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Heaven On Earth
Monthly Archives: September 2008
ABC Edits Make Palin Seem Aggressive, Naive
Last night, Sarah Palin sat down with ABC’s Charlie Gibson in Alaska to conduct her first interview with a major news outlet. Gibson jumped right in to the foreign policy questions, pressing Palin repeatedly on key points, to the point of sounding
condescending. Palin seemed somewhat skittish and unsure, but overall did not make any major mistakes. Still, the questions posed to her were not especially difficult, and some of her answers sounded like she was trying to remember the exact words she was told to say.
Note that the interview as aired by ABC is very obviously edited, and is missing some key statements by Palin that show up on ABC’s full transcript. Networks edit their interviews because of time constraints and flow, but what did not make it in can give a sense of any leanings a network may have. The cut comments show nuances and specific knowledge by Palin, and the way ABC edited it makes Palin’s answers seem simpler and disjointed.
The Apocalyptic Dimensions of the 08 Election
A friend of mine asked me to comment on a list-serv he was creating about the apocalyptic dimensions of this election. Here’s my response. I’d welcome any corrections and links readers might have to suggest.
Richard, I can’t help but think that we may be heading for a world calamity with the potential election of the McCain/Palin ticket. After all McCain is well known for his hair trigger temper (“bomb, bomb, bomb!”), and Palin is a far right wing, religious fanatic.
So as someone who’s familiar with Apocalyptic Writings, I’d be interested in your thoughts and if you’d be interested in posting them.
Apocalyptic Dimensions of the 2008 Election
The first clear apocalyptic elements in the race arose with the charismatic personality of Barack Obama. Many of us got our first taste of it with the release of the video “Yes we can…” which, esp to those who are culturally literate in todays youth scene, was a very powerful statement that appealed to a messianic yearning. “Yes, this will bring that transformation we all yearn for.”
The issue of Obama’s messianism is complicated. He has neither denied nor discouraged it, indeed he played with tropes like “we are the hope we’ve been waiting for.” His world tour played on that hope, and the Europeans loved it. It has gotten him in trouble with a public that doesn’t like pretension, even as it’s got him a highly committed base.
In an ironic way, Sarah Palin might be in the process of taking the prophetic mantle from him. Obama made it clear that Americans yearn for some kind of a savior — someone they can get enthused about, someone they can pin outrageous hopes on; but they may still be in the market. Obama didn’t close the deal, and she stole the ball. And we don’t even know who she is.
Now there are religious issues as well as personality ones in this apocalyptic brew. Palin is a member of a Pentecostalist (they talk in tongues/babble) evangelical church that adheres to the doctrine of Christian premillennial dispensationalism — the apocalyptic scenario whereby the return of the Jews to Israel will set in motion the final events — terrible tribulations that will only cease with the return of Jesus… at which point all the surviving Jews will convert.
It’s a troubling source of piety for Christian Zionism, and many Jews, especially on the left, have warned against it in no uncertain terms. For intellectuals, Palin’s piety, with its fundamentalist positions on abortion and creationism, with its demons, speaking in tongues and cell-phone annointing strikes us as the height of regressive folly. and for some, the threat goes all the way to ambitions to make the US into a Christian theocracy.
Would that we were offered a choice between this kind of apocalyptic weirdness and grounded sanity. But Obama’s issues with religion raise similar if not more dangerous problems. Reverend Wright is a key to Obama’s religiosity, and it’s not pretty (Obama’s protestations that he wasn’t there/didn’t hear those sermons, are like Clinton saying he didn’t inhale).
Wright is paranoid (US Govt invented AIDS to kill black people), he’s deeply anti-American, he’s more than a bit of a racist. And his theology is also millennialist, just instead of apple pie pre-millennial dispensationalism (in which the Lord has to intervene in order to set off the destruction), it’s a roll-your-own blend of Marxist, racist, post-millennialism (ie, we bring about the messianic age ourselves by destroying the system and imposing equality).
Nor is this the only problem. The proponents of this kind of neo-marxist, revolutionary, post-colonialism — America (and Israel) is the source of all evil — (Chomsky is the intellectual version), have an informal but broad alliance with Jihadis, in common cause against the West which is responsible for the world’s woes.
