OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Washington Times Editor and Author Tony Blankley
This morning's OneJerusalem.org conference call brought together a large group of bloggers to talk to Tony Blankley, Washington Times editorial page editor and author of The West's Last Chance. A very large group of bloggers: Allen Roth (One Jerusalem), Jerry Gordon (IsraPundit), Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Lynn-B (In Context), Rick Richman (Jewish Current Issues), Anne Lieberman (Boker Tov, Boulder, Thomas Lifson (The American Thinker, and maybe one person that we didn't catch (we either rudely talked over a ninth person while we were introducing ourselves or we rudely talked over Jim Hoft, who then patiently introduced himself again). As always, audio will soon be up soon on the OneJerusalem.org frontpage, probably before the end of the day if they stay true to form.
One thing emerges very quickly: Tony Blankley is not an academic. Which is not to say that he or his new book aren't careful or smart. More than one participant has commented by email about how it takes less than ten seconds to notice that Blankley is quite unassumingly brilliant, and the book itself is nothing if not rigorous (and if you haven't already purchased it, you should ask yourself why you don't have game on a book that Allen Roth and Thomas Lifson think it's important that you have game on). But The West's Last Chance is not an academic book, and Blankley explicitly tries to avoid getting bogged down in "academic" questions in any sense of the phrase.
Not that his scholarship and opinions aren't based on robust theory. There's theory underneath everything he says, and sometimes it slips to the surface. For instance, his acceptance of conventional wisdom ("if you can't say it in a couple of words, you can't communicate it") comes from obvious academic training (it's basic "mass comm" that confirms that belief -"mass comm" being mass communication, which will make our professors happy). And it's not that he's uninterested in the 'grand questions' or that he doesn't appreciate context - he locates the source of today's crises as far back as the 1920s founding of the Muslim Brotherhood. But as a matter of sensibility, he almost always spins back to very grounded examples and explanations. He followed up the mass comm point by illustrating how "No Blood For Oil" creates a general impression that Bush is driven by cynical economic reason. He was also quick to point out that the exact historical source of political Islam doesn't really matter since it's now undeniable that it has "metastasized" into millions of people's justification for violence.
An academic approaching the Clash of Civilizations defines terms and then approaches the tangle of dynamics by picking out a set of historical and contemporary trends that add up to a compelling expalantion. Blankley explicitly rejects this approach. In response to Thomas Lifson's question about the rhetorical stakes of the conflict - one of several 'naming' questions that came up (Jerry Gordon had another one) - Blankley insisted that people "should be careful not to" approach questions of civilizational clash through "extensive scholarly analysis".
Instead, Blankley thinks and acts like a policy-maker. That's not exactly surprising news given that he spent several years as a top aide to Newt Gingrich and still works as a political adviser, but in this case it has a very precise effect on how he frames the challenge of political Islam. It's not really about dynamics and trends (and even less so about definitions) - what he focuses on is what will happen on the ground should things go one way or another. His basic position:
[A] Europe is sliding into a horrific civil way between "a substantial number" of jihadists inside and outside its own borders
[B] "Responsible governments" should start taking actions to address this slide
[C] If "responsible governments" do not step forward, "irresponsible governments," like the neo-Nazis in Germany and the Nationalist party, will take control of the situation and bring it to a head.
This point can and has been made in certain forms by leftist academics (reactionary responses to open border, etc). But there are several things that might potentially recommend Blankley's more grounded approach over abstraction - we might not have time for theoretical niceties, theoretical niceties might not matter if Europe goes reactionary, etc. But you can get most of that from abstract academic analysis. What Blankley's a-theoretical approach does is suggest something new in the realm of day-to-day political life.
This is us extrapolating and not Blankley necessarily endorsing: but it seems like his description becomes uniquely valuable because it hints at a new way of articulating common ground between the right and the left. Bipartisan political alliances came up in all kinds of places during the interview: the nature of relationships in the media, the problem of "Americans going to their own news sources" (aka the echo chamber effect), and the way that bloggers have formed alliances around specific issues.
But political common ground becomes particularly scarce - and particularly important - in the context of the war against political Islam. Blankley was quite explicit on this point in answer to one of Anne's questions, when she asked why it seems like there are people who just get it and there are people who just don't. Blankley blamed political polarization: when opponents of political Islam point out that this should be a liberal cause - religious intolerance, enslavement of women, murder of homosexuals, etc. - the political left invariably comes back with "root causes" or "it's Bush's fault". This exchange only leads to deeper cultural divisions between activists who think that Bush is needlessly creating conflict and critics who think that ignoring jihadism is tantamount to global suicide. Political polarization is both the cause and a result of deep disagreements between the right and the left on the issue of militant Islam.
But Blankley's way of describing Europe's next decade suggests a new way of this cul-de-sac. Articulating the battle as a fight against reactionary Europeans is a new way of articulating anti-jihadist public policies as liberal causes: the impending disaster might not be caused by Muslims, but by hysterical and bigoted Europeans. It takes the left's anti-Western gut-check and makes it a reason to start combating European spinelessness.
We're not being sarcastic about this - political alliances are as often as not matters of how a particular advocacy first 'strikes' a particular activist, and that's determined by all kinds of deep-seated inclinations and assumptions. There might actually be real potential in explaining how the right and the left can work together to prevent the empowerment of European reactionaries - which is something that can only be done if Europe's center-right and center-left parties take public action against the jihadists in their midst. It's not the most important reason to resist radical Islam - reactionaries do not threaten the very fabric of the Western heritage. But it's certainly as good as any other reason if it genuinely brings political activists and resources to the cause. This way of looking at the conflict is why Blankley's work and sensibility needs to have a place at the table. At the very least, it's a new way of understanding the staggering and terrifying dimensions of what's happening in the hearts of Old Europe's greatest cities. More optimistically, it might light the path to a united Western front against Christian Europe's most persistent foe.
