Sharansky’s delusive evocation of “identity”

(See, further down in this entry, my indictment of the neocons for the bait-and-switch tactics they have used in one issue after another.)

In a previous post, I expressed uncertainty about the meaning of Natan Sharansky’s thesis on the need to balance democracy with “identity.” Was he, somewhat like a traditionalist, trying to return from today’s extreme right-liberalism back to the more balanced liberalism of the past that upheld nationhood along with individual rights? Or was he, like a typical liberal, going “back to the future,” replicating the familiar and inevitable transition from extreme right-liberalism (universalist individualism) to left-liberalism (diversity and multiculturalism)? Sadly, based on his article in today’s Wall Street Journal, it appears to be the latter.

I say “appears” because Sharansky uses the word “identity” as an all-purpose abstraction without defining it. Sometimes he seems to be using it in the sense of the national or religious identity of a nation’s majority group, sometimes he uses it in the sense of the identity of minority groups, namely Muslims. He even says at one point, apparently speaking of national identity, “the right to express one’s identity is seen as fundamental.” But the very phrase, “right to express one’s identity,” is the kind of language that is used in the context of multiculturalism, not in the context of traditional nations and peoples. To put the “identity” of the nation on the same level as the “identity” of an alien minority not only creates hopeless conceptual confusion; in practical terms it legitimizes the ongoing multicultural weakening of national identity.

According to Sharansky both the historic peoples of the West and the Muslim immigrants in the West have their respective “identities,” and everyone can get along if all groups adhere to “democratic norms.” “Democratic norms”—code word for the universalist, deracinated liberalism of today—is his ultimate standard, not traditional national identity. Meaning that the Western nations should continue to welcome Muslims and other non-Western minorities; allow Muslims to wear the veil in public (something he praises America for doing); and only stop the Muslims from doing really “non-democratic” things like female mutilation. From the logic of his argument we can presume that, like Hirsi Ali, Sharansky also supports the spreading of sharia, so long as it’s done by “democratic, peaceful” means.

At bottom, Sharansky remains a right-liberal whose right-liberalism leads to the left-liberal empowerment of alien cultures and the steady dissolution of the nations of the West.

- end of initial entry -

Alec H. writes:

Sharansky suggests that we assimilate Muslims “better” than Europe (for cultural reasons), rather than that we simply have—for now—a Muslim population below the critical mass necessary to provoke widespread, overt Islamic supremacism. And he puts the onus on Europeans to “[reassert their] national and religious identities that are now threatened,” but makes no mention of stopping or reversing the Muslim immigration which constitutes the threat.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

On reading Sharansky’s article, I agree with you that he is using the term “identity” in an ambiguous manner, and appears somewhat confused as to the thrust of his own argument. Does he favor American-style multiculturalism (what else could he mean by the positive reference to Muslims wearing veils in this country “largely without controversy”)? Or is he advocating a more substantive understanding of national identity? I’m not sure which it is. But this line struck me as quite out of character for a right- or left-liberal: “The logic of the struggle against this fundamentalist threat will inevitably demand the reassertion of the European national and religious identities that are now threatened.” At least in this piece, Sharansky does not appear to be criticizing or warning against such a development. He may be groping towards a position more like yours, trying to hack through decades of constrictive liberal thinking (rooted in the non-discrimination principle you have so effectively elucidated) to arrive at a new and better understanding of Western society. Based on this piece, I wouldn’t write him off as useless.

LA replies:

I agree that Sharansky’s sentence, “The logic of the struggle against this fundamentalist threat will inevitably demand the reassertion of the European national and religious identities that are now threatened,” sounds good. But we need to remember that he puts these “European national and religious identities” on the same level as the identities of the minority and Muslim groups. In other words, the majority is just another multicultural group. Yes, its “identity” has been suppressed by “too much” multicultural celebration of minorities; so we need, in addition to celebrating the identities of Muslims and Mexicans, to celebrate the identity of the majority. But this is still all taking place within a multicultural, “all-identities-are-equal” framework.

Obviously if Sharansky were serious about defending the national and religious identities of European countries as countries he would not be calling on Europeans to allow Muslims to wear the Muslim veil, since the preservation of traditional Western national identity and the spread of Islamic customs (not to mention the increasing Muslim population created by immigration about which Sharansky is silent and which he presumably supports) are mutually incompatible. I believe, therefore, that Sharansky’s basic liberalism will continue to lead him in the direction of accepting and rationalizing Western national surrender, even as he throws in comforting phrases like “national identity” to conceal the reality of this surrender from himself and others.

As James Burnham said, the function of liberalism is to accommodate the West to its own suicide.

