Michael Goldfarb Embraces Soft Power
Chez MacDo (cc photo by _gene_)
The other day, The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb wrote:
In the course of Donald Morrison’s review of Au Revoir to All That by Michael Steinberger, we learn that McDonald’s is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea, but nonetheless, it feels like a major triumph for American culture and cuisine. I once ate at the McDonald’s right next to the Arc de Triomphe. My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.
It’s worth pointing out that this is not hegemony at all, but rather the dread soft power. When I was in Finland, I saw an episode of Medium dubbed into Swedish on television. There was a Starbucks near the hotel I stayed at in Geneva. I’ve shown you my photo of Dunkin Coffee in Barcelona before. I’m told that an American-style Santa Claus is popular in Japan. They play basketball in China and baseball in Colombia. And of course Microsoft Office and iPods are ubiquitous wherever you have people rich enough to own modern information technology.
This is all good stuff. Just as it’s good that you can get sushi in any major world city, that Ikea has brought Scandinavian design concepts to a mass market, that Belgian beers are now widely available in the U.S., that there’s now a DC branch of a South African spicy chicken chain, and all the rest.
But the point is that that kind of thing is the real strength of the United States of America. Our culture, our technology, and our ideas—things that like sushi and the klippan sofa are good enough on their own terms to be appealing to others without resort to coercion and domination.
77 Responses to “Michael Goldfarb Embraces Soft Power”
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July 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.
But, don’t they use the metric system in France?
I wonder what they call it there.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Two words: CJ (from Baywatch) and Borat. That’s soft power.
Who’s looking forward to Brüno? Me.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Wow… someone that takes soft power seriously? Sad.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Hector rant in 5… 4…
July 1st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I not only had a Big Mac Value Meal in Paris when I was there, I then went next door and watched the premiere of Mission: Impossible 3. However, I had just spent 8 hours in the Louvre and done the double-decker bus tour for the checklist as well.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Goldfarb is truly idiotic. I supposed that the Japanese are currently our hegemon because they sell a hell of a lot more cars than “we” do.
Wow, they have McDonald’s in France! USA! USA!
I was in Asia nearly 20 years ago, and McDonalds was ubiquitous, as was KFC, Pizza Hut, 7-11, Coca Cola, and Shaquille O’Neal. So what?
July 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
‘Ikea’: Swedish for ‘particle board’.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Goldfarb is truly idiotic
Why? He makes a nice living serving this tripe. Its the people who get a kick out of consuming it who’re the true idiots.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:22 pm
peep,
rent Pulp Fiction
July 1st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
peep Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony.
But, don’t they use the metric system in France?
I wonder what they call it there.
Peep:
Are you serious? Anyone who’s seen “Pulp Fiction” knows what the French call a Quarter Pounder. A Royale with cheese. Guess you don’t have a big brain like Brad. (For all the good did him.) lol
July 1st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
we learn that McDonald’s is the largest private employer in all of France, which is sort of like being the largest provider of health insurance in North Korea,
I sense that this is supposed to be witty, even insightful.
WalMart is the largest private employer in all of the US of A. What’s teh witty insightful analogy there?
July 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Swedish design concept suck.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
yes, and in puzzling ways
July 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
The couch in the picture is really ugly.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
concepts.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Re: This is all good stuff.
Of course. COmmunities are torn apart, the world’s resources concentrated in the hands of a few, peasants separated from their land and workers from their labor power, religions and cultures are destroyed in the name of Britney Spears and Christopher Hitchens, and it’s all good stuff. Because a bunch of hipsters can chat at Georgetown cocktail parties about how they ate a muffin at a Starbucks in Teheran, and it’s that just so cool, man.
Globalization is ultimately a grave threat to the human race, as it is based on the fundamental premise that freedom is more important than virtue and individual autonomy more important than ties of obligation to the collective. This is a profoundly evil ideology, and shows that modern hipsterdom is rotten at his core. Our only hope is that global warming destroys modern liberal capitalism before liberal capitalism destroys human virtue.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:26 pm
popeye Santa likes reggae and smokin’ some fine herb
July 1st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Actually, Swedish design concepts were available to the mass market in the US long before Ikea. My family bought a dining room set from a place called Scan Design (which emphasized in all of its ads that they sold Scandinavian furniture) in the late 1970s.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Yes, peep has seen Pulp Fiction.
peep was trying to make a joke.
Oh, well…peep was briefly amused, anyway.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:30 pm
I thought Ikea was Swedish for Allen wrench.
