I’d also say that most, though not all, of the very small number of Euston signatories who oppose the war downplay their opposition, or fail to follow through on some of its implications, particularly when it comes to thinking about who or what is putting liberalism in the greatest jeopardy at this historical juncture. From the outside, that appears to me like a “social contract” to avoid intramural argument even when philosophically that argument seems to be both required and imperative. Or to avoid resetting the manifestistas’ priority list so that the White House becomes at least one of the major targets of the group’s critique, if not the major target, and so on.

He was interviewed on the Al Franken Show yesterday and said that the good folks, especially religious folks, have to be the ones to reconcile everybody and bring a stop to the rancor. He said that the good folks in both major parties had to move to the center and concentrate on agreements. But, he really did not mean it.

Franken asked him if he blamed the current administration for most of the current nastiness. Danforth said that the Dems were equally to blame because their party had been taken over by extremists as well. Franken said that the Dems don’t have a religious agenda as a de facto party platform. Danforth said that the Dems have an equivalent agenda demanded by the teachers’ union, labor unions in general, and trial lawyers.

Franken said that Danforth missed a chance to move to the center when he sponsored Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court, adding that Thomas was certainly one of the most conservative members of the Court. Danforth ducked. He said that a current liberal member (male) of the Court personally said to him, Danforth, “Thank you for Clarence Thomas.” He added that the Justice said that Thomas is a valuable, dedicated member. Franken asked for a name, and Danforth refused.

There were a few more exchanges of a similar nature and they ran out of time. I offer all this to say that this is as close to a conversation as we are going to get for years to come.

So why not say instead, “Ok, Tony Judt is coming from an interestingly contradictory place in general [details], but I’d admit that there are some contradictions and fault lines in the arguments I’ve been trying to sustain too [details].” Geras is, in my reading, considerably more sincere about trying not to demonize the anti-war opposition, far more than someone like Chrisopher Hitchens, but he still can’t bring himself to put any of the driving propositions of his views into the space of debatable jeopardy, or make any of the basic gestures that accompany open dialogue between intellectual and political peers. One of the first things would be to just say, “Look, for the time being, let’s stop talking about George Galloway and the usual suspects every single time I want to talk about critics of the war”. Intentionally or not, this has the effect of reducing all opposition to a single point on a grid.

I know, I know, you’re going to say that I’m doing the same to Geras. I expect he’ll probably do so shortly himself. But I’ve spent four years here trying to avoid that: disaggregating various arguments, understanding the underpinnings of the neoconservative/democratic revolutionary argument and distinguishing it from the people who were or are on the left, and so on. But equally importantly, there’s just a sociological difference: the opposition to the war is not a single movement, intellectually or politically, whereas the support for the war is a relatively coherent, tightly-woven group of intellectuals and policy-makers who have bound themselves to each other against a rising sea of critics. There’s an asymmetry from the outset. If you’re prowar and you want to get serious about debating your views, you’ve got some pretty divergent choices of people and constituencies whom you can convene a dialogue with. And, as I noted here, you’re defending a policy which exists, to which you have hitched (so to speak) your star, and for which you bear some measure of responsibility. It’s empirically and politically legitimate for me to treat intellectual advocacy for the war as relatively unified, relatively coherent, relatively interwoven. The reverse is not so.

(If it was a mistake and I’m offering plausible cover, then he owes me a favor. And believe me, I will cash in.)