Le dernier mot: Washingtonian Madness
My farewell column has a melancholy air not only because all partings are inherently sad, but because the times are genuinely grim. The world is changing . . . not for the better, and America is making a disproportionate contribution to the process. There is a malaise at the very core of this country’s foreign-policymaking, on both sides of the dominant duopoly in Washington. At its poles there may be differences over tactics and means, but the alleged necessity of America’s continued, open-ended “engagement” in faraway lands is never questioned—and it will not be questioned under the new regime.
The madness is an amorphous beast, and it is still remarkably unaffected by the awful financial and economic reality. It has many names—multiculturalism, one-worldism, tolerantism, inclusivism, antidiscriminationism—that demand engagement abroad and wide-open doors at home. Both abroad and at home, the impulse is neurotic; its justification, gnostic. It reflects the collective loss of nerve, faith, and identity of a diseased society, producing a self-destructive malaise that is literally unprecedented in history.
The intoxication is the arrogant belief that our reason and our science and our technology can resolve all the dilemmas and challenges of our existence, and, in particular, that enlightened abstractions—democracy, human rights, free markets—can be spread across the world and are capable of transforming it in a way that would ultimately turn Muhammads into Joes (which is what they all want, we are assured, or would choose only if they could think clearly). Both the madness and the intoxication have a “left,” essentially Wilsonian, narrative (one-world, postnational, compassionate, multilateralist, therapeutic) and a “right,” or neoconservative, one (democracy-exporting, interventionist, monopolar, boastfully self-aggrandizing).
Though differing in practice, both outlooks are utopian and firmly rooted in the legacy of the Enlightenment and the rejection of any power independent of “the market” and the ostensible will of the multitude. Both hold that Man is naturally good and improvable, that human conflict is unnatural and vanquishable, that chaos and bloodshed around the world are primarily the fruits of some flawed policies of the West (Wilsonians) or the result of our insufficient “engagement” (neoconservatives).
The former find remedies in endless self-examination, in the supranational mechanisms of “collective security” controlled by themselves, and in the promotion of “dialogue” with every Third World tyrant and madman, for as long as he declares a grievance against us. The latter rely on the use of force to impose their benevolent global order on a supposedly grateful pre-postmodern humanity. Both are determined to make the world as they want it to be rather than to deal with the world as it is. This produces policies that are invariably flawed, often evil, and occasionally fatal. Both are united in their loathing of the realist view of America not as an ever-expanding empire but as a republic with definable borders and interests rooted in her history, culture, and tradition. When a realist warns of the Hobbesian nature of the real world and advocates national interest as the foundation of this country’s external affairs, they both cry in unison, “Isolationism!” “Racism!” or some other ism.
It is incorrect to describe Wilsonianism and neoconservatism as two “schools” of foreign policy. They are, rather, two sects of the same Western heresy that has its roots in the Renaissance and its fruits in liberal democracy. Their shared denominational genes are recognizable not in what they seek but in what they reject: polities based on national and cultural commonalities; durable elites and constitutions; and independent economies. Both view all permanent values and institutions with unrestrained hostility. Both exalt state power and reject any political tradition based on the desirability of limited government at home and nonintervention in foreign affairs. Both claim to favor the “market” but advocate a kind of state capitalism managed by the transnational apparatus of global financial and regulatory institutions.Their shared core belief—that society should be managed by the state in both its political and its economic life—is equally at odds with the tenets of the liberal left and those of the traditional right. Far from being “patriotic” in any conventional sense, they both reject the real, historic America in favor of a propositional construct devoid of all organic bonds and collective memories.
The two sects’ deep-seated distaste for the traditional societies, regimes, and religion of the European continent was manifested in President Clinton’s war against the Serbs in 1999 and in their unanimous support for Kosovo’s independence today.
For the same reason, they share a visceral Russophobia, a soft spot for Chechen jihadists, and a commitment to NATO expansion. Both Wilsonians and neoconservatives are united in opposing democracy in postcommunist Eastern Europe, lest it produce governments that will base the recovery of their ravaged societies on the revival of the family, sovereign nationhood, and the Christian Faith. Inevitably, they have joined forces in creating and funding political parties and NGOs east of the Trieste-Stettin Line that promote the entire spectrum of postmodern isms that have atomized America and the rest of the West for the past four decades. From Bratislava to Bucharest to Belgrade, both present the embrace of deviancy, perversion, and morbidity as the litmus test of an aspirant’s “Western” clubbability. Ultimately, both sects share the Straussian dictum that the perpetual manipulation of hoi polloi by those in power is necessary because they need to be told what is good for them.
