In my later years I confess to galloping sentimentality. I tear up when the Star Spangled Banner is sung at baseball and football games. I tear up at scenes in old movies like Casablanca (when Paul Henreid leads the night-club band in La Marseille to upstage the Nazi brass, when Claude Rains says “I’m shocked, shocked, there’s gambling here” as the casino clerk hands him his winnings, or “Round up the usual suspects,” after Humphrey Bogart shoots the nasty Nazi officer).
Songs, poems and quotations from long-ago pop into my head. An Irving Berlin song from the Great Depression days did that yesterday. I think it should get a revival today.
“If today your heart is weary
and every little thing looks grey
just forget your troubles and learn to say
tomorrow is a lovely day.”
If our parents and grandparents could appreciate that sentiment in the 1930s we can take heart and sing along today. Tomorrow is even more likely to be a lovely day now that the threat from Marxist-Leninist ideology is on the ash-heap of history. Even though the 21st century challenge from Radical Islam is strong and real, it is not in the same league.
There is an irony though. Free-market democratic states won the cold war against command-economy communist states. By their example they even converted formerly desperately poor command-economy-leaning countries like India, Indonesia, Chile and Brazil and into free-market tigers now on the way to prosperity. Yet today within the advanced democratic countries some left-leaning critics seem to be still fighting a lost battle under different names. The Marxist-Leninists lost the 20th century cold war but some activists today are rephrasing some of the issues in that war as wholesale condemnation of western corporations, of western life-style consumerism, of free trade, of globalization, and of free-market capitalism.
Fortunately I don’t think this new challenge will fly any better than the earlier Marxist-Leninist one did. But it is there.
So … what’s to be done? To me the best advice is to keep in mind that tomorrow will be a lovely day if we stick to what worked so well in the past century–free-market global democracy.
Part 10: What’s to be Done?
At the beginning of the 20th century in 1902 Vladimir Lenin wrote a short book, “What’s To Be Done?” In it he gave his recipe for making Russia (and then the world) communist. The key, he wrote, was small tightly-controlled intellectual leadership that would use any and all available means, including extreme violence, to gain power. Fifteen years later his organization, the Bolsheviks, did gain power in Russia and proceeded to give birth to the world’s first communist country, the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics. Within a few decades communists controlled over one-third of the world’s people in countries on all continents (except Africa). By 2000 the cold war had ended and only one-half of one percent of the world is still controlled by true-blue Marxist-Leninists in two small countries, North Korea and Cuba.
At the end of the 18th century, a small group of patriots led by George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson gained power by free elections in the new world of America and established the world’s first (even though flawed) modern democratic government, the United States of America. Within the next two centuries democracies became the world’s most admired, successful and imitated countries. By 1940 democracies made up about one-third of the world’s peoples mostly in Europe, North America and Australia. By 2000 democracies were the governing system for more than sixty percent of the world’s peoples on all continents (including Africa).
In the 20th century the free-market democracies led by the United States won the cold war against command-economy Communists led by the Soviet Union. Today in the 21st century the free-market democracies are being challenged by Radical Islamic theocrats that use suicidal terrorism as their preferred weapon, as well as by some western activists who bitterly oppose globalization and denounce consumer-driven economies.
So … “What’s to be done today?”
As for the Radical Islamic challenge, a US military strategist, Eliot A. Cohen, has pointed out key features that the new war against Al Qaeda shares with the cold war against the Soviet Union. “It will involve a mixture of violent and non-violent efforts; it will require mobilization of skill, expertise, and resources, if not vast numbers of soldiers; it may go on for a long time; and it has ideological roots.”
There are differences of course, in the ideological roots and in the source and depth of their power, and those differences are important in deciding “what’s to be done?”
The communist challenge during the cold war was based on a Marxist-Leninist ideology that viewed the U.S. as a greedy capitalist imperial power. Marxists, however, actually admired our western standard of living, our consumer-rich way of life, our scientific and technological prowess and even some of our democratic freedoms. For all their secrecy, their love of violence and their repressive instincts, they saw themselves as competitors in the modern world. They just thought they were more modern, more scientific and more progressive than we were.
The Radical Islamic fighters also view the U.S. as greedy and imperial. They agree with the communists that state and religion should be one and the same. They just have a different religion. Communist law and ideology are based on a secular religion as laid down in Karl Marx’s Das Capital. Radical Islamic law and ideology are based on Allah’s revelations as found in the Koran (as interpreted today by radical imams.)
Unlike their communist cousins, however, Islamic radicals reject modern western society and values. They see modern western life styles with their consumer-driven economies as decadent and destructive. They claim modern western education is sinful, not liberating. Education, say Radical Muslims, should be confined to men and then primarily, if not solely, to the study of the Koran. They deplore women’s rights and women’s education as sacrilegious and deeply offensive. They look on science (especially biology and the social sciences) as threatening to dogmatic religious beliefs. In Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban and some other fundamentalist Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, Radical Muslims even see humor and music as threatening and sinful
To Radical Muslims, all other religions are inferior. Believers in any other faith in fact are guilty of blasphemy and fit only to be conquered and/or destroyed in the name of Allah. Insults to the prophet Mohammed are to be punished by death. As are many other crimes like blasphemy, adultery, fornication and homosexuality. And like communists, the Radical Muslims see their religion as international, the only true religion, the only way to achieve justice in this world and paradise in the next.
