An exchange (so to speak) with David Frum on whether evil can be ended

I sent the recent post on how the neocons went along with Bush’s Iraq disaster to Richard Perle and David Frum, with this note:

Gentlemen:

I wrote in 2006: “A man who says there can be an end of evil has disqualified himself from participation in politics, pending his renunciation of such dangerous nonsense.”

Do you still believe, as per the title of your book, that there can be an end to evil? Or do you now believe that this idea is wrong?

Regards,
Lawrence Auster

David Frum replied:

Since I’m disqualified from participation, why waste time on me?
df

I replied:

First, I didn’t say that a person who believes that there can be an end of evil is disqualified from replying to an e-mail. I said he is disqualified from participating in politics.

Second, in all seriousness, I was asking if you have re-qualified yourself. Over the last couple of years you have admitted that you’ve been wrong on a couple of large issues. So I was asking you if you had also re-thought the idea, contained in the title of your book, that there could be “an end to evil.” Or do you still believe that there can be an end to evil?

By the way, your reply to me was not a serious reply. Instead of responding on the substance of the point, you tried to dismiss it with a debater’s trick. It would be interesting to get a substantive reply from you.

David Frum replied:

It’s not a debater’s trick. I’m pointing out the logical absurdity of your note, which roughly translated, reads as follows

Dear Sir,

I think what you have to say is valueless. Please respond.

etc.

I’m not offended, I’ve actually come quite to appreciate your door-banging manner, but please do excuse me when I say that however valueless it may be to others, my time & energy remain from my own point of view, scarce and dwindling resources.

David Frum

ps—to anticipate the question, this you may post if you wish.

[NOTE: Mr. Frum’s reference is to an earlier exchange between us on immigration which I asked his permission to post at VFR and he declined.]

LA replies:

Haha. Ok. I’ll take that in the good spirit in which it was rendered.

However, to intrude on your dwindling time and resources once again, my substantive point stands, and is not logically absurd. I didn’t say that a person who says there can be an end of evil was incapable of logical thought. I said that you and Perle had enunciated a utopian position that would, or ought to, disqualify any person from being taken seriously in politics, “pending his renunciation of such dangerous nonsense.” So I have not consigned you to the outer darkness. I am seriously asking you, given that you’ve admitted other mistakes you have made, such as believing that the Muslim world could be democratized, whether you have also had second thoughts on whether there can be an end of evil.

LA continues:

On further thought, it’s not that my question is logically absurd, but that it is putting you on the spot in a way that many people would normally resent. So, I’ll remove the “disqualified from politics” part, thus removing the inquisitorial aspect of my query, and simply ask you, do you still believe that there can be an end of evil? And if not, why not?

Evidently, Mr. Frum’s decreasing store of time and energy (he’s 48 years old) made it impossible for him to reply.

- end of initial entry -

David Friedman writes:

Mr. Auster, I believe you have gone overboard on the neo-con thing again. I also happen to agree that you approached David Frum in a way that encouraged him to avoid you.

I do not believe that David Frum or Richard Perle believe that there is an end to evil. People who eat a low fat diet and a lot of non-fat foods similarly do not believe there is an end to fat. [LA replies: But if they wrote a book called An End To Fat, that would clearly suggest that they do believe that there is an end to fat.] How the war on terror could be won is not a pipe dream—it is a policy task and they are policy wonks. How to win a war on terror or fat foods must always assume the chance of victory. The reality will always remain and your nit-picking contention that they harbor a wrong headed point of view that goes beyond the pale of reason is simply not fair-minded. Bush can be described as too idealistic, too willing to believe that everyone can find freedom and democracy appealing. And yet, if you examine Bush’s statements, he did not say that everyone wants democracy—he said that everyone yearns for freedom and it is a universal goal. Liberal freedoms are not universally sought—Bush is wrong, you are right. “Too willing to give freedom a shot in the Middle East” is not the worst tendency in the world and it is one that is coupled with a realistic understanding that the status quo offered dangers.

The war in Iraq stands as the right thing to do even if all the intellectual justifications do not fit and some may have missed the mark entirely.

Finally, your problem with neo-cons is simply too heated. Perhaps you could be grateful that some liberals have joined in common cause with some conservative ideals and the world is the better for it. I would surely prefer the neo-cons as they are instead of Orthodox liberals.

LA replies:

Well, this sounds like the same conversation we had years ago. You don’t agree with my criticism of the neocons or think it has any value; I disagree with them on first principles, and you call that nit-picking. So we just don’t have common ground on this issue. Your telling me that I shouldn’t criticize neocons or that I’ve gone overboard against them again (again? how could it be again, since my criticism of them is never ceasing?), would be like your writing to a neocon and telling him he shouldn’t criticize liberals.

January 6

David Frum replies:

OK, very civilly put.

