Category: Old Dish

Fareed Zakaria has a noble attempt to argue for the imposition of liberal institutions in the Islamic world in this week’s Newsweek. I wish I could buy it. I wish I could believe that democracy could – even in its most basic form – take root in Islamic culture. But I don’t. Compare Zakaria’s hopeful essay with this riveting little piece of colonialist condescension from one Albert Kinross in the Atlantic in 1920. Here’s my favorite anecdote from it:

“My soldier-servant, Ibrahim, put the whole political situation in a nutshell, when, before we were separated by order of the higher authorities, he asked me to get him a new job.
‘Why don’t you go to one of your own people?’ I replied. ‘I am only an Unbeliever and an Englishman.’
We were excellent friends and understood one another perfectly, and so I could permit myself these candors.
‘If I go to an Egyptian, he say, “Bring me money, or bring me a girl, and then I find you a job.” If you send me to an Englishman, he say, “What can you do?” and he give me so much pay.’ Thus Ibrahim.
‘Where would you find a girl?’ I asked next.
Ibrahim shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘My sister.'”

Do we really think this part of the world is much different today?

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE (FOR EXCESSIVE RIGHT-WING RHETORIC): “So President Bush, fighting terrorism abroad, now invokes executive privilege to keep us from getting to the bottom of FBI terrorism back home. I don’t understand. Except in terms of the body count, what’s the difference between an al-Qaeda savage on Tora Bora and a crooked G-man in Boston? A badge, and that’s about it. They both kill Americans or help fiends who do. And when they’re confronted, they run away and hide. The Arabs cower in caves, the retired FBI agents sun themselves in Florida.” – Howie Carr, Boston Herald.

NAZI ARAB CULTURE WATCH: I’m assuming this picture isn’t what it appears to be. But even Hamas must know what a Nazi salute looks like. And getting school kids to do it?

LETTERS: You pitch in on the Goldberg-Sullivan debate on what conservatism really means.

MARY FRANCES BERRY: A deeply pleasurable George Will column on the lawless hoodlum chairing the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

I love reading Jonah Goldberg. He writes like an angel after a couple of bourbons. But I think he’s confused about my political philosophy, or how I think conservatism should adapt to modern liberal (in the good, old sense) society. In referring to my recent stab at portraying the problems of conservatism after September 11, he says that my “conclusion is that all branches of conservatism are wrong, and that they should basically adopt Sullivan’s own quirky, iconoclastic, personal brand of conservatism, complete with his imperative of incorporating gays into the mainstream conservative movement.” I don’t think that’s the best interpretation of my piece. I actually make a point of saying: “Don’t get me wrong: Many of the schools of thought I’ve discussed here have important insights. But they need adjustment to new social realities and new geopolitical opportunities.” I guess it just goes to show that even when you ask people not to get you wrong, they still do. My basic point is that conservatism is not in its best incarnation an ideology. It’s a temperament, a spirit, an impulse that has always been alive to change. From Burke to Oakeshott, the flexibility of conservatism as a political philosophy in response to a changing world has come almost to define its difference from other modern creeds. That’s the kind of conservative I am. Although others may have very different ideas of what conservatism is, I don’t think I’m being outrageous in saying that this emphasis on unideological temperament is perfectly within the mainstream of conservative philosophy.

So if conservatism is flexible, is it infinitely flexible? Nope. I think any political proposal a temperamental conservative makes is informed not by sheer random experimentation but by a respect for current institutions, an appreciation of morality, empirical common sense and an openness to debate. In my own fitful attempts to describe a conservatism that can respond intelligently to modernity, I’ve tried to make arguments that do all of that. My nuanced argument for gay equality, for example, is not some knee-jerk pro-gay polemic, but a carefully constructed, classically liberal, temperamentally conservative argument. <a href = http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679746145/ref=pd_sim_books/002-8971396-2779232 target = new>Check it out. Reviews by such conservative figures as Harvey Mansfield and Kenneth Minogue did not read the argument as solipsistic or liberal. And the issue of gay integration is not something I have simply dreamed up out of my own needs. It’s been a burning public issue for a while now. Obviously I have a stake, but I’ve been extremely careful not to argue from personal need, but simply to incorporate what I know from simply living as a gay man into an intelligent conservative case. That’s why so many liberals don’t agree with, say, my rejection of hate crime laws or even more harmless anti-discrimination statutes.

Ditto with the legalization of soft drugs. This isn’t some culturally neutral argument for anarchy, or a projection of my own tastes. It’s a case based on good classical liberal principles and empirical observation. I’m sorry but the ban on legal marijuana is so obviously counter-productive, needlessly authoritarian and irrational that, frankly, I’m amazed any sane conservative defends it. I think lifting such a ban would be good for social order, just as allowing gays to marry would be. I’m not a doctrinaire libertarian. I support banning the most addictive and anti-social drugs. I believe in an interventionist foreign policy; I support public schools; I largely back John Ashcroft’s anti-terrorism measures. Let’s tick off a few other items: I’m against affirmative action, morally opposed to all abortion, but politically resigned to legal first trimester abortion. I’m for a flat tax and secular government. I’m an anti-Keynesian; a Zionist; a fan of Orwell and Montaigne, a Catholic in frustrated but respectful dialogue with my own Church. In all this, I’m not a typical conservative, if there is such a thing. But are my views merely “an extrapolation of [my] personal beliefs – or, more accurately, [my personality]”? I don’t think so – at least no more than anyone’s political philosophy. Why is my congeries of beliefs more idiosyncratic than Robert Bork’s? Or Jack Kemp’s? Or Jonah Goldberg’s?

