Speaking of ideology and petty exercises in enforcement, Lee Siegel calls out Paul Berman for being one of the worst offenders:
In the sense that it recalls the heated solipsism of Partisan Review’s early politicized days, Mr. Berman’s “smackdown” reflects the worst tendencies of intellectual life, not the best. He has a simple point to make: Tariq Ramadan-a Muslim intellectual based in Oxford and taken up by some Western intellectuals as the spokesman for a moderate Islam-is a secret fanatic and a dangerous fraud. The intellectuals who defend him have betrayed Western civilization. On the other hand, Ayan Hirsi Ali-a Muslim intellectual, now based in Washington, D.C., who is highly critical of Islamic culture and is criticized by some of the same Western intellectuals for what they regard as her belligerent posturing-is a hero. The intellectuals who attack her have betrayed Western civilization. Though Berman sees Munich-like appeasement everywhere, there are, to my mind, good arguments, constructed in good faith, to be made for and against both these figures. But the arguments are irrelevant to the point of being ludicrous.
As Siegel points out, the true meaning of Tariq Ramadan’s ideas, whatever it may be, “poses no threat to Western democracy.” One of the main problems that many anti-jihadists have is that they want to liken anti-jihadism to anticommunism and anti-fascism, and they very much want to make the jihadist threat seem as threatening as, if not more threatening than, communism and Nazism at their strongest. These comparisons are all wrong and the power of jihadism is grossly exaggerated in the process, and so it isn’t surprising that the overreaction to Islamists in the West is similarly overblown. This is itself a sort of “idealistic posturing” that allows the people who engage in it to declare their own virtue and correct thinking while portraying themselves as defenders of an endangered civilization. Meanwhile, of course, all the risks and losses are taken by other people, and entire countries are ruined by the wars these people insist are absolutely vital. More than that, these wars are treated as vital not simply for specific security interests, which might at least be debated rationally, but for our very survival.
Several years ago, Berman’s arch-nemesis, Ian Buruma, wrote a good column in which he pointed to the true danger coming from certain Western intellectuals today:
But if one sees our current problems in less apocalyptic terms, then another kind of “trahison des clercs” comes into view: the blind cheering on of a sometimes foolish military power embarked on unnecessary wars that cost more lives than they were intended to save.
P.S. If you have nothing better to do, you may want to read Michael Totten’s interview of Berman from earlier this month to have a better appreciation of just how smugly self-righteous and wrong Berman is.