The notion of getting off on the ubiquitous presence of an American corporation is really strange unless your last name is Kroc. Am I supposed to be rooting for Microsoft or have my sense of self-worth tied up in Apple? Being a right winger really is a form of mental illness.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:32 pm
“Goldfarb is truly idiotic. I supposed that the Japanese are currently our hegemon because they sell a hell of a lot more cars than “we” do.”
No, Goldfarb is right however painful it is to admit. I mean the Iranian regime showed the movies of “Lord of the Rings” just the other weekend trying to mollify/distract the protesters and get them to forget about the election. They call us the “Great Satan” and yet still succumb to our soft power.
And I bet “peeps” was knowlingly referencing Pulp Fiction.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:32 pm
The only foreign country where I’ve ever eaten at McDonald’s is Slovakia. If you’ve ever had Slovakian food, you’d know why. Kind of like Austrian food, but without the flavor. Even the Chinese food there is completely devoid of flavor. The beer is good, though. As for Santa, I always think it’s funny how all the prostitutes in Bangkok wear Santa hats during the Christmas season. So festive!
July 1st, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Belgian beer?
Only a merlot Democrat could say that.
July 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Odd I came here following a link allegedly to your post on French teenagers who have to answer questions on whether it is absurd to desire the impossible. You thought that it is.
I just heard about an English language test for French University students. Started with a reading sample — Obama’s inaugural address. Then questions like “how inspiring was this”, “what made you feel hope as you read this” etc.
Don’t tell David Horowitz, but French students are, evidently, being forced to express (and motivate and explain this is University level) admiration for the President of the USA to pass an exam.
Now I happen to be irrationally nationalistic and long wished (without hoping) to live to see the day in which the French were overwhelmed by enthusiasm for a US President. Was that desire absurd ?
July 1st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
There are those who say that a good deal of 20th century US foreign policy was geared around making the world safe for Coca-Cola.
Seems to me that the lesson is that cuddling up to dictators and those who abuse human rights is cool so long as American companies are allowed to make profits.
They have KFC in Communist China now, so I guess all the other stuff about that regime doesn’t matter any more.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:17 pm
“we learn that McDonald’s is the largest private employer in all of France”
It’s also not true…..
Carrefour,for one, is larger. And i suspect peugeot, renault,BNP,france telecom,eads, etc etc.
Mcdonalds apparently employs 55,000 people in france. I doubt it even makes the top 10 employers. Figure that most of those will be part time jobs, and in FTE terms it probably struggles to make the top 20.
It’s probably the largest employer in the restaurant sector
but in the whole french economy ?
Not a chance.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
That’s probably bullshit, the McD thing, since McD is mostly made of franchises, individual small businesses. I thought it would be the Carrefour or something.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Hector didn’t disappoint. Those Communist apparatchiki are becoming liberal “hipsters” thanks to McDonald’s and Desperate Housewives.
By the way Hector, weren’t the Catholic Church and Marx precursors in heinous cosmopolitan hipsterism?
July 1st, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Ah, sorry kb, didn’t see your comment.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
“There are those who say that a good deal of 20th century US foreign policy was geared around making the world safe for Coca-Cola.”
Whether that was the intent or not, they sure did a good job of it. Coca Cola is the one product you can always get anywhere.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Matt,
Glad to hear that you’re a Medium fan.
Also, thank you for turning me on to The Wire. I’m finally watching it, and totally hooked. I’m just starting the 2nd season.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
homogeneous global culture of consumerism .. hooray! that is the end of history
July 1st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
“Globalization is ultimately a grave threat to the human race, as it is based on the fundamental premise that freedom is more important than virtue and individual autonomy more important than ties of obligation to the collective. This is a profoundly evil ideology, and shows that modern hipsterdom is rotten at his core. Our only hope is that global warming destroys modern liberal capitalism before liberal capitalism destroys human virtue.”
Exactly. The pope should issue an encyclical against it, to join such other greatest hits of the forward-looking catholic church as
- separation of Church and State is evil
- good Catholics shouldn’t vote
- papal infallibility
- birth control is wrong (as is being gay)
Not to mention, of course, the great virtue the Catholic Church showed during the Nazi years — was that extreme example of moral cowardliness the sort of “destruction of human virtue by liberal capitalism” you had in mind?
Or perhaps what you had in mind was earlier examples? The treatment of Jews from the Middle Ages on? The whole witch nonsense? The treatment of Cathars and Huguenots? Liberal Capitalism hadn’t really got going then, but that’s a minor quibble.
