News-Record.com

I was a bit surprised to open my News & Record Ideas section yesterday morning and see that freelance columnist Charles Davenport was accusing me of making stuff up. (The N&R doesn't generally post freelancers' columns, but you can read this one on Davenport's site.)

The full column has a host of problems, but to save time I'll address only the part where Davenport lies about my work (specifically, my review of Michelle Goldberg's book "Kingdom Coming"). Fortunately for those of us who are busy, he wastes no time, offering up this opening paragraph:

A recent spate of articles in these pages is a collective cry of "Wolf!" over the specter of a lamb. The reviewers and reporters in question -- their judgment evidently impaired by ideology -- desire that the rest of us furrow our brows, wring our hands and dialogue feverishly about a new menace rising in our midst: the evangelical Christian.

For those of you who are less attuned to Western culture than my 5-year-old son, the fable of the boy who cried "Wolf!" is about a kid who lied. Whether he did so to amuse himself or because he was just practicing or because he was lonely and wanted a little company isn't exactly clear. But he definitely lied.

Now, unless I'm mistaken, there are only two possible interpretations of what Davenport has written. Either he didn't understand that "crying wolf" means lying, or he has accused me of lying. For the record, he's wrong either way.

UPDATE (10/24): Davenport's response arrives. It says:

Mr. Alexander,

It takes a very active imagination to conclude, based on my opening
paragraph, that I accused you of lying. In common usage, "crying wolf"
simply means creating undue alarm and hysteria--which is precisely what your review did. "Crying wolf" is a vernacular expression that I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood.

Although I believe you misrepresented Christian conservatives, I did not accuse you of lying. Therefore, no apology is forthcoming.

Cordially,

Charles

Let's unpack that, shall we?

It takes a very active imagination to conclude, based on my opening paragraph, that I accused you of lying. (That paragraph is reproduced higher up in this post for those of you following alone at home.)

He falsely accuses me of crying wolf -- more on the "falsely" in a moment. He implies, although in fairness he does not explicitly claim, that crying wolf and lying are different. He claims, on the basis of exactly zero evidence and without any sort of explanation, that my ideology has impaired my judgment. (He never actually says what he thinks that ideology is, either.) And, finally, he claims that I have cast "the evangelical Christian" as a "new menace," rather than a specific subset of evangelical Christians -- whom I clearly identify in the review as adhering to a specific and identifiable piece of ideology with respect to the U.S. Constitution. (More on this last point in a moment, as well.)

In common usage, "crying wolf" simply means creating undue alarm and hysteria -- which is precisely what your review did. "Crying wolf" is a vernacular expression that I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood.

Indeed, "crying wolf" is understood as raising unnecessary alarm, and I'm quite sure that most N&R readers understood it in that way. But it is also properly understood as lying to do so. Follow the links to the various versions of the fable in my original post; you'll see that point made repeatedly. The only variation is the reason for the lie.

I'm quite sure most N&R readers understood that, too. (Indeed, in the comments to this post, Jim Wilson, who agrees with me about nothing and believes I'm an arrogant ass besides, grants me this point.)

I would also invite Davenport to point to any examples of "alarm" or "hysteria," due or undue, that my review "created."

Although I believe you misrepresented Christian conservatives, I did not accuse you of lying.

The fact that you believe I misrepresented "Christian conservatives" does not make it true. As my review clearly shows, and as I demonstrated above, I did no such thing. I didn't "misrepresent Christian conservatives," I accurately represented a particular subset of them (and more on THAT, as well, in just a bit). Perhaps that's what's really bothering Davenport. I don't know.

Therefore, no apology is forthcoming.

Translation: "Even though, if one examines the evidence in the light most favorable to me, I have been caught misunderstanding and thus misusing an expression in a way that unfairly casts Alexander's work in a bad light, I'm not going to apologize."

Thus, on the basis of the available evidence we may logically conclude 1) that I have correctly interpreted Davenport's writing; 2) that I'm not imagining squat; and 3) that Davenport, in defending the indefensible, goes so far as to repeat one of his original mischaracterizations of my work.

