from
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/koseth.html
The consequences of the Kosovo war for political philosophy and theory
are now becoming visible. Perhaps the politics of the Kosovo war are the
late expression of the post-1989 sense of victory among supporters of
liberal market democracy. Most young people in western Europe have never
heard any other moral judgment, than that their existing societies are
preferable to all others. The same applies in most cases to their
parents, and often their grandparents as well. During the 10 years since
1989, the claim that all alternatives to market democracy are
self-evidently wrong, has been dominant in European political thought.
At the same time, measurable social inequality has increased in most of
Europe, east and west. This is the background, I think, for the
developments around the Kosovo war, the emergence of "Paveway
liberalism". Few of these developments have a direct origin in Kosovo
itself:
- attitudes have hardened among supporters of liberal democracy: the
acceptance of assassination proposals, as a normal part of political
discussion, is a symptom of that
- there is a readiness to use military force, to implement market
democracy
- the identification with liberal-democratic values as a self-evident
truth, is especially strong among the groups which have profited from
the increasing inequality (Tony and Cherie Blair are classic examples)
- the existing society, with all its inequalities, is identified by
such people as the only alternative to "Auschwitz" - a world of
atrocities. Liberal philosophers have explicitly said this before: but
the effects are different, if a whole society comes to believe it
- the values and structure of existing society are implicitly also
identified as alternative to "Auschwitz", and therefore beyond
criticism, let alone reform or abolition
- the degree to which criticism of the existing society is tolerated
declines sharply, as this criticism is increasingly identified with
support for "Auschwitz"
This re-ideologisation of liberal-democracy is a double-edged sword.
When Tony Blair justifies the Kosovo war by claiming that the NATO is
bombing for its values, that is an implicit invitation to others with
different values, to bomb also. In particular, the defence of political
assassination as a legitimate tactic (for instance by the German
Environment Minister Trittin) was avoided in the past by political
leaders, for good reasons. Killing for beliefs, brings more killing for
beliefs.
No west European politician will say openly:
-
"People from the lower income groups must be excluded from higher
education, and trained for menial workfare jobs only. This is good for
the country, and anyone who criticises this is a Nazi, and an accomplice
to rape camps."
Yet this is obviously the emotional-level reaction of the new generation
of market-democratic leaders in Europe. To a large extent, it is the
attitude of the voters that elected them as well. Since social
inequality is only one of the fundamental value conflicts which can
undermine a nation state, such a hardening of attitudes is an important
destabilising factor in Europe.
--
Paul Treanor
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/koseth.html
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