The attacks of 9/11/01 awoke Americans — by no means all — to the threat posed by totalitarian interpretations of Islam. John Fonte, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, has long been concerned about another ideology that is perhaps no less dangerous to free peoples.
It goes by names that sound either vaguely utopian, like “global governance,” or too wonky to worry about, like “transnational progressivism.” But in a new book, “Sovereignty or Submission,” Fonte makes clear how this ideology — widely embraced in Europe and, increasingly, among elites in the United States as well — is stealthily undermining liberal democracy, self-government, constitutionalism, individual freedom and even traditional internationalism, the relations among sovereign nation-states. To put it bluntly: While the jihadists call for “Death to the West!” the transnational progressives are quietly promoting civilizational suicide.
That may not be what they intend. In theory, they are only recognizing “global interdependence” and arguing that “global problems require global solutions.” In practice, however, their project is to shift political and economic power from the citizens of nation-states and their elected representatives to the United Nations, unelected bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and NGOs.
Progressivism had its American debut in the later part of the 1800s. This late Victorian period was one of intellectual smugness in the fields of science and of politics.
The most influential physicists of that day thought that all of the groundwork had been laid to totally explain the physical world.
All that had to be done was to apply known mathematics and science to the physical problems remaining and it all could be explained in ‘a neatly tied package.’ And then along came Planck, Einstein, Hubble, the quantum thinkers, etc. and that arrogant assumption was shattered.
Likewise, the problems of transition from monarchies and the pre-industrial revolution era into the post-monarchial era of the industrial revolution could be be quickly solved by applying imaginative non-empirical/non-experiential/non-practical thought to how human should organize themselves.
The history of the human race was unimportant. What was important were the faddish ideas of a few new thinkers regarding ‘social theory.’
And voila! Socialism and progressivism and communism and national socialism and corporatist fascism and the United Nations and etc. were born out of the minds of a few simplistic thinkers who over simplified the fundemental problems of individual human nature and inter-human relationships.
The lessons and hard-learned axioms regarding human governmance that stretched back thousands of years were ‘tossed into the dust bin.’
And that is where we are in the western world today. Progressivism and the other ‘isms’ have so penetrated the consciousness of the modern ‘educated’ political thinkers that its newly created beliefs, creeds and axioms have become a ‘new religion’ which must be believed in and followed slavbishly ‘or else.’
But progressivism at it core, is still nothing more than an old fad that is still faddish.
It is simplistic and it is to be honest, ‘pure dripping drivel.’
The concept of ‘internationalism’ that flows from ‘progressivism’ that exalts the United Nations as the arbiter and potential governor of the nations is shattered when one realizes that most of the members of the UN are not democracies, most of those nations tolerate intolerable human rights violations, and many of them are run by persons who would be considered felons and/or war criminals in most democracies.
Note the intellectual laziness here:
[blockquote]In practice, however, their project [b]is[/b] to shift political and economic power from the citizens of nation-states and their elected representatives to the United Nations, unelected bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and NGOs. (emphasis mine)[/blockquote]
Instead of the more accurate “their project [b]would[/b] shift” you see the slide into the use of “is to”, implying intent. Why waste time (and blog space) on an (editorial) analysis that is so clearly an attack on the supposed conspiratorial “hidden motives” of progressivism? As a thinking citizen of the world, I might actually be interested in a cool-headed look at the unintended consequences of the well-meaning position that “global problems require global solutions.” Surely a world that is growing smaller and more interconnected (whether we like it or not) deserves such an analysis (and much ink has been spilled to that end), but, sadly, that is not what we find here.