Paul Berman om de intellektuellas svek

Ron Rosenbaum skriver i The Slate om Paul Bermans nya bok The Flight of the Intellectuals, en bok som gör upp med intellektuella som Ian Buruma och Timothy Garton Ash.

In The Flight of the Intellectuals, Berman contrasts the way intellectuals have treated Hirsi Ali—with ostensible support, in the abstract, but condescension, disdain, and nitpicking criticism in all the best intellectual venues—with the way they and others rallied unequivocally to the support of Salman Rushdie in 1989 over the Satanic Verses fatwa.

"Buruma and Garton Ash had lost the ability to make the most elementary of distinctions … they could no longer tell a fanatical murderer from a rational debater" like Hirsi Ali.