The essential similarity of Wilsonians and neoconservatives is undeniable. The inability of most patriotic, traditionalist Middle Americans to recognize that similarity and its implications is a problem. Many have no difficulty in recognizing the weirdness or evil of, say, Hillary Clinton, but they would be hard-pressed to detect identical traits in an equally radical sectarian who has morphed into a self-styled “conservative” of the Weekly Standard variety.
As Brian Mitchell notes in the conclusion to his book Eight Ways to Run the Country, the obvious disharmony between the genuine conservatism of ancient ideals—whether Anglo-American or orthodox Christian—and the ruthlessly new ideology of “democratic capitalism” embodied in Michael Ledeen’s Creative Destructionism is lost on the average “Red” American who votes Republican and watches FOX News:
It remains to be seen how far capitalism will carry us before social conservatives awake to its dangers. When free men are allowed to amass great fortunes from global rackets in gambling, pornography, prostitution, narcotics, weaponry, and usury, the permanent things can only expect short shrift. Ultimately, such unrestrained capitalism is on the side of our enslavers. In a thoroughly capitalist world, men will buy and sell each other. Only a power independent of the free market can save us from the slave market.
Historically, Mitchell notes, only two institutions have been up to the task: the institutions of nondemocratic governments that guard against accumulation of wealth outside government control, and a unified Christian Church whose wealth and power are committed to nonmarket purposes. “Democracy alone is no match for the market,” Mitchell concludes, “for democracy is itself a market, selling power to the highest bidder.” Indeed, democracy in America is a corrupt “democratic process” run by an elite class that conspires both to make secondary issues important and to treat important issues as either irrelevant or illegitimate: One party may be in; another, out; but the regime is in power permanently.
The global power of the Wilsonian-neoconservative regime is unlikely to be broken incrementally by an America gradually coming to her senses. It will indeed be broken, but the price will be paid in Middle American blood and treasure. We cannot know when and how this will happen—but happen, it will. We cannot know what will be the theme of after-dinner discussions a hundred years hence, but we do know it will not be the global grandeur of the liberal-democratic-capitalist Pax Americana.
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Dr. Trifkovic, we are genuinely sad to see you leave Chronicles. Many are asking where they may go to read your future articles. Are you at liberty to tell us?
Going out with a bang, not a whimper, that's for certain.
This piece and the prior one are among your best.
Merci, cher profésseur pout votre dernier mot entier. Que le Dieu de l'espérance vous remplisse de toute joie et de toute paix dans la foi, pour que vous abondiez en espérance, par la puissance du Saint Esprit!
"The intoxication is the arrogant belief that our reason and our science and our technology can resolve all the dilemmas and challenges of our existence, and, in particular, that enlightened abstractions—democracy, human rights, free markets—can be spread across the world and are capable of transforming it in a way that would ultimately turn Muhammads into Joes"
Thank you Dr. Trifkovic for all that you have stood for over the years and for daring to speak the truth. You will be sorely missed by Chronicles readers.
Thank you, Dr. Trifkovic, for all of your hard work and writings for Chronicles!
I can't imagine a major world event without Trifkovic's analysis , nor Srdja Trifkovic without writing it. You are a great man , an amazing writer and exceptinal intellectual. I am so sorry to hear you are standing down from your column. I concur wholeheartedly with the above commentators. You are too precious a commodity not to be heard by a wide audience.
--- An Irish blessing says:
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you!
Thank you, Dr. Trifkovic, for this final insightful essay and for so many others. May God go with you!
Farewell Srdja. Can we know where to find you in the future? I do hope we can, from time to time, see your analyses here on the Chronicles blog or elsewhere. Quo vadis? Warmest good wishes,
One of the major problems are these NGOs that interfere in foreign nations and are affiliated with the most radical policy advisors and receive grants for columnists and individuals to write books or compile research. A good example: the Neocons who are affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.
“For the same reason, they share a visceral Russophobia, a soft spot for Chechen jihadists, and a commitment to NATO expansion.” This is part of the average European and American mindset.