Now jihadis are apocalyptic, and the worst kind. active, cataclysmic: the passage from this world (where infidels are the most powerful and admired people on the planet) to the next, perfected world (global Dar al Islam) is one of immense destruction which we are Allah’s servants in bringing about. Making an alliance with them is insane (as the Iranian communists learned to their woe in 1979).
i’m not saying Obama has the slightest notion of this — indeed that’s the problem. with his pleasant youthful experiences with Islam and his adult life in an aggressive liberation church, he’s a prime candidate for manipulation by jihadis masquerading as “human rights” advocates. protect my right to teach hatred; protect my right not to be insulted by people who criticize me. i.e., Obama’s a perfect dupe for demopaths.
McCain is at least understands the Muslim threat better (as does Lieberman, who is apparently teaching Palin intl affairs). Obama is part of the world whose primary response to the collapse of the “Oslo Peace Process” and 9-11 is to ask what did “we” do to make “them” hate us so, and what can we do to make them love us enough to stop trying to kill us any chance they get?
As Amir Taheri puts it, Obama’s 9-10, McCain is 9-11; or as a French woman remarked to me back in 2003: “There are two kinds of people in the world after 9-11, those who understand that we’re at war, and those who don’t.” And it’s not a matter of whether you’re a war-monger or a peace-lover. It’s not a war we declared, and pretending it doesn’t exist does promote peace.
So i’d say, we’re between Scylla and Charybdis. Both candidates are, from the perspective of an “apocalyptic” analysis, carriers of dangerous tendencies. We have to figure out which is less dangerous.
In my universe of priorities, the threat from Islam is greater than that from Christianity which, even in very “fundamentalist” or evangelical circles, is far more committed to democratic culture. And right now, the folly of the left strikes me as far more dangerous and entrenched in its way of thinking than the folly of the right.
The Pig and the Lipstick: “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?”
I have not posted much lately. Classes beginning. Other obligations.
But I have to say some thinga about the Obama lipstick remark.
First, everyone I’ve read has misread it. It’s not about Palin being a pig, but John McCain. McCain’s trying to wrap himself in the image of a reformer (and, hence, changer), and by picking Palin, has tried to make it pretty, but it’s just lipstick. This isn’t a gross sexist remark — Palin’s a pig — but a sly sexist remark: she’s just gussying up the old wreck. So much of the dextrasphere’s loud indignation (now being picked up by some of the media), is as off the mark, as the attempts of the Obama camp to dismiss the topic. Palin Derangement Syndrome can apparently affect friend and foe alike.
[I just noticed that Obama made the same point to Letterman:
"Keep in mind, technically, had I meant it this way, [Palin] would be the lipstick. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig, just following the logic of this illogical situation,” Obama said.
(See below for further remarks on this.)]
Second, Obama’s response of righteous indignation, does not ring true. His tone, intonations, all seem unnatural. (The indignation comes at the end, around 4:00.)
Some can see veiled anger, others, measured outrage, I see a pretence to indignation. He knows perfectly well what he did. So did his audience. It’s part of the game he plays with his audience (a game, incidentally, that Reverend Wright plays much less subtly with his congregation). As one astute observer noted, his tell is that he touches his face as he delivers his zinger.
With Hillary, the tell was the joke — the body language with his arms, the slight hesitation… wait for it… and the finger motion as he says “uh…”
This might seem like eisogesis (reading into a remark something that isn’t there), but he did this at least one other time, same words, same intonation, same timing.
This is a practiced gesture, not a chance one.
This is classic “honor-shame” activity. Make fun of someone behind their back, or even better, to their faces, and then say, “What? What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything.”) Certainly that’s what I hear in the audience response. They know it’s there, they’re waiting for it.
Below is an excellent video analysis of Obama’s giving Hillary the finger that decodes the three women behind him (and who therefore didn’t see the gesture), trying to figure out why everyone’s laughing.
“Do you give me the finger, sir?”
“I touch my face with my third finger, but not at you sir.” (update of Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1).
Obviously the whole incident speaks poorly of Obama, who’s reverting to basketball behavior, playing to the team… making fun of the other side. Okay in sport, but partisan in politics. And just as he’s telling us the Hillary “got her dig in there.” “I understand. that’s how Washington is…” This is cheap thrills. As you chastize your opponent for taking cheap shots, you take a cheap shot.”
So his indignation at how the McCain campaign took this rings hollow: with phony outrage he denounces phony outrage. If he is as serious as he says he is, what’s he cracking that kind of joke for? And clearly the joke is that he’s getting in his dig and twisting the blade even as he’s chastizing Hillary for acting in that “oh so Washington” way.
