Tony Judt rolled on to the stage at NYU last night in a wheelchair, with a breathing tube strapped to his head and a blanket over his form, and began his lecture in a surprisingly strong voice by “shooting the elephant in the room": A year ago he was diagnosed with a form of amyotropic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative disease of the muscle, and it had progressed to the point that he was now paralyzed below the neck. Some friends had urged him to make the subject of the Remarque Lecture the nature of his disease, so as to advance the health care debate, but he had concluded there was no point in show and tell. The show was obvious: this is what the disease did to a body, left him quadriplegic “wearing facial Tupperware," a machine breathing for him, making a rhythmic wheezing. The hope others had that he would give an uplifting lecture about what a body can do under these circumstances he must also disappoint: "I’m English, we don’t do uplifting.”
Yet in spite of himself, Judt achieved both assignments. The speech he gave over the next 100 minutes, in which you wondered whether he was going to keel over, was a call to arms to leftwingers. The world faces a "terrifying" period of insecurity stemming from the amorality of capitalism, and it needs us more than ever. Our failure, he said, was discursive: we had failed to talk about justice in politics. We had given all our ground to the center right, and assumed that globalization and economic efficiency are the ways of the world. "We learned to talk about public policy as neoclassical economics. This is our problem." This reflected our enslavement by five conservative economic thinkers, Ludwig von Mises, Josef Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, Popper and Peter Drucker (!), all born within a short train’s journey of Vienna.
And all had fled Vienna because of "the failure, the fall, the collapse"– Judt became incantatory– of liberal society the last time it was put to a great test. Then it had given way to totalitarianism; and these refugees had come up with the idea that the only way to restrain the fevers of the left and right was to "keep government away from the economy."
Wasn’t always this way. A hundred years ago, social reformers had had "confident stories to tell about the purposes of history… the collective purposes that we should be aiming at." But 20th century ideologies had all worked out badly. No social democratic party in Europe can run on the platform of actual socialism. Because the USSR had socialism in its name- and produced the Gulag, as Judt was to remind the one nonworshipful questioner, a stowaway from the Communist Party. Today social democrats have "no story to tell that distinguishes them from the center right."
So forget about socialism. Stop talking about it the same way you have stopped thinking/talking about your first wife, he advised, genderbound– and try to imagine other ways of speaking of justice and equality in our politics.
The aura of the lecture was pure crisis. Of course there is Judt’s personal crisis, which gathered up all 2000-odd people in Skirball Hall, some tearyeyed, but also the sense of global crisis. The idea of a common good has given way to tax farming, privatization, and the benevolent humiliation of people who can’t get work. The inequalities in the US approach the inequalities in China, and will only produce bad effects. It was one thing to privatize the sandwich shop at the railroad station (the public did a bad job of running them, in Judt’s boyhood, he said) but another to have privatized the station and the rails. We are on the verge of a period of huge unrest that he likened to the late ’30s.
Because– per Keynes, the hero of the lecture, along with Orwell–after World War I the capitalists also spoke confidently about globalization, but economic crises produced totalitarianism in European states. And today the nation state is still the only political unit in town. For all the talk about India’s modernity—and I thought of Tom Friedman—only 400 million of over 1 billion Indians are employed and less than 1 percent of them are in the high tech industries. So what can globalization do for a crisis in India?
I watched the lecture with a mix of emotions. I admire Judt no end. He imagined the one-state solution in Israel/Palestine 8 years ago (having served in the Six Day war as a driver ala Hemingway), and the timid New York Review of Books has steadfastly refused to follow up on his daring. A man of great intellectual courage, he broke with the so-called liberals of the New Republic over Zionism, then took Walt and Mearsheimer’s side when it mattered in 2006, and joined Mearsheimer on stage at Cooper Union to explain to Shlomo Ben-Ami and Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk that just because anti-Semites agreed with something you said doesn’t mean you are wrong, read Arthur Koestler on Communism. His many accomplishments as a historian were read off by the NYU provost and the vice chancellor in introducing him; for myself I can say that his doorstop production, Postwar, is a pleasure to dip into, at any page.
So there was real grief in seeing a great man so reduced by an illness that he has approached with a stiff upper lip. His running shoes looked like toys sticking out from the blanket, we never saw his hands. The breathing became more labored over the near-two-hour performance, he seemed to want to be there longer; and I wondered if he had, ala Ted Kennedy, decided to deliver himself of wisdom now he has seen the light at the end of the tunnel.
