February 3rd, 2009
Part one can be found here.
Part two: Obligatory Identity Politics
Why we’re liberals begins with a predictable but thoughtful (at least in this case) premise that liberalism has been maligned by conservatives and the mainstream media (Alterman’s breakthrough hit, What liberal media?, makes a comprehensive argument that the mainstream media is conservative). It’s followed by a short account of recent trends in liberal history. He focuses on reasons liberalism isn’t as popular as it was in the early 20th century, including the prevalence of welfare payments “that appeared to reward sloth,” the “permissive social morality” advocated by the left, “the use of courts, rather than the electoral process, to achieve liberal aims,” and many more. While no serious person could mistake Alterman for anything but a leftist, his description of liberalism’s fall from grace is critical and informative.
Alterman then paints an impressive portrait of what a liberal society looks like by describing the most progressive aspects of Europe: free health care and the European Union’s abolition of the death penalty come to mind. He claims that health care costs Europe less than half of what it costs America, and that Europe’s infant mortality rate is lower than the United States’. He advertises Europe’s recognition of gay marriage and mandatory paid vacation for all workers. Yet he doesn’t mention how dominantly liberal the political atmospheres of American hellholes such as Detroit (consistently recognized as the most liberal city in America, according to voting patterns), and Oakland are. He only mentions Europe’s problems with unemployment (fueled in no small part by the expensive mandates the EU imposes on businesses) and immigration as an aside. No group in America intimidates its citizens like politicized Muslims bully Europeans. Groups of unassimilated immigrants don’t light up America’s streets like a Christmas tree. These same people will remain unassimilated because the only alternatives to cowardly, balkanizing multiculturalism Europeans seem to conjure up have more than a whiff of racism.
All the Europhilia in the world couldn’t derail Alterman’s defense of American liberalism. But his unabashed declaration of Europe’s cultural superiority does foreshadow his most problematic arguments, the reasons he believes that America doesn’t embrace the left today. When attempting to describe America’s reluctance to become liberal, Alterman cycles through the usual excuses: He argues that liberals by their very nature don’t get as angry as conservatives do, so they’re not as forceful. He argues (falsely) that the conservative base is much wealthier. He claims that liberals are handicapped by their dedication to good government. He peevishly complains about the Electoral College, and so on and so forth. In contrast with the book’s promising opening, Alterman serves the reader, among other gruel, boiler-plate proclamations of moral superiority more appropriate for the street-fighting blogosphere than a serious ongoing debate.
Perhaps the most inappropriate section in Why We’re Liberals blames liberalism’s unpopularity on conservative’s “purposeful exploitation of racial fear and loathing.” While this is disappointing to read from the pen of an intellectual, it’s not a surprise. No sympathetic summary of left-wing viewpoints would be complete without irresponsible accusations of America’s most taboo crimes: racism, sexism, and “homophobia.” Earlier in his book, Alterman accuses Glenn Beck of “racist rants” without attribution. He accuses the New York Daily News of “homophobia,” for describing former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in feminine terms, such as calling his voice “fruity.” Even the word “hatred” is loosely wielded by Alterman, as calling Cindy Sheehan a “crackpot” is apparently an example of it.
His loose definition of fear mongering includes a deeply flawed analysis of a 2006 political ad the RNC ran against the African-American Harold Ford during a Tennessee Senatorial race. The ad begins with a young white woman proclaiming “I met Harold at a Playboy Party!” To support the contention that the ad was racist, Alterman cites a writer who doesn’t understand the simple southern term “he ain’t right,” and instead makes a logical leap and concludes that it really means “he’s just not white.” This is the same logic Alterman himself employs when he claims that attacks on the New York Times have an undercurrent of anti-Semitism because supposedly average Americans associate New York with Judaism.
This all leads up to Alterman’s most inflammatory claim, that “blacks are demonized by conservatives so they might more effectively exploit the fears of white Americans.” Really? It’s the left, not the right, which insists on framing the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad as a racial appeal, not an argument about the dangers of letting prisoners loose on weekend furlongs. It’s Democrats, not Republicans, who in practice preserve racial resentment by refusing to reject the anti-intellectual tendency to attribute racially ambiguous phenomena, such as opposition to Barack Obama, to racism. Aside from sex crimes, racism may be America’s most stigmatizing offense, so charges as serious as racism must be backed up by something more substantial than subjective rhetoric. Otherwise we risk unfairly branding people to the point no American wants to hear what they actually have to say. But I suspect Alterman already knows that.
Our ancestor’s past racial crimes cast such a long shadow over America today that I fear that my discussion about Alterman’s book has been drowned out. But precisely because racism is so inescapable, any discussion of America’s dominant political schools cannot help but to broach it. There’s a reason Americans are still arguing over two decade-old advertisements. So I will end this section with a few important words on race, while acknowledging that truly addressing the topic would take much more than a personal essay.
Anyone who comprehends the American right knows that racism is incompatible with conservative doctrine. Conservatism insists that people be judged by their actions, which obviously cannot include their ethnic makeup. Race does not dictate character. This isn’t to say there aren’t any self-identified conservatives who are racist, but their racism is a deviation from conservative ideology, not a natural manifestation of it. Additionally, none of the right’s most influential figures, including Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, and G.W. Bush are bigots, nor do they promote bigotry. The closest any of them come is Ann Coulter’s stupid use of the term “raghead,” to taunt Muslim terrorists.
Again, a lot more needs to be said, but it would engulf my original message. The point is that Mr. Alterman’s accusations of bigotry are clearly polemical, intended to vilify, not inform. Remember that this is Professor Eric Alterman, a well educated, level-headed representative for the entire American left, not some glazed-eyed neophyte, intoxicated by the opportunity to feel important through politics. His rhetorical excess just proves that intellect alone does not prevent even the smartest people from overstating their opponent’s crimes.
Next week: Elitism
Cross-posted at Modern Conservative