From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 1:13 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: #263: Pipes in NYPost on the Left's new perils
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
September 24, 2002
In the debate over Iraq, the Democrats and most
allied governments are demanding United Nations Security Council endorsement of
a military campaign - or they are against it.
This is a strange position.
The U.S. government, with an over two-century record of forwarding human rights
and defeating tyrants, is to defer to the United Nations? The duly elected
leaders of the United States should step aside and let assorted dictators make
key decisions affecting American national security?
There is a reason for
this strange idea, John Fonte of the Hudson Institute reveals in an eye-opening
article in the current issue of Orbis magazine. In recent decades, the
"progressivism" rejected by America's democratic institutions - the executive
branch, Congress, the courts, state and local governments - has been gaining at
the United Nations and other undemocratic international institutions. And many
Western elites - even more so in Europe than here - have so internalized this
change that they now see the United Nations & Co. as more legitimate on
these issue.
This attempted end-run around American democracy, Fonte
argues, represents a significant movement, which he dubs "transnational
progressivism." I prefer the name "bureaucratic leftism," but whatever one calls
it, Fonte establishes that, in the tradition of fascism and communism, this
effort constitutes a significant "challenge to liberal democracy."
Fully
to absorb its threat requires reading Fonte's article in full. In summary,
unable to achieve their goals through the ballot box, law professors, political
activists, foundation officers, NGO bureaucrats, corporation executives, and
practicing politicians now seek to achieve those goals by denigrating the two
central pillars of modern liberal democracy, the individual citizen and the
nation-state.
Bureaucratic leftism diminishes the role of the individual
in many ways:
* The group over the individual: A person's unique
capabilities and outlook have less importance than his membership in the
ascriptive groups (racial, ethnic or gender) into which he is born.
*
Oppressor vs. victim: The world divides into good and bad groups, with
nonwhites, women, immigrants and homosexuals by their very nature in the former
category.
* Fairness requires group proportionalism: "Victim"
groups should be represented in all facets of life (executives, prisoners)
proportionate to their percentage of the population.
* Democracy as
power sharing by groups: Democracy ceases to mean majority rule and becomes
a matter of dividing the spoils among those ascriptive groups.
*
Victims' values rule: Institutions must shed the outlook of the "oppressor"
culture and adopt that of the nonwhite, female, immigrant and homosexual
victims.
* Out with national narratives and symbols: Traditional
notions of history "privilege" the oppressors and must be discarded. In the
American case, for example, the conventional emphasis on European settlers is
jettisoned in favor of a multicultural "convergence" of three civilizations -
Amerindian, West African and European. Then bureaucratic leftism weakens the
nation-state:
* Denigration of state sovereignty: States should
cede their powers to higher bodies, such as the European Union or the United
Nations. In this spirit, Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres has called for a
de-emphasis on sovereignty in his region and argued for a Middle Eastern version
of the European Union.
* Citizen of the world: Instead of giving
ultimate allegiance (defined as who you would die for) to the state, a vague
loyalty goes to some form of global membership.
* Immigrant rights
prevail: Immigrants should be able to relocate freely, impose their cultures
on and offer only ambiguous loyalty to their new countries of residence.
Long-established peoples in a region should accept "multiculturalism" with a
smile.
Although forwarded by progressives and garbed in post-modern
lingo, Fonte shows that bureaucratic leftism represents a throwback to a
pre-modern age in Europe when rulers were unelected. Today's bureaucrats
effectively fill the role of yesteryear's kings.
Predictably, the left's
newest project is having more success in Western countries other than the United
States - Canada, France, Israel and New Zealand come to mind. Fonte implies that
Americans will end up with the main burden of fending off this ugly system, just
as it did fascism and communism - and is now doing with militant
Islam.
Only by recognizing bureaucratic leftism for what it is can it be
stopped before its malign ideas have a chance to do real damage.
Most articles are also available online at: http://www.DanielPipes.org
Please note: these do not duplicate the DPlist mailings (such as this one).
Also, you are invited to visit the MEF site at: http://www.meforum.org
