Post-West syndrome: when patriotism is threatened, so are the roots of democracy.

When patriotism is threatened, so are the roots of democracy.

WRITING in The National Interest more than two years ago, Professor James Kurth stated: "The real clash of civilizations will not be between the West and one or more of the Rest. It will be between the West and the Post-West, within the West itself. This clash has already taken place within the brain of Western civilization, the American intellectual class."

An examination of what many in our intellectual class have been saying for the past several years corroborates this assertion. There is a Post-West, and it advocates transcending and redefining traditional Western ideas of patriotism and the nation-state. But historical evidence suggests that patriotism and the nation-state are necessary conditions for the survival of modern constitutional democracy. If we accept the Post-Western vision, traditional liberal democracy will ultimately be transformed into a post-liberal-democratic regime.

Let us be very clear. Civic patriotism or liberal-democratic nationalism is not based on "blood and soil," or race and ethnicity, or superiority and dominance over others. It is a love of country based on political allegiance, shared values, and a shared history and culture (which can be adopted by immigrants through an identification with the nation's past and assimilation of its traditions). It is essential for active citizenship in a self-governing polity. It is not inconsistent with an internationalist foreign policy, liberalized global trade, or broad participation in world affairs. An America, Britain, or France shorn of such patriotism would be a different country, but not necessarily a better, or more democratic, one.

Some disagree with this view and reject the linkage of patriotism and the nation-state with liberal democracy. Thus, in 1995, in a widely discussed article in Boston Review, University of Chicago philosophy professor Martha Nussbaum explicitly attacked the concept of patriotism and declared that "patriotism is very close to jingoism." Commenting on Prof. Nussbaum's article, Princeton's Amy Gutmann declared that it is "repugnant" that American students should "learn that they are above all citizens of the United States." Their "primary allegiance should not be to the United States or any actual community," but to what she calls "democratic humanism."

Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1994, Harvard's Charles Maier was impatient with the traditional American concept of citizenship. He declared: "it is time for confederation, cantonization, and overlapping citizenship." And in a little-noticed article five years ago, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, then a senior editor at Time, wrote: "All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary." Talbott predicted that by the end of the twenty-first century "nationhood as we know it will be obsolete: all states will recognize a single global authority." Moreover, he described the weakening of sovereignty as a "basically positive phenomenon."

This critique of patriotism, nationalism, and the nation-state is advanced in the name of universal ideals such as humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and democracy. Thus, Martha Nussbaum contends that our "primary allegiance" should be to the "community of human beings in the entire world" and to the "moral ideals of justice and equality."

This may sound benign to many, but what specifically are those moral ideals? Well, Prof. Nussbaum writes that it is our moral obligation to recognize that the "high living standard we [in the West] enjoy is one that very likely cannot be universalized, . . . given the present costs of pollution controls and the present economic situation of developing countries, without ecological disaster."

What is required, according to Prof. Nussbaum, is global planning and presumably the redistribution of wealth from the "north" to the "south." Moreover, transnational regulation is necessary to solve crucial global issues such as environmental degradation, overpopulation, gender inequities, poverty, and the like. Hence, just below the surface of the claims of universality we find the specific political agenda of an influential group of progressive activists. Instead of philosophy we find ideology; instead of cosmopolitanism we find the parochialism of the Western progressive elite. Furthermore, besides the promotion of a progressive political agenda under the guise of universalism, we see a demand for power, because -- as John O'Sullivan put it in these pages recently -- all this planning and regulation will require the guiding hand of an international "New Class."

THESE ideas have important political consequences. Thus, Jessica Mathews of the Council on Foreign Relations looks forward to the day when there will be a "Global Environmental Authority with independent regulatory powers." She is pleased to report that on major global issues "soft law in the form of guidelines, recommended practices, nonbinding resolutions . . . [is] rapidly expanding" and that "behind each new agreement are scientists and lawyers" -- a "new constituency" including "a burgeoning influential class of international civil servants responsible for implementing, monitoring, and enforcing this enormous new body of law." She notes approvingly that the European Union's judiciary can override national law and its Council of Ministers can overrule certain domestic executive decisions.

