Are You Left-Wing or Right-Wing? Hopefully, I’m Honest-and-Accurate Wing

By Barry Rubin

I ran into an older, retired Israeli colleague who is a fine scholar in his field. We hadn’t met for 25 years and agreed to have coffee in a nearby Tel Aviv cafe. In the ensuing conversation I learned some key things about why current  intellectual and political discussion is such a wreck.

The retired professor has read nothing I've written. He is on the left-wing politically, in the historic non-Communist sense, but his work has always been first-rate and untouched by any political slant.  In addition, he has worked amicably with people of different views. And that’s why I was dismayed by his first question: “Are you left-wing or right-wing?”

I sighed, partly because I hate this starting point of dividing people into two categories. A more appropriate question would have been: What do you think of….? To classify someone is to decide in advance to agree or disagree with whatever they say. To ask someone their view makes it possible to listen and think about the quality of their ideas.

A scholar or analyst, whatever his personal views, should do work that is beyond politics. Many years ago I did a scholarly article on American radical professors of the 1930s and 1940s. I was almost unable to find a single case in which anyone had even been accused of politicizing their academic work or classroom teaching. They viewed such behavior as inappropriate and perhaps some were worried about how being outspoken might hurt their careers. At any rate, even during the McCarthy era people were pursued for their organizational memberships and not their classroom behavior. Today, all those old issues of professional ethics have vanished. Professors may spend most of their time being propagandists, throw away scholarly standards, and energetically persecute dissenters.

Back to my cafe meeting. If one puts people into a box all that follows will either be banal agreement or total argument. If this encounter had been in an American context the next hour or so might have been spent on endless consensus on how great or terrible Obama is. Alternatively, the discussion would have been characterized by a heated argument in which each person would not concede that the other had a single valid point to make. Either way, nobody probably would have learned anything new or had to exercise their brain.

So I gave my standard response: "The international issues I deal with have no `left' or `right' wing aspect to them.  The important question is how one analyzes situations, issues, and events. They should be approached as objectively as possible with an honest attempt to be accurate, to produce evidence proving one’s assertions, and to follow where the facts lead.”

Perhaps because he is a pre-Politically Correct person on the left he completely understood my response, and he correctly added an additional point: “And not to conceal things that don’t coincide with your thesis.” A generation ago this is how people thought. You could hold totally different political views but how you wrote history or taught about works of literature was something else entirely. Not everything people said was predictable because they actually thought about things rather than merely applied a preexisting political standpoint. Instead, academics across the political spectrum respected what some call the “scientific method” and I prefer saying are “Enlightenment values.”

I continued, “Figuring out whether or not, say, the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical organization is not a matter of political viewpoint. One’s politics should be expressed by what one wants to achieve, not in one’s analysis of the situation.”

Although I didn’t say so an example I had in mind was this: I would like to see a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. That puts me left of center in Israel. But my good faith assessment of the Palestinian political scene (leadership, ideology, groups, public opinion, options) and of the regional situation is that, given overwhelming evidence, this is impossible to achieve at this time.  The evidence (and there is hardly any actual evidence) offered by those who argue otherwise is not persuasive.

Consequently, I draw policy conclusions from that analysis. No two-state solution is possible at this time. I then go on—I won’t go into this right now—to develop my view of the best policy response to the situation.

Instead, I asked him how he saw this methodological problem in which one's politics determined whether the Brotherhood was radical or moderate. Here’s approximately what he said:

“People on the right slant the facts to fit their political views while people on the left don’t.” After I questioned this he altered his statement to “most people” in either case. I then asked for examples. He gave two and I will take them one at a time.

He continued, “Rightists say that [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is so extreme that you cannot talk to him. He is eager for war to wipe out Israel. You can’t talk to him so therefore war with Iran is necessary.”

That’s a fascinating mixture of points from which I think we can learn a lot. Let’s dissect it.  The opening point-- Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is so extreme that you cannot talk to him—is clearly correct, not wrong at all. What is needed, though, is to separate analysis from policy proposals and always to look for alternatives.

I think these are the two points that people don’t understand and they are destroying any productive discussion of intellectual or political issues at present. So let me repeat them:

1. Analysis should be separate from policy.  If people conflate the idea that the Iranian regime is extremely radical, intransigent, and dangerous and thus no deal can be made--the perception of reality--with what should be done about it, people will reject the correct analysis because they don’t agree with the proposed response. Example: We must lie about Palestinian politics or we will damage the cause of peace; we must lie about revolutionary Islamism or we will provoke a war. Of course, lying is the most likely to hurt peace or lead to creating a crisis that will end in war.
2. When moving from analysis to policy, one should think creatively and not just give a knee-jerk response. There are many alternatives to going to war with Iran. But an accurate assessment of the threat’s existence must be the starting point. Examine each issue and the needed policy response on an individual basis rather than impose an ideological template on it.

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