A paleoconservative rejects Wilders

Here is an exchange between Paul Gottfried and me over the last three days concerning my entry, “Wilders calls for repeal of all hate-speech laws in Europe.”

Paul Gottfried to LA:

Larry, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but your appeal to “democracy” as the cornerstone of freedom is nonsense. Academic freedom and freedom of assembly are liberal bourgeois ideals that belonged to a predemocratic age. What has characterized democracy, as I try to show in my work After Liberalism, is managerially enforced equality. The only democracies that survived this process of change for a while were ethnically-based democracies, like Ireland and Poland, in which established churches and traditional ways of life could be preserved from modern public administration and meat-cleaver approaches to equality. What has gone on in Europe for about forty years, and in a less accelerated fashion in the US, in the form of feminist and anti-racial directives, is thoroughly consistent with mass democracy. The only hope in Europe is a return to self-governing ethnic communities, in those places in which they can be reconstituted. Needless to say, troublesome Muslims should be asked to leave, and human rights mavens unceremoniously hung from lamp-posts. Paul Gottfried

LA replies:

What have I said about Democracy as the cornerstone of freedom?

PG replies:

You stated that there was a necessary connection between democracy and freedom. there is in fact none, except for PC leftists and for neocons who don’t go too far criticizing the Arabs.

LA replies:

Please point me to where I said this. I don’t know what you are referring to.

PG replies:

“Freedom of speech is the keystone of our democracy.” That is worthy of the Weekly Standard. PC is the essence of our mass democracy. Paul

LA replies:

I didn’t say that, Wilders did.

And what is your problem with the statement? That he’s defending freedom of speech, or that he’s saying anything positive about democracy? He’s addressing a specific issue, the hate-speech laws, which prevent anyone from criticizing Islam. What do you expect him to do, criticize democracy itself?

So, tell me how he should have said it. Tell me how YOU would criticize the hate-speech laws of Europe.

PG replies:

Like the Vlaams-Belang he should abandon the tactic of defending something called “democracy” and begin to attack the present European regime as totalitarian. I had a piece on takimag criticizing the Flemish nationalists for attacking the admission of Turks to the EU on the grounds that it would threaten the present Belgian democracy. Arguably the EU regime represents the finest flowering of a post-liberal, post-national democratic form of organization. The EU provides social services, income redistribution, and programs to overcome cultural discrimination. What is “undemocratic” about any of this? Paul

LA replies:

That’s really a side point on which to be attacking him. He doesn’t call himself a European-style nationalist. He calls himself a democrat. He rejects Le Pen, BNP, etc. So he’s operating within that basic liberal premise. He’s not operating within a paleocon premise.

Second, not all meanings of democracy are bad. The basic sovereignty of a people in controlling their country and not having it controlled by unelected bureaucracy is democracy. Obviously if a people cannot discuss the most basic issues because it’s a crime to do so, that is an attack on self-government and thus on democracy.

So it seems to me that your criticisms of him are not dealing with the problems that Wilders himself is addressing and are not grasping where he is coming from. He says he’s against the EU and would like it to be ended, though he also says he deals with it as it exists. He says that all Muslim immigration should end, but doesn’t call for Muslims to be deported; however, he does suggest that Muslims who do not accept the Netherlands society should leave, though he’s not specific on that. He frequently refers to the rights of homosexuals; he doesn’t promote homosexual rights; he promotes the right of homosexuals not to be thrown from tall buildings, which the Muslims promise to do. And now, most recently he advocates the repeal of all the hate-speech laws in Europe, while leaving in place laws outlawing the incitement of violence, such as Muslims do. The latter would in effect mean the outlawing of Islam, though how that would work out is not clear.

So all in all this is an extremely positive agenda. What do you have against it?

PG replies:

What I am noting is the basic community of values that links Wilders to his adversaries. If one assumes those multicultural, post-Christian, post-national positions, there ain’t much difference between his perspective and theirs. They are simply one stage further in the same process of moral-cultural meltdown that has created the problems that we’re condemning. Regarding your defense of a certain kind of democracy, there is no argument between us. Unfortunately we are defending an almost antiquated version of democratic government, which is totally compatible with mass democracy and the managerial state. paul

LA replies:

Unfortunately I have no idea of what your point is. Wilders is attacking one of the pillars of liberalism—non-discrimination. He’s saying that Islam and observant Muslims are incompatible with Western society. Your problem with him seems to be that he’s not simultaneously adopting your specific criticism of modern democracy.

