Posted on 09/09/2006 5:37:04 AM PDT by A. Pole
"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict," said President Bush to the American Legion. "It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century."
But if the ideology of our enemy is "Islamo-fascism," what is the ideology of George W. Bush? According to James Montanye, writing in the Independent Review, it is "democratic fundamentalism." Montanye borrows Joseph Schumpeter's depiction of Marxism to describe it.
Like Marxism, he writes, democratic fundamentalism "presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved. ... It belongs to that subgroup (of 'isms') which promises paradise this side of the grave."
Ideology is substitute religion, and Bush's beliefs were on display in his address to the Legion, where he painted the "decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century" in terms of good and evil.
"On the one side are those who believe in the values of freedom ... the right of all people to speak and worship and live in liberty. And on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism, the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest."
Casting one's cause in such terms can be effective in wartime. In his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural, Lincoln converted a war to crush Southern secession into a crusade to end slavery and save democracy on earth.
Wilson recast a European war of imperial powers as a " war to end war" and "make the world safe for democracy." FDR and Churchill in the Atlantic Charter talked of securing "the Four Freedoms," but were soon colluding to hand over Eastern Europe to the worst tyrant and mass murderer of the 20th century.
The peril of ideology is that it rarely comports with reality and is contradicted by history, thus leading inevitably to disillusionment and tragedy. Consider but a few of the assertions in Bush's address.
Said Bush, we know by "history and logic" that "promoting democracy is the surest way to build security." But history and logic teach, rather, what George Washington taught: The best way to preserve peace is to be prepared for war and to stay out of wars that are none of the nation's business.
"Democracies don't attack each other or threaten the peace," said Bush. How does he then explain the War of 1812, when we went to war against Britain, when she was standing up to Napoleon? What about the War Between the States? Were not the seceding states democratic? What about the Boer War, begun by the Brits? What about World War I, fought between the world's democracies, which also happened to be empires ruling subject peoples?
In May 1901, a 26-year-old Tory member of Parliament rose to issue a prophetic warning: "Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than the wars of kings." Considering the war that came in 1914 and the vindictive peace it produced, giving us Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, was not Churchill more right than Bush?
"Governments accountable to the people focus on building roads and schools – not weapons of mass destruction," said Bush. But is it not the democracies – Israel, India, Britain, France, the United States – that possess a preponderance of nuclear weapons? Are they all disarming? Were not the Western nations first to invent and use poison gas and atom bombs?
Insisting it is the lack of freedom that fuels terrorism, Bush declares, "Young people who have a say in their future are less likely to search for meaning in extremism." Tell it to Mussolini and the Blackshirts. Tell it to the Nazis, who loathed the free republic of Weimar, as did the communists.
"Citizens who can join a peaceful political party are less likely to join a terrorist organization." But the West has been plagued by terrorists since the anarchists. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Puerto Ricans who tried to kill Harry Truman, the London subway bombers were all raised in freedom.
"Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock," said the president, "are less likely to blow themselves up at rush hour." But Hamas and Islamic Jihad resort to suicide bombing because they think it a far more effective way to overthrow Israeli rule than marching with signs.
What Bush passed over in his speech is that it is the autocratic regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman that hold back the pent-up animosity toward America and Israel, and free elections that have advanced Hamas, Hezbollah, the Moslem Brotherhood and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
In Iraq, we see the inevitable tragedy of ideology, of allowing some intellectual construct, not rooted in reality, to take control of the minds of men.
Pat calls Bush an ideologue?
Yup
Not to mention that Lenin was in power prior to the end of WWI.
There is still no history of democracies going to war against each other.
ok, they didn't end up RUNNING on a ticket together, but Lenora Fulani was about the first one Buchanan went running to in his race to dump his GOP bona fides ... and I dunno what you call her, but to me she's an avowed Marxist. Buchanan didn't seem to care.
She also endorsed Bloomberg, and he paid her back with a municipal bond for her youth program headquarters. He also tried to get non-partisan municipal elections passed for her.
their laugh(s) are the equivalent of "would you please repeat the question" ... gives them a pause to collect their thoughts for an answer ... a debating device, if you will.
Maybe sometimes it is a stall device...but I read it more as nervousness sublimating into laughter. Although I do not like Patsy, his laugh is actually (IMO) engaging; Her Heinous, however, has a laugh like fingernails on a blackboard.
Wow. I just flat-out love what you posted here in regards to Plato on leadership. Thanks.
One learns to expect reactionary ignorance from certain posters.
Uh, yeah, wow.
"German militarism" could not be "wiped out," dolt, unless one "wiped out" all the Germans.
The problem was in the settlement agreed to by "Mr. Democracy," Wilson.
And by the way, was Hitler elected?--democratically?
That's true.
GWB's phraseology is inadequate. It is NOT merely "democracy." It is also economic opportunity, which requires meaningful property legislation, as well as probability of material success, which requires stability of commercial law.
Looks like a long stay in Iraq, eh?
Actually, dirt, it is a Churchillian SPIN JOB.
Churchill was (inter alia) a complete failure in the military--because he was too busy being politically acute.
That cuteness cost 10 million lives in the Soviet Gulag.
Also somewhat (albeit with some important differences) as you point out in the case of Hamas coming to power in "Palestine," the election of Ahmadinejad has contributed to a sharpening of moral clarity.
Even had that election been fair Ahmadinejad might still have won since the sizable pro-Democracy, anti-Mullahtocracy movement within the country had unequivocally repudiated Khatami and all other fake "moderates" like him, refusing to continue electing such, refusing to continue providing the mullahs the false cover of a "democratic" opposition, which in fact was in their full control all along.
No.
Not necessarily. May not be enough people anywhere in the world that agree with a limited constitutional republic with inalienable individual rights.
Over the human history there were few democracies/republics one next to another so the examples are harder to come by. But when more of them existed they did to war with each other. Roman republic had no problems with attacking and conquering other republics. Democratic Athens attacked democratic Syracuse. Italian city states attacked one another etc ...
This false myth that democracies are so peaceful is inane, smarmy and politically correct.
When you need to go back to times prior to Jesus to find examples to support your case it must be a pretty weak case. Western Europe has been full of democracies for several generations without wars. The democracies of Asia do not go to war. The democracies of Latin America have no wars. Democracy has it's weaknesses but a tendency to go to war with each other is not one of them.
The claim was not limited to the time after Christ. And if it were then the city states of Italy were long after Christ. (BTW the basic concepts of politics and democracy were worked out in ancient Greece before Christ)
Looks like you have to limit your claim to exclude the evidence to the contrary even further. Very SCIENTIFIC method indeed.
Western Europe has been full of democracies for several generations without wars.
Yes, San Marino and Switzerland. Since that they did not border one with another they were not in position to fight war.
Along with being a supporter, Lenora Fulani was the co-chair of Pat's Presidential campaign. The fourth I believe, as I recall she resigned because she said Pat couldn't be trusted.
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