Soundings, December 2001

The events of September 11 have changed the political landscape in America. Political groups—progressive, liberal, conservative, and libertarian—have found themselves deeply split over the terrorist attacks and the war.

Consider, first, the division that emerged in the far-Left magazine The Nation, where longtime columnist Christopher Hitchens engaged longtime America-critic Noam Chomsky. Said Hitchens:

I was apprehensive from the first moment about the sort of masochistic e-mail traffic that might start circulating from the [Noam] Chomsky-[Howard] Zinn-[Norman] Finkelstein quarter, and I was not to be disappointed. With all due thanks to these worthy comrades, I know already that the people of Palestine and Iraq are victims of a depraved and callous Western statecraft. . . . But there is no sense in which the events of September 11 can be held to constitute such a reprisal, either legally or morally (The Nation, October 8, 2001).

Chomsky replied:

Consider Hitchens's fury over the 'masochistic e-mail...circulating from the Chomsky-Zinn-Finkelstein quarter,' who joined such radical rags as the Wall Street Journal in what he calls 'rationalizing' terror—that is, considering the grievances expressed by people of the Middle East region, rich to poor, secular to Islamist, the course that would be followed by anyone who hopes to reduce the likelihood of further atrocities rather than simply to escalate the cycle of violence, in the familiar dynamics, leading to even greater catastrophes here and elsewhere. This is an outrage, Hitchens explains, because 'I know already' about these concerns—a comment that makes sense on precisely one assumption: that the communications were addressed solely to Hitchens. Without further comment, we can disregard his fulminations on these topics ("Reply to Hitchens," The Nation, October 1, 2001).

The situation among liberals (as opposed to progressives) was well put by Michael Kelly, editor of The Atlantic Monthly:

The leftward wing of politics . . . includes [on the one hand] liberals who work in politics and [on the other] academic and literary leftists who stand — in a pose that apes moral superiority but is really a species of aesthetic snobbery — apart from (and, they fancy, above) politics. . . . Sept. 11 cleaved the left smack on the line between these two primary constituencies. Liberals and leftists who work in politics or who are serious about politics [he mentions the political philosopher Michael Walzer] have pretty much lined up on the side of the government and the public, which is the side of giving war a chance" ("The Left's Great Divide," The Washington Post, November 7, 2001).

Writing in the Weekly Standard (November 5, 2001), David Brooks observed:

The splits on the right have been quieter, but no less important. Anti-establishmentarianism on the right comes in libertarian and populist forms. Its adherents have noticed that during wartime, the power of the state tends to expand. . . . This skepticism applies not only to any new social programs that might emerge in this centralizing moment, but to proposals to strengthen the forces of law and order."

Among those taking up the anti-establishmentarian position, Brooks cites Grover Norquist, Dick Armey, and Tom Delay (David Brooks, "The Age of Conflict").

Lastly, it will come as no surprise to readers of Navigator that the split Brooks sees between national-security conservatism and economic conservatism can also be found within libertarianism. No one familiar with the history of libertarian foreign policy could have expected otherwise. For example, Murray Rothbard found the 1975 victory of North Vietnam to be "inspiring." Ayn Rand, though she wanted America to withdraw from Vietnam, said it had to be done in conjunction with a new, far more aggressive policy of isolating the Soviet Union diplomatically and economically. Moreover, Rand held, so long as America had an army in the field, Washington should ban campus anti-Vietnam demonstrations as harmful to our soldiers' morale and therefore tantamount to aiding the enemy. (The editor of Navigator will be grateful to everyone who resists the temptation to circulate an e-mail saying that TOC advocates suspending the First Amerndment rights of antiwar protesters.)

Given this divided history, it is no surprise that the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob G. Hornberger, has posted on the FFF Web site an essay entitled "Libertarian Splits in the War on Terrorism." He begins by noting that "responses to the September 11 attacks have split the libertarian movement like no other issue I have seen since I discovered libertarianism almost twenty-five years ago." He then summarizes, the position of pro-war libertarians: "One of the essential functions of government is to protect the nation from invasion or attack. The corollary of that duty is the government's power to wage was against those who invade or attack us." (More in defense of the war on terrorism can be found on TOC's Web site.)

But, Hornberger goes on:

For decades libertarians have been arguing that the roots of terrorism lie in the U.S. government's interventionist and imperial foreign policy. . . . Therefore, almost all libertarians have argued that in order to end terrorism in the long term, it's necessary to pull the weed out by the root by putting a stop to the U.S. government's interventionist policy. Yet, since the September 11 attacks, some libertarians have become totally silent about the relationship between U.S. interventionist foreign policy and terrorism.

How shall these splits be explained? Brooks borrows a metaphor from Machiavelli to describe the factions as lions and foxes: "Lions believe in the aggressive use of power. For them the main danger is appeasement. They worry that we will be half-hearted and never really tackle our problems. Foxes, by contrast, believe you have to move cleverly and subtly."

For a different explanation, as well as a more extensive exploration of today's political divisions, see Roger Donway's commentary "Choosing Sides" on TOC's Web site.