A huge community of leftleaning New Yorkers turned out because Judt has been so important, and this public act was one of leadership. As he has done on other occasions, he pulled aside the curtains and the wings to show that the little world we are used to accepting is not necessarily the world of history. It is the world of recent "opinion."
"We should be angrier than we are about what we’ve lost, morally, rhetorically, collectively," he said, invoking Penn Station and jammed highways. We must go on the attack, we must employ a "language of fear… the language of memory"– the memory of what happened the last time capitalism created such inequalities between rich and poor.
His words were specially cast for Obama. The left always thought that capitalism was going to fail once and for all, but then it didn’t fail once and for all. So we had the story wrong. "What has failed is our ability to articulate a response to a distinctive partial failure. This is a failure on our part… We don’t know how to say that something is unjust."
It was in the end a thrilling spiritual message, forged by Judt’s own misery, and a challenge to our creativity, to break the chains of established opinion and tell a different story about history.
Related posts:
- Judt Responds to Dershowitz’s Characterization: ‘It Is a Lie’
- Tony Judt Says It Is Becoming ‘Normal’ to Have Conversations About Israel’s Failings
- 40 years after first epiphany, Judt still very bashable
- Tony Judt on the Collapse of the Liberals
- In the ‘Times,’ Judt hints what he said baldly in ‘03: 2-state solution is finished
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That is sad. I was unaware of his condition. I have many disagreements with Judt’s analysis of post-WWII political development, but his courage (and it was courageous) of conviction on the I/P question was/is to be admired.
Will the lecture be up on Utube or similarly available?
Keynes a hero? I supposed compared with these guys he should be: Ludwig von Mises, Josef Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, Popper and Peter Drucker (not to mention Tom Friedman). Certainly Keynes’s beauty contest metaphor offers more insight than all the hundreds of Commanding Heights apologias combined.
So, in terms of how macro-economics influences the plight of each individual human,
we seem to be going nowhere good under the influence of either pure socialism or pure capitalism. Fact is, as practiced in any Western country at least, neither is in the
driver’s seat for any duration I can see. And, look at China too. China has replaced Japan as the Number 2 economy in the world, I read recently. And it will soon overtake the USA. It only has one political party, “the People’s Party,” and has
integrated main features of capitalistic system energy into those ostensibly contrary policies. What does this mean in this thread’s context?
I dunno. Should Keynes be a hero any more or less than Hayek or Mises? Doesn’t seem so to me. I’d like to hear Judt on that subject. Is there a middle ground? Does it
reveal the full cost of means and ends? How about Ron Paul’s approach of limited government? Is it merely to be dismissed as not worthy of attention, as, e.g., Mooser suggest here by surrounding brand Libertarian with quote marks? Also, isn’t the
original concept of Fascism one that defines it by the partnering of government with
private corporations? If memory serves, that relationship is even a key operating principle of COG, the cold war originated and still operating Continuity Of Government plan, which would take over if the Executive branch leaders decided
our country was under a dire emergency, a threat to its continued existence? Constitutional protections for individuals would go out the window & regime key players and private coporation playes, would be the new special class of Americans worthy–and hasn’t
some of this already taken place in the form of national security operatives gathering
data bases and information on everyday citizens since 9/11? Orwell and Keynes? Hero buddies? Did not Orwell satirize the Big Brother of communism? I don’t get it.
Citizen! You are banging along, full force, firing on all eight cylinders, and getting great mileage, too! A pleasure to read.
This is always the part of the conversation I get the biggest kick out of, that it is a big bad government. When in reality, all the government is quite frankly, is a franchise of the elite (who all of these “master” economic managers served). However, carry on everyone…lol
All interesting points, Citizen. I don’t think Keynesian macroeconomics mandates a particular size of govt (and it’s far from socialism). It calls for countercyclical deficits (in recessions), to be compensated by surpluses in better times. What we’ve seen especially under Republicans like Reagan and Bush Jr. (too soon to tell for Obama) is the opposite: permanent deficits due (among other things) to optional militarism for which they can’t justify fully taxing people.
I support Dr. Paul’s antiwar and anti-Fed positions, but the rest of his libertarian agenda is exactly the wrong way to go. In particular, for gentiles to adopt (even more) individualism while Jews aggressively pursue their collective strategy is suicidal.