In pitching to people who go for this kind of private joke at the expense of others, Obama appeals to the worse not the better nature of his audience. I can imagine a number of Obama people who have integrity, feeling really uncomfortable at this. Too bad those foolish girls in the back reacted to the news with giggles rather than dismay. They would also praise the emperor’s new clothes.
Here on the other hand, is an Obama supporter, Frnnk, expressing his dismay.
In the hopes that he’s not paranoid trying to warn people away from anyone in politics ’cause “they”‘re all part of the conspiracy, but an honest man dismayed by the behavior of his chosen representative, I say, we need more integrity like this. A genuine American, a civic hero.
Obama, on the other hand, plays a dishonest hand. He knows what he’s doing, he winking at his audience and they’re delighted. So he has no business presenting himself as innocent and calling McCain a liar for reading his game. That’s lack of integrity. I keep hoping he’s about to grin and say, “Don’t get upset man, I was just messing with your head.” But he doesn’t. He knows all the “right things” to say: “We can’t afford to waste our time on this… the issues need discussion… the public loses.” It just wrings hollow.
As for the MSM, I get the impression that they’re playing this up — obviously Fox, but even the allegedly pro-Obama other stations. Wouldn’t this be a good time to remind both candidates that there are issues to deal with, rather than invoke the “in politics perception is reality” clause as a justification for covering such a silly controversy. (Coming from the people who have an enormous say in our perceptions, I’d say this is pretty cheap.)
So the Obama people know what it’s like to have the press jump on your mistakes. Not fun. So unfair. They should talk to the Israelis about it. Might help them if they ever get their hands on the levers of power.
But still, what’s with the media? In my read — and I have limited access to the daily news these days, so I welcome correction — it’s not that the MSM don’t have “ideological” predispositions (they have plenty), but they are so addicted to attracting attention, that they’d sooner play up an issue stupidly — “he dissed her, man…” “no he di’nt” — than focus on less exciting but more important issues. So given the conjunction of being in danger of losing credibility for their partisanship, and having a “People magazine” moment available, the MSM jump the shark express: feeding frenzy. Don’t need to read boring policy papers and ask serious questions if you can ask, “Well, how’s Obama going to get out of this one?
And, of course, as Obama says, we, the public, lose.
PS: Advice to Obama. Own the game, tell us you were just playing around, and get serious. Spare us “enough is enough.” Act like it.
Ireland’s Hijab Debate
Ireland, sitting out there on the edge of Europe, is being forced to look itself in the mirror and ask what the official position is on the cultural assimilation of immgrants, especially Muslims.
Ireland’s two main opposition parties said that the hijab, or veil, should be banned from public schools, in response to the controversy kicked up by two Muslim parents asking last September that their daughter be allowed to wear the hijab at school.
From the Independent -
Labour’s Ruairi Quinn said immigrants who come to Ireland need to conform to the culture of this country.
“If people want to come into a western society that is Christian and secular, they need to conform to the rules and regulations of that country,”…
Mr Quinn said immigrants should live by Irish laws and conform to Irish norms.
“Nobody is formally asking them to come here. In the interests of integration and assimilation, they should embrace our culture,” he said.
He added: “Irish girls don’t wear headscarves. A manifestation of religious beliefs in such a way is unacceptable and draws attention to those involved. I believe in a public school situation they should not wear a headscarf.”
Mr Hayes said Ireland should not be going down the route of multiculturalism.
“It makes absolute sense that there would be one uniform for everyone. The wearing of the hijab is not about religiosity, it is more an example of modesty. It is not a fundamental requirement to be a Muslim,” he said.
Al-Jazeera is reporting on the case today, much later than the Independent’s June article. Despite their late arrival to the story, their article adds an interesting dimension. One-third of Irish Muslims are converts, not immigrants, so this is not only an immigrant issue.
Just under one third of all Muslims in Ireland are native Irish, according to the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) in Dublin.
“This is not an immigrant issue,” says Egan, who converted to Islam at the age of 28.
“It’s about freedom to practice religious beliefs. People say we should assimilate, but I was born in Wexford – I am Irish and Muslim. We should not follow the lead of France, where there is no tolerance.
Critics of the hijab says its wearing in schools violates ‘Catholic ethos’“It shows double dealings to a certain degree. For the school in Dublin to now use the Catholic ethos is a pretext – Catholic women used to wear a headscarf whenever they entered a church up until 20 years ago. So it’s not a new thing here in Ireland.”
