Values and violence

I’m losing track of the point here. If the argument is just that trying to impose enlightenment values on ‘unenlightened’ countries is likely to be bloody and counterproductive and generally non-utilty-maximising, then fine, we shouldn’t do it. But that doesn’t mean that we have to suddenly come over all principled about the inviolability of the democratic will of the overwhelming theocratic majorities that oppose us. The correct attitude is one of studied pragmatism: do whatever possible to change the situation in those countries, regarding the majority view as an obstacle rather than a countervailing reason. If it is possible, for instance, to coerce them not to execute people just for being gay, then we should do so when the costs, including costs to us, are not prohibitive. I’m certainly prepared to accept an increased risk of being blown up on the Tube in exchange for some tangible improvement in the lives of gay people in Iran. And if I weren’t so prepared, I should be. The relevance of the fact that the number of Iranians who care about the rights of homosexuals is vanishingly small is purely pragmatic.

Of course, it may be that this kind of cost-benefit analysis is precisely what d^2 and John Gray are arguing for. But then it’s hard to see why they come down so hard on the Enlightenment – isn’t Bentham an enlightenment figure? I should say that I don’t consider myself at all on the side of the Euston manifesto people, who I agree are the Americans’ useful idiots. But their problem isn’t believing in the Enlightenment.

I’ve said it before, but if you want to support secular Iraqi democrats, sponsor their visa applications.

There’s a distinction between arguing Muslims want, and must have, full-bore 21st century Western liberalism and arguing they have a right to consent to their governments and hold them accountable through periodic elections. The latter is the more fundamental requirement, and I fail to see how it conflicts with any essential tenet of the Muslim faith.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, constitutions (and the amendments likely to follow in Iraq) have been produced not as incoherent compromises between a monolithic Muslim mindset and a monolithic Western mindset, but as frameworks designed to secure the widest consent possible among diverse groups in those societies, with the hope of a working democratic process takeing root. The fact that if they survive these democracies may not establish the full extent of, say, freedom of expression that exists in the West doesn’t mean they are not distinct advances in basic human dignity. Its also hard to see how they would not be preferred by the populations there. Is it your argument that the Muslim faith inculcates a preference for arbitrary and unaccountable power that elections interfere
with?

In addition, there is a reason that the Taliban and Al Quaeda in Iraq are so violently opposed to elections and prone to kill voters and candidates. They recognize that the principle of democratic accountability and equality is not only incompatible with the pure theocracies they desire, it also contains the seed for a further development of individual rights into something like a more complete liberalism.

Certainly its OK to elect sharia governments. Introducing the principle that Muslim law owes its authority to the popular will is the best way long term to modify and soften its hold. If your argument is purely against Decentists who would, hypothetically, use armed force against democratic governments that enact illiberal laws, then I have no argument with you at all. But its important to realize that that’s not what we’re dealing with today. The violence in Iraq and Afghanistan is between the Coalition forces, the elected governments and armed minorities who view even illiberal democracy as unacceptable.

I think there is a certain irony here in the fact that a society in some of these places might be pretty much ready to accept some form of these “Enlightenment Values”, but as soon as Enlightenmentist thugs move in with their guns blazing, masses of people understandably change their minds and turn back to tribalism, traditionalism and religion. Oh, well.

btw, recalling the great-Maddy-Bunting-Enlightenment-debate, wasn’t Our Lady of the Guardian ridiculed by the Decents for pointing out that people in the actual Enlightenment (a) believed all kinds of stuff and (b) did a lot of head-chopping. It now seems that Eve Garrard accepts the line that, historically it was all a bit complicated, but wants to reserve the term “Enlightement Values” for stuff like the UN Declaration. Shurely shome apology to Bunting is called for?

It now seems that Eve Garrard accepts the line that, historically it was all a bit complicated, but wants to reserve the term “Enlightement Values” for stuff like the UN Declaration

Let us give things their right name. They want to reserve the term for the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. With honourable mentions for the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution (except for the embarrassing bits in the Bill of Rights).

Chris: I think a lot of the ridicule had more to do with such statements as “rationality is a social construction – a way of reasoning which we believe to be objective, but never can be.”

d^2: I think (or at least Gray thinks and I think I agree) that “Enlightenment Values” scores much less well on this criterion that a lot of its supporters might think.

Sure, so long as we’re distinguishing between “Enlightenment Values” and Enlightenment Values. I think you’re making the distinction, but I’m not convinced that Gray is. I thought Gray’s point was that we should become sceptical about e.g. ‘Candide’ and ‘What is Enlightenment?’ and ‘Introduction to Principles of Morals and Legislation’ as an ultimate basis for political thinking. The real doctrine which we’re ending up attacking is the natural rights view of Hobbes and Locke, which gets criticised pretty effectively within the Enlightenment itself.

All of this is stuff that d^2 obviously gets, though perhaps not Gray (who seems to think that Humean scepticism is the best political idea to have come out of the Enlightenment). Gray’s idea of attacking the Enlightenment is to point out that Kant was a racist. But it seems more plausible to say that Kant was better at explaining how we should go about thinking than putting his words into practice, and that’s a limited indictment of Kant, not of his idea of Enlightenment. Old hat, I’d have thought.

trying to get even one of its signers to admit that “intervention” and “protection” mean war, with surprisingly little success

I signed: intervention and protection mean war, or the threat of it.

If the principle of the Republic in time of peace is virtue, the principles of the Republic in time of war are virtue and terror!

Incidentally…..’And it would be not only easy but correct, because she’s dodged the central problem that Gray has been identifying for years; the problem that occurs when you try to bring people the benefits of freedom and democracy and they say “no thanks”.’

Interesting use of the phrase ‘freedom and democracy’ as though they are synonyms. But they aren’t. Almost everyone (not least in the middle east) wants democracy (‘rule by the people for the people’): that’s very different from saying that they also want ‘Western style’ freedom, or liberty, to choose another word for it. ‘Liberty’ has a number of meanings attached to it, but one specific meaning is its ‘Western style’ ‘Bourgeois’ definition: i.e. ‘An Englishman’s Home is his Castle’, ‘private property’, ‘sexual freedom’ and so forth.

