IP: Damn hard reading and even stomaching -- The Ideological War Within The West by John Fonte

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Howard Butcher, IV" <hbiv@netreach.net>
Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 17:52:27 -0400
To: "David Farber" <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Fw: The Ideological War Within The West by John Fonte

Dear David,  Here is a very interesting discussion that is certainly
relevant to a lot of the things IP'rs have been posting recently.  H.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Foreign Policy Research Institute" <fpri@fpri.org>
To: "Howard Butcher IV" <hbiv@netreach.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2002 3:22 AM
Subject: The Ideological War Within The West by John Fonte


> Foreign Policy Research Institute
> WATCH ON THE WEST
> www.fpri.org
>
> THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR WITHIN THE WEST
> by John Fonte
>
> Volume 3, Number 6
> May 2002
>
>
> John Fonte  is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. This
> piece is  adapted from  his article,  "Liberal Democracy vs.
> Transnational  Progressivism,"  which  will  appear  in  the
> Summer 2002  issue of  Orbis, and is based on a presentation
> made last  fall to  FPRI's Study  Group on  America and  the
> West, chaired by James Kurth.
>
>
>             THE IDEOLOGICAL WAR WITHIN THE WEST
>
>                        by John Fonte
>
> Nearly a  year before the September 11 attacks, news stories
> provided a  preview of  the transnational  politics  of  the
> future.  In   October  2000,   in  preparation  for  the  UN
> Conference   Against    Racism,   about    fifty    American
> nongovernmental organizations  (NGOs) called  on the  UN "to
> hold the  United States  accountable for the intractable and
> persistent problem of discrimination."
>
> The NGOs  included Amnesty International-U.S.A. (AI-U.S.A.),
> Human  Rights  Watch  (HRW),  the  Arab-American  Institute,
> National  Council  of  Churches,  the  NAACP,  the  Mexican-
> American Legal  Defense and  Educational Fund,  and  others.
> Their  spokesman   stated  that   their  demands  "had  been
> repeatedly raised  with federal  and state officials [in the
> U.S.] but  to little  effect. In  frustration we now turn to
> the United  Nations." In  other words,  the NGOs,  unable to
> enact the policies they favored through the normal processes
> of American  constitutional democracy--the  Congress,  state
> governments, even  the federal courts--appealed to authority
> outside of American democracy and its Constitution.
>
> At the  UN Conference  against Racism,  which  was  held  in
> Durban  two   weeks  before   September  11,  American  NGOs
> supported  "reparations"   from  Western   nations  for  the
> historic transatlantic slave trade and developed resolutions
> that condemned  only the West, without mentioning the larger
> traffic in  African slaves  sent to  Islamic lands. The NGOs
> even endorsed a resolution denouncing free market capitalism
> as a "fundamentally flawed system."
>
> The NGOs  also insisted  that the  U.S. ratify  all major UN
> human  rights   treaties  and  drop  legal  reservations  to
> treaties already  ratified. For  example, in  1994 the  U.S.
> ratified the  UN Convention  on the  Elimination  of  Racial
> Discrimination (CERD),  but attached  reservations on treaty
> requirements restricting free speech that were "incompatible
> with the  Constitution." Yet  leading NGOs demanded that the
> U.S. drop all reservations and "comply" with the CERD treaty
> by accepting UN definitions of "free speech" and eliminating
> the "vast  racial disparities_in  every aspect  of  American
> life" (housing, health, welfare, justice, etc.).
>
> HRW complained that the U.S. offered "no remedies" for these
> disparities but  "simply supported  equality of opportunity"
> and indicated  "no willingness  to  comply"  with  CERD.  Of
> course, to  "comply" with the NGO interpretation of the CERD
> treaty, the  U.S. would  have to  abandon the Constitution's
> free speech  guarantees, bypass  federalism, and  ignore the
> concept of  majority rule--since  practically nothing in the
> NGO agenda is supported by the American electorate.
>
> All of  this suggests  that we  have not  reached the  final
> triumph of  liberal democracy proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama
> in his groundbreaking 1989 essay.
