Wheatcroft on Rushdie

Well, it wouldn't be Wednesday if I didn't take a shot at my favorite Tory pundit Geoffrey Wheatcroft, whose otherwise admirable piece on the Rushdie knighthood and its lunatic discontents ends on this rather banal note:

Whether Rushdie really wants to be enlisted as a foot soldier—no, a knight is a member of the equestrian order—in this renewed clash of civilizations is another matter.

Of course, the preceding paragraph includes a swipe at one Daniel Finkelstein, supposed member of the great Anglo-American neoconservative conspiracy, who has rallied to Rushdie's defense, the author's literary talents, or lack thereof, notwithstanding.

Rushdie's desire to publish and live without the threat of state-sponsored murder of himself and his colleagues is "enlistment" enough in any sane movement that calls hysterical, God-bothering fascism by its rightful name.

There was a time, dear reader, when neoconservatives — or perhaps now we should be calling them "first wave neoconservatives" — were all ranged against Rushdie in his hour of crisis and were objectively siding with the Ayatollah Khomenei. It was one thing to oppose Iranian theocracy, they argued, but did a writer of fiction have to go about "inflaming" Muslim opinion, by which of course they meant questioning the dogma of monotheistic belief and thus being rude to Judeo-Christian opinion as well. (To find a contemporary update of this impoverished line of argument, look no further than Dinesh D'Souza's endorsement of Bin Laden's critique of our secular, depraved culture.)

Whatever its intellectual and moral faults — and there are many — neoconservatism has undoubtedly evolved a great deal since the collapse of the cold war. Rather than take petty aim at defenders of heretical speech who happen to have supported a war he passionately despises, Wheatcroft might have done what the illiterate, flag-burners refuse to do and been generous in the face of antagonism. Ah well. As with the lovers of fatwah, some things never change.