Beverley McKenzie, Egan’s British-born wife, says the government now treats the family as if they are foreigners.
“It’s like asking Irish people to develop some sort of mandate which tells them how to integrate into their own society when they already know how to,” she said.
Despite the “conventional wisdom” to the contrary, Muslims and other immigrants experience unique opportunity to practice their religion freely in America.
Apt Setup at the RNC
This photo from NRO’s The Corner blog is too funny not to share it. Someone at the RNC has a sharp sense of humor.
Media Needs Access to Palin in Order to Fulfill Its Role in Democracy
The McCain campaign has been reluctant to grant media access to Sarah Palin. She will conduct her first interview with Charlie Gibson this weekend, and hopefully more will come.The McCain staff has been extremely critical of the media reaction to Palin, with ample reason, but they are keeping the media from doing its most important function by shielding Palin.
The tactical reasons for protecting her are obvious. She is a sensation right now, driving enthusiam, poll numbers, and fundraising. There is no reason to risk all that momentum by exposing her to unscripted situations in interviews where she might commit a gaffe that would highlight her weaknesses. But the media exists in a democracy in order to flood the public with information and access so that they have the tools to make their own informed decisions. When the media is not allowed to ask legitimate questions of a fairly unknown figure like Palin, the public, and thereby the whole democracy, suffers.
Of course, this is assuming that the media, with its mixed record in this election, would carry out its task in the proper manner. It remains to be seen how they will perform in the next two months, but they will not be able to inform at all unless the McCain campaign allows us to learn more about Sarah Palin.
Muslim Military Honor Shame in Afghanistan
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article today about the problems facing the U.S. Army as they try to rebuild the Afghan Air Corps. The main problem is “a cultural gap”, the article says. But it never explicitly lays out the specific cultural paradigm at play- honor/shame.
When Muslim honor/shame cultures come into contact with Western militaries, the results can be comic, or frustrating. Western militaries are a certain type of honor/shame culture, as evidenced by the Marine motto “Death before Dishonor”, but practical and ethical considerations about the role of officers,as well as the emphasis on constant self-evaluation, makes for a markedly different military than Muslim ones.
My article in The Small Wars Journal, “Understanding Arab Culture“, examines Arab honor/shame in the Bedouin Scout Battalion in the IDF, and comes to similar conclusions that the Journal article alludes to.
In the spring, Afghan air force helicopter door-gunners went on strike over pay and rank. The flight engineers, who sit in the cockpit with pilots, refused to take their place, sniffing that they were officers and shouldn’t have to shoot. They went on strike, too…
But the effort has been plagued by red tape, uneven competence and the wide cultural gap between by-the-book American mentors and damn-the-checklist Afghan flight crews…
The U.S. flight surgeon advising Afghan medevac crews rarely takes off unless he has arranged for a kebab lunch at their destination. One of the first questions the Afghans ask him when assigned a new mission: Will there be lunch?
The cultural differences must be recognized before there can be successful interaction between the West and the Muslim honor/shame societies we wish to engage. When the West, especially the media, think that ‘they’ are like ‘us’, they are not only misleading themselves and their society, they are engaging in cognitive egocentrism, an intellectual trait that is grounded in self-worshipping racism.
What the Media’s Coverage of Palin Tells Us About Them
John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin has certainly thrown the political and journalistic worlds for a loop. Initially, the coverage of Palin reflected the astonishment and the degree of unpreparedness of the MSM in McCain’s selection. Then, as the media recovered, and went about its work of covering the heretofore little-known Palin. Does their coverage of Palin reflect something about the media in this country? What can we learn?
Jews Continue to be Attacked in France
It is not news to any observers of European Jewry that the situation in France is extremely worrying. In addition to the vicious anti-Israel atmosphere, or perhaps partially because of it, there have been a number of violent anti-Semitic attacks. These attacks can be fatal, as in the brutal kidnapping, torture, and killing of Ilan Halimi, a 23 year-old French Jew.
This past Saturday, another attack occured in Paris (read a full description of the attack here). Three 17- and 18-year old Bnei Akiva boys were on their way home from afternoon Minha prayers when they were set upon by a group of Muslim youths. The three have since been released from the hospital, and the police are still looking for the attackers.
