OT:Liberalism is Dead

[rogue]

Interesting article from that organ of the Right Wing (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050228&s=peretz022805)

[Christopher M]

You should see my right-wing organ.

[count]

Liberalism isn't dead, it just smells funny.

Too bad I can't even call up this site. How about just posting the text of the article instead of a link. Or do you have an interest in getting hits foor that site?

[rogue]

February 18, 2005

LOSING OUR DELUSIONS.
Not Much Left
by Martin Peretz

Printer friendly
Post date 02.17.05 | Issue date 02.28.05

think it was John Kenneth Galbraith, speaking in the early 1960s, the high point of post-New Deal liberalism, who pronounced conservatism dead. Conservatism, he said, was "bookless," a characteristic Galbraithian, which is to say Olympian, verdict. Without books, there are no ideas. And it is true: American conservatism was, at the time, a congeries of cranky prejudices, a closed church with an archaic doctrine proclaimed by spoiled swells. William F. Buckley Jr. comes to mind, and a few others whose names will now resonate with almost nobody. Take as just one instance Russell Kirk, an especially prominent conservative intellectual who, as Clinton Rossiter (himself a moderate conservative) wrote, has "begun to sound like a man born one hundred and fifty years too late and in the wrong country."

At this point in history, it is liberalism upon which such judgments are rendered. And understandably so. It is liberalism that is now bookless and dying. The most penetrating thinker of the old liberalism, the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is virtually unknown in the circles within which he once spoke and listened, perhaps because he held a gloomy view of human nature. However gripping his illuminations, however much they may have been validated by history, liberals have no patience for such pessimism. So who has replaced Niebuhr, the once-commanding tribune to both town and gown? It's as if no one even tries to fill the vacuum. Here and there, of course, a university personage appears to assert a small didactic point and proves it with a vast and intricate academic apparatus. In any case, it is the apparatus that is designed to persuade, not the idea.

Ask yourself: Who is a truly influential liberal mind in our culture? Whose ideas challenge and whose ideals inspire? Whose books and articles are read and passed around? There's no one, really. What's left is the laundry list: the catalogue of programs (some dubious, some not) that Republicans aren't funding, and the blogs, with their daily panic dose about how the Bush administration is ruining the country.


Europe is also making the disenchanting journey from social democracy, but via a different route. Its elites had not foreseen that a virtually unchecked Muslim immigration might hijack the welfare state and poison the postwar culture of relative tolerance that supported its politics. To the contrary, Europe's leftist elites lulled the electorates into a false feeling of security that the new arrivals were simply doing the work that unprecedented low European birth rates were leaving undone. No social or cultural costs were to be incurred. Transaction closed. Well, it was not quite so simple. And, while the workforce still needs more workers, the economies of Europe have been dragged down by social guarantees to large families who do not always have a wage-earner in the house. So, even in the morally self-satisfied Scandinavian and Low Countries, the assuring left-wing bromides are no longer believed.

The conflict between right and left in the United States is different. What animates American conservatism is the future of the regulatory state and the trajectory of federalism. The conservatives have not themselves agreed on how far they want to retract either regulation or the authority of the national government. These are not axiomatic questions for them, as can be seen by their determined and contravening success last week in empowering not the states against Washington but Washington against the states in the area of tort law. As Jeffrey Rosen has pointed out in these pages, many of these issues will be fought out in the courts. But not all. So a great national debate will not be avoided.

Liberals have reflexes on these matters, and these reflexes put them in a defensive posture. But they have not yet conducted an honest internal conversation that assumes from the start that the very nature of the country has changed since the great New Deal reckoning. Surely there are some matters on which the regulatory state can relax. Doubtless also there are others that can revert to the states. Still, liberals know that the right's ideologically framed--but class-motivated--retreat of the government from the economy must be resisted. There will simply be too many victims left on the side of the road.

At the same time, U.S. politics has not yet confronted a phenomenon that has been on the front page of the international financial press for years. This is the dizzying specter of economic competition from China, whose hold on U.S. Treasury bonds leaves the dollar vulnerable to a tremendous decline should China decide to sell them. (There is a new model of society emerging before our eyes: a most rapacious capitalist economy under a most pitiless communist political tyranny.) The industrialized states of Europe and, predictably, Japan are battening down their hatches rather than admitting to the challenge from China. But China will not go away.

