good criticism

I’m not in the business of educating whippersnappers—at least not online. (I’ve got a life, you know, and it happens to have lots of young people in it.)

This commenter at Matthew Yglesias’s site, however, is very interested in taking the fight to the whippersnappers. He takes exception to Yglesias’s habit of staking out the proper “progressive” line and claiming (for it, and for himself) the moral high ground … without ever backing it up [e.a.]:

[Y]ou utterly void your argument of any intellectual content when you restort to logical fallacies — in this case, using ad hominem semantics to tar the opposing argument. When you say, “requires people to temper the natural human instinct toward moralistic posturing” you make two ad hominem attacks on your opponent, 1) arbitrarily labeling opposition to international bad actors as mere “posturing” without substantive value (you give no rational argument why this is should be so a priori or otherwise; 2) that your opponents must be resorting to these actions out of “intemperate instincts” rather than on rational grounds - again you give no argument (other than a vain implication of false consciousness). These tendentious characterizations of your opponent’s position give the impression that you have little interest or confidence in arguing the issue on the actual merits.

Your argument claims that your position is moral because the outcome is moral, but you specifically void your position of any morality or rationality when you insist that opposing wrongs is not moral but mere posturing. Perhaps opposition to a bad actor must be curtailed for realistic reasons, but this does not make your silence or the bad act thereby good, merely an unfortunate, unavoidable, but immoral reality.

You also make a generic implied assertion which is demonstrably false historically, that “maintaining a good relationship” will inexorably or even predominantly lead to cooperation and commerce and away from violent conflict. These kinds of things need to be decided case-by-case, on the merits, and can never be decided with certainty. Taking a stand, symbolically, diplomatically, or economically, is not always mutually exclusive with “maintaining a good relationship.” Depending upon its effects on opposing regimes, it may or may not be effective, while “maintaining a good relationship” may or may not turn out to incite conflict more directly. Likewise military intervention is sometimes the path to the least overall violence. It depends.

Since these outcomes cannot be known — either way — in advance, it is wise to be cautious. But your dogmatism on which choices are generally optimal regardless of context, made plain by your unwillingness to state your argument merely in rational terms, totally ignores the fact that there are also moral costs, and often long-term costs to “peace and commerce”, to saying and doing nothing (be it symbolic, diplomatic, economic, or even military).

At least try to state your argument in ways that appeal more directly to reason and less to tendentious semantics.

But Samantha Power reviewed Yglesias’s book, so he must be a very important thinker, right?

Maybe!

Not to get all Gawkerish and conspiratorial about it, but one hand washes the other inside the Beltway, too—even if one hand belongs to a mere blogger and the other to a Harvard professor and journalist. Ms. Power might merely have been acknowledging Yglesias’s defense of her after her “Hillary is a monster” remark was dutifully reported by The Scotsman.

Just sayin’!