"On the right, which is to say the wrong, side of every issue"

"Being 'borked' by the likes of Senator Kennedy [during confirmation hearings for appointment by GW to the federally funded U.S. Institute of Peace] as 'someone not committed to bridging differences' remains painful," says historian Daniel Pipes -- whose point is that you can't bridge differences until you define them -- in a Harvard Magazine profile:

How does it happen that this gentle-voiced scholar has become so controversial? Partly, of course, it comes with the territory: in an academic field known for heated, bare-knuckled controversy, Pipes, as a Jewish conservative working from the outside, has chosen to make himself one of the most vehement contributors, finding himself on the right, which is to say the wrong, side of every issue -- at least in the eyes of much of the press and academia. And, not least, he is often tarred with the catchall brush of misattribution—accused of saying what he hasn't. Despite his endlessly repeated mantra—"Militant Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution"—he is charged with being an Islamophobe.

For such people, words mean what they are supposed to mean. Pipes objects to the phrase "war on terrorism," for example. "Terrorism is a tactic," he says. "You don't go to war against a tactic. We must be specific: we are at war with militant Islam, not 'terrorism.'" Pipes hammered at this point for almost three years. Recently, the 9/11 Commission issued its report and virtually echoed his words. The enemy, it said, is "Islamist terrorism . . . not just 'terrorism,' some generic evil."

"I have the simple politics of a truck driver, not the complex ones of an academic. My viewpoint is not congenial with institutions of higher learning," says the former Ivy League scholar, who slipped the surly bonds of the ivory tower to found and direct his own think tank, Middle East Forum.  But while critics project their own fascistic tendencies upon Pipes, supporter Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University, cuts to the chase:

"Who is better placed to act as a bridge than the scholar of Islam?" and continued, "Responding to criticism or implied criticism with threats is not a convincing way in which to present a counter-argument."

"Though neutral on Islam," [says Pipes]. "I take a strong stand on Islamism, which I see as very different . . . Whereas the closest parallels to Islam are Judaism and Christianity, those closest to Islamism are other radical utopian 'isms,' namely fascism and Marxism-Leninism.

Pipes's "contrarian" conservatism is in the genes.  His father is the great academic anti-communist cold warrior Richard Pipes:

. . . head of President Ford's Team B (formed to evaluate the CIA's estimates of Soviet nuclear intentions) and Soviet policy adviser to President Reagan, was cursed as a "wretched anti-Sovietist" by Pravda --and pretty well marginalized at Harvard for his politics.

The younger Pipes experienced a similar marginalization by the Harvard community as an undergrad during the politically turbulent (aren't they all?) sixties:

Harvard, he feels, let him down. "I didn't change," he says. "I entered one university, a traditional one, and graduated from something grotesquely different." No "neocon" he: "I was always a conservative; it's just that, as my father said, politics didn't mean that much to me. But by 1968, politics had become dominant. In April '69, my sophomore year, came the occupation of University Hall, which was a searing event, an event which dominated all our lives. I have chilling memories of that entire period, and of being always among the very few, swimming against the tide. Those decisions of whether or not to go to meals and class es we'd paid for, and being in a very small minority, caused me to ask myself all the time, 'What's wrong with me? Why am I not in agreement with everyone else?' And those endless arguments: before the University Hall bust, I had a social life with people I disagreed with. After that, it just wasn't possible, the rifts were too deep. I found myself rather isolated."

We felt something of that marginalization of our views during three years at the Design School a few years back.  Is the occupation of University Hall in 1969 perhaps the bitter, weedy root of the blind hatred that infests our national bluestate/red state politics?

Update:  Hindrocket of PowerLine is gloomy about teaching old dogs new tricks:

Many of those who "marginalized" Richard Pipes for his anti-Communism are still around. It would be nice to think that a few of them, at least, learned a lesson from the collapse of the Russian Empire and the downfall of socialism generally. But most, I suspect, are just as anti-American today, when the enemy is militant Islam, as they were 25 years ago, when the enemy was Communism, and just as scornful of Daniel Pipes as they were of his father.

But help is on the way.  As we blogged here, it's only a matter of time.

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[goomp]

Secular liberals are frightened. They have devised a view of the human codition that is at odds with animal nature. They feel that they are gods who should be able to command the actions of humans. They can not, and without a God to turn to they become irrational and jabber that it is the Judeo-Christian beliefs that they have abandoned that are the source of mankind's troubles