The Universal Argument Is All About, "Who Is In Charge Here?"

Both the results of the midterm election and the confused subtexts brought out in the assorted exit and other polls shows that if there is one unifying theme defining American political discourse today it is the matter of who is or should be in charge of power in the US.

The opponents are well defined.  On the one hand is the self-defined elite, the hoi oligoi of academia, media, and politics with a firm belief in its education and status conferred right to rule (for the good of all, of course.)  On the other is the rest of us, the hoi polloi who lack the arrogance, the utterly delusional sense of self entitlement, the prideful certainty that we are so competent, so blessed by wisdom that we can run anyone's life other than our own.

In this conflict as in the confusion over what government is all about, We the People are  no different from our fellow members of the Order of the Belly Button in Europe.  The same conflict has been extant and growing over there for some years.  Most recently it has culminated--as it has here--in a lurch away from the wholesale commitment to social democracy with its firm conviction that the government is the fountainhead of equality, justice, and security.  As in the US the assorted elites of Europe have been outraged, horrified by the notion that the ungrateful "masses" so repeatedly celebrated in the abstract by the elites have turned the worm against their presumed benefactors.

At root in both Europe and the US, the issue in play is the same.  Who will exercise political authority, that is power over the lives, the choices, the values, the beliefs of the individual citizen?  The short answer, apparent right now, is the citizenry generally in both the US and Western Europe no longer trusts the ability or the motives of the central government and those who closely identify with the central government be they politicians, academics, journalists, pundits, labor leaders, and the rest of the elite legion.

As the line in an old TV ad had it, "Please, mother, I'd rather do it myself."

The contest for power pitting supporters of the state against those who desire (demand?) that the state be either limited or shrunk has been raised in profile and embittered in tone by the exigencies of the great budget crunch.  The crunch would have come sooner or later and is in no way directly dependent upon the effects of the Great Recession.  The crunch is the product of the cold equations of population demographics pure and simple.  But the impact of the Great Recession on national bottom lines accelerated the pace of events, sped up the coming of the crunch.

The rapid coming and blooming of the budget crunch assured that people in the US and Western Europe had the impetus to bring an almost subterranean debate over the nature, role, and extent of governmental authority into the open.  For the moment at least, the Big State is on the defensive, but it is far from becoming an endangered species.

One reason for this is the distrust of international aggregates such as the European Union or the UN is far, far greater among the hoi polloi than with the hoi ollogoi.  There is and has been for many years a belief dear to the hearts of elites here and in Europe that the day of the nation-state was over.  To most of the elite the demise of the nation-state was an unmitigated good.  The complete antipathy held for the nation-state was equaled by a passionate affection for multi-national institutions whether the various precursors to the EU, the UN or, closer to us in the States, the Organization of American States.

All multi-national institutions but particularly the UN were wildly applauded and supported by all members in good standing of the elite here and abroad.  In the US the fact that Uncle Sam was often the designated whipping boy of the globe was seen as a sign of the UN's legitimacy.  How could any body in which the countries of the world had an equal voice be mistaken?

We the People have been reluctant in the extreme to embrace the notion that the US was the source of all global evil, all the problems, inequities, and injustices of the human race.  Few of the hoi polloi have been eager to accept the "We are bad" and "Blame America first" slogans of the elite in its exaltation of the UN or other multi-national bodies.

One reason for this as well as for the innate distrust of multi-national bodies is the intuitive understanding within We the People and our counterparts in Europe that not all people, not all cultures, not all countries have identical or even compatible norms, values, imperatives, and goals.  Regardless of the propaganda offered by the elites, there is and has been a pervasive belief that not all people, not all cultures, not all societies, not all countries are fundamentally interchangeable parts of some mythical human whole.

It is this understanding that is in play with the "Clash of Civilizations" so dramatically evident today.  The CoC pits two world views which are diametrically opposed in many basic features in sharp combat over just who will be in charge of the globe in the decades to come.

It is no more xenophobic or racist or "tribal" for a person in the West to want to see the West continue to be the dominant voice in global affairs than it is to say the same of a Muslim, even an advocate of violent political Islam to wish his world view to triumph.  Rather both are seeking to answer the "who is in charge" question in the way which most benefits the personal preference, the individual loyalty.

When a Western European polity determines to ban minarets or burquas it is neither intolerance at work nor the chimera of "islamophobia."  Rather it is the right of the majority culture, the majority society acting as polity, to determine it and not the stranger in our familiar land who is in charge of today and tomorrow.  It is the assertion of a basic human social right to determine its own identity and destiny--regardless of what the self-selected elite might desire.

Banning symbols of Islamic culture is not an attack on Islam.  Actions in Switzerland, France, or even the US in no way threaten the political integrity of majority Muslim polities.  Muslims have an untrammeled right to stone women, force women into garbage sacks, lop of hands and feet of purported criminals, or engage in the other requirements of their faith--in the areas where they are in charge.

At the same time it is well within the purview of Westerners to dictate the requirements of conduct, the tests of membership in their national communities.  It is not, despite the pronouncements of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an attack on Muslims to assert that they conform to the demands of the nation-states in which they choose to reside.  Nor is it, again regardless of the position adopted by the OIC, for the US or any other Western state to defend itself against the physical attacks mounted by Muslims who advocate violent political Islam.  Neither is it an attack against Islam qua Islam to retaliate when attacked by a Muslim.

The violent aspects of the Clash of Civilizations constitute nothing less than a war.  And, war is nothing but a means of determining just who is in charge.  The Clash, most importantly its violent component, was initiated by Muslims who are strong and fervent believers in violent political Islam.  They sought and continue to seek to be in charge not only in their own, home countries but elsewhere, everywhere if the words of such as Osama bin Laden are to be taken at face value.

We the People and our counterparts throughout the West can be grateful to the advocates of violent political Islam.  Their attacks, their mass murders, their terror has forced us to see just what is abroad in the world.  It has turned out that the danger is not  simply violent political Islam or even the add on of the intrusive Nanny state, but rather the long unchallenged ascendancy of the hoi ollogoi.

For too long we have surrendered power almost without question or protest to those who have proclaimed themselves to be "our betters."  The failure of the self-designated elites to defend our lives and territory against foreign threats gave rise to an increased unwillingness to entrust the elite with power.  As election after election in both Europe and now the US show, the non-elite, the common person, the hoi polloi has belatedly but decisively decided that it is in charge, that it has the power to control its life today and into the future.

And, that, Bucko, is a damn good thing.