If Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, represents the flower of the liberal intelligentsia, god help us. She was in a debate yesterday at the NYSEC hall on the Upper West Side, with Bill Emmott, editor of The Economist. The topic: America's role in the world, protector or predator?
Before I get lapse into depression, I should say that the turnout was impressive. 800 people in the hall, and hundreds lining up outside. I used the Gawker credentials for the first time, to jump the line. I said I'd write about the event, so here goes.
Both Brian Lehrer, the WNYC host, and Emmott, were intelligent and interesting. And vanden Heuvel's delivery wasn't bad. She had that slow NPR reasonableness, and made a good point or two about the overbearing governments, both in the US and abroad, taking cover in the imperialist project.
But it would help, once in a while to go beyond the standard applause lines of the American left. Vanden Heuvel, in the course of 90 minutes, said literally nothing surprising, apart from appropriating the language of Pat Buchanan to rail against the cabal -- could she possibly be implying they were Jewish? -- of radical neocons who had captured American foreign policy. Now novelty isn't a requirement of public speaking, or political analysis; but a token effort to veer from the party line, just once or twice, would at least demonstrate the capacity for independent thought. For Vanden Heuvel, and far too many others on the American Left, American power is always bad, all power is bad, the most recent Republic administration is always the most evil in history, globalization always works to the benefit of multinational corporations, international institutions are a power for good. These truths are held to be self-evident. No mere facts can alter her views.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, and America's more dogmatic leftists, should learn a simple debating trick: concede the occasional point. It creates at least the illusion of intellectual honesty; a concession can disorient an opponent, whose key argument suddenly finds no resistance; and it reassures the Popperist that your beliefs are testable propositions rather than articles of a wasting faith.
Oh, one last thing. Vanden Heuvel said the sanctions policy on Iraq was a mistake; what the US should have done was to encourage the kind of change from within that we saw in central Europe. What freaking planet is she living on? In countries such as Poland and Hungary, the communist regimes had lost the will to slaughter thousands; there, a few fax machines for dissidents could make a difference. To encourage the Iraqis to mount their own velvet revolution: that makes about as much sense as Jews mounting a sit-down protest at Auschwitz. When faced by a man with a gun and no conscience, Vanden Heuvel's Left is incapable of coherence. In New York City This Week [New York Press]