It is true that in the past Christianity too was sometimes intolerant, utopian and opposed to some of the same things that Radical Islam is today. In time, prodded and altered by the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment a few centuries ago, Christianity mellowed, modernized and often participated in progressive movements. Not only participated, but led. Some branches of Christianity in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, for instance, nurtured and inspired leaders in the democratic quest for compassion, equal rights, universal education, civil liberties and better health care in modern welfare states of Western Europe and North America.
Can the same thing happen with Islam? One can be forgiven for hoping so. Remember, once it was Islam that was the world leader not only in science, in art, in music, and in architecture, but also in tolerance!
Lenin answered his question of “What’s To Be Done?” by bringing to reality a small tightly disciplined organization of intellectual leaders and terrorists. We, in the 21st century democracies, must counter the challenge of Radical Islam in a different way. Rather than a small group of intellectual leaders and terrorists, we will need the patience and power of a vital working mass democracy, free people committed to a free press, free markets, free enterprise, free trade and free politics. The same power of example and patient strength that won the cold war against communism can serve us well in the war against Islamic terror. Like Truman we may need to “contain” the terror first, but we need not be satisfied with détente. Instead we need to have the faith and power to believe that in the long run the winning strategy will turn out to be “We win, they lose.”
Sometimes victory may require military force just as the Cold War did. President Obama said as much in his speech accepting Nobel Peace Prize in 2009: “Make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”
In the long run former President Reagan’s words in the cold war against communism can apply equally well to our struggle against Islamic terrorism: “What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.”
To achieve that final victory our strongest ally is our ideology of freedom, especially when magnified by the electronic revolution. Cell phones, television, satellites, and computers helped the western democracies expose the weakness and sterility of Marxist-Leninist ideology in practice. Those same tools can and will expose the strengths of western democracy and the weakness and sterility of radical Islam.
What we do not need (but will get anyway since we are and must continue to be a free society) are radical “fellow travelers” in the west who undermine our strength and muddy our goals. Folks like the professor at Rutgers who said after the 9/11 attack: “We should be aware that the ultimate cause for 9/11 is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades.” Or the professor at the Univ. of Massachusetts who claimed: “The American flag is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression.” Or the famous Harvard linguist, Noah Chomsky, who claimed that “if the Nuremberg trials were applied, then every post-war American President would be hanged.”
Or indeed the only-too-many celebrities and ordinary citizens who claimed that “we had it coming.”
These Radical Islamic “fellow travelers” may not agree with the religious and violent side of the terrorists, but they often do agree with the enemy’s denunciation of western values and culture. As some of the young “new-left” used to chant on elite campuses of the 60s, “Fee, fi, fo–Western Civ has got to go!”
We need to patiently and firmly answer: “No. Not so!” We need to keep building upon and improving western civilization and it’s most successful product so far–free-market global democracy.
If we stick to that task, in their last days Osama bin Laden and his radical Islamic brothers in arms will find their reward is not a bevy of virgins in heaven but the same ash-heap of history now occupied by so many sadly and tragically misled Marxist-Leninist fighters.
“If today your heart is weary
and every little thing looks grey
just forget your troubles and learn to say
tomorrow is a lovely day.”
For those of you who have stuck it out and read the entire 10-part series I can only say, thank you for listening. I will do the same for you if you care to write your opinions or comments.
Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President
P.S. To get a long range perspective on these issues see our 6-part program DEMOCRACY IN WORLD HISTORY.
From EDUCATIONAL MEDIA REVIEWS ONLINE, Univ. of Buffalo, NY
Democracy in World History
2006
Distributed by Hawkhill Associates, Inc., 125 Gilman St., Madison, WI 53703; 800-422-4295
Produced by Bill Stonebarger
Directed by Bill Stonebarger
DVD, color, 194 minutes (6 DVDs, approx. 30 minutes each)
Sr. High – Adult
American Studies, Economics, European Studies, History, Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science
Reviewed by Michael J. Coffta, Business Librarian, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Highly Recommended
Date Entered: 6/18/2007
This voluminous work sets out on the daunting task of discussing hundreds of years of the evolution of democracy in a swift manner without seeming cursory. Democracy in World History accomplishes this with a balance of detail, analysis, and identification of overarching themes related to strings of significant world events. The series does an excellent job in demonstrating linkages of events and movements. It also does a superb job of examining common threads among different civilizations. For example, it makes comparisons between Roman and medieval and industrial civilizations in the context of slavery. The viewer never feels overwhelmed by jargon, but is skillfully acquainted with terms such as Divine Right, human rights, industrialization, enlightened despotism, etc. The most notable aspect of this series is its overall consistency. The narration has the feel of a grandfather’s storytelling. Casual references, such as referring to microbes as “beasties,” and the like give this series a relaxed but informative tone. Make no mistake, however, that this is a rigorous rendering of the history of democracy. Scripts for each DVD are available on the Hawkhill web site. www.hawkhill.com.
Not simply a recording on a disk, the filmmaker has taken full advantage of the medium, by including a good deal of interactivity on each DVD volume. “Guided Questions” (usually in multiple-choice format) provide instant feedback and links the learner back to the portion of the “movie” with the information pertinent to the question.
This is an outstanding body of work, and is highly recommended for high school audiences and higher. It is important to note that while the volumes are interrelated, they also stand independently as solid surveys of the historical eras.
P.P.S. And please don’t forget our big 2010 sale. 70% discount on all DVD titles, 90% discount on all VHS tape titles. See: www.hawkhill.com