>
> POST-SEPTEMBER 11
> In October  2001, Fukuyama  stated that his "end of history"
> thesis remained  valid: that  after the  defeat of communism
> and fascism,  no serious  ideological competitor to Western-
> style liberal  democracy was likely to emerge in the future.
> Thus, in terms of political philosophy, liberal democracy is
> the end  of the evolutionary process. There will be wars and
> terrorism, but  no alternative  ideology  with  a  universal
> appeal will  seriously challenge  the principles  of Western
> liberal democracy on a global scale.
>
> The 9/11  attacks notwithstanding,  there is  nothing beyond
> liberal democracy "towards which we could expect to evolve."
> Fukuyama concluded  that there will be challenges from those
> who resist progress, "but time and resources are on the side
> of modernity."
>
> Indeed, but is "modernity" on the side of liberal democracy?
> Fukuyama is  very likely  right that the current crisis with
> radical Islam  will be  overcome and  that there  will be no
> serious ideological challenge originating outside of Western
> civilization. However,  the activities  of the  NGOs suggest
> that there  already is  an alternative  ideology to  liberal
> democracy within  the West  that has  been steadily evolving
> for years.
>
> Thus, it  is entirely  possible  that  modernity--thirty  or
> forty years  hence--will witness  not the  final triumph  of
> liberal democracy,  but the emergence of a new transnational
> hybrid regime  that is  post-liberal democratic,  and in the
> American  context,  post-Constitutional  and  post-American.
> This alternative  ideology,  "transnational  progressivism,"
> constitutes a universal and modern worldview that challenges
> both the  liberal democratic nation-state in general and the
> American regime in particular.
>
> TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM
> The key  concepts of  transnational progressivism  could  be
> described as follows:
>
> The ascribed  group over  the individual  citizen.  The  key
> political unit  is not  the individual  citizen,  who  forms
> voluntary  associations   and  works  with  fellow  citizens
> regardless  of  race,  sex,  or  national  origin,  but  the
> ascriptive group  (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one
> is born.
>
> A dichotomy  of groups:  Oppressor vs.  victim groups,  with
> immigrant  groups   designated  as   victims.  Transnational
> ideologists  have   incorporated  the  essentially  Hegelian
> Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy.
>
> Group   proportionalism   as   the   goal   of   "fairness."
> Transnational progressivism  assumes  that  "victim"  groups
> should   be   represented   in   all   professions   roughly
> proportionate to their percentage of the population. If not,
> there is a problem of "underrepresentation."
>
> The values  of all  dominant institutions  to be  changed to
> reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational
> progressives  insist   that  it   is  not   enough  to  have
> proportional   representation   of   minorities   in   major
> institutions if  these institutions  continue to reflect the
> worldview of  the "dominant"  culture. Instead, the distinct
> worldviews of ethnic, gender, and linguistic minorities must
> be represented within these institutions.
>
> The "demographic  imperative."  The  demographic  imperative
> tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the
> U.S. as millions of new immigrants from non-Western cultures
> enter American  life. The  traditional paradigm based on the
> assimilation of  immigrants into  an existing American civic
> culture is  obsolete and must be changed to a framework that
> promotes "diversity," defined as group proportionalism.
>
> The  redefinition  of  democracy  and  "democratic  ideals."
> Transnational progressives have been altering the definition
> of "democracy"  from that of a system of majority rule among
> equal citizens  to one  of power sharing among ethnic groups
> composed of both citizens and non-citizens. James Banks, one
> of American  education's leading  textbook writers, noted in
> 1994 that "to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral
> authority and  perceived legitimacy,  the pluribus  (diverse
> peoples) must  negotiate and  share power."  Hence, American
> democracy is  not authentic;  real democracy  will come when
> the different  "peoples" that  live  within  America  "share
> power" as groups.