LA continues:

I’ve removed from the initial blog entry the phrase “worse than useless,” which Mr. Warshawsky took issue with, as unnecessarily insulting toward Sharansky. However, as can be seen in the my next comment, that doesn’t take anything away from my substantive criticisms of him.

LA writes:

Thinking more about the subject of this thread, I must convey the anger I feel toward the neoconservatives and the universal democracy promoters. Sharansky with his simplistic notion that “democracy is the solution to terrorism” was one of the major influences on President Bush and his off-the-planet ideology of converting the whole Muslim world to democracy, this hyper-Wilsonian idea that’s been shoved down our throats for the last six years, killing any intelligent politics in this country and leading us into ruinous error. And then, after the democracy idea has been discredited a hundred times over, Sharansky comes along and says, “Whoops, I guess I didn’t have it quite right! It’s not just universal democracy, it’s universal democracy plus national and religious identity.” So he realizes that universal democracy doesn’t work, and that the idea needs to be corrected. But at bottom, being the liberal he is, he can’t give up the universalism, so he ends up playing with words, adding “identity” onto democracy and receiving a truckload of reviews of his grand new political theory about the need to moderate democracy with identity. But you look at his article in the Wall Street Journal laying out his idea, and what is it? Identity for Muslims. Identity for minorities. Approval of diversity and multiculturalism, with the idea of assimilation to a common culture downgraded to assimilation to “democratic norms,” which means, assimilation to liberalism.

Sharansky’s promotion of “national and religious identity” which turns out to be diversity is of a piece with what the neocons have kept selling to us over and over again, year after year, in one form after another, in which they promote what sounds like a conservative idea which turns out to be a liberal idea; or they promote a liberal idea which turns out to be a leftist and nihilistic idea. For example, the neocons used to stand for the “common culture,” meaning a substantive American way of life and shared America outlook, and for the requirement and total assurance that the Third-World immigrants we were admitting en masse would all assimilate into that culture. But then the neocons realized—whoops—that the non-Western immigrants, particularly Mexicans, are not assimilating into the common culture, because they are, uh, too different from that culture (the neocons didn’t say that, of course). So the neocons adjusted and said, “Well, the immigrants don’t have to assimilate into our culture, America is about diversity, we’ve always been a diverse country, so the newcomers can keep their culture, so long as their cultural expressions are not too disruptive, and so long as they conform themselves to ‘democratic norms,’ meaning tolerance and respect for the rule of law.” Which means our common culture has been cast aside, America has been cast aside, redefined as this liberal emptiness called “democratic norms.” But of course the neocons never admitted that they were wrong in their earlier assurances that all immigrants could assimilate into our culture. The neocons changed their conservative-sounding idea into a liberal idea, and never indicated that they had done so.

In the same way, the neocons assured us that Muslims would adapt “democracy.” So they launched the Bush Project to spread democracy in Iraq and other Muslim countries. Then the Iraqis adopted a constitution that enshrined sharia as the highest authority in Iraqi law. Whoops! But the neocons instantly adjusted and recovered. I mean that literally. When in the summer of 2005 I passed on to David Horowitz the news about the Iraqi sharia constitution , he wrote back an alarmed e-mail saying that this was a “disaster.” But he never said it again. He adjusted. He got with the program. The neocons said, “Of course we didn’t mean that they had to adopt a democracy like ours. Of course their democracy must fit their culture, which includes, uh, sharia, which means, uh, persecution of non-Muslims—whoops—but that’s ok because we’re still making progress!” Thus when Bush in 2006 pushed the Israelis to include Hamas in the Gaza election and the Palestinians elected Hamas—a Muslim jihadist organization devoted to Israel’s total destruction—whoops—it turned out to be ok after all, because the main thing—as Norman Podhoretz assured us on page 212 of his book on “World War IV”—the election of Hamas was actually a positive development, because it established in the Mideast the principle that legitimacy requires popular elections. So popular elections are a success and prove the benefits of democracy-spreading, even if they bring a jihadist terrorist organization to power. The neocons’ liberal idea of democracy-spreading turned into the leftist-nihilist idea of empowering Hamas, and the neocons denied that their earlier idea had been discredited or that anything had changed.

So it’s been one intellectual switcheroo after another that the neoconservatives have foisted on us, whether it’s “national and religious identity” that turns out to be about diversity, or whether it’s downgrading the meaning of “common culture” to tolerance and respect for rule of law, or whether it’s changing the meaning of democracy to sharia democracy, or whether it’s popular elections for all Muslims turning into a Hamas victory which the neocons then define as an affirmation of the legitimacy of popular elections!

At times I feel so desirous of getting rid of these troublesome neocons that the election of Obama seems worth the price for that reason alone.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 16, 2008 02:13 PM | Send