Now, amongst other thinkers, Hayek was very clear that democracy was not the same as liberty, and he also made very clear that if he had to choose, he would choose ‘liberty’: i.e. he thought it was more important to be able to own property, buy goods from private companies and so forth, than that he could vote. And he made it clear that places like Pinochet’s Chile (where they had, according to Hayek, ‘liberty’ but not ‘democracy’) were preferable to the contrary (i.e. Allende’s Chile).

To repeat: in Iraq, Palestine and other places, they seem to want democracy, but not liberty, specifically not sexual liberty. The ‘decents’ assumed that when democracy comes, liberty must surely follow. Again: ’tain’t necessarily so.

“The Muslim World” who simply don’t want tolerance, equality (in some sense) or freedom of speech. There are genuine democratic movements in most Islamic countries, but it is wishful thinking to pretend that they aren’t small and unrepresentative minorities.

I think that’s wrong (and wishful thinking of an another sort–most of ‘them’ don’t really want democracy, therefore we’ve no obligations in the matter). The strong electoral support of Khatami’s reforms in Iran belie that (which, of course, were tragically and systematically stymied by the mullahs). And the present problems establishing democracy in Iraq don’t derive from the fact that only a small minority of Iraqis want democracy, but rather than that a violent, ruthless, well-armed minority are prepared to stop at nothing to prevent it. The situation is very much the same in Afghanistan, by the way–a majority wanting peace and democracy, a violent, anti-democratic minority wanting to take (or, rather, retake) control by force.

And, yes, a majority in both Afghanistan and Iraq probably do want Islamic law to form the basis of the legal code. But that is a far cry from Zarqawi’s assertions that democracy itself is inherently un-Islamic. And even with aspects of Islamic law inscribed in those constitutions, women are likely to end up with greater legal rights (in particular, the right to vote) than they enjoyed in the west in the century after the enlightenment.

The Enlightenment didn’t share a single point of view, and many of its most famous representatives were anything but democrats. Figures like the Emperor Joseph and Frederick the Great, who proposed to rationalize government from the top down, are just as characteristic as Rousseau or Adam Smith. To some extent these people had assumptions in common and agreed about which issues were important to disagree about. Otherwise, there never was consensus–at best an Enlightenment way of being an authoritarian and an Enlightenment way of being a republican.

daniel– you are running several different issues together :
1) one is whether Eve Gerrard’s criticism of Gray works or not and here you supprisingly have almost nothing to say accept develop a red herring ( maybe enlightenment values do lead to violence but that is not the issue in her discussion ) by saying that Gray has a cheep shot available to him .
2) claim that ‘Enlightenmentism’ is inherently violent or leads to violence and that that is why there is Gitmo , Falujah etc. This seems to take on board uncritically Gray’s mistaken view that enlightenment outlook is somehow conceptually commited to thinking that there is only one rational conception of good.

Gray is here simply edorsing Berlin’s point that there are incompatitble/incommensurable but conception’s of good and he uses this idea to criticise enlightenment as being utopian. The violence comes in on Gray’s view because you have to force people to subscribe to the liberal ( read enlightenment ) conception of good.

This is a serious mistake easy to see if you consider Rawls’ work which can be seen as fleshing out of Kantian ( i.e. core enlightenment stuff ) ideas and it explicitly accepts and incorporates Berlin’s point about Good.
The point is on this more sensible view we do not have Pavlovian imposistion of values on people but the opposite is the case as should be obvious to anyone familiar with Rawls.
So what has happened in other words is kind of crude caricaturing of Euston position and the way enlightenment enters into our picture.

Just to back up my point, here’s Major-General Amos Yadlin who lists the major ‘strategic threat’ to Israel.

Number one:

‘(A key) factor was the adoption of the democratic model, which now aids many extremist organizations to seize power positions and be legitimized in their countries – as happened with the Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood which has gained strength in Egypt.’

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3265380,00.html

It’s ironical in a sense that Americans tend to view Sharia and Islamic culture in general as non-democratic, when there is a burgeoning evangelical movement in the U.S. that seems keen on introducing a Christian variant of same.

Intolerant attitudes toward abortion, overt prejudice against gays, regressive attitudes toward the role of women and the anti-science mentality that characterizes Christian fundamentalism … arguably demonstrates a mindset that is just as “medieval” (to quote Rummy), as the anachronistic visions of the late Musab al Zarqawi.

The word “sharia” has acquired a host of negative connotations in the west, thanks largely to the exertions of radical Islamists. Aspects of the Christian evangelical lifestyle on the other hand, that are equally incompatible with the values of a free and open society, are seen as de rigueur by some.

Perhaps we need to shift our attention from the Muslim community to the real opponents of free and progressive society – and they don’t wear burqas or sport long beards.

Slocum,
why on earth did the Mullahs go to all the trouble of throwing reformist candidates off the ballot (not just at the top, but all the way down).

Do you really want to be in the position of defending the democratic legitimacy of Ahmadinejad?!?

I don’t remember the exact number, but I think there were at least 6 candidates in that election. Ahmadinejad was the most religious, the most conservative, the most anti-Western of them all – and he won.

How would you explain this fact?

Daniel wrote:
[W]hat is unserious is pretending that you could support the war without supporting the actual war that was fought. Or, on a forward looking basis, supporting abstract “intervention in support of our fundamental values” while pretending that this doesn’t involve supporting the sort of wars that would predictably be fought as a result.

Hitchens, I think, was one of the few who was quite clear on this—parodying Rumsfeld but also admitting something like (I’m relying on memory here) ‘you have to go to war with the President you have’. Which I’ve always found simultaneously refreshing and ridiculous.

Well, what I mean is that Hemingway, Orwell, Picasso and other volunteers didn’t go there to steal oil or build military bases or get lucrative contracts. In this sense it was clean.

A lot of people come out and vote for a lesser evil, but fair enough, Slocum. Let’s say it’s inconclusive.

