Gallowglass

Bah humbug

It may just be crankiness on my part, but this article by Josh Chafetz gets on my nerves. It’s got all the silliness and tendentiousness of a mediocre-to-middling student debater, who isn’t quite sure of his case, and hopes that that self-righteousness and bluster will paper over the weak spots. Or perhaps it’s less an exercise in Oxford Union roundhousing than a maiden political speech: its mix of bombast, preening and empty rhetoric is almost Gladstonian in scope. See the Grand Old Man’s notorious exercise in humbug, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East for comparison; it too expresses moral fervor on behalf of peoples very far away, who are primarily interesting insofar as they illustrate an abstract point. There’s an argument to be made that the US was right in going to war; Chavetz isn’t interested in making it. This is an exercise in grandstanding pure and simple. It drips with smugness.

Update: I posted at 1.30 am last night after 90 minutes spent in voicemail hell trying to book a plane ticket, so my language may have been a wee bit intemperate. Still, the basic point stands: the ratio of self-satisfaction to argument in the piece is overwhelmingly lopsided. Chafetz responds to criticism this morning (I suspect he’s primarily addressing an equally grumpy post by Julian Sanchez), but there are problems in his reply too. The Oxbloggers are nice guys and all, but if they want their democracy project to be taken seriously, they need to moderate their triumphalism and be a lot more self-critical.