The Sniper's Tower
As Dan Larison astutely points out, language is the first casualty of warring states. It can also be a victim of peace-loving democracies. Appearing today in the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman, here is a piece of mine on the European Union’s efforts to define “hatred,” “universalism,” and “tolerance” in ways that invariably punish folks on the Right. It seems that only right-wing parties in Europe are willing to raise unpleasant questions about the preservation of national sovereignty and identity, which the centralizing forces of the EU threaten. The mandarins in Brussels are not very tolerant of these voices crying in the wilderness. As the ex-Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has observed, the EU is becoming a more benign version of the USSR: that is to say, a Soviet Union without the Gulag.
While the Chinese justifiably celebrate their Olympian achievements, a story in today’s Globe & Mail puts a damper on the festivities. According to the article, Chinese churches have been barred from meeting during the Games, and their leaders have either been arrested or put in seclusion (this of course doesn’t apply to foreign missionaries). Yet the overall policy of suppressing religious freedom, which began in earnest with the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, has not discouraged the growth of Christianity in the Middle Kingdom. According to the article, one million Bibles are printed per month in China and the number of Christians has exceeded the membership of the Communist Party (130 million to date).
Although I always celebrate the growth of Christianity anywhere around the world, and applaud the courageous efforts of Chinese believers, it also rankles me that western regimes scold China’s government while they are quite happy to impose draconian hate speech laws on their own populations (as Brendan has rightly pointed out). In my own nation some years ago, a judge in the province of Saskatchewan declared the Bible to be “hate literature” because of its teachings on homosexuality. As I have written on this site on a few occasions, Human Rights Commissions often punish Canadians for holding politically incorrect views on Moslems and gays. In another land of the free, the rise of same-sex marriage has been a veritable breeding ground of litigation, leading to legal actions against physicians, pastors, adoption services, and even wedding photographers (!) for choosing not to work with gay and lesbian couples (see Mark Hemingway’s “Gay Abandon,” in National Review July 14, 2008).
The Chinese have already astutely pointed out western hypocrisy in a few areas. At a recent press conference in Beijing on the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver-Whistler in 2010, the state media went after Gordon Campbell, the premier of British Columbia, for failing to deal with the problem of mass homelessness in Vancouver, a crisis of drug use and poverty worthy of a Third World nation. Campbell lamely answered that the government was working on the problem, and that it would be fixed in time for the Games. I would be fascinated to know how western governments might respond to the accusation that they hypocritically condemn China while they fully support the unchecked powers of human rights commissars. I fully encourage the Chinese media to make this argument, for the sake of religious freedom in western states!
It is also tempting for westerners to believe that only the benighted forces of the West will effect positive change in China. The unproven assumption is that the Chinese cannot do it on their own. I would think the jury is still out on this question. Much has been written on the “authoritarian” nature of Confucian tradition, which the Chinese regime now sees as a positive force for political stability, after a long period of distrust and neglect during the Maoist period. The Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington has even called Confucian democracy an “oxymoron,” since the Confucian insistence on strong family ties, strict virtuous conduct, and respect for one’s elders is too illiberal for a true democracy. Well, if these are the true pillars of Confucian democracy, then perhaps it is time for the decadent West to learn from the East! I certainly wouldn’t cry if Confucians shut down idiotic toxins like MTV.
Overemphasis on Confucian authoritarianism is arguably another example of western hypocrisy anyway. Like Christianity, Confucianism has a strict golden rule which applies to ruler and ruled (the doctrine of reciprocity known as shu). As well, the Confucian Analects stress that the people have every duty to hold their leaders responsible for lack of virtue in their statecraft. The Confucian philosopher Mencius even believed in a right of revolution against extreme vice in a regime. Judging from what I’ve read of Confucianism (I recommend the numerous studies by Wm. Theodore de Bary), it seems that this ancient tradition has its distinctive periods of authoritarianism and liberalism, much like western Christendom. In an age of empty soundbites and narcotizing video games, can anyone honestly claim that western electorates are more resistant to propaganda than any population of the East?
