A Conservative Defense of Liberalism

I’ve enjoyed Andrew Sullivan’s web log for months now. His literary, intellectually satisfying, and often humorous entries are enjoyed by people from all across the political spectrum. He’s at his strongest when taking to task the far left and its refusal to accept (or confront) the world-wide threat of extreme Islam. The strange thing, he points out repeatedly (sometimes overtly, other times it’s inferred), is that this interpretation of Islam represents the polar opposite of liberalism–yet, is is so often dismissed by those who most betray its militant, totalitarian worldview. Most recently, Sullivan discusses (click through Mercedes ad if you don’t have Salon Premium) the recent bloodshed surrounding the Miss World Pageant. Though it was foolish to hold this pageant in Nigeria, during Ramadan (I don’t get the whole pageant thing at all, but whatevs) the facts are pretty clear about what happened. He writes, “A journalist, Isioma Daniel, for the Nigerian newspaper This Day, made a crude reference to the coming Miss World pageant in her column. She wrote last week that Mohammed might approve of the contest since he might pick one of his wives from the throng of beauties. This comment prompted an outpouring of enraged Muslims from a local mosque, who grew into a crowd of rioters. Christians were attacked, dozens of churches were burned, and some Christians fought back. As many as 500 people were killed in the rampage, and there are reports that Christians are now fleeing the area entirely.” Also, as a result of the woman’s fairly benign comment, she now has a fatwa on her head, Salman Rushdie style. She’s either dead or in hiding from here on out, yo. Sullivan cites comments from the mayor of London, the Guardian, and others that demonstrate once again an unwillingess to call a spade a spade. He concludes, “The propriety, politics and principles of a beauty pageant are utterly irrelevant. If I don’t like such a pageant, I have many ways to protest. But killing people isn’t one of them. That isn’t so hard a line to grasp. So why have so few grasped it?” Exactly.

When thinking about how f–ked up the United States can seem, I return to the notion that our freedoms allow the possibility of virtue. If “appropriate” behavior and values are enforced with the possibilty of extreme persecution or death as a deterrent, individuals don’t have free will, and in a robot-like fashion are “good.” At our worst, we are: hypocritical, arrogant, insular, selfish, ignorant or in major denial of global suffering, jingoistic, and the rest. But millions of unreported kind acts, from people who could have chosen many, many other ways to spend their time or money go unnoticed by those that hate us.

November 27th, 2002