In all likelihood, the situation will only worsen, especially if a new intifada or war breaks out in the Middle East.
The Anti-Semitism Comes Out Against Joe Lieberman
After Sen. Joe Lieberman’s speech at the RNC, I predicted that there would be attacks on the blogs, especially in the comments section, that vilify him in anti-Semitic terms. Lieberman would be portrayed as really representing Israel’s interests in the more subtle attacks, and as a treacherous Jew in the more direct. Here is some of what I found-
From the comments on Ben Smith’s Politico post, “Gibbs Slams Lieberman“
Leiberman beleives that McCain’s policy of keeping troops in the M.E. indefinately is better for Israel’s security. That is the reason, the one and only reason that Leiberman supports McCain. So, you have to ask yourself, what is it when someone puts another nation’s interests above ours? Treason.
Lieberman should just cut out the middleman and go run for Israeli PM.
How can you question Joe Lieberman’s patriotism? He clearly loves his country. The only question is which country?
Lieberman (I-Israel) is the most pathetic figure in American politics. You can have him Repugs! Enjoy!
I hear Liebs may run as Bob Barr’s veep now unless Israel calls offers this clown a cabinet poosition as Secretary of War. It’s all he cares about.
Israeli-Arab Identity in American Arabic Textbook
A follow-up to our recent discussion of the preferences and identity of Israeli Arabs-
A popular introductory workbook to American students of Arabic, Alif Baa with DVDs, is published by Georgetown University Press. As the title suggests, the workbook is accompanied by DVDs featuring Arabic speakers from around the Arab-speaking world.
I was curious to see whether they would include any individuals from Israel or the West Bank. In the section where students learn to introduce themselves and their place of origin, there is a middle-aged woman from Israel. She says in Arabic that she is Palestinian, from Nazareth. Nazareth is well within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. There are three possibilities to explain her statement-
1) She lives in Nazareth and is an Israeli citizen, but refers to herself as a Palestinian, as many Israeli Arabs do, especially since the outbreak of the second intifada.
2) She lives in the West Bank, Gaza, or even Lebanon, and still refers to Nazareth as her home, as her parents left during the war in 1948.
3) In Hebrew, she tells people that she is Israeli, but in an Arabic setting, she refers to herself as a Palestinian.
I’d say that the first option is the most likely. But ask her if she’d trade in her Israeli passport, and all that comes with it, for a Palestinian one, there is no doubt as to what her answer would be.
“Punished with a Baby”: Insights into the Demographic Decline of the West
Obama made a revealing remark in answer to a hypothetical question about what he’d do if his daughter became pregnant.
“I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby,” Obama said.
Now granted this is an off-the-cuff remark made on a grueling campaign trail, and I’m not going to analyze it to death. On the other hand it does offer an insight into why the West is in demographic decline. The idea that having when you’re young, having a child is a punishment — burden, yes, but punishment…? — represents a wider attitude towards children that more or less sees them as getting in the way of personal fulfillment. How many potential parents don’t have kids because of the constraint on their life-style?
I’m not arguing that we need to reproduce at the rate — and with the authoritarian cruelty — of some cultures, but I do think that if we’re going to survive we have to stay in touch with — renew our touch with — the basic joys and ego-deprivations of having children, of pouring some of ourselves into something other than our own self-gratification.
A Millennial critique of Rene Girard’s thesis on scapegoating
N.B.: The following is an essay I wrote several years ago while working on early Christian millennialism. It’s a critique of René Girard’s work on the subject, in particular, the ideas he delineated in a book with the modest title of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. I’m posting it here partly because Yaakov of Breath of the Beast is working through some of Girard’s ideas and we have come to similar critiques of this seminal thinker’s provocative work. I also welcome any suggestions or criticisms from readers, even though this is not in the main stream of this blog’s focus. The essay is neither polished, nor fully footnoted; consider it a draft.
According to Girard, the New Testament (NT) stands apart from all previous thinking on sacrifice, with the partial exception of Judaism, because, rather than declare the sacrificial victim guilty, the victim is the very image of purity and innocence. Thus a mythical implosion occurs. This unjust sacrifice of the innocent extinguishes the self-regenerating mentality of sacrificing the guilty, thus putting an end to scapegoating. The notion has problems with handling Jewish materials, something especially evident in the work of Hamerton-Kelly, whose anti-Judaic tendencies flourish under his apologetic pen.
