Diavlog here, statements begin at about the 6:00 min mark.
Berman bio here (wikipedia).
I would ask those who have lost patience with liberalism to think about what it’d be like if the left offered more coherent, rational arguments before and during the Iraq war. Of course, everyone’s hindsight is 20/20, but we might have had a better discussion; even one that could help with our most difficult problems going foward.
The idea is relatively simple: intellectuals (and Berman is a serious leftist) need to reorganize and perhaps:
1. Accept the moral burdens the war has brought us.
2. Develop a vigorous intellectual debate that has the depth and moral courage to provide an alternative to the current administration’s (and I would say thinkers like Fukuyama) advocacy of the war, military force, and agressive action.
3. Use that debate as a platform to confront the totalitarian regime in Iran (for example)…thus not leaving only us with Bush-style axis-of-evil rhetoric and the unwise and unnecessary use of force as too easy an option.
It’d be a lot better than a lot of the debate we have going now.
More on Berman and how he fits into the Islamic debate in Europe here in World Affairs.
chr1
