Freedom, Internationalism,
Relativism, and Peace

"Truth on one side of the Pyrenees, error on the other" (Pascal).

The majority of conservatives these days (with the exception of some free-marketers and libertarians) loudly oppose relativism and advocate absolute values. The contemporary "anything goes" philosophy bothers lots of people, and many are repelled by the kinkier aspects of our various countercultures, so the anti-relativist tirades get a pretty good audience. But nobody ever talks about where relativism comes from.

Relativism is to a large degree institutional and legal in origin. The international system, federalism, limited government, secular government, and individual rights (as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights) all have a relativizing effect. What's legal in one place is illegal in another -- not just from nation to nation, but from state to state, city to city, and even from county to county. (In some states of the US each county has its own liquor laws.) Likewise, in a secular state guaranteeing individual rights, you are able to do whatever you want to, within the law, even if everyone in your community hates what you're doing. The tendency in the West over the last several centuries has been to relax the bonds of absolute values, especially religious and traditional values, and to replace them with more limited and more explicit legal codes, thus creating large zones of individual freedom which are differently defined from one political unit to another.

In the West there was a considerable degree of secularity and freedom in the Greek and Roman worlds, but much less so in the medieval world. The freedoms we take for granted came into being at the end of the Catholic-Protestant religious wars of approximately 1500--1650 AD. These wars depopulated large areas of Europe, with the entire populations of cities being massacred in some cases. Ultimately these wars came to be a cynical power struggle between Spain and France within which all the supposed religious goals were lost. (Spain and France were both Catholic, but for fear of Spain, France supported the Swedes who were the bulwark of the Protestant armies.)

The first stop to ending these wars was simply an agreement that states would not concern themselves with the internal religious affairs of other states. This did not lead immediately to personal religious freedom. Quite the contrary; since religious minorities could no longer call for outside help, many followers of minority religions were forced to emigrate. But in a few states, in different ways, real religious freedom did develop: Switzerland, Holland, England, and finally the United States. (Contrary to what Pat Robertson tells us, the US was the most secular and least religious state at that time. The "God" of the Declaration of Independence is an inclusive, Deist, not-necessarily-Christian God. The United States at its foundation was primarily inhabited by Christians, but it was an explicitly secular state).

There's a second level of significance to what I'm saying, though. The international agreements that ended up making freedom possible also strongly discouraged intervention in the internal affairs of other nations. This was a rather cynical kind of arrangement, since it allowed governments to treat their own citizens ruthlessly without fear of outside interference. But the new system was motivated by a very realistic and humane awareness that the horrors of war are usually much greater than any benefits that might come from war. This system was not perfect and was frequently violated, but it did lead to a multinational system which was stable for centuries and which led indirectly to an explosion of freedom -- a system which has never been matched in the parts of the world where pluralism and relativism never did develop. (The most recent violators of this system, Stalin and Hitler, are held in such utter and universal contempt that more distant violators such as Bismarck and Napoleon are honored far less than they used to be.)

While the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare is a pretty clear violation of the system I've been talking about, this system has always been imperfect and violations have not been rare. However, the fact that Bush's strategists seem to put no real limit to their plans and seem to have an utter contempt for the opinions of all other nations and of all international organizations, it seems that they really plan to discard the system entirely and replace it with a completely different system dominated by the United States. The talk of the warbloggers about going to war against all of Islam takes us all the way back to the crusades of Gustavus Adolphus and the Spanish Hapsburgs -- which is exactly the thing that "relativistic" international law was supposed to prevent.

If you want to know why the Europeans are being so pissy about our plans in Iraq, I just told you. They've been through the empire-building period a few times now already and they never want to go through that again. It's not that hard to figure out that the Bush administration's targets are not limited to Iraq -- I doubt that anyone at all, even within the administration, has any idea where this all will end.*

The Europeans are aware that Saddam's regime is brutal, but they don't really believe that our "Shock and Awe" program has much chance of leading Iraq to democracy. (They might even be aware that not a single member of the Bush administration has a strong pro-democracy record, either domestically or in foreign affairs). And if they happen to know anything about the many good Republican Christians who are praying for Armageddon, they are probably frightened rather than reassured by the "deep religious beliefs" which are supposedly one of the good things about George W. Bush.

And when you factor in Bush's oft-expressed belief that he doesn't have to care what anyone else in the world thinks, and the fact that the reasons he gives us for what he's planning to do seem to have nothing whatever to do with the real reasons which were in play during his decision-making process, and the fact that many of the things he says are false....

You don't really have to explain why Europe doesn't support Bush. You really have to explain why anyone does support him.

* Yes, I'm saying that Bush is more dangerous than Saddam. Saddam is a medium-sized regional despot with very limited offensive capabilities who is hemmed in by his enemies. Bush is the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military the world has ever seen, and seems to have committed himself to an open-ended war against enemies whose specific identities are as yet unknown. For more go here.

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