I read the Harris article last night, and knocked off this response. I looked at it again this morning, and it seems in retrospect a bit on the pompous side. If I had the time or the inclination to edit I'd try to wind it a little less tightly, but what the hell. Here it is, as is:
Harris has chosen to engage anti-Americanism in its most virulent and least relevant form, and in doing so he has created a erudite, accurate and intellectually flawless waste of time.
The article explains very clearly how the Marxist America-bashers think and why they think that way. But who cares what Marxists think, or why? Nobody listens to them, anywhere. Nobody has for years. They sit in little circles and chant their mantras and conduct their incomprehensible internal battles, and they are universally ignored.
Marxist America-bashing may be superficially irritating to those few who notice it, but it contains neither serious threat nor intellectual substance worthy of consideration. What Harris fails to mention is Marxism is by no means the only source of resistance to American initiatives and of attitudes critical of the United States. These positions, whether they are manifested in outright anti-Americanism or merely in audible discomfort with the manner in which America is managing its role as sole superpower, often derive from bases that have nothing to do with Marxism, and some of them, unlike the Marxist derivatives, deserve real attention.
One of these, of course, is the anti-Americanism that stems from radical Islamic theology, an entity entirely distinct from Marxism. This source is as devoid of intellectual substance as the Marxist version, but because it represents a real threat, it needs to be taken seriously, to be studied, and to be understood to a degree sufficient to craft effective long-term responses. Another source derives from the developing world and is directed less at America per se than at America as the perceived leader and representative of the industrial powers of the north. In its most extreme form this anti-Americanism merges with the yapping of the Marxists, and in this form it should be ignored. In more moderate manifestations, though, this sentiment derives from real issues that badly need to be considered and resolved.
There is another significant point of resistance, though, one that we need to consider very seriously indeed. It is also one that we are entirely capable of understanding, for it is rooted in a concept that forms the bedrock of our own political institutions: awareness of the danger of concentrated power.
Harris, with some derision, quotes Anatol Lieven’s comment that America is “a menace to itself and to mankind”. Whether or not Harris wants to admit it, though, Lieven is right, though probably not in the manner he intended.
Power is dangerous. Concentrated power is even more dangerous. Concentrated power wielded without accountability to those affected and with no effective system of checks and balances is very dangerous indeed. It is a cliché to say that power tends to corrupt, but that cliché has survived the years for very good reasons. America holds very great, nearly absolute, military power, in highly concentrated form and with no effective external check or balance. That’s dangerous. People around the world, responsible people who bear us no essential ill will, worry about this, with some reason. America’s policies affect people around the world, people to whom the American Government is in no way accountable. Can those people trust the American voters to consider the widest implications of their choices? What if that power falls into untrustworthy or irresponsible hands? What if that power’s tendency to corrupt became manifest? Is that possibility not real, and is it not a menace to us and to everybody else?
We say that America must be the world’s policeman. But doesn’t the standing of the policeman depend on the community’s perception that the policeman will act in the community’s interest, as defined by the community, and not do whatever the hell he pleases? Who among us would want to live in a community policed by an armed supercop whose primary agenda was the advancement of his own interests?
There is a real conflict of interest here. American leaders seem to be moving toward the point of declaring that we have the right to use force as we choose, when we choose, where we choose, simply because we are able to do it and nobody is able to stop us. At the same time we assume as a matter of course that our use of our own resources will be primarily aimed at advancing our own interests. It is quite natural for people in other countries, many of whom perceive their own interests as divergent from ours, to oppose this trend.
It has become fashionable in some American political circles to dismiss as irrelevant the desires of nations that cannot wield effective military force. The merit of an opinion, it seems, is proportional to the power of the military force that those who hold that opinion can bring to bear. Is this not, though, simply a rephrasing of Mao’s comment that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun”?
Those who support this view cite pragmatic concerns, saying that whether the influence of the coercive capacity force is right or wrong, it is a fact of life. How many of us, though, would accept this supposed fact of life within our own nation? Would we accept the right of the military to rule our nation, simply because they can bring more force to bear than anybody else? We would not and we have not. In our society those who have the capacity wield force are restrained by the rule of law. Our political structures are carefully arranged to ensure that no office or organization can achieve sufficient power to dominate the others. That’s one of the fundamental reasons why our society has flourished.
The leaders of the free world today, and of the US in particular, face a challenge similar to that faced by America’s founding fathers in their day. The men who created the American political system were no more prepared for the role they faced than our leaders today: history created the circumstances and they had to deal with them. Those men could have rallied their army behind them, declared that whoever has the guns makes the rules, and run the country for their own benefit. Instead, they rose to the challenge and created a system of law to which even they would have to submit, a system capable of enduring for centuries.
We face very similar challenges today, on a much larger scale. The survival of the United States and very possibly of the human race depends on the ability of the world’s leaders to create something approximating a system of governance, at the very least a basic structure of rules and enforcement mechanisms, that can function on a global basis. If this system assigns weight to opinions based on the coercive force that can be brought to bear by those who hold those opinions, it will create instability, not stability. If it relies on the military dominance of one power, it will ultimately collapse into tyranny and worldwide war. Whether we like it or not, historical circumstance has dumped a great deal of the responsibility for the development of whatever order will succeed the capitalist/communist bipolarity in our laps. Will we and our leaders follow the Maoist lead, announce that power grows from the barrel of the gun, and use our power for our own purposes? Or will we rise to the occasion as our ancestors did, and do our damndest, with no assurance of success, to build something greater than the sum of its parts, something that can last for centuries, even if this means restraining our power and allowing those without guns an equal place in the rule-making process?
Harris sums up his argument with this:
The belief that mankind’s progress, by any conceivable standard of measurement recognized by Karl Marx, could be achieved through the destruction or even decline of American power is a dangerous delusion.
I agree. I would also submit that the belief that mankind’s progress, by any conceivable standard of measurement recognized by anybody anywhere, could be achieved by American global supremacy is an equally dangerous delusion. I do not dismiss American achievements, far from it. It is entirely true that, as Harris says “Respect for the deep structural laws that govern the historical process… must dictate a proportionate respect for any social order that has achieved the degree of stability and prosperity the United States has achieved.” It is equally true that respect for dangers of concentrated power, which history has so abundantly and repeatedly demonstrated, must keep us alert to the risks inherent in the management of our capacities.
We cannot rule the world, even if we convince ourselves that we are trying to do so for the world’s benefit, without sacrificing one of our most sacred principles: that the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed. If we sacrifice that, we become tyrants. We would never allow ourselves to be governed without our consent; why do we think that others will allow us to govern them without their consent?
As long as the perception exists that America is seeking to use its military supremacy to dominate the world, to achieve a state of de facto empire, to advance our own interests at the expense of those of others, anti-Americanism will emerge, and with some legitimate reason. This kind of anti-American sentiment is based on principles that almost all Americans recognize and hold dear, and equating it with the preposterous and anachronistic buffoonery of the vestigial Marxist left would be a very serious mistake. |