There is also a rapacious capitalism in our own country. Of course, it is not as brutalizing as it is in China. But it is demoralizing and punishing. Moreover, it threatens its own ethical foundations. The great achievement of U.S. capitalism was that it became democratic, and the demos could place reasonable trust in its institutions. The very extent of stockholding through mutual funds, pension funds, and individual holdings is a tribute to the reliability of the market makers, the corporations themselves, and their guarantors. We now know that much of this confidence was misplaced and that some of the most estimable companies and financial institutions were cooking the books and fixing the odds for the favored. Eliot Spitzer has taught us a great lesson in our vulnerability. Many individual corporations, investment banks, stock brokerages, insurance companies, auditors, and, surely, lawyers who vetted their contracts and other arrangements were complicit in violating the public trust. What does a certification of a financial report by an accounting firm actually prove when each of the Big Four (formerly the Big Five) has been culpable of unethical behavior on several counts? What has happened on Wall Street in the last few years would be tantamount to the doctors of the great teaching hospitals in the United States deciding in secret to abjure the Hippocratic Oath. For some reason, even liberals have been loath to confront this reality of the country's corporate and financial life. Yes, it is true that greed plays a role, even a creative role, in economic progress. Still, greed need not go unbridled. What is a responsible liberal for if he doesn't take on this task?

[rogue]

Liberals like to blame their political consultants. But then, if you depend on consultants for your motivating ideas, you are nowhere. So let's admit it: The liberals are themselves uninspired by a vision of the good society--a problem we didn't have 30 years ago. For several years, the liberal agenda has looked and sounded like little more than a bookkeeping exercise. We want to spend more, they less. In the end, the numbers do not clarify; they confuse. Almost no one can explain any principle behind the cost differences. But there are grand matters that need to be addressed, and the grandest one is what we owe each other as Americans. People who are voluntarily obliged to each other across classes and races, professions and ethnicities, tend to trust each other, like a patient his doctor and a student her teacher. It is not easy to limn out such a vision practically. But we have it in our bones.

In our bones or not, it is an exacting and long-time task. It's much easier, more comfortable, to do the old refrains. You can easily rouse a crowd when you get it to sing, "We Shall Overcome." One of the tropes that trips off the tongues of American liberals is the civil rights theme of the '60s. Another is that U.S. power is dangerous to others and dangerous to us. This is also a reprise from the '60s, the late '60s. Virtue returns, it seems, merely by mouthing the words.

One of the legacies of the '60s is liberal idealism about race. But that discussion has grown particularly outmoded in the Democratic Party. African Americans and Caribbean Americans (the differences between them another largely unspoken reality) have made tremendous strides in their education, in social mobility, in employment, in housing, and in politics as images and realities in the media. Even the gap in wealth accumulation between whites and blacks has begun to narrow, and, on this, even tremendous individual achievement over one generation cannot compensate for the accumulated advantages of inherited money over two or three generations. Still, the last 30 years separate two worlds. The statistics prove it. And this, too, we know in our bones.

But, in the Democratic Party, among liberals, the usual hustlers are still cheered. Jesse Jackson is still paid off, mostly not to make trouble. The biggest insult to our black fellow citizens was the deference paid to Al Sharpton during the campaign. Early in the race, it was clear that he--like Carol Moseley Braun and Dennis Kucinich--was not a serious candidate. Yet he was treated as if he just might take the oath of office at the Capitol on January 20. In the end, he won only a handful of delegates. But he was there, speaking in near-prime time to the Democratic convention. Sharpton is an inciter of racial conflict. To him can be debited the fraudulent and dehumanizing scandal around Tawana Brawley (conflating scatology and sex), the Crown Heights violence between Jews and blacks, a fire in Harlem, the protests around a Korean grocery store in Brooklyn, and on and on. Yet the liberal press treats Sharpton as a genuine leader, even a moral one, the trickster as party statesman.

This patronizing attitude is proof positive that, as deep as the social and economic gains have been among African Americans, many liberals prefer to maintain their own time-honored patronizing position vis-à-vis "the other," the needy. This is, frankly, in sharp contrast to President Bush, who seems not to be impeded by race difference (and gender difference) in his appointments and among his friends. Maybe it is just a generational thing, and, if it is that, it is also a good thing. But he may be the first president who apparently does not see individual people in racial categories or sex categories. White or black, woman or man, just as long as you're a conservative. That is also an expression of liberation from bias.

