Peter Beinart's article An Argument for a New Liberalism, A Fighting Faith in The New Republic has been all over the blogosphere. I read lots of commentary before finally sitting down with the article in an Athens, GA coffee shop this past Sunday. Beinart argues that until the Democratic Party reigns in its liberal base and takes the Jihadist threat seriously, they're going to lose. He sees the militant Islamic threat as clear and equivalent to the totalitarian threat in World War II and the communist threat in the Cold War. Basically, I do too. But I've always had a paranoid world view (duck and cover!) and I can see why others don't. Kevin Drum, The Washington Monthly blogger (I'm a long time subscriber to the print magazine and a big fan of the blog) is a case in point. He wrote a must read response to the Beinart article that, after an eye openening review of historical comparisons, concludes:
I think the majority of liberals could probably be persuaded to take a harder line on the war on terror — although it's worth emphasizing that the liberal response is always going to be different from the conservative one, just as containment was a different response to the Cold War than outright war. But first someone has to make a compelling case that the danger is truly overwhelming. So far, no one on the left has really done that.
Today Jonah Goldberg jumped in to back Beinart. (I watch Fox News sometimes too, it's good to hear what the other side has to say.) His "compelling case" for an overwhelming danger is that everybody says it's so and isn't it obvious? As I said, I'm inclined to agree that the threat is as they say. What I don't get is why they don't respect the need to persuade us. Especially after Iraq, where so many of the arguments were wrong (on WMD, on welcoming throngs, on quick victory, on how many troops, the list goes on). For all the talk of spreading democracy around the world, they have very little patience with the inherent messiness of democracy; the need to convince people and convince them again. After all, it's World War IV they're talking about.
