In the last week, Melissa and I have watched both World Trade Center and United 93.
They are both sad and beautiful films that I recommend to everyone.
And both of them, with all of the various individual tragedies that they chronicle from that very tragic day have me reflecting on one very sad fact.
No matter what reasons we might imagine for why al Queda operatives were motivated to kill all those people on that day, or why terrorists are motivated to kill at any point (some variation of Peter Bergen and Michael Lind's thesis that pride motivates terrorism is the most persuasive motivation that I have read), what is clear about terrorism is that it is centrally motivated by a desire for power.
Al Queda and all terrorists believe that if they can use military force and political propaganda in ingenious and effective enough ways, they can force the hands of the subjects of their terrorism: the United States, Israel, Britain, Spain, Jordan, India, the West, Arab countries, whichever citizens of whichever countries that they direct their cult of death towards.
Terrorism, fundamentally, is brutal politics.
Terrorism is literally using all means necessary to acquire the power to force the hands of subject countries to do as terrorists see fit.
Generally, terrorists, like democratic peoples, believe that they can use power to solve the problems of the people they identify with. Islamic law is a cynical and romantic solution, many terrorists believe, for the myriad of problems that face their peoples. Military force, they believe, no matter how relatively weak compared to their opponents, can expel foreigners from lands they claim and exact retribution for perceived injustices.
It is this illiberal commitment to impose what terrorists argue is God's will, but is in fact their own, and liberal democratic commitments to freedom, democracy, equity, humanity, and other similar values that distinguish terrorists and their thinking from the citizens of liberal democratic countries they target.
This is all true except that liberal societies have one very important similarity to the illiberal commitments of terrorists that makes it harder for us to distinguish ourselves: our similar commitment to the idea that enough power will similarly solve the problems of liberal or illiberal societies.
It is all the fashion, these days. This foolish illiberal notion. It is more than fad in countries like North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Palistan. Sadly it is, in reality, less a fad in liberal democratic nations than is ideal.
But there is much more commitment, history, experience, thinking, cultural values, and institutions to support liberal democratic values in countries like the United States, France, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, and other liberal democratic countries (although the majority of that list have developed those institutions fairly recently, within the last hundred years; and liberal democracy, while dating back many hundreds of years as an idea, a set of values and nascent commitments, is a little more than two hundred years old as a sustained commitment of governance and cultural development).
And, most hopeful, liberal democratic cultures are ones which are forever elaborating upon and expanding their liberal democratic ideals, with cultures - scholars, writers, directors and filmmakers, actors, musicians, and other entertainers, businesspeople, and other citizens - that perpetually lead their governments towards greater liberalization.
Liberalization is the movement away from power as the central organizing principle of human development. Power is still needed, to be sure. But power serves purposes more and more limited in the scope of its use in liberal societies and governments, ideally. Power is used less often, less readily, and with less force and aggression, over time, primarily because liberal democratic citizens hold themselves and one another to a higher standard of humanity and maturity in their dealings with the world. But power is also used less readily because it has consequences that lead those who hold it to, eventually, seek other more liberalized and liberalizing options.
All societies are fragile. But liberal societies are strongest because the freedom they create nurtures greater responsiveness, flexibility, humanity and collaboration, inclusion, resilience, and honest engagement and reflection in the face of even the most difficult challenges, terrorism included.
Terrorism is not the most difficult challenge that liberal democracies have faced. It is only the most recent among illiberal philosophies to openly challenge liberal cultures. And like every illiberal challenge before it, it will fail, ultimately, because liberal societies will learn resilience, strength, and confidence in the liberal values that make those societies and governments strong and will use those values, and especially the more honest engagement and reflection, to defeat terrorists and terrorism, politically and militarily.
Power, when it is not exercised consistent with the highest ideals of liberal values, persistently undermines and compromises those values and the strength that they nurture.
But the power of liberal societies is the capacity of their cultures to strengthen their commitments to liberal values - to freedom and equity and humanity, for real, not just as political rhetoric that does not match substantive policies - even as governments and citizen advocates resist the strengthening of those commitments and values within the institutions that animate liberal democracy.
Illiberality, ranging from conditions like genocide, terrorism, and authoritarianism to less severe restrictions like freedoms in liberal democratic countries, rules by fear and spreads fear throughout a community. And that fear undermines the freedom that is necessary for more genuine responsibility and virtue to take root. Without access to the free will that is the source of all virtue, all peoples, liberal or illiberal, are cut off from their capacity to teach and learn it most honestly, meaning freely.
Liberal democracy strengthens its commitments to liberalizing values, in the long run, despite short terms setbacks and regressive historical periods, like the current one, because it is liberalization and freedom that are the heart of the the strength of those cultures and their governing institutions, rather than the weakness that the fears and insecurities their citizens so often mistake those liberal values for. Fear rationalizes illiberality which rationalizes fear with rationalizes illiberality. It is a vicious cycle that terrorism is designed to create and accelerate. The virtuous circle of liberality is facilitated by free peoples deepening their commitments to liberal values, creating the space and freedom for more genuine safety, virtue, decency and hope to take place. All of which are only available to the extent that a culture is free. And all of which are hindered to the extent that freedom is limited, except when immediate violence or harm is taking place or imminent.
Even amidst terror there is hope. And true hope is found inside of the elaboration and expansion our liberal values.
Love,
Ben
