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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
In his conclusion, Berman picks up Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s 1949 call for "a new radicalism" -- by which he means, as Schlesinger meant, a dynamic liberalism ready to fight for its ideals: for human rights and women's rights, ethnic and religious tolerance, the rule of law against racism, anti-Semitism, obscurantism, poverty. I agree, absolutely, that we should defend democratic values, abroad as well as at home. But where Berman sees a battle to rescue liberalism from its failures, I see a problem with liberalism itself. For liberals the antidote to totalitarian absolutism is pluralism -- as Berman puts it, "the tolerant idea that every sphere of human activity -- science, technology, politics, religion and private life -- should operate independently of the others." The problem with this idea is that it does not correspond with reality, for in fact the various spheres -- Berman might have included economics -- are interrelated.
The relationships are not always obvious: It took feminists and other cultural radicals to point out, for example, that "private life" -- sex, marriage, the family -- has a political dimension, that it involves relations of power, often enforced by the state. What a real new radicalism might look like -- a radicalism at once democratic and cognizant of the deep structures of our social and psychic life -- is a subject for another essay. But it's precisely the mindset that takes separate spheres for granted, and refuses to look at hidden connections, that invites the willed self-delusion Berman rightly scorns. To weave such connections into a seamless web of Truth is indeed totalitarian; but to deny them is also to simplify the world.
That simplification has its own dangers. If myopic liberalism bears a trace of resemblance to the illiberal left, militant liberalism easily drifts toward the illiberal right. While I'm generally leery of making comparisons between the Vietnam era and today's very different landscape, it's worth pondering that the liberal architects of that war saw it as a fight for democracy against totalitarianism. In Berman's formulation, the United States represents the party of liberalism even under the present far-right administration; whatever the failings of George W. Bush, he is a mere annoyance next to the totalitarian threat. But is he really?
Bush's couplike ascent to power, his singleminded commitment to the care and feeding of plutocrats, his view of America's mission as cleansing the world of evil, his use of 9/11 as an excuse to launch a far-reaching assault on civil liberties, can fairly be said to represent a crisis of democracy. Central to Bush's outlook (and that of his attorney general) is a Christian fundamentalism as hostile to liberalism as Sayyid Qutb. The recent conviction of abortion-doctor assassin James Kopp should remind us that Christianity has its own terrorist fringe; the violence committed by the fanatics of Operation Rescue and the Army of God may be puny compared to Osama bin Laden's, but it's similar in spirit.
Berman, who was characterized in the New York Times as one of the liberal left's "reluctant hawks" on Iraq, does criticize Bush in his book. He notes that the president's credibility has been damaged by his regressive domestic policies, contempt for the treaties, organizations, and vocabulary of international cooperation, minimalist support for the new Afghan government, and maximalist national security doctrine. But the problem, as Berman poses it, is that Bush has failed to effectively communicate his democratic intentions -- not that the intentions themselves are in doubt.
For Berman, it is evidence of Bush's good faith that we overthrew the Taliban -- a policy I did and do support. But is it just a minor matter that with an indifference that looks awfully like cynicism we have basically abandoned Afghanistan to the warlords? Does American messianism, embodied in an expansive doctrine of preventive war (and combined with American corporations' avidity to get their hands on those lucrative rebuilding contracts), bode well for democracy in Iraq? And when the war is won, and consolidating the United States' control requires making deals with various pressure groups, which will have more influence -- the "realist" State Department and the Europeans, or the Iraqi National Congress? (Take your time.) It's troublesome questions like these that make me a reluctant dove.
All that said, "Terror and Liberalism" is an important entry in the debate over the meaning of 9/11 and after, not least because it is clearly written from a left-of-center perspective and aimed at a left-of-center audience. I hope that audience will engage the book, rather than dismissing its author as an apologist for war or American imperialism. For the left's ability to address the issue Berman raises is nothing less than a test of its ability to make sense of the contemporary world. "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves," he concludes. "Let us be for the freedom of others." Let us, indeed.
