Willful Ignorance

Last Thursday, the New York Post ran a piece of mine in which I compared the antiwar movement to a religious cult "hoist on tenets of faith rather than points of evidence — and, thus, in the final analysis, no more responsive to counterarguments than guys who stand on street corners in sandwich boards forecasting the end of the world next weekend . . . no, next weekend . . . no, next weekend."

It was, I thought, a clever little piece, and I knew it would get under the skin of protester types — which usually means a dozen or so e-mails telling me what a right-wing fascist I am, what a neocon blowhard, etc.

What I didn't count on was the column getting read on air, in its entirety, by Rush Limbaugh. (Memo to Rush: Next time you read a column of mine, mention my novel. It's called Africa Speaks. Now available in paperback.) In the space of three minutes, I was transformed from irritating stick insect to cause celebre. By the time I returned home after lunch, I had 175 e-mails, and over the next 48 hours, I received around 300. The first wave was overwhelmingly positive; among dittoheads, I was the bee's knees. But as the column made its way gradually leftward, the replies became more and more ferocious.

Now nothing pleases me more than antagonizing folks on the political left — it's an especially bloodless version of bear baiting — but in this case I noticed an odd phenomenon. The rage seemed to coalesce not only around the antiwar-movement-as-cult metaphor but also on another line, a throwaway, in which I mentioned that the blame-America mindset characteristic of the antiwar movement's true believers was difficult to maintain "in light of the manifest truth that America is the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet."

Astonishingly, that sentence just set people off. I say "astonishingly" because the proposition that the United States is the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet is only slightly more arguable than the proposition that the Nazis did mean things to Jews during World War II. Denying that the U.S. is the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet is indeed akin to denying that the Holocaust happened in the sense that it's so beyond debate that it's pointless to begin laying out evidence in support; the effort only dignifies the irrationality of those who would deny it. To deny it, in essence, is to deny that real world exists, that the past really happened — which perhaps excuses postmodern intellectuals, who deny such things on a regular basis. But the rest of us are left to ask who are America's chief competitors for the title of most-benevolent world power? Ancient Greece or Rome? The Mongols under Genghis Khan? France under Napoleon? The British Empire? Nazi Germany? Imperial Japan? The Soviet Union?

To be sure, America clawed its way to world-power status and left in its wake a trail of bloody victims. As is the case with all world powers, America is even now a blundering, big-footed Gulliver walking among squeaking Lilliputians; a certain degree of squishing comes with the territory. But in the century since its ascendancy, judged by the decency of its intentions or by the consequences of its actions, American benevolence is without precedent.

Still, one reader replied, "The U.S. has bombed over 200 countries since WWII. Good thing we did it benevolently. Cheerleading for the rich and powerful killers you worship has you in the gutter. Have fun wallowing in your bloodlust and ignorance."

Another wrote, "Why don't you tell 5,000,000 dead Vietnamese, 5,000 dead Panamanian citizens, every black American, or every single pure blooded Native American (there is not a single one left alive) that we are the most benevolent government there is?"

And another: "America being the most benevolent world power ever . . . you are really not a student of history are you? When was the last time you saw a large number of Native Americans? How much longer did America cling to slavery when the rest of the world had long since realized the evil of it? Who was the first and only country to ever use their weapons of mass destruction? Who has the largest store of weapons of mass destruction?"

And yet another: "'Most benevolent in the history of the planet' — and you're calling me a 'true believer'?"

There's something more significant going on here than a profound lack of historical perspective or a skewed understanding of the scholarly record. Both of those are signs of ordinary ignorance. But this is willful ignorance — which is much more insidious. It's as if the very suggestion of America's fundamental benevolence triggers an intellectual gag reflex among hardcore leftists. It cannot be tolerated; the system rejects it whole, regardless of the mental contortions that follow, because allowing it to penetrate would gum up the entire works.

Concede American benevolence — concede, in other words, what cannot be denied by a reasonable observer — and the epistemological underpinning of radical politics crumbles to dust. Can Gore Vidal continue to publish once that concession is made? Can Noam Chomsky continue to deliver speeches? Can Tim Robbins even go out in public?

In such circles, it's become a matter of self-preservation to posit America's essential evil. To posit, in short, a condition contrary to fact. Precisely because our policies seem so well intended, and their outcomes so often benign, critics who operate on the assumption of American malignancy must turn to conspiracy theorizing in lieu of inductive logic. Thus, for example, they will note that Bush has personal ties to oil company executives . . . and that Iraq has lots of oil . . . ergo, the true purpose of the invasion of Iraq must be to enrich oil companies. What's wrong with this analysis, apart from its dubious grasp of market economics, is that it takes as axiomatic moral monstrosity. It presupposes that the president of the United States would, in effect, commit mass murder in order to line the pockets of his friends; it presupposes further that the Republican party is wicked enough to nominate such a person, that the electorate is depraved or callow enough to support him, and — since there's no evidence of genocidal tendencies in Bush's past — it presupposes the innate capacity of the analyst to peer into the furthest recesses of his soul. You can dress up an argument of this type with rhetorical flourishes, and publish it in a respected journal, but, in terms of its sophistication, it's really of a piece with those "Bush = Saddam" signs that crop up at antiwar rallies.