One thing emerges very quickly: Tony Blankley is not an academic. Which is not to say that he or his new book aren't careful or smart. More than one participant has commented by email about how it takes less than ten seconds to notice that Blankley is quite unassumingly brilliant, and the book itself is nothing if not rigorous (and if you haven't already purchased it, you should ask yourself why you don't have game on a book that Allen Roth and Thomas Lifson think it's important that you have game on). But The West's Last Chance is not an academic book, and Blankley explicitly tries to avoid getting bogged down in "academic" questions in any sense of the phrase.
Not that his scholarship and opinions aren't based on robust theory. There's theory underneath everything he says, and sometimes it slips to the surface. For instance, his acceptance of conventional wisdom ("if you can't say it in a couple of words, you can't communicate it") comes from obvious academic training (it's basic "mass comm" that confirms that belief -"mass comm" being mass communication, which will make our professors happy). And it's not that he's uninterested in the 'grand questions' or that he doesn't appreciate context - he locates the source of today's crises as far back as the 1920s founding of the Muslim Brotherhood. But as a matter of sensibility, he almost always spins back to very grounded examples and explanations. He followed up the mass comm point by illustrating how "No Blood For Oil" creates a general impression that Bush is driven by cynical economic reason. He was also quick to point out that the exact historical source of political Islam doesn't really matter since it's now undeniable that it has "metastasized" into millions of people's justification for violence.
An academic approaching the Clash of Civilizations defines terms and then approaches the tangle of dynamics by picking out a set of historical and contemporary trends that add up to a compelling expalantion. Blankley explicitly rejects this approach. In response to Thomas Lifson's question about the rhetorical stakes of the conflict - one of several 'naming' questions that came up (Jerry Gordon had another one) - Blankley insisted that people "should be careful not to" approach questions of civilizational clash through "extensive scholarly analysis".
Instead, Blankley thinks and acts like a policy-maker. That's not exactly surprising news given that he spent several years as a top aide to Newt Gingrich and still works as a political adviser, but in this case it has a very precise effect on how he frames the challenge of political Islam. It's not really about dynamics and trends (and even less so about definitions) - what he focuses on is what will happen on the ground should things go one way or another. His basic position:
[A] Europe is sliding into a horrific civil way between "a substantial number" of jihadists inside and outside its own borders
[B] "Responsible governments" should start taking actions to address this slide
[C] If "responsible governments" do not step forward, "irresponsible governments," like the neo-Nazis in Germany and the Nationalist party, will take control of the situation and bring it to a head.
This point can and has been made in certain forms by leftist academics (reactionary responses to open border, etc). But there are several things that might potentially recommend Blankley's more grounded approach over abstraction - we might not have time for theoretical niceties, theoretical niceties might not matter if Europe goes reactionary, etc. But you can get most of that from abstract academic analysis. What Blankley's a-theoretical approach does is suggest something new in the realm of day-to-day political life.
This is us extrapolating and not Blankley necessarily endorsing: but it seems like his description becomes uniquely valuable because it hints at a new way of articulating common ground between the right and the left. Bipartisan political alliances came up in all kinds of places during the interview: the nature of relationships in the media, the problem of "Americans going to their own news sources" (aka the echo chamber effect), and the way that bloggers have formed alliances around specific issues.
But political common ground becomes particularly scarce - and particularly important - in the context of the war against political Islam. Blankley was quite explicit on this point in answer to one of Anne's questions, when she asked why it seems like there are people who just get it and there are people who just don't. Blankley blamed political polarization: when opponents of political Islam point out that this should be a liberal cause - religious intolerance, enslavement of women, murder of homosexuals, etc. - the political left invariably comes back with "root causes" or "it's Bush's fault". This exchange only leads to deeper cultural divisions between activists who think that Bush is needlessly creating conflict and critics who think that ignoring jihadism is tantamount to global suicide. Political polarization is both the cause and a result of deep disagreements between the right and the left on the issue of militant Islam.
But Blankley's way of describing Europe's next decade suggests a new way of this cul-de-sac. Articulating the battle as a fight against reactionary Europeans is a new way of articulating anti-jihadist public policies as liberal causes: the impending disaster might not be caused by Muslims, but by hysterical and bigoted Europeans. It takes the left's anti-Western gut-check and makes it a reason to start combating European spinelessness.
We're not being sarcastic about this - political alliances are as often as not matters of how a particular advocacy first 'strikes' a particular activist, and that's determined by all kinds of deep-seated inclinations and assumptions. There might actually be real potential in explaining how the right and the left can work together to prevent the empowerment of European reactionaries - which is something that can only be done if Europe's center-right and center-left parties take public action against the jihadists in their midst. It's not the most important reason to resist radical Islam - reactionaries do not threaten the very fabric of the Western heritage. But it's certainly as good as any other reason if it genuinely brings political activists and resources to the cause. This way of looking at the conflict is why Blankley's work and sensibility needs to have a place at the table. At the very least, it's a new way of understanding the staggering and terrifying dimensions of what's happening in the hearts of Old Europe's greatest cities. More optimistically, it might light the path to a united Western front against Christian Europe's most persistent foe.
