Coulterland - Beginning Principles

Note: This will be a multi-part post, since as I continue to write it I find that A. I'm quite tickled by the notion, and B.--not unrelatedly--I find myself writing a lot more than I originally intended. So I'll be breaking this into bite-sized chunks for easy consumption. And hey, if all goes well, I smell a book deal!


The question one must ask of any philosophy or political position is "Quo vadit?" (One must ask this question in Latin in order to seem, you know, smart.) That is, "Where is it going/does it go?" Aristotle bases much of his philosophy on the concept of functions--that is, everything that exists has a function, and to understand that thing, one must understand its telos, its end--the telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak, for example, just as the telos of an egg is to become a bird, the telos of fire is to consume its fuel, etc. (The challenge of the philosopher, of course, lies in determining whether a possible telos is in fact the true telos. And naturally, if you're not an Aristotelian, you don't believe that things have proper functions, and that they just are, or are not, and meaning cannot be ascribed to either state. Thank you, F. Nietzsche, but we'll stick with Aristotle for now.) So--



The question I ask myself is this: What does the ideal world of the neocons actually look like? That is, if we are to take their moral, social, and economic positions at face value--dicey, I know, but their readers certainly seem to--and give them, as it were, the three wishes of the genie in the bottle, then what would a world in which all of their positions were fulfilled be like to live in? The test of any philosophy is its results when it is given every chance to succeed--thus we know that Leninism/Maoism is crap, because the nations that embraced it/them were, in the end, substantially worse off as a result. Too, though, we know that complete and utter 'free-market-capitalism' is a terrible idea, as it tends to lead to things like the Belgian Congo (the very epitome of market-driven, aggressively profit-intensive labor relations.) So--



Let us, then, picture a world in which Coulter, Limbaugh, Scarborough, Ingraham, Hannity, Liddy, O'Reilly, D'Souza, Goldberg, Savage--my God there are a lot of them--et al. get exactly what they want: the death of liberalism. Complete and utter. No voice of dissent or disagreement with/from their neocon values. Would this be a dystopia, and if so, what would be its character? What would it be like, in short, to live in the neocon America? For only by imagining total victory for their positions can we test their value. (And if it sounds like I'm indulging in one of those Alternate Universe scenarios in which the South won the Civil War or the Nazis WWII, well, yes, I am, but I do not plan to make this either a cheap Orwellian knock-off, nor a reductio ad absurdum. I want to imagine a world in which these people are happy and content--where things are, as Limbaugh would say, the Way Things Ought To Be. So, like the Bear in the song, let us go over the mountain, and see what we can see.



First, let's be clear about one or two things; even though I've sworn not to go all 1984 on their collective asses, this imagined nation will, by definition, be totalitarian. One political party, one perspective on social issues--that's what 'totalitarianism' means, go ahead and look it up. Since the word inevitably has a negative connotation, let me concede that A. an all-liberal world would be equally totalitarian, and B. since we are imagining an ideal world, we will imagine that everyone in this world agrees whole-heartedly with the neocons, because of course, if they are self-evidently correct (as they claim), then the ideal would be universal recognition thereof. So we need not imagine 're-education camps' or such easy stuff of nightmares. Everyone just woke up one morning and said, "You know what? I agree with absolutely everything I read in Let Freedom Ring, Treason, and The No-Spin Zone." I will moreover vow that I will strive to avoid satire or cheap-shots--those aspects of life, if any, that would be better under the neocon banner, will be acknowledged, and those aspects of life unchanged or changed without disruptive significance will likewise be noted. My attempt is to see what The Good World of these people looks like, and clearly, they do not see it as any kind of dystopia, so I will veer away from that temptation. So--

Well, start by eliminating the extraneous. Literally--let's examine the rest of the world before we look at things down home.

Geopolitically, I'm at a bit of a loss to visualize this world. I think that the only way the neocons can get their way is either for us to conquer the entire planet--shades of Randy Newman's satirical vision of every country the whole world 'round being just another American town--or else we would have to seal our borders entirely, and go into full-blown isolationist mode. It would have to be one or the other; the Neocon vision is not one of half-measures--their unwillingness to compromise is part of what distinguishes them as a philosophy. As I do not think that world conquest is practicable, I'm going to go with the isolationist perspective. Global trade will, of course, still be necessary, but inasmuch as we can rely on multinationals to handle such trade in a way that supports and develops, rather than undermines, geopolitical stability (per the neocons, mind you), we need not worry about international embroglios or dust-ups; Blackwater will handle such things, and our military can do what it's supposed to do--stay at home and guard our borders. Call it the Monroe Doctrine 2.0: The XTreme Edition.

The poorer nations of the world would probably suffer as a result of this new world order, inasmuch as outfits like Nike would, absent any government oversight or finger-wagging from the State Department, almost certainly engage in truly horrifying labor practices overseas. (Please see earlier note about the Belgian Congo.) But, as the neocons point out, such labor practices would be occurring under the auspices of the countries in which they took place, and therefore the blame for any such atrocities would have to fall squarely on the shoulders of local government. Bribery of said governments by the multinationals would allow these horrific labor practices--all right, all right, let's just call it 'slavery'--to continue, but inasmuch as our own rebellion and achievement of democracy ought to be the model for all subjugated peoples to rise up and achieve self-representation, well, we can't be responsible for a bunch of babies who won't grow a pair and stage their own Battle of Lexington. In short, Not Our Problem. Our responsibility as Americans is solely to ourselves as Americans; other nations must shift for themselves. Just as we do not ask them for aid, neither should we be compelled to give it. (Slashing the living shit out of the federal budget for a few years will, of course, enable us to pay off those pesky loans from China, and then it's a strict diet of self-sutained economic development. No more going to that well for us!) In short, a metaphorical wall has gone up around the nation (a literal one on our southern border), and we just don't get out to see the neighbors. Not a problem--we've got all we need right here at home. If you are, as we are, the greatest country in the world--in history--then why worry about anyplace else? People in Heaven don't take vacations.

So what's life like at home? Tune in tomorrow.