“The Catholic Church — We learned nothing from Galileo and Darwin, and we’re proud of it”.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
COmmunities are torn apart, the world’s resources concentrated in the hands of a few, peasants separated from their land and workers from their labor power, religions and cultures are destroyed in the name of Britney Spears…
Agree
Globalization is ultimately a grave threat to the human race
Agree
Implicating hipsters, and, well, the remainder of the screed, not so much
July 1st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
You know what else tastes like hegemony? A Chinese current accounts statement. Isn’t that funny?
July 1st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
That’s probably bullshit, the McD thing, since McD is mostly made of franchises, individual small businesses.
Yeah. The real bullshit point is the insinuation that everyone in France works for the state, when I’d bet good money on there being a much wider distribution of the small businesses that the GOP supposedly worships. The village baker, butcher, charcutier, José le Plombier, etc.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I don’t know where this daft urban myth got started but yes, Carrefour is roughly ten times as big. What is true, though, is that France is an extremely important territory for McDonalds, and it makes a lot of money there (this is at least partly because neither KFC nor Burger King have done any business at all). This is largely due to fifteen years of extremely good management by Denis Hennequin, CEO of McDonald’s Europe. It’s quite likely that he’s going to get the top job as a result and that, therefore, McDonald’s Corporation will be run by a Frenchman. Comment dit-on le “hegemonie”?
July 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
It’s hard to take anybody seriously who considers McDonald’s a trimumphal cuisine, particularly in France.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Oops! Hector wrote “liberal capitalism” and I read “liberal democracy”. Of course, one cannot agree with the other statements but disagree with the denunciation of liberal capitalism. Let us join together and denounce liberal capitalism.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Yes, peep has seen Pulp Fiction.
peep was trying to make a joke.
Oh, well…peep was briefly amused, anyway.
fwiw, I could tell you were knowingly referencing Pulp Fiction and I thought it was funny.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:22 pm
It’s worth pointing out that this is not hegemony at all, but rather the dread soft power.
Actually, before Nye, Deudney and Ikenberry called it “penetrated hegemony.” And before Deudney and Ikenberry, Gramsci called it “hegemony.”
July 1st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Globalization is ultimately a grave threat to the human race, as it is based on the fundamental premise that freedom is more important than virtue and individual autonomy more important than ties of obligation to the collective.
I’ve finally figured it out!
Hector’s ideal society: The Borg.
July 1st, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Oh, and more seriously, if “the fundamental premise that freedom is more important than virtue and individual autonomy more important than ties of obligation to the collective” is incorrect, then it seems to me there isn’t any particular reason why slavery should be illegal.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Wogglebug,
I dislike both liberal capitalism _and_ liberal democracy. Indeed, one justifies self-interest in the sphere of economics, and the other in the sphere of politics. So I see little difference between them.
Dilan Esper,
We’ve been over this many times already. The primary goods- virtues such as love, honor, faith, generosity, courage, affection- are things intrinsically good in and of themselves. Your hipster buzzwords like ‘agency’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’ and so forth are strictly instrumental goods- they are sometimes necessary to achieve the higher goods but cannot be viewed as intrinsically among the higher goods themselves. A just society would be one that stressed obedience to the natural order and the laws of virtue, and that kept yahoos like yourself firmly outside the political realm.
July 1st, 2009 at 7:48 pm
But the point is that that kind of thing is the real strength of the United States of America. Our culture, our technology, and our ideas….
Maybe this is a dumb question but…with perhaps the exception of Medium, none of the things matt mentions is an idea; its just American businesses selling stuff. How is that the “real strength” of America?
Also, while I don’t subscribe to Goldfarb’s worldview, I have to admit that last line is pretty funny…
July 1st, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Hector,
You really are a piece of work.
If we’re talking about Globalization lets talk about the biggest destroyer of traditional cultures. No Christianity outside of the Middle East and Rome. The English should be Druids, The Indians all Budhists and Hindus and so on. .