It is fascinating to watch both the pace and meaning of social change in China. Is it possible that the Middle Kingdom will gradually move towards freedom while the West turns away from it? May we live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse goes.
It is no accident, as the Marxists like to say, that historically Christian cultures have felt serious pressure to universalize their most cherished moral credos. In fact, the most ambitious attempts to secularize the golden rule have enjoyed the greatest level of success in traditionally Protestant nations like the United States. What Paul Gottfried aptly critiques as Kant’s universal morality of reason (which ultimately inspired Hegel’s articulation of a universal “History”) has resonated most strongly with liberal democracies rooted in a biblical framework. While it is highly dubious that the early Christian church had ambitious plans to recreate the world on a political scale, as a quick glance at the 13th chapter of Romans will show, it is also undeniable that moderns like Hegel, Marx, and Kojève depended to a large extent on the morality of agape as the necessary theological precursor to the formation of a universal democratic regime at the “End of History.” Despite St. Augustine’s famous warnings about the conflation of the City of God with the City of Man, this prudent theology has not deterred Christians like Woodrow Wilson from seeking a New Jerusalem for all of humanity in this earthly vale of tears.
Given the historic record of these radical and often violent attempts at universalism, would it be prudent to abandon the idea of universal moral credos altogether? It is one thing to impose these credos on nations by force; it is quite another task to ignore them in toto. It is interesting that the most “realistic” of presidents, Richard Nixon, opposed the forcible imposition of morality on the rest of the world, but stopped short of disconnecting a universal morality from politics altogether.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon, who entered politics as a young Cold Warrior dedicated to the universalizability of American values, urged his countrymen to repudiate attempts to immanentize the global eschaton. As the Vietnam War was winding down, Nixon in his 2nd inaugural address counseled Americans to abandon coercive attempts to universalize their values:
The time has passed when America will make every other nation’s conflict our own, or make every other nation’s future our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs.
Nixon’s prudence here, which obviously stemmed from the failure of the Vietnamese intervention, should not be confused with a call for America to abandon the world altogether. The president was too much the realist to support such an endeavour. As he declared in the same address:
Let us build a structure of peace in the world in which the weak are as safe as the strong—in which each respects the right of the other to live by a different system—in which those who would influence others will do so by the strength of their ideas, and not by the force of their arms.
It is tempting to spy a contradiction between these two ideas. How can one stand up for the weak while refusing to tell other nations (particularly those which persecute the weak) how to conduct their affairs? There is certainly a tension here, but not an impossible one for a prudent statesman to navigate. One had to be realistic about the limits of power, especially after the Vietnam debacle, but that did not necessarily mean the embrace of amoralism. The ideal and the real are equally important in foreign policy. Virtù must be wedded to fortuna.
Nixon was echoing not only the realism of Washington, Jefferson, or Kennan on the desirability of a foreign policy opposed to costly interventions; he was also reflecting the “Christian realism” which the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr identified as a humble and prudent understanding of the limits of power. It did not bother Nixon that “profound differences between systems of government” would always exist: it was not the proper role of America to impose democracy on the world, or insist that all nations embrace democratic universalism.
That said, America would still stand with the “weak,” and seek to “influence others” through the strength of her ideas (presumably those dedicated to liberty, the rule of law, etc.). Nixon, at least in principle, was rejecting the false choice between interventionism and isolationism. The propagandistic employment of one’s ideals was a prudent role to take, and a far cry from a policy of facing down tyrannies over every conflict around the globe.
It is now fashionable among neoconservatives to ridicule Nixon’s realism, or to identify his policy of détente with appeasement of tyrannies, which ultimately encouraged Soviet expansionism in the late 1970s. Current anxieties over a resurgent China no doubt further diminish Nixon’s achievement in opening up the Middle Kingdom to trade and diplomacy in the early 1970s as well. Apparently, Nixon’s brand of realism should be abandoned altogether, as impractical and immoral.
