The Left and the War

A reader writes:

I assume that you've had a look at Paul Berman's loooong article in the current TNR. Since I'm somewhat familiar with all three of the major personalities discussed (Ramadan, Buruma, Hirsi Ali) I found it quite interesting.

But.... he seems to come up just a bit short at the very end. He asks "why" and then ends with one or two quick sentences. We need a lot more analysis of this "why" question, on the part of people like yourself. Clearly we in the West are contending with several tectonic shifts all at the same time.

One of these shifts, the one most germane to the question of Ramadan, is this: for a long time - probably over a century - those of us on the left have felt at least an intellectual sympathy with the dispossessed, Fanon's "wretched of the Earth". Sometimes this sympathy crossed over and became emotional, personal. We felt that the poor and oppressed could - if only they had access to resources like we did - become "just like us". This is what drove left support for the various "national liberation movements" like those of Cuba etc.

Now, however, we are seeing a dispossessed class, namely the Muslim immigrants and near-immigrants (like the killer of Theo van Gogh), with which we can have very very little sympathy. These are people who aren't and probably never will be "just like us". They are implacably hostile to everything the Enlightenment West stands for. Indeed, they advocate a return to the kind of barbarism that the West (partially) escaped only after a very long struggle.

So, the old memes no longer apply. What we have is a situation in which the left finds itself in uneasy - and incomplete - agreement with those on the right who have traditionally been labelled "paleoconservatives", such as Pat Buchanan.

I want to be careful here. To a great extent we are still in a period of "false consciousness". The left knows that the old model isn't working very well anymore, at least with respect to Islam (within Christendom things are clearer). Some, like Berman and Hitchens, have jumped whole hog into an alliance with conservatives. This has made them appear as apostates to long-time leftists.

The problem is, at least in general terms, Berman and Hitchens are right. There *is* a threat to us and our values. It's a threat unlike those we've dealt with before (even the Soviets were, ultimately, children of the Enlightenment). The problem for leftists is (and this will take time to work out): how to ally with conservatives on the issue of defending the West and its values, *without becoming conservatives* ?

We need a new left-liberal identity that has shed the old-time "liberal guilt" and its patronizing multiculturalism, that is unapologetic about standing with the West and all enlightened societies against barbarism, notably Islamic barbarism. All of this is going to take some time to work out.