July 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Two things. One hegemony and “soft power” are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary both soft power and Matty’s “soft power” are, arguably, necessary to economic hegemony vis-a-vis direct, imperial hegemony. Secondly, I think that Matty’s definition of soft power is incorrect; thus, the scare quotes. Soft power, generally, refers to specific interventions by various actors for various reason. Such as: China’s new involvement in African development, or the laughable attempts at corporate “social responsibility”. What he seems to be referring to is a replacement of one culture with another; the fact that it is a proprietary, corporate culture make it no less hegemonic.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
We’ve been over this many times already. The primary goods- virtues such as love, honor, faith, generosity, courage, affection- are things intrinsically good in and of themselves. Your hipster buzzwords like ‘agency’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’ and so forth are strictly instrumental goods- they are sometimes necessary to achieve the higher goods but cannot be viewed as intrinsically among the higher goods themselves. A just society would be one that stressed obedience to the natural order and the laws of virtue, and that kept yahoos like yourself firmly outside the political realm.
So in other words, I’m right. Under your system, there’s nothing wrong with slavery, because personal autonomy, agency, and rights are instrumental goods and enslaving someone is fine as long as it ensures obedience to what you consider the natural order and the laws of virtue.
Hector, you know, the great irony is that the only reason you are able to rant against personal autonomy is because there is a societal consensus that your personal autonomy to do so is respected. You seem to think that there is something inferior about merely “instrumental” goods, but without the instruments, you never get to play your tune (or any tune, for that matter).
July 1st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
“Hector’s ideal society: The Borg.”
Fortunately, I put my beer down and swallowed before reading that. But Hector’s ideal society really seems to be the British Empire, whose actions in India he consistently defends. Strangely, it was the British Empire that pretty much invented globalization and the annihilation of civilizations. But they were Christian, so it’s all cool.
July 1st, 2009 at 8:49 pm
On a side note, and because no else has done it:
“Do you no what the call a quarter-pounder with cheese in Paris?”
“They don’t call it quarter-pounder with cheese?”
“No, man, they got the metric system over there, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a quarter-pounder is.”
“Well, wada they call it?”
“They call it a Royale with cheese.”
“A Royale with cheese.”
“That right.”
“What do they call a Big Mac?”
“Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.”
“Eh, Le Big Mac.”
“What they call a Whopper?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t go into Burger King.”
July 1st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Re: But Hector’s ideal society really seems to be the British Empire, whose actions in India he consistently defend
Fostert,
Nonsense. I defend British colonialism in India as a necessary evil. The British rule in India was deeply evil, don’t mistake me, and there was much about Victorian Britain that was deeply evil at heart. Blake was right when he wrote about the ‘dark satanic mills’. Nevertheless, it was still a lesser evil than the horror of the caste system, and it was a lesser evil than the rule of the various Nawabs, Wazirs, Maharajas, Nizams, and I know not what else. The Sikh Empire might have been better alternative than the British, but they were pretty short lived. Anyway, I’m not particular about this conclusion and I could be convinced otherwise. I will say this, the caste system was monumentally evil, all the more so because it perverted a good and beautiful religion to make its claims, and if it took two centuries of John Bull’s iron heel to destroy the dragon forever then the price was worth it.
Dilan,
As the Haitians say, are you incapable of complexity? Can you concede there’s a difference between ‘Personal autonomy has NO value’ and ‘Personal autonomy has less value then you give it?’ I don’t think freedom is the ultimate value, but I also think it does have a certain value. A society which gives too low a value to personal freedom of choice is an evil one, for reasons that Berdyaev pointed out. A society that gives it too high a value is also evil. And of course, personal and political freedom are not necessarily the same thing.
Liberalism enjoys so much success today (as did monarchy, Bolshevism, anarchism, fascism, and various other creeds in its day) because it contains a certain large portion of truth. It is not a full denial of the natural law scheme (unlike, say, Nietzscheanism) but rather a heresy, in the same way that (say) Gnosticism is a heresy of Christianity. It takes a certain element of the natural order (freedom and autonomy), things which are good in themselves, and then swells them into something grotesque by isolating them from all the other values to which they should be connected. Marxism and Falangism did the same, incidentally. Liberalism is bad because it exaggerates something good beyond its natural limits. But that thing (freedom and autonomy) is not in its intrinsic nature bad. As Augustine said, even the greatest of angels could become a demon if he lived for himself and not for God.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 am
Liberalism is bad because it exaggerates something good beyond its natural limits
Which is a pretty pointless criticism since alternative systems seem to do an even more spectacular job of twisting things well beyond their natural limits.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:46 am
“The Sikh Empire might have been better alternative than the British, but they were pretty short lived.”
The Sikhs are at their best when they are an abused minority. They fight harder. I certainly don’t think they should be abused, but they are quite successful on their own. They are the Jews of India. They can survive through anything and you still owe them money. And I mean this in the utmost respect of both the Jews and the Sikhs. They truly are impressive people. But there is no way the Sikhs could have ruled India. Too bad, they’d have ruled it better than anyone.
