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Palestinians reject Bush democracy demand
An interesting article in the Jerusalem Post tells how various Palestinian leaders as well as leftist Israelis are rejecting President Bush’s demand that the Palestinians democratize themselves before he will help them acquire a state. What we have here is a conflict between right-liberalism, the belief in a universal equality of rights based on a common human nature, and left-liberalism or leftism, the belief in equality of results for all people. Bush, the right-liberal in this instance, says to the Palestinians: “We will help you become part of the family of nations, if you become democratic. That is the standard that you must meet in order to show us that you are ready for statehood. Otherwise you’re too dangerous.” But the Palestinians and the Israeli leftists are saying, “There should be no standards, the Palestinians, exactly as they are and without changing themselves at all, should have a state, because they want it and need it.” Now the Bush, right-liberal, position seems civilized and intelligent compared with the leftist position. But from a meta point of view, the Bush position is very foolish, because it imagines that the Palestinians are capable of changing and democratizing themselves. It sets up an expectation that they can have a state, on certain terms. But since, in fact, the Palestinians are not capable of living up to those terms, they end up simply going for the first part of Bush’s statement (the promise of a state) and want to get rid of the second part (the demand for democratic reform). So the Bush, right-liberal position opened the door to the Palestinian, leftist position. It’s the same with immigration. We say: “You Third-World masses can be a part of America, providing you assimilate.” But when the immigrant masses come here and they’re not able to assimilate, it’s too late to take back the initial invitation. They’re going to want to be included in America, whether they’re assimilated or not. Right-liberalism, which upholds universalist and utopian standards, leads inevitably to leftism, which rejects all standards. The only way to have avoided the mess would have been not to go down the right-liberal path to start with. In the case of Israel, this would have meant that Bush in June 2002, instead of making Palestinian democratic reform the condition of Palestinian statehood, would have recognized instead that there could be no Palestinian state in the West Bank, and then helped and encouraged Israel to move the Palestinians out. In the case of immigration, it would have meant not admitting non-assimilable immigrants in the first place.
The only solution to the insoluble problems created by liberalism is to abandon liberalism. Email entry |