TNR’s welfare state model for the cultivation of Arab “democracy”

While grudgingly congratulating President Bush on the recent moves toward “democracy” in the Mideast, the New Republic feels that much more needs to be done:

[L]iberal democracy is more than just regime change and elections. It can succeed only if it is cultivated—which means devoting time and money to building civil institutions like a free press, nurturing liberal political parties, and generally inculcating liberal values through all available means, including popular culture. [TNR, “Grudging Respect,” editorial, 3-21-05]

“[D]evoting time and money … building civil institutions … nurturing liberal political parties … inculcating liberal values”—clearly TNR’s editors are not describing the normal development of a free and self-governing society, in which its members gradually build up their own institutions over time. They’re describing a social engineering project being enacted on the society from without, in which we, the Great White Father, or rather the Great Liberal Facilitator, “cultivate” liberalism in the Moslem countries, as though they were a garden and we the husbandmen, spreading manure, watering each day, carefully watching, until the delicate shoot of liberalism creeps out of the well-tended soil, and then we continue caring for it until it turns into a fruitful plant. It’s all to be done by us. They, the Moslems, simply exist in a mute and natural state, while we, America, “devote time and money … [to] building … a free press … inculcating liberal values,” and so on. We build their free press. We nurture their political parties.

Was a free society ever created on such a basis? Furthermore, if the Moslems aren’t capable of creating their own free institutions to start with, what makes us think that they will able to maintain those institutions once they have been created? The clear implication is that we, the Great Liberal Facilitator, must remain involved in each of these countries forever. It’s a globalized version of Charles Murray’s nightmare of the Custodial State.

What dreamland are TNR’s editors inhabiting that they could allow themselves to speak this way? Are they deaf to the way they sound?

Unfortunately, this isn’t just liberal nuttiness. While TNR’s editors bitterly criticize President Bush for not doing more of this kind of thing himself, isn’t it clear that he is already following their essential recommendations? Could the U.S. be any more involved than it already is in the cultivation of “democracy” in the Palestinian territories, for example? Indeed, it’s a reasonable guess that within a year Bush will be using U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund Hezbollah, just as he is now funding the Palestine Authority, in an effort to “nurture” it into becoming a liberal and democratic institution.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 15, 2005 08:08 PM | Send