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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

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Re: 1910? Come off it.

By Andrew Sullivan
Posted Tuesday, May 5, 1998, at 6:55 PM ET

Katha,

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With all due respect, you keep changing the subject. My point was merely that our double-standard with regard to Nazism and Communism is curious, and largely because of lingering (and I think mistaken) notions that somehow the Communists weren't quite so bad. They were. The targets of their liquidation were different; but the totalitarian structure, police state, and militaristic expansionism in both systems were uncannily alike. So, of course, were the crude, domestic economic policies, which harnessed big business interests to the military state. Both were evil empires; and both were essentially national socialist experiments. The only difference is that we defeated one in six years; and took another forty-four to defeat the other. And you misunderstand me when I said that Communism was responsible for American casualties in Korea and Vietnam. I didn't blame the American Left for these wars; I blamed the Soviet Union. Could anyone now dispute that? Oh, maybe you do.

And no, I don't dispute that, for a short period of time, some socialistic impulses addressed some real problems in America and the West and should remain in place. (What, after all, is workfare, if not a 30s-style piece of government intervention?) But I do think that, given Big Government's record in providing public goods over the last few decades (almost universally execrable, wherever you look), and given Extremely Big Government's record in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, we should be a little more concerned about a state that is now imposing a higher tax burden on ordinary citizens than at any time in the history of the Republic. Those tax-payers, by the way, are not "big business." They are consumers and citizens; and they are being bilked of their own money.

And no, I'm not a reactionary. Just because I think we should drastically cut government's suppression of our economic choices and liberties doesn't mean I'm against universal suffrage or desegregation. For goodness' sake. I'm a First Amendment absolutist, a solid believer in gender and racial equality of opportunity, etc, etc. And you know it. A truly liberal government would be strictly neutral between citizens, and do as little as possible to rob them of their civil liberties and worldly goods. Given the twentieth century's record of the alternative, what's so bad about that?

Andrew

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