Therapeutic Totalitarianism

Paul Gottfried has spent a useful career shining his lantern of truth into the dark corners of America's political consciousness. In After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (1999), he examined the rise and consolidation of centralized managerial regimes across the Western world. Gottfried documented what should have been obvious to every educated man: Modern mass democracy was characterized not by popular participation or informed consent but by mass socialization, public apathy, and rule by public administrators.

In Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, Gottfried examines "the turning of the administrative state . . . away from purely material programs, such as expanded entitlements, toward behavior control." This turning, he emphasizes, has not been preceded by any abandonment or shrinking of the welfare state. The triumphant managerial regime simply assumed an additional mission: the revolutionary transformation of society. There was no turn to freedom, much less to the right, after the Cold War. "What actually occurred was that the Left turned in a multicultural direction, toward the 'Marxist vulgate' of political correctness"--in other words, cultural Marxism.

Gottfried is one of the few scholars to notice that the social democratic left won the Cold War. Neoconservatives have been strutting about for a decade, pronouncing the "death of socialism," the triumph of democratic capitalism, the ascendancy of conservatism, and the dawn of universal freedom. Gottfried makes it clear, in painstaking detail, that all this is fantasy. While Soviet-style communism has failed and has been repudiated by everyone except Castro and Kim Jong Il, the Western form of democratic socialism--the mixed economy, the welfare state, redistributive taxation, government regulation of business--stands unchallenged. While the left has accepted private property, capital investment, entrepreneurialism, economic inequality, and market-generated pricing, it has not relinquished regulatory control over the private economy, nor has it reduced the proportion of taxes it extorts from private enterprise. Meanwhile, it has grown obsessed with other kinds of equality.

The left has exchanged the dream of a universal society without classes for the dream of a collectivity without cultural or ethnic differences. Leftists have learned that, by allowing for a semiprivate economy, they can command more financial resources for their revolution than they could by outright confiscation, nationalization, and centralized planning. They have also learned that corporations can be enlisted as enthusiastic allies. The result has been a kind of revolutionary left-wing corporatism. Gottfried describes it as an alliance between "the managerial state and the forces of capital accumulation." Here is the essence of Clinton's New Democracy, Tony Blair's New Labour, and George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism"--the latter phrase signifying the GOP commitment to the welfare state, multiculturalism, and the therapeutic regime.

The therapeutic state is now firmly entrenched, and the multicultural left controls all of our cultural institutions. How did this happen? Gottfried is at his best in answering this question. He sees two causes of the disaster. The first is the power of the state in forcing social and demographic change. Western elites have initiated, promoted, and subsidized Third World immigration as a method of social control and as an instrument of cultural revolution. They have employed antidiscrimination law and affirmative action to break communities and regions. They have wielded the coercive powers of the state to intimidate the majority population, and they have garnered the support of "aggrieved individuals," "unconventional lifestyle groupings," and "Third World minorities." The managerial class seems to have an instinctive grasp of divide et impera. Gottfried observes that

The second cause is the regime's successful appeal to "the politics of guilt" and a "theology of victimization" as a means to demoralize and enervate Western majority populations. Gottfried believes that the foundations of the therapeutic state are to be found in Protestant Christianity, specifically Calvinism. He is not arguing that p.c. doctrines are somehow Christian--far from it. Rather, they are the products of a "deformed Protestant culture." Gottfried makes a compelling case that political correctness has become a substitute for Christianity, "a misplaced quest for religious redemption that takes the form of worshiping at the multicultural shrine." He believes that long-standing and widespread biblical illiteracy, theological confusion, and historical ignorance turned the "the past into a tabula rasa" and thus prepared the ground for the inculcation of politically correct doctrine as a new morality. So powerful is this anti-Western religion that its doctrines have penetrated even seemingly orthodox Christian churches, both Protestant and Catholic. (Gottfried cites numerous p.c. statements by prominent leaders of the American "Christian Right" to support his case.)

Sin is no longer a violation of God's law but merely insensitivity toward designated "minorities." Redemption is to be found in confessing that you belong to a wicked race (the Europeans) and paying penance to non-Western peoples. Penance takes many forms--foreign aid, reparations, liberal immigration laws, generous asylum policies, affirmative action, quotas, self-debasement, and general confessions of sinfulness. As a result, Europeans now believe that the path to righteousness and acceptance before God requires repudiating their people and civilization. An "act of rejection by the non-victim group directed against their civilization, gender [sic], race, or ancestors indicates sanctified living in a world or society held to be reprobate." There is even a "secular version of the end times": Francis Fukuyama has declared that the triumph of the American model of democratic capitalism and racial diversity signifies the "end of history" and the "final form" of human society.