“I support Dr. Paul’s antiwar and anti-Fed positions, but the rest of his libertarian agenda is exactly the wrong way to go”
Exactly, Fust-Cless, exactly! It’s gonna take one hell of a state apparatus if we are ever to purge our culture of “alien” or “collective” impulses. You will need political-cultural comissars everywhere to seek out and purge the un-disireable elements. That pretty much gets rid of your “small government” idea, huh.
And Oh Gosh, “Jews aggressively pursue their collective strategy”? First of all, I thought you read this blog, but I guess I was wrong. Apparently you just paste in whatever facist sentiment s suit your purposes (If we want to be generous with the word “purposes”). So you think all those posts about the split, the widening awareness of what is going on in Israel and the reaction to it are an example of “Jews aggressively pursue (ing) their collective strategy”?
So just for fun, please supply us with some links to prove the “Jews aggressively pursue their collective strategy”? This ought to be good. “Judeofacism”, anybody?
You know America Fust-Cless, you could look at that paper that’s all over the web listing the salient points about facist ideologies and make at least some half-hearted effort to try and not be so obviously ideologically congruent with them.
America First – you put your finger on it in your last sentence. For some time now I realized just how unprepared America, with its code of individualism, was for a concerted onslaught by collective entities, be they tribal or corporate. Americans just cannot comprehend the power of neo-tribalism (which is what parts of the jewish community had reverted to) or neo-corporatism and has no means of effectively combatting either. The reason for the strangely weak-kneed response to either judeo-tribalism or creeping corporatism is that the extreme individualism americans grow up with is so very ill-equipped to counter highly focused action groups or entities. I think the downside of decentralization of both thought and action may be kind of what Judt perceives as well, especially when he talks about the failure to incorporate principles of justice. Unfortunately, liberty and the pursuit of happiness alone are not enough to guarantee justice, and thence is the failure of Ron Paul’s brand of libertarianism. Neither could christianity come to the rescue – as this too has been a religion that from its inception – and all through its history – sought to deliberately divorce itself from nationhood; it could therefore hardly provide any cohesive sense of loyalty or justice to a large political entity, such as a nation.
And therein lies the rub. Libertarianism sounds good on one front, such as foreign policy, but it is woefully inadequate to deal with domestic policy issues. Its emphasis on individualism is also what precluded it from becoming a viable party in the US since libertarians are simply not very good at running in packs – virtually by definition. The built-in undermining of group action is why the “tea-party” movement got so quickly hijacked by right wing interest groups and republicans looking for a free ride back to power. Libertarians just cannot do populism effectively which dooms them to failure as a social/political force to contend with.
BTW, I now remember that I used to argue some of these very points with the poster Ed (Chris Moore?), which is why I miss him. He made a good representative of the voices of nihilism around here. Good at diagnosis, but absent on prognosis. A good reminder of why sometimes the most commendable courses of action seemed so doomed.
I hope Monodoweiss and the legions of like-mindeds (which is all the other good blogs plus “us” – a motley crew of commentators) will succeed as a wedge to split up a dangerous form of collectivism. It would be good to remember though that that’s all we are thus far – a wedge. Which can perhaps break things up but not put together something new. Maybe that’s where Judt’s wisdom and emphasis on the long-ignored principle of justice can come in handy. Just a not-very-original thought here….
Yep, Judt is right when he says what is missing is a united front in favor of justice, and the common good. Perhaps in the old days the rhetoric of the “common good” worked to
favor white bias in fact; yet now, the rhetoric of the “common good” works to favor
two elements of society, the official minorities (by 2050 whites will be a minority across the nation, not just in large key areas) and the filthy rich, mostly those particular whites? Don’t shoot me, I’m just asking. (It seems like the results of our
tax code aid this; 40% of taxpayer age pay no federal taxes at all (over 50% of African Americans) and on the upper end, million and billionaires also pay no tax, or at most a slim proportion of their income compared to average taxpayers. )
Excellent points, Danaa. One of the most evil things the American right has done (up there with allowing the neocon infiltration) was to condition us to believe that justice (as you put it) and community (as I do) are code words for some commie plot. As I see it, Marxism and laissez-faire capitalism are both forms of class warfare, one from the bottom up and the other from the top down. No real conservative could possibly support either one.