My view is that conservatism needs to adapt to modernity or die a reactionary death. Oakeshott for me was an <a href = http://andrewsullivan.com/text/hits_article.html?1,people target = new>epiphanous intellectual mentor. He showed me how a conservative temperament could come to terms with a liberal order, restrain, temper and guide it. He faced similar attacks – that he was an idiosyncratic and unintelligible thinker. Read him closely and you will see that he isn’t – and that this coherence is also a function of his own, yes, personality. A conservative is someone who doesn’t take his views from some authoritative tome called, in Jonah’s words, “old-style conservatism.” He is someone who looks at the world afresh all the time, informed by tradition, alert to history, but constantly exhilarated by the possibilities of the present. He knows that all thought is, at some level, refracted through the prism of human personality, and rather than see this as a weakness, he sees it as a strength. Does anyone believe that Disraeli’s version of conservatism wasn’t informed by his personality? Or Lincoln’s? Or Reagan’s? Or Thatcher’s? None of these figures checked a guidebook to proper conservative ideology to govern. In his day, Burke was regarded as a Whig. No Tory backed American independence and he was decried as being completely on an idiosyncratic wing of his own. Now he’s regarded as the most influential conservative thinker perhaps of all time. My point exactly.

A conservative’s philosophy is a blend of experience and argument, of temperament and reason. He is enamored with intellectual challenge and does not, as Jonah seems to, feel threatened by new and idiosyncratic interpretations or ideas. That’s what Oakeshott meant, in part, by the metaphor of conversation. No book can contain this political tradition. No encyclopedia can inform it. It’s happening now – as I write and you read and you write back. That’s why in a way I think this new medium is such a boon for such a way of thinking. It’s so supple and open and human, it can reveal truths that more dogmatic approaches cannot. Jonah clearly gets this and practices it. At some point, his political theory may catch up with his practice.

Bin Laden fights back.

Of course they have. Why did you think they timed the release of that tape the way they did?

BUSH AND GAYS: Yes, there’s clearly a thaw, as Newsweek has noticed. I’ve certainly had no major sense of anti-gay animus from this administration, and the work of Charlie Francis is of enormous importance – not just for gay Americans but also for Republicans who want to see their party grow and breathe and unite. But the administration needs to do more than be passively non-hostile if it is to achieve a breakthrough. Here’s hoping Bush will get there soon. How about not discharging gay soldiers who have been fighting for their country when they return home from duty?

THE ENRON SMEARS: Spinsanity does a good job dissecting our good friends, Molly Ivins and Robert Scheer, whose dishonesty is only slightly leavened by their indefatigable dimness. Spinsanity has some cred here since they really are bipartisan bullshit detectors, and have taken me down a mini-peg or two in the past.

LETTERS: A Salon cartoon mud-fight: you weigh in. Plus: AbFab and John Walker.

JONAH: OK, ok. Trust me, I’m gonna blow his liquor-ridden, dog-hair covered, libertarian-baiting ass out of the water. But I’ve been writing all day and I don’t want to pen something as rambling as his original piece. I’ll post something first thing tomorrow. And first thing for me means sometime after noon.

David Talbot defends running a cartoon depicting a fantasy assassination of Bush. I reply.

After reading the transcript of bin Laden’s sickening discourse with his fellow religious lunatics, a couple of things strike me. The first is that anyone who doubts the genuineness of this man’s faith, the inextricability of a twisted fundamentalist Islam with this form of terror, is simply in denial. The second thing that’s obvious is that the only thing bin Laden respects is power. Notice how he predicts that there will be mass conversions to Islam after the massacre. He believes that people, especially those in his own backyard, suck up to the powerful – and that this is the critical battle in his region. He directly rebuts Western nonsense about the Arab street being enraged by any exercise of American power in the Middle East. In fact, bin Laden proves that the best form of persuasion in that part of the world is not rhetorical but military. Pummel them and they will respect you. Talk to them nicely and you’ll end up like Robert Fisk. Best of all, pummel them and then talk. The most persuasive piece of rhetoric yet unleashed in this conflict has been the daisy cutter bomb. It’s the only argument that much of this clearly depraved culture actually respects. And when bin Laden is dead or captured, his hold on the imagination in that part of the world will collapse.

Would you run a comic strip that treats the murder of president George W. Bush as a) desirable; b) a joke? Salon just did.

“I don’t think you can overstate the importance that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism will have to the rest of the world in the century ahead — especially if, as seems possible, its most fanatical elements get their hands on nuclear and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them against their enemies.” – Ronald Reagan, “An American Life,” chapter 57.

