Academe All-Stars!

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Crooked Timber (again), a lineup that blows any other group blog out of the water: Left2Right. The name is silly in its alphanumeric hipness, but the scholars are serious. Their mission is to understand how the Left can communicate effectively, and get itself taken seriously by the Right.

In the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, many of us have come to believe that the Left must learn how to speak more effectively to ears attuned to the Right. How can we better express our values? Can we learn from conservative critiques of those values? Are there conservative values that we should be more forthright about sharing? "Left2Right" will be a discussion of these and related questions.

Although we have chosen the subtitle "How can the Left get through to the Right?", our view is that the way to get through to people is to listen to them and be willing to learn from them. Many of us identify ourselves with the Left, but others are moderates or independents. What we share is an interest in exploring how American political discourse can get beyond the usual talking points.

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I commend the authors' premise, all the while doubting its prospect of success. I have of late confirmed a lingering suspicion that building bridges is not as wise as raising good, solid fences. Hey, common ground is good if you can get it, but I want to know that there's a place where they can't get to me.

Does that make me a bad liberal? A bad Rawlsian? I don't think so. At least I still need to justify the drawing of the property line. And this, I feel, is where "the Left must learn how to speak more effectively to ears attuned to the Right". Federalism, local government, property rights, these can all be bulwarks against the advancing (red) tide.

Of course, liberal rhetoric must be changed to fit these righteous times, not only to acommodate conservatives, but to challenge them. I agree wholehearledly with Elizabeth Anderson.

How can the Left get through to the Right on matters of principle? First, by recalling the inspiring principles of human dignity, equality, and democracy that underwrite liberalism's greatest achievements.
[...]
How can the Left get through to the Right in the face of its mass mobilization of individual and group antipathies? By standing up for ourselves, proudly defending our positions, ideals, and identities, and exposing the Right's tactics for what they are: ugly, nasty, small-minded bigotry.

But in the ensuing call for deliberative democracy, I am again wary (and weary). Why do we feel this masochistic need to deliberate—all of us together—about everything? We can't all get along; we've settle that. Can't we let ourselves be instead?