Posted on 03/21/2002 9:11:10 AM PST by vannrox
Will Hutton The most important political story of our time is the rise of the American Right and the near collapse of American liberalism. This has transformed the political and cultural geography of the United States and now it is set to transform the political and cultural geography of the West. Britain's reflex reactions to an ally with whom we apparently share so much and which has served us well are going to be tested as never before. The signals are all around. It takes extraordinary circumstances to produce the kind of warnings voiced over the last week by Chris Patten, EU commissioner for external affairs and former chairman of the Conservative Party, but these circumstances are extraordinary. Patten has damned the emerging US reliance on its fantastic military superiority over all other nations to pursue what it wants as it wants as an 'absolutist and simplistic' approach to the rest of the world that is ultimately self-defeating. It is also intellectually and morally wrong. He is the first ranking British politician to state so boldly what has been a commonplace in France and Germany for weeks. American conservatism, following the teaching of the influential conservative American political philosopher Leo Strauss, unites patriotism, unilateralism, the celebration of inequality and the right of a moral élite to rule into a single unifying ideology. As Professor Shadia Drury describes in Leo Strauss and the American Right (St Martin's Press), Strauss's core idea that just states must be run by moral, religious, patriotic individuals and that income redistribution, multilateralism and any restraint on individual liberty are mortal enemies of the development of such just élites is the most influential of our times. The emergence of the largely reactionary south and west of the US as its new economic and political centres of gravity; the weakness of its rules on campaign finance which allow rich, usually conservative, candidates to buy elections; the inability of American liberals to fight back; the embrace of Straussian ideas, laced with traditional anti-tax, free-market nostrums - these ingredients make a deadly cocktail. They have transformed American politics, so that even an essentially progressive President like Clinton found himself behaving, as he acknowledged, like an Eisenhower Republican, while being the object of a co-ordinated conservative conspiracy in first the Whitewater investigations and later the Starr inquiry. The Supreme Court's suspension of the Florida recount in December 2000, to gift the presidency to Bush, is part of the same story. Before this challenge, Britain, in its own self-interest, has to play the same balance-of-power politics it used to do in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. That means siding with the EU and no longer being US conservatism's lapdog. We cannot, for example, be part of the US national missile defence system if its purpose is to destroy the fabric of international law or join America's war against Iraq. Mr Blair should beware. Trying to be both pro-European and pro-American will no longer work. There is a choice and, if he does not make it, ultimately it will wreck his premiership. In an era of globalisation, it is international affairs that determine the fate of governments, because party Whips cannot contain the consequent passions. The Tories broke over Europe. Labour will break over too-slavish fealty to this US. This is the new political drama. Watch out Time to stop being America's lap-dog
Tony Blair is faced with a stark choice - either to ally himself to the increasingly conservative and intolerant US or be a fully engaged European
Observer Worldview
The Europe pages - Observer special
Sunday February 17, 2002
The Observer
The most obvious flashpoint is the weight of evidence that after Afghanistan George Bush intends a massive military intervention to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Dangerous dictator he may be, but the unilateral decision to declare war upon another state without a casus belli other than suspicion will upset the fabric of law on which international relations rests, as well as destabilising the Middle East.
American loyalists shrug their shoulders; Tony Blair is reported to have said privately that 'if we can get rid of Baghdad, we should', a devastatingly naive remark which so far stands uncorrected. This is the traditional British view that insists we stick close to the US. It remains the same good America that has been on the right side of the great conflicts of the last 100 years; worthwhile allies put up with the bad decisions as well as the good.
But it's not the same good America. The postwar US that reconstructed Europe and led an international liberal economic and social order has disappeared completely.
Its former leaders would no more volunteer the scale of defence spending now contemplated in the US - a 12 per cent, $48 billion increase on an already stunning military budget - while offering the less developed countries close to nothing in increased aid flows, debt relief and market access than fly to the Moon. Yet Bush has only agreed to attend next month's crucial UN conference in Monterey on global governance and Third World development strategies if it is understood that the question of money is not be raised.
It is this essential stance, along with the tearing down of international weapons treaties and last week's feeble move on global warming that tells us how profoundly conservative the US has become. Unilateralism, as Patten argues, is not in itself ignoble - states pursue their self-interests - but US unilateralism is uncompromisingly absolutist because it is ideological, which is what it makes so dangerous.
Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of state for defence pushing for an early invasion of Iraq, is a Straussian. So is John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, who has legislated for military tribunals both to try and execute suspected terrorists beyond the rule of law. Straussians build up the military capacity of the nation while invoking the Bible and the flag. This is not prejudice; this is a coherent ideological position.
This destructive conservatism is contested fiercely, especially on the liberal, internationalist seaboards. Many good Americans are as bewildered by their current leaders and ideas as we are. But they are not in control. What the world has to deal with is not just the Bush administration, but the internal forces that put it there and will continue to constrain the US even without it. Iraq, the continuing defence build-up, disdain for international law and total uninterest in the 'soft' aspects of security - aid, trade, health, education and debt - are now givens in US policy.
So, essentially the entire premise of this article is second-hand information ffrom an academic lefty. Oh, boy. I think if newspaper writers ahad to go out and do some research and actually do some thinking on their own that they'd all die of shock.
the weakness of its rules on campaign finance which allow rich, usually conservative, candidates to buy elections; the inability of American liberals to fight back;
A free clue. Rich liberals like John Corzine have been much more successful in buying elections than rich conservatives like Steve Forbes.
the weakness of its rules on campaign finance which allow rich, usually conservative, candidates to buy elections
I guess he’s talking about conservatives like:
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) ($620 million)
Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) ($400 million)
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) ($300 million)
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) ($200 million)
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) ($75 million)
Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) ($63 million)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) ($50 million)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) ($40 million)
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) ($25 million)
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) ($25 million)
Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) ($20 million)
Rep. Norm Sisisky (D-Va.) ($20 million)
Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) ($20 million)
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ($15 million)
Buncha right wing, gun-nut, militia types on that list.
This idiot is already out-of-date, today stories have appeared in which the Brits publicly said that they will use nuclear weapons if attacked with weapons of mass destruction. They have already made it clear that they are ready to join in a war against Iraq. If the left-wing laborites bring down the government, it will be replaced by the Tories, who are even more pro-American than Blair.
But remember, this ferret-faced crook is a left-wing Klinton Klone Klown at heart. He will be jumping off the Bush bandwagon very soon, and rejoining his true friends in Britain's loony left.
Britain is enjoying a huge and particularly brutal crime wave. The health system has collapsed to the point where Germany and Holland have had to send their doctors to Britain to attend to basic patient care. Armed feral immigrants from the remains of the African and Caribbean Empire swarm in the streets. Pakistanis have taken political power in the Midlands. Terrorists flock to London mosques and collect the Dole. Affirmative Action (which at least the Brits call by its right name,"Positive Discrimination,") is ticking off white bread winners. Their education system is an absolute shambles. and to top it off, there's this antipathy to being ruled by the EU.
Margaret Thatcher, where are you when we need you?
While nothing is impossible, this is as nearly so as makes no difference. Blair might be forced out by the left, but he can't turn on the US at this point and have any credibility. I agree with your analysis of the state of Britain, as well as Blairs responsibility for it, but he does give pretty speeches, doesn't he?
Key sign as to Blair's intentions: follow Jim "Snakehead" Carville.
"Many good Americans are as belwildered by their current leaders as we are. But they are not in control".
I'm not bewildered by my current leaders. I'm rather proud of them. We are in control - we vote for them.
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