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.