[lbo-talk] Leon Wieseltier, foe of extreme wickedness

[Carl Remick]

[If you're short on aggravation at the moment, you might peruse Leon 
Wieseltier's whack job on Nicholson Baker's _Checkpoint_ in the NYT Book 
Review.  I don't know whether this book -- a novel about a guy who wants to 
assassinate George W. Bush -- is any good, but I suspect it is not the 
"scummy little book" that Wieseltier tags it in the opening line of his 
review.  Wieseltier's shtick as the last sane man in a world driven mad by 
the excesses of left and right is, as always, impressive.  It lends true 
gravitas to his pronouncement, below, on America's eternal need to wield the 
Big Stick.  Ah, liberals!]

... Does the Bush administration love capitalism too much? But it is also 
possible to love capitalism too little. The greatness of capitalism, after 
all, is that it may be politically corrected. Was American power used 
improperly, or for ill, in Iraq? But it is also possible for American power 
to be used properly, and for good. Is the friendly opinion of the world a 
condition of American security? Often, but not always. The incompetence of 
the Bush administration in world affairs, too much of which was 
ideologically ordained, does not alter the fact that the United States must 
sometimes deploy overwhelming force against extreme wickedness. It will be 
disastrous, for liberalism and for America, if the indignation against 
George W. Bush becomes an excuse for a great simplification, for a delirious 
release from the complexities of historical and political understanding that 
it took the American left decades to learn. ...

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/books/review/08WEISELT.html>

Carl

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