End of the Liberal Project?

[johnc]

From Belmont Club http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/:

 

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

 

The Revolution Within the Revolution

 

The particular venom with which the Liberals regard President Bush is at heart a reaction to what they perceive as a coup de etat directed against the carefully constructed edifice of their historical achievements. To understand why the President and individuals like Paul Wolfowitz are described as "illegitimate", one should not, like the man who doesn't get the reference, look to the Florida chads or US Supreme Court decisions. Liberals are not talking about that kind of statutory legitimacy. Rather they are referring to what is perceived as a brazen attempt to negate the cultural equivalent of the Brezhnev doctrine, the idea that certain "progressive" modes of behavior, once attained, are irreversible. In this view, an entire set of attitudes, commonly referred to as "political correctness" and their institutional expressions, like the United Nations, have become part of a social contract, part of an unwritten constitution.

 

President Bush, so the indictment goes, is guilty of ignorant trespass on these civilizational norms; he is simply too stupid, too much of a yokel to know better. Like a hairy caveman guided by only the most primitive of instincts, he is accused of reacting to the September 11 attack on America by clubbing all, near and far. Yet if George W. Bush is beneath contempt, not so his archpriests the "neoconservatives". They are the worthy heirs of a role historically filled by the Knights Templars, Masons and Jesuits: the scheming manipulators of the half-witted king.

 

In the days following September 11, the Liberals watched aghast as America went to war -- when that had been abolished! -- against Muslims in the Third World, all but twitching away the hapless figures of France and the United Nations in the process. Arrivals to America were not ushered to sanctuaries run by enlightened clergymen. They were interviewed by Homeland Security. Abroad, the doctrine of containment for rogue states, kept in place by gentle diplomatic prods, was replaced by outright confrontation. But worst of all, liberals were faced with an intellectual movement, one that had developed an alternative ideology, a competing explanation for the way the world worked. Prior to that, Conservatives, however distasteful, were inchoate; they had tacitly acknowledged the intellectual leadership of the Liberal project. No more. Now Liberals were confronted with people who didn't want to read the New York Times, were unimpressed by celebrity and didn't want to go to Harvard. Many liberals didn't recognize "their" familiar country any more. James Lileks described the intensity of the revulsion at the barbarians at the gates; not Osama Bin Laden, but rather someone else. (Hat tip: Roger Simon)

 

"I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen -- Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated."

 

Osama Bin Laden, if he was regarded as a foe at all, was the 'far' enemy; but President Bush and the neoconservatives were the 'near' enemy. Osama Bin Laden's men came but once, like flaming apparitions across a blue sky mayhap never to be seen again, but President Bush sat day after day in the People's White House to their everlasting chagrin. In the most ironic of reversals the Liberals had unconsciously taken on the mantle of defenders of the ancien regime while the neo-conservatives donned the robes of Jacobins overturning the old order. But just as the terrorist threat didn't emerge overnight, neither did the nemesis of Leftist edifice. Both took shape at around the same time, in the dying days of the Soviet Union, while Jimmy Carter racked his brains helplessly for a response to the Ayatollah Khomeini, where if one looked carefully one could see that Leftism in the West was dying too.

 

The key factor in the moribidity of both the Soviet and Western cases was that Leftism had ceased to work. Its last serious intellectual exponents, Baran, Sweezy and Joan Robinson had gone shuffling off to retirement homes. Its stultifying effect on demographics and freedom have been described elsewhere; but in one particular its failure was life-threatening: the "progressive" edifice had ravaged the Third World with its nostrums and willful blindness. Countries like India and China quietly abandoned the dogmas of Leftist progressivism in favor of a market economy but the more dysfunctional societies of the world turned to stronger waters. In Africa it was mayhem; in Arabia and South Asia it was Islam. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism coincided with the collapse of Nasserism. The Koran was what the incendiary Arab grasped when he cast away the Little Red Book in despair.

 

Through the long summer of 1990s, the wounds festered as the infection deepened. It was masked by the ineffectual cologne of NGO projects, corrupt aid delivery, United Nations peacekeeping public relations projects, by selective media coverage and by the jangling of fund raising concerts at which a Secretary General appeared, like some secular pope, to give his blessing, until the boil burst over Manhattan on that bright autumn day. As the debris showered on New York it obscured the fact that a new post-post-colonial ideology was ready to push the Liberal edifice aside and take up the challenge of Islamic terrorism; underneath the War for Terror there was now a War for the West.

 

James Lilek's friends must know that electing John Kerry to the White House will not restore the antebellum world. Things have gone too far for that. The Third World in general and the Islamic World in particular have burst their bounds; they can no longer be herded into the decrepit and threadbare tent of the United Nations; the Kyoto climate agreement; the International Criminal Court or any of Potemkin treaties woven by the European Union. Islamic fundamentalists are openly attacking Russia; besetting India; seizing British naval vessels; threatening to interdict the Straits of Malacca; menacing the House of Saud; renewing hostilities in Kosovo; bombing trains in Spain; raging through the Sudan and building nuclear enrichment plants. No Clintonian ceremony in the Rose Garden can replace the planets in their old orbits. All John Kerry can do if he must pay the price of restoring the Liberal dream is to withdraw, like Prince Prospero, into the artificial gaieties of last Bal Masque while the Red Death stalks without. Niall Ferguson, writing in the Wall Street Journal described a world exactly like that:

 

"...a world with no hegemon at all may be the real alternative to it. This could turn out to mean a new Dark Age of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic rapine in the world's no-go zones; of economic stagnation and a retreat by civilization into a few fortified enclaves."

