This is my column in The Americano, dated September 15th:
The United States is still derided as a “young”, “inexperienced” nation -as opposed to the “wise”, “experienced”, “cultivated” Europe- or, worse still, made responsible for all that is evil in the world, from poverty to global warming, from terrorism to financial crisis. This is the price America pays for being the most successful nation in history.
I am happy to announce the launching of a new online editorial initiative, the Atlantic Weekly, where the writer of this blog will also write. Since it is an intelligent publication, and with really high quality writers, you may be surprised to learn that some of my writing will be there. Well, let me share your surprise and let us wish a long life a many readers to this weekly.
This weekly, in English and Spanish, will provide commentary and opinion on the US from a conservative perspective, understanding “conservative” as it is understood in the United States, without the fixed boundaries the term has in Europe. The contributors to the weekly are excellent professionals from journalism and other areas, who know well the United States. And then there is me, an almost newborn blogger.
I quote next the full Press Release as written by the editors of the new publication, and sent to the media on August 19th, explaining the principles and objectives of this weekly.
Among the initiatives in President Obama’s healthcare reform plan, one of the most cheered by Europeans statists and supporters of Big Government is undoubtedly his effort to curb the cost of prescription drugs by demanding from the pharma industry a reduction in prices.
Cost reduction is a praiseworthy objective. Price controls are wrong tactics. Being more like to Europe in everything is not always better. And this is one case when it is not. The first mistake in President Obama’s tactics is to believe, or make believe that he believes, that pharmaceutical spending in the United States is a huge problem. The second mistake is that, once again, he has tried to tell the American people something that is not totally true.
The approval index Bush 43 enjoyed – or suffered – at the end of his second term will be remembered a being so low as to lead one to wonder how could he have been chosen just four years earlier. The final catastrophe of his presidency, spiced by the delay in applying a decisive strategy in Iraq, makes one forget that there were moments in 2004 when his popularity was very high. In may 2005 he was already labeled “The Incredible Shrinking President” by some in the media.
Years before, in 1992, Time magazine ran an article with the same title which, to put it mildly, revealed the lack of enthusiasm the media had for Bush 41, and noted with some relish how both his approval index and that of his VP where at record lows.
Sarah Palin keeps on advancing positions in her race to play a significant role in national US politics. It would seem that she is beginning a path very similar to that of Ronald Reagan in the late 70s, when, after failing in the primary elections of 1968 and 1976 – especially in the latter, read about it in Noemie Emery’s excellent article in The Weekly Standard from January 6, 2009 – he decided to rebrand his message and his political image by constantly repeating four or five key mantras summarizing his political thought and by a continuous media presence by means of interviews, radio talks, and op-eds. It was this buildup of a the image of a leader with knowledge that brought the overwhelming landslide in 1980.
The reaction of the United States was late in coming. Which is quite a surprise. That European countries were swifter and more determined in their words of support of a major popular riot in a totalitarian state that is key for the stability of the world, is a real innovation, something I did not expect to see. And this is not because Europeans, following Merkel and Sarkozy, have sprinted to take the lead. It is because the American answer has been slow.
I consider now that the Obama Transition is over. Six months have passed since his inauguration. We know what his proposals are on the economy, we are getting to know them on healthcare and energy, and we are discovering them on Foreign Policy. It is regarding Foreign Policy that the world should worry most, because in my opinion his proposal are summed up in this principle: the world is of no interest to the United States. Obama has lost the will to be the leader of the Free World.
The events in Iran since the elections are very easy to misunderstand for most Europeans. As I explained already in an entry in my blog in Spanish, from a Western perspective the most widespread vision about Iran is that of a monolithic country of fervent Muslims who unconditionally support the Ayatollahs, and who hate the United States in the first place, and, by proxy, the rest of the West. This is simply not true, as it was not true of the Soviet Union or the Communist bloc.
I am not the greatest fan of Bush 43. I credit him with keeping the US safe for 7 years. But it irks me how he became a promoter of big government, and how attitudes more than policies made him one of the most loathed presidents of the US in Europe, dragging with him the image of the whole United States. So I cannot believe that I end up defending him every once in a while. But it turns out that, since the only solid and continuing guideline in President Obama’s talk for justifying his actions is that “I am not Bush”, quite often the new President is too close to ridicule, and at times he enters with firm step into the running sands of putting his country at risk.
