America's Good Cop/Bad Cop Routine

I've been calling Ross Douthat the "new" conservative columnist for the New York Times for a while now. Maybe it is time to start calling him the "other" (not David Brooks) conservative columnist. I always read his columns. I almost always enjoy them. I usually disagree with them, but even when I disagree, I think of them as essentially harmless.

Not this one.

Douthat is writing about the controversy that the proposal to built a new mosque in lower Manhattan has caused. To see the whole piece, so you can judge for yourselves, click here. I want to look at two aspects of the column (cyberappended here). The first is his admirable use of structure to support his argument. The second is the argument itself, which I find truly objectionable.

Douthat argues that there are "two Americas." The first, "constitutional" America is very high minded.

An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

The second, "cultural" America is a little more forthright about its expectations.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

Douthat himself prefers the cultural America--you can tell by the line, "a distinctive culture, not just a set of political propositions--but his point is the America "works" because of the interaction of the two cultures. That's why I called it a "good cop/bad cop" act. The two cops have the same goal in mind and they agree that by alternating the tactics, the suspect can be made to confess to the good cop something he would withhold from the bad cop.

Structure

Let's look at the effect of structure first. Douthat never has to make the point that the people opposed to the proposed mosque are bad guys: that they are "extreme," or are xenophobes, or that they are exacerbating the cultures wars that have so benefited the Republican party for the last several decades. All he has to do is invent two groups--constitutional America and cultural America--and put them on the same level, which he does, and argue that neither is right because it is the interaction of the two that makes America, America.

It is a wonderful strategy because it is nearly invisible. In fact, if my luck of the last several years holds, a number of my political friends will write to me arguing that Douthat's strategy is not "invisible," but is one I invented myself. That it is not, in other words, really "there" at all. No better compliment to invisibility could be invented.

If there are "two Americas," they are both good. The words will not be taken any other way. And if the interaction of the two Americas is what works, then they are both necessary.

Is Douthat's Argument Bad?

I've already said it is a well made argument, so if we're talking style, the answer is no, it is not a bad argument. But I want now to talk effect and for that, I think the answer has to be yes. It is a really bad argument. Why?

Let's consider some examples. Let's talk about gender style. The curriculum and the teachers represent "constitutional America." They teach that gender styles do and should cover a wide range of appearances and behaviors. The guys on the playground at recess, the Gender Behavior Posse, are the "cultural America." They find the sissies and beat the crap out of them.

And that's what makes America great! We teach toleration of diversity but we punish the practice of diversity and we come out just right. Everyone knows that little boys have the right to be effeminate and that they will pay the appropriate penalty if they do, so they learn to be conventionally masculine and all is well. Woohoo! We teach racial equality and allow the happenstances of poor schooling, high crime, and low medical care to have their natural effect. The two forces together, the "constitutional" and the "cultural" work together to produce the "balance" in racial outcomes we have today.

I could go on, obviously, from topic to topic. Douthat has invented a social, sexual, racial, migrant "boys will be boys" standard and called it "culture." As if people who approach these questions from a cultural standpoint all approach it in the same way. Of course, they do not. And then, he creates "culture" as the real world counterbalance to high-flown constitutional ideals and calls the outcome, "the success that is America."

It's a nice piece, for sure, and there are no fingerprints on it at all.