Danaa, Chris was anything but a nihilist. I think he had one of the most traditionally religious worldviews of anyone who posted here; which is probably why few people here ever seemed to get the basis for his arguments.
If anything, the traditionalist right (including many Ron Paul supporters) is less individualistic that the left. They are far more likely to be concerned that the US maintain a dominant cultural and linguistic identity, for example. They often support tariffs and other nationalist economic policies in order to protect communities that depend on agriculture and industry.
When the traditionalist right attacks government, they are not seeking to replace state power with unchecked individualism. Rather, they want to strengthen traditional family, religious, and community authority over education and local affairs. They might better be described as communitarian rather than libertarian.
PS–Patriotism is an integral part of most Christian Americans’ worldview. Christianity is so dominant among members of the Armed Services that the chattering classes have started wringing their hands about it. Christianity is, actually, the only religion with a proven track-record as the official or unofficial public faith of liberal Western nation-states, and has been a major channel for nationalist sentiment since the Reformation at least.
DavidF – it is true that I – and probably many others here – found Chris Moore to be somewhat confounding. I did not realize for the longest time that he was arguing from a traditional christianity viewpoint, and when he pointed that out, found it difficult to reconcile with opinions and positions he expressed before. You may be right that it is an angle foreign to many posters here, and may explain the out of sync dynamics that developed. perhaps he is not the same person as Ed, who I have on record as someone who tended to poke holes at almost any course of action suggested by anyone. Maybe that’s where the nihilist label came from. If I was wrong, that is regretable. Shows one should not be too confident ascribing motives and intents to well….mostly annonymous posters, who can be anything they want to be anytime.
As for Christianity and nationalism, I should really clarify what I meant. I certainly did not mean to suggest that christianity did not become all wrapped up in patriotism and nationalist sentiment. Rather I intended to say that christianity – as a religion – always had a universalist aspect to it (just as islam does), which is one reason it was able to garner so many adherents all over the globe. Ethnicity was never a bar to becoming christian which is why there are now so many christian originated sects and denominations. Yet, even though judaism too gave rise to different schools, there was always that ethnic-based bond – whether true or false. It’s the assumption of a common, ethnically-derived bond that matters, which is what’s embodied in the expression – Am israel (loosely translated as the nation-people of israel). And that is what a tribe is – the members of which are assumed to be bonded through blood connections – however remote or unreal. That’s why being a jewish convert is such a difficult proposition – the bond always seems a bit tenuous, no matter how strong the belief is.
What tribal familiality does is to reinforce the feeling that there is collective behind you. Even an ex-zionist such as me (or, as I like to call myself these days – a trans-zionist, kind of like trans-gender?) can be a beneficiary of this bond, regardless of how much I may criticize the collective. As Phil once described, there are always a few willing to act as tribal minders, ready to bring the straying sheep back home to the flock. It’s even OK if they choose to graze at meadows some distance away.
And this sense of bondedness to a collective empowers in ways that are, frankly, difficult to describe. It explains why jewish-derived people from totally different backgrounds and/or convictions find themselves gravitating towards each other, if only to fight tooth and nail. Even the fights are part of the code. Just look at Witty……were he a christian he would have long ago been put out to a nice cyber pasture somewhere far away from this blog, just like what happened to poor chris moore. but here, the tribal fabric strains, stretches but continues to bind.
Interestingly, it’s the mad-cap mega-zionists that are run out of town, with their transparent hasbara tool kits. And that gives me hope that this not-always-charming tribe is about to split up for real, as irrevocably as the tribes of judea and israel once did. Amen to that.
Good points, Danaa.
I agree that the sense of belonging within Judaism is unique and great source of strength. I look forward to the day when it is not chained to Israeli politics and Zionism.
Judt is one of the few Jews on the left to broach the subject of self-interest. I remember his comment (my words, not his) about how the Roman empire indulged the Jews until they became more trouble than they were worth, and then stopped indulging them.
(my words, not his) about how the Roman empire indulged the Jews until they became more trouble than they were worth, and then stopped indulging them.
Yeah because if there is anyplace we should look at for our models of citizenship and civic action it’s the Roman Empire. Tell me, America Fust-Cless, who do you think is “indulged” more in America, the Jews or the African-Americans or Hispanics?
