Thanks, Dan, for the responsive post. I suppose part of my response has to be: “What do you mean we, kemo sabe?” I happen to be extraordinarily funny.
More seriously, I agree that the goal of an academic ought to be to get the arguments right. Whether or not this is the primary goal of a political worker is another question, although I think it ought to be. But an academic, in my fusty understanding of its loftiest purposes, ought to care more about following a train of thought to its necessary conclusions than about where those conclusions lie. I concede that not all academics think this is so, and that is fine. But the trait I find too often missing in legal scholarship is the capacity to be surprised. I would like to think that more scholars work outward from the point of curiosity about the question that needs to be resolved or rethought, toward the conclusion, and not vice versa. But I’m not convinced.
Why spend more time attacking one’s friends than one’s enemies, as I lightly put it? Is this a problem? For me, it’s really a personality trait — cussedness, contrarianism, etc. Really, though, it’s also a matter of what is interesting and worthwhile. How much time do I want or need to spend reaching a point of easy agreement with others? Even if you agree that some set of conclusions are simply true, and truly simple, why devote your resources to those questions when you can worry about the complicated questions? And if, as is likely, your views tend to lie within a reasonably circumscribed spectrum, such that some set of views are within the Lessigian realm of the contestable and others are uncontestable, surely you’ll find yourself raising contestable issues within your frame of reference, and hence making life difficult for your allies.
I grant that these views apply especially to those who are interested in analyzing policy rather than making it, and I have no answer to the question how much time the politically active left, as opposed to left-leaning academics, ought to spend attacking itself. I think the answer is that it depends on how intractable the philosophical differences are. The more substantial they are, the more unavoidable the battles are, until someone can do a sufficiently effective job of galvanizing the left.
Does the Left really eat its young to a greater degree than the right does? There are plenty of internecine battles on the right, which are likely to increase; and certainly it is one story one could tell about turnover between the first and second Bush 43 administrations. Perhaps the problem is not that the left battles itself, but that it talks so damn much about that fact, and so makes those battles more salient and visible.
Nor do I think that there is a problem of levity in the left that is greater to any degree than among the right. To the extent the seriousness of the times is relevant — and I don’t think it is; to the politically committed, the times are always serious — it is because these are boom times for earnest folks, and earnestness is death for humor. That’s especially true if the earnest folks are also self-serious, since the best humor, in my view, involves cutting yourself as close to the bone as possible without quite filleting yourself.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on April 19, 2005 at 06:45 AM
Comments
To answer one question from the original post: yes, I do believe that the Left is a fractured, internally inconsistent, self-cannibalizing movement. While the conservative movement has its infighting, I think that it does a much better job of uniting to promote a few philosophical positions and policy goals than the left does.
Case in point: 90% of conservatives will agree with the statement that reducing taxes is usually a good thing. It is amazing how the disparate groups that make up the Right all push together to lower taxes (the Christian Coalition’s website used to list its number one political goal as lowering taxes…despite the fact that this has absolutely zero relation to Christianity or the Bible). Can we think of a single sentiment that unites the Left? No.
Perhaps this all indicates that it might be more accurate to say that the Left’s coalition is more ideologically and politically incoherent than the Right’s or that the Left has done a poor job coordinating and mediating between its different factions. That might be a more accurate way of describing what I feel is wrong with the Left than calling ourselves “self-cannibalizing;” perhaps, the self-cannibalizing isn’t due to the personalities of individual Lefties as much as the fact that our differences are greater.
Even if it is true that the Left’s internal divisions are what’s causing this behavior, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with trying to create intellectual space where Lefties can overcome these internal divisions. I think that is why it frustrates me to see that the intellectual arm of the Left is often so far out of touch with political reality. Our numbers are dwindling, and academic institutions are one of the few places left where Leftish thought is still fashionable. In the past, when liberalism was so pervasive, it might have been easier to ignore it when many professors engage in theoretical arguments that are unrelated to current political realities. As it stands, though, America is becoming more conservative by the minute, and I’d like to rally the troops.
But I think I’m now (if I haven’t already) overstepping my bounds. I won’t start law school until this fall, and I feel a little awkward preaching to a bunch of people who are officially several steps above me on the food chain.
(To be honest, though, I really do think that a great generalization holds true: the Right is much more influenced by a more efficient corporate-style model of organization, while the left is influenced more strongly by the individualistic academic model of organization. While our free-spirited style of debate and leadership sometimes has its advantages, I think it is undeniable that it contributes to our organizational weakness and strategic confusion.)
Posted by: Jeff V. | Apr 19, 2005 6:51:22 PM
Ariela is certainly correct that whether “women can have it all” is not something of interest only to progressive types, though I wonder whether the cause of women’s equality is really at the forefront of social conservatives’ agendas. I guess the reason the topic of family-friendly work environments seems tinctured with progressivism is because the discussion came about in some way as a response to fears of patriarchal domination in society and legal education, and that too is not something typically addressed by the “right.”
Thus, the comment that this discussion was self-cannibalization resonated at least insofar as it’s a topic more likely to be tackled by the left and to divide the left, when there could be other issues that would unite it against “the bad guys.” As Paul wisely noted, that is a good strategy for political organizations; but this blog space is not singlemindedly devoted to the causes liberals take up so much as the soundness of the arguments underlying them.
Of course, Ariela’s larger point stands: women’s rights are human rights, and they deserve vindication against tyranny both abroad and at home, and in the home.
Posted by: Dan Markel | Apr 19, 2005 11:43:37 AM
I’m intrigued and mystified by the notion, which seems to have gained instant currency on this blog, that our earlier discussion about feminism and legal academia was an attack on the left, or an example of the left cannibalizing itself. Who says? This idea was first suggested by a blogger contributing to that discussion, then picked up uncritically by Dan and now Paul. For my own part, I don’t see my criticisms of certain assumptions about family roles as aimed particularly at the left. Certainly the focus on whether professional women can have it all, without any questioning about whether men can have it all, is not the exclusive province of the left. Yet, clearly, the idea that some of us advancing these ideas were “cannibalizing ourselves,” or attacking the left in particular, resonated with some of you. Why do you think that is? I think the criticism is far more universal — it’s aimed at the broad segments of our society (left and right, I guess) that put women’s professional and family responsibilities under a microscope but fail to ask whether women would better be able to do either job if their male partners picked up the slack in the other department.
Posted by: Ariela | Apr 19, 2005 7:55:17 AM