels at the beginning of their names with their (actually our) beloved and hypertensive salty corned beef and cabbage. And, of course, his own folk whose last names seemed to have hardly any vowels at all. As in the recent case of Deplorables, these are the people who appropriated another term of contempt and turned it into a badge of honor, 'mill hunks'. They made steel. Lots of steel. They produced more steel here than all the Axis powers put together. As much as the soldiers, they won WWII.

PROMOTED

They elected JFK, and his economic policies made them more upwardly mobile than anyone had a right to expect. And when the Democratic party went brie and Chablis, the tough center-lefts went tough center right and voted for Reagan, because they wanted their children to be better off than they were and because they knew that the Communists were every bit as bad as the Nazis. They knew it because of stories from The Old Country. Novak rejected leftism because he knew leftism was bad for his people back at home. He saw that the only thing socialism offered was a beautiful lie, and in the real world it always failed, whereas what he dubbed "democratic capitalism" actually worked. Perhaps his greatest single insight in winning the intellectual war was to point out that socialism had engaged in a polemical sleight of hand: it compared its own ideals to capitalism's reality. Once an honest observer compared reality under socialism to reality under capitalism, the game was over.

Novak granted interviews to me over at least two decades. He talked about his various books. What was different about him compared to most is that he knew who, and where, I was. Other hosts will recognize what I mean. Celebrities (including public intellectuals who truly are a species of celebrity) do publicity drives when they have books to sell. They don't know who they are talking to, and often they don't want to know. Novak came on whether he had a book to sell or not, and even when there was a book to sell, he was happy to veer away from it. I remember one instance when he was on hold waiting for our interview to begin and a caller mentioned being in her "dark night of the soul." Michael didn't miss the opportunity to offer spiritual counsel and spent most of our interview talking about spiritual dark nights and how to get through them, leaving his current book un-promoted.

In our last interview, I asked Michael whether he would be willing to come back here to his boyhood home to offer a lecture about what he had learned in seven decades since he had been here last. He quickly agreed, and then went on to offer to take my family on a tour of his beloved late wife, Karen’s, art collection at nearby St. Vincent’s College.

Just to be clear, I had little to offer to him. My columns get a few thousand readers typically, and my wife and I are small to medium bore donors to our causes. I can't see any self-interest in Novak's offers: it appears that he was simply generous. Since his passing, I’ve read many accounts of such acts of generosity.

When I heard that his health had taken a turn for the worse, I felt a tinge of regret that I had not been able yet to put forth the effort to take him up on his offer to return to his boyhood home to offer reflections on a lifetime of learning. But when he died I comforted myself by remembering that there will be an opportunity to hear his new ideas in a new McKeesport, in a new heavens and a new earth, with new ears when the deplorables shall be exalted and the exalted shall be deplorable and that we will all bring our pierogis and arugula and corned beef (yes and even Brie and Chablis) to the great supper in the days after the last day.