#Brexit #Liberal International Order #EU #Donald Trump #Korea.... Here because I tossed a coin.
First - Brexit, a personal opinion
Although I am a Canadian I am proud to be a Brit, and Brexit makes me that much prouder. Not because of the outcome, which I support, but because of the process. In my view Britain is demonstrating to Europe what both liberalism and democracy means. And that confuses the heck out of the European priestly caste - and confirms in their view why they are right to fear both liberalism and democracy. They perceive chaos. The Brits perceive normalcy.
The arguments in Britain are hard, positions are heart-felt. But everybody who wants a say gets a say - assholes all over the political map are free to voice their opinions, take their concerns to court, launch petitions, try to change policy, regulations and laws, revert to the status quo ante, promote new alliances ..... and all while following the rules, while colouring inside the lines ....
Meanwhile the British economy ticks onwards, men in white vans conduct their usual business, the City continues to hire and fire people. Average Brits follow the Rugby, berate Australian cricketers, fill in the Football Pools, debate pert posteriors and whether Kate or Meghan is more this or that, and wonder if they are getting too much beer. Things change but nothing so much as can't be handled.
For the European "priests" this is all a conundrum. They don't believe, despite the evidence to the contrary, that their countrymen could be trusted to act in the same way. They fear their people - but I think if they spent more time reading their tabloids they would find more similarities between Brits, French, Germans and Italians than they suspect.
But maybe that is the very problem "Tabloids" are for the "Masses" and not for "Real People", much less for the "Elites" who are ordained to order society.
The Elite are great supporters of the Liberal International Order and its Supranational organizations. But then they always have been. In the past the term of art was "Ultramontanism" - meaning "over the mountains" - in particular over the Alps. It reflects a struggle that is over two thousand years old - one that the Romans get the blame for but probably pre-dated them.
The Protestant reformation also draws blame, or accepts credit, for the rise of both individualism and nationalism - with Luther and Henry VIII, Calvin and Knox being the usual stalking horses. But arguably the struggle can be found in the rise of the French national church (Declaration of the Clergy of France - 1682, Concordat of Bologna - 1516, Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges - 1438, Avignon Papacy - 1307) and in the rise of the German Holy Roman Empire (Investiture Controversy - 1076).
I don't question the good intentions of all parties. But there have historically been two paths - Structured order defined by man and comfortable chaos to which man adapts. The Elite tends toward structured order, as long as they get to define the structure. For everybody else it is always a matter of adapting.
This line of thought surfaced when I read this article, "America and the Liberal International Order
by Michael Anton" in American Affairs. It describes a point of view that has been percolating for a while.
I have become increasingly unhappy with the use of liberalism to describe the modern condition. Some folks have taken to talking about illiberalism. Personally I am comfortable with Adam Smith's, and his contemporaries', use of liberal. Not as a code, a catechism, a dogmatic prescription of rules over which lawyers and other clerks can argue, but as a mode of thinking - a toleration of other thought.
In my opinion much of the debate arguing for the Rule of Law effectively is the voicing of ancient beliefs by the clerical establishment, the priestly caste, that they, and only they can steer the course. And it frightened them to see Britain, Australia, Canada and America succeed in their absence - and ultimately defeat them in World War II.
The great problem after WW2 was the need to create a new order - because comfortable chaos, liberal democracy, was not an option. New institutions were created to emulate old institutions and the same people took their seats in new buildings. Democracy and Liberalism were capitalized, redefined and catechized - turned into comforting dogma. True Democrats and True Liberals, like
True Scots, were created and defined as separate from the tabloid reading masses.
The thing is, in Britain, in Canada, in the US, there has always been a faction that also believes in structured order and rejects the comfortable chaos that liberalism implies. They have found common cause across the Atlantic.
Should we say that Ultramontanism has been replaced by Ultraatlanticism?
