Finally there is Judis’s point about the supposed attempt to “suppress debate.” How does joining a debate become an effort to suppress it? I am not aware that Mearsheimer and Walt have been sent from the field to cower behind the bleachers. Indeed, nothing so perfectly gives the lie to their claims about the vast power of the Israel lobby as the fact that they have now been contracted–by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, no less–to turn their article into a book.

Still, were it up to me Judt, Mearsheimer, Carter et al would be run out of polite society. What’s wrong with that? A decade ago, Judis himself tried to do the same to Charles Murray for the “ominous racial theory” suggested by The Bell Curve. The plain fact is that some ideas simply foul our public discourse. Some “controversies” open doors to scoundrels. Some small truths serve as vehicles for big lies. It is not a resort to censorship to ask of the people who hold the keys to magazines like The New Republic or newspapers like The Wall Street Journal to exercise judgment and discretion. Indeed, it is the essence of our responsibility. ~Bret Stephens

That’s right, Bret.  Imagine how “foul” our public discourse might become if we didn’t have appointed guardians such as yourself (erroneously) declaring the opponents of your preferred policies vile bigots!  Thank goodness we have people like Bret Stephens to keep our public discourse free of anything low and base.   

As I read Stephens here, I take it that he very much wants to run these individuals out of “polite society,” and so we can take it for granted that his heavy-handed attempt to impute anti-Semitism to these individuals (or claiming that their work has an “anti-Semitic effect”) in his editorial of some months ago was just such an attempt to run them out of polite society.  It is therefore not so far-fetched that everyone else who more directly accused them of anti-Semitism (such as, say, Eliot Cohen) was also trying to “run” them “out of polite society.”  By “run out of polite society,” I would have to assume that this doesn’t just involve being ostracised from nice parties in Manhattan or snubbed by the guardians of morally superior opinions at social gatherings, but that it probably has more significance than that.  I would guess that it means what Stephens’ opponents take it to mean: to be “run out of polite society” would mean virtual professional and personal exile or the severe curtailment of future career opportunities at any institution that prides itself on having the “right” views on these and other politically charged questions (which is to say almost any influential or widely well-regarded institution in Washington and New York).  In other words, Stephens admits a desire to suppress his opponents, and he has acted in his official capacity as a member of the editorial board of a major newspaper to aid in the suppression of that debate by tarring his opponents’ views with either hateful intent or hateful consequences.  He uses as his main counterargument against the attempted suppression of debate evidence that some of his targets have not yet  had their careers visibly and largely ruined by the kind of false allegations that he and his colleagues routinely make against their political enemies.        

I would also have to conclude that he thinks it was quite appropriate to try to run Charles Murray out on a rail as a racist for The Bell Curve.  Presumably he thinks the avalanche of angry dismissals and denunciations that The Bell Curve received is another example of people who are just “joining” the debate! 

Having failed to completely demonise and marginalise two people [Mearsheimer and Walt] with the anti-Semite label in one instance–in other words, having failed to suppress and intimidate all contrary voices on Near East policy–it is obvious to Stephens that there is no attempt at suppression and intimidation going on.  But then they never claimed that it was absolutely impossible for critics of Israel or American Israel policy to get published.  Obviously, being such a critic can make it much more difficult to get published and be heard, and it is more difficult because of the significant influence of pro-Israel interests in politics and the media.  You need only to remember the hurricane of negative responses that their article generated to recognise a widespread effort to condemn Mearsheimer and Walt and to intimidate anyone else from taking up the same line of argument.  As far as the latter has been concerned, the demonisation campaign has been unusually successful: essentially no one has taken up for Mearsheimer and Walt on the substance of their claims, but at best in the name of “academic freedom.”  Academic freedom is certainly a good reason to come to their defense, but it is hardly the same thing as risking one’s own neck to make the same kinds of arguments they made.  

It is no surprise that others would hesitate to join the debate, since Mearsheimer and Walt’s enemies achieve effective suppression of the debate mainly by discouraging anyone else from joining.  That is how suppression usually works in the “open society”: make it clear to all that you will have serious difficulties if you adopt certain opinions, and the ready conformism and self-interest of members of the “open society” will take care of most of the suppression of undesirable ideas far more efficiently than pillorying and humiliating dissenters.  Of course, it is necessary to beat down those dissenters with as much damning rhetoric and as many politically damaging labels as the guardians can muster.  The debate becomes as lopsided and absurd as it is today because it is difficult to find many people interested in taking up one of the sides, because there is no incentive in taking up that side and a large number of disincentives in doing so.  The overwhelmingly hostile reaction of the majority of political magazines and newspaper editorials to their article, to cite just the most obvious examples, testifies to the considerable power of the lobby Mearsheimer and Walt described to shape and control public debate about American-Israeli ties and the role of pro-Israel interests in shaping U.S. Near East policy.  

Middle Eastern Studies programs in academia make up one oasis relatively free from the effects of this intimidation, but this is mainly because these programs have filled up with people who are almost as reflexively hostile to Israel as pro-Israel advocates are pro-Israel and represent something of a lost cause to the lobby.  This obvious tilt in these programs is nonetheless why there have been moves from some prominent figures on the right to try to bring political pressure on these programs.   

No, there’s no suppression of debate when your contribution to the debate is, “The learned gentleman’s contribution to this debate is the product of insane hatred and the vilest bigotry, and I am relieved of having to address his substantive claims in any way because of this.”  If more people would “join” the debate in this way, the debate would be over very quickly indeed.

This Stephens-Judis debate should be instructive for many on the right about some of the people who claim to represent their views.  Stephens represents the acceptable right, the sort of spokesman for a supposedly conservative newspaper that the respectable center-left can do business with.  The New Republic represents a center-left publication that “conservatives” of the WSJ type can live with.  In the quote above we have a good example of one of the foundations of this convivial relationship: Stephens implies that he has no problem if liberals want to falsely smear people as racists (the preferred rhetorical club of the left), so long as they remember that they should allow “conservatives” such as Stephens to falsely smear people as anti-Semites (or as those whose works have an “anti-Semitic effect”–this is the same kind of attack that leftists used against The Passion, as you might recall).  Stephens is saying that the “responsible” guardians of the political “center” need to keep up their solidarity against the “foul” opinions of those on left and right and make sure that they never gain any traction.