Like it or not, however, the greatest critics of this realism have been forced to be a tad realistic once they hold office. Even the most universally minded presidencies have been notoriously selective about their opposition to tyranny. The Reagan administration, to which today’s neocons look with reverence, did not let its suspicion of détente or support of global democracy-building get in the way of working with pro-US tyrannies in Latin America, Asia, or Africa on the basis of “constructive engagement.” Even President Bush, who declared in 2005 that the US would put an end to tyranny on the planet, shows no signs of putting serious pressure on the Saudis to embrace Millian liberalism.
Neoconservatives like Max Boot have been famously critical of Bush’s attempts to dialogue with North Korea, as if this weakness is a replay of Nixon’s détente, since any form of dialogue involving tyrants is an act of appeasement. Dialogue, however, does not necessarily mean the surrender of one’s ideals. Once again, America should put moral pressure on other nations if that serves the interests of peace and security in the world. Pressuring pro-US regimes in the Middle East to become more democratic, by contrast, would likely lead to the rise of radical Islamist parties taking over the reins of power. As Nixon implicitly understood, attempts to encourage democracy are sound if these do not lead to the triumph of the strong over the weak.
Neoconservatives pride themselves on being prudent realists, despite the fact that they treat every crisis as 1938 all over again. (So far America has not offered herself as an “honest broker” in the current conflict between Georgia and Russia.) Yet their views are at once unrealistic and imprudent. They have much to learn from Richard Nixon.
Dan Flynn’s insightful piece on Obama’s usage of religion joins an already vast literature on the exceptionalism of America as a secular democracy with still vital religious roots. Whatever one thinks about Obama’s candidacy, it is a useful reminder that the American Left never truly abandoned religion, despite persistent denials of its dependence on biblical symbolism. The leftist attack on American Christianity has always been misguided at best and hypocritical at worst. No serious student of the American founding can claim that this great event was wholly secular. The founders’ understanding of the separation between church and state still recognized that there was a positive relation between the two realms. The founders clearly assumed that only religion could teach morality, not the state. It was up to the state to protect the freedom to believe, not to displace churches altogether with a nanny regime of secular theocrats. The two realms needed each other, but did not replace each other. As Willmoore Kendall aptly put it, there was indeed a wall between church and state, but that wall was porous. The senator from Illinois has properly scolded many of his followers for believing that religion can and must be be surgically removed from the public square. Leftists are just as apt to use religion as rightists are, a fact to which the works of Harvey Cox, Michael Walzer, and Robert Bellah attest. America has never become a wholly secularized nation, and was never meant to be.
Of course, what has worried thoughtful Americans throughout the republic’s history are attempts to undermine this porous relation with the intent to reduce politics to a religious agenda, or faith to a political agenda. The Bible has a word for this reductionism: idolatry. Many of the arguments between religious and secular Americans would end if they recognized that their enemy is not each other. Rather, the common danger is that posed by idolatrous beliefs which encourage the worship of the power of fallible human beings to remake the world through government action, whatever the cost to human dignity in the process. To reduce politics to a faith-agenda is to turn the state into theocracy; to reduce faith to a political agenda is to transform churches into arms of the state.
To be sure, the most dangerous idol in the last 100 years in western history has been the growth of Leviathan, not the threat of theocracy. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of using the power of the state to cajole often willing believers into fulfilling purely political aims. Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to persuade Protestants that the war against Wilhelmine Germany was a war against paganism was a fateful harbinger of this idolatry of democratic statism, which reached new heights under the Bush II presidency’s efforts to persuade believers that all peoples have a God-given right to democracy. This idolatry of the warfare state is a threat to the freedoms and pocketbooks of religious and secular Americans alike.
There have been a few amusing attempts to satirize the idolatrous implications of Obama’s candidacy. Humor aside, Obama is tapping into some deep and radical tendencies in American history towards immanentizing the eschaton. While it is unfair to compare Obama to the John Brown wing of American Christianity, and it may well be that the fiscal crisis of American finances will hamper any attempts to construct a New Jerusalem on the Potomac, it would also be premature to dismiss the political theology of the senator from Illinois, who has occasionally compared himself to another astute politician from that state with a talent for invoking religious symbols. The very image and likeness of Obama as the great transcender of all differences, whether racial, religious, or political, is bound to embolden American leftists to rediscover the utility of religion again, especially in the struggle against the last vestiges of hierarchy, oppression, and orthodoxy in the public square. Then it will be conservatives’ turn to worry about the rise of theocracy in America, after 8 long years of leftist Bush-bashing.
