The author who coined the term Transnational Progressivism, John Fonte has come out with a new essay. It was published on Front Page Magazine on June 4. The understated title "Global Governance vs. the Liberal Democratic Nation-State" might alternatively have been, the neotot war on democracy.
Ever since the anti-philosophers of the Counter-Enlightenment put their vision of a Utopian world government to paper, the followers have been chasing and enacting the global phantom, which is the inevitable outcome of the questionable theory of progress. The West hasn't had the occasion yet, but if the course of history is seen over longer periods of time, cycles of rise and decline may be closer to reality.
Fonte follows the traditional political alignment, which doesn't recognize the reactionists as a movement to counter modernism. In that view the collectivist Left is a continuance of the Enlightenment proper, and leaves the Rightist Socialists (nationalists and National Socialists) out of the equation.
The following commentary puts the Fonte paper in the light of the political theory that on the contrary sees the departure from modernism as a counter movement directed against classical Liberalism: individualism, limited government, reason and capitalism.
Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804) sought ways to maintain order within states and peace among nations. Since he considered it necessary to have some way to repress lawless and immoral acts, he suggested a federation of states, leading ultimately to world governance, the result of progress through the dialectic of cooperation versus conflict. This brings man as a species to a more ethically evolved order. The process would culminate in a world government, an international and cosmopolitan federation of states, pending the coming of the Day of Judgment.
Unlike today's postmodernists Kant at least displayed an understanding of reality in fearing that this vision of global peace might turn out to be worse than the old, chaotic world order, indeed become "the most horrible despotism."
Kant is the spiritual father of (post)modern subjectivism: he held that the world as we see it is an illusion, the true world being an invisible universe which man cannot know. Instead 'reality' conforms to the mind: the anti-logic of subjectivism.
Kant's follower Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) built upon Kant's philosophies and his world vision of a global federation of states. Hegel's philosophy is a secular fantasy, loosely based on Judeo-Christian cosmology: God's projection, a spirit called the Absolute, represents creation which is seeking reunification with God. Its development by means of struggle and conflict through which it gets to know itself is the story of the history of the world. The story ends when the Absolute - reunited with God - achieves full self-consciousness.
Hegel is the father of (post)modern collectivism and personal subjectivism, the 'narrative.' His theme was the state, which he presented as a reflexion of the will of God. The state is the standard of good and evil, the 'ethical whole.'
Here we have the definition of the total state where individual man has abdicated his free will and has in effect transferred his morality to the collective: as a mere aspect of the state, ethical man has no self-will. It is his duty to submit to the state's needs, and worship it as the Supreme Being.
Karl Marx was a member of a branch called the Young, or Left Hegelians. The Right Hegelians fathered the subjective collectivism which we have come to know as National Socialism.
With that knowledge let us turn to Fonte's essay. He follows Francis Fukuyama's 1989 conclusion that liberal democracy has come up trumps as the best form of government for most people. Evidently this does not hold true for all, notably the postmodernist heirs of the Counter-Enlightenment movement. They are working in the post-democratic supra and transnational vacuum on the opposing end of the scale of democratic principles, the return to Kantian and Hegelian ideals.
The global strategy was summed up by Fonte as Transnational Progressivism, the basis of which is the out-phasing of the sovereign nation-state through systemic and relentless subversion and demoralization, resulting in a centralized secular authority with regional administrative sub-units. Critical theory has decades of study and experience behind its belt:
"Nation-states continue to exist but they are subordinate to transnational authority. This authority is exercised by new definitions (“evolving norms”) of international law (really transnational law); transnational courts such as the International Criminal Court; myriad UN conventions that establish new global norms, particularly in the area of human rights; supranational institutions like the European Union; and non-government organizations (NGOs) that act as “global civil society.”
Of course there is no people on earth who have voted this world order into power. The process is unfolding itself under our noses without anyone being the wiser. The flag covering it is pacifist Utopianism, world peace, international cooperation, sustainable development, multi-lateralism, global governance, and international law. The model governing it is multiculturalism: the postmodern, subjectivist, collective approach to societies in which relativist polylogism is key:
"First, the basis of political society ought not to be the individual citizen and voluntary associations, but the identity group, often ascribed, to which one belongs or claims as a primary identification (racial, ethnic, gender, religious if non-Western, sexual orientation, et cetera)": the collective.
"Second, these identity groups ought to be divided into two categories: the privileged (whites, males, Christians, heterosexuals, citizens) and the marginalized (non-whites, females, non-Christians, homosexuals, non-citizens)": subjectivism through the Marxist dialectic of 'oppressing' versus 'oppressed' groups.
"Third, the major inequities in society are “systemic” or “institutional,” built into the nature of the system. Thus, we have “systemic racism” or “institutional racism,” and “systemic sexism,” along with homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia that are embedded in the nature of society. The repeated use of this type of rhetoric challenges the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic nation-state. If a political regime is engaged in systemic bias, it clearly is devoid of moral authority and is not really “legitimate”": subversion of the sovereign nation, political correctness, postmodern rhetoric.
- Caption: the UN General Assembly -
"Fourth, an important goal of society ought to be eliminating these identity group-based inequities. A just society means a group-based equality of condition": egalitarianism, socialism, equality of outcome.
"Fifth, the nation-state is an inadequate institution to achieve social justice and is ill-suited to the problems of the future. Therefore, national identity, and exclusive national citizenship are, by their nature, problematic": anti-modernism.
"Sixth, global migration from less developed countries to more developed countries will be a major characteristic of the twenty-first century. Instead of promoting the assimilation of immigrants into an existing national culture, “fairness” requires that we promote transnational citizenship, diaspora consciousness, and group-oriented multiculturalism": discourage national loyalties, delete the border.
- Caption: Nurnberg, from Geoff Walden's "Third Reich in Ruins," dedicated to his father, U.S. Army Air Forces Lt. Delbert R. Walden, who was stationed in Germany in 1945-46 -
Since the doctrine, is based on progress through strife and struggle, only the strictest pacifism separates it from the global cataclysm and tyranny that Kant foresaw: in the absence of objective standards, polylogism excludes understanding between different groups. This is exacerbated by policies of non-assimilation. Soft force is exerted by the use of the method we have come to know so well: self-censorship through political correctness, and increasingly less soft methods to quell free speech.
What is happening in this transnational theater is a snail-pace, velvet coup d'etat against anyone living in a liberal democracy: subversion of nation-states, spying, manipulation of public opinion, assaults on objective equality, treason against voters and elected governments, it is all not too vile to withhold the transies their futuristic dream:
"a publication of the Ford Foundation on NGO human rights activity in the US, discusses the need “to break the chokehold of domestic law.” Indeed, the publication states that, “every nation and all people need ultimate recourse to an alternative ethical and legal authority.” The Ford document approvingly declared that, “US human rights activists are trying to reshape US society according to a philosophy and framework of rights that most people either have not heard of or have been taught to think of as foreign.”"
Corporations and multinationals are co-opted with a vista of free trade in lieu of national branding. For citizens forfeiting political rights is the price for living in a free-market economy: China stands model:
"On China Cato insists that “trade policy should be de-coupled from [political] human rights”; all sanctions such as Jackson-Vanik should be repealed; and that nation should be afforded “unconditional” MFN (most favored nation) trading status. Even closer to the political mainstream and at the core of the governing center-right was the persona of the late editor of Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley, who is reported to have told a Forbes journalist, “the nation-state is finished.”- Filed on Articles in dossier "Transnational Progressivism" and "The Dystopia of Paradise" -
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