It is a particularly noxious type of mischaracterization known as the straw-man argument. In a straw-man argument, Person A accuses Person B of saying something B never actually said, then criticizes him for it. In this particular case, among other problems, Davenport accused me of inaccurately describing all evangelical Christians, when, as noted above, I accurately described a specific subset of evangelical Christians.

This type of argument is bad enough when it's inadvertent. But it's particularly noxious when it's intentional because of the contempt it shows for both the person with whom one is arguing and any audience to the argument: It is saying, in effect, I'm going to lie about what this guy said because I think both he and the audience are too stupid to catch me. I think Davenport's use of the technique is intentional, inasmuch as even when called out on it, he refuses to disavow, let alone apologize for, his use of it.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Now, then, to elaborate just a bit on the points I raised above.

Spagnola denies that the problems identified, and documented, in the book exist. He's factually, objectively wrong (but would that wishing made it so). Having followed the trend myself for a decade or so, having read almost all her publicly available original sources myself and having independent knowledge of some of the events described in the book, I am confident that the individual events recorded in the book happened pretty much as Goldberg describes them.

Does that prove that she is correct in her conclusions? I believe that it does, and here's why.

Like Gaul, all journalism can be divided into three parts: event stories; pattern stories, which examine connections between events; and system stories, which examine conditions that give rise to patterns. Into each reporter's life a few event stories must fall, some of them quite entertaining, inspiring, enlightening, enriching and/or important. But for most of the past quarter-century, pattern stories and system stories are where I've eaten, professionally speaking. I am logical and analytical by nature, and that's the approach I've taken to much of my journalism, whether it involved crunching numbers from government databases or discerning patterns among otherwise-apparently-unrelated traffic accidents.

And, although pattern and system stories tend to carry a higher degree of difficulty than event stories, I'm good at them. I'm occasionally wrong, but not often and not by much. I wouldn't have lasted this long in this business had it been otherwise.

On the basis, then, of my independent knowledge and research regarding much of what Goldberg writes about, and on the basis of my confidence in my analytical abilities, I have concluded that Goldberg has, if anything, understated the threat posted by the trend about which she writes.

You can disagree with my review of Goldberg's book all you like. It's still a free country. But if you're going to expect me to take your criticsm seriously, you are obliged to consider the same data she did and then explain exactly how my analysis is flawed or create your own analysis that is demonstrably superior. Simply crying "undue hysteria" don't feed the bulldog. Claiming that you don't have to read the book to "know" that it is hysterical is laughable. And if my saying so leads you to think me arrogant and one of the worst parts of the N&R, to paraphrase Spagnola, I can live with that.

I take being correct seriously, and if I really am wrong, I welcome correction. I realize that some commenters doubt this, but it's true.
But if you're going to come onto the pages of my newspaper or my blog and call me wrong, and be personally insulting while doing so, then, as the kids say, you had better come correct or you can expect pushback, to put it politely.

One final point: Commenter Jim Wilson claims that the problems in the book differ, in degree and in kind, from the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. In degree, at least to this point, that's absolutely true, and thank God for it. But in kind? I'm with Goldberg on that question, so I'll give her the last word on it. From the book's afterword, titled "Solidarity":

One way to understand the hatreds tearing up the world today is as a war between East and West, Christianity and Dar El Islam. But the schema ignores the civil wars within both houses, and the alliances across spiritual and geographic lines. At a time when religious extremists seem everywhere ascendant, I see a different struggle, one between modernity, humanism, reason, and progress on one hand, and fundamentalism, tribalism, Puritanism and obscurantism on the other. Liberals the world over are fighting religious tyranny.