Lately, the news from Canada has been a tad grim. Human rights censors show no signs of slowing down their tireless attempts to rid the country of orthodox Christian believers who dare to criticize the gay rights movement. The country’s highest honor, the Order of Canada, has been awarded to a much maligned and divisive practitioner of abortion, Henry Morgentaler. And the governing Tories, the only party dedicated to property rights, individual freedom, and plain old common sense, are falling in the polls.
Amidst this darkness visible, there is a ray of lighthearted humor. A group of Canadians has set up a contest to decide on who is the “most mediocre” Canadian. On July 1 (Canada Day), the first vote went to none other than David Frum, an ex-speechwriter for a certain American president. As we know, Frum coined the memorable phrase “axis of evil” and pushed for the Iraq war as the first battle in a war to “end evil” in the world and save civilization as we know it. If there’s ever a contest for mediocre intellects with a penchant for over-the-top rhetoric, we know whom to nominate.
Secular millenarianism aside, Frum will have to compete with various state-supported leftist collectivists in Canada, whose list of names would be so long that it would contribute to serious deforestation. That said, this influential global democrat reminds Canadians that Americans sometimes suffer as much from unwanted ideological imports as we do from theirs.
A brief word of caution to my American friends with heterodox views on politics, ethics, and religion. If you are planning to speak in any public forum in Canada in the near future, you may be under pressure to seek permission from the “Human Rights Commission” in the province that you intend to visit. An American Christian couple who planned to speak on the biblical view of homosexuality in a church in Alberta has just acquired a taste of the statist process which speakers may have to navigate in order to exercise their right to freedom of speech.
Of course, paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians who are dying to spread the gospel in Canuckistan but worried about their liberties can take consolation from the fact that the number of paleos up north could probably fit inside a school bus. The paucity of paleos may be getting worse, if more Canadians accept the view that freedom of speech is just an outdated, right-wing, American idea.
Is it any wonder that the novelist Tom Wolfe has claimed that fiction can no longer compete with reality for sheer fantasy and absurdity?
Paul Gottfried’s recent piece reminds us of the undying tendency for pseudo-conservatives to surrender to the rhetoric of their leftist enemies in the culture war. Here’s another horror story from Canuckistan which sadly illustrates the same tactic of appeasement without any rationality or hope of reward. A Christian pastor has run afoul of the human rights authorities for criticizing homosexuality on biblical grounds. At first glance, this is not news in Canada; there have been similar human rights cases over the past few years.
But this one happened in the western prairie province of Alberta, the cradle of right-wing populism (my birthplace as well; perhaps these two factors are connected). Alberta, whose oil riches contribute to 50% of Canada’s GDP (think of Montana with the wealth of Texas), is supposed to be more right-wing than any other province. Apparently not, if one looks at the power of human rights tribunals in that province. When I complained to a fellow Albertan conservative about this scandalous abuse of authority and asked why right-wing Albertans are not storming the gates of these tribunals, she could only reply: if it doesn’t affect the majority of people, then it doesn’t matter. So much for rugged individualism in the heartland!
One last interesting item about my home province. During the start of the Iraq war, Alberta was the only province in Canada where a majority of citizens supported the US war effort. It seems that Albertans are in favor of global democracy-building in the Middle East, but they are quite content to accept the death of democracy in their own backyards. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
As a longtime admiring reader of John Lukacs’ histories, I agree with the comments of many bloggers on this site that his thought can be accurately described as “elitist” or “reactionary.” I also agree that Lukacs’ tendencies towards a Burkean conservatism at least in part explain his animus towards the more populist expressions of right-wing politics in the United States; these biases might even explain why he targeted Buchanan’s book in mainly unappreciative terms. Lukacs is no different from the late Peter Viereck in fearing the threat which mass democracy poses to traditional authority and conventions while celebrating a Rousseauian trust in the General Will. Like another Tory, George Grant, Lukacs has always given me the impression that American conservatism, in his view, is an oxymoron. A populist nation just cannot be conservative.