And it’s about time I made one thing perfectly clear. I object to you not mainly because of your ideas, which are trite and common enough (Just look up “Britain First” and see) . My main objection to you is that you are never honest. You are fundamentally dis-honest.
First, many historians have concluded what America First says about the relationship of Rome with the Jews locasted on their far border between Roman land and the main opponent of Rome. Second, if you really doubt the contribution of Rome to
contemporary civilisation, you need to get some basic education. The ancient Greeks and the Romans are key to how we know live. The concept of citizen came from Rome, for starters. The question of who is indulged as Mooser presents it to America First is a loaded question akin to “So how many times have you beat your wife?”
It’s a common topic of political conversation, even in our MSM, the pros and cons
of special interests politics. It’s really no secret that some groups vote overwhelmingly by ethnic identification, for example, the African American vote
for Obama. Both the demo and repub leaders act regularly accordingly–nobody on this
blog would doubt this.
My question to Mooser is this: Why do you say America First is never honest? Please exemplify your case against him. Thanks.
“The idea of a common good has given way.
Our failure, he said, was discursive: we had failed to talk about justice in politics.”
Judt said.
He was blaming capitalism.
It’s way more inclusive than capitalism.
Neither Obama nor Ayn Rand are sufficiently instructive.
And even Ron Paul and Nader are limited too.
We don’t even need to talk about the I-P situation, the paramount foreign policy issue of the age; we can, e.g., talk about the Hegalian
dialetic sans synthesis of domestic health care reform, which will affect us all very directly and soon enough, for sure.
It’s as hard to nail down either issue. Very few influential spokes people are unbiased, seriously addressing the fact there is no free lunch, ever. The devil is always in the details and nobody dedicated to objectivity has the time or funding to really sort out where the chips have and will fall under any plan, or program, regarding both domestic and foreign policy, and then make it public in a way accessible to John/Jane Q Public. The pundits & politicians seldom reveal the zero-sum game for all to see.
Citizen, all good points – except it’s not really a zero-sum game. The game – either economic or political – has collective consequences as well as individual ones.
“Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” -Mikhail Bakunin
It’s obvious we can’t solve these problems at our current level of thought. I don’t want to sound like a New Age freak or something, but I think it’s true that humanity needs to undergo a collective change in consciousness in order for anything substantial to happen going forward.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein
I could not agree with you more. And there is nothing New-Agey about it. If anything, all we do here is argue the 19th C and medieval consciousness of Zionism and how it has been allowed to strangle our world. How it is insular, not intended for everyone, and seeks to benefit a chosen few…yet imprison or exclude others it doesn’t like, by any means possible, in order to ensure it’s own survival. There is nothing high-minded or life-affirming about it, except in those instances when a salvo of charity will burnish its interests. It contravenes everything good and great about the Jewish religion, and seeks to create division, and relishes war.
Or as American Jewish leaders wrote in their 1919 petition to President Wilson: ‘The rights of other creeds and races will be respected under Jewish dominance’ is the assurance of Zionism, but the keynotes of democracy are neither condescension nor tolerance, but justice and equality.
“It [Zionism] contravenes everything good and great about the Jewish religion, and seeks to create division, and relishes war.”
Political Zionism has nothing to do with the Jewish religion, and in fact is a denial of it. Zionism has corrupted Judaism and transformed (at least temporarily) the Jewish “people”, with immense consequences for the United States. One of the principal social tasks for America in the years ahead is to convince the American Jewish community that secular Judaism can survive without the narcotic of Zionism.
So, if Judt’s dying theme is the abuses of capitalist power, why are you fixated on Israel only, and not engaging in the larger and more important discussion of modern civilization and alternatives?
Informed and contributing.
Also, even on your topic, if you’d read on the history of Zionism, you would have also read of proposals for every variation of single-state and bi-national state BY Zionists (by Ben Gurion, by Weitzman, not by Jabotinsky) prior to 1948, all rejected.
Read: http://www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx?id=502
Now.
Maybe the fixation you inquire about is due to the obviously capitalistic basis of
USA campaign finance
Witty’s up, and there’s the pitch. He swings (crack!) and the ball is going, going, oh my, oh no, it’s a foul, landing way out in left field over by No.4 (The Whole World Sucks)
“not engaging in the larger and more important discussion of modern civilization and alternatives”
Okay, let’s. And what do we know so far? Well, not a whole lot, but we are fairly sure colonialism and racism suck. And Israel is rife with it rests on it.
