Sunday, January 18, 2009

Bush Derangement Syndrome, Iraq & Liberal Democracy

I wasn't entirely convinced Bush Derangement Syndrome existed until I made my farewell post at Dispatches From the Culture War and am getting nailed in the comments to it. And, I mean this as no insult to Ed; he has a great blog and I'm grateful that he invited me to guest blog. Let me further say I didn't vote for Bush either times (I voted Libertarian). And I do not support the Iraq War -- I think it was a mistake -- and never promoted it.

First of all on why Bush took us to war:

My post originally gave a "shout out" to my blogfather Timothy Sandefur who was a supporter of Bush's War in Iraq. He argued after Christopher Hitchens, that the War was for secular values against theocratic totalitarianism.

I do believe that the war was fought chiefly for liberal democratic values (small l, small d). And that Bush believes liberal democratic ideas are God-given human rights as he has told us, as the Declaration of Independence says. Whether liberal democratic values are "secular" is debatable, but I think you can make that case. For instance, Bush's Straussian advisors who pushed him into this war (who tend to be atheists) understand that the Declaration of Independence's ideas of "unalienable rights" to liberty and equality are NOT authentically Christian, but essentially modern ideas. So it's not too much of a stretch to say a war against Islamic fanaticism fought on behalf of universal human rights of liberty and equality is an essentially secular project. Or it's at the very least a "modern" project.

The problem is it didn't work; we could force those values on Germany and Japan (as we did), but could not on the Islamic world.

I also believe that Bush & his Straussians advisors were involved in a concerted effort to "reform" Islam to be a more moderate and enlightened religion (i.e., the idea that Islam is a "religion of peace" and that Muslims worship the same God Jews and Christians do). But whether that can work as well is not for certain; I see that as a work in progress and a noble one at that.

Some of Bush's critics -- mostly the paleoconservatives at the Lew Rockwell Crowd -- who have termed neoconservatives "neo-Jacobins" have a kernel of truth in their argument. While I can't speak for Cheney or other parts of Bush's administration, everything I've seen, read and heard from Bush supports my contention that he fought the war in Iraq chiefly to put an American footprint in the Middle East of liberty, equality, and modern democracy. The ends were noble (that is liberal democracy is the best form of government and we should wish to see all nations adopt it); the means were not. You can't "nation build" and establish liberal democracy by force in most of the illiberal un-democratic lands. According to internal theory of liberal democracy, the "people" in those lands have to "consent" to the liberal democratic (or "constitutionally republican") form of government.

And by the way, though I don't agree with the Straussians on many issues, I've learned much about political philosophy and the American Founding from them. While I'm not certain if the term "neo-Jacobin" is proper, the idea of fighting wars for liberal democratic values can be gleaned from the American Founding record. Though I wouldn't call them "Jacobins," America's Founders certainly were Francophiles. One of the many revisionist myths of the "Christian Nation" proponents is that the American Founders did not support the French Revolution. The opposite is true. The French were vital allies in defeating the British and a consensus among both the Founders and the population at large was the French Revolution was a continuation of the American Revolution, that eventually such a revolutionary republican spirit would sweep the globe and make this the *final* form of government.

And it wasn't just the deists, unitarians and rationalists who supported the French Revolution, but orthodox Trinitarian Christians, like Ezra Stiles, as well. Indeed ministers, whether heterodox unitarians like Joseph Priestley and Richard Price, or orthodox Trinitarians like Ezra Stiles synthesized such revolutionary republican ideas with the Bible and thought the French Revolution would triumphantly usher in a "millennial republic" of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Men like John Adams and Edmund Burke -- Whigs who supported the American cause, but opposed the French Revolution from the start -- were in the minority at the very beginning. And then, as with Iraq II and Vietnam, what began as a popular movement eventually began to lose support as things started to go wrong. And when it was all over, of course, we realized just how different the American and French Revolutions were, why the former succeeded and the later failed. And men like Burke and Adams got to say "I told you so" just like LewRockwell.com and Counterpunch are now saying "I told you so."

And again, I write all of this just to try and get some perspective on the last 8 years of Bush's Presidency. I don't support him or his failed war. And I think the Founding Fathers, though they CERTAINLY believed (as Bush does) that liberal democracy (i.e., what's written in the Declaration of Independence) was *the* form of government that all nations *ought* to adopt, and consequently would "cheer on" and support nations that revolted on behalf of "the rights of man," they were also wisely prudent about engaging in "foreign entanglements" on behalf of causes that we might like.

9 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

For instance, Bush's Straussian advisors who pushed him into this war (who tend to be atheists) understand that the Declaration of Independence's ideas of "unalienable rights" to liberty and equality are NOT authentically Christian, but essentially modern ideas.

They argue that, but it's not necessarily true. Strauss' great lacuna is religious and specifically Christian thought, as Voegelin points out in their correspondence.

I also believe that Bush & his Straussians advisors...

The "Straussian" thing is way overblown. Take a class from Strauss at the University of Chicago, and you're a "Straussian."

The charges of atheism and Jacobinism are unsubstantiated. The French revolution was indeed "modern," as it put man as the measure of all things. Even if he was an atheist [he was, functionally], Strauss opposed modernity in favor of "classical" natural right, and wouldn't have supported invading Iraq. In "Natural Right and History," he mocks Wilsonianism, the idea of "making the world safe for democracy."

