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Why Is Linker So Angry?; Notes on First Things

For a portrait of an influential and provocative public intellectual, The Theocons has some curious omissions. Linker describes Neuhaus as “a handsome and charismatic man who delights in public attention,” eliciting great loyalty and even affection from his followers. Yet the nature of this charisma is never explained. Occasionally we get a glimpse of Neuhaus […]

For a portrait of an influential and provocative public intellectual, The Theocons has some curious omissions. Linker describes Neuhaus as “a handsome and charismatic man who delights in public attention,” eliciting great loyalty and even affection from his followers. Yet the nature of this charisma is never explained. Occasionally we get a glimpse of Neuhaus and his cronies, cigars and brandy snifters in hand, reacting with “blind rage” to this or that liberal deprecation. But the man’s personality remains opaque; he comes across more as an inexhaustible engine of argument than a flesh-and-blood person. Furthermore, if it is true that Neuhaus’s “ultimate goal is nothing less than the end of secular politics in America,” why did Linker go to work for him in the first place? Not knowing what made Linker enlist in what he now regards as a dangerously authoritarian movement raises serious questions about his forthrightness and credibility. Yet The Theocons never offers an explanation of his change of mind and heart. ~Paul Baumann, The Washington Monthly

Via Ross Douthat

When Linker’s book first came out and back around the time the Year of Books Denouncing American Theocracy had begun, I was struck by the bitterness and intensity of Linker’s rage against Neuhaus and First Things in the New Republic article he wrote that summarised the main argument of his book.  The intense bitterness seemed all the more inexplicable given that Linker had been editor of the magazine.  There are people, including those on the right and including myself, who often disagree strongly with Neuhaus who nonetheless cannot summon up quite this much fury against him or the magazine.  It is a pity that Linker did not attempt to explain how some personal dispute had “revealed” to him the nature of Neuhaus’ theocratic master-plan, since that would at least explain where this mania came from.  I think something very personal must have set him off in this direction, as almost nothing else explains the extreme rhetoric of Linker’s attack. 

It would not have been the first time that some personal or professional falling out had precipitated criticism of the old boss.  This is especially true among academics and intellectuals, who feel obliged to dress up their petty personal disagreements (you didn’t give my wife a job, you gave my book a bad review, etc.) in the fancy dress of profound theoretical clashes (you want to destroy the American way of life, you despise truth itself, etc.), and the more “public” an intellectual is the more necessary it is to make the costume in which you dress your personal grievances really elaborate, colourful and Mardi Gras-esque with all of the grotesquerie, zaniness and exaggeration that this implies.  It is not enough that your boss treated you poorly or failed to appreciate your work to your satisfaction–his intellectual project must be dark and dangerous, too!  That makes your petty inconveniences and suffering part of a narrative of resistance to the Dark Side, which is much more appealing for someone who thinks highly of himself and feels aggrieved by workplace setbacks.  It is probably because of this sort of thinking that we wind up with the apparent excessive rhetoric and melodramatic conclusions of Linker’s work.

There is certainly nothing in the record of Neuhaus or First Things that would lead me to believe that they are preparing the doom of secular America.  Indeed, one of my long-standing criticisms of the entire First Things approach to the public square has been that they not only have no intention of eliminating secularism from America (or anything of the kind) but seem all together too interested in justifying participation in the debate just to be part of it and simply having a seat at the table so that they are less willing to take the kinds of strongly conservative positions on the social and moral ills that they really need to take to mobilise Christian opinion in America.  They are at root accommodationists with secularism (and also, at heart, they are really progressives of one sort or another), because I believe their guiding vision has been one that sees a basic harmony between the taproot of modern secularism–Enlightenment liberalism–and Christianity where there is no such real harmony.  As with the heresy of ecumenism (and it assuredly a heresy in its present forms), the revealed truth will have to give way to make this unholy alliance work, and so I think First Things‘ approach contains as much danger to a faithful, socially and politically involved Christianity as it does to secularism.  If Neuhaus and First Things are the center of the future American theocratic movement, they are decidedly odd theocrats; one might even say that they give theocrats a bad name. 

