The Right Question

"Why Not Here?" is the question David Brooks says people living under repressive regimes are asking themselves nowadays.

To the ancillary question, why is this happening now?, Brooks writes:

Like pushing for democracy in the Arab Middle East when realists and left-wingers regard Arabs as congenitally incapable of self-rule, too. What we're seeing is a strong leader with a vision to mold the post-Cold War world as a freer, more democratic place. Aspirations for freedom that were suppressed for so long they atrophied are now getting a workout, mentally in many places and through actions in others, namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

Claus Christian Malzahn, quoted above, singles out what is perhaps the most important cultural and intellectual difference between Americans and many Europeans: we're forward-looking and innovative, while they tend to "always want to have the world from yesterday." That also divides President Bush and his supporters from his critics on the left and right. The former believe they possess the vision for a more perfect world, but don't understand that policies advocated by FDR and LBJ, much less cultural changes brought to a head in anti-Vietnam War protests, need to be rethought and, in most instances, scuttled. The latter are fearful of upsetting the status quo, less because they think it ideal than that they fear change qua change, seeing as they do a drive for human perfection behind all grand visions of a better world.

But America is founded on nothing if not a grand vision, and a daring one to boot. Advocating for change in corrupt and brutal regimes needn't lead to millenarian visions of earthly utopia. Rule by the likes of a Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, or even a Leonid Kuchma is neither inevitable nor desirable. No stability is gained from supporting such men, nor are any ancient virtues or lessons ignored when their ouster becomes the goal U.S. policy. Surely virtue dictates support of oppressed peoples, and prudence requires that we move toward the more stable world that freedom can bring. We've unleashed a global questioning of the status quo; it is our duty, and our interest, to keep this question, why not here, on the lips of millions the world over.