This position has its merits, although it is hardly immune to criticism. Much as I respect the Tory writers of our time, I have always found it perplexing that they often fault the tail for wagging the dog. Like Grant and Viereck, Lukacs is inclined to blame the American people rather than the ruling establishment for the most extreme passions circulating through the American psyche. One favorite target of Lukacs is American Christianity, a toxic blend of Puritan fanaticism and technological will to power that is incompatible with the restrained Christian faith which Lukacs finds characteristic of European culture. Lukacs gives the impression that this distortion of Christianity is the true culprit behind populist extremism in America. As he wrote in “A New Republic: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century” (2004)
“There was a kind of unrestrained spiritualism at the base of the American mind from the beginning. This did not mean that America remained medieval from its beginnings. It meant that this peculiar coexistence of medieval with supermodern habits of mind has been typically American. For Americans have been often unable as well as unwilling to recognize the peaceful coexistence of their, often evidently contradictory, mental categories—and this kind of inability was in itself a medieval habit of mind.” (pp 186-187)
Notice that Lukacs makes no distinction between ruler and ruled in his critique. Few Americans, whatever their caste, escape from a fanaticism which courses through the American bloodstream. Even that venerable Tory, Russell Kirk, did not escape the nefarious influence of this postmodern Puritanism, in Lukacs’ view. Kirk’s writings ‘reflect both the Royalist and the Puritan aspects of his persona, of the Cavalier and of the Covenanter at the same time.” (186)
As an outside observer of the United States, I must confess to sharing Lukacs’ anxieties about the fanaticism of the evangelical Right and its support of Jacobin policies like global democracy-building. If one watches the mainstream media in North America, it is to easy to get the impression that Reverend Hagee and Pat Robertson wield enormous power over Americans. Yet, in my more reflective moments, I must disagree with Lukacs’ conclusion that somehow the great mass of Americans and their religious beliefs are the primary source of these policies. Despite the “unrestrained spiritualism” of the Religious Right, their representatives did not make the decision to go into Iraq. Their supporters are just that, supporters. They have provided the foot soldiers for Bush and Cheney, but they do not call the shots. What every Tory writer known to me desperately needs is a good dose of “elite theory,” or the hermeneutical teaching (developed by Peter Brimelow, Sam Francis, and Paul Gottfried) that ideas, spiritual or otherwise, are usually subject to the manipulation of a savvy ruling class. This would be preferable to the alternative: embracing the hyperbole of Richard Hofstadter and other leftists on the imaginary power of the “radical right.”
Does this last claim relieve the American people of all blame? Not at all. The Religious Right and other unrestrained spiritualists in the American political scene deserve to be forever excoriated for going along with the neoconservatives, who do not take their social views on gay rights and abortion seriously until election time. Nothing stops the “unrestrained” spiritualists of America from restraining themselves with a good book on the history of the Middle East. Still, they don’t make the decisions in the upper echelons of the GOP.
As for the ruling class: we can accuse the neoconservatives and democratic leftists of many things, but they probably don’t fit what Lukacs (unhappily) calls a “medieval” frame of mind (considering the medieval respect for Aristotelian prudence, it’s hard to call the neocons medieval!). Rice and Cheney could probably care less about the spiritual passions of Americans in the heartland. While they certainly count on the populist stirrings within the American body politic for support of their agenda, there’s no question about who’s in charge.
In between writing a book and takimagging, I often have to play catch-up on old news stories. I hope that the following story is not old hat to any of you, but it caught my eye when I was rummaging through old e-links and files:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_obama_doctrine
In an article by Spencer Ackerman ("The American Prospect,” March 24, 2008), readers learn that the Obama Doctrine will put an end to the neocon’s “hollow sloganeering” about “democracy promotion.” Now that’s a relief to all those Obamacons out there. But wait, Team Obama plans to replace this Jacobinism with “dignity promotion.” The US of A must promote “dignity” as the only way to help liberty, justice, and prosperity to take root globally.
