The Idiot Wind of Charles Krauthammer, Pt. 2

Let’s first look at the still-smoldering “Ground Zero mosque” issue. Liberals believe the construction of the Islamic center in lower Manhattan should go forward, not purely on First Amendment grounds, but also as a statement of the country’s commitment to its values of openness and inclusion, tolerance and acceptance. We do make the distinction between Islam and “radical Islam” that Krauthammer seemingly cannot; we would not have the events of 9/11 inspire further trespass against American mores; we would not offer further evidence to the Muslim world that we are hostile to its religion and way of life. Krauthammer’s “Clash of Civilizations” mindset is so simplistic as to be risible, and it leads him to believe that Islam is intrinsically hostile to us (which is why he believes construction of a community center and mosque, with swimming pool and performing arts space, two blocks from Ground Zero to be an insult, an act of aggression even). The Islamic Center, once constructed, can be a monument to American values just as visible and meaningful as the one currently being erected at Ground Zero. What’s more, it seems an even better way to say to Al Qaeda, “You have not changed us. We are unshakably what we were before.”

Krauthammer’s implicit defense of the Arizona law, S.B. 1070 (his explicit defense is nothing more than a recitation of three ideas on immigration with which all Americans can agree) is even more easily refuted. The law, purportedly promulgated to stem an unholy tide of grisly violence perpetrated by undocumented immigrants (Dana Milbank puts the lie to that fairy tale here), is a poorly concealed attempt to harry people of Latino heritage from the state. The most important clause in the law is also its most objectionable and incendiary—it requires law enforcement officials to question individuals about their immigration statuses if there is reason to believe they are in the country illegally. The clause so clearly invites racial profiling and is so obviously unconstitutionally vague (not to mention that the law arrogates rights to the states that have long been the sole province of the federal government), that no one with a elementary grasp of constitutional jurisprudence, save for Krauthammer and other conservative flacks, is surprised that a federal ruling has currently blocked its most dubious statutes. And yet anti-immigration dunderheads will argue that the new law, constitutional or not, is a necessary tool against the Great Latino Tide, despite the fact that border security has improved under Obama and the number of new undocumented individuals entering the country is down two-thirds since 2005.

And finally we come to Proposition 8. Presented with another question of civil rights, Krauthammer reflexively defers to the historic enlightenment of human civilization, which had for millennia, until the late twentieth century, defined marriage as solely between a man and a woman. He also appeals to the will of the people, those 7 million Californians who voted on behalf of Proposition 8. Both arguments are frail ones; on questions of the rights of humankind, the majority does not rule, nor does past practice offer an especially considered view of the ordering of human relations. Had the segregation of schools been subject to a national referendum in 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education would never have been enforced; should the possibility of women’s suffrage be put to the people of Saudi Arabia today, it is a right that still would not be granted to that nation’s wifes, mothers, and sisters. The matrimonial rights of homosexuals in the U.S. are similarly forestalled by flimsy popular resistance, never mind that this denial runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. It remains to be seen whether judicial common sense or popularly-inspired legislation will cede this fundamental right to American gays; however, it is only a matter of time until it is granted—young Americans support gay marriage by wide margins.

The gay marriage issue, perhaps more so than anything else, highlights the fundamental fustiness of Krauthammer’s politics. Liberalism is the big-tent political ideology in a country whose tent is as broad as they come, while Krauthammer’s brand of conservatism clings to a vision of America that rests somewhere between Pat Henry and Pat Boone. It plants its feet firmly in the soil of the golden past and pushes like hell against the turning of the earth. Conservatives so often have rested on the wrong side of recent history—on civil rights, social safety nets, and the Iraq War, to cite a handful of examples—precisely because they insist on treating the future as if it must conform to the dictates of the past. Conservatives see a present wrong and remember a correct past; liberals see a present wrong and imagine a future right. Conservatism, especially that espoused by Charles Krauthammer, is far too often a reactive and regressive political force in America; it doesn’t move this country forward but only binds us to what has gone before. In 25 years, Proposition 8, S.B. 1070, and opposition to the “Ground Zero mosque” will be remembered as the black marks on American values that they are, and Charles Krauthammer’s idiot wind will blow weaker still.

The Idiot Wind of Charles Krauthammer, Pt. 1

Last Friday, arch-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer published a piece in the Washington Post entitled “The last refuge of a liberal” (invoking Samuel Johnson’s “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” a notion Glenn Beck might take to heart). The column claimed, in Krauthammer’s typically eloquent and astringent style, that liberals, encountering the realities of their failed policies (the stimulus plan, health care bill, etc.) and staring down major electoral defeat in November, have taken to cynically portraying their opponents—most notably the nebulous Tea Party—as a host of ignorant bigots, all in a deliberate effort to gain some semblance of traction in the quagmire of public opinion. He cites four relatively recent instances in which he believes the left wing has resorted to this tactic: painting Tea Partiers as racists; Arizonans in support of the state’s new anti-immigration law as nativists; Americans in support of California’s Proposition 8 as homophobes; and those opposed to the construction of an Islamic Center in lower Manhattan as Islamophobes.

I read conservative columnists on a reasonably regular basis; it’s worthwhile to understand the motivations and arguments of the opposition in order to better counter its rhetoric. Most of the conservatives I follow are on the Post’s Op-Ed page—Krauthammer, George Will, Michael Gerson, occasionally Kathleen Parker—as well as David Brooks and Ross Douthat of the New York Times. I respect Will for his intellectual consistency, his principle, and his facility with language (he is the heir of Buckley, Safire, and Kilpatrick), Brooks for his moderation and his thoughtfulness; Douthat and Gerson, too, are reasonable and fair-minded individuals, although Gerson’s deference to his old boss, George W. Bush, can seem misplaced at best. In short, although I regularly disagree with the ideas of these men, I rarely have cause to object to their tone—and more often than may be suspected, I feel somehow stronger for having entered their confidence. Reading their work can be an exercise in affirming the rightness of difference—a society demands a plurality of views to move itself forward.

Krauthammer, however, is a different beast than the rest; he never attempts to conceal his scorn for the left, never concedes its intellectual viability, much less its good faith. Left wingers are nefarious beings to him, incomprehensible and sinister. He employs “liberal” as a sneer, a diminutive, a pejorative coated in disdain, glazed with malice. His columns are not so much expressions or affirmations of conservative belief, as they are bitter repudiations of the liberal worldview. “The last refuge of a liberal” is echt-Krauthammer, a bread-and-butter gambit from a reactionary grinch, his every word exuding contempt and condescension, the arrogance of a self-satisfied pundit who believes his peculiar prejudices are in the ascendance.

He begins, “Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed,” and goes on to bemoan “the Democrat’s failure of governance,” sprinkles his commentary with acerbic references to the liberal “commentariat,” “intelligentsia,” and “vast media auxiliary,” and speaks of the “corruption of liberal thought” that has led to “the cheapest race-baiting.” He closes with a peremptory salvo that is intended as an epitaph for the Democrats in the coming mid-term elections: “The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.”

It is infuriating from beginning to end, not least because Krauthammer is so terribly off-target. How can he fail to recognize, in the instances he cites, liberals’ rhetorical commitment to advancing and protecting minority rights, to upholding constitutional statutes? Whether in agreement or not, can he be so thick-headed as to deny the moral foundation for the left’s arguments?