>
> Deconstruction of  national narratives  and national symbols
> of democratic  nation-states in the West. In October 2000, a
> UK government  report denounced the concept of "Britishness"
> and declared  that British  history needed  to be  "revised,
> rethought,  or   jettisoned."  In  the  U.S.,  the  proposed
> "National  History   Standards,"  recommended  altering  the
> traditional historical narrative. Instead of emphasizing the
> story of  European settlers,  American civilization would be
> redefined  as   a  multicultural   "convergence"  of   three
> civilizations-Amerindian, West  African,  and  European.  In
> Israel, a  "post-Zionist" intelligentsia  has proposed  that
> Israel consider  itself multicultural  and  deconstruct  its
> identity as  a Jewish  state. Even  Israeli foreign minister
> Shimon Peres  sounded the  post-Zionist trumpet  in his 1993
> book , in which he deemphasized "sovereignty" and called for
> regional "elected  central bodies," a type of Middle Eastern
> EU.
>
> Promotion of  the concept of postnational citizenship. In an
> important  academic   paper,  Rutgers  Law  Professor  Linda
> Bosniak  asks   hopefully  "Can  advocates  of  postnational
> citizenship ultimately  succeed in decoupling the concept of
> citizenship from  the nation-state  in prevailing  political
> thought?"
>
> (9) The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool.
> Transnationalism  is   the  next   stage  of   multicultural
> ideology.  Like   multiculturalism,  transnationalism  is  a
> concept that  provides elites with both an empirical tool (a
> plausible analysis  of what is) and an ideological framework
> (a vision  of what should be). Transnational advocates argue
> that globalization requires some form of "global governance"
> because they  believe that  the nation-state and the idea of
> national citizenship  are ill suited to deal with the global
> problems of the future.
>
> The same scholars who touted multiculturalism now herald the
> coming  transnational   age.  Thus,   Alejandro  Portes   of
> Princeton University  argues that transnationalism, combined
> with large-scale  immigration, will  redefine the meaning of
> American citizenship.
>
> The promotion  of transnationalism  is an  attempt to  shape
> this crucial  intellectual struggle  over globalization. Its
> adherents  imply   that  one   is  either   in   step   with
> globalization,  and   thus  forward-looking,  or  one  is  a
> backward   antiglobalist.   Liberal   democrats   (who   are
> internationalists  and   support  free   trade  and   market
> economics) must  reply that  this is a false dichotomy--that
> the  critical   argument  is   not  between  globalists  and
> antiglobalists, but  instead over the form global engagement
> should  take   in   the   coming   decades:   will   it   be
> transnationalist or internationalist?
>
> TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM'S  SOCIAL BASE:  A POST-NATIONAL
> INTELLIGENTSIA
> The social base of transnational progressivism constitutes a
> rising  postnational   intelligentsia   (international   law
> professors,   NGO   activists,   foundation   officers,   UN
> bureaucrats, EU  administrators, corporate  executives,  and
> politicians.)    When     social    movements     such    as
> "transnationalism" and  "global governance"  are depicted as
> the result  of social  forces or  the movement of history, a
> certain impersonal inevitability is implied. However, in the
> twentieth century  the Bolshevik  Revolution,  the  National
> Socialist revolution,  the New  Deal, the Reagan Revolution,
> the Gaullist  national reconstruction  in  France,  and  the
> creation of  the EU were not inevitable, but were the result
> of the exercise of political will by elites.
>
> Similarly, transnationalism,  multiculturalism,  and  global
> governance,  like   "diversity,"   are   ideological   tools
> championed by  activist elites,  not  impersonal  forces  of
> history.  The  success  or  failure  of  these  values-laden
> concepts will  ultimately depend upon the political will and
> effectiveness of these elites.
>
> HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
> A good part of the energy for transnational progressivism is
> provided by  human rights  activists, who consistently evoke
> "evolving  norms  of  international  law."  The  main  legal
> conflict between  traditional American liberal democrats and
> transnational progressives  is ultimately  the  question  of
> whether the  U.S. Constitution  trumps international  law or
> vice versa.
