Rambunctious Irrelevance...
...or, Left-wing Columnists Say the Darnedest Things
Andrew Sullivan (whose new website design looks great, by the way) makes an excellent point, in the course of commenting on the much-commented-upon Michael Kinsley "inner Ashcroft" column.
Kinsley then makes the following point: “In a country such as Great Britain, the legal protections for free speech are weaker than ours, but the social protections are stronger. They lack a First Amendment, but they have thicker skin and a greater acceptance of eccentricity of all sorts.” But there’s an obvious reason why Brits are less exercised by speech that might weaken resolve against global terror. It barely matters what they think. Americans are in a completely different position. Whether we like it or not, America is the sole responsible power in the world. No wonder Americans worry more when far-lefties and far-righties try to undermine a vital war. These extremists might actually affect things. Americans are no more naturally earnest than Brits, in my opinion. They just temper their rhetorical excesses to reflect their responsibility. The same less care-free atmosphere of public debate existed in Britain in the nineteenth century, when what the Brits thought and believed really did matter to the world. Rambunctious irrelevance might be more entertaining; but it’s not an option Americans really have right now.
Quite so. America does have a pretty good supply of rambunctiously irrelevant bozos, though, as Sullivan well knows. As I said earlier in my comment on Terry Jones's disingenuous anti-war-mongering, I believe that a lot of these people are quite consciously exploiting their own irrelevance, playing to their audience by indulging in "entertaining" rhetoric that they know is unlikely to do any real harm.
Brits tend to raise an ironic eyebrow when Americans react to such rhetoric with outrage or even only with mild complaint, as though to say "can't you even handle the occasional left-wing columnist?" Or, to borrow Kinsley's phrase, "grow a thicker skin, Yank." The British are very used to this kind of rhetorical excess and seem to take it, like everything else, in stride. And they do have a point. Reading day after day of Guardian columnists raving on and on about "innocent blood in a coward's war" and "America's Reign of Terror" is a bit like watching a junior high school production of Death of a Salesman, or a high school debate on a subject like "man's inhumanity to man." I'm sure the best reaction to George Monbiot is a detached, indulgent condescension, of the "left wing columnists say the darnedest things" variety.
Sometimes, though, such detachment is hard to maintain. You often hear people over here explain the "over-sensitivity" of Americans with regard to the war as a result of a lack of self-confidence; the American nation is so young, and hence so fragile, that its citizens feel it cannot bear the least criticism. In a way, though, the truth is almost precisely the opposite. It is a sign of our strength as a nation that there are some things, at least, that we feel we must be serious about, and that, in these matters, we do not suffer fools gladly.