The following piece was written on 12 April 2006. I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before. It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.' And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet bears the name 'Reality.' A return to federalism may help mitigate tensions, as I suggest here. But that is not likely to happen.
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A few nights ago on C-Span I listened to a talk by Mark Crispin Miller given at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His theme was that of a book he had authored alleging that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans and how democracy is dead in the USA. Not having read Crispin's book, I cannot comment on it. But I will offer a few remarks on his talk.
Miller, a tenured professor at New York University, is obviously intelligent and highly articulate and entertaining to listen to, his mannerisms and delivery reminiscent of Woody Allen. He takes himself to be a defender of the values of the Enlightenment. But then so do I. So here is the beginning of a 'disconnect.' From my point of view, Miller is an extremist motivated by the standard Leftist fear of, and hostility toward, religion. (Miller's NYU colleague, Thomas Nagel, owns up to his fear of religion, as I document here.) Miller's hostility was betrayed a dozen or so times during his speech by mocking turns of phrase. But of course he doesn't see himself as an extremist but as a sober defender of values he feels are threatened by Christian Reconstructionism, also know as Dominion Theology.
One of the most curious features of Right-Left debate concerns threat assessment. What are the threats, and how are they to be ordered in respect of seriousness? During the Cold War, the Right took the threat of Soviet Communism seriously indeed, whereas the Left spoke disparagingly of a Red Scare, the word 'scare' of course suggesting that the threat was unreal and manufactured by the Right to further its 'fascist' agenda. The same pattern has been repeating itself since 11 September 2001, when the threat posed by militant Islam, which had been building since at least the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, became impossible to ignore any longer. The Left either refuses to take the threat seriously at all, or else downplays its significance, seeing it as yet another attempt of the Right to impose 'fascism' at home and 'hegemony' abroad. (I could document this with statements from Amy Goodman, Nadine Strossen, et al.)
At the same time that the Left downplays the threat posed by one religious ideology, militant Islam, it exaggerates the threat emanating from the religious ideology of Christian Reconstructionism. Thus we find the Left accusing the Right not only of being 'fascists' but of being 'theocrats' as well. Indeed, some go so far as to claim or imply that we already have in place in the Bush administration a 'fascist theocracy.' This of course is a wild exaggeration bordering on a paranoid delusion, on a par with the Bush = Hitler Identity Thesis. I am not denying that Christian Reconstructionism is theocratic; but its influence is slight and hardly representative of American Christianity. And to brand all conservatives as 'theocrats' is irresponsible to put it mildly. There are plenty of conservatives who aren't even theists, let alone theocrats.
Part of the problem here is the Left's penchant for all-purpose terms of abuse, with 'theocrat' just being a recent addition to a list including 'racist,' 'sexist,' 'ageist,' 'homophobe,' 'fascist,' etc. Indeed, Miller somewhere on his blog uses 'Christo-fascist,' presumably to counter the use of 'Islamo-fascist' by some conservatives. I suggest we drop 'fascism' and coinages incorporating it altogether unless we are speaking specifically of the political ideology of Benito Mussolini.
It is typical of the Left to see moral equivalents where they don't exist. The use of 'Christo-fascist' is supposed to suggest that, corresponding to the threat from militant or radical Islam, there is an equal threat from militant or radical Chrsitianity. But anyone who maintains something so intemperate and out of touch with reality is teetering on the brink of delusionality.
During his talk Miller complained that leftists are demonized by people like David Horowitz who are, Miller thinks, filled with anger but devoid of valid points. They supposedly engage in psychological projection and are "paranoid." Interestingly, however, Miller went on to display the very same characteristics. For example, he thinks that the ultimate agenda of the pro-lifers is a ban on contraception. Of course, some who oppose abortion also oppose contraception (though with different arguments); but to say or imply that the ultimate agenda of pro-lifers is a ban on contraception is border-line delusional.
Miller displays an abysmal failure to appreciate that there are powerful reasons for regarding abortion as deeply immoral, reasons that are not even theistic let alone theocratic. See A Common Mistake in the Abortion Debate. Instead of dealing with the conservative's legitimate concerns, and granting them some probative weight, Miller paints him as an extremist, thereby projecting his own extremism into the conservative. And his accusation of projection is arguably itself an example of projection! Unable to acknowledge his own tendency to project, Miller projects projective tendencies into his opponents. Near the end of his talk he angrily projected his anger into conservatives accusing them of being 'racists.' This is perhaps the premier term of leftist abuse, to which presumably there can be no response. The ultimate argument-stopper: 'You're a racist!'
As I have documented scores of times on this weblog, liberals/leftists use 'racist' as a semantic bludgeon to shut down debate. They use it in such a way that any disagreement with liberal/left positions earns one the epithet.
So I suggest there are reasons to be pessimistic about the future of Right-Left debate in this country. Observation of the antics of someone as intelligent as Miller cannot leave a reasonable person very sanguine.