To her credit, Mrs. Mathews does admit that "more international decision-making will also exacerbate the so-called 'democracy deficit,' as decisions that elected representatives once made shift to unelected international bodies." Indeed, this is the heart of the matter. The Achilles' heel of the progressive project is that the effort to diminish patriotism, nationalism, and the nation-state appears to have the result of diminishing liberal democracy as well. But although supporters of the transnational progressive project are aware of the "democracy problem," they have no answer.

Liberal democracy and liberal democratic nationalism are phenomena of the modern age, whereas the alternative progressive vision smacks of the pre-modern and post-modern. Instead of individual rights and national citizenship there is an emphasis on group rights and multiculturalism; instead of majority rule there is proportional representation for ascribed groups; instead of patriotic affection for one's own nation, multiple loyalties to subnational and supranational groups are emphasized.

The United Nations women's conference in Peking is instructive. At that conference, the Western nations promoted the idea that women's representation in national legislatures should be roughly proportional to their presence in the population. Thus, for example, if women make up 52 per cent of the population of Great Britain, then 52 per cent of all members of Parliament should be women. If the British electorate in a free election fails to choose members of Parliament on this proportional basis, there is apparently a problem of "underrepresentation." "Democracy" is thus redefined from a system that permits free choice of a people's representatives to a system that requires group representation.

This concept, as I have suggested, is both pre-modern and post-modern. It would base electoral results not on the choice of the individual voter, but on preordained proportional representation for ascribed groups, like the "estates" of the Ancien Regime. That this idea was promoted by Western governments at Peking (including the Clinton, Major, and Kohl Administrations) tells us something about the coherence of liberal-democratic ideas in the contemporary West. And the appearance of the radical former congresswoman Bella Abzug speaking on behalf of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tells us something about the state of Western civil society in the mid 1990s.

Significantly, the Clinton Administration is vigorously promoting this illiberal, neo-corporatist view of democracy promulgated at Peking. Thus, the Administration's ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt, in a recent Foreign Affairs article, decries the decrease in "gender parity" in Eastern European parliaments since the fall of Communism and the advent of free elections. Ambassador Hunt complains: "Across the political upheaval, from 1987 to 1994 the percentage of women in parliament decreased from 28 per cent to 6 per cent in Albania, from 34 per cent to 4 per cent in Rumania, and from 21 per cent to 11 per cent in Hungary. Parliament was 33 per cent female in the Soviet Union, but in many of the newly independent states the figure is now under 3 per cent." Hunt notes that "Although Communist parliaments were little more than rubber stamps, women were at least visible, ensured by state-imposed quotas."

According to Ambassador Hunt, reversing this "underrepresentation" (caused, it should be noted, by free elections) is a major goal of U.S. foreign policy under Clinton because it reflects "basic American values" and is consistent with "stable democracy." In other words, Clinton's appointees judge the health of democracy not in liberal-democratic terms -- for example, by the strength and vibrancy of freely chosen parliaments -- but, instead, in neocorporatist terms -- by the percentage of ascribed group representation in those parliaments.

Moreover, the Clinton Administration is supporting the shift from traditional liberal democracy to neocorporatism in practice as well as in theory. In 1991 Argentina passed the world's first gender Quota Law (Ley de Cupos) for electing national legislators. It requires all political parties to: 1) run a minimum of 30 per cent women candidates in all districts and 2) place these women in electable positions. If a party fails to comply with the Quota Law it is not allowed to compete in the election. In July 1997 at a conference in Washington, D.C., Assistant Secretary of State Alexander Watson praised Argentina's Quota Law as an example of the "political affirmative action" that the Clinton Administration favors.

OF COURSE, there are recognized scholars who are willing to maintain that, so far from being impediments to democracy, liberal nationalism and civic patriotism are virtually intrinsic to it. Georgian political philosopher Ghia Nodia declares that "denouncing all nationalism as would-be fascism makes no more sense than denouncing all religion for ultimately leading to fanaticism." Moreover, Prof. Nodia insists that "democracy never exists without nationalism" in some form. And Francis Fukuyama states that "many proponents of liberal democracy do not understand the ways in which moderate nationalism can contribute to the success of democracy as a matter of practical politics."

