Saturday, October 28, 2006

Blogging Heads   [Jonah Goldberg]

Blogger Bill Scher and I entered the bloggingheads thunderdome this week. The  whole thing was plagued with technical problems, interruptions, barking dogs, and the like. Moreover, the conversation got quite odd and then, suddenly, the back-up system we were using (digital video tape) came to a dead stop and so did the conversation. Still, it was an interesting conversation even though it was sometimes hard to be relaxed having it.

What I found most interesting was Scher's insistence about what liberalism is rather than what it should be. This is the conversation  that got cut off.  Scher seems to really believe that liberalism — as actually practiced over, say, the last century — doesn't stand for imposing public policies on democratic majorities that don't want them. Moreover, he holds that liberalism never stands for imposing  the personal moral beliefs of liberals on anybody else. Having not met a smart liberal who actually believes this in a very long time, I was kind of flummoxed by how to respond to it. Though I tried to mention bussing, racial quotas, gay marriage, Title IX, etc etc. I also tried to convince him — to no avail — that liberalism's opposition to polygamy can't simply be a public policy argument about what's good for women, but must to some degree be recognized as a moral value liberals are willing to impose on those who want multiple marital partners simultaneously,  Scher seems like smart and decent guy, but I don't think he's thought through the philosophy of liberalism nearly as much as the tactics of liberalism. A charge, some may recall, I've made of a lot of  self-described Progressives in recent years. 

Anyway, if you can stand at looking at my enormous cranium in hostage-video lighting, check it out and judge for yourself.

10/28 10:17 AMShare