It is more than interesting that liberals have so much trouble recontextualizing race in the United States. It is, to move to the point, pathetic. And it leaves work undone. In Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger (the Michigan affirmative action case), she wrote that the Court assumed that, in 25 years, there will no longer be a need for affirmative action. Unless things change quickly, she will be completely off the mark. Nearly two years have passed since that ruling and virtually nothing has been done to make sure that children of color--and other children, too, since the crisis in our educational system cuts across race and class--are receiving a different and better type of schooling, in science and in literacy, than those now coming into our colleges. This is not about Head Start. This is about a wholesale revamping of teaching and learning. The conservatives have their ideas, and many of them are good, such as charter schools and even vouchers. But give me a single liberal idea with some currency, even a structural notion, for transforming the elucidation of knowledge and thinking to the young. You can't.

This leaves us with the issue of U.S. power, the other leftover from the '60s. It is true: American liberals no longer believe in the axiomatic virtue of revolutions and revolutionaries. But let's face it: It's hard to get a candid conversation going about Cuba with one. The heavily documented evidence of Fidel Castro's tyranny notwithstanding, he still has a vestigial cachet among us. After all, he has survived Uncle Sam's hostility for more than 45 years. And, no, the Viet Cong didn't really exist. It was at once Ho Chi Minh's pickax and bludgeon in the south. Pose this question at an Upper West Side dinner party: What was worse, Nazism or Communism? Surely, the answer will be Nazism ... because Communism had an ideal of the good. This, despite the fact that communist revolutions and communist regimes murdered ever so many more millions of innocents and transformed the yearning of many idealists for equality into the brutal assertion of evil, a boot stamping on the human face forever.
Peter Beinart has argued, also in these pages ("A Fighting Faith," December 13, 2004), the case for a vast national and international mobilization against Islamic fanaticism and Arab terrorism. It is typologically the same people who wanted the United States to let communism triumph--in postwar Italy and Greece, in mid-cold war France and late-cold war Portugal--who object to U.S. efforts right now in the Middle East. You hear the schadenfreude in their voices--you read it in their words--at our troubles in Iraq. For months, liberals have been peddling one disaster scenario after another, one contradictory fact somehow reinforcing another, hoping now against hope that their gloomy visions will come true.

I happen to believe that they won't. This will not curb the liberal complaint. That complaint is not a matter of circumstance. It is a permanent affliction of the liberal mind. It is not a symptom; it is a condition. And it is a condition related to the desperate hopes liberals have vested in the United Nations. That is their lodestone. But the lodestone does not perform. It is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics. It does not recognize a genocide when the genocide is seen and understood by all. Liberalism now needs to be liberated from many of its own illusions and delusions. Let's hope we still have the strength.

Hosni Mubarak is a nasty dictator who has stymied liberalism in Egypt. But it's precisely for the sake of liberalism in Egypt that he should be allowed to reelect himself one more time.

Social Security is essential to preserving the middle class, which makes it a key component not just of liberalism, but of capitalism and democracy as well.
Copyright 2005, The New Republic

[Christopher M]

Peruse Lakoff (http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/people/lakoff) for a more in-depth treatment of essentially the same thesis.

On a similar note, I recall one of the contentions that came out during the election was that the American Left was a fundamentally heterogenous group that would be hard pressed to agree on much beyond their opposition to the American Right. I suppose it's possible to imagine that in both positive and negative lights.

The main problem I have with the solution Lakoff and others seem to be putting forward is that they're focussing on improving the rhetoric of their ideology, whereas (and call me a starry-eyed idealist), I would really like to see the debate about ideas.

[ZIM]

I'm rather taken aback that you'd read Lakoff. Can't stand the nimrod, myself. For the same reason you've noted, too: Essentially I see him as playing a shell game.

WRT the heterogenity, etc of the US Left: Its herding cats. The Dems have largely been a party of emotion, not logic. The emotion is needful for unifying them long enough to vote in one direction.

Which could be both positive and negative, depending on whats stirred up. The last round was pretty ugly. They *can* appeal to nobler sentiments if they choose, but I wonder if thats possible whilst bearing their PC/neo-Socialist shackles.

Have to read the article more closely later...

[Christopher M]

Originally posted by ZIM
I'm rather taken aback that you'd read Lakoff.

Not in agreement. Some of his non-political stuff is on the right track, but typically available from better sources already (eg. Merleau-Ponty).

[Merryprankster]

Liberalism isn't dead...however, I think there are some serious issues regarding intellectual vibrance. Look at Noam Chomsky - going on and on about American empire....never mind that there are more competing power centers in the world than ever before. Never mind that U.S. relative power is decreasing because of increased power pluralism. The truth is that Noam and others like him are old cold warriors - just like many on the right. They grew up in a certain paradigm and with certain arguments and are trying to force fit the new world into that old framework. The framework was realism - old-style, statist political models that quite frankly have less relevance as time goes on.