There is a too long backstory to the business, but one short answer to the question is that I (obviously unwisely) assumed that that word “evil” in the title of the book would be read contextually—ie, to refer to the evil of Islamic terrorism and the Islamic extremism that spawns terrorism. I assumed that a book subtitled “How to Win the War on Terror” would not be read to promise to offer guidance on how to extirpate all possible evils from the hearts of human beings. Child abuse, malicious spite, and the 7 deadly sins generally will continue long after Islamic terrorism has vanished into the dark chapters of human history.

LA replies:

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I didn’t read the title as meaning that you thought that all human evil and sin could be literally ended, but that you thought, or seemed to be saying, that all human evil of the geo-political kind could be ended.

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

It took Mr. Frum a couple of extra emails from you, plus a retraction (even after he said he wasn’t offended), before he would make a reply.

I asked myself, why did he focus on that word evil—the end of, no less? Perhaps it was a reference to President Reagan’s genuine concern about the evil Communist empire. Or it was the axis of evil that was coined, I believe, by Frum, to get this whole ball rolling. Perhaps it was that since the evil that Reagan identified—Communism—was indeed defeated, all other (geo-political) evils can also be dealt with in one blow. [LA replies: that could well be part of it, since, as a result of the fall of the USSR, the neocons, like the people of Babel, began to believe that nothing was impossible to them.]

Reagan used evil sincerely and fearfully. I think Frum et al. are using it as a sound bite, a tactic to get people excited and to reference the great period of Cold War success led by Reagan to combat a phenomenon that he genuinely thought was destroying the world. I don’t think Frum has this concept of evil.

If he did, he would notice the very different nature of Islam. Unlike Communism (or even Nazism), it has survived, and to some extent, flourished for 1,400 years. It is more than an ideology, more than terrorism, and more than a sound bite.

If he and his company had really taken each situation in its context, he would never have declared the “end of evil” in the context of Islamic terrorism. Maybe the end of evil Islamic terrorism.

So, I think his purpose is not genuine. I think he is using historical and political references to get his message across—let’s get evil out of our way. I think in neocon speak it means let’s have war and establish democracies the world over.

By the way, I don’t think Reagan ever said that there would be an end to evil (even of the geo-political kind). He just said that we had stop the evil Communist empire.

So, I think you are right to put him to task. And I think he was being disingenuous. Or perhaps it is really the best he can do.

Sorry for the lengthy email. I think I’m beginning to learn something about neocons (or maybe just Frum—who by the way is Canadian).

LA replies:

I think Kidist’s interpretation is very insightful. Frum and Perle didn’t literally mean that America could end all geo-political evil. Rather, they were using that (to them) appealing phrase to justify and sell an unending campaign to impose American (read neocon) ideals on the world.

At the same time, to write a book with the title, “An End of Evil,” is to spread the infinitely mischievous notion that an end of evil is possible. Frum and Perle have to take responsibility for that, as they also have to take responsibility for their actual underlying policy of trying to impose on the entire world the neocon ideology, i.e., “All people desire freedom, all people are ready for freedom, all people deserve freedom, and the U.S. has to give it to them via global U.S. hegemony.”

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Frum became an American citizen in 2007.

Also, I thank Kidist for correctly capitalizing Communism, which, in some Orwellian reversal (“communism is spelled lower-case, communism has always been spelled lower-case”), almost everyone has stopped doing in the last few years.

David Friedman replies to LA:

No that is simply wrong. It is fine to criticize neocons and I believe their position deserves a good deal of criticism. Bush’s idealism—inherited from neocons and non-neocons alike—can easily be questioned.

But you are not here to show how such thinking is pie in the sky. You are here to tell David Frum that such a position cannot see the light of day in a public debate and you want his head on a platter. This is the precise call from the anti-war Left concerning the same neocons and when it comes from them, it is tinged with a strong flavor of anti-Semitism.

You tend to take the “correct” (I have met with Caroline Glick and we both agree with her) stand on Israel and yet present this hyper-critical view of people on the Jewish right who support force against the terror states. Therefore note that Caroline Glick has a very different criticism of US action in Iraq than you.

Introducing “democracy” into downtown Baghdad is a bold move and one in which the neocons predicted would bring long term benefits and short-term difficulty. It is costly and controversial and it is a big problem. Given the threat, they figured it was a good way to go and I have large agreement with the decision and the assessment of the risk.

You have spent a good deal of time attacking David Frum, Charles Krauthammer and John Podhoretz with the same kind of emotion one might spend on Obama and his allies. Your point that there are those who want surrender and socialism directly and openly and there are those who want it slowly and indirectly—and I agree with your assessment.

Helping to bring all neo-cons to the right side of the divide can take a bit more than a call to take off their heads. Similarly, you turn off admirers of your blog such as myself when you give David Frum an easy opportunity to run away instead of engage you in conversation. If he runs—it needs to be his fault and not yours.

LA replies:

I disagree with several of Mr. Friedman’s points but don’t have time to reply now.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2009 10:21 PM | Send