Kevin Sullivan

On Feelings

Posted by Kevin Sullivan under Uncategorized

Andrew on Ezra on Cohen:

Klein slips in a bogus word here: feels. Cohen doesn’t feel he is a liberal hawk; he believes he is. He has arguments to make, arguments that can be agreed with or disagreed with, but that have merits of their own that should be addressed regardless of the arrangement of political power at the time. This isn’t narcissism; it is the duty of any writer and thinker to state his own views as best he can without concern for how the world might greet them, who might use them unfairly, or who might expropriate them for insincere purposes. Without this independence, a writer is merely a hack. Or, worse for a writer, an activist.

Amen.

I wrote about the Cohen piece a couple of weeks ago, and found Klein’s argument equally puzzling. Aside from labeling all dissenters as enablers, it also seemed to imply that there should rarely ever be consensus on matters of foreign policy. I argued the following:

Consensus on foreign policy apparently strikes Ezra as enabling and unthinkable, even though Democrats and Republicans often agreed on matters of war and diplomacy throughout the last century. This is why Senator Johnson could mobilize his party to support a Republican president’s war effort. This is why Republicans and Democrats alike could support the same approach in dealing with the Soviet Empire. This is why two of the top-tier Democrats, both currently courting the anti-war vote, could authorize the invasion of Iraq in support of their president.

This behavior, or similarity in tone, surprises Ezra. Forget the very Liberal merits in staying in Iraq, those are irrelevant. To approve of such a thing would make you a neocon, thus dismissing you from the table. The appropriate behavior for any good Democrat would be to apologize for the invasion, and get out. Anything short of that enables the scary neocons, and PNAC and other bad stuff.

I didn’t touch upon the feelings argument, but yes, I find it to be the puffiest of straw men, as did (Andrew) Sullivan. I don’t think it’s a question of honesty, but rather a question of fairness.

It’s not fair to accuse someone you disagree with of narcissism. This should probably go without saying, but it’s unfair to warn someone on the impact of their words simply because you don’t like them.

Why? Because that can go both ways. If the words of Roger Cohen are enabling the administration, well who does Klein et al. enable?

Who might take comfort in hearing that American bloggers, journalists and politicians don’t support their president?

That’s a dangerous path to go down.

Others Blogging It:

Protein Wisdom
Brian Beutler
Ezra Klein

(Cross posted at RCP)