Incoherence
by tristero
A prime example of the deplorable condition of our public intellectual discourse. In truth, it is an almost completely incoherent essay, but I think Orlando’s arguing that because Bush misunderstood John Locke, liberal naivete is the root cause for the fiasco of Bush/Iraq. Like I said, it’s incoherent.
Patterson’s first sentence seems pretty clear:
One of the more disquieting aspects of the Iraqi occupation is that the president’s final rationale for it is a cherished, though groundless, liberal belief about freedom.
So Bush/Iraq was a bad idea because it was based on a groundless liberal belief about freedom, says Patterson. The belief, being groundless, is the problem.
But not so fast. In the third paragraph, Patterson writes:
Once President Bush was beguiled by this argument he began to sound like a late-blooming schoolboy who had just discovered John Locke, the 17th-century founder of liberalism.
Huh? Suddenly, it doesn’t matter whether the idea was groundless or an indisputable fact. More important is that Bush’s understanding of Locke – ie, liberal notions of freedom – is that of a late-blooming schoolboy, ie, someone without a deep understanding.
In other words, Patterson can’t make up his mind. Is the problem the groundless liberal belief about freedom, or is the problem that Bush acted on a shallow understanding of what the liberal belief about freedom is? But one thing Patterson tries to make clear: the fiasco of Bush/Iraq is the fault of liberal thinking. Properly understood or poorly, it doesn’t make a difference when it comes to liberal belief.
Liberals’ “cherished” belief about freedom is groundless, he says up front. And Patterson goes out of his way to drive the naivete of liberals home. They might call themselves “neo-conservatives,” but Patterson knows they are really “neo-liberals.”
And so this bizarre essay is really only comprehensible as an exorcism.* As Digby has pointed out on numerous occasions, conservatism can never be wrong, liberalism can never be right. Therefore, if people calling themselves “conservative” (neo, or whatever) are wrong, then they cannot be, in reality, conservatives but misnamed liberals. Once we see that they are not “real” conservatives, they can easily be condemned and conservatism’s infallibility is preserved.
But wait, there’s more! Orlando moves so fast he’s slipped one heckuva strawman past the readers of the Times. And that is the liberal belief about freedom that is at the core of his confused argument, namely
… the doctrine that freedom is a natural part of the human condition.
Nowhere does he provide a quote from what he calls the “liberal past” from any liberal actually believed that. He depends upon our half-remembering Rousseau, Locke, the Enlightenment gang – surely, we assume, one of them said, somewhere or another that freedom is a natural part of the human condition. So Orlando can’t be bothered to tell us exactly where.
And that is for a very good reason. Orlando’s description of the liberal “doctrine” of freedom as a natural condition is a grotesque distortion. Perhaps somewhere Locke actually said exactly that, but Orlando’s ripped it from context, and oversimplified the idea, making it appear self-evidently naive and foolish. It is easy to swat away.
What’s not so easy, and Orlando knows it which why they go unmentioned, is to argue against the real words of Locke regarding man’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property, words which are echoed in the Declaration of Independence. Words which I, being an American, think are rather wise, and not naive. I have no problem asserting them as universal rights for human beings. However, the leap from that to overthrowing Saddam Hussein makes the famous jump cut in 2001 from the apes to the spaceship look like a mere blip. It does not follow that because life, liberty, property, therefore invade and conquer a country that is not a threat and that you know nothing about.
And it certainly doesn’t follow, as Orlando says it does, that
…because freedom is instinctively “written in the hearts” of all peoples, all that is required for its spontaneous flowering in a country that has known only tyranny is the forceful removal of the tyrant and his party.
And I’d be very curious to know where Locke says this.
Speaking of Locke, calling him, as Orlando does, the “the 17th-century founder of liberalism” is a little like calling (the 18th century) Weber the inventor of opera. It is so over-simplified that doesn’t enlighten, except about the blithering ignorance of the person who talks like that. Both, of course, were enormously influential in their respective fields. But Weber didn’t invent opera, and Locke certainly didn’t found liberalism.
No, Orlando, the problem of Bush/Iraq wasn’t a naive liberalism. Nor was it a callow president misunderstanding the liberal founder, Locke. It was stupid, ignornant, malicious people in thrall with an ultra-conservative, fascist ideology that perpetrated Bush/Iraq. It was a terrible idea and only terrible people would act on it. Their worldview – marinated in a foul imperialistic manicheism – is uttlerly illiberal.
The incoherence and disortions noted above in Orlando’s op-ed are inexcuasable. He, like so many others who are now making the case for the “liberal” failure o George W. Bush are just clowning around. For in truth, a genuinely useful American intellectual discourse begins with what Orlando tries to exorcise – the articulation of a 21st century liberalism. One more sleazy attempt to blame liberalism for the obscene, forseeable failures of the conservative movement is the last thing we need.
*I’ll leave for you folks the second half. Honestly, I can’t understand it. It seems predicated on the same simplistic, and wrong, notions of the terms “freedom” and “liberty” as the first part. But like I said, I have no idea what his point is other than we, the free, will prevail over the unfree Chinese. And for this they pay him the big bucks?