‘Reformist supporters mostly decided to stay home rather than turn out to vote for the lesser of the evils (Rafsanjani).’

And how do you come by this information? You seem to be implying that Ahmadinejad was elected in on an unusually low turn out, but he wasnt: actually turn out was unusually high.

You also imply (without saying so) that Khatami was somehow prevented from standing: actually the Iranian constitution prevents more than two consecutive presidential terms.

Yet again, you ignore my main point: there WAS a reformist candidate (Mostafa Moeen): he finished fifth (out of sixth). So your comparison with an election in which ALL Democrats were banned from standing is highly misleading (surely if the Iranians desperately wanted a reformst, they would all rally round the remaining reformist candidate?) The idea that ‘all’ reformist candidates were banned from the 2005 elections is a popular one amongst the American right wing, but it is false. The idea that the elections were a ‘sham’ is also false: no serious allegations of vote rigging have ever been brought forward.

Even though this discussion is primarily about the UK, as an American I would very much like to second Aidan’s comments (#43). Opposition to obscurantism, like charity, ought to begin at home. But here in the US, many of the biggest “sharia”-phobes arrive at that position via their own mirror-image religious bigotry, not via “Enlightenment” anything.
In this time of Guantanamo and the “don’t let me lose face” President, we have much housecleaning to do before we have any business even thinking about lecturing the rest of the world on “values.”

Although this is a losing argument, since it is aimed at the impenetrable stereotypes that govern the current state of controversy, I’ll make it nevertheless: the Enlightenment thinkers had much more complicated ideas about the universal and the culturally particular than you would be able to tell from the potted history of the Enlightenment thrown about between the Garrads and the Buntings. A good place to see this — because it is a crucial text in the reaction to the Enlightenment’s cultural relativism — is in James Mill’s History of India. It is a History that has, as its whole point, the barbaric state of India and the necessity of bringing civilization, i.e. British rule, to the subcontinent. To mount that argument, Mills has to knock down a century and a half of sentiment about Eastern ‘wisdom’ — and what he takes to be the wild, Rousseau-ist effusions of William Jones, the fad for China of Voltaire and Montesquieu, the myth of Persian wisdom, etc., etc.

Actually, Jones, Voltaire, Montesquieu and the rest of them were simply applying Enlightenment principles in trying to see through ‘eastern eyes’ and using that perspective to criticize the West. A real heir of the Enlightenment would, I think, ask questions about the West such as: why in the world should we allow Weapons of Mass Distruction to be indiscriminately built and stored by the U.S.? Why should we trust any state that claims that it is working solely in the service of the higher moral interests without explaining how those interests are related to the state’s own particular and material interests?

All of which is to say: the Euston crowd are mistaken in claiming to be the heirs of the Enlightenment tradition — they are, instead, the heirs of the early 19th century backlash against the Enlightenment tolerance for other perspectives.

Hi Daniel,

It certainly looked like there was genuine popular outrage about those cartoons, for example.

A belated “genuine outrage” that only became popular once it had been whipped up by members of the hardline theocratic elite.

I still see no evidence for your remarkably broad assertion of “no support for civil rights” in Indonesia (of all places) or the Arab states, etc. Meanwhile, gay rights took their blessed time coming to the West, and are not all there yet. I don’t see what this has to teach us about some insurmountable difference between cultures.

I wasn’t at all confused by what Gray was saying, meanwhile; I just consider that logically it’s nonsense.

‘To mount that argument, Mills has to knock down a century and a half of sentiment about Eastern ‘wisdom’—and what he takes to be the wild, Rousseau-ist effusions of William Jones, the fad for China of Voltaire and Montesquieu, the myth of Persian wisdom, etc., etc.’

Absolutely. At the ‘beginning’ ‘the Enlightenment’ was all about importing foreign values, because Western values (theocracy, slavery, ‘backwardness’) were perceived to be so..well..backwards. Instead the ‘enlightenment thinkers’ looked to China.

‘China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.’ (Adam Smith).

‘ Even the anticlerical philosopher Voltaire was intrigued by what he read about the Chinese. Since Voltaire was intent on attacking the power of the Catholic church in eighteenth-century France, he cleverly used the information about China provided by the Catholics to disprove their more extreme claims. If, argued Voltaire, the Chinese really were so moral, intelligent, ethical, and well governed and if this was largely attributable to the influence of Confucius, it followed that since Confucius had not been a Christian it was obviously possible for a country to get along admirably without the presence of Catholic clerical power.’

http://www.heritageeast.com/history/qing.htm

etc. Some enlightenment thinkers were trying to stamp out Western Values, not propagate them.

What mystifies me about this whole thread is that no-one (that I’ve seen) has mentioned that two fairly central Enlightenment values, on any decent account of them, are freedom from arbitrary rule and respect for human life. Invasions tend to neither respect human life nor be particularly accountable to those they are inflicted on. Consequently, you don’t have to go anything like as far as John Gray’s wilful and obscurantist misrepresentation of liberalism to get the conclusion that there’s something wrong with the Euston Manifesto’s willingness to advocate the use of force: there’s a perfectly good case to be made from perfectly respectably Enlightenment values for the badness of the use of force. In fact, I say to the Euston Manifesters, give me back my Enlightenment!

It is a sort of pointless discussion to pin down what the Englightenment “really” was. The Englightment was a category created after the fact to encapsulate a lot of different thinkers, who disagreed on a lot things.

Today, we typically use the term to refer to those specific views that we think are the best to have emerged from that period: democracy, liberalism, freedom of speech and thought, equality under the law, commitment to empirical science, separation of church and state, the rule of law, etc. In other words, it is simply shorthanded for the views that have mostly triumphed in Western liberal democracies.

That is why is it mostly beside the point to say that these sorts of values are somehow undermined by the past violent actions of revolutionaries or the prestent violent actions of imperialists. The values really stand or fall on their own. Likewise, the best ways for Western liberal societies to encourage devleopment of these same values in other countries is mostly just a pragmatic cost/benefit question.

