WHY "TERROR AND LIBERALISM" IS RELEVANT AFTER ALL

I recently read Paul Berman's medidation on the current conflict, "Terror and Liberalism." Before reaching the merits of Berman's argument, one has to get past the problem that the book simply mistitled. Berman's central thesis is how the "War on Terror" is simply a continuation of liberalism's struggle against totalitarianism. More specifically, Berman sketches out an argument for why our disparate enemies in the Islamic world - Irqai Baathism (which represented the last, deadliest version of pan-Arab fascism) and Islamism in both its Sunni and Shiite forms are the intellectual heirs of western totalitarian thought. Therefore, they pose a similar threat to Liberal societies, and demand a similar struggle (as was provided against facism and communism) by liberals. Thus, in a book that seeks to clarfify the stakes and rationale for liberals in this conflict, the very title of Berman's book confuses the struggle against Islamic variants of totalitarianism with its principal tactic of terror.


Putting this non-trivial semantic failing to the side, I otherwise enjoyed "Terror and Liberalism." I was not surprised, given my ideological leanings to find myself agreeing with Berman's call to arms to liberals, but I found his writing lucid and his more specific argument (about the close connection from western totalitarian thought to Islamic totalitarian thought) tightly reasoned if at times oversold. What I found particularly enlightening were Berman's explanations of the fundamental similarity of superficially distinct forms of totalitarianism and some of the reasons for liberals failure to respond adequately to the totalitarian threats. But on the whole, I wondered if Berman's book wasn't in some sense superfluous. After all, isn't it obvious that Islamic totalitarianism (at least in its Islamist form) is a threat to liberalism, isn't it self-evident that liberal societies (and the United States in particular)have a duty to struggle against this force until it no longer poses a threat to liberal and free societies? Could any sober-minded liberal take a contrary view?


Berman's publisher, if not Berman should rest easy. The relevance of "Terror and Liberalism" has been made all too plain by the response to Peter Beinart's TNR piece challenging Liberals to place a struggle against Islamic totalitarianism at the center of their politics. In particular, for anyone who wants to comprehend why so many liberals reject the liberal hawks' views about the threat of Islamism, Berman's chapters on liberal rationalization and denial in the face of totalitarian irrationality are required reading.


I'll expand on this in further posts, but in the mean time, read the response to Beinart of Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly, his comment posters, or John Judis, author of the Not Ever to Be Emerging (If It Follows the Foreign Policy Prescriptions of Its Authors) Democratic Majority on TNR Online. All of the pathologies catalogued by Berman - the claims of exagerration, the projection of rational, appeasable objectives, the blaming of victims for the anger fomented against them - are on display. And the truly scary fact, is that this is the case barely 3 years after 9/11. How deep must the pathologies in American liberalism run for this monumental event to have faded so quickly? And can it be healed in time before Islamism abroad and corporate-evangelical Bushism at home wreck irreperable damage?