norm's grumpthink manifesto

What is grumpthink?

• It is a kind of thinking, as opposed to mere sentimentality and other mushy thought-substitutes. This flags it immediately as old-fashioned.
• It is critical thinking, in the sense that it doesn't tolerate sloppiness and imprecision, not even from friends.
• It is willing to be individualistic in its outlook, if not positively contrarian or even curmudgeonly. It is thus deeply opposed to groupthink in all its forms, including, for example, today's epidemic of Hopenchange.

Its name notwithstanding, it is not misanthropic. It smiles at human foibles and silliness even as it skewers them, but is capable of hot indignation at duplicity and hypocrisy.

Great exemplars of grumpthink include Hamlet, who employs grumpthink especially with Polonius, Claudius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern; the entire text of Gulliver's Travels (though the final section, especially, verges on misanthropy); and William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "standing athwart history, yelling Stop." Masters of grumpthink include Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, C.S. Lewis, the aforementioned WFB, Thomas Sowell, Roger Scruton, and Mark Steyn. As these examples suggest, grumpthink has an affinity with Christianity and with several recent forms of conservatism. To be fair, however, it has had some notable practitioners outside those traditions. One thinks of Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell--not to mention the better writers at Saturday Night Live.

When is grumpthink called for? Any time people are doing misguided things in large groups--which is to say, any time. But the larger the groups, and the more misguided the things, the greater the need for grumpthink.

Events of the first weeks of the Obama administration and the 111th Congress suggest that the nation's and the world's need for grumpthink is now pressing and will remain so for the foreseeable future. They also suggest that grumpthinkers' mills will not lack for grist.

That's why I'm finally taking the blog plunge. The world cannot have too many people questioning the idiocies of our day. So I take my place athwart history and start yelling Nonsense.