Posted on 11/19/2001 6:02:04 AM PST by walden
Why West Is Best Secrets — or rather, obvious ingredients — of the Good Society.
By Paul Johnson, the British journalist and historian, is the author of many books, including A History of Christianity and A History of the Jews. From the December 3, 2001, issue of National Review
No such thing as a perfect society exists in the world or ever will. But the Good Society can and does emerge from time to time, and is far more likely to exist within the orbit of the Western system than in any other. Why is this? To begin with, consider the historic blend of two valuable but imperfect and distinct moral/legal systems — the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian — which together are much more than the sum of their parts. All of us desire moral order. All of us wish for justice. The chief problem that faces a civilization is how to translate morality and justice into a workable system of law. The Greeks took legal concepts from numerous ancient societies, notably the Medes and Persians, but they brought to the science of law the spirit of philosophic inquiry, their own unique gift to humanity. They probed the nature of justice and the validity of morals, and thus infused law-making with a new dynamic: the endless quest for truth, viability, and endurance.
The Romans, in turn, built on this method, evolving a code that worked effectively over the world's largest and longest-lasting empire, enduring in one form or another for two millennia. What the Romans struggled towards was the notion of rule by law, rather than by mere men, and this involved the supremacy of a political constitution, which men, however powerful, were obliged to obey. The attempt ultimately failed, Rome became an oriental dictatorship of god-emperors, the rule of law collapsed, and, in due course, so did Roman civilization itself, in both its Western and Byzantine forms.
However, from the 5th and 6th centuries onwards, Roman notions of law and its rule were reinforced and transformed by Judeo-Christianity. The Jews were as devoted to law as the Romans. They saw the law as God-made, and under its rule all, from kings and high priests to shepherds, were equal: That is why the great 1st-century Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, called Judaism a "theocratic democracy." The Christians took over the principle of equality under the moral law and applied it to both the law codes of the Germanic north, based upon tribal consultations, and those of the Romance south, based upon Roman digests. The clergy evolved their own canon law and, between the 11th and the 16th centuries, there was a struggle between secular and clerical systems. The result was a felicitous compromise: neither theocratic law (as in Islamic states), nor wholly secular law, since the codes recognized natural law (as interpreted by Christianity) as the basis of all justice.
The rule of law was not established in the West without conflict. The constitutional struggle that produced in 1215 the Magna Carta, the first English Statute of the Realm (still in force), the English Civil War of 1640-60, and the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, the American Revolution of the 1770s and 1780s, producing the first modern written constitution, and the French Revolution of 1789, leading to the creation of the Napoleonic law code (both these last, as amended, still in force) are all episodes in the successful effort to make even kings and governments subject to the rule of law. The process continues, the latest salient event being the collapse of the supra-legal Communist dictatorship in Russia in 1991 and subsequent attempts, as yet incomplete, to establish the rule of law for the first time in Russia and its devolved territories.
From this long history, it has become evident that equality in law cannot be finally ensured without the mass participation of the public. But it is important to understand that the rule of law must be established first before democracy can successfully evolve. That is the great political lesson of Western civilization. It explains why democracy has quickly collapsed in all those (mainly Third World) countries where the rule of law was weak or nonexistent. A notable exception has been India, which — with all its weaknesses — still maintains democracy because the rule of law, thanks to the genius of Macaulay, took root there under British rule.
Where the rule of law exists, continually reinforced by an evolving democracy, liberty too takes root. The point was succinctly made by Thomas Hobbes, who, together with his follower John Locke, was the determining political philosopher in the evolution of both the British and the U.S. constitutions. "The silence of the laws is the freedom of the subject," wrote Hobbes: Where the law does not specifically prohibit, the citizen is free to do as he pleases. In unfree or Oriental societies, the assumption is reversed, and the freedom to do any individual action depends on favor, tradition (as interpreted by the absolute ruler or his agents), or corruption.
The freedom enjoyed in Western society under the rule of law and constitutional government explains both the quality of its civilization and its wealth. In the early Middle Ages, Islamic societies enjoyed some freedom in transmuting the Greeks' knowledge and spirit of inquiry, but this came to an end in the 13th century, which was precisely the point when the Western university system took off. Where the quest for knowledge is relatively, and now almost absolutely, unrestrained, the public benefit will be great, especially where the certainty of the law ensures that knowledge is rewarded. This is exactly the combination that is the foundation of wealth-creation.
Society in the West was establishing a consistent pattern of wealth-making even in the Middle Ages. From the 15th century, two factors — the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and of printing from movable type — were joined by six others, all consequences of the rule of law and of (virtual) equality under the law. These were the invention of the legal corporation (later including the limited-liability company and the trust); the development of a clear legal doctrine of marriage and inheritance; the invention of freehold in real estate and of banks operating as sure deposits for liquid wealth (both serving as the basis for lending and investment in mercantile and industrial enterprise); the development of copyright law; the inability of government to confiscate or tax individual property except by due process; and, finally, the invention of an immense range of legal devices, from commercial and personal insurance to stock exchanges (to promote, protect, maximize, and employ savings efficiently).
