Letters to a Young Conservative (19 page)

Another effective technique for ruining immigrants is multiculturalism. In previous generations, immigrants who came to America were expected to assimilate. The results were spectacular: Immigrants changed America and were changed by America. Some people called it the melting pot. It worked.

Today the liberals and the multiculturalists tell immigrants that they should not try to “become American.” They should continue to speak their native languages, they should demand bilingual programs so their children
can study in Spanish, Chinese, or Tagalog. They should affirm their ethnic identities and refuse to be integrated into a common culture.

This is destructive for America and bad for immigrants. What prospects does a Tagalog speaker have in the American work force? Most immigrants, of course, recognize this. They come here because they want the American way of life. If they had wanted the Pakistani way of life, they would have remained in Pakistan. But of course they feel pangs of loneliness, isolation, nostalgia, and so on. The liberals and the multiculturalists exploit that. Instead of helping immigrants to make the necessary but difficult transition from one way of life to another, they seek to seduce immigrants into remaining separate and holding fast to their old identities. Buchanan and others are right to be outraged about this. But the answer is to keep multiculturalism away from immigrants, not to keep immigrants away from America.

America can and should have a generous immigration policy. But it should be a more selective policy in which America specifies the kind of professions and the kind of people it wants and needs. Moreover, America’s immigration policy should be part of a reconstructed cultural framework in which immigrants are encouraged, indeed expected, to embrace the ideals of America and to adapt to the American way of life.

Dear Chris,

I am not surprised that your political science professor thinks George Bush is leading America into a “quagmire.” I am sure he learned that big word during the Vietnam era. No doubt the earnest fellow is also telling your class that America should not “rush to military solutions” but instead “give peace a chance.” Ordinarily this Kumbayah mentality amuses me for its naïve idiocy. But behind it there is an anti-American prejudice that I find less risible. This anti-American strain also goes back to Vietnam; although less conspicuous today, it remains an influential element of leftist thought.

It is not, of course, anti-American to question American actions. I do not subscribe to the mindless patriotism that asserts, “My country, right or wrong.” Liberalism crosses the line from criticism to anti-Americanism when it shows a pathological hatred of
America, and when it faults the United States for offenses that it routinely excuses in the nation’s enemies. Recently I debated the novelist Gore Vidal on PBS. Summoning up all his venom, Vidal denounced the United States as a “rogue nation” and even suggested that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist attack was a preemptive strike to thwart a pending American invasion of Afghanistan. (This American plot seems to have resided entirely in Vidal’s imagination.)

Vidal’s pique may be attributable to personal causes, but the “blame America first” mentality it conveys is prevalent on the left. Consider the common liberal assertion that America purports to stand for such noble ideals as human rights while in reality America nakedly pursues its own self-interest. Liberals are quick to sneer that the Gulf War was fought not to promote the freedom of Kuwaitis but to protect American access to Middle Eastern oil. Liberal intellectuals take pleasure in showing how America has historically invoked democratic ideals while supporting dictators such as Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and the Shah of Iran. Even now, liberals tirelessly point out, America is supporting unelected regimes in Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

How valid are these claims? As a patriot, Chris, you may be tempted to defend America on all counts and to deny that its policies are rooted in self-interest. Resist this temptation. There is nothing wrong with admitting
that America, like other countries, acts on behalf of its own citizens. Think about this: The people in a democratic society empower their government to act in their interest. Why should their elected representatives be neutral between their interests and, say, the interests of the Somalians? To ask a nation to ignore its own self-interest is tantamount to asking it to put aside the welfare of its people. Liberals seem to think it is outrageous for America to pursue its self-interest even as they recognize that other countries pursue their self-interest.

Despite this reality of foreign policy, Americans can be proud of how often their country’s actions have simultaneously protected American interests while also advancing universal ideals and the welfare of other peoples. While the United States was careful to wait until it was directly attacked before entering into World War II, American involvement in the war helped accelerate the defeat of the Axis powers and advanced the freedom and security of the whole world. So, too, America’s involvement in the Gulf War was partly intended to protect American oil interests, but it was also aimed at expelling a barbarous invader from Kuwait. In these instances America’s interests did not corrupt American ideals; rather, the ideals ennobled the interests.

But what about American support for Somoza, Pinochet, Marcos, and the Shah? This support is fully justified when we consider the operating principle of foreign policy. Foreign policy is not a philosophy seminar.
In philosophy seminars, the choice is usually between good and evil. In the real world, however, the choice is often between a bad guy and a worse guy. The central principle of foreign policy is the doctrine of the lesser evil. This means that a country is always justified in supporting a bad regime to overthrow a regime that is even worse. In World War II, for instance, the United States allied with a very bad man, Joseph Stalin, to oppose a man who was an even greater threat at the time, Adolf Hitler.

By the same logic, U.S. support for despots such as Pinochet, Marcos, and the Shah of Iran was entirely defensible in the context of the cold war. The United States was fighting a larger battle against the “evil empire.” Given that the Soviet empire posed the greatest threat to freedom and human rights in the world, the United States was right to attach less significance to the status of Pinochet, Marcos, and the Shah as tin-pot dictators than to their anti-Soviet beliefs.

But now the cold war is over, so why is America supporting unelected regimes in Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia? Once again, the liberal fails to ask the relevant question: What is the alternative? During the 1970s, Jimmy Carter decided that the longtime ally of the United States, the Shah of Iran, was a despot. Applying typical liberal logic, Carter decided that he could not in good conscience continue to support the Shah. Indeed, he actively aided in the Shah’s ouster. The result, of course, was the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini. If the
Shah was bad, Khomeini was worse. To avoid this kind of disaster, America should be slow to destabilize the flawed regimes of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia until it is confident that the alternative is a pro-Western liberal democracy. More likely, the alternative will be Islamic fundamentalism of the bin Laden stripe.