A belated “genuine outrage” that only became popular once it had been whipped up by members of the hardline theocratic elite

But surely a polity in which riots can be whipped up by mullahs over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed is a polity in which there is no underlying support for freedom of speech when it comes to blasphemy. At the very least.

I’m not sure what sort of evidence you’re looking here and suspect that you’re looking for evidence in favour of a stronger claim than I’m prepared to defend. In Indonesia, Nigeria and many Arab states, forms of sharia are the law, and political parties which favour the extension of sharia laws (and the interpretation of sharia in a less rather than more liberal manner) are gaining in power. Sharia, in the forms currently popular in the Islamic Third World, is not consistent with civil rights as understood by (for example, but on topic) the Euston Manifesto. Hence, to this extent, civil rights do not have popular support. This is a different thesis from saying “they’re not ready for democracy” or some such.

I’m not arguing that there’s an “insurmountable gulf” between us and the Islamic third world and in fact I think I specifically said I thought it was surmountable. But it is the case that across a lot of the Islamic third world, political systems which aren’t the same as ours are in place, and they are for the most part in place because they have popular support. I also don’t think that any gulf is “between cultures”; I don’t think we need to bring culture into what is essentially a political question.

But surely a polity in which riots can be whipped up by mullahs over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed is a polity in which there is no underlying support for freedom of speech when it comes to blasphemy.

Can we then assume, for example, that there was no “underlying support” for multiculturalism in Yugoslavia before the hysteria deliberately engineered by a media and political narrative of “ethnic” hatred, revisionist history and so on? How representative of populations as a whole should we ordinarily take some rioters to be? In my view the most notorious of the cartoons was simply racist, anyway. In the West we also ban speech that incites racial hatred or violence. Does that show that our underlying support for the principle of free speech is also compromised and hence that we are not very interested in civil rights?

across a lot of the Islamic third world, political systems which aren’t the same as ours are in place, and they are for the most part in place because they have popular support.

What is this “popular support”? Is it like Blair having popular support in the UK simply because he won the 2005 election? Is the reason for this popular support, if and to what extent it exists, attributable to opinions about Islam or maybe other factors? To what extent are populations seriously being offered civil rights and rejecting them?

I still think the claims are too broad to be defensible, even before you consider counterfactual examples such as slocum’s point about Khatami.

It is impossible to say what type of government the Iranian people would prefer without free and open elections and a free press to report on the elections. The Khatami and Ahmadinejad elections may be some evidence, but ultimately I think they are not particularly helpeful in answering the question because the method of determining preference was so corrupted.

I think it is fair to say that the Iranian people at least deserve the opportunity to choose a more liberal, democratic government in free elections unconstrained by the ruling party’s decisions on who can run and what they can say, and unconstrained by crackdowns on the press.

‘But the point is that, supposing you accept both election results as legitimate, you cannot argue that Iranians have a settled preference for either a liberal society or fundamentalist theocracy and, therefore, you cannot argue (as you seem to be doing) that Iranians are somehow fundamentally ‘not ready’ for liberal democracy.’

Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! My whole POINT was that ‘liberal’ and ‘democracy’ are two different words, with two different meanings. They are NOT synonyms.

And also, spare us the ‘not ready’. That’s a view of history that I’m obviously rejecting, the whig view that all societies are slowly trudging towards American style ‘liberalism’ and that some countries (white ones, mainly) are ‘further on’ this road than others, whereas others are ‘not ready’ for it yet.

The key point about Iran is the same as that of DSquared above, so i’ll repeat what he says: ‘In Indonesia, Nigeria and many Arab states, forms of sharia are the law, and political parties which favour the extension of sharia laws (and the interpretation of sharia in a less rather than more liberal manner) are gaining in power. Sharia, in the forms currently popular in the Islamic Third World, is not consistent with civil rights as understood by (for example, but on topic) the Euston Manifesto. Hence, to this extent, civil rights do not have popular support. This is a different thesis from saying “they’re not ready for democracy” or some such.’

And the key point is the point of the post. You might not like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbollah, etc. etc. etc. and in fact I’m sure you don’t. But they are popular and they win elections. They really really really really really really really do. It’s not false consciousness. It’s not because ‘they’ don’t know any better. It’s not because ‘they’ are stupid or irrational. It’s just that the electorate like the policies of those parties, and we in the West are going to have to get used to that. *

(incidentally I’m not putting a ‘stamp of legitimacy’ on anything: Iran’s elections are clearly not democratic in the sense we would use in the West. My point is much simpler: Ahmadinejad is very popular in Iran. And he is.)

*And despite what Donald Rumsfeld says, these parties are not fascist or Nazi either. Hitler used elections yeah, but once he had achieved power he abolished them. There’s no evidence that Hamas or Hizbollah wish to do that. Islamists have nothing to fear from elections because they tend to win them. ‘Western’ (i.e. American backed) parties have much to fear from elections because they almost invariably lose them.

fighting a civil war is not the same thing as protesting within your own country against foreigners

Sure, it isn’t. But the question is whether we can reliably deduce something about underlying popular opinion from the actions of some people deliberately encouraged by demagogues in an atmosphere of moral hysteria. I think it is not so easy.

I think there is clearly a qualitative difference between the reason we ban incitement (it’s a public order offence) and the reason why Islamic states have sharia law (it’s the will of God).

But that’s not the comparison I was making, which was between why we ban incitement, and why some Muslims protested about a cartoon which was arguably itself an incitement to hatred.

I’m only wanting to make a point about specific polities in which I think it’s unarguable that, for historical and economic reasons, Islam is popular and Enlightenment Values ain’t.

Yes, but you are hopping between:

1.) Islamism (Sharia law etc) is in power; therefore
1a.) Islamism must have “popular support”

or, as in this comment,

2.) Islam is popular.

In turn: 1) is a claim about some governments and is true of those governments of which it is true.

The extent to which 1a) is true is highly debatable, and you still offer precious little evidence. Election results are very unreliable evidence either way, as others are arguing here, owing to the circumstances of the elections.