What strikes the millennial scholar here, however, is the depiction of Jesus as innocent. Granted Girard is working with the “myth” of Jesus, – indeed, Girard regularly and, I think, revealingly, refers to not to Jesus but to Christ.1 But the myth is self-consciously embedded in a historical discourse about millennial hopes and apocalyptic expectations which – surely much to amazement of all sides at the time were they to know it but not retrospectively to Girard – continues to flourish to this very day.
From the millennial, that is from the historical rather than mythical point of view, Jesus is not “innocent.” On the contrary, he was wrong about the imminence of the apocalypse and, whatever his intentions, dangerous to those who brought their demotic millennial hopes to the surface in a prime divider society profoundly hostile to such sentiments, in the case of Jesus, during the pax romana, whose peace the Romans nailed down, literally, with crucifixion. The kingdom was not at hand, and he got crucified for simple and predictable reasons by Romans who had no doubt of his guilt. There may well have been Jewish aristocrats who shared this perspective, and even invoked the “safety of the people” (given Roman rule), for their conservative, prime-divider politics. The disciples, those who developed the myth as well as those who wrote it down, needed above all to save their faith in their own salvation. And they chose to do so by denying Jesus’ error and in so doing, denying their own continuing and continuously fruitful error of anticipating the end at any moment.
The sacrificial victim in this process of denial was Judaism, especially Pharisaic (later rabbinic) Judaism. This sacrificial Judaism was judged guilty by Christians for the mere fact that they did not accept the divine, blameless and faultless messiah of the Christians. Thus, far from putting an end to scapegoating, NT narratives actually imbedded a new kind of scapegoating into its very history and salvific myth. For Christians, Christ, Jesus sacralized, was innocent, the Jews guilty of the double crime of killing the man and denying the God.
Thus it cannot be “merely” the Saducees who are guilty of killing Jesus, it must be the Pharisees who are responsible for killing Christ. For the sake of saving themselves from the rocky shores of cognitive dissonance, Christians consigned their religious parent to perpetual guilt, and, as we shall see, when Christians gained power, to oppression, prison and death. Girard, despite his usual acuity in such matters, does not perceive any of this disguised sacrificial activity in the text, partly because it is crucial to his own reading of the Crucifixion, partly because his entire effort aims at showing that this text presents the end of sacrificial constructions. Thus he repeatedly refers to and analyzes the “Gospel” and the “text” as if it only needed direct interpretation, not deconstruction for its silent and disguised sacrificial activity.
How Did It Happen? Kagan on Realists as Dupes of Demopaths
Robert Kagan, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an informal adviser to the McCain campaign, whose most recent book is The Return of History and the End of Dreams, has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal on the bizarre turn that our “realist” thinkers have taken in recent years. It’s as if the “realists,” who should in principle line up with the Honor-Shame Jihad Paradigm (HSJP), have somehow adopted the Politically Correct Paradigm (PCP) — whose principles are as un-”realistic” as one could imagine, and then turned that paradigm against the only culture that makes PCP a viable option, the civil polities of the democratic West. Although Kagan focuses on the anomaly, my comments attempt to explain how this bizarre turn of events could happen. It’s got to do with the Moebius Strip of cognitive egocentrism, something no “realist” has any business falling prey to.
Power Play
The nature of nations, like people, never changes. Today’s political realists say economics rather than military might has become the guiding principle of countries, but the conflict in Georgia shows otherwise, argues Robert Kagan.
By ROBERT KAGAN
August 30, 2008; Page W1
Associated Press
A convoy of Russian troops drives toward the Abkhazian border in western Georgia.Where are the realists? When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it ought to have been their moment. Here was Vladimir Putin, a cold-eyed realist if ever there was one, taking advantage of a favorable opportunity to shift the European balance of power in his favor — a 21st century Frederick the Great or Bismarck, launching a small but decisive war on a weaker neighbor while a surprised and dumbfounded world looked on helplessly. Here was a man and a nation pursuing “interest defined as power,” to use the famous phrase of Hans Morgenthau, acting in obedience to what Mr. Morgenthau called the “objective law” of international power politics. Yet where are Mr. Morgenthau’s disciples to remind us that Russia’s latest military action is neither extraordinary nor unexpected nor aberrant but entirely normal and natural, that it is but a harbinger of what is yet to come because the behavior of nations, like human nature, is unchanging?
