Posted by
JDComments on Friday, October 27, 2006 4:11:19 PM
As rancor continues regarding the Iraq War, I think it serves a purpose to point out that Conservatives, in defending it, have gone against their most profound beliefs, while Liberals, too, are acting out of character. The important question is why these two groups have taken on opinions which they shouldn't have based on their histories, and what this says about them.
For Conservatives, the preeminent doctrine is maintaining existing political and societal institutions, which should be changed only with extreme prudence and care. This is a reflection of the rise of Conservatism in England under Edmund Burke as a response to the French Revolution and the upheaval it promised to bring to Europe’s societies. Burke’s defense of the existing governing bodies was premised on his belief that Man’s collective intelligence over time had given birth to the best institutions for harnessing his base instincts, and attempts to uproot and replace these based on Reason exercised by a handful of men, was foolhardy and dangerous. Fareed Zakaria, in his excellent book “The Future of Freedom”, shows all the institutions and structures , among which are an independent judiciary and laws, free press, and powerful private interests groups, that are required to prevent a Democracy being just a tyranny of the majority. For a Conservative, the time required to create these are the argument against trying to impose change quickly .
Given this perspective, our attempt to instill Democracy would seem to a Conservative the ultimate heresy in most circumstances. The problems we are having would appear clear to Burke, who would not be surprised by the internal strife, battles for autonomy and fights for national wealth that are occurring. In truth, we are attempting to build a structure which hasn’t had its foundation laid yet, and we are suffering for it. A Conservative could understand and justify the removal of Saddam, a dangerous man whose mere threat of having WMD’s was enough to warrant overthrowing him. The problem would be our attempt to install a democracy in place of the existing government structure.
However, these are not most circumstances. Faced with the threat of more Islamic nations getting nuclear weapons, combined with the fact that most Arabs live in despotic, repressive regimes with no outlets for grievances and no hope of bettering themselves and are therefore susceptible to the call of the Wahhabi and other forms of extreme Islam, all this can be seen to be leading to a world where the West would be faced with executing a war of extermination to survive. Like a pressure cooker with no release valve, leaving things as they are would invariably lead to a day of reckoning in the not too distant future which is horrible to contemplate. Given the Iranian President’s predilection for using Armageddon and Apocalyptic imagery, we would be dangerously foolish to believe we could whistle past this cemetery. With hindsight, WWII was inevitable given what Hitler believed and how he behaved, but there were times he could have been stopped if only we had listened to him. Well we are listening to the Middle East, and have concluded our only hope was creating an enlightened Democracy which would serve as an example to release the escalating pressure and allow the people of the region to participate in the 21 st century, and hopefully this would nullify the appeal of the radical theology. For this reason, the Conservatives tempered their fears and have supported a war which will be long, complicated and frustrating, but God willing, which will lead to a safer world.
The irony is that the Liberals, the heirs of the French Revolution, the people who have called for humanitarian military efforts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and numerous other places and the people who do believe that rational decision making and enforced solutions can solve national woes have turned against their base principles and decried this war. A military effort which they should be cheering as liberating millions of people from slavery and blessing them with Liberal self government is instead vilified . Why does the movement which is predicated on the importance of spreading Democracy now stand staunchly against our effort to do just that? The only answer I can arrive at is that for them it is just a bargaining chip, a way to be the opposition and to play to populist sentiments. In other words, it is a selfish attempt to gain power.
And so you have two groups which have suppressed their most fundamental principles, one in order to try and change the world in a way to make it safer for us all, the other to gain political power. Somehow I think Burke would be prouder of his children than Robespierre would be of his.