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

National Review, Oct 27, 1997 by John Fonte

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.