But I’m glad that you, Hector, can recognize that The Raj wasn’t always so good.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:10 am
I hear pizza’s quite popular in the U.S. Yet another example of Roman Imperialism slowly taking over our lives.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 am
“Nevertheless, it was still a lesser evil than the horror of the caste system,”
I can’t really imagine much worse than the Caste System, except for the Inquisitions. The Buddha argued against it a long time ago, but nobody listened to him, either. Well, actually, they did really listen to him for a thousand years, but they chased him out after that. But why did Buddhism get wiped out? It would make sense if it happened during the Mughal invasion, but it didn’t. It happened two centuries earlier and the Hindus took them out. And so the same system came back to life. And it really took off during The Raj because it was convenient for the British to exploit. It really is the most evil system ever, but the Anglicans really loved it for their purposes. But in the end, there is one good thing about it: the same people will cremate you and throw you ashes in the Ganga. In India, that matters a lot to people.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 am
“I hear pizza’s quite popular in the U.S.”
That’s because our style of it was invented in New Jersey. Just like like the Fortune Cookie. And trust me, you don’t want to get it in other countries. You’d think that Vietnam would be the worst, but it’s not. Australia is even worse.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:22 am
What kind of fucking retard goes to France and eats at McDonald’s?
You may as well go to Brazil and take in an ice hockey game…
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:37 am
It’s hard to take anybody seriously who considers McDonald’s a trimumphal cuisine, particularly in France.
It’s not the cuisine, I believe it’s the hours of operations. Between 2pm and 7pm McDos and kebab shops are pretty much the only places where you can get food. And, of course, it’s a place for teens to hang out.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:54 am
Re: They are the Jews of India. They can survive through anything and you still owe them money. And I mean this in the utmost respect of both the Jews and the Sikhs. They truly are impressive people. But there is no way the Sikhs could have ruled India. Too bad, they’d have ruled it better than anyon
Fostert,
Actually I’ve never heard the Sikhs be referred t as ‘the Jews of India’ though I have heard that appelation applied to the Banias (a traditional merchant caste) and the Jains. I don’t want to get too far into the traditional Jewish stereotypes so I’ll stop here.
The Sikhs ruled a good chunk of Pakistan and a bit of northern India in their day, including Kashmir. The one part of their empire they couldn’t rule effectively were the Pashtuns around Peshawar. They tried to control the Pashtuns by having a brutal Italian mercenary as governor, who did things like hang rebels from the top of mosques, but even that couldn’t pacify the region. Not that I blame them- neither the British nor the Russians nor the Americans have managed to pacify the Pashtuns.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 am
Yes, but General Tsao outranks Colonel Sanders.
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:55 am
I’d say Hector’s ideal society would be a Jesuit Reduction.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
“But the point is that that kind of thing is the real strength of the United States of America. Our culture, our technology, and our ideas…”
So shitty coffee and awful mass-produced food are reflective of our “culture”, “technology”, and best of all, “ideas”?!! Wow, if that is what we have to offer to the world, no wonder they hate us. Any American who needs to feel some cultural inferiority should go to Paris. When I was there, I felt intense admiration for a culture that could produce such a jewel of a city, mixed with regret that I come from a culture (the “culture” of McDonald’s) that could not.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:36 am
Dilan Esper:
I’ve finally figured it out!
Hector’s ideal society: The Borg.
The Borg on crack. Just put the pipe down son…
But Dilan wins the thread.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Probably you did not. Medium is shown in Finland, but like all the other tv shows (with the exception of shows for kids), it is not dubbed.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Hector:
Your hipster buzzwords like ‘agency’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’ and so forth are strictly instrumental goods- they are sometimes necessary to achieve the higher goods but cannot be viewed as intrinsically among the higher goods themselves.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a hipster who wanted to talk about agency, rights or autonomy, they’re too busy being hip in their Calvin Klein jeans.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
My quarter pounder tasted like hegemony
That’s funny, cause every one I’ve ever had tasted like sugar-coated crap.
OTOH, the loaf of bread, hunk of cheese and bottle of wine I purchased from an honest-to-god small business entrepreneur on the Left Bank was one of the tastiest things I’ve ever had, and cost me a grand total of 6 francs.
Anybody who celebrates the invasion of American fast-food franchises in places like Europe is an idiot, and no friend of small business.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Njorl,
Not exactly, but I suppose the Jesuit Reductions would do for a first approximation.
