I just pointed out that Bérubé’s remarks on “building Greater Serbia” are part of a great intellectual tradition that ranges all the way from The Corner to Andrew Sullivan. This is true independent of my respectability.

For what’s worth my relative disdain for Choamky and his followers has cost me dearly — e.g. Ed Herman stopped contributing to Swans; a much regretfull loss to our collective work. And we lost a bunch of readers…

This said, if I had to choose between Chomsky and Bérubé, I would undoubtedly choose the former.

Fortunately, I do not have to choose. Keeps me sane and sound, readers notwithstanding.

And Andrew, earlier, laments the absence of willingness on the part of some of us to meet the lib-labs midway, since they too want a more humane society.

Well, I speak for myself here and not on behalf of Louis. Each and every time I’ve engaged the lib-labs I’ve only received “ordinary hyberboles” in return. Their use of logical fallacies and rhetorical attacks is their almost immediate line of defense.

I once dissected their technique through an analysis of a Hugo Chavez dissing by Marc Cooper. Take a moment and read it:
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/ga204.html

I’ve tried once upon a time to have a civil exchange with Michael Bérubé. It led nowhere for he was generalizing time and again and refusing to dig deeper. (I still have the entire e-mail exchange in my archives and can therefore easily prove the point.) There’s a time when, like Noam Chomsky often does, the assertion is that it’s time to move on…you know, there are more serious matters to deal with…

Time and again they avoid a real debate, and most often resort to name-calling.

To me, the intellectual paucity — even, sadly, depravity — of so-called American intellectuals “du bon genre” — the “bien pensants” — is the most regrettable characteristic that I have experienced in my almost 25 years living in this sorry place called the USA.

One cannot, literally cannot, have a debate with these people — and I include Chomsky — without them resorting to negative rhetoric.

It’s not a matter of style: Louis’s is evidently harsher than mine and more rooted into activism (he also, obviously, masters the language better than I do). I can go out of my way to remain civil and mild and even try to meet them half way, to no avail.

The fundamental difference is that they are market-driven and see us as a threat — remember, we are “fringe radicals” defending all the dictators in the world — to, when all is said and done, their notoriety, however limited it may be, and in the final analysis, their bank accounts. Ask Michael Bérubé whether he would spend time going into a lengthy debate with me or rather write a piece for the NYT magazine… Ask him. Louis would debate me to death first…

Real hard to have any constructive exchanges with people who use “ordinary hyperbole” as a motus operandi, think about themselves first, and constantly join the guard dogs of the Citadel, no?

Finally, please note that having smeared me (and Louis), Michael Bérubé carefully avoided my challenge.

I rest my case.

(Note to qlipoth: Anonymity is not conducive to respect.)

Yes, you are absolutely right. Crooked Timber is your little playground and you are entitled to it. However, I resent being called a troll. Trolls are generally anonymous and get their kicks by disrupting a mailing list or a newsgroup through the interjection of provocative and off-topic material, like somebody arguing against abortion rights on a feminist mailing list, etc. You brought up the topic of Kosovo and I presented my own views. This is not trolling. It is called a debate. But that’s the end of it. I had all I had to say about your creepy tinpot dictator ways here and will not waste another word about your hypocrisy. As I have discovered from your fellow “decent” Marc Cooper, you blather on ceaselessly about Communist dictators but are anxious to jump all over any commenter who steps out of line. If you creeps had any real power, it would force Amnesty International to double its staff.

He is correct: this tactic is not out of the ordinary at all. For example, people who criticize Israel are often described as Hamas supporters, those who opposed the war against Afghanistan were Al Qaida-loving lefties, and everybody who opposed the invasion of Iraq is objectively pro-Saddam.

http://crookedtimber.org/2006/07/26/ct-policy-on-trolls-sockpuppets-and-other-pests/

Your claims of censorship are ill-judged. You have not been censored, as you continute to have the capacity to disseminate your views on the internet and elsewhere. We are under no obligation, however, to provide a forum for you at our expense, or to engage in any kind of conversation with you. As it happens, we rarely delete comments, but discretion to do so is entirely in the hands of the the CT member who wrote the original post in question. If you comment on another thread and on another topic, we may choose to tolerate you. Or perhaps not (it is up to us). I hope you continue to derive comfort from your fantasy that you present a “fundamental challenge” to our “conventional ideas”.

Concerning my Afghanistan article (note, btw, that I opposed the Iraq war and so can hardly be considered a member “in good standing” of the “Cruise Missile left”). You write:

Basically it is the same argument that Michael Bérubé made around the same time, namely that George W. Bush could be an agent of progressive change despite his sleazy past.

Anyone who follows the link will see that I mention Bush in one para of the article and that what I actually say is:

It is also worth adding to the reasons for the left’s hostility [to the Afghan war] the fact that a Republican administration was in power at the time of the attacks, and, moreover, one headed by a President, George W. Bush, whose alignment with Big Oil and whose unilateralist attitudes rightly arouse the hostility of anyone who cares about social and global injustice. Since September 11th, the Bush administration, with its absurd ‘axis of evil’ rhetoric and its underwriting of Ariel Sharon, has confirmed this negative opinion. But unpalatable though the Bush administration may be, the question of which party is in the White House is, strictly speaking, irrelevant to the issue of whether the United States is justified in using military force to respond to such an attack. If Clinton, Gore or even Ralph Nader had been in the Oval Office, the issues of justice and injustice would arise in exactly the same way.

On the general point “What’s disgusting about the Rotten Timber crew is that they blather sanctimoniously on about how much they hate the dictator Milosevic, but censor me” you seem to misunderstand the way the Internet works. It’s our site and we can
blather on as long as we like about how much we hate dictators like Milosevic, Pinochet and so on, then publish comments if we feel like it. You have your own site here - you can praise dictators in general, or particular dictators as you see fit, then adopt your own comments policy.

The ideological commitments may be nearly irreconcilable, but the end goals are not. I think liberals are totally misguided, but if, unlike the right-wing, they actually believe in eradicating poverty and “uneven” distribution, why not speak to one another w/ respect? I *know* that sounds naïve, and that the negative dialectic must be maintained in order that tautological liberalism be confronted w/ historical-materialism and *difference*, but this sectarian bickering is so tiresome, unproductive and unethical in my view.

And the ad hominem obviously goes in both directions (and I honestly never considered Holbo might so fully embody the effete-yuppie, liberal nerdboy part). Oh no. I should delete that.

But seriously. I think Marxists’ have the combative rhetoric in spades (Lenin’s Tomb), but how about a less ego-driven and less self-valorizing rhetoric?

Would it be utterly despicable to begin partisan attacks by throwing over a bone of some sort, at the very least?

NO ONE’S mind changes in these exchanges. Not even a smidgeon. Only a child would think it helpful. I’m sorry, but it seems pure egotism on both sides to me (although the liberals are worse b/c wrong!).

This is the bottom line. Everyone digs her trench a little deeper. Whoopty Woo.

I think Berube and Holbo, et al, want a more equitable arrangement of resources and power than what exists and is thought possible. That is so much more than could be said for 40-95% of Americans. Why not try—EVERY TIME—to start there?