SCORE ONE FOR YOURS TRULY: “After a mere three weeks, the press has begun to use the word, ‘quagmire.’ After three weeks, liberal critics have pronounced the war not merely lost but unwinnable, and conservative critics have declared it half-hearted. The only thing that can be said about such armchair strategists is that they cannot have a clue what they’re talking about.” – yours truly, Sunday Times, November 4.

JONAH’S VICIOUS ATTACK: Just kidding. A response is in the works …

Will Saletan rightly takes president Bush to task for seeming sympathetic to the plight of John Walker. But he cannot use the rhetoric of this war and make an exception for a terrorist simply because he is a young American. As Will puts it, “You can frame this as a war on terror and demand that all terrorists and those who harbor them be punished. You can frame it as a war on Afghanistan and demand that the United States spare the lives of young Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. But you can’t call it a war on terror and spare-much less harbor-the one al-Qaida fighter known to be an American. That’s not a perspective. That’s a lie.” Amen.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
“Moderns in Marin try to live down their mothers back in Spokane (“I mean, she makes casseroles”), make up bumper-stickers for their Volvos (“Another Glass-blower for Udall”), attach tiny silver coke spoons to their high school charm bracelets, drink at “The Silenced Minority,” buy Earth shoes at “The Electric Poppy,” and get hair cuts at “Rape of the Locks,” where a black militant shampooer harasses the ladies by constantly changing the soul handshake.

“Marin’s affliction is “French bread thumb,” a wound suffered by hostesses who drink too much with hors d’oeuvres and then slice themselves instead of the bread. Marin exercises inclde Zen jogging, and dressing for tennis… The Serial is a comedy about moderns struggling to keep their chins above the rising sea of their status anxieties. It is a Baedeker guide to a desolate region, the monochromatic inner landscape of persons whose life is consumption, of goods and salvations, and whose moral makeup is the curious modern combination of hedonism and earnestness.” – George Will reviewing the novel, Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County, by Cyra McFadden, in 1977.

EPIPHANY WATCH: “Three months ago, the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists, and what happened to the Bay Area? One of our young men, from Marin County no less, was captured in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban. This provided the only chuckle of the war, yet led to an entirely serious debate about whether John Walker, Taliban Ranger, is an only-from-Marin phenomenon or not. Well, folks, he wasn’t from Nebraska. Now that would be news, although not as good a story. Walker is the worst thing that’s happened to Marin County since peacock feathers, and everybody has an opinion. Why the big fuss in the Bay Area? Because we’ve had a crisis of belief, and our truest believer turned up with an AK-47 on the side of the enemy. ” – Rob Morse, San Francisco Chronicle.

The U.S. isn’t the only country to have spawned an idealistic suburbanite who ended up fighting for the Middle Ages in Afghanistan.

POLITICAL SITE OF THE DAY: Thanks to aboutpolitics.com for naming us their site of the day.

AIDS IN INDIA: On the plane to Chicago this evening, I got time to read two deeply rewarding essays. One was Michael Specter’s report from India on the burgeoning HIV epidemic in that country. The piece is full of the usual New Yorker high-mindedness, but it breaks ranks with orthodoxy by making a simple, arresting point. Cheap anti-HIV drugs – or even free anti-HIV drugs – have all but no relevance to curtailing the epidemic in a vast and dirt-poor country like India. It’s far more important and feasible in such a place to find innovative ways to prevent HIV infection than to treat or cure it. Specter, like all New Yorker writers, is a liberal. He’s basically sympathetic to writers like Tina Rosenberg who have laid almost the entire responsibility for the spread of HIV in the developing world at the feet of the evil pharmaceutical companies. But when Specter actually saw the situation on the ground, he saw the tragic futility of such an approach. And his intellectual honesty casts a dark shadow on the real motivations of some of those who want to use the developing world HIV crisis to cripple a free market in pharmaceuticals at home. Alas, Specter’s piece is not online. But if you get the New Yorker, don’t miss it.

WHEN AMERICA BLINKED: I also got around to Robert Kagan’s endless book review in The New Republic of David Halberstam’s tome on “Bush, Clinton and the Generals.” Like much of what Kagan writes, it was cogent, elegant and powerful. Kagan’s account of the collapse of foreign policy nerve among American elites in the past generation is a wonderful rubric through which to see the country’s recent history. It’s a polemic, of course, but that only buoys the narrative along. What you get here is an almost pristine view of the boundless potential of American power abroad, and the necessity to project it anywhere and everywhere to do good, prevent harm, and generally bring about a better world. I’m sure Kagan would consider my reaction to his often breathless naivete about the wider world to be a symptom of my own enmeshment in American decadence. But his admirable idealism and sharp intellect would, I think, be leavened if they came with at least some respect for the virtues of moderation in foreign policy, prudence in foreign engagements, and respect for other powers and cultures. Certainly, we need more of Kagan’s spirit in foreign policy – but I’d be terrified if there were no moderating influence as well. That’s why, although I’m critical of many of Colin Powell’s views, I’m glad he’s at the table in the current war. The president, I think, understands this mix. I wish that some neoconservatives, who deserve our gratitude for their powerful critique of recent foreign policy, would appreciate this more.