The left in the United States is on the defensive - it has defined itself by what it is against, rather than by what it is for. And that gets you nowhere.

In fact, I think you can trace the success of neo-conservatism to the fact that the United States did a poor job of defining what it was for during the Cold War. Sure, it paid lip service to freedom and democracy, but the truth is that much of what took place was "Ah, you're an anti-Communist? Here, have some money and training....we'll worry about your human rights abuses and your totalitarian style later" Our actions defined us as against Communism and the USSR, NOT "for" anything in particular. We didn't combat Communism by promoting freedom, democracy and the rule of law unequivically. We fought it (and won) by being brutally pragmatic.

I would like to note that this critique/criticism is significantly different than the Kung Lek style rantings about American Colonialism and Empire Building, which is historically inaccurate and unsupportable. Folks like Kung Lek like to forget that the USSR ever existed, that Communism's aim was WORLDWIDE proletariat revolution, and that that represented a genuine threat. I'm not suggesting the ends justify the means - I'm saying that people who make the "American Empire" argument are ignoring the giant turd on the table - that little Cold War thing that provided the motive, vice a desire for American world domination. But like heroin addicts, they love their little dream worlds...but I digress.

Neo conservatism, regardless of what one might think of it, offers a definition of the National Purpose that is affirmative, rather than antagonistic. That's a public relations coup if I've ever seen one and quite powerful. The left must articulate a National Purpose in the affirmative as well....the problem is that what that purpose IS is largely agreed upon since the death of Communism. It's methodology that's different. And that doesn't paint much of a difference between the two parties. It's like the left holding up their hand and saying "oh, me too, but I'd do it better and different!"

[MoreMisfortune]

You should see my right-wing organ.

you mean this
http://www.trojanpleasure.co.uk/so/so.htm

lol :D

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

Liberalism isn't dead...

They grew up in a certain paradigm and with certain arguments and are trying to force fit the new world into that old framework. The framework was realism - old-style, statist political models that quite frankly have less relevance as time goes on.

that Communism's aim was WORLDWIDE proletariat revolution, and that that represented a genuine threat. I'm not suggesting the ends justify the means - I'm saying that people who make the "American Empire" argument are ignoring the giant turd on the table - that little Cold War thing that provided the motive, vice a desire for American world domination. But like heroin addicts, they love their little dream worlds...but I digress.

Neo conservatism, regardless of what one might think of it, offers a definition of the National Purpose that is affirmative, rather than antagonistic. That's a public relations coup if I've ever seen one and quite powerful.

first of all a lot of what i deleted were fine statements. however, that 'framework of statist political models' was created by the body of adolescents you now call the neo-conservatives.

Communism, more correctly Marxism, is as you described. The Soviet threat of the cold war was from the series of maniacal leaders the Soviet system created that was required to operate thier economy. Mind you most of the liberals are related to Communism via thier Socialism and willingness to share what's yours into thier happiness without much consideration for you in the process.

In the barest of realities Communism was never a threat to a developed industrial society that already had a demand economy in place. it was however a very real threat to totalitarian and colonial pre-industrial systems in which the majority of the population could see a better economic standard for themselves by being greedy for thier neighbors' goods in the interest of the guy across town. plus there had to be a visible difference is standards and a fair bit of journalistic license known as propaganda.

enter the idea of 'american world domination'. we spent less of our gdp on foreign aid than the soviets but defeated thier political insurgencies with the intellectual capital of greed and 'work' ethics. cowboys, cigarettes and coke. by helping them to develop demand economics by flooding thier markets with our goods. and it worked. thier industrial capacity was geared mainly towards military production and not luxury goods. so , naturally the soviets were able to make friends in unstable regions of the world by offering 'good all-weather guns' instead of butter.

in my personal opinion it is the liberals who are the heroine addicts: they keep trying to take away our rights to arm ourselves, get drunk, get high, give rights to folks who aren't eligible for them, ect. ect. it may be because they did heroine they have to be liberals: not much reason to thier elucidations.

neo-conservatism as a positive focus? when the most nihilistic and responsibility shirking religeon in the world is it's ideological base? where is your intellectual honesty?

[Merryprankster]

however, that 'framework of statist political models' was created by the body of adolescents you now call the neo-conservatives.