First of all, let me briefly introduce myself. I am a Spaniard. I live in Spain. I have visited the US some four times in my life, and I have spent less than a year there. I am not a scholar. I consider myself a fiscal conservative with mild liberal social beliefs. All my opinions are thus tainted. All my opinions are thus prejudiced. It takes nerve, a foreigner writing about the US. And about Palin, too. So it is, and all my opinions will bear the stamp of all my nerve and all my mistakes.
We are witnessing the ascension to the throne of Villain Number One of Sarah Palin, driven there by the most extremist liberal bloggers and by part of the mass media dedicated now to making a caricature of the Governor of Alaska after months of shredding her as a politician. To the television appearance of Levi Johnston, add now the video from the declining white rapper Eminem, where for lack of other attractions to achieve popularity, this grownup willing to appeal to teenagers sings – a generous term – on how he is going to “nail” Palin and illustrates the announcement with images of a Palin look-alike in possession of a scarcer wardrobe than the one the press has accused the real Palin of mismanaging during the campaign (wrongly, as it turned out). Very classy. In Ancient Rome, artists such as this one were probably rewarded with a meal in the company of lions, the artist acting the part of food, not of table companion, of course. What a civilized people, the Romans.
Anyway, Palin remains in the national news in the US and world news too. Not for her action in government. But because of what her adversaries wish her image to be: an object of ridicule, derision and mockery. Regrettably, it is this image the one that is reproduced in half of the MSM around the world, since it is the one that attracts an audience. I believe this is fundamentally due to two reasons: firstly, it presents a paradoxical image of the governor (a self called Conservative with a daughter who is already a mother without marrying, a faithful wife and mother presented like a slutty woman who enjoys sex with a semi-violent white man, …); secondly, on the other hand, and I regret that this is the way it is, she is a woman. Yes, Palin remains in the news because what happens around her happens to a woman, and it still brings some amount of dread among men, and envy among women, the fact that someone tries to juggle a complex familiar life, plus an elected position with demanding public obligations, plus private managerial initiatives, plus – what else could you miss – a meteoric rise towards an even greater level of demand in the public arena going so far as to become a symbol for a big part of the conservative movement.
Also to consider into the juggling act, achieving all this without having studied in Harvard, without having written dull autobiographical tomes, without having hobnobbed with the elite of the Republican party or having worked to get into the party "machine". It is also extravagant, and that’s why it is news, but rather than as an example of what it is possible to do, as an example how it is not possible to do it (hence there appearance of negative news or pejorative portrayals of the governor). If the one who was governing Alaska called himself Henry Palin, thing would be different for sure.
But this is what there is, and with this must the Governor of Alaska live, as she will never be able turn back time to August 29, 2008.
Although I blog in Spanish with the intention of offering a different vision on politics in the United States in general and on the Governor of Alaska in particular from the vision the general media in Spain provide, I believe that a couple of blog entries dedicated to explain why in my opinion it is worth taking the Governor seriously and following her activities are necessary. And the reason is not because she is hot, because Eminem wants to nail her, or because she is as dumb as Dan Quayle and can provide many humorous quotes. Not at all.
Why the United States matter
The United States is the only democracy risen from a breakaway with an established power (Great Britain), a breakaway which was not that much desired at the beginning, and a country that once this breakaway took place decided to create a new form government with a clear target: to avoid the abuse of government on individual.
The rupture with Great Britain was not the main target of the revolutionaries of 1776, who really came to this position dragged by some of the more activist and radical of them (Thomas Jefferson, for example), and by the real failure of George III to see or listen to his citizens. It was the Second Continental Congress, after much debate and after some two years from the beginning of the First Continental Congress, that decided for a Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress also gave birth to the Articles of the Confederation, which were in fact the first definition of the power of the government of the United States. It granted so few powers – the great worry was limiting power – that the Articles came to be an exercise in good intentions, but a danger for real government, even more for a nation at war against Great Britain. Washington as a General complained bitterly several times during the War of this failure.
This is important: the American revolutionaries were not thinking about how to replace one power with the other. They were thinking about how to replace big power with small power, while keeping several existing forms of political relation (representation, parliament making the government accountable, Anglo-Saxon trial by jury, …). The definitive Constitution of the United States, which has inspired so many later constitutions, is one of the most complex existing exercises in balance and limitations of power, and certainly the most complex considering its extension of a few pages.
