The Anti-Liberalism of Fear

Daniel Davies rants against the deviationist doctrine of "Decentism" that advocates the export of liberalism at the barrel of an M-1: >[Daniel Davies writes](http://crookedtimber.org/2006/06/21/values-and-violence/): [T]his John Gray’s latest piece in the New Statesman.... [I]t is often quite difficult to work out precisely what he is on about, but in this case, he is making the point that “Enlightenment Values” have historically been associated with a hell of a lot of death and destruction.... >[A]lthough [people like] Eve Garrard claims to only be in favour of the nice bits of the Enlightenment and against all the revolutionary terror, the actual tangible results of her project have been Fallujah, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.... she’s dodged the central problem that Gray has been identifying for years; the problem that occurs when you try to bring people the benefits of freedom and democracy and they say “no thanks”. Like it or not (I don’t), there are a lot of people out there... who simply don’t want tolerance, equality (in some sense) or freedom of speech. There are genuine democratic movements in most Islamic countries, but it is wishful thinking to pretend that they aren’t small and unrepresentative minorities. The biggest proportion of the population of Islamic states are quite happy about Islam and don’t want the same things we want... so much that they are prepared to have a war about it. >At this point you have to either say “well you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” (which is presumably teh dreaded relativism! oh no!). Or you have to say “Let freedom ring! / eat lead hadji” and admit that a universalised view of our moral obligations to the world like Enlightenmentism is always potentially an open-ended commitment to violence. Or you have to say “I heartily disapprove of this behaviour, why not read my weblog for further hearty condemnations of everyone who isn’t condemning it enough”, which in my view is a bit of a cop out.... >A whole subsidiary strand of Decentism appears to be the complete refusal to accept that... political philosophy is the study of the proper use of government violence (the libertarians and Max Weber are right on this one; government is the organisation of state violence for the greatest good). I have been... trying to get even one of its signers [of the Euston Manifesto] to admit that “intervention” and “protection” mean war.... At the root of it of course is a confusion between ethics (what we think is good) and politics (what we are actually prepared to put people in jail and kill them for).... >[U]nless one believes that the simple moral power of our Enlightenment values is enough to change the minds of the Muzzies, we have to (as Gray says) accept that they are, in fact, Muslims, and that whether or not we like their society, there is nothing we can do about it unless we are prepared to have a literally genocidal war. I actually do believe that the moral superiority of Western society is likely to win over the fundie world in the same way it did the Communists, but it is going to take a long time and I would rather not suck in an anthrax spore in the meantime, or watch my government bombing people into the stone age, just because somebody thought there was a short cut... Me? I don't accept Daniel's belief that there are countries in which an undifferentiated "they" "don't want tolerance." Countries are not unitary mental entities. Countries are made up of millions of people who want lots of different things most of whom are prepared almost all of the time to tolerate and be tolerated--especially if there is something in it for them. If you had told your average Graham in 1590 that one of his kinsmen would [someday write a book with a Dodd] rather than killing the Dodd from ambush or stealing his cattle--but I digress. I don't believe in a "general will"--I don't believe that "people" say "no thanks" to freedom, prosperity, and democracy. I believe that organized gangs of thugs with automatic rifles or prayerbooks or both say "no thanks--we like our cut of the way things are more." I believe that most others can be brought to say "no thanks" if subjected to the proper propaganda, for we East African Plains Apes are by nature somewhat xenophobic and depressingly easy to manipulate. Iraq at the moment looks a lot like the English-Scots border *circa* 1590, except with large religious cleavages, much heavier weapons, and a stretched-too-thin alien army that doesn't speak the language added to the mix. But by 1620 the English-Scots border was *peaceful* (by and large). In the end, most people would rather *not* be blown up by IEDs--even if some dorky priest does say that you will be lord and master of 72 virgins in paradise. The only people who might even think about it are the post-adolescent males who would much rather, if they thought about it, be competing in X-treme skateboarding contests on local cable in the hope of making it to the cable network version of the contest. So I reject all three of Daniel Davies's claimed options--(i) "Let freedom ring!/Eat hot lead hadji!" (ii) "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink," and (iii) "on my weblog I condemn them, and I also condemn them who don't condemn them enough." My answer? Soft power. Trade. Aid. Cultural contact. Large contributions to mosques where imams preach, "why can't we all get along?" Large contributions to democrats and civil liberties associations worldwide.... Alongside the immediate overthrow of any government anywhere that coquettes with Al Qaeda or its allies. And a beefed-up CIA to actually run the real War on Terror.