Let's agree to a moratorium on calling each other p****** for a while and figure out how to save the free world from ISIS, and also from the perhaps equally profound risk of allowing ISIS to orient us toward a response that descends into totalitarianism.
I'm going to put some thoughts down, mainly just to clarify things for myself. If you find it interesting or objectionable, that will be fine.
First, we need to address what I will call the Jeff Ward///Robert Nisbet///libertarian concern about proportion. This concern holds that the danger posed by ISIS, while very real, has been blown completely out of proportion. They will point out that deaths caused by ISIS and other Islamic terror groups amount to a tiny fraction of those caused by automobile accidents and other mundane things. And yet we are not terrified by automobile accidents. Nor do we quiz our presidential candidates on what they plan to do about auto accidents. The argument follows that the disproportional fear that the public attaches to the ISIS threat will inevitably put (or keep) the country on a war footing, and that war always expands the power of the federal bureaucracy--an expansion of power that can only come at the expense of individual liberties. It is an argument that reprises the notion that "war is the health of the State".
There is a lot to this, and nobody who has studied the history of the United States from the Civil War on can deny that the bureaucratic structures put in place during time of war, even when they are dismantled at the war's end, nevertheless form a blueprint or a pattern that can be quickly resurrected and adapted to meet the need of any future crisis, social concern, or moral crusade. The war socialism of 1917-18 was eventually transfigured into the New Deal; just as the war socialism of 1942-45 was transfigured into the Great Society, the war on poverty, and the war on drugs.
If we plan on fighting a major action against ISIS, we have to consider the changes that previous major actions have had upon the nature of our government, and as a consequence, upon the nature of American life. As the federal bureaucracy has increased in its reach and its list of responsibilities, the more local institutions of town, church, and family have fallen into decline or dissolution. As these ancient forces of community become increasingly marginalized, public education loses the natural authority that is its precondition. The idea of the good life toward which society points its citizens can take many forms, but whatever form the idea of the good life takes, it is necessarily a local life. It can never find expression in a vast federal body of many millions of human beings. In other words, public education can never be valid without healthy local institutions. War tends to concentrate power away from the community and thereby to weaken these institutions.
And yet the good life to which we aspire is always a secondary consideration to life itself. As Aristotle said more than two thousand years ago, "The city comes into existence for the sake of life, but it exists for the sake of the good life." Life, quite obviously, is the indispensable precondition to the good life. In order to enjoy liberty and pursue happiness, we must first secure the life that ISIS has implicitly promised to destroy. And while it is no doubt true that the ISIS threat remains minimal in terms of body counts when compared with automobile accidents, it nevertheless has the undeniable potential to expand the scale of its threat exponentially. It is not inconceivable that if ISIS goes un-checked, it could undermine and eventually overthrow many or most of the decidedly un-scriptural regimes that currently hold power on Islam's home turf. The job of checking ISIS will become far more difficult and far more costly in blood and treasure if it is allowed to assume anything approaching the shape of historical Caliphate.
And so I ask: How do we balance these double risks? I'm completely sure that the current policy is inadequate to the task of defeating ISIS. But we also cannot minimize the very real threat of a major military action, even if successful in checking ISIS, pushing us toward a totalitarian State which will have technical capabilities the likes of which no regime in history has conceived of.
I honestly don't know the way out. And I freely admit it.
(And, as always, I apologize for the length.)
I'm going to put some thoughts down, mainly just to clarify things for myself. If you find it interesting or objectionable, that will be fine.
First, we need to address what I will call the Jeff Ward///Robert Nisbet///libertarian concern about proportion. This concern holds that the danger posed by ISIS, while very real, has been blown completely out of proportion. They will point out that deaths caused by ISIS and other Islamic terror groups amount to a tiny fraction of those caused by automobile accidents and other mundane things. And yet we are not terrified by automobile accidents. Nor do we quiz our presidential candidates on what they plan to do about auto accidents. The argument follows that the disproportional fear that the public attaches to the ISIS threat will inevitably put (or keep) the country on a war footing, and that war always expands the power of the federal bureaucracy--an expansion of power that can only come at the expense of individual liberties. It is an argument that reprises the notion that "war is the health of the State".
There is a lot to this, and nobody who has studied the history of the United States from the Civil War on can deny that the bureaucratic structures put in place during time of war, even when they are dismantled at the war's end, nevertheless form a blueprint or a pattern that can be quickly resurrected and adapted to meet the need of any future crisis, social concern, or moral crusade. The war socialism of 1917-18 was eventually transfigured into the New Deal; just as the war socialism of 1942-45 was transfigured into the Great Society, the war on poverty, and the war on drugs.
If we plan on fighting a major action against ISIS, we have to consider the changes that previous major actions have had upon the nature of our government, and as a consequence, upon the nature of American life. As the federal bureaucracy has increased in its reach and its list of responsibilities, the more local institutions of town, church, and family have fallen into decline or dissolution. As these ancient forces of community become increasingly marginalized, public education loses the natural authority that is its precondition. The idea of the good life toward which society points its citizens can take many forms, but whatever form the idea of the good life takes, it is necessarily a local life. It can never find expression in a vast federal body of many millions of human beings. In other words, public education can never be valid without healthy local institutions. War tends to concentrate power away from the community and thereby to weaken these institutions.
And yet the good life to which we aspire is always a secondary consideration to life itself. As Aristotle said more than two thousand years ago, "The city comes into existence for the sake of life, but it exists for the sake of the good life." Life, quite obviously, is the indispensable precondition to the good life. In order to enjoy liberty and pursue happiness, we must first secure the life that ISIS has implicitly promised to destroy. And while it is no doubt true that the ISIS threat remains minimal in terms of body counts when compared with automobile accidents, it nevertheless has the undeniable potential to expand the scale of its threat exponentially. It is not inconceivable that if ISIS goes un-checked, it could undermine and eventually overthrow many or most of the decidedly un-scriptural regimes that currently hold power on Islam's home turf. The job of checking ISIS will become far more difficult and far more costly in blood and treasure if it is allowed to assume anything approaching the shape of historical Caliphate.
And so I ask: How do we balance these double risks? I'm completely sure that the current policy is inadequate to the task of defeating ISIS. But we also cannot minimize the very real threat of a major military action, even if successful in checking ISIS, pushing us toward a totalitarian State which will have technical capabilities the likes of which no regime in history has conceived of.
I honestly don't know the way out. And I freely admit it.
(And, as always, I apologize for the length.)
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