>
> Before the  mid-twentieth century, traditional international
> law referred  to relations  among  nation-states.  The  "new
> international   law"   has   increasingly   penetrated   the
> sovereignty of  democratic nation-states.  It is  in reality
> "transnational  law."   Human  rights   activists  work   to
> establish  norms   for   this   "new   international   [i.e.
> transnational] law"  and then attempt to bring the U.S. into
> conformity with  a legal  regime whose  reach often  extends
> beyond democratic politics.
>
> Transnational progressives  excoriate American political and
> legal practices  in virulent  language, as  if the  American
> liberal  democratic   nation-state   was   an   illegitimate
> authoritarian regime.  Thus, AI-U.S.A. charged the U.S. in a
> 1998 report  with "a  persistent and  widespread pattern  of
> human rights  violations," naming the U.S. the "world leader
> in high  tech repression."  Meanwhile, HRW issued a 450-page
> report excoriating  the U.S.  for all types of "human rights
> violations," even  complaining that  "the U.S. Border Patrol
> continued to grow at an alarming pace."
>
> ANTI-ASSIMILATION ON THE HOME FRONT
> Many of  the same  lawyers who  advocate transnational legal
> concepts are  active in  U.S. immigration law. Louis Henkin,
> one of  the most  prominent scholars  of international  law,
> calls for  largely eliminating  "the  difference  between  a
> citizen and  a  non-citizen  permanent  resident."  Columbia
> University  international  law  professor  Stephen  Legomsky
> argues that  dual nationals holding influential positions in
> the U.S.  should not  be required to give "greater weight to
> U.S. interests, in the event of a conflict" between the U.S.
> and the  other country in which the American citizen is also
> a dual national.
>
> Two leading  law professors  (Peter Spiro  from Hofstra  and
> Peter Schuck  from Yale)  complain that  immigrants  seeking
> American  citizenship   are  required   to   "renounce   all
> allegiance" to  their old  nations." Spiro  and Schuck  even
> reject the  concept of  the hyphenated  American and endorse
> what they  call the  "ampersand" citizen.  Thus, instead  of
> traditional "Mexican-Americans"  who are  loyal citizens but
> proud  of  their  ethnic  roots,  they  prefer  postnational
> citizens, who  are both  "Mexican &  American,"  who  retain
> "loyalties" to  their "original  homeland" and  vote in both
> countries.
>
> University professor  Robert  Bach  authored  a  major  Ford
> Foundation report  on new  and "established  residents" (the
> word "citizen"  was assiduously  avoided) that advocated the
> "maintenance" of  ethnic immigrant  identities and  attacked
> assimilation as  the "problem in America." Bach later became
> deputy director  for  policy  at  the  INS  in  the  Clinton
> administration.
>
> The financial backing for this anti-assimilationist campaign
> has come  primarily from  the Ford  Foundation, which made a
> conscious decision to fund a Latino rights movement based on
> advocacy-litigation   and    group   rights.    The   global
> progressives have  been aided--if  not  always  consciously,
> certainly in objective terms--by a "transnational right." It
> was a  determined Right-Left  coalition led  by  libertarian
> Stuart Anderson,  who currently holds Bach's old position at
> the INS, that killed a high-tech tracking system for foreign
> students that  might  have  saved  lives  on  September  11.
> Whatever their ideological or commercial motives, the demand
> for "open  borders" (not  simply  free  trade,  which  is  a
> different matter  altogether) by  the libertarian  right has
> strengthened the Left's anti-assimilationist agenda.
>
> THE EU AS A STRONGHOLD OF TRANSNATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM
> The EU  is a  large  supranational  macro-organization  that
> embodies  transnational   progressivism.  Its   governmental
> structure is  post-democratic. Power  in the  EU principally
> resides in  the European  Commission (EC)  and to  a  lesser
> extent the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The EC, the EU's
> executive body,  initiates  legislative  action,  implements
> common policy,  and controls  a  large  bureaucracy.  It  is
> composed of a rotating presidency and nineteen commissioners
> chosen by  the member-states  and approved  by the  European
> Parliament.  It   is  unelected  and,  for  the  most  part,
> unaccountable.
