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The
Real Clash of Civilizations:
Liberals
Versus the Crypto-Nazis
by
John Chuckman
June
24, 2003
There
is a real clash of civilizations in the world, but one that has little to do
with East and West. It is found in the advanced world and consists in the
values of traditional liberalism being attacked by the right wing. Nowhere is
this battle noisier and of more consequence to the world's peoples than in
America where victory for the right appears all but certain.
I
have no quarrel with honest, decent conservatives. The essence of conservatism
is the preservation of what is best from the past, the unwillingness to change
what remains useful or valid just for the sake of change.
But
all social and political arrangements are subject to change where there is
economic growth. Old ways pass away, everything from the daily wearing of
traditional garb and the absolute role of males to the average number of
children and the selling of brides changes, sometimes in a single lifetime.
Liberals differ from conservatives in being more ready to recognize this
fundamental reality and to accommodate change in a timely way.
America's
right wing is another matter altogether. Attitudes here go beyond conservatism
into the shadowy realm of social Darwinism, selfishness exalted as virtue,
muscular arrogance, and turning one's back on many aspects of enlightenment.
These attitudes come embedded in an intense, almost religious, fervor.
When
people read the word Nazi they first think of mass murder, and rightly so, but
the Nazis had a set of beliefs and attitudes other than racial theories. In
fact many Germans, and even party members, did not share Hitler's incandescent,
almost inexplicable hatred of Jews, although anti-Semitism was very much a
theme in German history, Martin Luther, for example, a remarkable man in so
many respects, having said and written things every bit as vile as Hitler.
What
were the characteristics of Nazism that might justify comparisons with
influential contemporary groups in America?
As
the title of Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, suggests, the Nazis viewed life as a
struggle, embracing the idea that only the able should thrive and reproduce. It
is helpful when you hold this belief if you also regard yourself as among the
ablest, and so the Nazis did. Hitler was a social Darwinist with a mystical
belief in the special merit of Germans.
The
Nazis had an absolute loathing of Communism, or Bolshevism as it was called
then, and contempt for all forms of liberalism and social democracy. All
philosophies that offered hope against their vision of a world of successful
predators prevailing over the weak were despised. Ruthlessness itself was held
up by Hitler as a virtue because it could bring victory, or so he thought.
The
Nazis were big-business capitalists, although political expediency had put
socialist in the party name, but where issues of great national significance
were concerned they never hesitated to redirect with subsidies, contracts, and
other pressures the efforts of German industry. The Nazis encouraged the
development of gigantic corporate entities. Small business was actually held in
contempt by Hitler, hence his famous derisive comment about the British being a
nation of shopkeepers. To support the Nazis' worship of military strength, only
vast enterprises would do.
The
Nazis were willing to accept a good deal of repression in their society if that
guaranteed the success of their primary values, and, despite Germany's being in
many ways one of the most advanced and cultured of European states, the Nazis
were willing to tolerate floods of ignorant propaganda so long as it supported
their aims.
Based
on these criteria, it might be hard to distinguish America's extreme right from
a good many Nazis, but I think the prefix crypto helpful in distinguishing them
from their more straightforward cousins. For America does have a set of written
ideals about human rights and freedoms at odds with Nazism, although these
ideals have been interpreted with great flexibility or totally ignored over
long periods of the country's history, often accommodating dark and brutal
practices. Where the will to make good on constitutional promises does not
exist, they remain fine words on parchment, as many wonderful-sounding
third-world constitutions attest.
That
is why the cypto-Nazis always attack the courts as unelected legislators when
what the courts are mostly doing is the necessary job of deciding how to
interpret grand general statements into the specific day-to-day circumstances
of people's lives, and that under ever-changing circumstances. By the way, in
the Nazis' early period, before they felt free to drag judges from their courts
or murder them, they had exactly the same view of courts that dared to make
unfriendly decisions.
The
father of this contempt for courts in America was Thomas Jefferson who loathed
the idea that the Supreme Court would interpret the Constitution's
generalizations on behalf of the states. That is why he is the patron saint of
America's crypto-Nazis. Jefferson was an expert at sounding high-minded while
acting shabbily.