Ummm. No? The framework of statist political models is quite a bit older than the neo-cons. Many of them were/are adherents, but the American left ideologues (Noam, etc) are all old Cold Warriors for the most part. I say this with respect to their argumentation, not necessarily their generation. That very much shapes their thinking and world view and thus their perception of both the motivation and the way American power is used in the world. The Cold War is over and so is statist realism as a descriptive model.

Because of this, the ideological leftist perception of American power use is littered with words like "empire," "Neo-colonialism," and other nonsense that evidence doesn't support. You want an empire, go see Old Europe. I discussed Communism specifically instead of Marxism, because Marxism in its original format had less of a "goal". Rather, it was a historical inevitability. That's very different from the Leninist or Maoist conception that you force the proletariat revolution.

I agree with you that the SYSTEM of Communism wasn't going to make a dent in developed, industrialized societies, but the ideological goal of worldwide proletariat revolution, coupled with significant state backing from the USSR, certainly did constitute a threat. However, most Soviet leaders weren't maniacal. They were excellent party bureaucrats, dedicated to the Communist ideal, behaving practically from their point of view.

Regardless, the threat existed and the American response was to throw aid and money at less than savory regimes that opposed the Soviet Union. Very balance of power, realpolitick type stuff - not empire, not neo-colonialism, just brutal, Bismarckian style pragmatism. Consequently, I say that the American identity during the Cold War was defined antagonistically.


enter the idea of 'american world domination'. we spent less of our gdp on foreign aid than the soviets but defeated thier political insurgencies with the intellectual capital of greed and 'work' ethics. cowboys, cigarettes and coke. by helping them to develop demand economics by flooding thier markets with our goods. and it worked. thier industrial capacity was geared mainly towards military production and not luxury goods. so , naturally the soviets were able to make friends in unstable regions of the world by offering 'good all-weather guns' instead of butter.


This I just don't get. "Luxury Goods?" How about bread lines? They collapsed because planned economies don't work. Their system was super super broken. I object to the idea of "greed," when people are missing basic goods and services. The USSR could not engage in both worldwide realpolitick and feed its people. More trade was naturally going to encourage and probably hasten that collapse, because information comes with it, but let's be clear that the problems were fundamental and inherent and built on basic things like food and decent medical care - not cowboys, cigarettes and coke. BTW, interesting tidbit, estimates now range as high as 20%-25% of USSR GDP was spent on the military. Yikes! So, I agree that their GDP couldn't keep up, but I sure don't buy into your greed argument. I view it as an inherently flawed state that couldn't handle the load.


in my personal opinion it is the liberals who are the heroine addicts

I don't know if you were just reaffirming what I wrote or trying to challenge me....but I was saying the same thing, at least with respect to the heart of the "left" in the U.S. (as distinct from the much more reasonable center-left).


neo-conservatism as a positive focus? when the most nihilistic and responsibility shirking religeon in the world is it's ideological base? where is your intellectual honesty?

On this, I call bull****. I don't especially like having my integrity questioned, regardless of the arena. I come by my thoughts and opinions honestly, examining quite a bit of evidence before making up my mind, even if many don't agree with my point of view. For the record, if you're looking to pick a fight with me, this is probably the best way. I don't think you are, I think I'm just making myself poorly understood.

This will require going back to the original part about the Neo-Cons and the Cold War though. Bear with me. It's going to take a second.

Even if many/most of the Neo-Cons grew up in the statist, balance of power model, what really unites them is aggressive use of U.S. power to persue the "national interest." The reason that their model/vision is not statist though, is because it's not about focusing on state on state actors and relationships. It's about the United States hawkishly using its power to alter the SYSTEM (which does include states, but other things as well) and encourage its growth in a particular direction that they perceive as favorable to the United States.

I do not credit this as an innovation or revelation. It's mundane linear analysis (gets you a much changed caterpillar, but not a butterfly...). However, it's clear, articulable, cohesive and it defines the national interest in positive, affirmative terms, rather than negative, antagonistic ones. So when I say positive, I'm not assigning moral weight, I'm talking about being "for" rather than "against," something.

I agree with you that you can still see the statist influence in Neo-Con thinking, but disagree with the "where." To me, the Neo-Cons have identified the new reality of "global system," vice Cold War style statism. However, their old thinking comes through in the mechanics of their solutions, which are absolutely not system oriented. They are still rooted in geo-political considerations, not systemic ones. There is little effort to understand the system and figure out how to influence it, exploit it or try and change it. It's like doing brain surgery with a mallet.

Take the "War on Terror." The basic idea of "fighting it abroad so we don't have to fight it at home," is fundamentally flawed and reveals zero understanding of the global system. A systemic, networked approach would look rather different. So the Neo-Cons have yet to institute solution sets rooted in the new reality they (correctly) identify. As long as they keep advocating that type of thing, their use of U.S. power is going to be quite clumsy.