To test Nodia's and Fukuyama's insights, we might reflect on the careers of a number of democratic politicians who have regularly been described by historians as nationalists or patriots -- in France, Georges Clemenceau and Charles de Gaulle; in Britain, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher; in the United States, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. It would be difficult to make a case that the nationalist or patriotic policies of these leaders weakened liberal democracy.

Some make a distinction between nationalism (negative) and patriotism (positive). Benjamin Barber, on the Left, and John Lukacs, on the Right, prefer the term "civic patriotism." In theory, this distinction has some merit. However, the problem with making the distinction is that the two terms are often used interchangeably by both supporters and opponents of patriotism. For example, in secondary education most teachers and curriculum specialists make no distinction between patriotism and nationalism. In the academy, Prof. Nussbaum attacked patriotism, not national- ism. Likewise, among journalists, when Ronald Reagan was first elected, Norman Podhoretz at Commentary lauded the new spirit of nationalism that had resulted in his victory.

A more politically minded group of progressives has questioned the practical utility of attacks on patriotism by Prof. Nussbaum and others. This group, which includes philosopher Richard Rorty, historian Sheldon Hackney, political theorist Charles Taylor, critic Paul Berman, and sociologist Todd Gitlin, recommends that progressives interpret and use the symbols of patriotism for their own ideological aims. In fact, Prof. Nussbaum's original essay was prompted by Prof. Rorty's suggestion that progressives embrace patriotism because, as this philosopher of pragmatism bluntly put it, "an unpatriotic Left has never achieved anything."

After Prof. Nussbaum's article appeared, a number of progressive intellectuals backed Prof. Rorty's stance. Thus, Canadian political theorist Charles Taylor declared that "we cannot do without patriotism" if people are to be mobilized to support "policies with a redistributive effect." Others redefine American ideals as the ideological fulfillment of the utopian Left. For Paul Berman, American patriotism means the "cosmopolitanism" of the "classic Left," the "old universalist dream of worldwide egalitarian and democratic solidarity."

Although not directly involved in the reply to Prof. Nussbaum, Todd Gitlin, in a separate book, agreed with Prof. Berman and emphasized the convergence of American values and the universal, "historic ideals of the Left." For Prof. Gitlin, the American and French Revolutions are essentially the same; thus he makes no important ideological distinctions between the sober vision of America's Founders in, for example, the Federalist Papers, and the utopian political philosophy of the French Jacobins. For Sheldon Hackney, who launched a "conversation" about the meaning of American identity as President Clinton's chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, American ideals mean globalism and multiculturalism. First, Prof. Hackney sees "no necessary conflict between the moral obligations of national citizenship and world citizenship." Then, he frames his argument in utilitarian terms by warning that "if we can't make cultural pluralism [i.e., multiculturalism] work within a single country -- especially a country like the United States" --then Prof. Nussbaum's laudable "cosmopolitan" goals will be difficult to achieve.

And so there is very little common ground between conservatives, centrists, and old-fashioned (i.e., pre-1960s) liberals who favor traditional notions of patriotism and representative democracy, and this progressive intelligentsia that occasionally employs patriotic rhetoric. In the end, Martha Nussbaum's "cosmopolitanism," Amy Gutmann's "democratic humanism," Strobe Talbott's "single global authority," Jessica Mathews's "soft law," Richard Rorty's "patriotic left," Paul Berman's "democratic solidarity," Todd Gitlin's "universalism," Sheldon Hackney's "cultural pluralism," and the Clinton Administration's "political affirmative action" are ideological cousins. By either transforming or redefining both patriotism and democracy, these "progressive" concepts provide justification for a major transfer of power from elected national legislatures to unelected transnational bureaucracies, from market forces to global planners, from citizens to non-citizens, and ultimately, and most importantly, from a self-governing free people to a "New Class" of regulators, planners, and bureaucrats.

And so, as James Kurth suggests, the real clash of civilizations will indeed be within the West itself, "between the West and the Post-West." This will be a continuing struggle. Who knows with what success and with what results?