In the summer of 2005, I interviewed Marjane Satrapi, an Iranian graphic novelist whose books, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, chronicle her childhood during the revolution that instituted religious rule. Part of a cosmopolitan, politically engaged family, Satrapi captures their terrified disbelief as theocrats obsessed with sex and death took over Iran. I thought secularists in America might be feeling some faint shadow of that same horror, but I was reluctant to make comparisons between Iran's despotic mullahs and our Christian nationalists, because I didn't want to trivialize her country's exponentially greater suffering. Satrapi had no such qualms. "They are the same!" she said over the phone from Paris, before spontaneously launching into a plea for solidarity among all enemies of dundamentalism. "The secular people, we have no country. We the people -- all the secular people who are looking for freedom -- we have to keep together. We are international as they" -- the zealots of all religions -- "are international."

Indeed they are. The alliance between Christian Zionists and the most fanatical Israeli settlers is well-known. Less remarked upon is the way American evangelicals have made common cause at the United Nations against international accords protecting women's and children's rights. Under [President George W.] Bush, U.S. delegations to United Nations conferences mimic the lineup at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference: the group sent to a 2002 U.N. summit on children included Concerned Women for America's Janice Crouse; Paul Bonicelli, dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College; and John Klink, a former advisor to the Vatican. They worked with delegates from authoritarian Islam countries to scuttle a reference to "reproductive health services" in the declaration that came out of the meeting. In a story headlined, "Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby U.N.," The Washington Post wrote of U.S. and Iranian officials huddled together during coffee breaks, presumably plotting strategy. (In 2005, Bonicelli was appointed to oversee the U.S. Agency for Internatinoal Development's democracy and government programs.)

According to the Post, partnering with conservative Muslims "provided the administration an opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many cultural values with Islam." It quoted an American official noting, "We have tried to point out there are some areas of agreement between [us] and a lot of Islamic countries on these social issues."

* * *

The things so many Islamic fundamentalists hate about the West -- its sexual openness, its art, the possibilities it offers for escaping the bonds of family and religion, for inventing one's own life -- are what the Christian nationalists hate as well. And so, in a final grotesque irony, we come full circle and see defenders of American chauvinism speaking the language of anti-American radicals. At another U.N. meeting, this one in March 2005, Janice Crouse made the connection pointedly.

Held to review the progress made since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, the gathering offered another opportunity for the administration to pack its delegation with people like Christian radio broadcaster Janet Parshall (who, incidentally, was the narrator of David Balsiger's fawning documentary, George W. Bush: Faith in the White House). Crouse wasn't an official part of the team this time, but toward the end of hte conference, she gave a talk at the United Nations nongovernmental organization building about how feminism and "sexual liberation" have been an "unmitigated disaster" for women. ...

The blatancy of her appeal to patriarchy surprised me, because in speaking to American audiences Christian nationalists usually imitate the language of female empowerment. What shocked me, though, were Crouse's comments during the Q&A following her performance. A Turkish woman in a head scarf stood up and declared that American culture and communism are "the same," because both are colonialist forces that assault traditional norms. And amazingly, Janice Crouse agreed.

"I think you're very much on target when you say that modern-day feminism is colonialism in disguise," she said. "I get very short-tempered with American feminists today, because I see much of what they emphasize as importing decadent Western culture into third world nations." Frantz Fanon -- or Osama bin Laden -- couldn't have said it better. The crowd applauded.

This is what we are up against. Christian nationalists worship a nostalgic vision of America, but they despise the country that actually exists -- its looseness, its decadence, its maddening lack of absolutes.

Writing just after September 11, Salman Rushdie eviscerated those on the left who rationalized the terrorist attacks as a regrettable explosion of understandable third world rage: "The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings," he wrote. "Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multiparty political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women's rights, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, beardlessness, evolution theory, sex." Christian nationalists have no problem with beardlessness, but except for that, Rushdie could have been describing them.

It makes no sense to fight religious authoritarianism abroad while letting it take over at home. The grinding, brutal war between modern and medieval values has spread chaos, fear, and misery across our poor planet. Far worse than the conflicts we're experiencing today, however, would be a world torn between competing fundamentalisms. Our side, America's side, must be the side of freedom and Enlightenment, of liberation from stale constricting dogmas. It must be the side that elevates reason above the commands of holy books and human solidarity above religious supremacism. Otherwise, God help us all.