No other "modern" revolution – between the XVIth and XIXth centuries – before or after has looked so deliberately for this limitation of the powers of government, and no other revolution has not been against “the man next door” for what he thought or believed, but against an abstract “government” for what it did: the Dutch revolution against Spain was looking for freedom of religion and not many protestants or catholics would survive the vitory of either side; the Russian revolution was about how to replace a ruling class for another one and not letting one single person from the earlier one alive; different European revolutions of the XIXth were class revolutions in shorter forms (the Paris Commune) or failed liberal reforms (Spain’s 1812-1814 liberal experiment) , … The French revolution of 1789 stars as a heir of the American revolution, but with a explicit desire to eliminate all previous institutions and to create a “new man”. The American revolution had no such high aims: man is as it is, and social engineering was not part of the plan. Read the American ideals: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Read the French ideals: liberty, equality, fraternity. The last two are not individual rights, but rights of the group. I can be equal to others, and I am brotherly with others. The French revolutionaries were thinking about how to impose a new system of beliefs and behavior. The Americans were just thinking about how to change the borders of the political frame so that every person, as an individual, could living with the greatest freedom. French revolutionaries had to exterminate the past. American revolutionaries had just to let every single person build the future.
The history of European political theory from the XVIIIth century is just a succession of theoretical designs on the best way of governing a society. Europeans do nothing else than think about how to govern men. Americans stopped thinking about it two hundred years ago: every man is man enough to govern himself. Successive attempts of putting in practice our theories and ideas have cost to the Europeans hundreds of million of deaths, launched two world wars, and brought about the greatest disasters in political experiments that history has ever seen (Communism was a European inventions, as was Fascism, Nazism, Imperialism, Colonialism, …). This is the force of ideas.
The evolution of the United States has brought the convergence with Europe, and this greater as time goes by. Urban development helped to homogenize the points of view of citizens; it also helped to imperceptibly transfer more powers to government: local –someone has to take care of security, of roads, … -, state and federal; and it also saw the acceptance of political ideas originated in Europe. American universities were freer than European ones model, and this allowed ideas to sow: all the seeds distilling form the European illustrious minds fell into fertile ground. And this happened from the middle of the XIXth century. Since then, all ideologies invented in Europe were discussed extensively and investigated in the United States, surpassing in many cases their European originals in depth of study. As a result, there are no greater scholars of any political theory than the Americans.
Calamitous was in the second half of the XXth century the rooting in the United States of the meaningless lucubrations, irrational and opposed to knowledge of European frauds such as Lacan, Foucault, Derrida et al, whose incapability of constructing a new philosophy of knowledge led them in fact to denying simply the existence of knowledge (the infamous Sokal Affaire provided a sad evidence of this tremendous infection that has contaminated Western rational thought). They triumphed in American universities. And a huge success it was. And American universities nourish big urban areas of professionals. And big downtowns distribute and homogenize ideas. And thus we come a situation in which the so called Culture Wars explode once and again, fundamentally between a few high-and-middle class urban liberals on the one side, receptive of some ideas originated in Europe, and generally dazzled by the dialectical artifices of these ideologies, and a few middle class urban and rural people on the other side , who in some cases would not consider themselves conservatives, who are more alien to these developments, and who watch with surprise as not only their way of life is presented to them as erroneous (“you are all alienated, the real truth is only for those in the know”), but also their way of being related to others (“all your interactions are tainted by a cultural superstructure which in your case promotes western supremacism and abuses other cultures”), and their way of understanding government (“you do not live in a true democracy”).
This is of course a simplification. Sure, there are conservative urban elites, and sure, there are universities where the classical thought – I do not mean Classical as in ancient, I just mean scientific and rational – is present (but it appears that the University of Chicago is not one of them, as it is disowning Milton Friedman). But truly has this ancient virus from Continental Europe, of platonic and Augustinian ancestry, of preferring complex intellectual architectures aimed to a historical end (“the new man”, “the City of God”) grown in a big part of America, instead of the most common sense and practical approaches (scientists, classical empiricists, partly Aristotle, …).
This transfer from Europe to the United States is a loss for human thought from the moment in which it drowns the approach of considering the individual person as the objective, and replacing it with a kind of universal aim of humanity (the universal good, the universal peace, the universal friendship, the end of poverty, the end of ignorance, …). And as this transfer is done in academic circles, and these are eminently urban, I believe the simplification I do is still correct
The advantage of this philosophical constructions is that, being as they are pure theory, they provide an answer to many of the failings in the current real situation, and they explain in a theoretical way many problems of reality. The disadvantage is that they are as metaphysical, inaprehensibles, and impracticable as any other supernatural religion. The political, philosophical, cultural establishment, and in recent times even the scientific one, has defined a new set of rules for our behavior ethical (how we must think), politic (how we must organize our government), social (how we must relate among us), and cultural (what we must learn). This is in some aspects just a reprint of the struggle between Paganism and Christianity from the IIIrd to VIth centuries of our era, in the sense that it is the struggle between two conceptions of the world, in this case a rational one (losing ground), and an irrational one.
