(I was going to post this to the David Rieff thread below, but it seemed to me like it's something worth starting a new thread over.)
stupid Chris: In two days you've denied that Palestinians desire peace and prosperity, and declared that Palestinians are incapable of self-governance. You wonder why it appears racist? Try reading what you're writing.
Why are either of those necessarily racist judgments? It strikes me as naive that you (and Freddie) assume that all people naturally want to live in peace and prosperity. Even if it were true, it is clear that there are people -- all kinds of people -- who would not live in peace and prosperity if it meant a loss of liberty, self-determination or some other thing or value they held to be more important. In the case of the Palestinians, I'm sure that they'd rather be rich and at peace, but not at the cost of living in a world that contains Israel. Therefore, evidence indicates that peace and prosperity matters less to them than destroying Israel. Some things are worth fighting and suffering for. When we assume that living in bourgeois comfort is the natural telos of all human beings, we impose our Western middle class values onto a world that doesn't necessarily share them. I'm not saying the Palestinian who says he'd rather die fighting the Israelis than live with the shame of Israel's existence is right; I am saying that his calculation is at least explicable. The Palestinian of Gaza does not see the world as an American of Suburbia. The Israelis have to understand this, because their own survival depends on it.
If my judgment based on the evidence is wrong, then please point out where I err. But to say that it's "racist" to reach that conclusion is to substitute emoting for thinking.
Same with my judgment that the Palestinians are incapable of self-government. They live in a strong-man thugocracy, which is a cultural legacy of tribal Arab society (the book to read is David Pryce-Jones' "The Closed Circle"). I recall talking to a Catholic priest, an American who served a Palestinian parish south of Jerusalem, who shared with me the heartbreak of trying to lead his people. He said that it was plain to him, as an outsider, that Arafat and Fatah were robbing the people blind, and when the people complained, they'd blame the Jews. And that worked! He said the people were so quick to believe any conspiracy theory, no matter how outlandish, and that made them easy to manipulate by their chieftains. Look anywhere in the Arab world for an Arab polity that's good at self-government. You won't find it. This isn't because the Arabs are bad people -- they come into this world no better or no worse than any of us -- but because they have a culture that is ill-suited to democratic self-rule. One reason for our Iraq adventure turned out so badly is because our leaders sallied forth under the ideological conviction that the ability to govern oneself democratically occurs naturally in individuals and populations. It's not true, and it's not the least bit racist to say so. Mind you, a racist might reach the same conclusions for racist reasons, but it's fallacious to assume that the conclusion can only be reached for racist reasons.
Anyway, to observe that a particular people is incapable of self-government doesn't mean they don't deserve it. I say give the people what they want, and give it to 'em good and hard. The Italians are demonstrably less capable of self-government than, say, the Swedes. I do not think that means Italian democracy should go away, or it's anybody else's business how the Italians govern themselves (except insofar as Italian misgovernment threatens the stability of other nations).
As I have pointed out in this thread, Louisianians, my people, are not as good at rational and efficient self-government as, say, the people of Minnesota. This too is a cultural legacy -- chiefly a high tolerance for and expectation of corruption as normal. It's a legacy that can be overcome, like all cultural legacies, but one that hasn't been overcome yet, alas for us. It's not racist to say so. Similarly, polities governed by African-Americans tend to be badly administered for reasons having nothing to do with the genetic characteristics of the governors, but the culture of the governed that produces the governors. In Dallas a few years ago, every single black member of the city council was under FBI investigation for corruption. Why? In part because corruption was simply part of the way they did business in that part of the city, and it was expected. Naturally, when they'd get called on it, they'd blame the white man for being racist. For many, probably most, of their constituents, that was sufficient to exonerate those leaders, who continued to rob them blind. The difference between south Dallas and the West Bank is not so great. It's all culture.
A few years ago, a television journalist in New Orleans left his job and moved his family out of the state, telling his colleagues that he didn't want to raise his kids in a culture that valued parades more than libraries. I see his point. Louisianians are great at parades, not so great at government. It's not an ethnic thing: Huey P. Long was as white as they come, and was phenomenally corrupt. I love a parade. People would rather vacation in New Orleans than Minneapolis-St. Paul, but they'd probably rather do business and raise a family in Minneapolis-St. Paul (remember my story from earlier this year about my south Louisiana exile friends who are on a certain level miserable living far from Louisiana, amid all the sturdy Yankees of the Twin Cities -- and yet, they don't want to go back to the mess that is Louisiana life; you can't separate what is great about living in Louisiana from what is awful about it, because the two come from the same root: culture.)
