We Carried You In Our Arms on Independence Day...

by Eric Martin

...And now Andrew McCarthy would like to throw us all aside and put us all away. No, seriously.  John Holbo, bless his soul, delves into the pathology prevalent in Andrew Mcarthy's new book - like Jonah Goldberg's infamous masterpiece, but with a twist.  Call it Liberal Islamofascim for short:

A couple posts back I quoted Andrew McCarthy re: his new book, Grand Jihad: what is the nature of the “partnership” – “effective partnership” – between the Obama-led left and the terrorists/Islamists?

“In order to establish their respective utopias they need to push out of the way American constitutional republican democracy. That’s the biggest obstacle to both of them.”

So the Obama-led left and the terrorists/Islamists are, in effect, ganging up on the United States constitutional order, in an enemy of my enemy spirit. This is strong stuff because it explicitly rules out the more charitable interpretation that Obama and the left are just clueless about strategy and tactics. It would be one thing for them to adopt counter-productive policies with perverse consequences. But you don’t attempt this sort of Machiavellian bank shot – aiming at overthrowing the American constitutional order by aiding and abetting enemies of the state – unless you are actually attempting this sort of Machiavellian bank shot. Just to confirm that McCarthy is not slightly mis-speaking in an interview, we can quote from a written Q&A in which he makes the same point, being quite clear that he is not accusing Obama and the left merely of incompetence. (In my previous post I made fun of McCarthy by asking whether Obama is like Benjamin Linus to Islamism’s Smoky. McCarthy makes clear, in this Q&A that he thinks that is pretty much exactly the right sort of analogy.)

So it seems silly to me to rationalize that the Left has lots to lose in a partnership with Islamists — as if we were talking about a hypothetical. The cooperation is happening. The better question is: Why? The easy answer is that the two sides have more in common than they have in opposition. Moreover, to say that the Left would suffer more than anyone under Sharia law misses the point. We are not in a situation where the only ones left are the radical Left and the Islamists — where they would square off against each other. Instead, we are at a point in history when they both have a more pressing common enemy: the culture of freedom in the West. As they have done numerous times in the past, they will work together to try to defeat that enemy. Once that happens — if we let it happen — then they can figure out which one is the crocodile and which one the last appeaser to be eaten.

Despite the audacity of the claims, and the incindiery nature of the charges, the evidence marshalled by McCarthy amounts to little more than guilt-by-some tangential common ground on distinct and unrelated issues (and even then, not really):

Consider, by way of illustration, this post by McCarthy at Powerline. The bold bits, in particular. The evidence that there is some grand alliance between Islamists and Leftists, when McCarthy finally produces it, is … that the left supports health care reform, and there are some Muslim groups that favor the versions of health care reform that the left tends to support. (In another interview he mentions that some Muslim groups favor unions, too.) And there are Muslims concerned about global warming, and the left is worried about global warming …

since the book was published last week, I’ve been asked questions like: “So, are you saying that President Obama wants to implement sharia?” and ” Isn’t it true that if Islamists came to power, the Left would have a lot to fear?” Again, the alliance between Islamists and Leftists (not all progressives, but the modern hard Left) is an alliance, not a merger. Leftists and Islamists have worked together numerous times in history and, as we look around us today, we see them working together on Obamacare, global warming, the Palestinian cause, the campaign to close Gitmo, the campaign endow terrorists with constitutional rights, and so on. That they work together is not a hypothesis on my part; this partnership exists, period. And why it exists is simply explained, it if we are willing to look at the facts. While they differ on a number of significant issues, Islamists and Leftists are in harmony on many parts of the big picture. Islamism and today’s Leftism (which, as I note in the book, David Horowitz aptly calls “neocommunism”) are both authoritarian ideologies: they favor a muscular central government, virulently reject capitalism, and are totalitarian in the sense that they want to dictate all aspects human life. They both see the individual as existing to serve the greater community (the state or the umma). Saliently, they have a common enemy: Western culture, American constitutional republicanism, and their foundation, individual liberty.

