Frank,
Let me thank you again for your thoughtful reply to my post about Pipes. After rereading Pipes' essay, I see no reason to change my comments. But I do see the basis for yours.
On mine, I observed that:
That's not what's bothersome about Pipes. It's this tendency of his that pops up ever so often to call people who disagree with his sense of the world, "treasonous."
To disagree about the meaning of words is one thing; to drop the "traitor" word out there is the proverbial horse of a different color.
And the text for that conclusion was drawn from this sentence/paragraph of Pipes' essay.
At present, loyalty to one’s home society is no longer a given; it must be won. Conversely, hating one’s own society and abetting the enemy is common. Traitor, like bastard, has lost its stigma.
It's quite clear that Pipes considers the freedom to freely criticize the actions of "one's home society" as approaching "treason." We don't see a clear line from reasonable criticism to treason in the essay. But it's easy to see it from Pipes' actions. His attempts to shut down criticism of Israel in certain American academic circles is illustration enough.
In addition, in those comments, there is a nostalgia for a time when "treason" was prosecuted. There is a clear use of acts of speech as emblemmatic of treasonous acts in the essay; not acts of spying, acts of terrorism, but speech. And a clear implication that opposition to US policies such as that in the Vietnam war was traitorous. He did choose a particularly interesting example of free speech but the essay is written for that incident to be a standin for opposition per se.
As for your comments about reason and democracy as the bellweathers of modernity and what there is to be lost, while I have a problem with "reason", much to vague, I certainly concur in your recommendation of democracy. In place of "reason", I would use the term "reasoning," in the sense that what we hope for democracy is a political process in which consultation, etc. replace the brute exercise of power. Habermas is, I gather, the guiding philosopher here.
If that latter is what you mean, then I very much agree.
I hope all is well with you. |