Some cultures are better at certain things than they are at others. Why are we scared to admit what's obvious? Why do we have to pretend that all cultures are equally good at everything? Because it's ideologically more comforting? Because powerful peoples in the past have used this fact as a pretext for oppression? But using a truth for immoral ends doesn't make it any less true.
Sam Huntington got pilloried as a racist for pointing out that Western liberal democracy is largely the product of English Protestant culture. I'm neither English nor Protestant, and it doesn't upset me or make me feel diminished that he was right. He was concerned that opening the doors indiscriminately to Latin American immigrants, whose political culture is much different from the American culture, was going to diminish our politics here, and make them more Latin American (e.g., passive, susceptible to a patron rule, etc.). If he's wrong, he's wrong on the evidence. His judgment, though, makes him racist not in the least -- though if his opponents can make it stick, it relieves them of the duty of answering his argument.
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Hmmm....could the differences in governing have something to do with proximity to the equator? I know, stupid thought. Every example you used for good self-governing people are Northern societies and every example used of poor self-governing peoples are Southern societies.
Just a thought.
Otherwise, the essay is execellent and I agree with you. It takes courage to point out the obvious and challenge the word usage. Telling the truth has always taken courage. Keep up the good work.
Re: Every example you used for good self-governing people are Northern societies and every example used of poor self-governing peoples are Southern societies.
Australia extends from the southern hemispehere tropics into the southern warm-temperate zone. This seems to belie notions that climate influence politics.
"This is historical nonsense. By the time of the Crusades (12th not 9th century by the way), Islamic civilization had already become fractured, weak and decadent and was no threat to Europe, which is why the Crusades were even possible and why they enjoyed their initial success. True, the Turks were a threat to Byzantium, but that's another matter entirely-- and the idiot Crusaders ignored the Turks entirely; hence their long term failure."
Perhaps it is my imagination that the Ottoman Empire kept invading Europe until the Nineteenth Century...although I allow that you are talking about an earlier period. In any event, the Crusades were a direct response to Islamic imperialism and invasions of Christian kingdoms in North Africa and Iberia. The Crusade led by the Good Sir James Douglas of Scotland (also known as the Black Douglas) fought in Spain at the behest of the Spanish against the Moors. Muslim raiders and slave expeditions continued to plague and harry Christian nations through the Middle Ages.
Re: Perhaps it is my imagination that the Ottoman Empire kept invading Europe until the Nineteenth Century
The last serious invasion of Europe by the Ottomans was in 1683 (and that was a last hurrah on a doomed empire, on par with Early's raid against Washington in 1864). Moreover Turks are not Arabs and should never be confused with them. As I mentioned in my post the Turks were a problem for everyone in the Middle East during the Crusader era-- and the Crusaders' strategic blunders actually made the Turkic take-over of Byzantium, the Balkans and the Arab lands of the Middle East inevitable.
Re: the Crusades were a direct response to Islamic imperialism and invasions of Christian kingdoms in North Africa and Iberia.
No they weren't. The expansion of the Caliphate occured in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Crusades happened 400+ years later. That's like claiming World War II was caused by the Renaissance dynastic feuds of the houses of Hapsburgs and Valois. By 1096 the Caliphate had fractured into multiple successor states, all of which had become weakened and corrupt. Turkic tribes marauded through the east (much as Germannic tribes had marauded through the collapse of Rome) and the west was overrun by Berbers. It was the Turkish defeat of the Byzantines, and the fact that the Turks refused to honor the old and long-established treaties regarding Chirstian pilgrimmages and holy sites, that sparked the Crusades. No one in western Europe feared a new Arab invasion at that point in history. That danger was as far past as the Spanish Armada was in Queen Victoria's day.
Just a point of clarification: "invasion" is not an accurate term. The Ottoman Empire already extended into the European continent, and it was a full-fledged war between the Ottomans and Hapsburgs up to that point. The Battle of Vienna was the decisive defeat for the Ottomans, and during the next few years they withdrew considerably from previously held territories (Hungary, notably).
The boundary eventually settled on the Croatia-Serbia frontier, helping to define and cement the ethnic and religious hostility between those two cultures through the modern era, and setting the mish-mash of cultures and religion in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
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