That's an interesting word, polemicist, for what I'd ordinarily
label a fanatic: same thing.
==DP

At 12:18 PM 02/16/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Brennan's recent outpouring of self-hate shouldn't really be taken at
>face value.  When he talks about his "cancerous respect for democracy,
>free speech, and worst of all, free enterprise", he seems to me to be
>playing a game whereby we who disagree with him (either by engaging his
>specific points or by simply calling him a jingoist) will recognize how
>far we are from the position of America-loving righteousness.  As for
>the people who dismiss him as a jingo, they have failed as well, in
>that they want mainly to stress their own a priori correctness as
>critics of American power.  In both cases, the discourse of this list
>suffers.
>
>Foucault made some comments on polemics that I find instructive: "In
>the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal
>elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in
>the discussion. . . Questions and answers depend on a game -- a game
>that is at once pleasant and difficult -- in which each of the two
>partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and
>by the accepted form of the dialogue.
>        The polemicist, on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that
>he possesses in advance and will never agree to question.  On
>principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making
>that struggle a just undertaking; that person he confronts is not a
>partner in the search for truth but an adversary, an enemy who is
>wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. .
>. his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a
>difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has
>been manifestly upholding from the beginning.  The polemicist relies on
>a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied."
>
>I recommend this not because it is by Foucault and so somehow sacred.
>It applies, it seems to me, to numerous moments on this list when
>polemics become "a parasitic figure on discussion and an obstacle to
>the search for truth."  Calling someone a jingo is to assume from the
>outset that they're too blinkered by ideology to even process sentences
>for the truth they might point at.  In the same way, someone announcing
>disingenuously that he "ponder[s] self-flagellation" as a cure for his
>deep respect for democratic ideals is attempting to accuse his enemies
>of disrespecting something sacrosanct..
>
>American policies and their consequences for other countries are not
>obviously one thing or another, obviously good and benevolent, or
>obviously malicious and mean-spirited.  To find out the character of
>American interventions on foreign soil, people inclined to polemicize
>ought to hold their tongues, and consider what they have already taken
>for granted.
>
>I appreciate this list.  That does not mean however that I want to
>invite everyone to my lovely Oak Park apartment and sit them down for
>wife-made cookies.  I'll settle for thoughful, non-self-pitying,
>non-manipulative discussion.
>
>Happy Sunday to all,
>Jon
>
>On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 08:26  PM, Brennen Lukas wrote:
>
>>Furthermore, I am ashamed of my jingoist blithering. Last night I wept
>>openly as so many of you made clear that my soul is corrupted by an
>>unnatural urge to question the efficacy of pacifism in world affairs.
>>Even
>>now, I ponder self-flagellation. If only painful lashes across my back
>>would
>>rid me of my cancerous respect for democracy, free speech, and worst
>>of all,
>>free enterprise. Alas, I fear I am beyond repair, quite unworthy of
>>cleaning
>>Ezra Pound's sanatorium bedpan, let along posting to a list serve
>>dedicated
>>to his work.
>
>=====================================================
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