>
> A  white   paper  issued   by  the  EC  suggests  that  this
> unaccountability  is   one  reason  for  its  success:"[the]
> "essential source  of the success of European integration is
> that [it]  is_independent from  national, sectoral, or other
> influences." This  "democracy deficit"  represents  a  moral
> challenge to EU legitimacy.
>
> The substantive  polices advanced  by EU  leaders on  issues
> such as "hate speech," "hate crimes," "comparable worth" for
> women's pay,  and group  preferences are  considerably  more
> "progressive" in  the EU  than in  the  U.S..  The  ECJ  has
> overruled national parliaments and public opinion in nation-
> states by  ordering the  British to incorporate gays and the
> Germans to  incorporate  women  in  combat  units  in  their
> respective military  services. The  ECJ even  struck down  a
> British law  on corporal punishment, declaring that parental
> spanking is  internationally recognized as an abuse of human
> rights
>
> Two Washington  lawyers, Lee  Casey and  David Rivkin,  have
> argued that  the  EU  ideology  that  "denies  the  ultimate
> authority of  the nation-state"  and transfers policy making
> from elected  representatives  to  bureaucrats  "suggests  a
> dramatic  divergence"  with  "basic  principles  of  popular
> sovereignty once shared by both Europe's democracies and the
> United States."
>
> In international  politics, in  the period immediately prior
> to 9/11,  the EU  opposed the  U.S.  on  some  of  the  most
> important   global    issues,   including   the   ICC,   the
> Comprehensive Test  Ban Treaty,  the Land  Mine Treaty,  the
> Kyoto Global  Warming Treaty,  and  policy  towards  missile
> defense, Iran,  Iraq, Israel,  China, Cuba, North Korea, and
> the death  penalty. On  most of  these issues, transnational
> progressives in  the U.S.--including  politicians--supported
> the EU position and attempted to leverage this transnational
> influence in  the domestic  debate. At  the same,  the  Bush
> administration on  some  of  these  issues  has  support  in
> Europe, particularly  from parts  of the  British  political
> class and  public, and  elements of European popular opinion
> (e.g., on the death penalty.)
>
> After 9/11, while some European nation-states sent forces to
> support the  U.S. in Afganhistan, many European leaders have
> continued to  snipe at American policies and hamper American
> interests in  the war  on terrorism.  In December  2001  the
> European Parliament  condemned the  U.S.  Patriot  Act  (the
> bipartisan antiterrorist  legislation that  passed the  U.S.
> Congress overwhelmingly)  as "contrary to the principles" of
> human rights because the legislation "discriminates" against
> non-citizens.  Leading  European  politicians  have  opposed
> extraditing  terrorist   suspects  to   the  U.S.  if  those
> terrorists would  be subjected  to the death penalty. Even a
> long-time Atlanticist,  like the  Berlin  Aspin  Institute's
> Jeffrey Gedmin,  questions  the  "basis  for  a  functioning
> alliance" between the U.S. and Western Europe.
>
> Both, realists  and neoconservatives  have argued  that some
> EU, UN,  and NGO  thinking threatens  to limit both American
> democracy at  home and  American power  overseas. As  Jeanne
> Kirkpatrick puts it, "foreign governments and their leaders,
> and more  than  a  few  activists  here  at  home,  seek  to
> constrain and  control American  power by means of elaborate
> multilateral processes, global arrangements, and UN treaties
> that limit  both our  capacity to  govern ourselves  and act
> abroad."
>
> CONCLUSION
> Talk in  the West of a "culture war" is somewhat misleading,
> because  the   arguments  over  transnational  vs.  national
> citizenship, multiculturalism  vs. assimilation,  and global
> governance vs. national sovereignty are not simply cultural,
> but ideological  and philosophical.  They  pose  Aristotle's
> question: "What kind of government is best?"