This “objective law” is what Eli Sagan calls the “paranoid imperative.” Rule or be ruled… Do onto others before they do onto you. According to Sagan, this principle has prevailed in virtually all international relations between polities, and domestic relations between incumbent elites and commoners from the early centuries of the agricultural revolution. The dominance of this principle produces what I’ve called “prime divider societies.” I refer to this principle as the “dominating imperative” partly because when I spoke to colleagues in political science about it, they responded, “that’s not paranoid, it’s realistic”; and partly because I prefer saving the paranoid imperative for “exterminate or be exterminated.”
The significance of Sagan’s perspective, however, comes out when we understand the role of overcoming the paranoid imperative in creating civil polities. Only when a critical mass of autonomous moral agents can commit to renouncing the dominating imperative and trusting that others will as well, can a society create a democratic polity. I recently reread Mill’s words in an article by Alain de Botton on “The Nanny State”
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“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it … The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”
When I first read those principles in high school, it all seemed fairly straightforward. I didn’t realize how much they appeal to what I now understand is “liberal cognitive egocentrism” (LCE) that the zero-sum games that people play for emotional reasons make Mill’s eminently reasonable-sounding conditions extremely rare to achieve at a social level.
Our problem, as a democratic culture committed to the principles of civil polities, is that we fail to appreciate how exceptionally difficult it is to achieve these levels of tolerance and good will towards others, and as a result we get profoundly confused about both the ability of other cultures to achieve the same levels (PCP 1) and about our achievements (hyper-self-criticism and PCP 2). This goes back at least to the late 60s (when I first encountered the phenomenon): if we can have civil polities based on mutual trust and mutual freedoms, why can’t we do that with the whole world? (This is, by the way, an unspoken axiom of Chomsky’s thinking.) In some senses, the UN was created precisely with this model in mind, and the legislation of universal human rights was its quintessential expression.
Today’s “realists,” who we’re told are locked in some titanic struggle with “neoconservatives” on issues ranging from Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to China and North Korea, would be almost unrecognizable to their forebears. Rather than talk about power, they talk about the United Nations, world opinion and international law. They propose vast new international conferences, a la Woodrow Wilson, to solve intractable, decades-old problems. They argue that the United States should negotiate with adversaries not because America is strong but because it is weak. Power is no answer to the vast majority of the challenges we face, they insist, and, indeed, is counterproductive because it undermines the possibility of international consensus.
Maybe the key here lies in the phrase “some titanic struggle with neoconservatives.” Among the many elements of zero-sum thinking is a bizarre (and highly emotional) force-field that distorts judgment. Like Bush Derangement Syndrome (or its many relatives, like Israel Derangement Syndrome), people so dislike someone or thing that they adopt positions that are self-destructive just so that the object of their hatred, resentment, or irritation, can suffer. From zero-sum to negative sum.
This is where we enter the Moebius Strip of Cognitive Egocentrism. We project our good intentions on demopaths (“realism” rephrased as “idealism”), demopaths project their bad intentions on us, and with the help of some hyper-self-criticism, we accept their profoundly dishonest and hypocritical accusations of not living up to standards they themselves hold in contempt (attacking the realists as racists for pointing out profound cultural differences).
They are fond of citing Dean Acheson, Reinhold Niebuhr and George Kennan as their intellectual forebears, but those gentlemen would have found most of their prescriptions naive. Mr. Acheson, as Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, had nothing but disdain for the United Nations and for most international efforts to solve world problems. As his biographer, Robert L. Beisner, has shown, he considered such efforts evidence of the naive hopefulness of “people who could not face the truth about human nature” and “preferred to preserve their illusions intact.” He strongly supported the NATO alliance but ultimately put his faith not in international institutions but in “the continued moral, military and economic power of the United States.” He aimed to build a “preponderance of power” and to create “situations of strength” around the world. Until the United States acquired this predominant power, he believed, negotiations and international conferences with adversaries such as the Soviet Union were worthless. He opposed talks with Moscow throughout his entire time in office.
Clausewitz’s Lesson for the Israelis
A gem from Clausewitz that I recently came across:
“We see then that if one side cannot completely disarm the other, the desire for peace on either side will rise and fall with the probability of further successes and the amount of effort these would require. If such incentives were of equal strength on both sides, the two would resolve their political disputes by meeting half way. If the incentive grows on one side, it should diminish on the other. Peace will result so long as their sum total is sufficient- though the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain (emphasis mine).” (On War, Book One, Chapter Two).