When I argue that Islamists and Leftists are working together to sabotage America, this is what I am talking about. Historically, when Islamists and Leftists collaborate against a common enemy (e.g., the Shah in Iran, the monarchy in Egypt), these marriages of convenience break apart when the common enemy has been eliminated. We are a long way from that point in America – and, hopefully, we never reach it. We must expect, though, that Islamists and Leftists will continue their alliance as long as the Western way of life remains an obstacle to their respective utopias.

Even these brief excerpts are so rife with irony, self-refutation and contradiction that the task of taking on the claims individually is daunting.  Luckily, Holbo did much of the heavy lifting.

On a side note, it is telling that the two historical episodes that McCarthy selects as examples of the nefarious collaboration between Leftists and Islamists are the toppling of the brutal dictatorship of the Shah in Iran (himself ascending to power after a CIA enabled coup) and the usurpation of the Egyptian monarchy.  In other words, the Left is apparently so determined to undermine constitutional republicanism that it had the temerity to help take down two undemocratic regimes.  Right.

Further, it deserves to be emphasized that McCarthy is a vehement supporter of the government's right to torture, right to indefinitely detain without trial (for some), require military tribunals (for others), suspend habeas corpus rights, withhold the recitation of Miranda rights, conduct warrantless wiretaps, etc. - all for suspected and accused terrorists (including where same are US citizens), not just convicted terrorists mind you.  If it were left up to McCarthy, many of the accused would never even get to the stage of the game where their innocence or guilt is determined.   

And yet he accuses the "Left" of laboring to undermine "American constitutional republicanism" and "individual liberty" - precisely because the Left is working to ensure that Constitutional protections still apply to the accused and, in some cases, convicted.  Irony seems too mild a term.  Doublespeak overly tame.  This is uglier than that.

Adam Serwer teases out just one of the absurdities:

 But I do want to point out one flaw in the right-wing's conspiracy theory charging that support for the rule of law is evidence of terrorist sympathies -- a great deal of the lawyers who represent or have represented Guantanamo Bay detainees are Jewish. Not Jewish by birth, or culturally Jewish, but observant, even Zionist, Jews.

Now, to accept McCarthy's premise, one has to believe that these Jewish lawyers aren't really Jews but are secretly anti-Semites pretending to be Jews or possibly self-hating Jews looking to aid in the annihilation of the Jewish people by, um -- making sure the U.S. government is imprisoning and punishing actual terrorists. That sounds absurd, although I'm guessing McCarthy's never really thought about it before. Maybe he addresses this in his book -- I'd be interested to see how he handles it.

The obvious explanation for this phenomenon of course is that Jews are (a) mostly liberals who believe in due process and (b) a historically persecuted group that gets anxious about groups of people being singled out and denied basic legal rights.

Anyway, the point of this post is that the prominence of Jewish lawyers among those defending the legal rights of terror suspects is one of the questions that McCarthy might have considered before alleging this entire terrorism-liberalism axis, if he weren't living life in a red haze subsisting on a diet of sour grapes and spilt milk.

That may be what he's eating, but he's feeding his readers a steady diet of BS.

Comments

[Ugh]

What an insane, scared, pathetic little man McCarthy is.

And I've never understood the so-called, "anti-government", federalistic, pro-constituion, etc. right's abohorrence of due process, not just for terrorism suspects, but with anyone accused of a crime by the authorities in general. As if, the supposed incompetence of the State disappears in such instances. Just bizarre.

[alphie]

Andrew McCarthy is the poor man's Jonah Goldberg.

[chamblee54]

If you take out "Islamist" and substitute "communist", this sounds like the "conservative" rhetoric of the cold war era.

[efgoldman]

Damn. So many trees were killed to publish this bullbleep...

When 40,000 unsold copies go back to the publisher, I hope they at least recycle the paper.

Unfortunately the brain cells that were lost in the reading are probably unrecoverable.