Lastly, 2) is of course true in Muslim countries but has no necessary political implications. We all know there have been very enlightened (arguably Enlightened avant la lettre) and tolerant Islamic polities at various points in history.

The part where you are wrong dsquared is the part about the commitment to violence. I am not sure why you think that anyone who wants to encourage the development of liberal democracy in places that do not have such a tradition are forced to resort to violence. It may be a slow, difficult, and piecemeal process (and it may not even be successful within any reasonable period of time) but I just don’t see how the commitment to creating “Englightenment” values requires a recourse to violence.

The use of violence may be justified in certain situations – i.e. to prevent a greater loss of life that may occur – but that is a different question.

“I wonder if there was a long-bearded version of me saying to Osama “look it’s no good, it isn’t just a matter of the way that Wahaabism has been presented to them, they fundamentally don’t want to be Talibans and it is going to require an open-ended and ultimately unsustainable commitment to violence for us to keep ruling that territory”. Or indeed, a Somali version of me giving that advice in Mogadishu.”

Or some French general saying the same thing about secular republicanism in Algeria in the 19th century, or Henry Morton Stanley talking about Christianity and civilization in central Africa, or some Soviet general talking to Khrushchev about Hungary in ’56, or for that matter, some Roman general talking about Germania or Caledonia.

This is my principal problem with the Euston Manifesto ideas: Even if we concede that superiority of their values, how is their propagation going to be any less awful than the propagation of past ideas, both good and bad? Many of the ills they identify come from efforts to impose quite nice ideals on people who didn’t see them that way and couldn’t or wouldn’t comply with them.

Steve: Studies of Iranian attitudes that I’ve seen seem to support Daniel’s argument that support for Islamic rule as existing is still popular in Iran. I think part of the reason why we don’t believe this, is because the views of educated intellectuals tend to be overrepresented in the western media. That’s not to say that Iranians don’t want change, but they seem to be more concerned over economic problems and some of the more arbitrary aspects of the clerical rule.

In Syria there is obviously an awful lot of support for Islamic political groups (which is one reason why the regime is so repressive), as there is in Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan and indeed the poster child of secular Islam, Turkey.

Incidentally, walking down any English town’s high street on a friday night, I tend to find myself wondering whether the Muslims might not have a point on this “liberty” thing…

‘Or take the case of Somalia and clitoridectomy (a practice which is not in the Koran but which is pretty widely regarded as an Islamic practice in Somalia). That isn’t being imposed on anyone from above.’

As I pointed out in my first post (of about 300 it seems) underneath all the democratic rhetoric, there is something just a tiny little bit snobbish about the Enlightenment/Eustonite commitment to liberalism, secularism etc. By implying that religion and illiberalism are a ‘top down’ phenomenon, that all that is necessary is to get rid of the priests, Immans and rabbis and the ‘masses’ will realise the truth of science, secularism and Eustonism, is to imply that the problem with the masses is that they are just a teensy bit stupid, not quite as smart as clever middle class Eustonites, who have already seen through the lies of the religious bogeymen.

The idea that secularism and Islamism etc. might be ‘bottom up’ phenomena not ‘top down’, that they are actually ‘of’ the masses not ‘against’ them, and that the political leaders we see (like Osama Bin Laden) would be quickly replaced even if the Americans finally got round to finding them, is totally alien to the Eustonite mindset. Hence their bafflement when, after the deposition of Saddam, the Americans found themselves governing not a secular placid nation of aspiring Americans, but an angry, Islamic (and Iranian) leaning group of people who weren’t shy about reaching for the gun.

I don’t think most people come to vote for specific policies. They vote for a brand of rhetoric. Progressive, conservative, humanist, xenophobic, religious – whatever sounds right.

(And one might wonder why, if they enjoyed such massive popular support, they would require such an elaborate apparatus of violent suppression at all.)

‘And one might wonder why, if they enjoyed such massive popular support, they would require such an elaborate apparatus of violent suppression at all.’

Well mainly because the ‘apparatus of violent suppression’ is not being used against their supporters. It is mainly gays, minorities, and ‘blasphemers’ who are being violently suppressed, with the acquiesence (or worse) of the majority. Hardly compromises the ‘they are popular’ theory.

Incidentally, when you talk about ‘secret police’ etc. I think you think I am saying that these ‘illiberal democracies’ are actually totalitarian states, which is explicitly what I am NOT saying. I’m talking about states where both in theory and in practice the governing party can be democratically voted out.

Let’s cut to the chase Slocum, yes? This whole debate was started by the initial post, and the point of the initial post was this: in democratic elections, many people (not always but mainly, at the moment, in the Middle East) choose governments that are not ‘liberal’ in the Western sense. They don’t do it because they are stupid or irrational, or misled or bamboozled by Immans or politicians. They do it because they really think that these parties will best express their interests. As the first paragraph of your post of 4.19pm shows, I’m no further down the road of persuading you that this is an objective fact than I was at the beginning, but it remains an objective fact.

And I’m going to undercut the whole argument about progressive and ‘liberal democracy’ etc. by pointing out that my view, and your view, as to how the Iranians and the Palestinians and the Lebanese and the Venezuelans etc. (whether we think they are ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ or whatever) is simply irrelevant. What matters is what the Iranians and the Palestians and the Venezuelans. And if they vote in (in democratic, free elections) parties which me and you (i.e. white males who live thousands of miles away) think are ‘reactionary’ or ‘illiberal’ or whatever….so much the worse for us. We can give our opinion of course, but we don’t have the right to attempt to overthrow their government or otherwise interfere in their electoral processes.

And I’m quite happy about that. All the evidence of the last two centuries (and more) demonstrates that white middle class males really have no clearer insight into the political process, or any better ideas about the ‘good’ (or whatever) than anyone else, and I’m perfectly happy to leave things to the people to decide.

Finally, given that my and your views are of no importance to the Iraqis (or anyone else….)

‘Mind-boggling but, at the same time, refreshingly honest. Liberal society is no farther along, no more advanced than repressive theocracy? Thanks for clearing that up.’

