Klavan is all over the place in his examples, seeming not to recognize any private-to-public gradations governing speech. A guest at a private dinner party and a talk-radio host all appear to be operating in the same flattened social space - not a view of society I'd describe as "conservative", and one easily colonized by the incontinent emotionalism of the leftists, and the malice of the thought-police.
What freedoms of expression you might allow yourself in various private spaces - particularly as a guest in someone's house - are not the same as the freedom one has (or rather, should have) in neutral, public space. (I've marked down as hopeless boors people with whose every shade of political opinion I agree - because they were bloviating, hectoring jerks who couldn't fathom that any social situation wasn't all about them, and that the duties of a guest include attention to what the host might or might not want going on in his house and at his table.) Klavan confuses the discretion a well-mannered person might exercise out of respect for his host with the morbid cult of public sensitivity and apology, a cult which has nothing to do with good manners and everything to do with cowardice and confusion.
That one might feel suffocated or irritated beyond endurance in certain private company is not a justification for distressing one's host. A private dinner party is not a neutral public space. (Though one would not be amiss in angling for invitations from more wide-ranging hosts.) That assorted grievance-mongers, pollyannas, charlatans, and half-wits emote mindlessly in response to fact, or rational argument about the facts, is not a justification for cowardice and groveling. The space for public debate is not a private dinner party or a boudoir. The louts raised in the pc-barn should never be allowed to get away with the claim that it is.
That inability to make "a time and a place" distinctions leaves Klavan accepting the judgment of "boor" from categories of people among whom one ought to have a more expansive freedom of expression - poker buddies, tennis partners, and, yes, friends - rather than passing righteous judgment as a civilized man on their own primitive, insular, crabbèd, boorish ways.
He is also more naïvely charitable toward "conservative politicians" than the limpest of "root causes" social workers:
This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they’re clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute—especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.
Ahem. A "vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or a gentleman" would more likely fill them with a "vague memory" of what a sense of shame felt like. What's behind all that apologetic backing down is far more likely shamelessness. Not "I do not wish to be seen as a brute" but "I do not wish to lose money, office, and perqs".
The problem is not and never has been that having good manners must interfere with acknowledging the truth. By suggesting that it is, one is pandering to the cretinous lack of judgment that propels its sufferers into confusion or rage at social rules about "a time and a place for everything". Thus the "love of truth" is mixed with and debased by the preening thuggery of "keepin' it real", as if Larry Summers's attempting to open inquiry on the subject of sex differences in scientific aptitude is of a piece with some talk-radio boor's trash-talk. Klavan is correct to say that there are things "greater than courtesy". But if both Summers's speculations about women in science, and insulting comments about someone's appearance, accurately illustrate your definition of "discourtesy", you've been spending too much time in lefty charm school.
I don't think we're going to advance the battle for "the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty" by accepting the "bad guys" confusion of courtesy with obsequiousness, with its concomitant confusion of real debate with consensus-seeking.
But maybe I'm being too harsh here... it could be one of those American-English vs. British-English things. In the same way that 'boot' in old Blighty can really mean 'car trunk', 'sausage' really is just shorthand for "gray, underdone, unseasoned organ bits and gristle' rather than 'spicy, flavorful, well-cooked pieces of...(well, let's leave it at that)'.
(He also whines that our bacon isn't undercooked, or greasy enough.)
Am I alone in finding it a vaguely nauseating prospect to be trapped in a flying tube for hours surrounded by people telling their friends "I'm on a plane. Yeah ... I'm on a plane"?
No.
Could anyone recommend a good set of hard-core noise-blocking headphones/ear protectors that can be comfortably worn about in public? ("Comfortably" as in my comfort. I don't really care if I look like a dork.) Because I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to need them to get through my allotted time in this vale of tears.
Or not.
Anyway, leaving the hot springs behind, we drove northward as the sun dropped to the horizon, past recovering forests and meadows, with the occasional geyser or hot spring thrown in. I seem to remember actual wildlife along this stretch as well, a few elk strategically placed along the road. In twilight, we crossed the open meadow of Gardner's Hole, passed between two mountains, and unexpectedly (because we hadn't bothered to look at the map) began the long and rapid descent down Golden Gate Canyon.
By the time we passed the mammoth hot springs that give Mammoth Hot Springs its name, it was pretty dark, and there was little to see. At the bottom of the descent, there was the Park Service town of Mammoth, dominated by the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. We were to stay in a cabin; our experience in Yosemite with the Curry Village tent cabins had made us a bit gun-shy. Checked in, we took our little map of the cabins and drove down the road, until we found ours; a sturdy wooden thing, painted white, with big double-hung screened windows, decent beds with decent sheets, an overhead fan, a clothes closet, a sink with running hot and cold water, towels, and bear-shaped soap.
The baths were down a little ways, but well-kept. And the best thing of all, it wasn't crowded, and the people there were quiet. It felt like a little Chautauqua village; Curry felt like a Civil War army camp inhabited by noisy slobs.
We settled in, but needed food; after all, we hadn't eaten since Jackson (Feb. 18). We walked in the cool evening up to the big dining hall, staffed by a set of exotic Xanterra youths, kindred to those that catered to us in Bryce; but the restaurant was too crowded, and pretty expensive. Instead, we slipped into the bar, and got the very nice bartender man to serve us a pile of appetizers and local microbrewed beer in lieu of dinner. It was good, very good indeed.
*(Yes, just an excuse to post the picture.)
UPDATE (April 12th). You would not believe how much egg salad I have forced myself to eat this week.
Walking uphill from the previous steaming pool, we came to the biggest hot spring in the park, the Grand Prismatic Spring. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed by this one – this was a feature I'd been anticipating for a long time, but you can only get a partial idea of the range of colors it contains from the ground (and in this picture), but to really appreciate its prism-ness, you need an aerial view. (Or one from space).
This is what you can see from ground level. The overflow from the spring travels in thin sheets across the ground, so the only place it's safe to walk is along a raised boardwalk.
The mineral-rich water deposits thin layers of crust as it cools. The crust is pretty fragile, which is another reason the NPS wants you to stay on the boardwalk.
These little terraces are home to dense mats of microbes.
The vivid blue of the center of the pool is just the blue of clear, deep water; but the brilliant oranges and reds of the periphery are the photosynthetic pigments of vast multitudes of thermophilic archaebacteria (what we old-timers used to call 'cyanobacteria', or just plain old 'blue-green algae').