Poptarts,
I can’t parse your rhetoric. Do you mean what you say, or do you mean to be ironic? In other words, are you with the hipsters or are you with the partisans of the natural order?
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
As the Haitians say, are you incapable of complexity? Can you concede there’s a difference between ‘Personal autonomy has NO value’ and ‘Personal autonomy has less value then you give it?’
Hector, I think you are being slippery here. Earlier in the thread, you said “Globalization is ultimately a grave threat to the human race, as it is based on the fundamental premise that freedom is more important than virtue and individual autonomy more important than ties of obligation to the collective.” And then you said “Your hipster buzzwords like ‘agency’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’ and so forth are strictly instrumental goods- they are sometimes necessary to achieve the higher goods but cannot be viewed as intrinsically among the higher goods themselves.”
Neither of those statements is an endorsement of the rather anodyne position that autonomy, while very important, is sometimes subordinate to other goals. (Indeed, even pretty hard core libertarians, let alone liberals, admit that.)
Rather, you were saying in the first quote that it is flat wrong to say that autonomy is more important than obligations to the collective. Under that schema, personal autonomy has no value at all, because you have only so much of it as the collective permits you. Kim Jong Il’s North Korea or 1984’s Oceania are perfectly legitimate societies, because they have simply decided that autonomy be subordinated to the collective.
In your second quote, you decry autonomy as purely instrumental and concede only that it is sometimes necessary (not even always necessary) to achieve other goods. Again, that’s pretty much a recipe for saying that except in those situations where it is necessary for the collective to grant us a little autonomy, we belong to the state.
Look, I don’t doubt that your ACTUAL views are closer to your last comment, i.e., that personal autonomy is important, it is a good, it is deserving of respect, but that liberalism takes it too far and in doing so has a negative impact on other goods that are very important such as virtue. But that’s the thing– I think you sometimes want to sound shocking, or you don’t want to admit the hard trade-offs against legitimate personal autonomy interests that would really be necessary to achieve your idealized state, and trashing personal autonomy is a good way to accomplish those ends.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Dilan,
Autonomy is, at best, an instrumental good. Freedom is good insofar as it allows (and is needed) for us to pursue virtue. But the thing which is good in itself (the first order good) is virtue. Therefore virtue is more important than freedom. Freedom and autonomy are not without any value at all, but their value must be seen as secondary and instrumental. I’m not sure where I said anything otherwise. Let me be clear- I fundamentally disagree with the values on which this country was based. And I fully acknowledge that my ideal state would be a deeply illiberal one, which would exclude many people with dangerous ideas- feminists, liberals, capitalists, Bolsheviks- from the political arena, and one which sought to replace the idea of political leaders as public servants chosen by the people with the idea of leaders as fathers to their people, with a deep emotional and moral bond of love between them and their people. As the campaign slogan of Mr. Chavez said in ‘06, “Love with love must be paid.” I.e. the people owe unconditional filial love to Mr. Chavez, and he owes unconditional paternal love to the people.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
As the campaign slogan of Mr. Chavez said in ‘06, “Love with love must be paid.” I.e. the people owe unconditional filial love to Mr. Chavez, and he owes unconditional paternal love to the people.
In other words, you want the public to have won the victory over themselves and love Big Brother.
Again, I think you are being very slippery here. It’s fine and good, in the abstract, to be talking about freedom being less important than other ends, but governments don’t govern in the abstract. Particular freedoms are taken away, and not always (or even usually) to pursue virtuous ends.
I’ll tell you a story about Hugo Chavez, who, by the way, I am not some overbearing critic of. As a general matter, I think he’s a big improvement over what came before him, kind of the equivalent of Putin in Russia.
But there’s a television network called Sur which is on my cable system and gives me news from South America from primary sources (i.e., news shows broadcast in the various South American countries in Spanish). A couple of those news shows come from Venezuela. One of them, a longtime supplier of Sur programming, is Globovision.
Globovision has the distinction of being the last independent television network in Venezuela. Note the word I used. Independent. All the other networks remaining are either state-run or state-controlled. And Chavez has moved to shut down Globovision, and as a result, they are now basically relegated to broadcasting as a pirate station as the government fights to shut them down.
Now here’s the thing. You probably assume, because you love Chavez, that Globovision is some right-wing network filled with capitalist elitists who broadcast counterrevolutionary messages, and this is why they are being shut down. This is certainly what Chavez claims. But I’ve watched Globovision. I’ve watched them cover their own shutdown. I’ve watched them cover Chavez. They are completely fair and, if there is any bias at all, it is a slight bias towards the government. Ideologically, they are probably somewhere to the left of CNN.