What does this all mean in short for the United States? That it will be ever more difficult to find a real leader who advocates the principles of the Founders. It is difficult to think of leaders who are not immersed in this postmodernist environment of anomy, which feeds vigorously in this new religion, Political Correctness. It is difficult to find leaders who support this practical intention of life, and the maxim that every human being must account for his own actions, that he is autonomous in his relations with other human beings, and that he is the maximum “government unit”. Namely, that it is the individual the one that chooses his leaders, and that these govern for him, not for a tribe, a society, or a species that are in the need for improvement.
Why Sarah Palin matters
A basic characteristic of the United States that all foreigners since Tocqueville have born in mind, is the enormous extension and a sense of “last border”. The extension itself is nothing (Russia, Canada, Brazil, Australia, …) without this model of government that values autonomy of the individual over the tribe. Combining both factors, great extension, and autonomy, we have the only country where persons have been able to live in a virgin territory, in many cases isolated, and, except in the big urban centers, with little feeling of being submitted to a government. And it is in this environment where there have risen the big theoretical Americans of government and politics. And it is in this environment where the great American leaders have risen.
Geography is more and more a less important factor, as less and less territories are "isolated", and less and less areas demand the struggle of the individual against the environment, after the big expansive waves towards the Pacific Ocean in the XIXth century.
It is then difficult to find political leaders whose progress does not depend on one of these three things:
What great territory does still exist that where these circumstances of ideological and political environment do not exist? What territory does still allow for the rise figures of high political level whose vision of government – citizen relations is foreign both from the aristocratic theoretical models (“there are persons prepared by education to govern and decide what is better for the governed ones”) and historicist models (“there is a final objective towards which history travels, and this travel implies the moral progress of the human being, which the government must encourage”)? Obviously, one of them is Alaska.
I have not met Governor Palin, nor expect to do so. But I would like to. It is very easy to see through people who seem to hold very high standards but in fact do not. She may not be the greatest thinker of the Western World in the 21st Century. I, for myself, do not seek that in a leader. She certainly does seem intelligent, curious, and able. Should Palin be different from what she seems to be, it would be one of the greatest disappointments for conservatives in a couple of generations.
The importance of Sarah Palin for the United States is that she is the living evidence of the notion that it is still possible for a leader to rise from the governed, a leader whose priority is the individual, a leader who considers that example is more important than doctrine, a leader who considers that the autonomy of the human being must make a subordinate of and not be subordinated to ideological theory, a leader who considers that merit is the essential tool of success and not a condition out of the ordinary that must be compensated, a leader who believes that success is a just reward for effort and not a dispossession of others, and a leader that, in short, believes that citizens do not wish to be told what they must do but just to be left alone.
And not just this: she is a living proof of a leader who takes to practice all these beliefs, and who lives, with not always ideal results but with a demonstrable truthfulness, in accordance with them. And in this vision the social, ethical or moral creed are not that important. Because example is enough.
The last great politician who personified this vision in the United States was Ronald Reagan. The last one in Europe was Margaret Thatcher. Both belong to an already gone generation. In the new generation, nobody symbolizes this like Sarah Palin. Foreign to the hardware of homogenization and uniformity of the cultural, political and other elites, this intelligent woman, with her learning and without external impositions, seems – at least it is what we can believe from her performance – to have adopted this vision of the world that classic conservatives long for.
In her acts as Governor, and as a person, she seems foreign to the Unique Thought that is Political Correction. She seems foreign to irrationality and to tribalism. She seems foreign to scorning common sense. And she seems foreign to disrespecting 15.000 years of civilized thought that humankind treasures, which might come handy for something.
Palin is not only important for the United States. She is important for all of us around the world who believe at least one of this things:
The importance of Sarah Palin is not Palin in itself. She is important as a living proof that there is still a chance of recovering governments that serve instead of governments that command. And as the proof that leadership by example is better that any ethical speech for everyone who wants to see the reality.
That’s why Palin matters, and that’s why it is chilling to think that because of the image that is projected from her, which has so little to do with the core of who she is as a person and with the record of who she is as a politician, we might go so far as to let go waste the opportunity she has of really meaning something more than a new hope.
Tags of Technorati: palin’s future, sarah palin