With regards to Serbia they dislike true Orthodox people. It is no surprise Russia -- being the largest Orthodox nation and the church actively being sponsored by the state -- are the number one target and the major geopolitical rival to US hegemony.
Dr. Trifkovic, I was very sorry to read in the December issue of Chronicles that you were stepping down as the magazine's foreign affairs editor. May God continue to be with you and to bless you.
Don’t let me read too much into it, but most commentators are saluting Dr. Trifkovic wishing him the only wish worth of such a unique, worthy individual, a renaissance man, and a thinker with no boundaries. Dr. Trifkovic is most rare of all men. He can interweave African tribal infighting, Bret-Litovsk treaty, orbiting of Jupiter and Russian conquest of the North Pole undersea, all in one sentence never loosing a sight of his main thread. We are all (collectively and individually) directed towards our faith in God and God will surely smile on people like Dr. Trifkovic where-ever his path takes him. Equally as the fellow commentators, I wish to know where Dr. Trifkovic will be published as of 2009.
“More is thy due, than more than all can pay”. I even went as far as doing a spell check before posting (as to avoid my hasty trade-mark of huge typos). Just imagine what will the next generations have to say about a man who singlehandedly broke the illusions of Islam being anything but a farce or a cult, while masquerading as a religion for nearly 13 centuries. Not many men can stand up to such winds. Thank you again.
Dr. Trifkovic,
I have learned in through the school of life that ignorance is my shadow, always present even as I gain a modicum of light which leads to some knowledge or to a little understanding. I have not long frequented this cyber version of Chronicles - two years perhaps. Your columns have accomplished two paradoxical ends in my intellectual life: made me even more aware of my ignorance and given me such light that I might successfully soldier on in these times, which as you say are "genuinely grim." It is my personal prayer that God will give you the strength, the health and the courage to continue to speak and write the truth with the elegance and clarity which you have demonstrated in your pieces in and on Chronicles.
Et en français : Dernier mot ?
Jamais.
Je trouverai plus de mots de Dr. Trifkovic n'importe comment dur il est.
So there.
I have trouble even imagining Chronicles without Trifkovic.
Best of luck.
Dr. Trifkovic,
My very best wishes to you in all your endeavours.
It looks as if the time of the breaking of the Wilsonian-neoconservative regime is not all that far off.
I echo the statements above. Thank you so much for your articles during the past few years from which I have learnt so much, and I certainly would like to know where we can find your articles in future.
@15Allen Wilson
The Obama-Clintonian regime isn't going to be much better.
Instead of bombing the Mid East were going to have WW1 style geo-politics in Europe against Russia and new offensives in the Balkans.
In DC, a certain libertarian leaning think tank saw some competent analysts leave it. This was followed by that org. adding on at least one person with the kind of views the neolibs and neocons prefer at home and abroad.
Some orgs. get hijacked with $ issues in mind. Others can depreciate for reasons where personal matters come into play. At present, there appears to be a gap. The best case scenario has Dr. T at another significant venue, with Chronicles continuing to provide intelligently thought provoking insight. There's a good deal of talent out there.
Along with Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, I've considered Chronicles as one of my preferred American online political punditry webzines.
A giant is leaving one of them.
"AWESOME"!.....................I will miss your wrting and logic very, very, much.
Thank you for this time Master Trifkovic and the best of luck for the future. We are many that will continue to read your articles in the future wherever you may write them. They are true masterpieces, each one.
We Occidentals have come to know Russian writers as "intense." After over four years of reading Dr. Trifkovic, I must say, with all due respect to the Russians, they had better make sure they never become less numerous than the Serbians, lest they be rapidly dethroned.
Yet even this column scarcely does justice to the magnitude of the catastrophe about to strike this country. Not that this is any shortcoming on the part of Dr. Trifkovic. Indeed, it would seem difficult, if not impossible, to discuss it without overdoing onesself.
I am happy that Dr. Trifkovic will, in parting, remain clearly Dr. Trifkovic. I wish him the best in this next phase.
Dr. Trifkovic-
I am at a loss of words. Wish you all the best.
This is a sad, sad day for all of us who read Chronicles. To lose an exquisite critical-analytical mind such as Dr. Trifkovic's is an irreparable loss not only for this magazine, but for the public arena of the American political discourse in general.