Gottfried believes that the new faith assuages the pervasive social guilt that lingers as a vestige from the Christian era. Of course, it is more; the guilt is real. It results from man's sinful rebellion against God. It is not surprising that a people that is no longer Christian is ready to grasp at a pseudofaith that offers them relief from their guilt and fear of God's deserved wrath. In other words, the grip of p.c. upon the population may be even stronger than Gottfried thinks.

The religious character of the ideology accounts for the fanaticism of its supporters, their eagerness to persecute opponents, their hysterical reactions to reasoned dissent, and the lack of resistance from Western populations to the hostile and ethnocidal policies imposed on them by their governments. Cultural and political authorities defend multiculturalism and political correctness as the essence of morality, in a manner that appeals to the lingering Christian heritage of the population. Opposition thus appears as evil, and elites resort to demonization whenever they or their policies are challenged.

Such methods work. Gottfried cites former president Bill Clinton's wildly applauded and well-received address to the student body at Georgetown University just eight weeks after September 11, 2001 (in which he declared that America was "paying the price" for African slavery, Indian genocide, and the Crusades), as an example of the new faith in action. He points out that Western politicians (Clinton, Blair, Chirac, Schröder, and Bush) who support Third World immigration and embrace multicultural platitudes have been rewarded by voters with election and reelection to office.

Gottfried ends his book on a pessimistic note, speculating that the managerial-therapeutic revolution "may be irreversible." "Where regional loyalties and powers have broken down and individual self-fulfillment remains the highest ideal" (as in the United States), "it is unlikely that much resistance can be generated to the therapeutic ends pursued by public administration." Only on the Continent, the cradle of Western culture, where relatively cohesive national cultures still exist, does there appear any serious opposition to therapeutic government. In the more "fluid cultures" that characterize the anglophone West, the "malleability" of public opinion and the servility of the majority population cause Gottfried to consider whether "a core culture exists there at all."

The events of September 11 led many to wonder whether Western elites would realize the dangers inherent in their policies. Nothing of the kind happened. Gottfried explains that such hopes did not take into account the "fantasy aspect" of the managerial vision. He is no doubt right. However, he fails to note that the chief beneficiary of those events proved to be the managerial regime itself. Fantasy and calculation are driving the Managerial Revolution.

H.A. Scott Trask has a Ph.D. in American history, is finishing a study of antebellum political economist Condy Raguet of Philadelphia, and is writing a book on the Northern antiwar movement during the War Between the States.

Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West.

The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:

(1) The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born. This emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender leads to group consciousness and a deemphasis of the individual’s capacity for choice and for transcendence of ascriptive categories, joining with others beyond the confines of social class, tribe, and gender to create a cohesive nation. ^{Immigration & The American Future}

(2) A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Influenced (however indirectly) by the Hegelian Marxist thinking associated with the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and the Central European theorists known as the Frankfurt School, global progressives posit that throughout human history there are essentially two types of groups: the oppressor and the oppressed, the privileged and the marginalized. In the United States, oppressor groups would variously include white males, heterosexuals, and Anglos, whereas victim groups would include blacks, gays, Latinos (including obviously many immigrants), and women. ^{The Gramsci Factor by Chuck Morse - Sierra Times.com}^&^{Welcome to the Anti-Communitarian League homepage!}^&^{Why There is a Culture War- Policy Review, No. 104}^&^{Gramsci: A Method to the Madness}^&^{Gramsci And The US Body Politic}^&^{Gramsci's Grand Plan}^&^{Frankfurt School}^&^{Rigoberta Menchú: Liar}^&^Treason^&

