> From the theo-cons on the Right, http://www.firstthings.com
> current issue or previous.
> Michael Pugliese
Current. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0202/articles/anderson.html
These people are not without influence. They are in a way the intellectual vanguard of the christian right, so one ought to pay attention to them. First and 3 last paragraphs excerpted here. Everyone on this list will be happy to learn that the "radical left" exercises such a hold on "elite" culture. It is a mistake, according to this guy, to "dismiss as inconsequential" the "continued influence of the far left." Huzzah!
Jacob C. -----------------------
Excerpt:
The Ineducable Left
Brian C. Anderson
First Things, February 2002, 40 - 44
The far left''s disgraceful response to September 11——it has temporized about terror, embraced moral equivalence between the Islamist fanatics who killed thousands of innocent Americans and the military actions of the democratically elected U.S. government, and even blamed the U.S. for the atrocity——shows that its hatred of democratic capitalism and, more broadly, Western civilization itself remains fierce more than a decade after the collapse of socialism. The intensity of this hatred will come as no surprise, however, to anyone who has paid attention to the praise that the academic left and its sympathizers in the liberal media have been showering on one of the most pernicious books published in recent memory: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri''s encomium to anticapitalist revolutionary violence, Empire.
<snip, yadda yadda>
Do Empire''s many fans really believe their own praise? Does Time really think it''s ""smart"" to call for the eradication of private property, celebrate revolutionary violence, whitewash totalitarianism, and pour contempt on the genuine achievements of liberal democracies and capitalist economics? Would Frederic Jameson like to give up his big salary at Duke? To ask such questions is to answer them. The far left''s pleasure is in the adolescent thrill of perpetual rebellion. Too many who should know better refuse to grow up. The ghost of Marx haunts us still.
For all its infantilism, the kind of hatred Hardt and Negri express for our flawed but decent democratic capitalist institutions——the best political and economic arrangements man has yet devised and the outcome of centuries of difficult trial and error——is dangerous, especially since it''s so common in the university and media. It seems to support Islamist revolutionary hopes, the increasingly violent anti––globalization movement, and kindred political lunacies. September 11 has reminded us of the fragility of our freedom and prosperity. But the continued influence of the far left, which some mistakenly dismiss as inconsequential, can weaken our collective will to protect ourselves from our enemies. Why fight for a political and social order that is so contemptible?
The journalist Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argued that one consequence of September 11''s terrorist assault will be to discredit permanently the views of those who, like Hardt and Negri, despise democratic capitalism every bit as much as the Taliban does. I hope he''s right, but I''m not so optimistic. After all, Empire is the ""Next Big Idea"" after a century in which more than 125 million people lost their lives because of antibourgeois political movements. A few thousand murdered Americans may not be enough to end the hold the radical left still has on elite culture.
Brian C. Anderson is Senior Editor of City Journal, author of Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political, and editor of On Cultivating Liberty, a collection of Michael Novak''s social and political writings.