But you're quite right about the BDS at that other blog. I was appalled. I gave it more credit than that.

You can't "nation build" and establish liberal democracy by force in most of the illiberal un-democratic lands.

You mean like Japan and Germany?

Jonathan Rowe said...

I thought about qualifying my statement with remarks on Japan and Germany. Germany was smack dab in Western Europe a "liberal democratic" zeitgeist. And Japan's particular Asian sense of shame and authoritarianism made them amenable to accepting our "liberal democratic" orders. Those two examples are serious ones. They provided Bush, Kristol, Wolfowitz with confidence that when Hussein was easily defeated as he was, we could establish a liberal democracy there as we did in Japan and Germany. To tell you the truth, when this went down, I had no idea whether it was going to work as it did in Germany & Japan, or whether the naysayers on the left & right were right that it would turn into a quagmire. But they were right.

And it wasn't just the Lew Rockwell or the Counterpunch crowd. It was advisors for the first Bush (GHWB) who told him we had to leave Hussein in power for *those very reasons.*

I can't tell you how many times since 1991 I spoke to folks who said, they supported the first Iraq War but couldn't fathom why GHWB didn't "finish the job." Well now we know. But, as with the French Revolution, things weren't so "self evident" back in the early 90s, both in the early 1790s and 1990s.

Tom Van Dyke said...

Well, popular sentiment and BDS has made it impossible to discuss the issue; I was inclined to postpone it for 20 years.

But while we have the floor and are being dispassionate, I'd say that "liberty" is seldom discussed by Strauss---he is concerned with tyranny. One might say that "Straussianism" was combined with Reagan/Thatcherism, the notion that man desires to "breathe free."

Depose the tyrant, and the people will choose democracy.

This is only somewhat accurate, because liberty is useless without order, without the freedom from being murdered. And so we see in Russia a "consent of the governed" for authoritarianism. Still, despite his illiberal machinations, it seems to me that the Russian people are choosing Putin quite democratically. So too in Singapore, which used to be known as the toilet of Asia, there seems to be a consensus for that authoritarian government, as it's resulted in order and prosperity.

And the "liberal" part of "democracy" becomes problematic when religious sentiment is ignored. The models for nontyrannical government in the Muslim world are Turkey and Indonesia and I suppose Malaysia. But we cannot ignore that their systems must be congenial to the prevailing social ethos of Islam---you certainly can't turn Istanbul into Amsterdam.

Christopher Hitchens' truly secular state is quite aways away. In fact, Amsterdam might become Istanbul first. But that's another discussion. ;-)

Jonathan Rowe said...

As a libertarian, I can't support the authoritarianism of Russian or Singapore. However, on empiracle or observable grounds, I note that while you need capitalism, property rights and rule of law (i.e., markets) to create wealth, authoritarian political mechanisms seem to be just as good at providing the structure as democratic ones.

There are a few key differences between Russia and Singapore. Russia is European in its culture and as such "authoritarianism" isn't as authentic to them. Asia, on the other hand, has authoritarianism much more deeply embedded in its traditions. And, until recently there was a huge problem with corruption in Russia that leaves residues of arbitrariness in Putin's rule. Arbitrariness and corruption are the opposite of "rule of law" and are terrible for effective functioning markets.

Singapore is one of the least corrupt, or "arbitrary" nations on Earth. If you can play by their rules, they'll be fair to you and provide a nice place to live.

Indeed, authoritarianism in pursuit of "quality of life" -- which is a secular end -- though not the most desirable form of government, is much better than authoritarianism in pursuit of religiously fanatical ends.

Tom Van Dyke said...

fanaticism = bad

Our Founding Truth said...

One of the many revisionist myths of the "Christian Nation" proponents is that the American Founders did not support the French Revolution. The opposite is true.>

This is only true until the french attacked Christianity.

The models for nontyrannical government in the Muslim world are Turkey and Indonesia and I suppose Malaysia.>

Indonesia and Malaysia are tyrannical big time; the tyrannical majority of muslims over everyone else, adhering to the koran.

I'm almost certain Figi is the most republican country in the world; run by Christians.

Jonathan Rowe said...

This is only true until the french attacked Christianity.

Not exactly; don't forget the dominant form of Christianity in France was Roman Catholicism; THAT'S what was attacked. And many of the Founders (orthodox OR heterodox) had a strong disdain for Roman Catholicism. That led figures like Ezra Stiles, himself an orthodox Christian theologian and President of Yale, to put up with attacks on Christianity under the auspices that they were just attacking tyrannical Roman Catholicism.

Our Founding Truth said...

This is only true until the french attacked Christianity.

Not exactly; don't forget the dominant form of Christianity in France was Roman Catholicism; THAT'S what was attacked. And many of the Founders (orthodox OR heterodox) had a strong disdain for Roman Catholicism. That led figures like Ezra Stiles, himself an orthodox Christian theologian and President of Yale, to put up with attacks on Christianity under the auspices that they were just attacking tyrannical Roman Catholicism.>

I agree with that.

Our Founding Truth said...

This is only true until the french attacked Christianity.

Not exactly; don't forget the dominant form of Christianity in France was Roman Catholicism; THAT'S what was attacked.>

Not only the catholics persecuted the Christians, and it seems the true Christians were attacked to a certain degree by the majority deists. That would be an interesting post to write. To what extent did the deists of France persecute the true Christians, who were underground?

Maybe because they were underground, they weren't touched at all.