I can only hope that Dr. Trifkovic will find a new media entity as a vehicle for his brilliant elaborations of the current world affairs, and that he will continue to deliver his insightful, uncompromising and courageous thoughts, which, as we know, are always veiled in the ultimate truth.
In the meantime, we can only pray for the survival of humanity, which ia arguably the most endagered of all species on the face of the earth in these times of " multiculturalism, one-worldism, tolerantism, inclusivism, antidiscriminationism..."
Thank you Srdja.
"We Occidentals have come to know Russian writers as 'intense.' After over four years of reading Dr. Trifkovic, I must say, with all due respect to the Russians, they had better make sure they never become less numerous than the Serbians, lest they be rapidly dethroned."
****
He's a rarity amog ALL humankind. He reflects a way of looking at things which a good number of English language mass media propped propped Russian and Serb pundits stay away from (this excludes the likes of Dr. T and NM).
The greater censorship is the one quite evident but not highlighted.
three cheers for the good doctor!
Srdja Trifkovic should create his own blog were can comment on occasion on events when something major happens in the Balkans or Eurasia
“We Occidentals have come to know Russian writers as ‘intense.’ After over four years of reading Dr. Trifkovic, I must say, with all due respect to the Russians, they had better make sure they never become less numerous than the Serbians, lest they be rapidly dethroned.”
I find that Russia has failed miserably on this issue. There no good English language Russian writers who do a good critic like Serbian writers do and the reality of what’s going on in the Balkans.
There is only a handful of writers who do a good analysis on Russia and they are American.
I've always been impressed with your position on many issues & I too would like to know where your talent will take you.
Sorry to see you leave Chronicles, best wishes for the future.
Forget "conservatism," please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
An outstanding piece.
It's unanimous.
Srdja should continue having a high profile column.
Just not on Chronicles.
I think I am understood.
Why such a specification and why do you continuously hyperlink your name to MSN (asked with some trepidation)?
You will be sorely missed from this site, Dr. Trifkovic. Thank you so much for your articles here. I do hope we will see you published elsewhere soon.....
Mnoga ja ljeta!
Mr. Averko,
Trifkovic is quite a weakling when you get down to it.
It sickened me when he suggested, after all the Zionists did to to his precious little Serbian friends in Kosovo, that a "demystified" continuation of the military alliance between the USFG and the Zionist Entity would be a good idea.
At other occasions he has suggested such lunatic and braindead notions as that the USFG should support the attainment of Nuclear Weapons by South Korea and Japan, a suggestion so retarded that it caused me to wince that I had to descend to the level of refuting it.
On other, even more disgusting occasions, Trifkovic defended as somehow honorable the military record of the worthless air pirate and noted late night talk show plaything John McCain.
If we ever get to a point where's there's nothing left of America except its precious military, it will be because of short-sighted imbeciles like Dr. Trifkovic and John McCain.
They should all be put in a home where they can watch old war movies and be attended to by cheap robot laborers cooked up by DARPA.
Maybe Michael Averko or Srdja Trifkovic can answer this one: Who is Alexander Nevsky, and what is his background? He was recently voted most famous Russian. Of course the western media continued with the "Russia wants to resurrect the USSR" theme by highlighting the fact that at 11.5% Stalin was voted into third place. Pravda published a good opinion piece on it.
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/31-12-2008/106884-most_popular_russian-0
Here in Britain we voted as number 1 that greatest genocidal warmonger/criminal Winston Churchill, who -- as Buchannan pointed out -- got Britain to start WW2 with war guarantee to Poland to intervene on its behalf if Germany invaded; they were slaughtering ethnic Germans in Poland given to them after Versailles.
Farwell, thy good and faithful servant
Even a short passage like the one I quoting, shows that Dr. Trifkovic’s vision and farsightedness capable of identifying the ills (from decadence to downright stupidity) which permeates our society. This is what caught my eye:
“The madness is an amorphous beast, and it is still remarkably unaffected by the awful financial and economic reality. It has many names—multiculturalism, one-worldism, tolerantism, inclusivism, antidiscriminationism—that demand engagement abroad and wide-open doors at home. Both abroad and at home, the impulse is neurotic; its justification, gnostic. It reflects the collective loss of nerve, faith, and identity of a diseased society, producing a self-destructive malaise that is literally unprecedented in history.”
