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Jewish World Review Sept. 24, 2002 / 18 Tishrei, 5763
The Left's New Idea
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
The hard left, having failed to prevail through the democratic institutions of American life --
the executive branch, the Congress, the court system, state and local governments -- is doing a
dangerous end-run via the United Nations and other international institutions.
One example: two years ago, Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee, Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, American Friends Service Committee, the ACLU, and NAACP issued a "call to action" to
Mary Robinson, the then-U.N. Human Rights Commissioner. In it, these left-wingers asserted
that "men and women of color [suffer] at the hands of the United States criminal justice
system" and cannot get a fair deal. So, they announced, "In our frustration, we now turn to
the United Nations and have asked the high commissioner ... to aid us in holding the United
States accountable."
In other words, having failed to get their way through the usual methods of effecting change
in the United States, they took their case to the United Nations. Their effort came to naught
but, as John Fonte of the Hudson Institute shows in the current issue of "Orbis" magazine,
this attempted end-run around American democracy represents a significant movement.
He dubs it "transnational progressivism," but I prefer the name "bureaucratic leftism."
Whatever one calls it, Fonte establishes in his eye-opening article that, in the tradition of
fascism and communism, this effort constitutes a significant "challenge to liberal democracy."
To fully absorb its threat requires reading Fonte's article in full. In summary, unable to
achieve their goals through the ballot box, law professors, political activists, foundation
officers, NGO bureaucrats, corporation executives, and practicing politicians now seek to
achieve those goals by denigrating the two central pillars of modern liberal democracy, the
individual citizen and the nation-state.
Bureaucratic leftism diminishes the role of the individual in many ways:
Then bureaucratic leftism weakens the nation-state:
Although forwarded by progressives and garbed in post-modern lingo, Fonte shows that
bureaucratic leftism represents a throw-back to a pre-modern age in Europe when rulers were
unelected. Today's bureaucrats (like Mary Robinson) effectively fill the role of yesteryear's
kings.
Predictably, the left's newest project is having more success in Western countries other than
the United States - Canada, France, Israel, and New Zealand come to mind. Fonte implies that
Americans will end up with the main burden of fending off this ugly system, just as it did
fascism and communism - and is now doing with militant Islam.
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By Daniel Pipes
Only by recognizing bureaucratic leftism for what it is can it be stopped before its malign
ideas have a chance to do real damage.
JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Militant Islam Reaches America. Comment by clicking here.