Dope

My friend was, indeed, dissatisfied with yesterday's post (and if you don't know what I mean, lunkhead, see yesterday's post). Limited Inc, like Coolidge's secretary of state, Henry Stimson, believes that gentlemen don't open other gentleman's mail -- so we aren't going to quote our friend's animadversions about our post, except to sum them up as the observation that we ramble on entertainingly, but to little point. However, we we will quote our own email reply:

"... I have a pretty straightforward view that the Middle East is not that exotic, or incomprehensible, vis a vis the West; and that the necessary framework for a civil society is missing in most Middle Eastern countries because of the convergence of two seemingly opposing interests: on the one hand, the theocratic, and on the other hand, the Western. While the theocratic impulse gets its strength, I think, from a false sense of nostalgia that becomes politically powerful when both the rural class and the educated, urban middle feel disempowered, the Western influence is directed, pretty consistently, at one goal: keep the oil flowing cheaply. This simple rule entails a complex politics, because sometimes it seems like the West is willing to forego cheap oil -- such as the petro from Iraq -- for more urgent political reasons. But I think the Iraq business basically stems from a fear that the Saudis will be displaced by an expansionist state, not by any feeling for the oppression of the Iraqis by the mad megalo Hussein. So that the pretence, which was floating about when the Gulf War was fought, that the Western alliance wanted democracy was a surface excuse that lost its force when the West achieved its real objective of making Iraq less threatening.
Does this mean I think the West is evil? No. The West is composed of opposing forces, too, temporary alliances, ephemeral idealisms. Certainly I hope I am a small part of the force that is secular, democratic, egalitarian, liberty loving. And that force basically thinks that a just society requires that the force of the rulers be modified by the power of the ruled to replace them; that minorities be protected systematically -- which means guaranteeing rights, and generating an independent judiciary to enforce those rights; that the political economy not be wholly controlled by an elite. Etc. These are pretty simple things to me. The logical mistake, I think, that is often made by Westerners is to think, okay, we encourage the secular, humanist state and then all of our interests are coordinated. That's simply false. If the Sauds, or the Iraqis, became democratic in the deep sense tomorrow, their interests would still not correspond to the interests of, say, America. Some of the interests would be similar, some dissimilar. I think the advantage of civil society is that, in the end, diverging interests don't require mortal hostility. In that sense, American idealists, since Wilson (who opposed the French and British plan to carve up the Middle East into protectorates with odd, stupid territories with absurd names like Iraq) are almost always right in the long run."

Now, those who know and love Limited Inc (alas, how few!) know that we are ultra relativists. And so they may want to know how we reconcile our relativism with the seemingly universal claims we are making here for human rights.

This doesn't really seem problematic to me. It is simply a part of saying, if there is a state, there needs to be human rights in order to limit that state. If there is governance of another sort, such as tribal governance, that, too, produces limits. Those limits will be attached weakly to the rights accorded to all. You have no right to say what you will in your average Pentecostal church -- meaning that you can kicked out of that church without recourse. Limiting the ability of the church, or the state, to punish you is allowing the process of relativism to work -- because relativism necessarily needs differences to relativize. Does this mean that human rights discourse is universal? No, it means that a progressive politics attachs it to cultures and states, if and when they exist. In fact, if relativism has anything substantial to say about culture and human beings, it consists in this: 1. that cultural diversity is unavoidable, an essential part of what culture is -- cultures arise and form themselves with regard to their differences; 2. the value of culture, and of the human beings who become bearers of culture, can't be abstracted from the formation of culture and human beings as culture bearers. 3. These insights are bound to perspectives that we have in this age and space and culture. This doesn't mean that we have to respect other perspectives in this age and culture -- such as one that would say there is no human right to speech attaching to state dominance. Relativism isn't the same as tolerance for any position. It is odd that this jump is commonly made, as if that were self-evident. Relativisms can come in different types, from those that counsel tolerance like some Buddhist monk sunk in an ultimate trance to those that promote a robust struggle for survival among different points of view, like some Nietzsche freak. Count me among the Nietzsche freaks. My relativism comes out of the idea that any point of view is formed by struggle against other points of view -- it isn't given to us, ab nihilo.

There will be those who do not recognize, in what I'm saying, the relativism they heard attacked in Philosophy 101. Sorry. Limited Inc.'s relativism can accomodate Lord Acton's definition:

"By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. The state is competent to assign duties and draw the line between good and evil only in its own immediate sphere." The question of whether this liberty is too individualistic doesn't seem sociologically relevant to us. Most men and women will only do their duty as custom and opinion, authority and majorities, defines it. To form other authorities, majorities, customs and opinions -- to have, in other words, an openess to difference - is the very use and function of human rights. And this is where we stand, so help us deity - or non-deity, or nature, or as you like it.