 The Idea: The actions of George Bush suggest a frontier-mentality faith in the individual's ability to do anything
better than the state. But the plan built on that faith is so naive,
unworkable, and tinged with religious fanaticism and intolerance that
it should be easy for opponents to present a vastly better one, much
more to the electorate's liking, yet still based on faith in and
respect for the individual.
Lately this article
by Mike Gecan in the Boston Globe has been generating a lot of blog
buzz (formatting seriously messed up, but this seems to be the only
version online). I thought it was interesting, but not for its main
message (that Bush opponents don't take religious faith seriously and
hence alienate swing voters). The message that interested me was that
Bush opponents don't take faith in the individual seriously.
Now I know George Bush is hardly your poster boy for libertarian
anarchism, but think about it a minute. Almost everything he has done
is consistent with a (naive, idealistic) faith that individuals left to
their own resources will do a better job than institutions. He
destroyed the governments of two nations and has left them to rebuild
themselves. He wants to dismantle government and social institutions
like social security. He would like to privatize education. He seems
hell-bent, with the assistance of Ayn Rand's most devout worshipper,
Alan Greenspan, on bankrupting the US government so that it will no
longer be able, or trusted, to do anything. He chants "freedom" and
"democracy" with absolutist fervour. In his abhorrence and distrust of
government and central authority, he sounds not at all unlike Timothy McVeigh.
He is fiercely opposed to gun control of any kind. In the mistaken
belief that there is such a thing as a 'free' market economy, he
espouses deregulation and a private 'ownership' economy. On the
surface, his beliefs and actions are entirely consistent with
libertarian-anarchist philosophy. His decisions are those of someone
who thinks even no government
is better than the tyranny of Saddam or the Taliban -- and better than
the governments of Iran, Syria, and most of the other nations on the
planet. He has enormous faith in the "little guy's" ability to rise
from the ashes, as long as institutions of power and interference are
kept at bay.
So what about the Patriot Act and his opposition to the right to die,
to abortion and to gay and lesbian rights? My sense is that he is very
much an 'ends justifies the means' guy -- he evidently has no qualms
about stealing elections, lying and committing fraud to achieve a
'higher goal'. So what is the 'end' of the Patriot Act? Simple: The
expulsion of those who threaten the master plan of needing no
government in America. And in his philosophy, the right to die, to
abortion and to gay and lesbian rights are moral evils, not rights at
all, and it's deplorable that they are being upheld by government institutions
-- the judiciary and the constitution. In Bush's perfect world, those
that espoused such evils would be reformed, dismantled, executed or
cast out by right-minded Americans, and he obviously fiercely resents
public institutions that prevent divine law from being carried out. So
running back to Washington to sign a bill to smack the judiciary for
upholding the right to die is morally justified, while the millions
being slaughtered in Darfur should be looking after themselves and
ridding themselves of yet another loathsome government that sponsors such atrocities, rather than expecting some other government to intervene. Every man for himself. (Women, well, as the Bible tells us, they're moral slackers and should do what they're told.)
There's a bizarre consistency to all his actions. Yes, I know he has a psychopathic
personality, but that doesn't mean he isn't capable of assembling a
cogent moral philosophy and using it to drive his agenda forward.
Remember, that German lunatic in the last century also had a consistent
and quite persuasive, well-intentioned moral philosophy.
The answer, as Gecan suggests, is that opponents need to provide a
cogent moral philosophy that is simple, consistent with different
American political frames (all styles of progressives, and libertarian
conservatives -- the authoritarian conservatives are beyond reach) and
demonstrably more workable
than Bush's McVeigh-style extreme anarcho-libertarianism. That
shouldn't be too hard to do. It should be built on community rather
than just individual, and on autonomy rather than charity, which would
place it right in the American philosophical heartland and co-opt the
great bulk of those who voted for Bush. And it need not be heartless or
un-humanitarian -- it merely needs to devolve its heart and its
humanity and its economy to the local community, and distance itself
from centralized command-and-control institutions. And what about the
terrorist threat? As the Internet model has shown, the best way to
protect yourself from attack, short of miraculously solving the
problems and diseases that cause perpetrators to launch them in the
first place, is to move everything out of the centre, to the ends, so
no single offensive can cause much damage, and so that resilience is
high and almost instantaneous.
Anarchism is a great theory. But we can't get there the way Bush is
trying to get there. Progressives, like conservatives, should have
faith in the individual -- to realize a fraudulent, ill-conceived and
naive moral philosophy tinged with vicious religious intolerance when
they see it, and to see the value of an alternative that is
devolutionary, respectful, unpatronizing and generous.
|
5:46:33 PM 
|
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
