Welcome friends!
I see it’s the start of a brand new year. Always a nice feeling, isn’t it? Yeah! Go 2013! It’s going to be the best year ever! Hey, might as well show a little enthusiasm. Attitudes matter, don’t they? Anyway, I thought I’d start out by taking a quick glance back at my list of irritating things from the recent past to make sure I haven’t missed anything I found particularly offensive and, sure enough, I see I managed to not write anything at all about that ultra-conservative nut job who gunned down all those innocent young kids at that summer camp in Norway a couple of years ago. Did you happen to notice at the time he was apparently quite the fan of certain conservative American bloggers and political pundits? No big surprise there. Well, I suppose it was a bit of a surprise this particular murder spree went down in Norway rather than Texas or Kansas or wherever. I’m not sure, but I suppose there must be a heck of a lot more guns in Texas than in Norway and probably a lot more ultra-conservative nut jobs as well. But it wasn’t surprising there would be connections between the conservative fringe in the two countries. After all, it’s pretty much the same story everywhere, isn’t it? But no, what I wanted to write about was something I read in one of the responses to this tragedy from the generally liberal side of the aisle, which would be my side of the aisle in case you’re keeping track. How’s that for being non-partisan? The particular response that caught my eye was a piece by Roger Cohen in the New York Times about the people who ostensibly enable this type of violence by creating the climate in which these types of events take place. It sounded fairly reasonable to me in general. Apparently some of our European brothers and sisters have been spouting off about Muslims and immigrants and Muslim immigrants and so on. You know the type of thing. Look out, they’re taking over the place, etc. Sort of like what we had in this country when the old timers were wringing their hands about all the Catholic immigrants coming over from Italy and Ireland. Hey, do you know how many kids they have? Soon the country will be run by an army of wine and whiskey swilling Papists taking orders from Rome! Well, actually I suppose you don’t have to go back quite that far. We’re having a somewhat similar conversation right now about Hispanic immigrants. Soon we’ll all need to learn Spanish! Uno hamburger, por favor. Egads! So, I think I get the general point Mr. Cohen was trying to make. When people start spinning paranoid fantasies about invading hordes of whoever the crazies start coming out of the woodwork. However, he included one example that really had me scratching my head. And you know that can only mean one thing. Yes, another basically good natured but thought provoking blog post!
So the bit in Mr. Cohen’s article that really jumped out at me was that in his list of ostensible enablers he included the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. Hmm, maybe that’s not that interesting but wait, there’s more. The interesting bit is why Mr. Cohen included Mr. Wilders, which is that Mr. Wilders had at one point supposedly compared the Koran to that classic of ultra-conservative paranoid nut literature: Herr Hitler’s very own Mein Kampf. Now maybe Mr. Wilders made this comment and maybe he didn’t and maybe he’s an enabler of anti-Muslim violence in Europe and maybe he isn’t. That’s not really my point. Sorry, but I don’t follow European politics closely enough to comment on those issues. Hey, give me a break. There’s a little something called the Atlantic Ocean that tends to get in the way, OK? But I did have an issue with this idea that if Mr. Wilder did indeed compare one book (the Koran) to another book (Mein Kampf) then he was enabling mass murderers. As my readers probably know by this time, this actually gets to one of my pet peeves: a failure to clearly differentiate ideas from people holding ideas.
As I’ve said many times before and will probably be led to say many times again, I think that under the liberal tradition it’s absolutely crucial we maintain the ability to discuss and debate ideas including those expressed in religions, creeds, belief systems, and what have you. Indeed, the entire project of a democratic society is based on the idea that people are out there discussing these things and working them out. So if you ask me, if you don’t like something in Islam or any other religion, creed, belief system, or whatever, then you should feel free to express and explain your reservations in any terms you find appropriate. To me, that simply cannot qualify as enabling hate mongers.
From my perspective, hating and enabling only legitimately come into the picture when one stops talking about books and ideas and theories and instead starts talking about people. That’s because there’s a big difference between talking about ideas and talking about people. For one thing, with ideas you can sit down and establish what you’re talking about. If you can’t find a reference you can just say, look I’m talking about belief X. Here it is: X. With people you’re in an entirely different situation because you can’t really read the minds of other people. Sure, people sometimes express ideas but maybe they don’t say them correctly, or maybe they don’t really believe what they say, or maybe they believe a lot of things that are only vaguely consistent with one another, or maybe they draw incorrect conclusions from what they say, etc. Even clarifying you’re talking about person Y right now only gets you so far because you don’t really have access to Y’s brain. You can’t say look, here it is: person Y. I mean, yeah, you might see the person standing there but you don’t really know what he or she is thinking, do you?
Then the other thing is the appropriate response to ideas is inevitably different from the appropriate response to people holding ideas. In the case of ideas it’s pretty obvious what one should do if one meets an unwelcome idea. Call it out. Let everyone know why you think it’s a load of BS. Nothing too difficult about that. It’s not like you’re going to hurt the idea’s feelings or whatever. But when you’re talking about people who may or may not hold particular ideas then you’re in an entirely different situation. I guess you could try calling them out as well but it’s hardly the same situation. First of all, since as I just pointed out you don’t have access to their brains you may very well mischaracterize their beliefs and end up with egg on your face. Second, even if you do manage to correctly characterize their beliefs it’s just not necessarily the most productive course to call someone out like that. Maybe you have a lot in common except for the one particular idea you find objectionable. Maybe it’s better to just talk things over in a friendly chat and try to straighten things out.