From these dozen or so advantages and their interaction, capitalism evolved. It is not, strictly speaking, an "ism," but a process of nature, which at a certain state of human development — the rule of law and a measure of personal freedom being the most important ingredients — occurs spontaneously, as millions of ordinary people go about their business in as efficient a manner as they know how. It is, then, a force of nature, which explains its extraordinary fecundity, adaptability, and protean diversity. It is as much a product of Western civilization as the university and the library, the laboratory and the cinema, relativity theory and psychotherapy. Coca-Cola and McDonald's are not alternatives to the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Public Library: They are all four products of a wealth-creating and knowledge-producing process based on freedom and legal certainty.
Moreover, because capitalism is based on human nature, not dogma, it is self-correcting. The freedom of the market enables these corrections to be made all the time, to short- and long-term problems. The expression "the crisis of capitalism" is therefore misleading. Capitalism moves through continual crises, major and minor, absorbing their lessons and so continually increasing productivity and living standards in the long run.
Indeed it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting — not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities — that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals. And it is protean not least in its ability to detect what other societies do better, and incorporate such methods into its own armory. All the other systems in the world, notably the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Indian, have learned much from the West in turn, and benefited thereby. The Islamic world has been the least willing to adopt the West's fundamental excellences. That is why it remains poor (despite its wealth of raw materials), unfree, and unhappy. Its states are likely to have uneasy relations with the West until Islam reforms itself, embraces the rule of law, introduces its own form of democracy, and so becomes a protean player in the modern world.
I agree with you on some points and disagree on others. Yes, the glorious West has given the world Nazism, Communism and the latest movement, the non-ideological decadence, which may end up the worst disease yet.
But then, let's argue about the above quote a bit because it is an almost familiar argument. The they-hate-us-because crowd tells us they (the Islamicists) hate us because we have supported corrupt and ruthless regimes in the Middle East. This argument has been advanced time and time again since 9/11. But then, look what alternative to the Shah, to Mubarak and to the Saudi monarchy these "dissidents" have offered the people of Afghanistan. The Shah and the Saudis have been quite enlighened, compared to the system now in place in Iran which you say is liberalizing. Bringing up examples of 7000 filthy rich Saudi princes is as much a proof of anything as is bringing up the many freebies that Saudi Arabia's citizens enjoy thanks to the oil wealth.
But my main argument is with your deterministic theory which appears to state that a Middle East country must evolve through "a stage of control by Islamic fundamentalists" before, before what?, before becoming enlightened? How do you figure that? Afghanistan in the 1950s was a liberalizing, developing country. And now what?
Now, wait! Where in this country can you make a call for a quarter? Better adjust it for inflation. (Darn it, I miss all those country and pop songs about phone calls for a dime, three songs on a jukebox for a quarter. Note that no one is writing such songs any more. How can they? Seventy five cents doesn't translate into songwriting material.)
They lasted for thousands of years. We will, quite possibly, create (or have created) the technology that will destroy humanity in the very near future. How do we "correct" for that?"
You correctly note that the argument over modernity is not a battle between the traditional "right" and "left", but rather over those that want to exercise more control over people and those who want to exercise less.
I don't know anyone who wants to go back to the time of the Pharohs, but plenty of the American right want to go back to the "Leave it to Beaver" fifties, while plenty on the left want to go back to an agrarian and frontier America. All of these people basically want a "do-over" on American history and modernity. The trouble with the nostalgists, though, is that they choose to see the past through their visions of what those times were like, rather than as they truly are. Although ancient Egyptian society may have been long-lived, by our standards the life of the average Egyptian was nasty, brutish, and short. Furthermore, they fail to see such triumphs over nature as "organic" farming as the technological marvels that they actually are: if you don't believe me, go plant a garden of carelessly selected seeds, use no pesticides or herbicides, and see what you get. To succeed at such a venture requires a tremendous understanding and use of natural controls such as beneficial insects and other biologicals, the use of improved disease and pest-resistent seed strains, etc., etc.. Furthermore, who among us of any political persuasion will refuse radiation and chemical therapy if we are diagnosed with cancer?
The idea that a society can reap the benefits of technology without dealing with the risks is wishful thinking. Moreover, once the genie of knowledge is out of the bottle, it cannot be put back. But, it seems to me that the civilized world has effectively policed itself in harnessing technology to the benefit rather than the detriment of mankind-- the only challenge now is to extend civilization to encompass the remainder of the world. The ultimate extreme of the anti-technologists that we are now battling-- the Taleban and bin Ladenites, the Islamo-fascists-- are an object lesson as to what lies at the end of the anti-modernist road: they want to destroy modernity, and are willing to use technology to kill as many people as are required to achieve their goals.
Consider the following possibilities:
1. Nuclear War
2. Genetically engineered viruses
3. Natural (nonengineered) viruses
4. Nanotechnology robots which "eat" everything and self-replicate
5. Intelligent, larger robots that take over the world
6. An unanticipated, technological threat, developed in the coming decades, perhaps based on new discoveries in physics.
Can we stop any of these things? If nuclear weapons are any guide, then the destructiveness of the technology will be available long before a solution to the destructiveness is available. What happens when technology allows a small group of scientists, hell, a single nonscientist, to destroy the world?
