The Ideological War Within the West

Jerry Pournelle just posted this on its own page on his web site. Generally, if Jerry thinks something is worthwhile enough to get its own page, it's worth reading. Not easy going, but well worth it. Know thine enemy (not the author, but the forces of Transnational Progressivism).

Apologies if this has already been posted; I searched on "ideological" and didn't find it.

Correct link to Jerry Pournelle's web site.

No time to read it all right now but the first few paragraphs are extremely interesting.

Okay, done.

All I can say is, you owe it to yourself to read this article. Yes it's long, but every word in there is important.

No matter how young you are, this conflict between "liberal democrats" (NOTE: "liberal" in the good old classical British sense of the word; small-d "democrats") and "transnationalist progressives" will last our entire lifetimes.

The enemy within. Starting today SEEK HIM OUT AND ENGAGE HIM, by peaceful means.

When I read your post, I immediately thought of your linked-to thread. Was gratified, upon clicking the link, to see you had already thought of the same thing. Excellent comment/link.

This right up your alley. Ping.

bump for later

Great find, and an important and disturbing article.

Cheers,

Richard F.

Thanks for the heads-up. I've only just posted the day's update to the Palace, and She Who Must Be Obeyed is demanding my attention to a few sweaty chores, so I'll have to get on it a bit later.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

"there already is an alternative ideology to liberal democracy within the West "

Yes. It is popularly known as "Liberalism". In the U.S., its base is the Democrat Party. It has nothing to do with the word "liberal" in the sense of freedom-loving, open-minded, or free-thinking. It has nothing to do with liberty and justice. It is contrary to the liberalism and dedication to universal liberty and justice inherent in Western Civilization.

"Louis Henkin, one of the most prominent scholars of international law, calls for largely eliminating 'the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen permanent resident.'"
"Columbia University international law professor Stephen Legomsky argues that dual nationals holding influential positions in the U.S. should not be required to give "greater weight to U.S. interests, in the event of a conflict" between the U.S. and the other country in which the American citizen is also a dual national. "

They can rejoice. Their desires have already been realized.

"My suggested fourth dimension is the conflict within the democratic world between the forces of liberal democracy and the forces of transnational progressivism, between democrats and post- democrats. "

This is the "culture war". And on its outcome hangs the fate of the world.

The conflict is within the Western Democracies ("the democratic world") between "Liberalism" ("the forces of transnational progressivism") and the American Heartland (the great bastion of florishing "liberal democracy").

"Liberalism" represents decadence within the West. If it prevails, the West will fall--because of decay and destruction from within--and Western Civilization will come to an end.

The fundamental question is whether or not the people of the West have the wit and the will to survive. If they don't, nothing will save them.

If the American Heartland prevails, it will bring the American Dream to the entire world and Western Civilization, the greatest accumulation of wisdom, liberty, justice, and liberalism the world has ever known, will survive.

The fate of the world rests on the answer to this fundamental question.

The American people had better repudiate "Liberalism" and remain powerful in every way, especially economically and politically. The fate of the world depends on it.

There was a lead quote in one of the chapters of Hayek's Road to Serfdom that I've never forgotten. I think it's:

Nothing would prove so dangerous to freedom, as the passion for equality.

The problem is the demand for equality of results, not that for equality of opportunity. I suspect we are in agreement.

This is a excellent article. A must read. Time may have overtaken Fonte, though.

The weight of the global market and giant corporations has been thrown behind transnationalism and globalism. Political and legal multiculturalism and postnationalism complete and extend the work that the economy is already doing. Transnational may be oppressive and unworkable, but it isn't unprecedented and doesn't come from nowhere.

There's also an ambiguity in "liberal democracy." Fonte's is the 19th century version of these ideas: a self-governing, sovereign state for every people. The "liberal democrats" or "Liberal Democrats" of the 20th and 21st century have left such ideas behind them already.

Certainly since the founding of the European Union and the United Nations, if not the League of Nations, liberal democrats have been on the transnational path. Proclaiming the benefits of liberal democracy today probably means promoting post-sovereignty. Today's advocates of 19th century liberal democracy or republicanism, like Paul Gottfried, are radically at odds with promoters of the modern version.

This article and William Hawkins National Review article on Kantian Europe have some overlap. Hawkins is wrong about Europe representing some Kantian universalism against American particularism. Years ago one might have taken exactly the opposite line. We were the freetraders, the universalists, the ones who wanted to get Europe out of its particularistic ruts. But he does point out the universalizing drive of the modern world.

Finally, it's not clear how far Israeli "post-Zionism" fits into the pattern. There's a surface similarity between phenomena here and there. But one could argue that things are actually quite different.

First, the kind of transformation urged on Israel may be of the sort that we went through a century ago, when we ceased to be an overwhelmingly WASP nation. Or a century before that when we separated church and state.

Second, post-Zionism looks like a continuation of the transformation away from the original Eastern European settlement to take in Jews from other parts of the world. There's a similarity here to our own history which used previous waves of immigration to justify later ones, but it makes "post-Zionism" less unprecedented or apocalyptic. Such a "continuation" or further development may derail the orginal project, but it ought not be taken as something wholly alien to it.