In other words, Chavez doesn’t want to shut these guys down because he believes, as you seem to believe, that freedom of the press is a secondary value and that it is subordinate to primary values of pursuing a socialist utopia. Nope. Chavez wants to shut these people down because they are independent. Period. He doesn’t want independent mass media out there. Just like Putin.
And this, Hector, is truly the greatest flaw in your thinking. These governments that you want the public to subordinate themselves to, they are not run by God. They are run by men. Imperfect men. Egotistical men. Men who are constantly looking out for themselves, as all men do. Un-virtuous men.
Look at how the Catholic Church responded to the sex abuse scandal. Any virtue there? Were they pursuing the good, returning the love from their flock?
The Enlightenment thinkers who crafted political liberalism didn’t do it because they were convinced that if you just gave people lots of freedom, the resulting society would be good. They had no such illusions. They did it because governments that have a lot of power have an inexorable tendency towards tyranny. Institutions without accountability tend to react to scandal the way the Catholic Church did, or the way the Chinese government reacted to the SARS virus.
You can rail against freedom, decry it as a “hipster” value, call it merely instrumental, but the fact of the matter remains, the governmental systems you advocate don’t tend to give us Plato’s Republic. They give us Stalin’s Russia. Meanwhile, the US may have a decadent, sex-obsessed, selfish society that you can criticize on all sorts of grounds, but we also haven’t had purges, don’t have a military coup every 3 years, don’t have show trials, and don’t have government officials shutting down independent television stations.
In other words, freedom WORKS. It doesn’t create virtue– nothing can– but it protects us against some of humanity’s worst instincts. And your system doesn’t do that, which is why, at the end of the day, you can lob all the critiques you want at liberalism, but your idealized society is not only unattainable, but dangerous.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Re: Now here’s the thing. You probably assume, because you love Chavez, that Globovision is some right-wing network filled with capitalist elitists who broadcast counterrevolutionary messages, and this is why they are being shut down. This is certainly what Chavez claims
I do assume that. Not because Chavez claims it, but because it happens to be true.
If there was some independent radio station out there that was run by decent and moral people, and not by treasonous fascist hacks, then I’m sure Chavez would be happy to let them broadcast. The unfortunate (?) reality is that no such station existed. The entire Venezuelan opposition is a conspiratorial, oligarchical, greed-obsessed, secessionist brood of vipers, and forfeited their right to exist as a political movement a very long time ago. Rights come with responsibilities, and if you don’t obey the responsibilities then you don’t deserve the rights.
The rest of your post reads like a junior high school textbook about why America is the greatest country on the face of the earth. Sorry, but I’m not in middle school anymore.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I do assume that. Not because Chavez claims it, but because it happens to be true. If there was some independent radio station out there that was run by decent and moral people, and not by treasonous fascist hacks, then I’m sure Chavez would be happy to let them broadcast.
Hector, I’ve watched Globovision. That was the point of the story. Have you?
You can “assume” lots of things about Chavez, but that doesn’t make them true. There was a time when American leftists assumed the best about Stalin’s intentions too. They assumed wrong.
For many years, many American Catholics assumed the best about their Church’s leadership. Tragically, while they made those assumptions, many children got abused.
Hector, you need to stop assuming the best about ANY dictatorial government. Indeed, any government at all. If time has proven anything, it is that Lord Acton was right about power.
The rest of your post reads like a junior high school textbook about why America is the greatest country on the face of the earth. Sorry, but I’m not in middle school anymore.
First, where did I specifically mention America? Western Europe is filled with liberal societies. Latin America is filled with liberal societies. The far east has several liberal societies. Every one of them accepts the premises that I discussed. This isn’t about America being the greatest country on earth; it’s about the fact that political liberalism solves a problem that is endemic in the the type of government that you advocate.
And as for it sounding like a junior high school textbook– Hector, that’s not a counterargument. Many things in junior high school textbooks happen to be right. And this happens to be one of them.
Here’s how I will sharpen the discussion, Hector. As you know, in liberal societies, free speech and democratic rights are generally seen as a safety valve against tyranny. If the government gets tyrannical, the public can march in the streets, use the media, vote them out, etc.
What safety valve, if any, do you envision against a tyrannical government or an individual tyrant that gains control in your preferred system and starts misusing the government’s power to promote what you would concede are non-virtuous ends? How would your system stop that from happening? And what historical evidence do you have of such a safety valve working?
