Liberals and the Left

by Joe Miller

At the TPMCafe Bookclub, Todd Gitlin is blogging about his new book, The Intellectuals and the Flag. It seems that Gitlin's basic premise is that, post 9/11, "intellectually as well as politically, it felt to me that the left was disarmed." Indeed, Gitlin goes on to criticize in the second part of the book several "incapacitating trends in the academic left." Gitlin goes on to suggest rather pointedly:

Suppose that intellectuals of the left were thinking more clearly about the American nation as (a) a whole and (b) a work in progress? Suppose that ideas about actual American potential proved more appealing on the putatively left-wing campus than sticking up, in code and despair (albeit with flourishes), for all kinds of exotic indeterminacies, theological neo-Marxisms, and third-worldist romantic fancies?

In his discussion of Gitlin's post, Michael Tomasky argues for a distinction between the left (which he claims dominates academia) and liberals, claiming that

the dividing line[between liberals and the left], I think, hasn’t to do with ideology, but something more innately human: faith. Not religious faith. Faith in America and its potential to do good; and faith that we can build a civic sphere in which engagement and deliberation lead to good and rational outcomes. The left doesn’t have it, for the most part (there are some exceptions). But liberals uniformly must.

I couldn't agree more.

I've been trying for a while now to articulate the distinction between liberals and leftists. I know that there are all sorts of trends on my side of the political spectrum that I find quite distasteful. Multiculturalism. Relativism. Marxism (and its bastard post-isms spawn: postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and deconstructionism. Yes, I know the last one isn't a 'post-ism'. I think that it deserves (dis)honorable mention here, though.) It's these sorts of ideologies that spawn the blame-the-U.S.-for-everything mentality that pervades the academy. I, for one, get tired of the assumption that my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker means that I must agree with the latest Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly librul bogeyman. Liberals end up, in the popular mindset, being equated with every leftist loon out there.

I'm not sure that I would go as far as Gitlin is tying a more optimistic worldview to patriotism per se. It's not that I have any real objection to loving my country; I do in fact prefer living in the U.S. to living elsewhere. Okay, I've a real weakness for the UK. But let's face it; the UK these days is Boston crossed with Savannah. And older buildings. I digress. No, my objection is not that I think people ought not love their country. Overt displays of emotion for pretty much anything make me uncomfortable, so I cringe a bit at people crying during the playing of the national anthem at the Olympics. That's not a critique of the overt patriotism so much as it is my own personal hang-up about open displays of emotion.

My worry about patriotism lies more in the ease with which patriots are sometimes (willfully) blind to the faults of their governments. Gitlin quotes Mark Twain approvingly: "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." The problem, however, is that those who support their country strongly often come to conflate their country with their government. Twain's remark is a long way from, "My country, right or wrong," but the slope between those two positions is slippery.

I would argue that what is needed is a compromise between the kind of unquestioning patriotism that has led some on the right to embrace torture just as long as the government tells us that it's necessary and the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that does seem to pervade college campuses. We should take pride in living in the wealthiest and (arguably) most free nation in the history of our species. But we must also be aware that "Hey, we're better than anyone else" isn't an untrumpable defense against all criticisms. There are some areas in which the U.S. could be doing better than it is (e.g. more emphasis on effective family planning of the sort that makes abortions less common, full legal recognition for same-sex couples, better access to health care for the poorest among us--hey, we're rich enough that we can afford to sacrifice some efficiency here). But there are nevertheless a whole host of areas in which we are doing things quite well, often orders of magnitude better than other nations manage. Where things are going well, we should say so.

This doesn't seem that much to ask from academics. One of the first lessons that I learned as a brand new teaching assistant back at Virginia Tech was to be sure that at least some of the comments that I put on essays should say something positive. It's easy to point out flaws, but pointing out only the flaws and leaving nothing but critical comments in a sea of red ink usually results in students who simply stop reading the comments. Those of us who take our teaching seriously try to remember that basic truth (though it's sometimes hard to do). We academics ought not forget that the same principle applies when we adopt our role as public intellectuals. All criticism all the time will result in a public that just stops paying attention.