Content area
Full Text
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Ann Coulter
Crown Forum, 2003
There is a dilemma that bedevils the scholar. Intellectual discourse most often prefers a less-than-strident, sometimes even equivocal, presentation of arguments, precisely because, at least as ideally conceived, this makes possible the nuanced consideration of ideas. It invites discussion by leaving open the possibility that on a number of things "reasonable people can differ." And it encourages a context in which ideas of all kinds can be put forward without having reason to anticipate that the exchange will turn into an ad hominem slugfest.
Civility among the proponents of differing ideas is also important because the world is so deeply divided, as at most times in history it has been, and because the divisions portend to become vastly deeper in the decades ahead as the economic displacement caused by globalization and ever-advancing technology polarizes the world.
At the same time, there is much to be said for an honest, straightforward telling of something "as it is." This is what Robert A. Taft had in mind when he said that "tact is dishonesty." A fully honest presentation will often be strident, not because of gratuitous slurs upon an opponent, but because the subject-matter itself is unappealing. In that context, there is merely the finest line between an acceptable stridency and a lack of civility.
In Treason, Ann Coulter never withholds a punch. She gives her readers the "red meat" they long for. She plainly charges American "liberals" with hatred for their country and treachery toward it. One is tempted to think of it as a lack of civility. But most of what she says differs only in tone from what scholars speak of more genteelly when they...