The tortured logic of force as a governing democratic philosophy

David Ignatius writes this really strained piece, today, in the Washington Post making the tortured case for why collective security is only something that rational folks like David can impose on rational, self-centered folks like you and me.

The Paradox Behind the Paralysis on Security

David cites this obscure economist named Mancur Olson Jr. and his equally obscure 1965 book, "The Logic of Collective Action," and argues that Olson has figured out what keeps rational, self-centered actors from pursuing collective security options that are in their best interests: they haven't yet been compelled to do so:).

Rational actors, David and Mancur argue, can't be expected to engage in collective security options that would be in their best interests. They're too busy being self-interested and rational to do something so clearly rational, or so the convoluted logic seems to go. The problem with China and the Bush Administration, David's logic goes, is that they've been dragging their feet on getting really tough with North Korea because they just haven't been compelled sufficiently enough to take the tough action.

It couldn't, of course, be the obvious, which is that the tough action hasn't worked. No, David argues. The problem is that the United Nations, not the United States, needs to be the group that imposes it's will (Kim Jong Il has apparently been signalling that the United Nations is the democratic authority that he trusts-- him being so committed to democratic principles and all -- and David, identifying the all too rational nature of the U.S. government, the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans, and other U.N. nations, recognizes, immediately that they're problem is that they haven't been sufficiently compelled to do the right thing.

As I told David on the comments section of his Post piece: he and the Democrats that he favors will have ample time to prove his theory right in the coming years.

My question is, when it fails -- which it will -- will he and the Democrats be willing to give it up?

It is amazing to me, I must say, the tortured logic that people will employ in their pursuit of power and their right to pressure and force others to do their bidding.

The strongest societies are free societies, reasons David, because they just know the right way to use force. The Soviets and the Saddam Hussein just didn't know how to impose their will appropriately. Had they done so with David's wisdom, then they would have created the utopias or maintained the cults of personality that they sought. And all of it, by David's logic, would be equal. Because David doesn't suppose that any moral or decent or humane values be the handmaidens of force. No, David reasons. Force is the governing philosophy that should animate free societies. There is no reason for ideas to describe or limit how it might be used. Freedom is for suckers who don't really see the writing on the wall, David reasons. The truth is that rational people only do what they should do when they are made to.

Most amusing to me is that David is supposing that some obscure economist from the University of Maryland has somehow outthunk the smartest international policy scholars like Joe Nye and his colleagues at Harvard who have concluded that too much aggression, not too little, has undermined our efforts in Iraq, with Iran, and with North Korea.

The truth is that what created the atrocities of the Soviets, the Nazis, the Baathists, the North Korean and Cuban communist governments, and every other most horrific government that the world has ever witnessed is exactly the philosophy that David is arguing for.

There is another philosopher who had a more apt description of the problem that we see among advocates of pressure and force who are using so much of it so freely these days.

It was an idea coined by an obscure little liberal British historian and political philosopher at the beginning of the 20th century named Lord Acton:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Those who argue for the use of power without a sense of its limits or that it should have limits are marching down a dangerous road. It is a road well travelled and littered with death and stagnation and every form of human ugliness.

What advocates of force to ultimately govern human relations rather than free will, morality, and intelligent discussion and debate, divided and limited power, decency, humanity, and compassion are most in need of is exactly what they are most cynical about:

A stronger conscience.

The truth is that David's and Mancur's theory are one long excuse and defense for why selfishness is really rationality and not self-centeredness -- which is distinct from a more reasonable sense of self-interest as expressed in the classic Hillel wisdom, "If I am only for myself, what am I? If I am not for myself, who am I?" -- and why people like David and Mancur have really figured out problems resolving matters in Iraq, with North Korea, and with Iran because David, at least, has figured out the right group to use force, not a serious asterick and reason to question if whether imposing our will works in these situations very well at all. Clearly military force is necessary in Iraq, which is why I support General Casey's commitment to a sustained U.S. presence and more troops, if they are needed, and a larger commitment to a political solution in the form of a sustainable peacefully-committed democratic government in Iraq. But clearly, to anyone who is looking at that situation squarely, what Iraqis resent about the American presence, as much as anything else, is that the situation was imposed upon them without their input or consent and without respect for any of the basic democratic principles that the invasion purports to have as its purpose.

What really bothers me is why David hasn't consulted folks like Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama or the Harvard JFK School of Government faculty that recently and publicly talked about the need for a less aggressive foreign policy.

It bothers me just as much if not more than when President Bush would not consult such people, because David acts with the pretension that he is really thinking and concerned with better ideas when the Administration is not. When the truth is that David, like the President, is trying to find arguments to support his preconceived ideas about the matter rather than doing what is hardest with intelligent reflection and engagement: to seriously question one's premises.

And it is that pretension which was at the root of the arrogance of power that animated the Soviet Union, the Nazis, the Baathists, and almost every dictator or totalitarian government of the 20th and now 21st century.

That good people just didn't know what was good for them until they were compelled to do so. And that those who challenge that idea just wouldn't understand not because freedom and equity is the highest values, but because they are naive about just how brilliant the insight of those imposing their will is into what will create a better, safer, more decent world. Meaning, poor saps cannot possibly be good people and behave well and/or exceed expectation because, being our own rational selves, we can't possibly know what is good for us. We must be condescended and compelled to do good because otherwise we would just remain naive of David's superior wisdom.

