Editor’s Page

“The man who first flung a word of abuse at an enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization.” Sigmund Freud once quoted this adage with approval, and its (apocryphal) point is plain enough. But its insufficiency as a maxim for democratic civilization is also evident. Healthy democracy demands more: partisanship in good faith—rather than partisanship as a surrogate for spears. That’s why we need to fret about the state of contemporary American public culture. Rhetorical venom is a vintage phenomenon in the country’s politics back to attacks on “Godless” Thomas Jefferson. There is also a sorry history of demonizing and misrepresenting foes within the left (as every “renegade social democrat” knows). Today, American conservatives deserve special, dishonorable mention. The Republican leadership, the Christian right, and neoconservative ideologues sound as if democracy were little more than a continuation of war by other means. Perhaps they are inspired by the declaration made in 1993 by Irving Kristol, neoconservative doyen: “There is no ‘after the cold war’ for me.” Liberalism had corrupted “sector after sector” of society, and so “now that the other ‘Cold War’” had ended, “the real cold war” could begin. “We are far less prepared for this cold war,” he added, “far more vulnerable to our enemy . . . [I]t is a conflict I shall be passing on to my children and grandchildren.” Well, he did, but our right-wingers were ...