The Roots of Extremism

 

The Roots of Extremism

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following passages are found in the book The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons from Nixon to Obama, by Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman:

 

                  “The fundamental and continual clash between ideology and pragmatism is a basic theme of human history. At certain times, however, it becomes possible to take actions that have both an ideological and pragmatic basis. The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon provided such an occasion.” [385]

 

                  Therein lie the roots of extremism. That is, to think that a “fundamental and continual clash” between two alternatives, here called “ideology” and “pragmatism,” does not require that a choice be made, that these two alternatives may both be embraced, is an invitation to political extremism. It is such political naivete that lies at the roots of extremism, as the policies of the Bush administration made clear, with, by the way, the wholehearted support of the American people and American elites across the board.

 

                  So: “President Bush and his advisers construed those attacks … as the ‘new Pearl Harbor’ the PNAC had predicted would be necessary to awaken the sleeping giant to the need to act aggressively in the world.” [385] That is, Bush and his advisers construed those attacks as an invitation to extremism, what Dick Cheney called “going to the dark side.” And they did so in part because they did not think that in the political arena humans are confronted by fundamental alternatives among which choices have to be made.

 

                  “So as they fashioned the response of the United States and its allies to the al-Qaeda terrorists who had planned and executed the attacks, they also conceived a new main enemy for America and the world, and the rationale for what President Bush called ‘a global war on terrorism.’” [385] And, of course, because Bush defined that war as a war to eradicate evil in the world, it can be accurately described as extremist, an extremism that mirrors the extremism of bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

 

                  Only when the political arena is understood as presenting fundamentally different and conflicting alternatives can political extremism be tamed or avoided. Without a recognition of such alternatives, the temptation to embrace extreme political projects is easily succumbed to, especially because absent a perception of such alternatives, it is all too easy to convince oneself that you know how all humans ought to live, that you know not only one good way to live but you know the ideal way all humans should live. Insofar as there are fundamentally different, conflicting but legitimate alternatives, just so far it impossible to embrace extremism.

Means as Ends

 

Means as Ends

Peter Schultz

 

            In their book, The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, Colodny and Shachtman highlight how Dr. Fritz Kraemer provided the neocons with rationales for their decidedly militaristic foreign policies. For example, when Reagan sent the Marines into Lebanon, Kraemer “cheered loudly” because “Rapid military responses to provocations” was one of his tenets. Moreover, Kraemer saw “the battle with the Soviet Union as involving will as well as strength.”

 

            Note: Kraemer was focused on means as if they were ends. Responding rapidly, provocatively, willfully was essential, as important as anything, because such responses demonstrated and validated that the US was capable of a morally virtuous politics.

 

            Similarly, anti-communism is more about means than ends because anti-communism proves, validates the virtues of the United States and its elites, even in the face of defeat or war, that is, regardless of the consequences. At one point, Colodny and Shachtman point out that some neocons like Wolfowitz and Perle engaged in “official and unofficial alliances with right-leaning regimes…” that led “to the policy disaster known as Iran-Contra.” [304] But to its leaders, such as Ollie North, Iran-Contra was not a policy disaster. Why not? Because their actions were considered noble and therefore served, ironically, as ends. Because North had acted nobly, he had nothing to be sorry for. In fact, he could and did proclaim his pride in his actions, achieving significant notoriety and popularity as a result. He had proved himself to be a morally virtuous American, which then redeemed his extremism.

 

            It is useful to think about moral virtue more generally, as both means and ends. As means, moral virtue is taken to promote happiness and well-being. But moral virtue tends to become an end, that is, as being good in itself. Being morally virtuous is all that matters. But this is a kind of extremism.

 

            For example, as noted with regard to Kraemer et. al., anti-communism is a kind of moral virtue as an end: “better dead than red.” Anti-communism is then a kind of extremism, to be pursued despite the costs. Or, more importantly, the extremism that is intrinsic to moral virtue produces anti-communism. Anti-communists illustrate the extremism intrinsic to the morally virtuous. Barry Goldwater once famously asserted that “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” which is clearly a defense of extremism as well as liberty. So, to deal with anti-communism, to tame it, it is necessary to be clear about and deal with moral virtue and its extremism. At the roots of anti-communism lies moral virtue as the deeper phenomenon.

 

            Reagan himself experienced this phenomenon after he had declared the Soviet Union to be the “evil empire.” Ironically, “Reagan soon found … that the ‘evil empire’ phrase constrained him in formulating foreign policy.” Of course it did, because when confronting evil, formulating policies, i.e., seeking accommodations, is insipid. The only honorable course of action against evil is violence, war, and seeking to “kill the beast,” ala’ Jack in The Lord of the Flies. Arm yourself to the teeth and provocatively go after the evil ones, defeating or killing them as necessary, thereby proving and demonstrating your moral virtue.

 

            Being morally virtuous, confronting evil is intrinsically extremist. Did Machiavelli, e.g., know this? Does this help explain his anti-Christianity, while he allegedly appealed to pagan virtue? But insofar as he was aware of extremism intrinsic to moral virtue, perhaps he was opposed to both Christian and pagan virtue, creating new modes and orders based on a new understanding of “virtu.” Could the same thing be said of Plato, Aristotle, and others, such as Montesquieu and Nietzsche, as well? Hmmm…..