In relatively free and fair elections, the Iraqis were offered a choice, to lean to the States (what you would probably call ‘liberal democracy’) or to lean to Iran (‘repressive theocracy’). The American backed campaign hogged most of the TV and media, was backed publicly by the American diplomats and so forth, and had money funnelled in from ‘mysterious’ (i.e. American) sources.

The Iraqis chose, overwhelmingly, to go down the Iranian route.

Y’see that’s the terrible thing about democracy: the white middle class punditocracy tends to lose their power, no matter how well inentioned their governance on behalf of the lesser breeds without the law.

Gray criticises Kant’s defence of slavery as justified by African racial inferiority. Fair enough, but why blame the Enlightenment? The doctrine goes back to Aristotle, and only needed a little twist around 1500 to apply it to the Africans whom the Portuguese were starting to trade. Kant failed, unlike other Enlightenment thinkers, to attack a traditional position, and in so doing contributed to the rise of scientific racism. More here.

daniel, I take it you believe that there is, for what ever reason, a certain inertia in some Muslim societies to liberal values. And that therefore war is not a usefull instrument for spreading the ideals as set out by the EM and some sort of intelligent support from the sidelines is the way to go.

That’s all reasonable but you also seem to think that this is in oposition to the EM crowd. Now I don’t see them advocating invading Nigeria. Apart from Iraq, are you in and the EMers in that much disagreement?

Early Democracy in the United States was limited to white male landowners. The vast majority of these individuals maintained extremely close ties to religion. If this time in US history can be called a Democracy (actually Republic) it seems reasonable to assume that Muslim nations can reach something similar.

The adaptation of Sharia is almost always a choice between a repressive system of laws and corruption, death and complete anarchy. It is hardly ever a choice between a Sharia and liberal democracy.

re 102 — again we see the assumption ( made but not justified by any argument ) that commitment to universality of human rights and what this entails viz. duty to assist somehow automatically leads to war . This is false in the sense that no one actually thinks this among EMers nor does it follow from the concepts themselves . Even on a perfectionist interpretation ( this is the more militant outlook ) of human rights ‘just war doctrine’ will be at play and this puts meaningfull constraints on when and what sort of violence is to used.

But second this is not the only interpretation of the impact of commitment to human rights that is available to EMers because we get ‘political liberalism’ which will be even more reluctant to use violence . Rawls in Law of the People explicitly rules out using force against non agressive muslim countries ( see his discusion of fictional Kazanistan ). True violence is justified …” if the offences against human rights are agregious and the society does not respond to the impossition of sanctions , such intervention in the defence of human rights would be acceptable…” ( p.94 Lof P ).
If you add to this that even Rawls insits that use of force in these special circumstances ( i.e. against outlaw states only ) should be consistent with just war doctrine , you can see the the claim that commitment to universality of human rights will automatically lead to war is false whether you look at the more militant EM outlook or the less militant viz. Rawlzian EM outlook.

102– the distincion between interventionists ( EMers ) and non interventionists is bogus as the following shows : immagine that a neonazi boeremag group takes over South African government rouds up all black people into concentration camps and starts mass exterminations. It cannot be argued with or negotiated with and it is clear that the only way to stop this mass murder is the use of force.( -+ 30 mil. people will die if not stoped.) Would such force be justified if the contemplated military action also complied with just war doctrine ? But if you answer yes then you are an interventionist. The point is all non lunatic moral outlooks will sanction the action and the distiction between interventionists and non interventionists is empty .

106.
Is it the same government with (mostly) the same old personnel, or is it a new government—or maybe even two or three governments down the line—in which the personnel are (mostly) new?

Are some of the personnel perhaps of a younger generation, with some fresh ideas of how to approach the same old problems of statecraft?
Perhaps also their social mores have changed a little, along with the society that has changed around them, and they display, if not necessarily provably a change of heart, then at least a change of plan?

I don’t know, of course an individual can have a radical change of heart, but a government is an institution, not individual. It’s an institution representing not even individuals as much as economic forces and economic entities that simply have no heart. Of course societal evolution and individual leaders do have an effect, but I think it would be a very difficult point to agrue in this case.

At times, when the Enlightenment is the subject, I regret that ‘Godwin’s Law’ doesn’t invoke the tenets of Political Justice.

Saying “apart from Iraq” when it comes to disagreement over the Euston stuff sounds to me a lot like saying “apart from slavery” when discussing sectional differences in the US, or “apart from the gender you’re attracted to” when comparing sexual orientation.

The Eustonites do not, of course, believe in Universal Rights or Values, because they think that there are certain actions (for example, invading and occupying a country which poses no threat to you) which are wrong when carried out by the ‘others’ but right when carried out by ‘us’.

Brendan: I’m appalled at the lack of imagination you show. Surely the Eustonites are firmly committed to the universal principle that all lives and fortunes are subordinate to their desires. What’s not universal about that?

(I don’t generally do sarcasm, but there’s something about mass murder and torture in the name of liberty that brings it out in me. Speaking seriously, Brendan, I very much appreciate your posts.)

BTW, I’d just like to say something about the recruitment of Rawls in support of the Euston Manifesto by Zdenek, a recruitment that Daniel appears to accept, but which I don’t think he should. There’s actually very little about this in Law of Peoples, but a relevant section is 13.3 “Law of Peoples as a Guide to Foreign Policy” (pp. 93-4). I cite:

bq. “Their [well-ordered societies] long-run aim is to bring all societies eventually to honor the Law of Peoples and to become full members in good standing of the society of well-ordered peoples. Human rights would thus be secured everywhere. How to bring all societies to this goal is a question of foreign policy; it calls for political wisdom, and success depends in part on luck. These are not matters to which political philosophy has much to add … What to do on these questions is … essentially a matter of political judgment and depends upon a political assessment of the likely consequences of various policies.”

