I'm a trigger-happy deleter, so it doesn't bother me to see silicon-wasting flame wars on PEN-L. I do think the politics underlying this hostility deserves consideration, though. Flame wars rage all over the net for a variety of reasons, and I think many of them are reproduced here, but PEN-L offers an additional inducement: the dysfunctional symbiosis between political and intellectual commitments on the left. The way most leftists see it, you have an analysis of the world and from that you deduce your politics. Therefore an intellectual dispute is necessarily a political dispute, exposing the incompatability between your values and someone else's. Thus, for instance, how you understand the territorial conflicts between precolumbian inhabitants of north america reveals the depth and nature of your commitment to indigenous land claims today, and more fundamentally, whether you are truly in solidarity with exploited native peoples (one side) or in favor of rational, cosmopolitan conflict resolution (other side). (I may not have these positions quite right, but I think the underlying point is true.) This is too bad, since there will never be intellectual agreement on the left, nor should there be. The world is too complex and our understanding too fragmentary; we will always need multiple points of view and continuing dialog. The tragedy is that these intellectual differences obstruct the broader unity we need to be politically effective. For what it's worth, let me suggest a different model. For me, being on the left means being motivated by a set of core values--the three classics, liberty, equality, and solidarity, and a fourth, collective action to achieve public goods. Anyone else who truly cares about all of these is in some sense my ally, even though they might weigh them differently in different situations. Intellectual effort is about trying to figure out a strategy to change the world to make it freer, more equal, etc. Every one of my theoretical ideas could be shattered by argument or experience, and I would feel the need to rethink my positions; in fact, I would like to believe that I am ready at any moment to rethink them if need be. None of this affects the values that place me on the left, however, and determine what types of struggles I support or oppose. Intellectual analysis, for me, is about how; political commitment is rooted in why. There--got that off my chest. Peter Dorman