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Re: What safety valve, if any, do you envision against a tyrannical government or an individual tyrant that gains control in your preferred system and starts misusing the government’s power to promote what you would concede are non-virtuous ends?
Oh, hell. I’m sure something will turn up.
I’m amused by how much time you take out of your busy lawyer’s day to try and correct me out of my delusion. Does it bother you that much that someone, somewhere in the world, does not buy into the collected Gospels of Jefferson, Smith, and Judith Jarvis Thomsen?
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Hector, it doesn’t bother me that you have different beliefs from the American founding fathers. Plenty of people do, and frankly, they were wrong about lots of things.
But what does bother me is that you seem to think that you can throw a bunch of attacks on liberalism for its various perceived shortcomings while basically ignoring that liberalism was founded on an extremely persuasive critique of granting the sort of near-absolute power to the state that seems to be the foundation of your conception of the state. And that pointing to various shortcomings in liberal societies does not in any way address that critique.
In other words, if you want to go around imposing gross restrictions on people’s freedoms, which you claim you do, then you have to have some answer for what is going to replace the role that those freedoms have in preventing slippage into tyranny.
And indeed, the fact that you really don’t even know what Hugo Chavez is actually doing in shutting down television stations is indicative of what the problem is– you are like the communist dupe from 1949 who refused to believe no matter what the evidence that Stalin had actually ruled in a tyrannical fashion.
Hector, there’s plenty of room for anti-liberal political philosophies. But what you can’t do is simply assume away the problems that gave rise to political liberalism.
There’s one more thing I think I ought to say about this. You spend quite a lot of time deriding your political opponents as “hipsters”. You use that term to describe some unserious type hanging around an urban coffeehouse without any concern for the struggles of the masses in some far off place. And I actually am somewhat aware of the force of your critique– I’ve drank more than one cup of coffee in such a place over the years.
But you are really guilty of the same thing you accuse the hipsters are. To advocate illiberalism, without acknowledging the downsides of such systems, is just as unserious as anything you accuse a hipster of doing.
I’d respect you a lot more if you would come to grips with the implications of what you advocate, really understand what the dangers of these sorts of governments are, and argue in a really rigorous and thought-out fashion why it is worth taking that risk or what institutions could stop a slippage into tyranny. I’d also respect you a lot more if you didn’t do that, but also didn’t pretend that the people who advocate for liberal societies, permissiveness, tolerance, and democratic decisionmaking were a bunch of evil libertine hipsters.
But you want to condemn all those who disagree with you as unserious while reserving for yourself the right to have your own unserious ideas. That doesn’t work, Hector.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Re: You spend quite a lot of time deriding your political opponents as “hipsters”. You use that term to describe some unserious type hanging around an urban coffeehouse without any concern for the struggles of the masses in some far off place. And I actually am somewhat aware of the force of your critique– I’ve drank more than one cup of coffee in such a place over the years.
Ironically, Dilan, you just captured almost perfectly exactly what I mean by using the word ‘hipster’. And you did so in a considerably more concise way then I’ve ever been able to. Thanks. “Morally and intellectually unserious” is pretty much exactly what I intend to convey by the term.
As for the rest of your post, you raise some good points. I have too much work going on at this time of year to address them, but I promise to think about them and address them at length later. You’ve definitely given me some inspiration to sharpen my arguments.
Can we agree on this though- Chavez himself is NOT a tyrant (show me the mass graves or labor camps in Venezuela), and his organized opposition IS a bunch of oligarchic creeps that cares nothing for the people. In this particular case, can we agree that the separation of powers, and the presence of oppo outlets like Globovision, is not accomplishing a hell of a lot of good?
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:27 am
Chavez isn’t a tyrant, and his POLITICAL enemies are mostly the kleptocrats of the Venezuelan right. But a free press is still important, not to do the bidding of the kleptocrats but to keep an eye on Chavez.
To me, Globovision is a lot clearer case than the Russian media outlets that Putin shut down. Those media outlets were basically the toys of the Russian oligarchs, who weren’t really upset at Putin being antidemocratic, just that Putin wasn’t serving their interests in his antidemocratic actions like Yeltsin did. But Globovision is basically a pretty independent, down the line news organization. As I said, I’ve watched it, and it’s basically a CNN, a tick or two to the left. This wasn’t the Fox News Channel, and Chavez is giving his opponents a continuing gift by trying to shut it down.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
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