Obama Invokes the Carter Doctrine on Foreign Policy

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President Obama has promised to “rebuild America’s image abroad” by way of aggressive diplomacy. The idea being that the world hates America because, under former President George W. Bush, the US became an international bully. But this theme is not new. It was echoed some 35 years earlier by a US President with the worst foreign policy record imaginable, President Jimmy Carter.

Arthur Herman of Commentary Magazine, takes up this argument brilliantly in an article entitled, “The Return of Carterism?” Herman relates, in pertinent part:

“…..Carter proclaimed, governments that violated their own citizens’ human rights would no longer receive American support but would instead incur our opposition. A foreign policy so constructed would, theoretically, encourage the growth of democracy in third-world countries and reduce the appeal of more radical or revolutionary ideologies.

In the event, the opposite happened. As Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out at the time, instead of paving the way to democracy, the withdrawal of support from petty dictators in Latin America paved the way for a surrender of American interests—at the expense of our hopes for democratization.1 The only countries on which the U.S. could bring significant pressure to bear were those ruled by authoritarians who restricted certain freedoms while leaving others intact; by contrast, we enjoyed little or no leverage at all with totalitarian regimes that systematically destroyed all
freedoms and treated us as their ideological enemy.

Thus the fallacy turned out to be not the old cold-war mentality but the new Carter human-rights policy. When we ceased supporting our bad allies, they were replaced by far worse antagonists.”

Socialism’s Honesty Problem

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You might think this strange, but I yearn for a return to the days of the pre-1950’s Socialist movement. That time when Socialists possessed the indispensable characteristic of intellectual honesty. You may not know it given today’s political discourse, but Socialists were at one time, quite candid about their views and their prescription(s) for societal transition.

Professor Harold J Laski was one such individual. A well-regarded Socialist intellectual and member of the British Fabian Society, Laski holds his place among the most powerful figures in the movement during the early 20th century. In “Labour and the Constitution” (10, Sep 1932) Laski questions “whether in a period of transition to socialism, a Labour Government can risk the overthrow of its measures as a result of the next general election.” He leaves the question unanswered at least affirmatively. In reading the essay in its entirety, one is left with no doubts as to his feelings on the matter.

Then in Democracy in Crisis (1933) he elaborated these ideas even further. Laski concludes that parliamentary democracy must not be allowed to form an obstacle to the realization of Socialism. For in his view, not only would a Socialist government “take vast powers and legislate under them by ordinance and decree” and “suspend the classic formulae of normal opposition” but the “continuance of parliamentary government would depend on its (i.e. the Labour government’s) possession of guarantees from the Conservative Party that its work of transformation would not be disrupted by repeal in the event of its defeat at the polls.”

This, of course, was the plan for Great Britain. Yet it would appear that the American Socialists of the Democrat Party have with considerable élan, taken up the Laski formulae.

HELP!! I see dead principles

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We often ask ourselves with regard to motion pictures, whether art mirrors life or life, art. The concept was brought to the fore yet again as I pondered the current socio-political landscape of the United States, particularly with respect to the status of “Reagan era conservatism.”

Do you recall the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Sixth Sense (1999)? It’s a very entertaining piece of work indeed. But what interests me at the moment is the story of one of its title characters, Dr. Malcolm Crowe.

You see, Dr. Crowe is a brilliant therapist who one evening gets a visit from a patient whom he failed to help. That patient shoots Crowe and then kills himself. Fast forward a few years and Dr. Crowe is back in business with a new troubled patient whom he is dedicated to helping more than ever in light of the previous failure. This young man’s problem: he sees and communicates with the dead. Crowe, at first incredulous, ultimately comes to believe that his patient may not be delusional. And as he opens to the possibility that such things may in fact be possible, he is able to give this severely troubled child the help he really needs. When the deed is done, Dr. Crowe is in for yet another revelation. He discovers that he himself never survived the attack by his former patient. Dr. Crow realizes that he is one of the dead his young patient sees. Though a gifted therapist, a man of scientific realities, he never knew or even conceived the possibility that he was no longer among the living. Isn’t Dr. Crowe the epitome of the GOP and “conservatism”?

For months now we have been fed a steady diet of lamentations by “conservative” columnists and talking-heads on the death of “conservatism” or “the Reagan era”, etc. All are presented in reference to the victories of Democrats in the last mid-term Congressional elections and/or the victory of Democrats in the elections last Fall which effectively put them in a position of unchecked power at the Federal level. Now I certainly concede the fact that the Left wields enormous political power but this didn’t begin with recent electoral victories.

The sad reality is that the “Reagan era” ended when Ronald Reagan left office. An associate of mine recently penned an article entitled, “The Fault, dear Republicans, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” wherein she castigates Republicans/conservatives for wallowing in the glory of minor victories for decades rather than staying on the offensive. Fact is this is exactly what the Right has done since Reagan. Sure there was the victory of the GOP in the 1994 mid-term elections. But after securing this victory, the GOP forgot about the struggle. The Party ultimately became the principle defender of the very bureaucratic and Statist (or dare I say Socialist) policies to which it was supposedly opposed. By 1996, the difference between the Republicans and Democrats was becoming titular, at best. If I may borrow from an old bard, Socialism by any other name is still quite odious.

The reason Socialists have been so successful is that they never allowed a victory to lull them into a false sense of complacency and security. Socialism is in every respect, a constant struggle. The battle never ends. Hence with every victory, they behave as if they are still the downtrodden masses. It takes no more than a cursory gander at the society around us to appreciate the fact that the Left dominates every aspect of the culture (journalism, entertainment, academia, government), and has so for decades on end.

Obama’s ascendancy did not signal the death of “conservatism.” “Conservatism”, like Dr. Malcolm Crowe, has been dead for quite some time. The signs have long been visible to those of us with the sixth political sense. It just took a while for "conservatives" to realize the fact.