In The Good Fight: Why Liberals — and Only Liberals — Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, Peter Beinart writes (p. 71), "Immediately, liberals and conservatives divided into opposing camps [over what to do about the leftist Sandinista rebels who overthrew the anti-Communist dictatorship of Anastazio Somoza in 1980s Nicaragua]. As in El Salvador, [President Ronald] Reagan waxed Manichean about his dubious right-wing allies, infamously calling the [anti-Sandinista] contras the 'moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers'."
That use of "Manichean" is not what I have in mind. It suggests that there is a simple, clear dividing line between good and evil, and only if we stay well to the good side of the line, exercising our might for God aganist Satan, will things turn out for the best. That sort of thinking, says Beinart, fueled Reagan's "dreams of military victory" in Central America.
The American left generally opposed Reagan with an anti-imperialistic and equally simplistic "U.S. out of Central America" stance. Yet there was a split among liberals. A few, like "left-leaning" journalist Paul Berman, defied the wishes of editors like Michael Moore at Mother Jones (yes, that Michael Moore) and condemned the "human rights abuses and disastrous economic policies" of the Sandinistas. Democratic congressman Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma visited Nicaragua and was disturbed by "evidence of growing Sandinista repression" (p. 72).
McCurdy, Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, and others in the fledgling Democratic Leadership Council (its members were called the "New Democrats") backed nonmilitary aid to the contras and efforts at economic development conditioned "on respect for human rights ... [and on purging] former Somoza loyalists from leadership roles." By the time all was said and done, Nicaraguan voters had rejected both combatants and elected Violetta de Chamorro, the leader of the nonviolent opposition, as their new president. Beinart chortles, "Both the Sandinistas and the contras had lost, and a genuine democrat had won."
True, Beinart adds quickly, most of the forces leading to this outcome that was so fortunate from the U.S. perspective had lain outside our control. But ...
... for the evolution of liberal foreign policy, [the efforts of the New Democrats] mattered. Whether they realized it or not, the New Democrats were stumbling toward the synthesis that had eluded [President] Jimmy Carter: a liberal antitotalitarianism for the post-Vietnam world, which prized human rights without taking refuge in morally pure isolationism, promoted liberty without pretending that the threats to liberty came only from the other side [i.e., the Communists], and ceded some U.S. control to gain legitimacy abroad. It was a synthesis that would reappear years later, once the cold war was gone. (p. 73)
Neo-Manichaenism as I envision it is big on synthesis. Philosophers have noted how an antithesis (Reaganism; the contras) to a thesis (Carter-style post-Vietnam liberalism; the Sandinistas) gives way to a synthesis (the New Democrats; Chamorro). It's called dialectics, and in different guises it's been embraced on both the left and the right.
Neo-Manichaeanism embraces it as a reflection of the "dance" of good and evil in the world. One side of every thesis-antithesis pair is always called "good," the other "evil" ... though different people choose, in perfect conscience, opposite sides as truly representing the good.
Somehow, then, a synthesis emerges in which those erstwhile unbridgeable differences are bridged after all. Result: progress. But also, there is inevitably a new thesis which calls forth a new antithesis ... and the dance goes on. God never defeats Satan. Satan never defeats God. Time, and progress, march on.
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