[Carleton Wu]

I often wonder if the people who say these things believe them, or merely think that they can get others to believe them via a lot of hand-waving. Or if no one other than the mentally ill believe it, but many find it socially or politically convenient to profess such beliefs rather than debate eg healthcare on the merits.
Or if maybe Im vastly underestimating the people I should be lumping into "mentally ill".

[CaseyL]

I often wonder if the people who say these things believe them...

1. Everything the RW says and (professes to) believe is projection. They accuse "the Left" and "Islamofascists" and so on of hating the West, hating America, and hating freedom.

The truth is plain to anyone who's heard them go off about women, racial and gender minorities, science, the arts, etc. upon etc: It's the Right that hates the West (the anti-fundamentalist secularism, logic-based science, progressivism traits that make the West the West), and definitely hates America.

Everything McCarthy accuses "the Left" of believing, you can be very sure he believes himself.

2. Also, and alternatively: They're saying what they wish was true; and they wish it were true in order to justify their own fearfulness, and the rage that comes from the fear.

[John Thullen]

This is one of the books aroused Redcrap denizens read to their goats at bedtime. It's like a date-rape drug -- the goats become soporific and permit Erickson's clumsy pokings aft without causing a stampede.

I like to react to vomit like McCarthy's in the spirit of "become the demon they think you are", just to see what happens.

I now have one uniform for each day of the week to wear when I supply the dreaded knock-at-the-door these paranoid haters want to hear -- Monday's child is Nazi leathers, jackboots, swastikas a monocle and a sidecar -- Tuesday's is a tuniced Stalin -- Wednesday finds me a dapper Mao jacket taking a swim in the Yang-sze, Thursday's costume is a brilliant Bin Laden thobe fluttering in the breeze -- Friday,I'm the dreaded hippie in a bomb-factory, but Saturday's fever-dream is Abraham Lincoln all in black, beseeching the new Confederacy to stand-down and lighten up on the rhetoric.

Alas, Sunday's demon is Sherman marching to the sea -- leaving this alien, anti-American beast and their goats burned to the ground and this time, unlike the old Confederacy, eternally silent.

[Brett Bellmore]

"precisely because the Left is working to ensure that Constitutional protections still apply to the accused and, in some cases, convicted."

Well, except for the Constitutional protections you typically work to make sure don't apply to anybody at all...

[Eric Martin]

Ah Brett, bringing it back to guns.

And, for the record, which Democratic politicians or major leftist figures are in favor of banning public ownership of firearms?

[Carleton Wu]

Well, except for the Constitutional protections you typically work to make sure don't apply to anybody at all...

I understand that this is something of a nervous tic with you, but do you not recognize how this total non sequitur adds nothing to the conversation?
If you have to, you can try typing in such comments and then deleting them. Perhaps this will discharge the needed energies without embarrassingly waving your neuroses around in public.

[Carleton Wu]

Eric,
DNFTT. Engaging on the issues with such an obvious threadjack can produce no good outcome.

[cleek]

if we're gonna play the guilt-by-common-goals game, it seems much simpler to take OBL's stated desire to embroil the US in a series of bank-draining endless wars and link it to the GOP's barely-restrained desire to give him those wars.

ergo, Republicans want what terrorists want: a broken and bankrupt America.

QED.

it's easy to be as smart as McCarthy!

[efgoldman]

@ Thullen

Knew it was you even before I scrolled down.

You're my commenting hero, you know.

[Mike Schilling]

If Andrew McCarthy had made a joke about Obama's intelligence, would John Boehner be demanding an apology?

[JanieM]

The obvious explanation for this phenomenon of course is that Jews are (a) mostly liberals who believe in due process and (b) a historically persecuted group that gets anxious about groups of people being singled out and denied basic legal rights.

(b) is an easy assumption to make in the abstract, but it often breaks down badly in the real world. It's far from being universally true that people who are part of historically persecuted groups have this tender anxiety for the rights of other persecuted groups.

I could give examples from my own experience, but since anecdota <> data and I don't have time anyhow, just look at the Israelis and the Palestinians.