That’s why to me saying the Koran is like Mein Kampf is not the same thing at all as saying Muslims are like Nazis. One is a statement about ideas. It’s interesting. Maybe there are certain parallels between the Koran and Mein Kampf. I have no idea, but we can read the Koran and we can read Mein Kampf, so we could look into it and discuss it. What’s wrong with that? In contrast, the other is obviously rather similar to hate mongering because it’s about people and imputing certain beliefs to people.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Am I not talking about people every time I talk about “conservatives,” which I tend to do rather frequently? So is this a case of the kettle calling the pot black? Well, no, I don’t think so. I’m not saying we should never discuss people or discuss ideas in the context of the people who we think hold those ideas. What I’m saying is if someone goes the extra step and clarifies he or she is discussing a particular idea then he or she should at least get credit for it and get a free pass on the enabling the haters charge. Someone who sticks to discussing things like ideas and books is doing exactly what he or she should be doing, so good for them. Now I guess if we had a lot of anti-conservative violence going on in this country and Mr. Cohen claimed I was enabling the people engaging in that type of behavior because I’m always bad talking conservatives then I suppose I would have to say he might have a point there and I would need to start watching my language a lot more carefully, but fortunately we’re not in that situation. Look, we both know I’m being intellectually sloppy whenever I talk about “conservatives,” right? Of course, in my defense I do try to stick to things at least some conservatives have said themselves or acknowledge supporting in some way, so I’m not just making things up. And you may have noticed I often try to clarify when I’m talking about things I think all, most, or only some conservatives believe. But the bottom line is people can call themselves whatever they like and no matter what statement I might make about what “conservatives” believe or do you can be sure there will be some person somewhere who can stand up and say, well, I consider myself a conservative and I don’t believe or do that.
So why do I do it? Why not just confine myself to talking about ideas? Well, I suppose in the end it’s just my nod to popular culture here in the US. The fact is many people in this country seem a lot more comfortable thinking about things in a rather combative us versus them context than in the rarified atmosphere of mature intellectual debate about ideas. Conservatives have been making up outrageous straw man liberals and attacking them for years while liberals have sat around patiently trying to discuss ideas and what has happened? Have liberals gotten credit for taking the high road? Hardly. No, what has happened is that many average men and women have come to see liberals as namby pamby eggheads and have flocked to the ignorant conservative blowhards and bully boys who are now so ubiquitous on radio and TV. So I’m sorry, but if we liberals are going to participate effectively in our democratic system then we don’t really have the luxury of discussing things like we’re at some college symposium. That’s just the way it is. So follow along with me: it’s a case of us versus them. Got it?
But seriously, I don’t really know where this style of thinking comes from or why it’s so popular in this country. I suspect it may be related to some type of underlying social conflict between intellectuals (by which I mean people who are comfortable discussing ideas, not necessarily people who are smart or knowledgeable about anything in particular) and anti-intellectuals (that is, people who consider any criticism of their ideas a form of gratuitous psychological violence or aggression). I suppose it may seem a bit comical to many people I would suggest a columnist for a publication of the intellectual stature of the New York Times is being influenced by anti-intellectual sentiment but I’m not so sure. Here in the US despite our generally rather respectable educational system and our commitment to liberal and democratic values I think our prevailing cultural climate remains rather anti-intellectual. That is to say, it seems to me many Americans just don’t really enjoy talking about ideas very much. I have the impression they find it a little annoying and complicated and they just have a lot of other things they would rather be doing. I think these people are a lot more comfortable talking about people rather than ideas, especially in the context of other people being up to something or trying to do something to someone. And that goes double for conservatives. You think I’m being too harsh? Well, let’s take a look at our popular culture as expressed in our cinema for example. I don’t think one could fairly say it’s excessively focused on ideas, could one? I mean, you rarely see anyone in an American film solving a problem by sitting down with someone else, discussing it, and coming up with a solution. You don’t typically have people holding some combination of good and bad ideas and getting together to hash it all out and eliminate the bad ideas. No, you have good guys and bad guys. Period. Maybe they sometimes have ideas but in that case the good guys have good ideas and the bad guys have bad ideas. And the good guy solves the problem of the day by punching the bad guy on the nose. No words necessary. And I hate to say it but I think that type of scenario sets the tone for much of our public conversation.
So to sum things up, I think I understand the general point Mr. Cohen was trying to make. We can and probably should cool the pervasive us versus them political rhetoric. In fact, I’d much prefer it if we did. But I’m sorry, I think we have to hold the line when it comes to discussing ideas. I just don’t think we can adopt the view that if one says one doesn’t like a certain religion or one thinks some holy book or other has some similarities to Mein Kampf then one is enabling terrorists and so on. I don’t know, maybe some crazy people might transform the offending statement into something along the lines of certain people are like Nazis. But I think in that case we should place the blame on crazy people who can’t distinguish ideas from people, not on the people discussing the ideas. The answer to that problem is better treatment for crazy people, not a gag order on sane people. The alternative just isn’t realistic to me. We simply can’t afford to stop calling out what we see as bad ideas in the off chance some crazy person with a gun might get the wrong end of the stick. So could we please make another list of enablers but confine the new list to people who actually say rude things about other people and leave the people who clearly want to discuss ideas out of it? Thanks a bunch. Now hurry up and get the wagons in a circle because the conservative horde might attack us at any moment!
References
Breivik and His Enablers. Roger Cohen. The New York Times. July 25, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/opinion/26iht-edcohen26.html?_r=1&ref=global.