Multicultural ideologists have incorporated this essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy into their theoretical framework. As political philosopher James Ceaser puts it, multiculturalism is not "multi" or concerned with many groups, but "binary," concerned with two groups, the hegemon (bad) and "the Other" (good) or the oppressor and the oppressed. Thus, in global progressive ideology, "equity" and "social justice" mean strengthening the position of the victim groups and weakening the position of oppressors-hence preferences for certain groups are justified. Accordingly, equality under law is replaced by legal preferences for traditionally victimized groups. In 1999, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission extended antidiscrimination protection under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to illegal immigrants. ^{City Journal Winter 2004 | The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave by Heather ...}^&^{City Journal Summer 2004 | The Immigrant Gang Plague by Heather ...}^&^{Race and Revolution}^&^{Rewarding Lawlessness} ^&^{Racism is Not the Problem: Why Martin Luther King Got It Half ...}^&^{Issues & Views: Increasing "Hate Crime" Punishment Violates ...} ^& ^{Harvard University Fellow Advocates "Abolishing the White Race"}^&^{Issues & Views: Using Racism as a Device}

(3) Group proportionalism as the goal of "fairness." Transnational progressivism assumes that "victim" groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population or, at least, of the local work force. Thus, if women make up 52 percent and Latinos make up 10 percent of the population, then 52 percent of all corporate executives, physicians, and insurance salesmen should be women and 10 percent should be Latinos. If not, there is a problem of "underrepresentation" or imbalance that must be rectified by government and civil society. Thomas Sowell recently wrote-as he has for several decades-that many Western intellectuals perpetually promote some version of "cosmic justice" or form of equality of result.8 The "group proportionalism" paradigm is pervasive in Western society: even the U.S. Park Service is concerned because 85 percent of all visitors to the nation’s parks are white, although whites make up only 74 percent of the population. Therefore, the Park Service announced in 1998 that it was working on this "problem."9 ^{An FTAA Sneak Preview} ^&^{FTAA: Forced To Accept Aliens}^&^{What is Sensitivity Training}^&^{Psychic Iron Cage}

(4) The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives in the United States (and elsewhere) insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities (including immigrants, legal and illegal) at all levels in major institutions of society (corporations, places of worship, universities, armed forces) if these institutions continue to reflect a "white Anglo male culture and world view." Ethnic and linguistic minorities have different ways of viewing the world, they say, and these minorities’ values and cultures must be respected and represented within these institutions. At a 1998 U.S. Department of Education conference promoting bilingual education, SUNY professor Joel Spring declared, "We must use multiculturalism and multilingualism to change the dominant culture of the United States." He noted, for example, that unlike Anglo culture, Latino culture is "warm" and would not promote harsh disciplinary measures in the schools.10 ^{Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular ...}^&^{Multiculturalism and Marxism}

(5) The Demographic Imperative. The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the United States as millions of new immigrants from non- Western cultures and their children enter American life in record numbers. At the same time, the global interdependence of the world’s peoples and the transnational connections among them will increase. All of these changes render the traditional paradigm of American nationhood obsolete. That traditional paradigm based on individual rights, majority rule, national sovereignty, citizenship, and the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is too narrow and must be changed into a system that promotes "diversity," defined, in the end, as group proportionalism. ^{Western Civilization Against Itself}^&^{New Mexico Professor Advocates Secession for Southwest}

(6) The redefinition of democracy and "democratic ideals." Since Fukayama’s treatise, transnational progressives have been altering the definition of "democracy," from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. For example, Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1995 that it is "undemocratic" for California to exclude noncitizens, specifically illegal aliens, from voting. Former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) general counsel Alexander Aleinikoff, declaring that "[we] live in a post-assimilationist age," asserted that majority preferences simply "reflect the norms and cultures of dominant groups" (as opposed to the norms and cultures of "feminists and people of color").11 James Banks, one of American education’s leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that "to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power."12 In effect, Banks said, existing American liberal democracy is not quite authentic; real democracy is yet to be created. It will come when the different "peoples" or groups that live within America "share power" as groups.

(7) Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols. Transnational progressives have focused on traditional narratives and national symbols of Western democratic nation-states, questioning union and nationhood itself. In October 2000, the British governmentsponsored Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain issued a report that denounced the concept of "Britishness" as having "systemic . . . racist connotations." The Commission, chaired by Labour life peer Lord Parekh, declared that instead of defining itself as a nation, the UK should be considered a "community of communities." One member of the Commission explained that the members found the concepts of "Britain" and "nation" troubling. The purpose of the Commission’s report, according to the chairman Professor Parekh, was to "shape and restructure the consciousness of our citizens." The report declared that Britain should be formally "recognized as a multi-cultural society" whose history needed to be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned."13

