The opinion piece that caught my eye this morning was this one in the Washington Post by A. Wess Mitchell contrasting the differing visions articulated by Sec. of State Marco Rubio and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, respectively, at the Munich Security Conference. Each was hortatory but they differed markedly in their underlying premises and what they were exhorting their audience to do. Sec. Rubio emphasized shared history, culture, and values:
The secretary of state told the Europeans that this civilization was in peril from within. He pointed to years of domestic policies — open borders, deindustrialization, outsourcing of sovereignty, obeisance to the “climate cult” — that have weakened the West not just materially but spiritually. He called on Europeans to stop tinkering with a broken status quo and turn their attention to rekindling the West’s very identity and confidence as something worth defending.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, assumed universal values and focused on an administrative structure:
Ocasio-Cortez, by contrast, called for a restoration and refinement of the international “rules-based order.” She described this order not in organic and moral terms as Rubio did but as an essentially administrative construct built in the service of certain abstract goals, which revolve around fighting “income inequality” and “social instability.”
The problem, she said, was not the construct itself but the fact that in recent years its rules have been applied unevenly, in ways that treat the West more favorably than the developing world. “What we are seeking,” she said, “is a return to a rules-based order that eliminates … hypocrisies.” She called for a return to “dozens of global compacts” that the Trump administration has “withdrawn from” and a redoubling of efforts to “stave off the scourges of authoritarianism.”
Dr. Mitchell correctly notes the issues with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s formulation:
Rubio’s speech put its finger on what has long been a fundamental problem for the progressive vision of order: that it attaches value (indeed, the ultimate value) to institutions that are the by-product of a civilization that it holds to be uniquely and irredeemably iniquitous.
I would articulate that slightly differently. The rule of law is part of the superstructure of Western civilization and honored more in the breach than the observance.
Dr. Mitchell clearly favors Sec. Rubio’s formulation. I think that both views are severely flawed and peculiarly American. IMO the idea of “the West” as presently articulated is largely a sales pitch by the British over the last century or so to draw the United States into wars they feared they were losing. It lies in stark contrast to the disdain in which our European cousins held us for the previous century. There is a kernel of truth in it but it is greatly exaggerated.
The other problem with Sec. Rubio’s formulation is that although we do derive much from our European heritage we also derive aspects of our culture and values from Africa, Asia, and native Americans which the Europeans do not share other than as they have been mediated through us, something the French and Germans, in particular, actively deny. Perhaps more of their cultures and values will be derived from other sources in the next century but they are not now.
The additional problem with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s formulation is that there are no universal values. The two to which she drew attention, income equality and social stability, are conditional goods not universal. The “hypocrisy” about which she complains is inherent in that lack of universality, i.e. they are honored on a strictly instrumental basis by virtually every country, not just the United States or the countries of Europe.
American culture is not marble; it is tectonic. Its dominant substrate shifts over time and place, absorbing new populations, new experiences, and new pressures but it does not dissolve into abstraction. Institutions and policies are superstructures resting on that moving ground. When the ground drifts gradually, reinterpretation is possible, indeed necessary, and the civil religion expressed in the Declaration, the Constitution, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, and our national mythology can be renewed without being discarded. When the ground is denied or despised, however, when reinterpretation gives way to repudiation, cohesion fractures and institutions become hollow. America’s strength has never lain in static purity or imported theory, but in its capacity to let its cultural plates shift without shattering the republic built upon them.
I much prefer Dave’s recent description of America’s difference from Europe as one of divergence, than there not being significant commonality. In many respects America is still shaped by European thought as it existed in the 18th century, like some aspects of current American English are truer to that time period than modern British English. I don’t know how much of that can be contributed to Noah Webster, but the U.S. Constitution was based upon European political and economic thought of the time.
What those passages from Rubio and AOC suggest to me is different Western views of the role of government. Ignore Rubio’s reference to culture, the policies he complains about are Hobbesian concerns — namely, the ability of the sovereign to provide security and the peace necessary for commodious living. The Founders were more influenced by Lockean thought which is less pessimistic about the state of nature and advocated limited government as all that was required to meet those ends.
AOC, OTOH, is talking in the language of Kant about a goal of moving into a post-historical society of perpetual peace founded on international order, human rights and subordination of sovereignty. Kant wrote Perpetual Peace in 1795, and it doesn’t appear that any of the founders were familiar with him when the Constitution was drafted. They certainly didn’t draft a Constitution with higher moral principles as ambitions.
Ironically, American English (particularly in the Appalachians) is closer to the language of Shakespeare than modern British English is. In between there was something called “the great vowel shift”. I’ve posted on this subject before.