The quality of the intelligence 2

[Part 1, to which this is 2, is here]

Onwards then, and onwards. Tim Fisken, down at H.U.H?, after Martin Wisse but not necessarily because of him, one day thought to put forth something like this (see Part 1 for the convention we have adopted in replacing a certain familiar obscenity):

The backing Second International all over again So, I was going to write something about how being part of the pro-war left leads to endorsing strange and repugnant right-wing positions. But I'm too enraged to actually make an argument, and anyway, I think it's a case of, if you have to ask, you'll never know. Anyone who can link approvingly to this interview with Christopher Hitchens just Doesn't Backing Get It. I'm with Vyshinsky here - let's shoot the pro-war left like the mad dogs they are (Ken MacLeod is as enraged as I am, but more coherent with it).

Now, if you click through the links which Tim supplies in this carefully crafted paragraph, you will learn certain things: one of them is that the repugnant right-wing position directly in question is a qualified defence of the death penalty, argued on normblog by Matthew Kramer, and the pro-war leftist thought to be endorsing it, consequently, looks like being me. (Ken MacLeod's enragement, by the way, came as some surprise to me, since what Ken expresses under another of Tim's links seemed quite calm, even though it did register a disagreement between the two of us.)

Anyway, Tim's post got me to thinking about why it is that, along with others on the pro-war left, I'm to be shot like a mad dog. Just for endorsing Matthew Kramer's argument about the death penalty? Except that I haven't. I've just posted it on my blog. I've posted Eve Garrard's arguments about evil, knowing that I have a major disagreement with her account of evil, and I've posted Clive Bradley about movies because he and I had an email discussion in which he expressed a view I hadn't previously much thought about, and so didn't know whether I agreed with. I've posted Andrew Russell's critical reflections about Rugby Union, knowing that Andrew has a more negative view of the game than I do and indeed because I knew that. In all these cases, I should add, I found much of interest and to agree with in what these friends of mine in the event wrote. But there's a principle I'm edging towards here and it's this: publishing something by someone else isn't necessarily endorsing everything - or sometimes anything - of what they say.

Happily for me, however, it turns out that it's not my supposed endorsement of Matthew Kramer's view for which I'm to be shot like a mad dog. In a comment up at the Stoa, Tim Fisken - now ruing the startling incoherence of his own post - starts off with the clarification that he has 'a general dislike of [my] meta-ethical position... [my] particular sort of deontological morality'. Oh no - am I to be shot like a mad dog for my meta-ethical position?

Hang on... it may not be that either which has got Tim angry. It is, rather, that left-wing supporters of the war are too tolerant of right-wing supporters of the war even though the latter hold positions which are incompatible with... left-wing ones. Tim says he's confused but what he's driving at, it seems, is: Can we pro-war leftists still be of the left? If so, then fraternally polite disagreement might be apt. If not - contempt. So that's why we're to be shot like mad dogs (if indeed we still are); it's because we're no longer really of the left and are now contemptible. But, finally, maybe not even that. It may just be that Tim mustn't post 'first thing in the morning after hard nights on the town with IndyMedia activists'.

Call me old-fashioned, call me straight-laced, but I haven't been able to find any good reason at all in Tim's developing reflections why I - or anyone else on the pro-liberation left - should be shot like a mad dog. Not, surely, just for endorsing a qualified defence of capital punishment written by someone else (or in fact not endorsing it); not for my meta-ethical position, real or alleged; not for being tolerant of people some of whose positions I agree with and other of whose positions I don't agree with (which, it occurs to me, is my relationship, not only to right-wing supporters of the Iraq war, but also to left-wing opponents of the Iraq war); and not for Tim's hard nights out with his IndyMedia friends.

Oh, oh - hold on there. Tim's reference to Vyshinsky, he finishes by saying, was only meant as ironic. It is, after all, incompatible with his views on capital punishment.

Yay, we're not really to be shot like mad dogs, we're only to be shot like mad dogs ironically.