Appologists for Tyranny

Its amazing what some people appologize for. Tom Palmer has posted on a group calling itself the British Helsiniki Human Rights Group, that argues that its Viktor Yushchenko who cheated in the Ukrainian elections, and approves of those remaining dictatorships in Eastern Europe. They favored Slobodan Miloševi?. Palmer includes some bloggers who ally themselves with the BHHRG and its claims in his criticism. Palmer makes the astute observation, "I’ve discovered that that hatred of Yushchenko is not unique, but of a piece with a vigorous whitewashing of old-style Soviet tyrants generally." He concludes by saying, "To be so angry at your own government that you will ally yourself with tyrants abroad is … well, words fail me. But when I become very calm, one comes to mind with perfect clarity: evil."

In my own study of Positivism, I've come across the surprising numbers of American Positivists (called Pragmatists in philosophy and Progressives in education) who fell head over heels for Soviet Communism during the 30's at the exact moment that Stalin was conducting his purges and forced collectivization. Positivism holds that its own "scientific" approach to social problems is correct, or as Virginia Postrel says, "the one right way". (See also Technocrats) Auguste Comte is not only the founder of Positivism, but of Sociology, the "scientific" study of society. Moral and political choices should be made by experts, imbued with the positive philiosophy, on a purely "scientific" basis. [Science in a Positive context will be presented in quotes because I hold that society cannot be examined scientifically, since repreated experimentation under controlled conditions are impossible.] I can understand how someone in 1936 might have lost confidence in capitalism, but to ignore the horrors of Stalinism something else entirely. Yet the Left then and now is all about ignoring the horrors of the enemies of capitalism and democracy, free markets and free societies. Embracing Ukraine's government-backed, Soviet-style candidate is only a demonstration of how this continues today.

Peter Beinart has written in a New Republic cover story about this problem, as it afflicts the Democrats, harkening back to the rejection of Henry Wallace and the embrace of Truman style anti-communism, and arguing that now the Democrats need to do it again. He writes, "In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions--most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn--that do not put the struggle against America's new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world." While I think he's totally off the reservation when it comes to the real progress in Iraq, I do think he's right that the center-left and as much of the left as can stomach it, has to come to an awareness that the Democrats would be far better off being Hawkish in foriegn affairs than they would ever be as Doves. My own view is that the Democrats have been hemoraging Jacksonians since Vietnam, and in 2004, even turned their back on Wilsonians, retreating into pure Jeffersonianism. In foriegn policy terms, the Republicans had the Jacksonians, Hamiltonians, and those Wilsonians who put the spread of democracy above a devotion to multilateral institutons. (Wilson wanted international institutions to serve the cause of democracy, not the dictators, so the spirit of Wilson is with Bush.)

A rejection of Micheal Moore, MoveOn, and the anti-war crowd who so recently have prefered the Soviet style government candidate in Ukraine to Yushchenko would allow the Dems to win back some of the Wilsonians and those Jacksonians (mostly union labor) who will support victory in the war on terror. I am irritated much more by Joe Biden's and Peter Beinart's rejection (whether through ignorance or partisan purpose) of Rumsfeld and Iraqi success than I am worried that center-left hawks would fail in the war, but they need that purge, or as Beinart puts it, "American liberalism still has not had its meeting at the Willard Hotel. And the hour is getting late."