So, my point is not to glorify the Neo-Cons. It is to say that they were the first to articulate a clear, cohesive, affirmative message of the U.S. national purpose in the post-Cold War world. And that purpose is to develop a liberal (in the classic sense, not the modern U.S. usage - think The Economist, not Mother Jones) internationalist system that promotes freedom of choice and the rule of law.

The problem for the left is two-fold. First, they have no such clear, articulable message rooted in the new reality. Secondly, the fact is, the Neo-Cons got the basic idea RIGHT. The United States SHOULD be using its power to promote a global liberal internationalist system. So anything the left comes out with is going to look like a "me too," sort of document.

What they need to do in order to craft the necessary distinction between them and the current right, is sit down and identify quite clearly the environment the U.S. is operating in, and HOW to go about using U.S. power to accomplish the national interests. That document will look quite different from the Project for a New American Century IF they identify system and network style answer sets.

However, in order to do that, they have to drop the old statist international model and give up their language of empire. I haven't seen that happening, ideologically. I see it PRACTICALLY, with their major politicians, by necessity, but not as a fundamental ideological shift. The left is still going on and on about corporate government and economic empires and neo-colonialism. Enough. That conflict is over, and generally speaking, liberal internationalism won, because it's BETTER in every way. It promotes a higher standard of living, it promotes plurality of opinion, it empowers the individual, the list goes on and on. So the left needs to stop fighting the Cold War of ideas and MOVE ON. It must answer the question of how to maximize the spread of liberal internationalism, (which promotes ALL of the things the left says are important) rather than claim its all a quest for power or its going to become increasingly irrelevant (which we are starting to watch).


when the most nihilistic and responsibility shirking religeon in the world is it's ideological base?

A completely different argument, and one I'll allow you to debate with somebody else. While I don't believe you can make a strong case for this (I view the big five as morally equivalent, generally speaking), I simply don't care.

[SPJ]

Interesting threads and discussions.

Liberalism vs conservatism.

President Clinton is the most successful liberal democrat. He used whatever good ideas that work even if they are actually republican agenda. All of a sudden, there is a blur in terms of policy that is liberal democrats=liberal republican.

The world in the 21 century is beyond national borders. EU, NAFTA, Greater Asia (China and its neighbors).

POST WWII, Japan and western pacific countries were the factories and labors for the US market. Ever since the late 70's, opening of China injected a even cheaper labor for all. China has become the largest consumers market in the world exceeding US. China also becomes the factories of the world.

The huge market and free flow of foreign capital (not under planning or control by CCP) make the neighboring countries under depression growing again. Why Japan, Korea, Taiwan, south east Asia were in depression? Because, US industry moved factories to China from these countries.

While US is busy in fighting a war or many wars, China and its neighbors are growing economically together.

WTO becomes the forum for negociations on trade issues.

The world is changing very fast.

As if there is a storm coming, look for ways to weather the storm and not bothered by finesse about what we wear "liberalism" or conservatism".

The future of everyone is in the hands of many governments "together".

[SPJ]

OOPS;

My point is that liberalism as defined in liberal, free or flexibile ways of adopting ideas and policy that work as opposed to clinging on to a certain "fixed" doctrines;

Then liberalism is not dead. Liberalism is to be free to come up with better ideas to cope with whatever is at hand.

[rogue]

Merry, very interesting analysis of the neo-cons. Does Europe have a vision of the world and do you think they have a version of the NCs?

[Merryprankster]

Merry, very interesting analysis of the neo-cons.

Thank you. I don't know if I'm right, but it seems to me that's what's happened. Of course, I think Al Qaida and its associated movements are going to evolve into a worldwide criminal organization driven by profits and only nominally by global jihad, so what do I know?



Does Europe have a vision of the world and do you think they have a version of the NCs?

Sort of and not really, in that order.

The European vision of the world is basically liberal internationalist. That's exactly what they are espousing. The problem is internal agreement among the member nations of how exactly that comes about and what role the EU should play. The EU hasn't answered the question of "What IS the EU," yet.

There are lots of internal difficulties the EU has to deal with before it can focus on how to realize any future vision.

As far as a version of the Neo-Cons, there is nothing I can identify - largely traced to lack of a European common identity...