The Irony of the Political

 

The Irony of the Political

Peter Schultz

 

                  Common sense holds that “the ends justify the means.” So, in order to stay healthy or regain one’s health, one might have to undergo strenuous, even brutal medical procedures. The interesting thing though is that, very often, in politics “the means justify the ends.”

 

                  Take the Vietnam war, for example. The ends were to be the establishment of a non-communist South Vietnam, a nation that would ally with the United States and contribute to fortifying “the free world” by helping to contain communism. Obviously, though, those ends were not achieved and, so, they should not and could not be used to justify the means employed to achieve them. Failure in the end cannot justify the means employed.

 

                  On the other hand, when the means are thought to justify the ends, a different “logic” arises. For example, if the means used, because they are said to confirm the virtues of the United States, e.g., in opposing communism and doing so at great cost, may be said to justify the end results of that war even though the results represented failure. As Ronald Reagan and others liked to say, the Vietnam war was noble, which implies that the means employed justified the end results despite those results being failures. The means were noble, so the war, despite its bad, was justified. The means justified the ends. The means redeemed the failures. Ironically, the political often overrides common sense.

 

                  Moreover, this often means that the means become the ends, and failure does not even look like failure. When the means become detached from the ends, it is all too easy to tolerate failure without questioning the ends themselves. Acting virtuously, even in a lost cause or lost causes is thought to redeem the actions. This helps explain why political elites, even after suffering failures, over and over, persist in their actions. Because in defiance of common sense, the means are taken to justify the ends, even when the ends are unachievable. But common sense dictates that if ends are not achieved, then the both the ends and the means employed should be subjected to the strictest of scrutiny.

 

                 

 

 

Trump's Victory and Politics

 

Trump’s Victory and Politics

Peter Schultz

 

                  A comment on understanding the reaction to Trump’s victory and especially its intensity.

 

                  I heard recently from a friend that “Nixon sabotaged himself,” and, eventually, I thought: “Isn’t that comforting!” It means that politics is self-correcting, where the guilty convict themselves. It also means that, as some have said, the arc of history bends toward justice. In other words, the political may be affirmed because it self-corrects toward justice. Hence, Trump’s victory enrages many because it seems to be a political aberration so great that it must be attributable to the evils in the world, such as sexism and racism.

 

                  But what if the political isn’t self-correcting or tending toward justice? What if, in fact, while the political has intrinsic characteristics, those tendencies bend toward dominance, and not toward justice? That is, whether just or unjust, the political tends toward dominance, toward repression and imperialism. Insofar as this is so, then the political arena favors those who the dominant ones, regardless of whether they seek justice or injustice. Thus, by embracing or affirming the political, Trump’s enemies, ironically, undermine themselves in their battle with him. Battling Trump in the political arena plays to his strengths, enraging his enemies by making them feel powerless.

 

                  But so long as his enemies indulge their rage politically, Trump will likely prevail. Because politics so often involves vicious circles, the vicious, like Trump, are often the most adept and the strongest politically.

Conspiracies, Morality, and Politics

Conspiracies, Morality, and Politics

Peter Schultz

 

                  Being conspiratorial is essential for achieving political success. And successful conspirators dress up their conspiracies as moral campaigns. Successful conspirators are able and willing not to be good, as needed. For example, by relying on, allying with criminals, drug dealers, or other disreputable types.

 

                  Politics tends toward the melodramatic, that is, as being redemptive, as seemingly moral, even though it is essentially conspiratorial. As a result, politics ironically tends toward corruption, both of societies and of individuals, despite all the alleged moral drama that seems to be on going and normal. The moral fable that is thought to characterize the Watergate affair serves to cover up multiple conspiracies or cover-ups, e.g., by John Dean, Alexander Haig, Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post, the CIA, the FBI, James McCord, E. Howard Hunt, and of course Richard Nixon.  

 

                  Take note of the following from Carl Oglesby in his book The Yankee and Cowboy Wars: “Conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means…. [The] Yankee-Cowboy interpretation … is dead set against the omnipotent-cabal interpretation … in that it posits a divided social-historical American order, conflict-wracked and dialectical rather than serene and hierarchical [where] results constantly elude every faction’s intentions because all conspire against each and each against all….”

 

                  Oglesby’s interpretation is an interpretation not just of America and its order, but of the political generally or universally, including what are labeled “totalitarian” orders like Nazism or communism. Politics is never “serene and hierarchical,” is always “conflict-wracked and dialectical;” that is, is so in every regime, aristocracies as well as oligarchies, in monarchies as well as tyrannies, and in polities as well as democracies.

 

                  There might have been A Cruel and Shocking Act, [ironically the title of a book on the Kennedy assassination that denies its conspiratorial character]; while that act might well be cruel but it should not be shocking. Such assassinations are normal or the norm politically. In fact, for all its gruesomeness and its horror, the Holocaust was not a unique event. Those who affirm the political, as Carl Schmitt did, are embracing cruelty or, in current lingo, “shock and awe.” But the challenge should be taming the political, not affirming it. Even Machiavelli taught this, as did Montesquieu as well.