^{The Claremont Institute: The Cost of Ignorance}^&^{Historical illiteracy abounds}^&^{National Constitution Center: New Survey Shows Wide Gap Between ...}^&^{Senate Panel Hears that Ignorance of U.S. History Poses Major Security Threat}^&^{Only half would vote for Constitution} ^& ^{Albert Burns -- Historical Illiteracy & Antonio Gramsci}^&^{the deliberate dumbing down of america}^&^{Frivolous Courses Pervasive at Top American Colleges}^&^{Terrorists Find Allies on Campus}^&^{Marine Shouted Down at UNLV} ^& ^{American Flag Banned on Campuses Across the Nation}^&^{ACTA: American Council of Trustees and Alumni}^&^{The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing by Lee Harris - Policy ...}^&^{FrontPage magazine.com :: Battling Bias in Academia by Joseph ...}^&^{Book Review: Why the Left Hates America}^&^{Who Will Defend American Values?}^&^{How Textbooks Distort American History}

In the United States in the mid-1990s, the proposed "National History Standards," reflecting the marked influence of multiculturalism among historians in the nation’s universities, recommended altering the traditional narrative of the United States. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a "convergence" of three civilizations-Amerindian, West African, and European-the bases of a hybrid American multiculture. Even though the National History Standards were ultimately rejected, this core multicultural concept that that United States is not primarily the creation of Western civilization, but the result of a "Great Convergence" of "three worlds" has become the dominant paradigm in American public schools. ^{The Multicultural Theocracy: An Interview With Paul Gottfried}^&^{The Relentless Assault of 'Multiculturalism'}

In Israel, adversary intellectuals have attacked the Zionist narrative. A "post-Zionist" intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Tom Bethell has pointed out that in the mid-1990s the official appointed to revise Israel’s history curriculum used media interviews to compare the Israeli armed forces to the SS and Orthodox Jewish youth to the Hitler Youth. A new code of ethics for the Israel Defense Forces eliminated all references to the "land of Israel," the "Jewish state," and the "Jewish people," and, instead, referred only to "democracy." Even Israeli foreign minister Simon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book, The New Middle East, where he wrote that "we do not need to reinforce sovereignty, but rather to strengthen the position of humankind." He called for an "ultranational identity," saying that "particularist nationalism is fading and the idea of a ‘citizen of the world’ is taking hold. . . . Our ultimate goal is the creation of a regional community of nations, with a common market and elected centralized bodies," a type of Middle Eastern EU.14

(8) Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship. "Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?" asks Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak.15 An increasing number of international law professors throughout the West are arguing that citizenship should be denationalized. Invoking concepts such as inclusion, social justice, democratic engagement, and human rights, they argue for transnational citizenship, postnational citizenship, or sometimes global citizenship embedded in international human rights accords and "evolving" forms of transnational arrangements. These theorists insist that national citizenship should not be "privileged" at the expense of postnational, multiple, and pluralized forms of citizenship identities. For example, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, under the leadership of its president, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, has published a series of books in the past few years "challenging traditional understandings of belonging and membership" in nation-states and "rethinking the meaning of citizenship."16 Although couched in the ostensibly neutral language of social science, these essays from scholars from Germany, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as the United States, argue for new, transnational forms of citizenship as a normative good. ^{"America's Border: Who Left the Door Open?"}

(9) The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. The theory of transnationalism promises to be for the first decade of the twenty-first century what multiculturalism was for the last decade of the twentieth century. In a certain sense, transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology-it is multiculturalism with a global face. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of transnational "global governance" because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future. Academic and public policy conferences today are filled with discussions of "transnational organizations," "transnational actors," "transnational migrants," "transnational jurisprudence," and "transnational citizenship," just as in the 1990s they were replete with references to multiculturalism in education, citizenship, literature, and law. ^{Can Globalism Amend Our Constitution? -- Phyllis Schlafly Aug. 13 ...}^&^{Bipartisan Border Betrayal}^&^{The & Immigration Conspiracy}^&^{Socialist Scholars Call for Dismantling of US Constitution in NYC}^&^{Lawyer Indicted for Aiding Terrorists Becomes Stanford Law 'Mentor ...}

