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December 21, 2002
Left Has Hard Time in Era of Terrorism
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

n a 1976 symposium published in Commentary called "What is a Liberal — Who Is a Conservative?" the novelist Tom Wolfe offered an unorthodox explanation of those vexed political terms. He declared that they were more the result of instinct than reason and more a reflection of schoolyard wrangling than adult sophistication. Forget political philosophy. Political conflicts grow out of rivalries like those between jocks and freaks that once split the nation's high schools. "My Childhood Enemy!" Mr. Wolfe cries out in epic extravagance, "O My Faithful Schoolyard Phantoms!"

But as Mr. Wolfe also knows, schoolyard enmities are hardly matters of innocent play. Caricature and mockery abound, but consequences are serious. Trent Lott's recent declarations, for example, did indeed have an adolescent aura, mixing exaggeration with elastic principles. His first comment portrayed a liberal caricature of the conservative: a racist wanting to turn back the clock. Then, in his apologies, he became a conservative's caricature of a liberal, guiltily and naïvely donning the mantle of virtue. But more was always at stake than posturing and declarations of allegiance.

In fact, conservative and liberal categories really do offer opposing views of the world, providing different explanations for events in history, different descriptions of human nature and different philosophies of political justice. These ideas have always changed with historical circumstances, but after 9/11, some of liberalism's perspectives have come under increasing scrutiny.

In an article called "The Case for Liberalism" in the December issue of Harper's, for example, George S. McGovern tries to revive liberalism as a loyal opposition in the face of possible war. He says its definition as a political philosophy is "based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of man and the autonomy of the individual, and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties." In contrast, conservatism's function, Mr. McGovern argues, is "to cling tightly to the past"; it cannot be relied upon for "constructive new ideas" that might lead to a "more just and equitable society or a more peaceful and cooperative world." Conservatism's main contribution, he suggests, is just to keep a critical watch on liberalism, whose virtues should be transparent.

Mr. McGovern's version of conservatism is hardly recognizable as the conservatism of recent decades; his version of liberalism is also formulaic. But if liberalism is considered in its broadest sense, Mr. McGovern's sweeping assertions about its obviousness might be true. Much of political modernity, with its ideas of democratic rule, individualism and human rights, actually represents a triumph of classical liberalism. In fact, attitudes like Mr. Lott's aside, much contemporary conservatism honors similar ideas, making it less an opponent of liberalism than an alternative interpretation of the liberal world.

This is one reason that events since 9/11 have been so traumatic. While ethical and political acclaim for this larger sense of liberalism in the West is uncontested, it is barely present in Arab governments, virulently opposed by Islamic radicalism and rejected by many in the growing Muslim fundamentalist populations in European urban centers. Meanwhile the United States has been engaged in a new form of war, one goal of which is to transform preliberal societies into modern democracies while protecting against incursions at home. This requires an uncompromising scrutiny of liberalism's doctrines, ambitions and limitations.

Yet Mr. McGovern avoids the issue. He refers to terrorism as "one of the more vexing problems facing us" but argues that it does not justify an "obsession with external threats and internal security." Other liberals have been more attentive. Last spring in Dissent magazine, for example, Michael Walzer argued in an essay called "Can There Be a Decent Left?" that the overemphasis on civil liberties misses the real nature of the threat. Mr. Walzer more broadly accused the American left of having been "stupid, overwrought, grossly inaccurate" in its condemnations of the United States. Its rationalist and materialist analyses, he continued, have also led to an inability "to recognize or acknowledge the power of religion in the modern world." The left has thus become alienated from its own country, he said, and unrealistic in its expectations. Comparable arguments have been made by Todd Gitlin in Mother Jones and by Michael Kazin in the current Dissent.

Each of these writers says one strain of American liberalism has gone awry when its celebration of equality and its distrust of power are taken to extremes. Liberalism also presumes a society in which equality and liberty have been established and disruption controlled through the use of reason. So when force becomes necessary, it is a source of discomfort, because it implies the failure of reason and the curtailment of liberty.

Recent events increased discomfort because in many ways, liberalism's international future is at stake. In the West liberal democracy became possible only after centuries of economic growth and philosophical debate. In his classic 1927 book, "The History of European Liberalism," the Italian scholar Guido de Ruggiero showed how principles of liberal government developed in England, France, Germany and Italy over three centuries. How, then, can preliberal or fundamentalist societies be quickly transformed into liberal democracies? And if they are not, how are their militant threats to liberalism to be addressed?

There are no simple answers to these questions, but they address issues at the heart of the liberal idea. Consider, for example, the philosopher John Rawls, who died last month. He struggled to define a philosophy that could take the messiness of the world into account while preserving an ideal of reasoned and just liberalism. In a 1993 essay, "The Law of Peoples," he tried to envision a reasonable international counterpart to his ideal of a just society made famous in his 1971 book, "A Theory of Justice."

But Rawls began that essay stipulating that he would consider only peaceful, nonexpansionist, legitimate governments who honored human rights.

The same limitation applies to Rawls's vision of "justice as fairness." He imagined that if a group of people were designing a just society without knowing what their place in that society would be, behind that "veil of ignorance" they would make sure that the society would be most fair to its least privileged members because that is who they might end up being. Inequalities in intelligence, character and wealth would still exist, but in Rawls's view "men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit."

But this noble ideal assumes that human decisions have a fundamentally rational foundation, that material goods are the main measure of privilege, that an interest in egalitarianism is paramount, and these hypotheses are surely not universally accepted.

Rawls's notion of fairness also assumes an almost static world that can be managed without worrying about the irrational and the unexpected. But it is in response to challenge and disruption that the system would be tested. In the face of internal challenge and external attack, Rawls's system might even display the kind of intolerance outlined by Mr. Walzer.

None of this means, of course, that the broad liberal ideas of the West are to be discarded; just the opposite. But the challenges being mounted also mean that the particular incarnations of liberalism will change under pressure; conservatism will also have a role, leading to other kinds of intellectual confrontations. Edmund Burke once wrote, "Politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part." That is something that really is learned in the schoolyard.

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Oh, thank you.

What happened to your dinosaur?

He imagined that if a group of people were designing a just society without knowing what their place in that society would be, behind that "veil of ignorance" they would make sure that the society would be most fair to its least privileged members because that is who they might end up being.
Liberals do envision their selves entrusted as the designers of our society.

They quickly realize that their skills will not be in great demand from the rest of us though. There are very few want-ads for "society builders".

So they do their best to engineer a society that obliges the largest number of people to their whims. Liberals become the distributors of cardboard boxes for the homeless, unemployment for the unemployed, and tax-breaks for the non tax payers.

Enslaving us while adding to the ranks of the worlds "least privileged members" year after year.