While I am still not ready to resume daily blogging, a serendipitous combination of events have led me to the tentative conclusion that we may be seeing signs of an emerging consensus. To that end I will be posting a book review, a magazine review, and some conclusions that offer support to the contention that Western elites are beginning to recognize our common interests and beginning to come to grips with the need for a more unified approach in the war against Radical Islam.
Last week I finished reading The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West by Lee Harris. My initial impression was of disappointment. I thought Harris did an excellent job of offering a historical overview of the development of the modern Western liberal political philosophy based on Reason and of the current threats to that tradition which are inherent in our over-valuation of reason, yet I also felt that his arguments would not add much to the debate. Those who were already convinced would find little they did not already know, though his presentation added detail and a historical context to the argument, while those who would most benefit by becoming engaged in the discussion would be unlikely to read such a book. Two things have given me some optimism that we may be seeing the beginning of an emerging consensus about the current conflict between the West and Radical Islam.
Yesterday, the cover of the New York Times magazine section was devoted to Mark Lilla's The Politics of God. Where Harris focused on the difficult journey toward Reason as the prime organizer of society, Lilla focused on the inverse, that is, our difficult journey away from Religion as the prime organizer of society. Both approaches are complementary and both are necessary to understand the space that Radical Islam occupies in the world.
The other events that feed into my argument, that we can glimpse the outlines of an emerging consensus linking most of the Right and Left in the preeminent ideological struggle of our times, can best be described by two vignettes over the weekend.
On Saturday night we had dinner with some old friends we hadn't seen in a while. They are both Pediatricians, eclectic thinkers, quite intellectual, and well versed in Reason. Dave is the head of a Neonatal ICU and Kathy runs a Pediatric ICU. They are reliable New York liberals faced with a problem.
After some initial and perfunctory Bush bashing (actually, it was more in the nature of Cheney bashing by Dave) for having gotten us involved in such a mess in Iraq, Kathy remarked that she still read my blog and thought that I wrote very well and quite persuasively, yet she refused to believe that the problems with Radical Islam were as dire as I suggested. She could not believe that the Arab world was in such a state. She believed that they were just like us and the idea that their culture and belief structure could be incompatible with the West and the modern world was so troubling that she simply refused to believe it.
On Sunday night, we were at a party attended by a significant number of New York Psychiatrists. Arthur has been reading my blog for quite some time and agrees with much that I write, especially about the problems Israel faces with their irredentist opponents. Yet he, too, could not believe that the Arab world was culturally incompatible with the West. He knows many Muslims, especially physicians with whom he works closely, and they are almost all lovely people, urbane and sophisticated. Arthur insisted that the Muslim extremists represent a tiny portion of the world of Islam and that to believe otherwise is a dangerous oversimplification. I readily agreed with him that many, perhaps most, individual Muslims are indeed lovely people who want nothing more than to be left alone, but that their culture, based as it is on the Prime divider ethic of winner takes all, overwhelmed the individual and it was the culture that made our problems so intractable. When he again insisted that that could not be true, I suggested that he was in agreement with none other than George Bush, who went into Iraq believing the Iraqi people were "just like us in their desire for freedom" and yet the ensuing difficulties in Iraq showed how incredibly difficult it can be to change a culture from the outside. Needless to say, Arthur was speechless to be compared to George Bush, yet could not refute it.
Please note that in any discussion of Right and Left finding common ground, it is important to distinguish the Far Left (true socialist and communist aficionados who despise capitalism and demonize America) from the liberal left who have a pacifistic tendency and oppose the Iraq War out of discomfort with the use of military force and the genuine belief that soft power can be more effective than hard power. We have no hope of finding common ground with the Anti-American Left; we have every reason to seek common ground with the liberal left.
There are two necessary ingredients for a consensus to emerge. First, the liberal left must see themselves as having a stake in our liberal democratic politics.
Second and more important, the liberal left has to recognize that our liberal democracy is not inevitable, that it can fail, and that the threats to our values are real and increasing. This does not mean that every enemy has to be attacked militarily; in fact, that approach will likely become more and more counter productive as time goes on. It does mean that we have to aggressively assert our common values whenever they are challenged.
Both Arthur and Kathy are close. What holds them back is a nascent realization that if I am correct, their world view will be in need of significant modifications. This is never an easy or simple thing to do. Further, the mismanaged war in Iraq and the demonization of George Bush has interfered with the evolution of a consensus. For the seed to be nourished we need progress in Iraq and from all indicators General Petraeus is getting it right over there, and we need an open, even contentious, debate during the next Presidential campaign. From such a crucible, it is possible that the country will begin to agree on a common set of irreducible values from which our tactics and strategies will follow.
In the near future I plan on looking more closely at Harris's book and Lilla's article. I will consider some of the traps and snares that can derail this fragile process and will also throw in my assessment of the Wild Cards that will change this war in fundamental ways within the next 10-20 years.
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