JAN. 14, 2004: REVIEW OF REVIEWS
Richard Perle & I take some pride in having done our bit to make Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times choke on her biscuit yesterday morning. When she reviewed THE RIGHT MAN last year, she complained – as much in sadness as in anger – that I had not lived up to the high standards set by my earlier work. (Her enthusiasm for the earlier work inexplicably went unexpressed at the time.)
This time there was no pretense of regret, but only inarticulate howling rage. There was no argument in the review, only a series of gesticulations: “Can you believe they said this? And THIS? And THIS??!!! Well we did say it, and we do believe it.
The greatest scholar of the Islamic world, Bernard Lewis, has brilliantly explained the roots of Muslim rage. He traces that rage to the failure of Muslim societies to adapt to the modern world. The people of these societies remember that they were once rich and powerful and important. Now they lag far behind – and they do not understand why. Rather than look inward at their own faults and failings, they have sought scapegoats in the world beyond their borders.
Can’t one see something similar at work in the mind of Michiko Kakutani? <font size=4>The brand of liberalism championed by her newspaper was once all-powerful in American cultural life. Over the past decade, that power has ebbed away – and since 9/11, the ebb has become a flood. The New York Times no longer decides what Americans will read and what Americans will think about what they read. Rather than look inward, they blame talk radio and the Internet and Fox TV. And when this ferocious reservoir of accumulated resentment encounters a new and contradictory idea – well it just boils over.
Over at the Economist (subscription required), the rage is ventilated in more temperate tones. But the anonymous reviewer’s shock and astonishment are just as incoherent as Kakutani's frothing wrath. The book isn’t “nuanced” enough for the Economist’s liking –nuance being a euphemism for “accommodationist.” This turn of phrase suggests, however, exactly what is most grievously wrong with the accommodationist position: like many shoddy goods, it is marketed by appeals to snobbery rather than reason. Applying the label “nuanced” to a policy position is like applying the label “exquisite” to a condominium: It tells us that the position will be costly, but not whether it will keep out the rain.
Essentially, “nuance” means settling for less, and in the case of terrorism, accepting more of the unacceptable. As Richard and I argued in the Wall Street Journal last week, this is ideology masquerading as realism. It is dangerous and it is wrong.
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12:54 PM
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