Sunday, February 06, 2005
Bush the Hegelian?
I heard President Bush speak yesterday. C-Span Radio is a wonderful thing.
Contra my point on Rice below, Bush himself sounds exceedingly Hegelian. It really is shocking to hear. His fundamental belief is that everyone wants freedom and that democracy is the only way they can get this. He states that this is the natural desire of every human being, and that this desires comes from God. While that is different than Hegel's idea of the Spirit, it has the feel of an American restatement of his basic theme.
There are two important points here. Functioning democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to look an awful lot like vindication of this idea. Whether you agree with the metaphysics of it or not, pragmatically if these cultures can support democracy any culture can. There will always be other constraints on developing democracy in a region such as personal income, education, etc. But these complaints become tactical, the strategic argument will be over.
The second point is that this idea is profoundly unconservative. Buckley, Will, Kissinger, Nixon, even Theodore Roosevelt would have abhorred this idea. It doesn't take into account important cultural distinctions that conservatives so deeply respect. This is a triumph of the neoconservative idea. Not the "evil neoconservatives" (read: Jews) that the media attacks. But it is the triumph of Irving Kristol and the old school neocons who came over from liberalism in the 1960s and brought their idealism with them.
We should not underestimate the extraordinary shift in History that will accompany a functioning Iraqi democracy.
Contra my point on Rice below, Bush himself sounds exceedingly Hegelian. It really is shocking to hear. His fundamental belief is that everyone wants freedom and that democracy is the only way they can get this. He states that this is the natural desire of every human being, and that this desires comes from God. While that is different than Hegel's idea of the Spirit, it has the feel of an American restatement of his basic theme.
There are two important points here. Functioning democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan are going to look an awful lot like vindication of this idea. Whether you agree with the metaphysics of it or not, pragmatically if these cultures can support democracy any culture can. There will always be other constraints on developing democracy in a region such as personal income, education, etc. But these complaints become tactical, the strategic argument will be over.
The second point is that this idea is profoundly unconservative. Buckley, Will, Kissinger, Nixon, even Theodore Roosevelt would have abhorred this idea. It doesn't take into account important cultural distinctions that conservatives so deeply respect. This is a triumph of the neoconservative idea. Not the "evil neoconservatives" (read: Jews) that the media attacks. But it is the triumph of Irving Kristol and the old school neocons who came over from liberalism in the 1960s and brought their idealism with them.
We should not underestimate the extraordinary shift in History that will accompany a functioning Iraqi democracy.