(1) Since Daniel’s position on the war has throughout centred on a judicious assessment of the likely consequences of an war conducted by the Bush administration, I suggest that Rawls is closer to his position than to Zdenek’s. (2) The current United States is very far from being a well-ordered society in the Rawlsian sense. The relevance to current policy debates of what Rawls’s view on what the correct foreign policy for a well-ordered society would be, is therefore open to a good deal of argument.

chris just a brief comment. In this discussion I bring in Rawls to argue that like Eustonites he is an interventionist and to that extent he is not closer to Daniels concerns since the force of most of his comments it seems to me is hostile to intervention. Is Rawls interventionist ? consider the following long footnote on p 93 of LoP :

” … is there ever a time when forcefull intervention might be called for ? If the offences against human rights are egregious and society does not respond to the imposition of sanctions such intervention … would be acceptable and would be called for.”

This is an essentially Euston position as far as I can see.

is Rawls an interventionist even in this limited sense or not ?

In the sense that he’d hypothetically sanction intervention against a developed society practising slavery and human sacrifice that failed to respond to other methods to get it to change?

Um yes.

Does that amount to a posthumous endorsement of the Euston Manifesto.

No.

zdenek, do you think that anyone who disagrees with the EM is therefore opposed to all interventions everywhere in any circumstances?

As you suggest yourself, Brendan, it it possible to have a negative opinion about a government from the outside—such as that of Chavez or Hamas, or even of the religious Shia parties in Iraq—and at the same time realise that they have some democratic legitimacy and that it is really something to be left to the electorates in question.

abba 1: I think it’s certainly defensible to argue—and furthermore, I think it is also true—that states over time often demonstrate features and change along side features of continuity, whether you look it the question from a “personnel” or a structural perspective.

I think that they’re more interested in supporting democracy where they perceive it to be in their strategic interests, and when not, not. I don’t know if that’s a fundamental change—it’s not as fundamental and moving against the prevailing socio-economic system, for example—but it seems to be a notable one.

My view is that when the Americans are for democracy, the left (very broadly speaking) should also be for it; and when they’re not, we should still be for it.

Obviously, under current conditions real democracy almost anywhere on the planet is pretty much the worst outcome for the US government.

Almost every (very few exeptions) government cooperating with the Bushies is completely out of sync with reliably anti-American sentiment of its population. Including the European population; not to mention middle-Easterners and Muslims in general. Democracy anywhere in the ME would be a disaster.

But if real democracy anywhere in the ME would be a disaster for the American elite, shouldn’t all sincere anti-Americans be rooting for it?

And yet other anti-Americans, including Europeans, are no doubt rooting the success of the extremist movements that US and Israeli policies brought to life, if only because it might be one in the eye for the hated Bush-Cheney gang. But the Frakenstein’s monsters of the extremist movements weren’t brought to life only by such policies: they willed themselves into life with their specific responses to those policies: they are their joint creators of their monsterliness, and, as such, deserve equal credit.

No, I don’t think anyone with a functioning brain is rooting for success of any extremist movements.

Setting aside all the talk of religion, war, and enlightenment for a moment, it does seem to me that there is a critical problem with democracy – the size of the political entitity.

Between one person one country and a universal democracy, there is no good place to draw the line for the size of the political unit.

Our current nation-state politics runs into trouble whenever the residents of a geographic area and the their assigned nation don’t match up.

Face it, we have nation-state citizenship apartheid. Its clearly wrong (under any but the most ethnocentric moralities) AND there is practically nothing we can do about it. We’re all nationalists now.

This is one judgment that the makers of history (be they global capitalists, extremists, or CO2 molecules) have in common, they, appropriately, do not respect national boundaries.

I think the issue of war or no war is a side-show to the real issue, that the nation-state is the sick man of the world. It encourages both despots and imperialists. Its the political crack to which we are addicted.

102
Daniel, if you have to exaggerate the position of your opponents to such an extent you must have a pretty weak argument.

I thought this was a discussion in good faith but to turns out to be another bitch session about the EMers dressed up as some sort of intellectual analysis of the Enlightenment etc.

I don’t think most people come to vote for specific policies. They vote for a brand of rhetoric. Progressive, conservative, humanist, xenophobic, religious – whatever sounds right.–abb1

best abboneism

Obviously, under current conditions real democracy almost anywhere on the planet is pretty much the worst outcome for the US government.

second-best abboneism

abb1, the only contributor who made scanning through these posturings worth the 10-20 minutes of your time

cant resist making following last ( I promise )remark about whether Rawls’later work lends support to Euston outlook : Chris in his 121 comment suggests that the only relevant section of LoP in this regard is 13.3 p.92. This is wrong I think and one needs really to read the whole of part 2 and 3 of LoP if you want to capture what Rawls thinks about intervention.

Here is an argument Rawls seems to be making :

1) no state has right to war in the pursuit of its ‘rational’as opposed to its *reasonable* interets.

2) having reasonable interests includes promoting freedom and justice among other people.

3) there are outlaw states that systematically abuse its citizens and that are a threat to other law abiding people.

4)it is in the reasonable interest of of the law abiding people to secure freedom and justice to citizens of outlaw states but this must be done in the manner consistent with Just War Doctrine.

therefore 5) provided such war is consistent with JWD it is legitimate.

Of course the claim is not that this shows that US intervention was legitimate but rather more modestly that Rawls’ later work sits comfortably with EM.

“forced to create genuine democracies

Can you point to anyone who actually thinks that?” (soru)

That appears to be dave’s position in 136. The US govt might not want to create democracies, but they will be constrained to do so by the political context.

Of course, if that’s not what you think, perhaps you can explain why you believe the US would rather set up a (possibly hostile) Iraqi democracy rather than a friendly puppet state?

No, I’m afraid that you are the one clutching at straws. There’s actually a body of _criticism_ of Rawls from a position much like your own. See, for example, Chris Nattichia, “The Law of Peoples, the Old and the New” in J of Moral Philosophy vol. 2 no. 3 (2006).

But I’ll reiterate the point I made above. Even if Rawls had not made the points he does make about the need for political judgement in foreign policy, and about the lack of expertise of political philosophy concerning the practical means by which justice might be achieved in the international order (points starkly at variance with your attempts mechanically to read a foreign policy out of his principles), there would still be the not-inconsiderable matter that Rawls’s principles concern a well-ordered society’s foreign policy. Since the USA is not a well ordered society in Rawsian terms, there is bound to be room for considerable disagreement concerning how the principles that would ideally guide a well-ordered society apply to the United States.