You're right that the genie is out of the bottle, but he's one of those sneaky genies who twists your words around when you make wishes.
I don't know if we can stop those things, but I look at what we have stopped and I'm encouraged. A fifty-year standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union with enough nuclear power to blow up the earth several times over. Many killer chemicals for weapons have been known for much longer than that, and other than people like Saddam Hussein, not widely used since WWI. Many diseases eradicated, many vaccines, many new medicines to treat old diseases. I'm not morose by nature, so I don't sit around worrying about all the potential ways to die. Besides, most people are going to die of heart disease in their Lazy-boys.
If humans don't destroy it first, of course, according to astronomers the earth will be hit within a few million years by a giant meteor. Failing that, the sun will go through it's natural changes and kill all life here. But, as one astronomer put it, so what? It's not as though the earth is a major planet anyway. :)
This conversation is over. Get back to me if and when you plan to join the human race.
I don't think I was saying exactly that. Or at least I didn't mean to. I don't regard these developments as inevitable at all.
When a country is ruled despotically (especially by a colonial despot), opposition forces develop ideologies to counter the ruler's power, thereby mobilizing the people against him. Nationalism, communism, and fundamentalism are are examples of the kinds of forces come to the fore. People take refuge in these emotional responses to their oppression.
When the only way to overthrow a despot is through violence, men of violence come to the fore. When the ruler is finally overthrown, it often happens that the forces unleashed go out of control. The history of nationalist struggles against imperialism and colonialism is full of examples of this. The longer and more desperately the Imperial power hangs on to power, the more violent it is likely to be.
I have this suspicion that Saudi Arabia is likely to give in to fundamentalism. The longer that it is ruled by a corrupt monarchy supported by an overseas power, the more radical the change will be when the system is finally overthrown. Constrast that with, say Jordan, where a relatively benign monarchy is gradually liberalizing.
Fundamentalism is not inevitable. But the longer and harder that we fight to avoid it, the more radical and violent it will be when it finally takes power.
If you ever want to prove that you aren't full of BS, you answer those two questions. 1) How should we have deposed Saddam without killing him, without killing any Iraqi soldiers, without killing any civilians, without creating refugees, without trampling anyone's "rights," without the danger of him being reinstated, etc and 2) What do you want done now, do you want Saddam killed, aided, or what. I confidently predict that you will never answer these straight questions.
And now go. Before somebody drops a house on YOU.
If we decided to liberate Kuwait in 1991 a certain group of Iraqis conscripts would have had to die. They did. If we had instead decided to take Baghdad, more Iraqi conscripts would have died. The two groups are not necessarily the same. Some of those who would have died in the liberation of Kuwait would have survived an attack on Baghdad. And vice versa.
Roughly three-quarters of the 200,000 Iraqi conscripts who died in the Gulf War did so pointlessly. That is to say, their deaths were not necessary to obtain the liberation of Kuwait, nor did this serve any other purpose. Pointless killing is murder.
The million or so Iraqis who have died due to the embargo have also died pointlessly. This also is murder.
Your attempt to conflate the people who have died pointlessly with those who might have died in a war to depose Saddam is, to say the least, disingenuous.
I think Johnson skipped a step in here. What is the basis for the "rule of law" that needs to be established? At a minimum, there needs to be a consensus about an objective moral code.
Or to make sure he doesn't strike again? But no, what I'm having a problem distinguishing is WHAT YOU WANT. You seem to say we should have "taken" Baghdad. I want to know HOW we should have done that. I want to know if we should have KILLED Saddam Hussein. I want to know how we should have done it WITHOUT killing SH, if that is your stance. I'm trying to get you to actually state WHAT YOU WANT. But for some reason, you are extremely evasive about that.
If we decided to liberate Kuwait in 1991 a certain group of Iraqis conscripts would have had to die. They did. If we had instead decided to take Baghdad, more Iraqi conscripts would have died. The two groups are not necessarily the same. Some of those who would have died in the liberation of Kuwait would have survived an attack on Baghdad. And vice versa.
And you are okay with one group dying but not the other? Why might that be?
Roughly three-quarters of the 200,000 Iraqi conscripts who died in the Gulf War did so pointlessly. That is to say, their deaths were not necessary to obtain the liberation of Kuwait, nor did this serve any other purpose. Pointless killing is murder.
No, they died so that they didn't turn around and charge back in the minute we left.
The million or so Iraqis who have died due to the embargo have also died pointlessly. This also is murder.
But there is a point. We are trying to get Saddam out of power. You yourself seem to say this is a valid goal. Is it a valid goal? Let's start with that: DO YOU THINK DEPOSING SADDAM IS A VALID GOAL OR AN INVALID GOAL? See if you can answer that question before we attempt to go on. And let's not even get into the oil-for-food program that allows Saddam to sell billions of dollars in oil every year for food (which he then doesn't use for food, not OUR fault). Let's not even get into the billion dollars in humanitarian aid funnelled to Iraq over the last 10 years, you don't want to talk about that, I know. Let's just talk about what you want. What do you want? Do you want Saddam killed, or do you want the embargo lifted with him still in power?
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
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