The truth, I reiterate, is that America is the most benevolent world power in the history of the planet. If you cannot recognize this, you might as well be reading tealeaves.

— Mark Goldblatt is the author of the novel Africa Speaks, now available in paperback.

Mr. Goldblatt, as can be seen, made a statement of the blindingly obvious that is simply not acceptable to Leftists. Most Leftists will not be able to give you an example of a nation more benevolent than the United States -- but, as Jay Nordlinger has pointed out, that's not really what matters to them. To some liberals, what should be true is what is true. After all the unquestionably bad acts that the United States has committed in its history (show me a nation that hasn't done such things), it seems somehow incorrect to them -- tasteless even, like saying that Hitler did some good things -- to suggest that the United States is essentially a benevolent power.

I here reiterate my standing offer to Email an abridged copy of Malcolm Muggeridge's essay "The Great Liberal Death Wish" to any Freeper who requests it. Muggeridge ruminated long and hard over the question of why liberals automatically oppose whatever would help their nation, and support whatever would hurt it. In the run-up to World War II, the typical British Leftist line was to castigate France as a greedy, ruthless power, and Germany as a poor, bankrupt, oppressed country whose election of Hitler to power was totally "understandable," given the awful things they had gone through. As Muggeridge notes: "No view could have better pleased the then emerging Dr. Goebbels, or have been more conducive to the disaster of September 1939; more especially as it was combined with an unwavering, sanctimonious refusal to countenance anything in the nature of rearming, and a naive, obstinately held faith in the ramshackle League of Nations as a peace-keeping instrument."

Here's another example: Eric Hobsbawm is a Stalinist British historian who told an interviewer a few years ago that if he had known about the horrors of Joseph Stalin in the 1930's, it would not have affected his membership in the Communist party. He further said that if the Soviet "worker's paradise" could have been achieved, it would probably have been worth the deaths of 10 million people -- or more. Now imagine somebody making similar comments about the Nazis. Obviously, that person's career would be over. And yet Hobsbawm is a renowned historian, feted and acclaimed by his peers and by the British nation that he has worked so hard to destroy -- he even received a prestigious British history prize a few years ago.

What can explain this Leftist loathing of the Western world -- this "death wish"? I don't know the answer. I'm not sure I'll ever figure it out.

Agan, to Leftists, the essential benevolence of America just shouldn't be true. And so, to them, it isn't.

This form of leftism very definitely qualifies as a cult. It has a body of received knowledge that is essentially scriptural, one tenet of which is that America has been evil since Columbus set his foot ashore and joined those happy, peaceful, earth-spirit-worshipping natives in their simple, loving customs of merrily slaughtering one another on a daily basis.

I say unquestionable because for those who do question it, the treatment they receive is not one of polite dissent but the bloodthirsty call for the stoning of an apostate. The list of ex-leftists treated this way is a long, tedious read, and it runs from Sidney Hook, Whitaker Chambers, and Kingsley Amis to Horowitz and Hitchens today. If this treatment has the quality of the burning of a heretic, it is because those according it have the quality of true religious fanatics.

I do not claim to have an answer, but I have a hunch.

Such is the fundamental part of the human nature: the search for paradise --- to the point of sacrificing the present, currently experieced, life.

The notion of thereafter --- and a happy, harmonious one at that --- is cross-cultural and cross-religious. In Judeo-Christian tradition, however, there is an omnipowerful deity that controls the entry into the eternal life. One can live according to the Law and improve, as it is writted, his chances, but the choice is still not his in the end.

Exit Cheistianity at the time of Enlightenment. Not abruptly, of course, but over a few decades. That creates spiritual vacuum and leaves, in particular, the question of the paradise uanswered. This vacuum is very quickly filled --- by "scientific" socialism in the form of Marxism first, then Leninism, and then various other forms. That inludes most of Europe for a long time: its aligence to socialism was not visible because it was overriden by the fear of the Soviets; once that threat disappeared, the Leftis leanings, including anti-Americanism, came to the fore. The absence of Christianity is by now striking: Islam is the leading religion in Amsterdam (12%), far more prevalent than the Protestants and Catholics (10% combined). The attendance of churches varies between 5% and 10% of the population, from Sweden to Britain. That decline now included even such conservative countries as Spain, Portuga, and Italy.