Third, The vision of some early Zionists was already multicultural. It was far more problematic to plant a state for one people in a region largely populated by others than to advocate one for a population living in the area where the state would be, so compromises with sovereigntism were necessary. For some early Zionists, a national home did not mean a nation state. For others, the assumption was that Arabs would gratefully live in and embrace a modern industrialized Jewish-run state. These may be naive assumptions, but the question of what the original Zionist project of a "national home," a "Jewish state" or "normalization" involves means that Fonte opens up a complicated can of worms that he probably should have left alone.

Fourth, it's not the desire to integrate Palestinians that makes "post-Zionism" but the arrival of non-Arab and non-Jewish workers for economic reasons. As with other countries, the economic and demographical transformation precedes the political one. Even fervid Zionists are going to find it difficult to cope with transformations in Israeli society, and it's by no means clear to outsiders that those changes are for the worst.

Peres's vision of multinational organizations for the Middle East is almost certainly naive and unworkable, but should be seen in the positive light of the original Franco-German moves to overcome centuries of conflict, rather than as a pernicious move in the direction of a superstate.

BUMP

Mr. Fonte's observations are all unimpeachable. Nor can I fault his essential conclusions. There is indeed a struggle going on, and it is not possible to be perfectly confident that the good guys will win.

In pondering Fonte's presentation, I found myself remembering a passage from William Simon's classic A Time For Truth. He noted that when the forces of the Left start hurling accusations and vilification at such figures as bankers and industrialists, the usual result is not a vigorous self-defense by the latter, but rather a failure of moral courage followed by a campaign of appeasement and propitiation. More often than not, the Left's targets officiate at their own lynchings.

Another thought that struck me was of the pyramidal nature of political organizations, including all the NGOs and special-interest groups Fonte mentioned. The great mass of adherents are probably sincere about their beliefs, and do not grasp their toxic nature. The top operators are clearer-eyed, for their agenda is always the preservation and extension of their power and perquisites. The group's "official" agenda is only a cover for their advancement of themselves.

Finally, we have an ideological shift of continental dimensions, yet one which is so large as to be effectively invisible: the steady elimination of the concept of privacy, especially private property. The private and the public spheres are mutually defining; once there is no more private sphere, there will be nothing which is not subject to thoroughgoing political control. Obviously, as the boundary of the private is pushed back before the encroachments of politics, it will become ever more important to have "friends in high places."

It might not be clear at the outset how all this ties together, but a little reflection will make all the pieces fall into place:

The NGOs and "stakeholder" interest groups always take care to operate from a morally elevated position. That is, such a group always argues its case as a matter of fundamental justice, rather than a matter of relative utility or efficiency. The mere fact of proclaiming their issue to be a moral issue is enough to disarm and put to flight many who have nothing to account for by any objective standard. Their unwillingness to defend themselves leaves many of us wondering what guilts they hide, even when we don't have any sympathy for their attackers' values.
The leaders of the NGOs and interest groups are endlessly willing to accept compromise offers, and will defend such actions to their "outer party" constituents as steps in the right direction that are all that's practically achievable at this time. But. these "compromise offers" never involve any absolution or exculpation of the other party, be it a government, a corporation, a religion, or any other kind of institution. The compromise is all in one direction. Inevitably, it weakens the target institution (especially its moral stance), strengthens the predator group, and improves the position of the predator group's leadership -- "Look how far he's brought us!" This is true even when the concessions flow directly into the pockets of the leader, as for example with Jesse Jackson and Yasser Arafat.
The groups' recourse to the UN and other supranational fora is the most expedient way to neutralize the protections of privacy, especially private property, since that concept is accorded little respect anywhere outside the United States. As with the "compromises" mentioned above, there is never a final settlement possible with these groups concerning what is properly and unchangeably private and therefore beyond the reach of political machination. Each concession only strengthens their conviction that someday they can eliminate the concept of privacy, private property, and private life in its entirety, reducing us all to Winston Smith's state of continuously monitored fear where one's sole private possession is the few cubic centimeters inside one's skull.

The Constitution, that uniquely American idea, will not protect us from the "transnational progressives" unless we protect it. It is not the origin of freedom, but rather a plan conceived by men already convinced of the rightness of liberty, that sprouted from American defiance of invalid authority and was watered by the blood of patriots. In these days, when few are willing to go to the barricades for freedom, justice, and the rule of law, our founding heritage and its documents provide little cover.

To protect our rights will involve regenerating our understanding of them: whence they emerge, their scope and application, and their implications for our treatment of one another when we find ourselves in disagreement. Isabel Paterson believed that this could be done by encouraging students to approach the Constitution as an engineering plan, a blueprint that emerged from the Framers' understanding of the fundamentals of freedom and the stresses and strains a diverse, often fractious people would undergo. Her book The God Of The Machine was an attempt at such a presentation.

There are few certainties in political combat, but there is always this one: For evil to triumph, it is necessary only that good men do nothing.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

Excellent analyses! I feel privileged to be reading you two.

I suspect we are in agreement.

We are.

B²

??

My bad.

B² means "bookmarked and bumped."