During
the early Federalist period, Jefferson was ready to have Virginia secede - more
than half a century before the rise of the Confederacy - over the issue of the
Supreme Court's authority. Why? Because he understood the intrinsic conflict
between a Bill of Rights and a society of aristocratic slaveholders, a
democratic-sounding Constitution and a Virginia where about one percent of
people could vote, and he was, despite all his high-sounding language, quite
comfortable being an aristocratic slaveholder. The Bill of Rights sounded fine,
but just don't set up anyone to interpret and enforce it.
Parts
of America's right drift off into utter blindness and even phobic hatred.
Jefferson to his dying day believed blacks were inferior, almost another
species, and that women didn't merit the same education, and certainly not the
same political privileges, as men. You don't find America's Aryan churches or
weird militia groups or anti-gay organizations with liberals on their
membership rolls. America's extreme right provided the vicious anti-Semites of
American history - the founding males of many clans like the Fords or the
Bushes - but they rule now in an odd partnership with the religious right whose
eyes tear over with every mention of words like Holy Land, the End of Time, and
Armageddon.
One
of the major bonds tying them together is the fundamentalists' fear of social
change. Fundamentalist minds seem fixed somewhere around 1840 or so as offering
the ideal family and social arrangements, although they do enjoy suburban
living, television, fast food, and SUVs, and not many of them have ten children
or mail-order brides anymore. They see the never-ending pressure for change in
American society - the inexorable result of long-term economic growth - as
destructive to their vision of what society should be, and they are right, it
is. This is why undefined blubber about "family values" joined the
right-wing lexicon some years back. Ironically, the right wing's simplistic and
enduring love for "the hell with regulations" economic growth,
actually works against the long-term interests of fundamentalists, creating
even greater future stresses on their vision of society, but few of them seem
to understand this fact.
What
of liberalism and its history in America? Although America rejected the idea of
a king or lifetime president, taking what was a liberal view in the 18th
century, the early Republic was effectively an aristocracy, an aristocracy of
men with money, farms, and slaves rather than noble birth. It was the spirit of
liberalism that gradually extended the franchise to include more than a small
number of (male, white) property owners. It was the same spirit that gave the
franchise to women and that made the United States Senate an elected rather
than appointed, aristocratic body. It was liberalism that finally freed
America's blacks from a second bondage, brutal apartheid in every detail, and
gave them the franchise a century after the supposed end of slavery. It was
liberalism that produced the great reforms of the Depression, creating hope and
saving America from the brutal coups and civil wars of Europe during the
troubled 1930s. It was liberalism that drove hope and progress for universal
education. It was always liberalism pushing to make the tolerance for speech or
religion promised in the Constitution into something tangible.
The
mouthpieces for America's equivalent of the 1930s' Krupp or Farben - Rush
Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, William F. Buckley, and dozens of others - are rarely
seriously challenged over their sophomoric historical knowledge or their
sneering jokes at hard-won human values. There appears to be a large appetite
in America for re-cycled political garbage. The money supporting its production
comes in truckloads. And there are truckloads, too, for phony institutes where
ideologue-propagandists pose as academics, much like actors in white lab coats
posing as doctors on ads for hemorrhoid relief. Money gushes like blood from
opened arteries to support meaningless advertising's suffocation of genuine
debate in American elections, and the George Wills of this world are paid
handsomely to cover this naked display of power with arguments about free
speech.
All
the insensitivity and stupidity spewing over America's airwaves and carried in
its newspapers does have an effect, as its sponsors intend that it should.
Without any serious political opposition inside the country, America has
launched two meaningless wars on weak nations, killing and maiming thousands of
innocent people. It threatens still others and keeps prisoners in cages
offshore. There is considerable public acceptance of barbarities like torture
and assassination, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, inside the country are
arrested and held with no access to courts or legal help. There is a vast
increase in spying on your own people, and there is selective support for
leaders of some countries no better than tyrants or murderers.
Meanwhile,
"Hon, they've got a special on air conditioners down at the mall. Do you
think we could drive down after the news?"
John Chuckman lives in Canada and is
former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He writes frequently
for Yellow Times.org and other publications.