Iraq Election Left World Our World - Road to the Middle Class

IT WAS A famous victory, the election of 12/15—for Iraq, for President Bush-in-a-Bubble, for his not always constant supporters, and for the men and women of the incomparable U.S. armed forces. For a moment we can take a moment to savor the emotion of the moment, like that of the Iraqi general, Mustafa Abdul Aziz, who returned from abroad to vote, only to find out that he was not on the election roll. Could he at least dip his finger in the indelible purple ink?

“‘That’s okay,’ they told me. And as I dipped my finger in the inkpot, my eyes watered and tears started coming down,” Abdul Aziz said at the polling center, surrounded by poll workers overcome by his story. “That’s what we always wanted, a chance to live a free democratic life. I and my family had suffered just to have such a day, and now it has become a reality.”

But let us not be distracted by hearts and flowers. Let us remember the Iraqi election of December 15, 2005 as another small step in the advance of global democratic capitalism and self-government.

If our lefty friends seem less than enthusiastic about all this, it is because they experience the advance of democratic capitalism not as the advance of civilization but as an imperial conquest of the kind represented by Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, or Adolf Hitler. But they are wrong.

Genghis Khan rode out on the Asian steppe in the thirteenth century to bring the whole world under his personal rule. But the Europeans who sailed the oceans of the world starting in 1492 spread like the anonymous vectors of an epidemic. Under the commercial empires of the Dutch Republic and Britain, a decentralized infection of global commerce spread from Europe to India and Indonesia, and then to China. Now the western virus, growing stronger over the years, is threatening to overcome the hardy resistance of the Middle East. The left hates it. Why is that?

As Nietzsche taught us in The Birth of Tragedy, the world is a contest between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the forces of order and bright shining surface versus the chthonic forces of instinct and disorder. But the two opposites need each other. The Apollonian needs the chaotic forces of the Dionysian to save it from sterility, while the Dionysian needs the Apollonian to save it from an orgy of self-destruction. It cannot therefore be a surprise that in the middle of the nineteenth century a dark force arose from the global ooze to oppose the harmonious, ordered, self-governing commonwealth of democratic capitalism. We call this global counterforce the Left.

The Left hates our democratic capitalism and always will. Its well-born fanatics oppose against the virtuous circle of western law and enterprise a witch’s brew of romantic idealism and revolutionary blood lust. They long for a world of perfect peace and caring community while secretly lusting after the homicidal orgasm of the bloodthirsty terrorist gang. And they always will.

This is a good thing. The ever-present Dionysian left forces the Apollonian world of democratic capitalism to constantly critique and improve itself.

But wait, you say. Doesn’t the left believe in non-violence, that “violence never solves anything?” How come it opposes the spread of capitalist prosperity yet passes in silence over the beheadings of terrorists? It’s an interesting question. The left answers it by dividing its world into two. There is first of all the world of “us,” the educated, rational elite in where differences are resolved in facilitated discussions between stakeholders. Then there is the world of “them”—the oppressed—where violence threatens to break out if the just demands of the oppressed and the traditionally marginalized are not met. It’s a variation on the old Billie Holiday song: Comes rage, nothing can be done.

In their world the idea of a risky, sustained effort to extend the commonwealth of democratic capitalism to 27 million people suffering under a brutal dictator, an effort renewed in the face of mistakes, setbacks, and a hail of elite criticism, just doesn’t make sense.

In their world Time has chosen Bono and the Gateses instead of the Iraqi people as Persons of the Year for 2005. Time prefers to celebrate elite Lady Bountifuls and their billions instead of ordinary Iraqis struggling to establish self-government.

But in our world, the world of self-governing families, freedom, commerce, and nations under God, every small advance in the frontiers of freedom such as the late, great Iraqi national election is an occasion to rejoice, just like that former Iraqi general who didn’t even get to vote.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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