September 21, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Doug Turnbull has posted on
Doug Turnbull has posted on Steven Den Beste's controversial post calling for us to pull a Japan on the Middle East.
I'm not going to respond to Den Beste's post, because I haven't thought it all through yet. But I wanted to talk about Doug's analysis, which I think is thoughtful, cogent, but flawed.
Doug basically argues that if you accept Den Beste's premise -- that what he calls "Arab Traditionalism", and I would probably call "Saladin Syndrome", is fundamentally dangerous and cannot be fixed other than by stripping away many of the practices and institutions that allow it to flourish -- then you have to choose what his opponents term "Genocide", because the alternative is WMD attacks on America. Turnbull, however, rejects the idea that there is no other way to achieve it. He thinks that cultural imperialism -- the exporting of our culture via books, TV, etc. -- will work. In effect, Steven Den Beste is arguing that the culture produces murderous thugs, and therefore has to change; his left-wing opponents are arguing that that's untrue; and Doug seems to be arguing that it may be true, but they can be changed if we can just pipe Baywatch into every house.
Mmm, maybe. But that's by no means a foregone conclusion.
For one thing, you have to look at the time frame. If it works in 50 years, that doesn't do us much good. We need it to work before a terrorist group blows up more stuff here.
Second of all, our books don't get into Saudi Arabia, Iran, et al. Some of our television does, but it isn't necessarily improving their image of us. Imagine your Victorian great-grandmother getting an episode of "Friends" -- would it make her think, "Wow, those are people I want to emulate" or "Gee, those immoral monsters must be stopped!" (I'll give you a hint: my quite Victorian grandmother's church was nearly torn apart in her youth by the issue of -- I am not making this us -- square dancing.) It is a common fallacy in the West to assume that our sexual license makes our culture attractive to foreign people, because hey, we like it that way. I don't think it works that way. Most people are not so constituted as to tear off the entire mantle of their culture, throw the morality they were raised in to the wind, and party like rock stars. People like what they're raised with -- it's comfortable. That's why feminist aid workers are so often angry and hurt to find out that the majority of women in places like Afghanistan do not want to throw off the veil and turn into Gloria Steinem. It would mean abandonning the entire matrix of customs and beliefs in which they are operating comfortably, for an unknown future.
Turning into a western society would involve ripping out everything they do, and embracing an untried, and in many ways inferior, way of life. To take just one example, many Arab/Muslim cultures, social lives revolve almost entirely around the extended family, especially for women, who in many countries rarely socialize with anyone but their own families, and their husband's families when they are married. This is not compatible with the sexual license and serial monogamy of modern American society. You're asking women to give up their family and friends so that they can wear lipstick. Of course, we, who are comfortable in this way of life, consider it superior. And perhaps it is. But for someone whose lifestyle is so different, the idea of embracing it is terrifying, not liberating.
(Incidentally, I'm talking about countries like Saudi Arabia and areas of Pakistan, not countries like Lebanon, which were considerably Westernized for decades before the current trouble)
Maybe you don't buy that. Maybe you think in a couple decades all that will change, as indeed it did for your Victorian grandmother. Here's the other problem: the institutions have to be there to support it. Islam is undergoing a fundamentalist revival right now. People are getting more religious, not less. Some of that is a cultural response to hard times in their country; some of that is active government policy, or at least work by part of the government. But I think there are a large number of things that can't be fixed unless the government lets them.
The government can prevent that cultural imperialism, by controlling internet access, blocking unauthorized satellite channels, and banning books. It's not a perfect solution, but it worked pretty damn well for the Soviet Union.
The government can keep people miserable by its short-sighted, statist policies. There are basically two kinds of Middle Eastern nations: those that have oil, and those that don't. The ones that have oil keep most of their population out of the labor force, except for government jobs, and use oil to import foreign labor to do all the work. When oil revenues fall, or the population rises, they get into trouble. They have taught their young men to disdain work, and their government regulation keeps the private economy stagnant, so the result is a lot of over-educated young men with time on their hands and a declining standard of living.
The ones without oil also have a burgeoning population, which is even more miserable. They also have a complex network of horrible regulations that strangle the private sector, accompanied by massive official corruption.
Everyone agrees that economic improvement in these countries would help the situation; people getting rich are too busy to blow things up. Problem: you can't make people get rich. You can't improve their lot by trade if their high tariffs hinder trade flows (on net, countries can't export more than they import). You can't improve their lot by investment if officials steal half of it and regulate away the rest. You can't improve their lot by aid if the aid money flows into Swiss bank accounts or monumental boondoggle infrastructure projects. That's why I'm so derisive when neo-libs write nice articles saying that the real solution is trade or economic liberalization or what have you. Well, thanks, genius, now how do we bell the cat?
The government can also discourage liberalism through repression, beating people who step out of line. These aren't democracies, folks; they're not going to vote out the House of Saud if they've decided they want to wear Guess jeans and hang out at the mall. There might be a revolt. But my reading of history does not bear out the idea that people will riot for sexual freedom. Except students, but I don't recall their successfully staging a coup anywhere. Any overthrowing is likely to go in the other direction; fundamentalists who can convince their followers that God is on their side.
The government can encourage fundamentalism by giving fundamentalists money and a state media platform.
In other words, I'm not sure how cultural imperialism works without stripping away the government that prevents it. Maybe I'm wrong; I'm sure I'll get some arguments on this one. But I don't think so. The Soviet Union didn't fall because of Pepsi; it fell because it ran out of cash. Which Saudi Arabia isn't going to do any time soon.
Posted by Jane Galt at September 21, 2002 10:33 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links