A very powerful piece by Richard Cohen today. It’s really a defense of anger – justified anger. “[A]s for myself and countless other Americans,” Cohen writes, “our anger is so pure, so clean, so clearly the product of what was done to us, that to shame us for it mocks our humanity. It comes not from our insecurities or failings but from what is best in all of us — sorrow for the dead, sympathy for the grieving, concern for the future and love of our country. I feel no shame — but I would if, after what happened, I felt no anger at all.” I know what he means. I was talking to a friend in the gym today, a man who is mild-mannered to a fault, and he said that he wanted to shoot bin Laden himself. Personally, I’d like to pummel bin Laden’s head in for a while first. But the truth is, I am ashamed of this impulse. I was a little ashamed when gabbing with friends the other day, I was asked what I thought we should do with the Taliban stragglers. I said, “Three words: kill them all.” My faith tells me that these impulses are not simply wrong but sinful. We can forgive but we cannot excuse them. For years, I have tried to channel what is really a profound rage at the way society has treated gay people for so long into something more constructive and reasonable. I’ve been criticized for this, but anger, I still believe, is only and always part of the problem. It is never part of a constructive solution. I think what Cohen really means is that his anger is related to a sense of righteousness. In so far as anger is proportionate to such righteousness, then it’s a good sign but it is still not a good thing in itself. Killing bin Laden out of rage is not the correct response. We must not kill him because we are angry. We must kill him because it is just.
MUST READ: “Anyone who ever wondered about the extraordinary blindness of clever people towards the Soviet Union 70 years ago – all those Shaws, and Wellses, and Webbs, and G D H Coleses; all those subscribers to the Left Book Club – anyone, indeed, who thought we would never see such naivety again, has been able to enjoy a little trip down memory lane since September 11… Substitute Islamic fundamentalism for Soviet Communism and you will hear exactly the same argument being made today – with this one difference. At least Shaw and the Western sympathizers for Stalin believed in something: for all their folly, they had a kind of intellectual grandeur about them, a coherent philosophy to defend. Today, the Left doesn’t even offer an alternative – just endless nit-picking raised to the level of an ideology.” – Robert Harris, Daily Telegraph today. The American Left, of course, has not been as shameless as the British Left in this war. But the impulse is the same and Harris is right to name it: it’s not legitimate skepticism about a war; it’s a desire to see the West lose. Those faulty predictions were really wishful thinking gone awry. Thank God they were wrong.
JONAH AGAIN: Jonah Goldberg’s response to my response to him is now up on National Review’s site. He makes a couple of good points, although I think he has largely conceded the gist of my argument about what conservatism should be like. Our agreement is that conservatism is a messy temperament. Conservatives like what is, but they are not averse to what might be – if the change seems sensible, practical and moral. There is no conservative textbook, no fixed set of principles with which conservatives approach all political questions. That’s why conservatives place particular emphasis on the necessity for practical judgment, for prudence, in politicians or even political writers. And I think what Jonah is saying is that as a practical matter, the inclusion of gay people among conservatives is a non-starter. The Republican Party isn’t ready for it. The country isn’t ready for it. Get real.
The sentence that set Jonah off is the following one from a set of rough and ready suggestions I made for conservatism to adjust to the new opportunities proffered by the war. Here’s the offending sentence: “And why not win some gay votes, by noting and praising the way in which gay Americans . . . acted as patriots and heroes in an integrating national crisis?” This is my crazed and radical idea: that the president might actually include a previously marginalized group in a unifying national sentiment. In the piece Jonah is referring to, it’s almost the only mention of the subject of homosexuality: one sentence out of over 4,000 words. (Then Jonah goes off on a tangent about equal marriage rights, which it is not in the purview of the president to grant, which I do not mention in the piece, and with which Jonah in part seems to agree. On Jonah’s basic point that I should have patience before we get marriage rights, dignity in the military, etc., all I can say is: sure. But when every other NATO military bar Turkey has already included open gays, and when our current compromise has doubled the rate of discharges, why am I being impatient? As to marriage, I’m perfectly happy to let federalism work and have marriage tried out in a few states for a while to see how it transpires. But it’s the position of National Review that no such empirical experimentation should be allowed – ever – and that such a ban should be imposed by federal diktat. How conservative is that?)
Where was I? Oh, yes. A presidential acknowledgment of gay war heroes. Why, I wonder, was I so ‘quirky’ in suggesting such a thing? Was Senator John McCain quirky when he attended gay rugby player Mark Bingham’s memorial service and paid tribute to Bingham’s spouse? Was Colin Powell out of it when he presided over Michael Guest’s swearing in as ambassador to Romania, with Guest’s spouse present? Were Barry Goldwater and Gerald Ford nuts when they supported equal treatment for gay citizens under the law? Was Dick Cheney a flake when he said in the vice-presidential debate that it should be up to states to decide whether to grant gays and straights equal marriage rights? Are all these people – luminaries in the Republican Party – raving solipsists for arguing that including gay people within the bounds of conservatism is good for gays, good for their families, good for Republicans, good for the country? Or is it only a gay man making this argument who is subject to the terms ‘solipsistic,’ ‘quirky’, etc?
Recall that I wasn’t even asking for anything more than words: simple words of inclusion and respect. Is there any Christian Church which wouldn’t endorse such a statement and see it as completely consonant with Christian orthodoxy? Recall too that I suggest this not as a way to criticize Republicans but as a constructive measure to help them win wider support. Jonah says it’s naxefve to believe that such a statement wouldn’t have serious “consequences for the conservative project.” I think he means it would antagonize a few religious right leaders. But why should it? What happened to the “hate the sin, love the sinner” concept? One of the people I think Bush should praise was a priest, for goodness’ sake. The other was a Republican jock who might have been one of those who actually saved Washington from terrible destruction. Sorry, I don’t get it.
As a practical matter, I think Jonah is too hard on his fellow Republicans. My experience is that they are not in fact the homophobes he seems to think they are. More and more of them know openly gay people and don’t have huge problems with them. More
and more are actually related to them. They may not be ready to sign on to, say, marriage rights – but I don’t think they’d be shocked if the president found a way to reach out to gays, especially in the context of a unifying speech which mentioned others as well. Bush did as much already in Austin, at the behest of his good gay friend, Charles Francis. Why not do more? Besides, as a political matter, the Republican Party is changing. The religious right is in retreat. Jerry Falwell has become a national disgrace. Pat Robertson has just quit. The new GOP chair, Marc Racicot, defended gay dignity and equality in his home state. The vice-president’s daughter is openly gay. Several key non-left writers – from Jon Rauch, Norah Vincent, Walter Olson, to Camille Paglia, David Boaz and yours truly – are openly gay. Many others whom Jonah knows all too well are privately gay. One thing conservatives surely shouldn’t do is deny reality. The gay presence in our culture is here. Sure, we’re a mixed bag, as all human beings are; but there’s plenty about gay people that good conservatives should want to co-opt, embrace and nurture. Jonah, it’s your refusal to follow the logical consequences of this that seems quirky and solipsistic to me. Get real.
The Dish 