Whither the Green Party in 2004?

[Dogface]

And the point is? Buckley, Will, O’Reilly, Buchanan–all pretty much fascist from my point of view. That’s how I tease out the crypto-fascists. These are the folks who are so narrow-minded that they think anyone who fails to agree with their agenda MUST be an adherent of the “opposite”. Thus, a fascist Green would presume that anybody who considers Greens to be extremists (which they are) MUST likewise be a “right-wing” extremist.

[BrainGlutton]

Posted by Dogface:

And the point is? Buckley, Will, O’Reilly, Buchanan–all pretty much fascist from my point of view. That’s how I tease out the crypto-fascists. These are the folks who are so narrow-minded that they think anyone who fails to agree with their agenda MUST be an adherent of the “opposite”. Thus, a fascist Green would presume that anybody who considers Greens to be extremists (which they are) MUST likewise be a “right-wing” extremist.

Now you’re really twisting things, here, Dogface. I suggest you read Fascism: A History, by Roger Eatwell (Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 1996). “Fascist” is not simply a generic term for an authoritarian, a militarist, an ideologue, or someone who is sure he is right about everything. Fascism is a 20th-Century political ideology with a very well-established historical tradition. Fascist ideology is characterized by a strange combination of an anti-Marxist form of “socialism”; anti-traditionalism (sometimes combined with a desire to revive the “traditions” of an imagined and romanticised distant past); a desire for radical reconstruction of society, including elimination of class distinctions but only within the national group; statist authoritarianism; agressive militarism and a “might makes right” ethic; a mystical form of nationalism and communal groupthink; and in most forms a hatred of some demonized “other.” Fascism occupies a very well-defined position on the political map, and that is a good piece away from the Green position. Fascism is also a good piece away from Buckley’s position, and Will’s, and O’Reilly’s, and even Buchanan’s. Fascist rule requires centralized national government and a strong military. The Greens are consistent decentralists and anti-militarists. So is Buchanan. Buckley, etc., are less consistent.

Michael Line put the matter in perspective in his article “Which Civilisation?” published in Prospect, October 25, 2001 (http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm...ticle&pubID=598):

[T]he most important civilisational divide-one that seems even more important after the events of 11th September-may be the one between supernatural civilisations and secular civilisations. The divide is roughly, but not completely, correlated with the divide between pre-modern agrarian societies and industrial societies. Of the supernatural civilisations, the most significant have been the Abrahamic (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and the Indic (Hinduism and Buddhism). The two major Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam, conquered most of the world’s territory and people, including south Asia and the Americas. Only China and Japan, among the major non-western nations, escaped Muslim or Christian rule. Today Muslim theocracies like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia are the most extreme examples of societies based on supernatural religion.

On the secular side of the civilisational divide, there have been three major traditions: humanism, rationalism and romanticism. These three traditions originated in Europe but now have adherents around the world. All three are essentially secular worldviews which do not need to invoke the authority of divine revelation or mystical gnosis (though some romantics are mystics or pantheists and some humanists have been religious believers). In respects other than their common secularism, the three traditions are fundamentally different from one another.

Humanist civilisation crystallised in Renaissance Italy, before spreading to the Netherlands, Britain, and the US. This liberal, commercial, increasingly democratic civilisation has spread to other nations by emulation (Lafayette’s France, Atatork’s Turkey, Yeltsin’s Russia) and by conquest and conversion (post-1945 Germany and Japan). Humanists seek to ameliorate the problems of social life with the guidance of practical wisdom, derived chiefly from history, literature and custom, with little or no reference to supernatural religion or natural science, with the possible exception of the emergent sociobiology. Humanists tend to be modest as philosophers and cautious as reformers. Examples of great humanist thinkers and statesmen are Petrarch, Erasmus, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Franklin, Hume, Burke, Smith, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison.

Rationalism, a world view underlying a number of secular creeds, first crystallised in 17th and 18th-century France. Rationalists reject the humanist distinction between practical wisdom and natural science. The goal of rationalists of all kinds is to devise a science of society, modelled on natural science, which can serve as the basis for the construction of a “rational” social order. Stephen Toulmin makes a useful distinction between the “reasonableness” of Renaissance humanists and the “rationality” of Enlightenment philosophes. The rationalist pantheon includes social engineers like Condorcet, St Simon, Comte, Fourier, Bentham, Marx, Lenin and Ayn Rand. (The “secular humanists” who support world federalism and utopian social reform are really rationalists).

Romanticism, the third major secular world view, has spread widely from its original homeland, late 18th and early 19th-century Germany. Romantics reject both reasonableness and rationality, they exalt the inspired unreason of the artistic genius, the child, the primitive uncorrupted by civilisation. Rousseau, Emerson, Wagner, Nietszche and Frantz Fanon should be on a list of romantic prophets, and idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel arguably are closer to romanticism than to humanism or rationalism.

The American revolution, and the French revolution in its constitutional phases, were humanist. The French terror and the Bolshevik terror were rationalist. The second world war was a struggle of three secular civilisations: humanism (Roosevelt and Churchill), rationalism (Stalin) and romanticism (Hitler). The war by Islamic radicals against the US, Europe and Israel is, among other things, a conflict between religious and humanist civilisation.

Fascists are romantics. If you examine Green literature policy statements, you will see they occupy a middle-ground between humanism and rationalism. Pat Buchanan and his America First Party occupy a middle-ground between humanism and traditional supernaturalism. Neither are fascists. Then there are some purely supernaturalist groupings, such as the Constitution Party and the Christian Coalition. In the United States, of course, the humanist tradition is the center-of-gravity of our political culture and all the other traditions sort of buzz around humanism – and usually have to redefine themselves in humanist terms to have any small measure of success.

Relating this to your above comments – you seem to have been (mis)using the word “ideologue” to mean only a rationalist ideologue. But any political viewpoint, including the most moderate humanism, can have its ideologues.

[2sense]

*Originally posted by John Corrado *
**I think the Green Party has a long way to go before they need to start even worrying about whether their candidate is consitutionally eligible to serve. **

I think John hit the nail on the head. It doesn’t matter much who the Party runs because we won’t win. I might vote for Dean but none of the other viable Dems has much of a chance at all to gain my vote.

I’d rather see Bush and his ilk run the country into the ground all at once so Americans can’t miss the fact that destructive Republican policies are to blame. To me that’s better than the slow decline as Dems periodically pull us back from the cliff. If a Dem wants my support they need to chart a new course rather than simply blunting the conservative attack.

[adaher]

What you want already exists in Europe.

So does the result of such a course. 10+% unemployment, stagnant growth, increasing crime…

Ever since the country reversed the liberal trend and went conservative starting in 1980, we’ve prospered. People love to cite Clinton as an example of great liberal politics, but in fact he led a center-right government that cut spending growth and expanded free trade and reformed welfare.