[Marxism] Michael Walzer's Tortured Conservatism

["Calvin Broadbent" <calvinbroadbent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Isn't Walzer's communitarianism and ethnocentric 'pluralism' merely
ideological subterfuge for capitalist democracy, (immigrant) community
'self-help', American nationalism, and racist oppression? If so, perhaps it
is but a short step to supporting blatant imperialist savagery. Are many
'communitarians' Zionists, by the by?


Dubya?s Fellow Travelers: Left Intellectuals and Mr. Bush?s War

<http://www.logosjournal.com/bronner_jacobsen_election.pdf>


.............................


Luckily, our fellow travelers know what?s up. Michael Walzer and Jean
Elshtain got a real firm grip on the situation when they signed the war
manifesto, ?What We?re Fighting For,?6 sponsored by the center-right
Institute for American Values. It stands for ?freedom? and, if the document
explicitly equates freedom with the American understanding of it, no big
deal. Enough that signatories should denounce the taking of life, urge
aggressive self-defense and, after the posturing is done, banish any nagging
suspicion that the crisis of 9/11 might be manipulated for imperialist
purposes. Elshtain goes this one better. She primly alerts us to the
seductive dangers of ?appeasement,? ridicules the notion that any change in
US policy will improve the situation, sternly informs us that the world is,
you know, a dangerous place, and insists that the ?humanist? preference for
negotiating with fundamentalist fanatics?not, of course, the Israeli or
Saudi or Louisiana sort?is fruitless.7

Never heard any of that stuff before? It?s always nice to encounter brash
new arguments about the need to take up ?the burden of American power in a
violent world.? Silly cynics might wonder whether this dainty counsel
amounts to a resurrection of the ?white man?s burden.? Pay them no heed. No
?realist? with liberal principles would ever abide the idea that foreign
policy might have a racist component either. It does seem strange that the
enemy du jour of the United States always seems to be a people of color or a
nation with little taste for its brand of globalization. But, never mind.

Interesting how the signatories to the rousing ?What We?re Fighting
For!??half of whom are conservative enough to actually join the present
administration?never bothered to consider that perhaps the fanatics are less
enraged by the way Americans live in their own country than by the policies
its government pursues in the Islamic world. No less than Elshtain, however,
Walzer was probably contemplating higher things like the theory of ?just
war? and the ethical obligation to ?reconstruct? what has been destroyed.
Not that he was ardently supportive of the Iraqi invasion. Walzer cheered on
the first Gulf War of 1991 to save Kuwait from the clutches of Saddam,8
though Kuwait was never exactly a shining ideal of democracy, but he has
said any number of different things at different times about the second Gulf
War. The stance of our hero is, shall we say, nuanced.

Ever the hand-wringing Democrat, to be sure, Walzer recognized that the
administration of Bush the Younger never made its clinching case for the
Iraqi War.9 In spite of that, however, the war apparently had to be
supported and, though it has become ever more obvious that the American
presence is only stoking the chaos and the Iraqis want us out, it remains
ethically incumbent upon us to reconstruct this smartly devastated nation.10
Is the reader following Walzer?s lucid argument? Let?s try again. The war on
terror should not excuse ?indefensible? policies though, given a state of
?supreme emergency,?11 an ?emergency ethics? may be required even though it
provides no criteria for either judging what policies are defensible or for
examining the interests of those in whose name the policies are undertaken.
Still don?t get it? One more time: Since a war is being fought against
terror in the name of liberal principles under illdefined emergency
conditions it jolly well might be legitimate on ethical grounds to consider
employing military courts and constricting civil liberties, which violate
those very liberal principles.12 Okay, since these are ?complex? arguments,
let?s cut to the chase. Mature and responsible and patriotic left-wing
intellectuals should tell the Bushies: do what you gotta do and, in the name
of the national security and what Gore Vidal calls ?perpetual war for
perpetual peace,? we?ll hold our noses and support you. Or, if that doesn?t
fly, we?ll retreat into the great dusty documents of liberal Zionism and
ponder deeply the reasons why its venerated values have eroded.

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