Socialism replaces Judaism and Christianity in all important respects: it has the notion of paradise and the notion of G-d (which is why all communist regimes always deteriorated into dictatorships). Only G-d is now man, as was famously pointed out by Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky. But the paradise is relevant for the topic at hand.

Since G-d is man --- YOU, actually, once you provlaim your good intentions (observe not deeds as required by both Judaism and CHristianity) --- entry into the paradise is under your control. You hasten it, of course, by improving the lot of the poor and the downtrodden --- the blacks, the women, the chidlren, the homeless; it does not really matter and the results do not; whatever you do is only a manifestation of your intentions (which is why, incidentally, you cannot make the LEftists accept responsibility: their minds are simply not focused on teh results, intentions matter exclusively). So, by holding hands against the hunger, by lying down in the street against the war you do not try to acheive anything but simply profess your religion of hastening the paradise on earth --- equality and brotherhood of the peoples and persons.

What stands in the way? You and I. Anyone and anything that does not by into that madness. And especially the religious. Witness: not the Europeans' disagreement with but laughing at President Bush because he is... religeous. How backward of him. They actually say that allowed -- in puvlic, on TV, etc.

That is the source of the death wish: western values, which have found their full expression in two major social institutions, capitalism and representative government, are a blockage for entry into the paradize --- entry that does not have to be postponed until G-d reveals his plans, but the entry that can be achieved tomorrow, if capitalism and American freedoms are buried today. That is the source of the death wish, and it exists because Christianity has retreated and left room for it to take root (the same, incidentally, happened in Judaism, with the development of the Reform movement in 1800s, but I did not speak of it because it has never so socially consequential as Christianity).

Most certainly, this wish of a deathwish variety: these apostates deny the very sources of both the freedoms they enjoys and material comforts in which they indulge. But you do not need these in paradise, do you?

Thanks to all for your comments. Mona Charen (Useful Idiots), Paul Hollander (Political Pilgrims, Discontents: Postmodern and Postcommunist, The Survival of the Adversary Culture), and of course Malcolm Muggeridge (Things Past, which includes the "Liberal Death Wish" essay) have written some good stuff on this topic.

I'm in agreement with TopQuark: all you have to do is read the book Political Pilgrims mentioned above to realize the essentially chiliastic nature of the Leftism that so many dupes of Communist nations spouted. A new utopia is coming! We shall create the world anew! Imbued with ideas in an age when "God is dead," they substituted the world of man for the world of God, and thus sought to create heaven on earth (the origin of William F. Buckley's immortal phrase "Don't immanentize the eschaton.").

What is truly scary about all this is that many of the people who have historically fallen for this nonsense are extremely intelligent individuals -- the "lights of the western world." Muggeridge told tales of seeing Western visitors to the Soviet Union falling for the most obvious charlatanry: feminists would be overjoyed by the sight of women bent over a hundredweight of coal, pacifists would be ecstatic at viewing military parades, clergymen would reverently tour the halls of anti-God museums, etc.

In addition, Leftists are highly concentrated in occupations where there is never any bottom line you can't talk you way out of (the media, journalism, academia, etc.), so they are insulated from reality: as Robert Bork once pointed out, the market forces that put certain automobiles out of business don't apply to college professors (Hitler was always extremely popular at the universities). Being professional communicators, they control the terms of the debates. They can thus spout nonsense about the "military-industrial complex" and "outlawing war" and so forth without fear of reprisal. As Thomas Sowell once said, they are "masters of a world of unverified plausibilities."

I think we miss something about the nature of human beings if we fail to understand that people are fundamentally not rational, and are apt to fall prey to any glittering Idea (that's a purposeful capital "I") that enters their heads.

Since they seek to reorder society, they also demand the right to make other people's decisions for them, and to enforce their ideas through the power of the government. The populace becomes more and more accustomed to the security of the state that de Tocqueville warned of -- and they essentially go along with the schemes of the eggheads. The military is downsized, illegal immigrants are allowed into the nation, punishment for criminal offenses is deemphasized and riots ensue, and the government provides for the citizen from birth to death -- thus gaining more control over them. The peace of the grave beckons. The death wish marches on.

You are right.

The problem is that concrete moral issues have been preempted by the liberal presumption of privacy, and the relentless extension of the liberal language of autonomy has removed a common moral framework from our society. Somewhere we have lost our hold on the sense that there is a moral order independent of our choices and wishes.

We can point to many suspects in history as the causes of this loss, but only their common character really matters. It is the fate of a liberal political tradition to progressively consume its own moral substance.

"The inescapability of an order of good and evil, which is not ours to command but by which we will eventually be measured, is a steady pressure on our individual consciences, and it is made manifest by the elaborateness of attempts to deny it."

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