Well. I am just so relieved that Obama will discard all those utopian goals characteristic of Bush the Younger. At long last, the Democrats have come up with a practical and prudential foreign policy. After all, everybody around the world agrees on the meaning of dignity, even though they disagree on what counts as democracy. The consensus on the meaning of dignity is clear, from New Guinea to New York.
Yup, the future of the republic is bright indeed. No more empire-building, just dignity for all. Perhaps he will also create the New Jerusalem in the process, so long as it’s not in Iraq.
I am very grateful that Takimag has encouraged a real discussion about the role of Churchill in WW 2. It is hard to imagine many other magazines allowing the degree of opennness on the causes of that terrible conflict. This on-going dialogue has certainly compelled me to go back to the history books and re-think some of the conventional wisdom regarding the main players in the war.
There is one longheld position, however, which so far I have found little reason to abandon: that FDR bears infinitely more responsibility than Churchill for the rising influence of Stalin at the end of the war. FDR was the far greater appeaser of Stalin, who surrendered to demands which were far less necessary than was the case at Yalta. While a nauseating reaction to Churchill’s often effusive praise of Stalin around the time of Yalta is an understandable one, it is also undeniable that Churchill possessed a hatred of communism which was simply unthinkable to Roosevelt, a hatred which dated as far back as the 1917 revolution. FDR’s attitudes to Stalin, by contrast, were consistently and outrageously generous.
I heartily recommend Robert Nisbet’s 1988 work “Roosevelt And Stalin: The Failed Courtship,” to put to rest any doubts about the role of FDR in fostering the influence of the Soviets while attempting to marginalize Churchill at Teheran and Yalta. (This work is also used by Buchanan in his study of Churchill, but he draws different conclusions from that of Nisbet.) As Nisbet argues, FDR truly “courted” Stalin much as he would have courted a Bronx democrat. In FDR’s view, Stalin was just a slightly more radical version of a New Dealer who could be trusted to co-govern the world with the United States after the war. FDR even agreed with Stalin that France had to be put in its place after the war, since it was a dangerous imperialist power; of course, Stalin saw France as the one continental rival to his ambitions after the destruction of Germany.
Nisbet does not accuse FDR of treason, nor does he fault him for giving “permission” to Stalin to control Poland. This permission was unnecessary, since Stalin already controlled the nation. Still, he clearly faults the president for a dangerous naivete towards Uncle Joe, a naivete which led FDR to believe that Stalin had the “moral” right to control Eastern Europe; that was never Churchill’s position! Here are a few of Nisbet’s most important conclusions, based on a close reading of the relevant documents:
1) Even before WW 2, FDR discouraged criticism of the Soviet Union in his administration
2) FDR never accepted the view that Stalin was an imperialist, since he was a fellow leftist who “cared” about humanity. Indeed, the true imperialists were Churchill, De Gaulle, and Hitler, in FDR’s view.
3) FDR ignored the advice of Russia experts like George Kennan and William Bullitt about the dangers posed by Stalin’s regime. The leftist Harry Hopkins had the greatest influence over FDR on Russian matters.
4) FDR’s State Department was more critical of Britain’s actions (in Greece and Italy) fighting communists than it was of Stalin’s crimes in the East.
5) Churchill, who thought Stalin was an “unnatural man,” worried after the Quebec conference that FDR was more than willing to condemn all of Europe--East and West--to Soviet control.
6) Churchill was astounded that FDR abandoned Berlin to the Russian army in 1945.
7) FDR promised to withdraw troops from Europe two years after the war, to further win the confidence of Uncle Joe.
And on it goes. If Nisbet is right, Churchill had little to do with any of these planned blunders, and vigorously opposed them. After the war, Churchill was understandably coy about recording his displeasure over FDR in his official WW 2 history, since he desired good relations with the United States. Nevertheless, FDR must go down as one of the worst presidents in the arena of foreign policy in the 20th century, whose naivete about the world rivals that of LBJ or George W. Bush.