[rogue]

Thank you. I don't know if I'm right, but it seems to me that's what's happened. Of course, I think Al Qaida and its associated movements are going to evolve into a worldwide criminal organization driven by profits and only nominally by global jihad, so what do I know? I think thats spot on and it's happened before. The PLO was making money off of the drug trade for years. Same with FARC or Shining Path, I confuse the two sometimes. It makes sense that they would move from using illegal commerce to support their cause to using their cause to support the illegal commerce. Living in a cave and being on the run can get old after awhile.

[Merryprankster]

It's happened more immediately (to the global jihad movement) with the Abu Sayyaf Group.

[rogue]

I thought they were involved in that trade all the way back to the 80's? I thought that was one of the reasons that they were targeted. I could be confusing them with some other group that some folks I know chased around the jungles.

[Merryprankster]

I think you might be. ASG didn't really get going till the 90's. They're in the Philippines

[rogue]

You're probably right. Too many terrorists and movements for my tiny brain to keep track of. Could have been one of the independence movements that was causing trouble in the Philippines. With plenty of cash they can hire out their global jihad to contractors, inspire the disenfranchised to join them and make a tidy profit on top of it.

[Merryprankster]

With plenty of cash they can hire out their global jihad to contractors, inspire the disenfranchised to join them and make a tidy profit on top of it.

Bingo!!!!!

[rogue]

Good old Pablo Escobar stepped over the line with using terrorism and paid for it. I wonder if the terrorists are Pablo in reverse. If they do become mainly criminal they will have to be more selective in what they do and where. I wonder if that will make them harder or easier to hunt. I'm just thinking out load and I'm going to have to do some more reading.

[Merryprankster]

Good old Pablo Escobar stepped over the line with using terrorism and paid for it. I wonder if the terrorists are Pablo in reverse. If they do become mainly criminal they will have to be more selective in what they do and where. I wonder if that will make them harder or easier to hunt. I'm just thinking out load and I'm going to have to do some more reading.

I think yes. They'll start focusing on STATE targets, not culturally symbolic ones.

[Christopher M]

A completely different argument, and one I'll allow you to debate with somebody else.

I dunno... maybe secularism is the most nihilistic and responsibility shirking religeon in the world. :eek: :D

[rogue]

Can you clear that up for me? I thought if they went criminal they'd go more symbolic with less deaths. The last thing a criminal wants to do is tick off the civilians too much or bring the state after them. I'm using the mafia fora reference.

[Christopher M]

Does Europe have a vision of the world...?

The future of Europe will probably be played out in (i) how the tensions between France and Germany resolve themselves -- they have an ongoing vision of themselves as the eastern and western leaders of the old continent which simultaneously pushes them together as would-be leaders of the new continent and pushes them apart in mutually exclusive self-definition; (ii) how the tensions between the UK and France/Germany resolve themselves -- factions in the UK seem to be trying to avoid an EU-US faceoff by placing themselves in the moderating position; and (iii) how the introduction of countries beyond the traditional borders of the old continent plus the changing cultural makeup of the continent itself will influence this entire mess.

A real possible direction for Europe is "very balance of power, realpolitick type stuff... brutal, Bismarckian style pragmatism."

[Merryprankster]

I'm using the mafia fora reference.

Right, but the Mafia never justified itself in terms of ideology (or if it did, then it's long gone).

Think more like the FARC - it attacks state targets, not civilian populations very often. This allows them to claim morality. It's harder to justify attacks on civilians. While you CAN, the incentive will drop as they focus less on jihad and more on criminal work, IMO. But they still have to attack something or else they lose the justification for their criminal activity.

[Merryprankster]

A real possible direction for Europe is "very balance of power, realpolitick type stuff... brutal, Bismarckian style pragmatism."

Hey, good point. I don't think it WILL happen, but it is certainly possible.

[rogue]

Right, but the Mafia never justified itself in terms of ideology (or if it did, then it's long gone).

Think more like the FARC - it attacks state targets, not civilian populations very often. This allows them to claim morality. It's harder to justify attacks on civilians. While you CAN, the incentive will drop as they focus less on jihad and more on criminal work, IMO. But they still have to attack something or else they lose the justification for their criminal activity.
Gotcha. Could be why FARC is getting active again.

Christopher, I haven't talked with my European friends in a long while but they always thought of themselves as Dutch, German or Italian first and European second. Is that still a common view? I can't help but wonder how quickly the national finger pointing start when they lose their shirts on building a plane of questionable utility.

[Christopher M]

I don't think it WILL happen...

Probably not. I sometimes take our Gaullist friends perhaps more seriously than they ought to be.


they always thought of themselves as Dutch, German or Italian first and European second. Is that still a common view?