Many of the same scholars who touted multiculturalism now herald the coming transnational age. Thus, at its August 1999 annual conference, "Transitions in World Societies," the same American Sociological Association (ASA) that promoted multiculturalism from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s featured transnationalism. Indeed, the ASA’s then-president, Professor Alejandro Portes of Princeton University, argued that transnationalism is the wave of the future. He insisted that transnationalism, combined with large-scale immigration, would redefine the meaning of American citizenship. University of Chicago anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has suggested that the United States is in transition from being a "land of immigrants" to "one node in a postnational network of diasporas."17 ^{City Journal Spring 2002 | Do We Want Mexifornia? by Victor Davis ...}^&^{Abolishing Our Borders}

It is clear that arguments over globalization will dominate much of early twenty-first century public debate. The promotion of transnationalism as both an empirical and normative concept is an attempt to shape this crucial intellectual struggle over globalization. The adherents of transnationalism create a dichotomy. They imply that one is either in step with globalization, and thus with transnationalism and forward-looking thinking, or one is a backward antiglobalist.

Liberal democrats (who are internationalists and support free trade and market economics) must reply that this is a false dichotomy-that the critical argument is not between globalists and antiglobalists, but instead over the form Western global engagement should take in the coming decades: will it be transnationalist or internationalist?

Vindicating the Founders

Liberalism Implemented By Activist Judges

Arizona Republic) "A federal judge blocked the state of Arizona yesterday from implementing Proposition 200 at least for the next three weeks." Prop 187 all over again. "California judge David Bury granted a temporary restraining order after lawyers hired by The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund argued that people will be harmed if the voter approved initiative is allowed to take effect. Attorney Hector Villagra said, 'Individuals are likely to be denied benefits to which they are legally entitled." This denies benefits to illegal immigrants just like Prop 187, exactly 187, an activist judge rolls in there and says, "The people don't know what they're talking about. They don't know what to do. Their vote was stupid." He didn't say it that way but that was the impending conclusion of his result, and so he threw it out. This has only been thrown out for three weeks. The state of Arizona responded that the will of the voters is entitled to be obeyed, but the judge, in his four-page ruling said the challenges have raised serious questions about the legality of the initiative.

The judge said, "It seems likely that if Proposition 200 were to become law it would have a dramatic chilling effect upon undocumented aliens who would otherwise be eligible for public benefits under federal law, even though the language of the initiative specifically exempts those programs mandated by federal law." This is the left for you, folks. This is judicial activism. This is how it happens. The people vote. It goes against the will of some liberal judge and the liberal judge throws it out saying, "It's unconstitutional," saying, "It will deny somebody benefits," as though the sole role of the federal government is to provide benefits to illegal immigrants in the country! Speaking of illegal immigrants, by the way, the new label has been coined by the people who hate labels. The left in this country who can't stand to be called "liberals" have come up with a new label: Anti-Immigrant.

http://www.house.gov/tancredo/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Carlos Espinosa

November 8, 2004 202.225.7882

MEDIA IGNORES IMMIGRATION MILESTONE

"Arizona Prop 200 Adopted by Decisive 56% Vote;

47% of Latino Voters"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Tom Tancredo (CO-06) today expressed his concern over the media blackout on the passage of immigration reform measure Proposition 200 in Arizona.

"Arizona’s Proposition 200 marks a milestone in the battle for common sense immigration reform," said Tancredo, chair of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. "I am disappointed – but not surprised – by the lack of media attention dedicated to the passage of this measure that the media and political establishments staunchly opposed."

The proposition faced serious opposition as its rivals enjoyed support from the state’s Governor, two incumbent U.S. Senators, the state’s major newspapers, the chamber of commerce, and labor unions. In addition to facing opposition from most of the state’s power brokers, proponents of the measure were outspent almost two to one in the final days of the campaign.

Exit polls of voters in Arizona also revealed that 47% of Latino voters supported it, along with 65% of "other non-white" voters, meaning Native Americans, Asians and Blacks.

The common sense proposition will require proof of citizenship for voter registration and actual balloting and also requires state employees to verify citizenship or legal residency before allowing applicants access to welfare and other state social services. Access to K-12 education, emergency medical care and other services mandated by federal law were explicitly exempted.

"The abject failure of the federal government to address the problem of illegal immigration has finally prompted Arizona voters to say ‘enough is enough’," Tancredo concluded, "And more ‘Prop 200’s’ across the country are sure to follow if Congress doesn’t step up to the plate and take is issue on."

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