Fear and loathing in the Democratic Party

Fareed Zakaria writes an excellent critique of both major Democratic party nominees and their messages on trade in today's Washington Post/Newsweek PostGlobal forum.

The Democrats Dangerous Rhetoric

It is so refreshing to see prominent liberals calling out the leading liberal American politicians on their illiberal policies and rhetoric.

And Fareed makes exactly the argument on this issue that liberals need to get clear about. Protectionist trade stances are not about helping the disadvantaged. They are about self-interest. Short-term and counterproductive self-interest, to be sure. But there is nothing philanthropic about protectionism.

Free trade is important not just because it is good for America, though it most assuredly is. It is important because it is good for everyone, even when there are some marginal ways in which Americans have to deal with the downsides, as well, that come with competition and trade opportunities in other countries.

Americans famously want everything they face to go their way. They are not unique in this regard. Neither are they to be encouraged or pandered to. And much of American policy, like much of the policy of many countries, has very little to do with what is good for everyone, no matter how much they may protest that such is the case, and much to do with a mistaken perceived notion of what is good for America.

Many foreign policy positions as well as trade positions are about foolish and shortsighted self-centered views on world events and America's stake in them. If you doubt that, just watch American policy vis a vis Iran. How long it takes us to be honest about our failures and mistakes is another question. But the bottom line is that a mistake is a mistake because it doesn't actually yield you the result you want.

Is it really any coincidence that this era of "force" is also an era of self-centered American policy?

Short answer: Nope.

As with virtually all political philosophies that have romanticized force as a governing philosophy, self-centered motivations are typically covered by altruistic rhetoric. But the reality lies right beneath the surface, if we will only look.

Liberty is the value of the confident and those more concerned with the long run than with the immediate gratification that denying it might offer. That is why liberal democracies are, by any objective standard, stronger cultures and nations than the illiberal and undemocratic among us.

But a commitment to liberty means learning to stop giving into the most persistent and nepharious temptation the world has ever known: the temptation of power.

And that is a temptation that liberals and conservatives and all of us are subject to, independent of any merits we might otherwise have.

Me too. I only hope it is not a temptation I am want to give into for long in my own life. Though I really do not covet power. It's forgiveable, whatever the case. Because without it being so, without forgiveness as the more fundamental virtue that people like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King, Mohatma Ghandi, Desmond Tutu, and other great people have tried to center in our imaginations, humanity really would be doomed. Because there would be none among us who could pass a test of virtue or integrity. It would all be illusion.

And what kind of world would we live in where honesty is an illusion and power is its replacement. A pretty bleak and cynical world.

And that is the alternative to a world where liberty is taken seriously.

And that is why, as Fareed argues, that those who seek to sell it off to the highest democratic bidder and give into the efforts to force our hands on such questions need to seek higher ground.

Fear is the tool of despotism, as Montesquieu wisely observed so many years ago.

It is not a means of leading free peoples. And it is most certainly not the way to lead the illiberal peoples of the world into freedom. And that, and not the satisfaction of parochial pressure groups, is the challenge before the American and all heads of state in the 21st century.

And that is the larger leadership question facing all of the candidates for the American presidency and every aspirant for leadership in this era of globalization.