I believe your criticisms of him are pointless, destructive and add nothing useful. Because he doesn’t fit into your ideological pigeon hole, you attack him, not even understanding what he actually stands for. He’s a politician speaking more directly about the Islam threat than any other politician has done, and he’s also free of the nasty background of BNP and the anti-Semitism and sheer stupidity of Le Pen, and he’s also made this excellent 17 minute movie that captures the very essence of the jihadist threat, and his clear stand has gotten him indicted for hate speech in Netherlands and gotten him excluded from Britain, and he’s making the issue more visible than ever before—and what do YOU see? All you see is that he hasn’t adopted your precise critique of modern society, and so you attack him.

As I’ve often said, if a pickpocket met Jesus, all he would see would be his pockets.

Well, if a paleocon met Jesus, all he would see would be that he wasn’t a paleocon.

LA continues:

Also, you write:

“What has characterized democracy, as I try to show in my work After Liberalism, is managerially enforced equality.”

I agree with that description. I’ve often made the same point in somewhat different language. I say that modern liberalism is against self-government and majority rule, because those things have the result that some people will have more power than others. The only way to ensure true equality is to have an unelected unaccountable elite ensuring equality for everyone. This is the order of Europe. Below are some of my articles on this theme. However, what does that have to do with Wilders? Basically what you’re saying is, unless Wilders, while calling for end of Muslim immigration, simultaneously calls for the end of democracy, because democracy leads inevitably to EU type managed society, Wilder’s position on Islam is self-contradictory and not worth the trouble. You’re saying it’s not enough that Wielders attack the managed rule of the EU; you’re saying he must attack democracy itself, i.e., self-government and freedom of speech, since, according to you, self-government and freedom of speech must lead to the managerial rule.

So you take away everything. You’re attacking one of the most hopeful figures on the scene at the moment, because he’s not adopting a radical reactionary critique of democracy. But, again, democracy, in the sense of a people ruling their own country, is the only thing that can fight against both the EU and Islamization.

So in my view your critique of Wilders is destructive to the point of nihilism.

Here are my articles on how modern liberalism means the end of majority rule:

How liberalism leads to the end of democracy

What liberals really think of democracy … they think it’s icky [On Dan Balz’s anxiety that in October 2007 the Democratic race wasn’t yet settled.]

Tolerance uber alles and the death of British civilization [Discussion with Mark D. Liberalism believes only in the self (not in life), and in the equality of all selves, Therefore there can be no majority rule as that would mean rule by some selves over others.

How the modern liberal paradigm of the total equality of all selves evolved Excerpt from previous entry. I disagree with the idea that Nietzsche—along with the postmodernism which stems from Nietzsche—is the main source of modern liberalism. As I see it, modern liberalism is a natural outgrowth of … liberalism.]

Without God, no consent of the governed [“As Mark D. said the other day, since equality among the wills is the only standard, the only rule for adjudicating a conflict between wills is that the majority of wills must be prevented from imposing its will on the minority, since such imposition would mean that some wills are superior to others.”]

The inequality hunters: a job that never ends [Times seeks end of Iowa caucus system because not all people can vote in it.]

The Times’ response to the passage of laws defining marriage as consisting of a man and a woman [NYT says: “the immediate impact of Tuesday’s rights-shredding exercise is to underscore the danger of allowing the ballot box to be used to take away people’s fundamental rights.”

LA writes:

Paul, I’ve posted our exchange:

A paleoconservative rejects Wilders

PG replies:

Good!

PG writes:

My point is that critics who share most of the same worldview of those who are in power are for the most part useless. Solzhenitsyn was a far more devastating and far more effective critic of the Soviet system than Trotsky or even Sakharov. the criticism that works best or works at all must come from outside of an evil system. Wilders cannot accomplish that. At best he can ameliorate the system for a few months.

LA replies:

I persist in failing to see the relevance of Mr. Gottfried’s comments to the work of Geert Wilders. If ever there was an example of a critic letting his demand for ideological conformity with his own position blind him to an important contribution that is being made, this is it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 27, 2009 09:39 AM | Send