[CharlesWT]

"And, for the record, which Democratic politicians or major leftist figures are in favor of banning public ownership of firearms?"

Well, I can't think of any at the moment.

[bobbyp]

I am extremely jealous of Andrew McCarthy. Nobody pays to read the bald faced lies and crap I write.

[Catsy]

If you take out "Islamist" and substitute "communist", this sounds like the "conservative" rhetoric of the cold war era.

Dingdingdingdingding! We have a winner!

The reason why Bush Republicans treated 9/11 like a godsend is because for their purposes, it was: American Republican conservatism revolves around a melodramatic grand struggle against the Other. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, they lost the boogeyman they'd used to scare Americans into voting for them for decades.

The tragedy of 9/11 simply allowed Republicans to seamlessly transition from red-baiting to green-baiting. All the lines are the same, you just change the bad guy in their ideological mad lib.

[Carleton Wu]

The tragedy of 9/11 simply allowed Republicans to seamlessly transition from red-baiting to green-baiting.

Let's not forget the brief period when they were preparing China for the Black Hat role, before they got distracted. Get aggressive & provoke a response, then blare the response across the airwaves...
All of which went by the wayside after 9/11, and the US became focused on an 11th century geopolitical conflict instead of a 21st century one.

[Hartmut]

What do you expect from people that claim that Bismarck was a stinking commie?
Or for that matter that Hitler and the Nazis were the spearhead of the Jewish world conspiracy (the Holocaust being just a pawn sacrifice)?

[biggerbox]

I think Andrew McCarthy suffers from the bile fed to him at a young age by his father Charlie, who never quite got over his treatment by Edgar Bergen.

[Eric Martin]

heh

[Uncle Kvetch]

(b) is an easy assumption to make in the abstract, but it often breaks down badly in the real world. It's far from being universally true that people who are part of historically persecuted groups have this tender anxiety for the rights of other persecuted groups.

Ain't it the truth, JanieM.

[Alex Russell]

Carleton Wu: It's through stuff like this that I've come to believe the answer can often be a sort of perfect Schrodinger's Cat superposition. The person is okay with it being absolutely true - or the person is okay with any aspects of it being a distortion because it's on OUR SIDE and MAY HELP our side - and the person is completely okay with it staying right there and present, without the need to ever look at it and ask if it's true or not.

This accounts for the weird sparkly-eyed smile when the person is confronted by seemingly-difficult contradictions or objections, and the happy, defiant vigor with which the person then just says the exact same thing again. It isn't deafness to the other side. It's a magic moment when, if what's said forces some part of the person's mind back to the accuracy-question, the person bounces off the question because of the unreachable impervious fact that it doesn't matter whether it's really sound or not. And then the irrelevant box closes, unglanced-into, and the person propounds again with full fire and certainty.

This with all sorts of topics over the years.

[Mike Schilling]

I think Andrew McCarthy suffers from the bile fed to him at a young age by his father Charlie

More his uncle Joe.

[joel hanes]

As an aside, Eric -- thanks for the post title. I've spend the last two days hearing in my head The Band's Richard Manuel singing "Tears of Rage".

(There are some recordings one no longer needs to own, as the sounds are permanently graved in the mind.)

[Eric Martin]

Yeah, I've listened to it on ye olde ipod no less than thrice since I posted this piece.

FWIW, the ear viruses affect me at least as much as anyone else. Self inflicted wounds, of course, but inflicted nonetheless.

But yeah, that is a great song. From a great record. By a great band. Who are great.

[xanax]

Why does John Thullen hate goats?

[South Florida Lawyers]

Thank you for this. I've been following him for a while on NRO and he is as bad as it gets, but this book takes it to a whole new level.

Disgraceful.

[Chris J]

When 40,000 unsold copies go back to the publisher, I hope they at least recycle the paper.

Oh, they'll sell. Right wing organizations buy these sorts of books by the truckload. One reason is to artificially jack up the sales figures on the best-seller lists.