The truth is that David has thought far too little about what makes for a good society and good people and for policy to govern both. David is not a bad man. But he is arrogant about his ability to compel his way to a safer or better world. And it is the arrogance of folks like David and the Democrats he favors, right now, that very much concerns me about Democrats seizing power this election.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is a much more abiding bit of wisdom than "Rational people are selfish and must be compelled to do look after their best interests," a serious distortion of economic theory and of Adam Smith's moral observations about the need for people to have freedom to look after their self-interests and to freely and voluntarily look after the interests of others as it benefits their interests. People will look after the interests of others, reasoned Adam Smith much more powerfully than Mancur Olson, as they discover the self-interest in doing so. Freedom serves the interests of all because it allows them to discover how their interests are mutually served by their cooperation and their willingness to look after the interests of those who look after their own.

It's an important bit of wisdom that could provide a breakthrough in Iran, North Korea, and Iraq, if we would stop rationalizing our will to power.

Perhaps the North Koreans and Iranians would stop their pursuit of nuclear weapons if we stopped acting so provocatively in opposition to their interests and began to more genuinely work on behalf of the interests of their people, including promoting more genuinely the values of freedom and equity and democratic engagement, engaging them in free and open discussion and diplomacy about their nuclear weapons' programs, their relationship with the United States, the West, and the democratic world, whether their use of force and constraining the freedom of their peoples -- and the constraining of the freedom of the peoples of the United States and West, as well, if we were to have a more credible conversation where we acknowledge our own faults as well -- actually serves their interests or the interests of their people or any of us.

Such was the on-going conversation that Ronald Reagan had with Mikhael Gorbachev in the 1980's which precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.

It seems straightforward enough, doesn't it? That democratic engagement, at its base, means discussion and engagement and persuasion rather than force. Force is certainly necessary by democratic peoples' at times, especially in cases of self-defense or when force is the only way to remove an overwhelming power. But force is not a governing philosophy, in and of itself. If it were, democracy would never be necessary. Most of the history of humanity has been governed by far more force than we use, today, not less. We are just too arrogant to face that ugly legacy. We are too drunk with power.

But I have to say that it is as if an entire segment of our population has so blurred the distinction between freedom and force, between persuasion and compelling will that they believe that if they assert the superiority of the latter, enough, that they will never have to seriously engage the question of persuasion and free will in a democratically engaged society. It is as if they are beside the point.

Because the real point for people like David is that they get their way. By any means necessary, as Malcolm X, the hero to so many liberals and radicals like David, might say.

This is the ugliest political period that I have ever witnessed personally in my lifetime.

And it is ugliest because a group of people that I was proud to associate myself with and identify with most of my life -- liberals -- have decided in the last 6 years that they can and will rationalize and excuse any means necessary to get their way this election and, in some distorted way, as THE legitmate governing philosophy.

How ugly. And wrong. And marching on the path to the road of power and corruption of power.

What an ugly period we are living through.

And our best hope is that such a philosophy will inevitably fail.

It was the final downfall of the Soviet Union. It will be the downfall of dictators and totalitarians over the course of the 21st century.

And, luckily, free peoples (and I hope unfree peoples) will not tolerate it in America or the democratic cultures of the West and will not long tolerate it in the maturing and emerging democracies the world over. If and when Democrats abuse power, democracy will offer us the opportunity to remove Democrats from power as it has offered us the opportunity to remove Republicans from power. And so we will continue, building a culture more committed to freedom all the while.

If David or Mancur were right, there would be no need for a democratic discussion or process at all. We would always only need to compel our way to good purposes. We would see important goals, and compel our way to our objectives. There would be no need for thought and discussion and debate. That is the reason that the most and even the least thoughtful histories and political studies have emphasized the important distinction between thought and debate and discussion and brute force. Humanity has been using compulsion for purposes of collective security, more than any other reason, for most of the history of the world. And it has meant ruin and death and destruction for most of that history. If liberals, like conservatives, who argue for force as a governing democratic philosophy were correct, there would be no need for any philosophy whatsoever. Because there would be no need for reason or thought or engagement whatsoever. We would see what we wanted, collectively, and pursue it with as much or as little force necessary. But force is not a philosophy. We must certainly think about how we use force and power. But force and power, of themselves, are not philosophies. In the great majority of cases when force has been used and abused in the history of humanity, it has been the opposite of thought or philosophy. It has been brute action to aggressively acquire or compel. And it has been the basest impulse that human beings have indulged.

And the single most important correction to that impulse has been and always will be free and democratic engaged debate, discussion, and thought.

Our mistake is not that we have not had enough compulsion. Nor that we have not been rational enough.

Our mistake now and perpetually is our hubris. Our belief that we are the generation who has finally figured out how to wield force and power correctly to make the world in our own perfect image.

Hubris. Our greatest weakness, our most common sin, our most consistent mistake.

And the mistake that we are most reluctant to acknowledge.

Because it means acknowledging that we make mistakes at all.

And that, really, is the most serious and persistent mistake of humanity.

Love,
Ben