Needless to say, I also don’t think much of their long-standing and ongoing alliance with some of the figures who have crafted neoconservative positions on foreign policy, and if anyone wanted definitive proof that these are not theocrats-in-waiting it would have to be the magazine’s engagement with what the new editor, Mr. Bottum, called the “new fusionism,” which is an alliance dedicated to being basically pro-life at home (against abortion, euthanasia, etc.) and pro-death overseas (in favour of every war you can think of).  Just as the old fusionism between “libertarians,” generic anticommunists and “traditionalists” worked to the distinct disadvantage of the traditionalists in most respects, the secular and foreign policy-oriented side of the “new fusionist” alliance proposes, and the religious side disposes, getting virtually nothing of what it hoped to gain from the bargain.  What is the logic of this alliance in the first place?  It’s all about being dreadfully, seriously moral (or at least talking about morality with a dreadfully serious demeanour)–that’s what makes invading Iraq and protecting the unborn so clearly related.  What worries me more about First Things is not that it is a vessel for the coming theocracy (the idea really is risible), but that it is an all together too willing cheerleader for interventionism and has shown itself willing to anoint the most appalling policies abroad with the chrism of Christian justice (while running interference against the actual authorities of Christian churches who have opposed the very same ventures).  

Which brings me back to Linker.  As Baumann notes:

Again and again Linker lapses into the worst rhetorical excesses of the theocons he is trying to discredit. Baptized into the apocalyptic world of the theocons not long ago, he has returned to warn us that at Neuhaus’s direction the Republican Party is leading the nation into “the arms of absolute ecclesiastical authority.” Apparently, evangelicals provide the foot soldiers and Catholics the intellectual generals in the theocon battle plan. Linker’s worries that the theocons want to put an end to religious pluralism in America sound paranoid. First Things, after all, remains an “ecumenical” journal. Presumably Neuhaus would like his many conservative Protestant and Jewish friends to follow him to Rome, but he would not compel them to do so even if he could. Detecting The Grand Inquisitor behind every Roman collar is an old and ugly canard.
 

To see any kind of Inquisitor here would be very difficult, and if you did it would sooner be the cynical socialist Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky’s imagination rather than any of the actual Inquisitors of history.  In the wake of consistent anti-Vatican criticism from First Things editors and contributors on questions of war in Iraq and Lebanon, which does not even take into consideration any other areas where contributors and editors may have voiced dissent against Vatican or American bishops’ statements, Linker’s claim that Neuhaus and his colleagues desire the establishment of “absolute ecclesiastical authority”–regardless of whether it would be possible to realise–strikes me as so obviously untrue that it is remarkable that anyone would publish, much less read, his book.

But if Baumann eviscerates the credibility of Linker’s claims, he concludes with a note that seems intended to leave you with a worse impression of Neuhaus than Linker has offered:

If, as Linker suggests, Neuhaus has a prophet’s uncompromising temperament, it is the temperament of a prophet strongly drawn to the stark and simple truth of getting and keeping power. Neuhaus has made a number of surprising but very canny conversions in his lifetime. If I were a betting man, I’d pay careful attention to where he is headed. For better or worse, the nation (or a slim electoral majority, at any rate) is usually not far behind, led by a cohort of voters who also happen to be religious believers. It would be a welcome miracle if liberals could get there first, with a plausible appeal to some of those same voters. 

This ends up leaving you with the impression of Neuhaus not as an impatient prophet preaching for the downfall of the present order so much as a cynical operator who sees which way the wind is blowing and gets to the front of the line for the latest trend.  As much as I disagree with Neuhaus and First Things, I think this is as extreme and untenable a claim as any that Linker makes.

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