What Richard is really saying of course is, why don’t we go on talking in circles until all the Palestinians are dead or dispersed. We should have it settled by then.
What a great line of thought and observation: pulled aside the curtains and the wings to show that the little world we are used to accepting is not necessarily the world of history. It is the world of recent “opinion.”
I am plowing my way through one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve ever read: The Lost Science of Money. Subtitled: “The Mythology of Money – The Story of Power.” It is the history of money for 3,000 years and how people, nationalities, and governments handled it, and what the consequences were over time in terms of economy and people’s prosperity. A guy named Zerlanga wrote it, and he shows in exhaustive detail (book is over 800 pages) the misdirection that modern American capitalism has wrought and why. This is not a polemic, or policy screed. It’s a history book, and even though I’m fairly well-read, and stacked with a number of degrees, there is info in there that I had no clue about.
This reviewer, an ex-US Treasury official, calls it a classic and the most important book in the last 200 years: http://z.pe/ta5. Read it for an encapsulation of the modern part of Zerlanga’s sweep of history. Zerlanga separates out monetary policy from banking, and describes how both operate from the point-of-view of history and its consequences for us now. A brilliant work.
You can’t buy it on Amazon. They wont stock it; just has reviews. You can only get here: http://z.pe/nOh. Oh yeah, and it ain’t cheap.
This is a back-handed way of saying that Keynes isn’t the answer.
Thanks for the recommendation, MRW.
“…the private control and resulting misdirection of the nation’s monetary system.” Uh oh, better be careful here – you might run into some of the things I am talking about…lol
I had no idea. I had a cry. Tony Judt is a most amazing man. Heard him during the lecture at Cooper Union. What an honest, forth right, brilliant human being. Christ life is not fair..not fair at all. I am so sorry to hear this.
But Tony demonstrates his inner core by continuing to come out and tell the truth.
If you have not seen this panel discussion that Tony Judt takes part in after Meirsheimer and Walt book came out
Tony Judt, Meisheimer, Indyk etc
http://www.scribemedia.org/2006/10/11/israel-lobby/
O.K. I am crying even more after I read your whole post. Life can be so damn cruel. But again Judt sets the bar so high…so high “”We should be angrier than we are about what we’ve lost, morally, rhetorically, collectively,” he said, invoking Penn Station and jammed highways. We must go on the attack, we must employ a “language of fear… the language of memory”– the memory of what happened the last time capitalism created such inequalities between rich and poor.”
Is there a link to his whole speech. Sometimes I just want to drop out stop pushing, stop lobbying, protesting….stop banging our heads against what sometimes feels like a brick wall. Then you read about Tony Judt’s situation and the strength he is demonstrating for all of us.
Whoa…thanks for this post
“PS–Patriotism is an integral part of most Christian Americans’ worldview. Christianity is so dominant among members of the Armed Services that the chattering classes have started wringing their hands about it. Christianity is, actually, the only religion with a proven track-record as the official or unofficial public faith of liberal Western nation-states, and has been a major channel for nationalist sentiment since the Reformation at least.”
Good take, DavidF. But do you really think that so many people are truly ignorant of the roots of Chris’s arguments? Chris’s views are very common in America, and I know many people who vote Democrat who hold views that are very similar to what you describe. It’s no surprise to me that many Dem voters would basically sound like Chris, since most Republican voters don’t vote for their own best interests, either. And how anyone can seriously deny the impact of Christianity on the West is beyond me. The fact that the cross or other christian symbols are present on many national flags in the West says something.
It seemed to me that a lot of people had no idea where Chris’ ideas were coming from, Todd.
In part, I think, because the left has controlled higher-ed for over 40 years, the gap between the left and right is colossal. The two sides read different books, use different assumptions in their reasoning, and often seem to speak different languages.
I tend to agree with you, David. I even say that a major part of the problem is that the left has a big hand in education at all levels, from what is taught to the actual theorists who shape the system.
I just have a hard time believing that most on the left are ignorant of major themes in American thought. My guess is that it would be nearly impossible for many people on the traditional right to escape the views of the left, since those views are everywhere. I can see how some on the left can be ignorant of many traditional American views, but can that be the case among the intelligent and supposedly well-educated? Are we that far gone as a society?
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