OPEN UNIVERSITY OCTOBER 8, 2006
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
by Jeffrey Herf
This past March, a group of intellectuals, scholars, and journalists in London posted a statement on the Internet calling for a "new political alignment" among those ranging from the democratic left to "egalitarian liberals." A month ago a group of us wrote "American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto" and were able to post it on the Euston Manifesto website. Today we are pleased to announce the launch of a new website, NewAmericanLiberalism.Org that continues this effort.
"The Euston Manifesto," named for the London underground station near the café where its key points were discussed and debated can be read at the group's website. The statement was a defense of liberal democracy and human rights as well as a rejection of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Its authors supported a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We regard the Euston Manifesto was an important turning point in contemporary intellectual and political debates. As of today, 2,574 people, mostly in Britain but also in this country and many others around the world, have signed the statement.
In late summer, the Euston Manifesto group in London helped to put the American signers of the statement in touch with one another via e-mail. I wrote a draft of an American liberal's response. Following several weeks of discussion with Russell Berman (Stanford), Thomas Cushman (Wellesley), Richard Just (The New Republic), Andrei Markovits (University of Michigan), Robert Lieber (Georgetown), and Fred Siegel (Cooper Union), we agreed on the revised text of "American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto." We then sought support from prominent intellectuals and scholars. The Euston Manifesto group agreed to post it on its website. The statement and the list of signers was posted on September 12, 2006, and is available here) or by clicking on the "International" icon at the Euston Manifesto website).
"American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto" is posted on our new website, NewAmericanLiberalism.Org. There are links to the Euston Manifesto site. Those who wish to sign either statement can do so. In addition to the co-authors, the now 178 signers include many people who are closely associated with The New Republic, notably Martin Peretz and Leon Wieseltier, past and recent contributors such as Daniel Bell, David Bell, Walter Laqueur, Daniel Goldhagen, Robert Leiken, Benny Morris, and Ronald Radosh, and a host of other very distinguished scholars, intellectuals, and policy analysts too long to be included here but readily available on the websites. The full list of signers is at the website. We hope website will facilitate discussion and debate occasioned by the issues we have raised.
4 comments
The train departing from Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross bound for Hogwarts contains a bunch of good students and one professor of the Dark arts who is inevitably aligned with evil. The train departing from platform 9 3/4 at Euston bound for Hogwash is crowded with Dark Arts Professors who got the most important foreign policy issue of the last half decade utterly and totally wrong.
We do not need lectures and hectors from the Euston Manifestants - from them we need abject contrition and apology. But no amount of contrition and no amount of apology can bring forgiveness for the tens of thousands who have died in Iraq because of the moral failures of the manifestants. The worthless Euston Manifesto has been written in the blood of the Iraqi people. A blood that these useless and worthless Manifestants are awash in. If they had any sense of morality and any sense of shame they would have retired their opinions from the public sphere instead of once again proselytizing their hogwash.
- ndmackenzie
October 9, 2006 at 1:51pm
ndmackenzie: Yes, I suppose that is also an intelligent way of going about things.
- thomaselrod
October 9, 2006 at 1:59pm
Well your corollary is certainly an improvement on the original Euston Manifesto which consists mostly of anti-strawman calls to arms and whining that people still want supporters of Bush's Iraq invasion to admit what a disaster it has been. At least you draw distinctions between yourselves and the clash of civilizationists rather than between the Eustonites and "those left-liberal voices today quick to offer an apologetic explanation for such political forces"(tyranny and oppression) or who have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about authentic Lefty values. At least you, in contrast to the Eustonites, are willing to say that the Iraq war is tragic and Bush has mangled that effort while dividing the US and alienating the world. The Monifesto claims that "We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic "anti-imperialism" and/or hostility to the current US administration." You at least seem to recognize that the current US administration is completely hostile to the entire progressive-democratic agenda. I take the main thrust of your NewAmericanLiberalism to be that Liberals have a strong tradition of fighting tyranny and oppression, and that that tradition can inform our response to the current threat from Islamist Terrorists. I don't think I'm alone in agreeing with that general sentiment, but we don't live in generalities. The Iraq War casts a dense black shadow over that simple truth. The Iraq war conflates fighting Tyranny and fighting Terrorists. Sure, our tradition of fighting oppression gives Liberals a place from which to support wannabe oppressors like Osama, but where are the Liberals who didn't want to fight Osama simply because he attacked us anyway? When I say I believe in fighting tyrants, I end up supporting Bush's personal vendetta against Saddam. I supported Bush's war against Saddam as better than no war against Saddam because Saddam was a tyrant. That was a mistake. It was a mistake, among other reasons, because Bush isn't there fighting tyranny. Nobody knows why he started this, but he's shown that he's happy replacing one tyranny with another, Chalabi in the original plan, or Allawi, or SCIRI, all with their own brand of oppression. Maybe we don't need to break the habits of post-vietnam and hark back to the 30s and 40s but instead go back further to when the Lefty position was that wars are domestic disputes between princes in which the workers do the dying. Today that seems a better perspective on Iraq than does Spain, for example. And Iraq is where all these Liberal Values come to a point. Anybody can agree to be for liberty, equality, and fraternity, (well anybody except a republican whackjob) but that agreement can't paper over the differences in what those values drive us to do about the bleeding sore that is our Iraq policy. Which, again, is different from what those values may drive us to support in fighting Islamsist Terrorists.
- jacksonsher
October 13, 2006 at 5:50pm
"support wannabe oppressors like Osama" should (hopefully obviously) read "support fighting wannabe oppressors like Osama"
- jacksonsher
October 13, 2006 at 5:59pm