That's definitely my impression. Although there's also a continental vs. UK (etc.) sentiment, and a central vs. peripheral (eg. Turkey) sentiment, and a Europe vs. US sentiment. Being united against a common Other (!) is an old story. Like you say, falling apart because you're profoundly different is another old one.

Personally, I might disagree with MerryPrankster somewhat in that I still believe the statist level of analysis is meaningful. (Although depending on the distinction he makes between the Neoconservative's identification of the "correct" philosophy and their flawed implementation of it, maybe we agree.) I think the EU (and potentially the neoconservatives) are going wrong by following a supernationalist model which ignores 'statist reality.' We need internationalism, but it has to be decentralized rather than centralized -- states rather than superstates ought to serve as its basic unit.

A kind of EU could work if it respected 'statist reality' -- because these states really do identify themselves as distinct. Unfortunately, the socioeconomic values of many of the power players here are opposed a priori to this kind of model -- their socialism biases them to closing economic borders and having a social supernational body rather than closing social borders and having an economic supernational body. This social supernational body will only work so long as there's a social reality uniting these different people, which only exists so long as there's an Other to define themselves against. This creates an inherently antagonistic ideology which depends upon propagating this antagonism in order to survive, hence: "balance of power, realpolitick type stuff."

[FatherDog]

Right, but the Mafia never justified itself in terms of ideology (or if it did, then it's long gone).

Actually, they did - the Mafia was originally formed as a vigilante law enforcement agency during the Spanish occupation of Sicily, and when they emigrated to the US, they served a similar function in law enforcement and dispute arbitration for Italian immigrants who largely did not trust the american government or police (often with good reason).

You're right that any attempts at ideological justification for the Mafia beyond a cursory level are long gone, of course.

[Merryprankster]

I still believe the statist level of analysis is meaningful

it is in certain instances - that I won't deny. But I believe our world is increasingly described in terms of networks and that states are no longer the only or even major powerbrokers, necessarily.

States enjoy a unique status - after all, they make laws. And no person can do that absent a state.

[Christopher M]

our world is increasingly described in terms of networks

Definitely. The question, which you introduced already I think, is what is going to define the structure of these networks. I see classical liberal and socialist theory as already a theory of the network, and do not see any essential reason why the same methods can not be applied to this new* context. In this sense, the centralized, supernationalist model seems like a neo-socialism, and I expect there to be a decentalized, internationalist model of neo-liberalism. I don't take it for granted that these models will be represented by the EU and neoconservatism, respectively (popular nomenclature aside). It seems that an internationalist model, contra a supernationalist one, must give a substantial amount of respect to the notion of state.

* Really, I don't think this context is new at all, but was rather a primary focus of classical liberalism from the beginning. Although it's possible, as you suggested, that such factors as the end of the Cold War could have created a new situation where this context can be more directly played out.

[Merryprankster]

I expect there to be a decentralized, internationalist model of neo-liberalism.

Yeah me too. And I don't expect that the EU and neo-conservatives are going to "get that right."


It seems that an internationalist model, contra a supernationalist one, must give a substantial amount of respect to the notion of state.

Yes, but it will also weaken the state as a power broker. State on state dealings are not necessarily going to be the definitive form of international action.


Really, I don't think this context is new at all, but was rather a primary focus of classical liberalism from the beginning. Although it's possible, as you suggested, that such factors as the end of the Cold War could have created a new situation where this context can be more directly played out.

That's reasonable. You could look at it that way. I certainly think we're far closer NOW to the ideal of classical liberalism than we ever have been.

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

There are lots of internal difficulties the EU has to deal with before it can focus on how to realize any future vision...


i can vaguely see the EU beginning to deal with similar issues as the early Confederation of American States circa 1779-1789. especially with regaurd to currencies, cultural groups and economic regions.

i generally agree with your indeapth explanation and i apologise for flaming you into it. i thought that might be where you were comming from/going to. i just thought i'd look under the covers and see how warm it was under there.... :cool:


with regaurds to superstate networks i understand that they have already exceeded the control of states and corporations and often seem to fold or advance on the word of one or two principals and define themselves by simple agreement or disagreement to the stated temporary pupose. permenant coalitions might evolve from the repeated success of the organisers of such superstate networks. they do seem to function to certain opportunistic global purposes defined by the needs and natures of the colaborators: thereby defying the 'tradition' of fixed organisations. which appears to be the sentiment behind the EU's general statement last week of seemingly wishing to disolve NATO....