A simple question. What does my birthplace (England), sex-life (gay and active), or the medications I take for HIV (testosterone replacement therapy) have to do with my views on this war? Last time I checked, nothing. Still, David Talbot takes me to task on these grounds in Salon. Since it’s twenty years since I graduated high-school, I won’t respond to these slurs. The ad hominem attacks seem to me to be a sign of intellectual desperation, which in Talbot’s case, is understandable. Still, he makes a couple of points that are worth addressing. The first is the notion that I have criticized some individuals, including Talbot, for lack of patriotism. This is simply untrue. I challenge Talbot to prove it. Sure, I’ve seared some writers on the left for defeatism, illogic and escapism for not having anything constructive to say since September 11, and I have seized a chance to discredit their view of the world. I have also pointed out that there are enclaves on the decadent left whose nihilism runs so deep they want terrorism to win. Maybe Talbot should take a trip to Berkeley or Amherst to fact-check this. What I haven’t done is attack any named individual for lack of patriotism. I cannot look into someone’s soul and say she is not a true patriot. All I can say is that her version of patriotism is, to my mind, deeply misguided, foolish and immoral. That is my exercise of free speech – and in America, most do not say that immigrants cannot contribute to that free speech. When Talbot says, “It’s repellent to be lectured about my commitment to America, which is deep and true, by an arrogant and self-important Brit,” he is engaging not only in a fantasy – I did no such thing – but in a nativism that shames him.
THE CENSORSHIP CANARD: My second point is that this debate has nothing whatsoever to do with censorship – and the charge is a blatant attempt to change the subject. Talbot knows I’m a First Amendment fanatic, and I have more experience publishing and writing truly radical, dissenting views than he has. He also knows there is no chance of actual government censorship in this war, and that most of the attacks on free speech in recent years have come from his friends on the p.c. left. I have no ability or desire to censor anyone. What I’ve been trying to do is expose and ridicule the views of many on the far left whom Talbot still won’t take on, and whom he still fawns over (e.g. the ridiculous Sontag). Talbot further claims I have lumped everyone on the left into the same camp. Again, untrue. I have praised many liberals in these dark days – including several, like Jake Tapper, at Salon. I have commended the American Prospect, NOW, the NAACP, Hitchens, Rushdie, and on and on. I deeply respect liberals whose views about how best to defeat terrorism are different from mine. But I simply do not respect those, like Sontag and Pollitt and Moore and Chomsky, who have nothing to say except that it’s largely our fault that we are in this war, and that we should take no action against the enemy that has launched a brutal war against us. This is a contemptible position. It is not censorship to say this. It is a service to the truth.
AND ANOTHER THING: Talbot’s deeper argument is that I should go easy on the left at a time like this because the pro-war hawks on the right are homophobes and would lock me up if they could. This is the kind of argument I have spent most of my career countering. A writer’s job is not to look around him and see which camp it is in his best interests to join. A writer’s job is to call things as he sees them, regardless of how many friends he loses or enemies he gains. When you’re an ideological hodge-podge like me, this makes for a difficult intellectual life. Your friends in some matters are your enemies in others and you get isolated pretty fast. But Talbot knows that I have never turned a blind eye to intolerance on the right, and have battle scars fighting fundamentalism in every form. My biggest contribution to this war debate so far has been an essay in the New York Times dedicated to the exposure of both Christian and Muslim fundamentalism. To describe my writing as Taliban-like is therefore simply loopy. And Talbot is blind if he does not also see that homophobia, nativism, prejudice and every other human failing are also present on the left. In some ways, I am encouraged that the most homophobic attacks on my private and public life have come from the left. It shows that ideas can matter more than simple identity; and that the resort to ugly prejudice is not unique to any politics. Talbot’s desperate smears are merely further proof of that.
AND NOW, FORTE: On a more pleasant note, I’d like to address the arguments of David Forte, who has written a critique of my piece, “This Is a Religious War,” in the current National Review. Forte wants to argue that Osama bin Laden’s extremist fundamentalism is not what he calls “essential Islam.” I don’t disagree. As I wrote, there is obviously a great and glorious past in Islam, and much within Islam today that could never be used to justify the massacre of thousands of civilians. But my point is that bin Laden’s appeal specifically blurs such distinctions, and that there is enough within mainstream Islam to help his effort. Whether we like it or not, this ideology obviously has wide appeal in the Islamic world and is gaining adherents daily. If bin Laden really were a complete crank with no real connection to Islam as a whole, then this simply wouldn’t be happening. Look at Doug Jehl’s piece in the New York Times today. What it tells us is that it matters very little what mainstream Islam says any more. The message has been overwhelmed by a culture of extremism and discontent in societies where there is no space for political opposition, and where a truly terrifying politicized Islam is on the march. Is this new form of Islam still Islam? In some ways, this is semantics. In a very basic sense, it obviously is – just as the Inquisition was a part of Catholicism and the Salem witch trials were a part of Protestantism. But my beef with Forte is not over religion. I am passionate about the importance of religious faith. My beef is about the fusion of politics and religion. Every time this happens, it’s dangerous. In many instances, the fusion has been truly terrifying. Forte disagrees and he wants to blur the distinction between politics and religion in the United States. That’s our deep disagreement. On the empirical question of what kind of Islam is now prevalent in the Middle East, we will soon find out. All I can say is that I’m far less optimistic than Forte.
The Dish 