George Rebane
Given the 25jun15 SCOTUS ruling on ACA, I had to rush off a post on it since RR's readership will not sit idly by and let an occasion like this pass without extensive discussion and debate. And this happening may even fit into these thoughts that I’ll try to weave together on equally impactive geo-political goings on.
William Galston, left-leaning observer and columnist picks up on RR’s ‘beyond the tipping point’ assertion in his ‘Modern Autocrats Are on the March’. Therein he cites David Clark of UK’s Henry Jackson Society who argues that “the great wave of global democratic change that began in the mid-1970s—doubling the number of electoral democracies in the space of three decades—has come to an end. Instead, we are now confronted with a powerful authoritarian backlash that is reversing some of these gains and encouraging a resurgence of anti-democratic ideas.”
This according to many of us, including Galston, who have observed geo-political maneuverings over the last decade or so makes clear that while “the rise of violent Islamism has transfixed the world, another, graver threat—21st-century autocracy—is gathering strength. In the long run, it is sophisticated autocrats, not bearded zealots, who pose the greater menace to democracy.” By this is meant that these sophisticated autocrats are not some conservative or progressive knuckle-draggers wanting to return to yesteryear, but instead are elites who take into account globalization, rising prosperity and digital communications, and, according to Clark, they have developed “new techniques of control and new justifications for monopolizing power that enable autocratic leaders to resist pressure for democratic change.”
As we know, democracy is not a naturally occurring form of governance, and pure democracy is now the established tool of would be tyrants as the enthusiastically swallowed preamble to tyranny. Today these elites “adeptly manipulate the façade of democratic procedures” to “co-opt their countries’ rising middle-classes.” This is most evident in the Asian autocracies that preach to their citizens their cultural exceptionalism in the expression and practice of their ‘Asian values’. And I agree with Clark that “the rise of the new authoritarianism shows that democracy is not the inevitable outgrowth of modernization and economic development.” To confirm this we need look no further than our own shores.
Columbia University’s Alexander Cooley puts a bow around the entire new authoritarian movement, observing the use of “post 9/11 counter-terrorism norms to suppress domestic dissent.” An effective means toward this future is in their creation of “a network of pseudo-NGOs including false election monitors.” And the more the west withdraws from its awareness, its investigation and reporting of these happenings, the more certainly its own countries (of the EU, North America, New Zealand, Australia, …) will be the inevitable targets of such enlarging authoritarian orders. And most of those who are paying attention know that we are already well on our way (again consider how our government has transformed toward the authoritarian model).
A contributing socio-economic factor that will enable these autocrats is the public’s increasing awareness of the rise of systemic unemployment. Popular outlets like The Atlantic are now publishing comprehensive reports and analyses with titles like ‘A World Without Work’. These articles are full of numbers that tell the tale of fewer and fewer workers at companies with huge market valuations bringing in revenues that dwarfed the manufactories and service bureaus of yesterday with ten times as many employees. And they cite well-known officials, executives, and economists who some years back thought that warnings of machines reducing the net jobs available to humans were a “Luddite fallacy”; they are now changing their minds in droves.
Nevertheless, what we can bet the ranch on is that masses of un/der-employed will be extremely receptive to political demogauges of the autocratic bent who promise them a new order in which everyone will work, and everyone will once more be relevant. And again, we see it happening today, right here in River City.
The final goad to trading everything for security comes from Islam and its radical elements making progress – especially in the face of now obvious lies from the Obama administration – in the goal to set up its much awaited caliphate starting in the Middle East and Africa. For the rest of us who prefer western civilization, the question has been and remains ‘what are the sentiments of the millions of Muslims who already legally live among us?’ The record of their acts, actions, and speech have not been a comfort, and their aired promises through the internet and from their state sponsors do not portend well – it will still be ‘Accept Allah, or die!’
So what are the sentiments of, say, American Muslims? This question is polled and studied only at its margins, even by reputed polling companies like Pew Research Center. These attitudes are highly in flux with the continuous stream of news about the latest bombings, beheadings, mass executions, and territorial gains by ISIS and the Taliban. But for such an important and ongoing inter-civilizational conflict, the polling is surprisingly sparse and conducted with softball questionnaires that substantially miss the mark. However, one not too well known right-leaning think tank, Center for Security Policy, has dared to step into that breech and ask at least some of the right questions that concern the rest of us.
The CSP poll conducted by The Polling Company should raise more than eyebrows in America. You can read the entire report and also the poll’s questionnaire here. A summary of the main findings of America’s Muslim sentiments and attitudes include –
• a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”
• More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.
• nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.” • Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.
Pew Research reports that there are three million Muslims in the US, or almost 1% of our population. Even if the above poll results are even approximately on the mark, these findings reveal that there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst with values and mores that are radically different from our own. And as we have seen, here and elsewhere in the world, Islam is not a religion of peace, never has been, and today according to its leading thinkers and theologians, Islam demands a harsh allegiance of all followers of Allah.
The violence perpetrated by the spontaneous radicalization of one or two Muslims in a larger population is well known here and around the world. But the most worrisome absence is that there is no visible hew and cry from the so-called moderate Muslims in America to continually denounce the violence and civil variances of their zealous brethren. All is quiet on the western front, until … . Meanwhile, our leadership in Washington tells us a steady stream of fairy tales about Islam’s nature, objectives, and reach.
So to bring it full circle, what happens when the next jihadist attack again kills thousands of Americans? We have in place the legal machinery to move the country firmly into an authoritarian form of governance from which exits, even if they exist, are unknown. And to make sure that no indigenous protest by Americans will be successful, I invite you to monitor Jade Helm (q.v.) which starts in about two weeks.
rebanesruminations.com 
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