A few months ago, I linked to an interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian philosopher who had been imprisoned by the Iranian government for the radically subversive act of critical thought. Jahanbegloo has been released . . . but he is by no means a free man. Upon his release, he gave an interview denouncing much of his previous work and claiming that he had been inadvertantly playing into the hands of foreign interests, risking the overthrow of Iran's regime. For the privilege of giving this humiliating press conference, Jahanbegloo had to post as bail his house as well as his mother's house.
And, apparently, this repression isn't an isolated incident.
The trials of Ramin Jahanbegloo attest to the fact that we who enjoy a relative degree of intellectual and expressive freedom should by no means take it for granted. Too often, western intellectuals, in raising a legitimate critique of the failures of liberalism, forget its advantages. I'm not saying liberal democracy=intellectual freedom (McCarthyism taught us that). But I am saying that where intellectual freedom exists, be it in a democracy, monarchy, wherever, it must be protected and it must be practiced. If we fail to do so, we're the ones putting our houses up for bail.
Posted by pjaussen at September 6, 2006 08:10 AM | TrackBackI knew you were a hawk.
Posted by: JosiahQ at September 6, 2006 03:18 PMI'd say crow: I stand at the sidelines and try to bitch intelligently. And ocasionally steal a scrap when the hawks and the doves aren't looking.
Posted by: paul at September 6, 2006 05:29 PMOH, and BTW, while McCarthyism taught us that a liberal democracy doesn't necessarily equal intellectual freedom (at least in the most expansive sense) were you a betting man (and I know you are) you're pretty much sitting on a made hand if you're betting that a liberal democracy is going to give you intellectual freedom, no?
So c'mon. Just say it. Living in an Islamist country aint all that appealing. This will not make you unintelligent or a Hawk. I promise.
Posted by: JosiahQ at September 11, 2006 07:09 PMIf that's all you're trying to get me to say, then no, living in an Islamist country aint all that appealing to me. But I've been around enough conservative, fundamentalist people (as I know you have) to know that there are a lot of people who would find an islamist country, or a dutch reformed country, or a "fill-in-your-favorite ideology" country appealing. And we can't get away with just lumping all of those types together as "enemies of civilization." The problem is much more basic and gnarly than that.
In fact, I would argue that the difference between the liberal democracy and the reactionary theocracy, totalitarian regime, what have you, is precisely the way they deal with human freedom. Liberal democracies mediated freedom thru many institutions--state, private industry, churches, education, civic services, etc.--all of which, in theory, are allowable because they provide a space for freedom to flex its wings, even change the society, without doing it in ways that completely disrupt the social fabric. Totalitarianism substitutes all of these for one, at best two, institutions: the State or, as in Iran, the Church/State. This substitution comes from a suspicion and fear of human freedom and its volatility.
What does all of this mean? I think what it means is that liberal democracies, for all of their rhetoric of wholeness (terms like "freedom of speech," etc.) are ultimately messy, shifting places, which make you feel like you're on the edge of dissolution but, somehow, it stays together (most of the time). Totalitarian regimes, on the other hand, keep a lock on things because that feeling that everything is going to explode is terrifying. The question, and this is what Jahanbegloo was trying to answer pre-captivity and recantation, is which is more reflective of human beings? I.e., can we reclaim some human universality without making that universality simply an excuse to wipe out everyone who doesn't fit it?
Though I can't solve this problem, I think it hides a real paradox, namely, that any human universality has to take into account that we are simultaneously democrats and totalitarians, we want freedom just as much as we want solidity. And that aint too appealing either.
Posted by: paul at September 12, 2006 09:31 AM