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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (42705)	4/14/2004 12:49:39 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

Fear is being used as re-election tactic SHELDON S. WOLIN With a defiant "We are not afraid" stance, President George W. Bush has dismissed the natural response to terrorism while tacitly making fear the basis of his politics. Fear is politically useful because it simultaneously divides and unites. It breeds suspicions among neighbors as well as a common yearning for security. Using the battle cry of a "war on terrorism" and stubbornly insisting that Saddam Hussein possessed "weapons of mass destruction," the Bush administration is not about to surrender the tactical advantages of an anxious public being told repeatedly that it is trapped in a war with no end-point. In January, The New York Times quoted a "senior political adviser" to Bush as describing how finely calibrated the president's re-election campaign will be in this era of global terrorism: It will have a "healthy mix of optimism and the fear factor." What is the basis of a politics of fear? Here the unquestioned master is the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an authority on mankind and government. Hobbes is cited by today's fear mongers who champion an aggressive foreign policy, embrace unilateralism and pre-emptive wars and rhapsodize over the prospect of an American empire. Hobbes believed that the world is continually threatened by terror, hence safety and order are precarious at best. Mankind fears not death but violent death. When no power is strong enough to impose order, then each person (and, by extension, each nation) has a natural right to use whatever means necessary for self-defense. Absent a power capable of imposing its will on its subjects, society lapses into a "state of nature" where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." In that condition of a "war of every man against every man," where notions of "right and wrong ... have no place," a clever nerd can kill a dedicated muscle-builder. Hobbes' philosophy seems a prescient account of a world where terrorists can wound even a superpower, where atomic secrets are purchasable in a clandestine market and where weapons of mass destruction can be mailed in an envelope. While neo-imperialists and neo-cons invoke Hobbes to support aggressive foreign and military policies, they rarely confront his main concern - that no practical distinction exists between the powers needed to defend against external threats and those required to preserve law and order at home. Both cases require that absolute power be granted to rulers because the struggle for power and the possibilities of violence are as rampant at home as they are in international relations. (Think of our overflowing prisons and love affair with the death penalty as the domestic counterparts to pre-emptive war.) What makes Hobbes' argument attractive to the apologists of empire and Superpower is his claim that the only sure method of establishing power that is both unlimited and legitimate is to derive it from the free consent of each citizen. Citizens are complicit in their own subjection, engaging in an imaginary covenant whereby they agree to surrender all their powers to a sovereign who is authorized to protect them. Ideally, the accompaniment to the politics of fear is political quietism. Meanwhile the neo-Hobbesians warn that the Social Security system will be bankrupt unless replaced by a social insecurity system based on the vagaries of the stock market. Pension systems are put at risk and employers encouraged to reduce benefits. Medicare becomes more problematic just as unemployment increases and jobs are exported. Meanwhile, "crowd control" is perfected by an increasingly militarized police. Enough to satisfy the most demanding Hobbesian - and with the Guantanamo prison camp and the Patriot Act as dividends. The central question to be answered in November is: Will the citizenry revoke or confirm the Hobbesian covenant? newsday.com lurqer