>
> In America,  there is an elemental argument about whether to
> preserve, improve,  and  transmit  the  American  regime  to
> future generations  or  to  transform  it  into  a  new  and
> different type  of polity.  We  are  arguing  about  "regime
> maintenance" vs. "regime transformation."
>
> The   challenge    from   transnational   progressivism   to
> traditional American  concepts of  citizenship,  patriotism,
> assimilation,  and   the  meaning  of  democracy  itself  is
> fundamental. If our system is based not on individual rights
> (as  defined   by  the   U.S.  Constitution)  but  on  group
> consciousness (as  defined by  international  law);  not  on
> equality of  citizenship but  on group  preferences for non-
> citizens (including  illegal  immigrants)  and  for  certain
> categories  of   citizens;  not   on  majority  rule  within
> constitutional limits  but  on  power-sharing  by  different
> ethnic,  racial,  gender,  and  linguistic  groups;  not  on
> constitutional  law,   but  on  transnational  law;  not  on
> immigrants  becoming   Americans,  but  on  migrants  linked
> between transnational  communities;  then  the  regime  will
> cease to  be "constitutional,"  "liberal," "democratic," and
> "American," in the understood sense of those terms, but will
> become in  reality  a  new  hybrid  system  that  is  "post-
> constitutional,"  "post-liberal,"   "post-democratic,"   and
> "post-American."
>
> This intracivilizational  Western conflict  between  liberal
> democracy and  transnational progressivism accelerated after
> the Cold  War and should continue well into the twenty-first
> century. Indeed,  from the fall of the Berlin Wall until the
> attacks of September 11, the transnational progressives were
> on the offensive.
>
> Since September  11,  however,  the  forces  supporting  the
> liberal-democratic nation  state have rallied throughout the
> West.  In   the  post-9/11  milieu  there  is  a  window  of
> opportunity for  those who  favor  a  reaffirmation  of  the
> traditional norms  of liberal-democratic  patriotism. It  is
> unclear whether  that segment of the American intelligentsia
> committed to  liberal democracy  as it has been practiced on
> these  shores   has  the   political  will   to  seize  this
> opportunity. In  Europe, given  elite opinion,  the case for
> liberal democracy will be harder to make. Key areas to watch
> in both the U.S. and Europe include immigration-assimilation
> policy; arguments  over international law; and the influence
> of a civic-patriotic narrative in public schools and popular
> culture.
>
> FOURTH DIMENSION?
> I suggest  that we  add a  fourth dimension  to a conceptual
> framework of  international politics.  Three dimensions  are
> currently  recognizable.   First,   there   is   traditional
> realpolitik, the  competition  and  conflict  among  nation-
> states (and  supranational states such as the EU). Second is
> the competition  of civilizations,  conceptualized by Samuel
> Huntington.  Third,   there  is  the  conflict  between  the
> democratic world  and the  undemocratic world.  My suggested
> fourth dimension is the conflict within the democratic world
> between the  forces of  liberal democracy  and the forces of
> transnational progressivism,  between  democrats  and  post-
> democrats.
>
> The  conflicts  and  tensions  within  each  of  these  four
> dimensions   of   international   politics   are   unfolding
> simultaneously and  affected by  each other, and so they all
> belong in  a comprehensive understanding of the world of the
> twenty-first century.  In hindsight,  Fukuyama is  wrong  to
> suggest that  liberal democracy is inevitably the final form
> of  political   governance,  the  evolutionary  endpoint  of
> political philosophy,  because it  has become  unclear  that
> liberal democracy  will defeat  transnational progressivism.
> During the  twentieth  century,  Western  liberal  democracy
> finally triumphed militarily and ideologically over National
> Socialism and  communism, powerful  anti-democratic  forces,
> that were,  in a  sense, Western ideological heresies. After
> defeating its  current antidemocratic,  non-Western enemy in
> what will  essentially be  a material-physical  struggle, it
> will continue  to face an ideological-metaphysical challenge
> from powerful  post-liberal democratic forces, whose origins
> are Western,  but, which  could be  in the  words  of  James
> Kurth, called "post-Western."
>
>
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