 

But that nightmare does not lie at the end of the Conservative dream; a dream which springs not from the Paris Commune but from the Declaration of Independence. And therein lies the problem for Liberals; that the only impetus to social survival springs from someone else and that illegitimate. To John Kerry's task of corralling Osama Bin Laden must be added the daunting job of persuading many Americans to renew their touching faith in the United Nations; to grasp the pages of the Time and Newsweek again as if they were gospel; to laugh on cue at the network anchor's artificial smile: to return, in short, to the Big Tent so recently punctured by the suicide pilots of the Al Qaeda -- as if nothing ever happened.

 

From a practical standpoint, the Liberal project will not die overnight. It is too old and established for that. But neither will the new faith that has risen to challenge it be banished by single John Kerry term. It is too vigorous for that. Sooner or later Liberals and Conservatives must form a coalition of national unity to face the barbarian horde as one. Perhaps President Bush is too polarizing a figure to achieve that; perhaps the current crop of Democratic candidates are too narrow to see that their world has ended forever. They will pass, and a new polity will emerge as the old wanes. On a long-ago summer in that vanished world, children played and sang a song so beautiful that it seemed it would never end:

 

"Some will come and some will go,

We shall surely pass.

When the wind that left us here,

Returns for us at last.

We are but a moment's sunlight,

Fading on the grass."

 

But the last strains have sounded: the golden children have aged; night has fallen and the Morlocks have come. At their peril, for a flame still burns in the West.

[Mikelly]

We can only hope that the extremists from both sides of the fence are culled from those heards... It would seem to me that there should be FOUR parties:

 

The FAR Left

The FAR Right

The NEAR Left

The NEAR Right

 

Eventually the political environment we and our parents/ grand parents new, will be a thing of the past.

 

I've spoken to enough senior gov't and military personnel, both active and retired, to know that none are happy with either party... Most are seriously looking for another alternative.

 

It is funny, because most of us in defense industry/ Intelligence/ Gov't work in and around Washington are almost forced to vote republican because defense spending does up when republicans are at the helm... But a surprising number of diehard republicans are really frustrated with our current commander in chief... For reasons far and beyond Iraq.

 

Mike 8)

[blueovalz]

Great comment Mike. What troubles me in the current political arena is how deeply divided the left and right are. Recent experience in the workplace has shown me that tolerance for the other's viewpoint has all but disappeared, opposing points of view are never considered, an open mind is rare, and there is no regard for the remote chance that "my" argument may be flawed. One person, whom I've had a great deal of respect in his opinion for it's fairness, has for the last year and a half been consumed in literature that pounds the left, and uplifts the right. At what point does one begin to be brainwashed by the opinions and words of what he reads, leading to more and more of the same, leading him to become more and more focused into a narrower and narrower field of view, unable to raise his head and see that there are indeed two sides to an argument. Just for once I'd like to have an intelligent debate with the other isle in which both sides of the argument could be considered from both sides of the isle.

[Guest Aaron]

I think I have posted this before. Does it sound a little familiar?

 

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

 

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

 

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with illfounded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

 

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchial cast patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose; and there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

 

From George Washington's Farwell Address, printed September 19, 1796.

[johnc]

Well said Mr. Washington.

[Mikelly]

Very good comments by all... What I find so interesting is we preach tolerance of others to our friends abroad, Yet we can NOT come together on many issues politically at home .

 

Terry, Once emotion enters into things, reason and sensebility go out the window. No good will come from the far left or the far right being "In control" of the house or senate.

 

This is going to be one of the worst voting years in recent history.

Mike

[blueovalz]

Excellent observation, and one I agree with. I felt the last election was perhaps a peak in the abyss that separates the parties, but now see this was a premature observation. No longer is leadership the primary goal (as I have so naively presumed it should be) of office, but rather election of one's party appears to have replaced this goal, which thus sets our first President's words to ring more true than ever. I suppose I'm much too idealistic for my own good.

[Heavy Z]

I like Mike's 4 main party idea, it'd give us more of a choice than 'coke or pepsi' politics and would encourage less divisiveness in our country. Counterveiling political forces are a good thing IMO.

 

As to the first post, regarding the removal of liberalism. Remember that the American Revolution was a LIBERAL revolution, conservatives of the day were known as 'Tories' and they sided with the British. The US Constitution is the epitome of liberal thought, the way it prevents any one faction from gaining complete power. Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall paved the way for America's conservative movement. My point is that to think liberalism has no place in the US is denying the cornerstones of our political heritage.

 

As for liberalism failing elsewhere, I envite you to look over the EU's balance sheets. The Euro is up 30% against the dollar in 2 years. They have a GNP on par with us without the massive debt overhang we are growing here upwards of $1.5 billion a day. I'm not happy about the slide as I'm for team USA, just stating some points that came to mind when I read the article.

[VRJoe]

I like Mike's 4 party idea, but from what I can tell all our elected officials believe they belong to the ALWAYS RIGHT

 

As I've said before, we've become a country focused on differences rather than similarities. That's what makes this site so great, we focus on the similarities and celebrate the differences. Hmmmm ... maybe we can get the politicians to study our example.... now there's a scary thought.....

 

 

- Joe