In a recent commentary on ZNet entitled The Liberals Answer Tony Judt’s “Useful Idiots” Charge, Professor Edward S Herman performs an incisive analysis on the Weltanschauung of the so-called «liberals», two of whom, Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin, in an article article in the journal American Prospect (which, with the modesty typical of this breed of «liberals» refers to itself as an «authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics» - the watchword here is, of course, the adjective «effective») attempt to parry Tony Judt's recent criticism of their ignoble roles in promoting the current crusades to which King George have given the name (among many others in the search to find one that goes home) «the War on Terrorism». Professor Herman, of course, takes his criticism of these «liberals» further then Mr Judt was able or willing to do, and backs it up, as usual, with telling documentation. His article is brief and as an innoculation against the establishment platitudes to be found on the OpEd pages of, say, the New York Times, a must read ; here I confine myself to citing the last paragraph :
In short, an imperial and militarized state will use its military power relentlessly, and the feedback effects of this chronic warfare are inevitably going to entail encroachments on domestic freedom. But A-G [i e, Ackerman and GitlinMHD] can’t confront this deeper relationship and challenge militarism and the imperial state. They adapt to it, and in the process “liberal principles” are compromised and thrust aside, and the liberals do in fact serve as the imperial state’s “useful idiots.”
Here below is the response I posted to StumbleUpon :
There are, of course, «liberals» and «liberals» ; the former group reasonably loyal to a set of universal principles which, while tending to neglect the (to my mind) obvious base of certain political, economic, and social problems in capitalistic forms of alienation and exploitation, do attempt to ameliorate these problems, uphold human rights (not merely abroad as a fig leaf for imperialist aggression, but even in their own countries), and combat militarism. The latter, whom we might call «establishment liberals», however, are not universalists but particularists in the service of (their) Empire ; they tend to criticise their mirror twins, the neo-conservatives, not from the point of view of principle but rather that of efficiency and competence ; their objection to, e g, the US/UK war on Iraq and Afghanistan is not that it was and is illegal and unprincipled, but that it has been poorly run. These people have been immensely successful as apologists for the US empire, which they have managed to portray as a giant who, bumbling at times and rather unsophisticated (how pleasing to the self-esteem of members of this group to feel themselves more «sophisticated» than those responsible for US policy !) and who by virtue of his size sometimes demolishes a few vases in the porcelain shop that is the world (for some reason, these metaphors never quite recreate the horror of being blown apart by a bomb dropped from an F-16, or being tortured by CIA operatives or their foreign clients), always means well and is deeply dedicated to «human rights» and «democracy», unlike his «Axis of Evil» foes....
Professor Herman's reply to the reply of certain «liberals» of this latter persuasion to an article by Tony Judt in a recent issue of the London Review of Books, dissects the fallacious and self-interested reasoning which these last-named bring to market (where, of course, it fetches a good price, as such apologetics tend to do). A must read !...
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