Are liberals incapable of the kind of practical moral reasoning that foreign policy requires? It seems that they are. Most liberals are content with slogans that cannot survive the slightest scrutiny. “Violence never solves problems.” This is manifestly not true. Violence helped to end the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however controversial their use, did solve the big problem of an unyielding Japan. Violence proved equally effective against the Taliban. “But you can’t impose democracy at the point of a bayonet.” This is another liberal shibboleth. In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance.

Dear Chris,

America has a one-party system of government. I mean this in a special sense: One party tends to dominate American politics in a given era. One major party sets the agenda, and the other party has the choice of reactively opposing its ideas, or of sounding a feeble cry of “me, too.” During the Andrew Jackson era, the Democrats were the majority party. This dominance lasted half a century, until the Civil War. After the war, the Republicans became the majority camp, a position they held until the Great Depression. Since 1932, the Democrats assumed the majority position, which was consolidated during the Roosevelt years, and continued even through the Reagan years. Only in 1994, when the Republicans won both houses of Congress, did the Democrats lose the majority status they had enjoyed for most of the twentieth century. The big question now is, Can the Republicans
secure a new majority that will carry them through the first half of the twenty-first century?

It was Ronald Reagan who showed the Republican Party the way to its current success. Before Reagan, the GOP was the party of balanced budgets. Republicans used to fault the Democrats’ programs as well-meaning but fiscally irresponsible. Consequently, Republicans sought to limit the programs so that spending could be kept in line with revenues. Another way that Republicans sought fiscal stability was by proposing tax increases. Thus the Republican Party earned a well-deserved reputation for being the party that a) raised your taxes, and b) reduced your government benefits. The Republicans were Scrooge, and the Democrats were Santa Claus. Not surprisingly, Republicans lost election after election.

Reagan changed this dynamic. His belief was that if the Democrats wanted to spend money, the Republicans would refuse to accommodate them by raising taxes. Let the Democrats be the party of tax increases. The Republicans would be for tax cuts. The Reagan tax cuts had an economic rationale: to give people the incentive to produce more. But lower tax rates also had the political effect of limiting the revenues available to the Democrats for spending. Essentially, Reagan took away their allowance. He gave the Democrats the choice of enduring huge and growing deficits with interest payments that would eat into future spending, or of going on a fiscal diet to limit the size of the deficits. The Democrats chose the second course, which explains one of the most
remarkable political reversals of recent decades. Suddenly the Democrats became the party of tax increases and balanced budgets.

Since Reagan, the Republican Party has suffered what may be termed the problem of success. Reagan was too successful: His efforts helped to end the cold war and to secure the triumph of capitalism over socialism. Consequently, Reagan took these issues off the table. When Reagan’s appointed successor, George Bush, showed that during his eight years as vice president he had learned virtually nothing from Reagan, the American people hurled him out of office and ushered in the Clinton people; they proceeded to rent out the Lincoln bedroom, sell presidential pardons, seduce the interns, and do all the low, deviant things that the Clinton people are known to do.

Despite his disgraceful personal conduct, Bill Clinton was not a bad president. He fought for a landmark free trade agreement, signed welfare reform, and moved the Democratic Party to the political center. Republicans loathed him, and against their political interests they tried to impeach him. Consider this: Had the GOP succeeded in kicking Clinton out of office, Al Gore would have become president, he would have proclaimed himself a healer, and he would have been invincible in the election of 2000. Republican leaders kept wailing that Clinton was “stealing” their issues. They didn’t know what Reagan knew: that one of the greatest achievements in politics is to make your opponent do
what you would do if you were in power. So the Republicans flailed ineffectively against Clinton, but his high approval ratings prevented them from ousting the rogue.

Even so, by the year 2000, Americans were frustrated with the low tone that had become endemic to American politics, and they took out their frustration with Clinton—on Al Gore. Although George W. Bush entered the White House under the most harrowing of circumstances, he proceeded to campaign for a bold tax cut, which he got. Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Bush underwent what can only be termed a metamorphosis. Suddenly the mumbling, bumbling Texan emerged as a firm, articulate national leader.

Despite Bush’s continuing popularity, the Republican Party faces two big challenges that it must address if it is going to win enduring majority status. The first challenge is that affluent people are no longer voting solidly Republican. It used to be an iron law of politics that, as people became well-off, they became Republicans. (The only exception to this law was Jews, who maintained a tradition of loyalty to liberal causes. Irving Kristol once observed that Jews were the only people who earned like Episcopalians and voted like Puerto Ricans.) But for every other group, the iron law held. Now, however, affluent people are as likely to vote Democrat as Republican. The reason is that, as people become richer, they become more conservative economically but more liberal socially. Wealth gives people more choices, and people who have choices do not like rules that seek to
limit what they choose. Consequently, the new affluent class is disposed to vote for Democrats who are economically centrist but who will let them live as they want.

If Republicans are to become a lasting majority, they must win the votes of affluent suburbanites. To do this, they must convince the country that they are not the party of moral naysayers, and they are not merely a front for the Christian Right. I am not suggesting that the Republicans relinquish their moral beliefs. The Republican Party is the party of values, and this can be a great asset if Republicans find the right language in which to speak about values. Throughout the country, there is a widespread belief that the American standard of living has gone up but values have gone down. The Republican Party needs to capitalize on this conviction without sounding extreme or harsh.