Zdenek, your reckless use of the verb “to suggest” and the adverb “only” is, I suggest, only harming your case.

I know nowt about Rawls but I can scroll back through a thread. What Chris Bertram is actually suggesting is that Rawls is very wary indeed about endorsing intervention. The “Aztec” example supports that claim. It hardly means that only Aztec-like states would have had anything to fear from a President Rawls, but then nobody around here is actually suggesting that interpretation.

For all I know you may be quite right about Rawls. But your method of argument is lousy. You won’t be taken seriously unless you clean it up.

I’m assigning too much agency to the occupying power in Iraq? You don’t think those hundreds of thousands of troops, and those hundreds of billions of dollars, are going to have veto power over the kind of government Iraqis form?

How, precisely, do you think the US is going to be constrained? By Western public opinion – the public opinion that in Europe didn’t stop the war and in the US seems to be mainly concerned with avoiding casualties? (Hands up who thinks there’ll be a massive wave of public protest in the US if Bush announces that he’s found a friendly dictator to keep the oil flowing, and now the troops can come home)
By Iraqi civil society, what’s left of it – assuming that at any point there was a majority in favour of ‘functioning democracy’ as opposed to ‘my guy being in power’? Or maybe you’re the one cheering on the insurgents, because they’ll “keep the US honest” and prevent a puppet govt being installed?
Or maybe this is just more wishful thinking – supporting a war because the best-case scenarios are so nice that it’s worth the risk of hundreds of thousands of people being killed along the way.

Then I’d ask you the same question I asked soru – why do you think there was a majority in favour of genuine democracy in Iraq (ie. not secession, and not rule for their own faction, however that rule is maintained), and how do you that hypothetical majority would be able to enforce it’s will on the US? Any Iraqi government was going to be dependent on money from the US, at least for a few years, and US troops would always be by far the most powerful force in the region. If you don’t think the US was going to choose to roll over and play nice, who was going to make them?

Sure, a US-friendly democracy was a possibility, but it was hardly realistic. And this is why I brought up all thousands of smaller decisions that follow from an invasion – the fact that the US priority was force-protection, the fact that Bush is incompetent, the absence of a post-invasion plan (and the way the attention of the US visibly moved away from Afghanistan once the initial fighting was over) – all of these factors argued against the US overturning a background hostility in Iraq.

Finally, do you think you could tell the EM people about anti-Americanism? They seem to be a little obsessed.

Hang on, a minute ago you said you weren’t talking about the domestic social and political context of the invaders, but about the response of the invadees?

If you’re talking about the domestic context, then why do you think the UK public opinion that couldn’t stop the war could stop the invaders pursuing their own interests? Especially given the well-known ‘rally around the troops’ effect once a war has actually started? For all the good job that you think the Western press does, Abu ghraib and Guantanamo are still open for business. The pressure the US applies to Iraqi governments is likely to be less obvious, and less easily described. And the longer the occupation goes on, the less people going are to care about the form of the Iraqi government, compared to the price of oil and the number of US and UK dead.

I wasn’t only, or even primarily, thinking of the domestic social and political context of the invaders

Clearer without the ellipsis, I think.
But now I’ve asked you why you think the invadees would be able to over-ride US interests, and I’ve asked you why you think domestic public opinion would be effective in this given that it hasn’t been effective in related cases, and you haven’t answered either question.

But now I’ve asked you why you think the invadees would be able to over-ride US interests

That’s interesting, a lot of commentators would say the US can’t possibly win this war. You would appear to be claiming they can’t possibly lose, no matter what tactics or strategy they adopt, what current allies they turn into enemies, what political changes happen at home. Because, surely, that is what is necessary in order to think that he ‘invadees’ (the Iraqi people) have no power over the situation in Iraq.

Could you justify that view in the face of the 400 textbooks and generals I could quote disagreeing?

166: are you suggesting you think it is likely that the US will switch sides to supporting those groups?

Now obviously they have does stuff like that in the past, but only out of sight of the media. This is where democratic constraints (hopefully) do count – I can’t really see Bush getting away with standing up at a press conference and saying ‘al Qaeda are now Freedom Fighters, we will be sending them arms to aid their overthrow of the corrupt secular-atheist regime’.

Admittedly, I could be wrong on that…

If you think he’d say it like that, then yes, you’re most likely wrong.

But I think even the most prudish members of the US government will think “Fuck a bunch of Iraqi democracy” if they think they can pull the troops out (or back to bases where they won’t get shot at) and leave someone in power who’ll keep the oil flowing. They’ll probably make sure that they don’t have to hand power over to someone who’s appeared on a ten most wanted list recently, but that’s about it. Any criticism will be met with “now it’s time for Iraqis to make their own mistakes – and look over there! I think I see a plane full of our brave men and women returning home! Didn’t they do a great job?!” How many reporters are going to want to stay in Iraq looking for the disappeared then? Who is going to be interested in stories of torture chambers – who is going to want to be interested in those stories?

What other scenario do you think the US is going to hold out for, and at what cost?

The thing is, an undemocratic leader chosen by the US would have a greater need to prove himself by avoiding acts that make him seem a puppet than one with more democratic legitimacy.

Compare Pakistan and Afghanistan – which has the dictator, and which allows US troops in?

Power is about choices: if the US doesn’t have any plausible alternative options to supporting the Maliki government, it doesn’t have any power.

An undemocratic leader would have two choices – court public opinion by criticising the US, or kiss up to the US and use their deep pockets and big sticks to secure power.
The first option is certainly workable in general, but it’s complicated in a divided society. You can’t just identify yourself as anti-US, you’re also Sunni, Shi’ite, or Kurdish. Hard to build a stable coalition like that.
If you’re Bush’s poodle, on the other hand, you don’t need to build that coalition. You have money to throw around, and you have the threat that anybody putting together a military opposition will find themselves on the receiving end of an airstrike.