“A Fighting Faith”
If you
look at many other blog sites (and I'm sure you do), there has been a
lot of discussion (and a little infighting) regarding this week's cover
story in the New Republic titled “A Fighting Faith” by Peter Beinart.
The article – and the discussion around it – is worth reading and thinking about.
The opening and closing statements from Beinart's article:
On January 4, 1947, 130 men and women met
at Washington's Willard Hotel to save American liberalism. A few months
earlier, in articles in The New Republic
and elsewhere, the columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop had warned that
“the liberal movement is now engaged in sowing the seeds of its own
destruction.” Liberals, they argued, “consistently avoided the great
political reality of the present: the Soviet challenge to the West.”
Unless that changed, “In the spasm of terror which will seize this
country … it is the right–the very extreme right–which is most
likely to gain victory.”
…
Today, the war on terrorism is partially
obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the
purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more
obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against
communism. Global jihad will be with us long after American troops stop
dying in Falluja and Mosul. And thus, liberalism will rise or fall on
whether it can become, again, what Schlesinger called “a fighting
faith.”
Of all the things contemporary liberals
can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most
important is that national security can be a calling. If the struggles
for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to
liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by
spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral
purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn. As it did for the
men and women who convened at the Willard Hotel.
Here's some of the discussion about the article – worth reading in its own right:
Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly) weighs in. (He has also been blogging on this regularly over the past few days.)
…as does Josh Marshall (Talking Points Memo)
I have a few thoughts on the topic myself, but I view the discussion as
being more important than any off-the-cuff opinion I could
provide. I'll continue the discussion in the comments section.
What are your thoughts?
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