I had a long talk with my 27 year old son last night and forewarned him that “Cyclopic” – view of the world may not necessarily be all true, accurate and correct. He replied with the standard American brainwash “checks and balances” – naturally on paper it sounds great but there are so many ways to bypass the “checks and balances” – whereby even a mediocre person can be inventive enough to hire MPRI, L3, Wackenhut, and nominally claim that “our troops in Iraq are under the 90,000 military persons, but naturally that does not include all sorts of “support staff” hired by private contractors (including Dick Chaney’s Halliburton), and the combined number of Americans in harm’s way well exceeds 150,000 persons. Rather than count on the honesty and integrity in this Godless society, we are better off getting the South to separate again and form a neo-confederate states of America – let the Detroit bail itself out, let the Detroit mosques get financed by some other source not our tax dollars, let the NYC financial moguls work out their own bail-out without my tax dollars. For the first time in years my son did not oppose me – he’s a hard working typical American middle class worker who finds himself in the same predicament as the rest of us, but, again like the rest of us, he, too, has been brainwashed by CNN, fake crisis about some dog on a Los Angeles Freeway one sided view of the world which offers us panem et circensis (just as Mr. Buchanan quoted Hamlet very recently “something is rotten in the state”). Our constitution is almost perfect – people enforcing the laws and proposing new bills (Patriot Act – thoroughly UNAMERICAN, and contrary to the ideas the founding fathers had) – yes getting the activities of most mosques monitored would be acceptable but that should not involve me taking off my shoes at every airport. I feel needlessly humiliated, only because our law enforcement is blinded by who the real enemies are.
After that we shift into the second gear – increased taxes, extra cost per luggage, higher airport fees – do I feel any safer against Muslim encroachment? No I don’t.
Third gear: multi-ethnical, multi-racial, multi-cultural, BY DECREE. How can any such nonsense be mandated? Even if there were such a legal codex – the enforcement can not be mandated.
Whatever happened to our right to dissent?
I don’t know about the rest of us, but each article Dr. Trifkovic has written gets me to ask some profound questions, even going as far back as our basic rights, constitution, etc. That’s only one, most visible part of his greatness. Thank you for your honesty in such times where other forces dominate our daily lives and honesty is well out of sight.
Is the PcH writing in comments on this column and elsewhere the same PcH who accused Chronicles' editor of being a proponent of open immigration in order to flood the country with Catholics? All those arguments, as has been pointed out, have been recycled into the slanderous Wikipedia article on Fleming, which replaced the previous balanced and accurate entry. If this is the same PcH, why doesn't the webmaster ban this jerk?
Mr. Trifkovic,
I've long read your writings with interest. May you resurface somewhere else for all our understanding.
A happy new year.
A few more years and Trifkovic's name will rank with Kennan's.
Sad to see you go. Stay clear of matters Balkan and you'll be alright. Over-invest in them and you'll never be heard from again.
Re: # 42
..Trifkovic’s name will rank with Kennan’s."
You are right. Given his wisdom and knowledge Trifkovic can be one of the finest advisors, diplomats, political scientists, and historians that America ever had.
I'm wishing you God-speed, Srdja!
I hope to see your perceptive and articulate
writing in other venues. Best wishes.
Serge,
Even when I've disagreed with some of your conclusions, I've always profited by reading your articles. As an analyst of foreign affairs, you're second to none.
Best wishes!
Go with God, Mr. Trifkovic, and may Luck walk with you.
Dr. Trifkovic,
Let me also join those who will be sad to see you leave Chronicles. The University of St. Thomas in Houston Texas is my alma mater where you also taught for a short time. I have always enjoyed your articles and you are the light in a dark tunnel. You will be sorely missed and I wish you all the best in the future!
Thank you for all of your insight,
Ken Schneider
Whether you like Dr. Trifkovic or not ( I do, and apparently Mr MSNBC does not) he brings a perspective that you simply don't (and won't) get from anyone else. His is an important voice
For sure # 47.
George:
Let's respect the moment.
In brief answer to your inquiry:
Stalin apparently wanted to pattern himself after AN. A rather famous 1930s era Soviet film on AN was apparently produced with that idea in mind. The Pravda link you gave is a pretty good summation.
Say it ain't so Srdja, I weep!