If there are any future politicians out there who want to learn how to use an opponent's argument against him, head over to The American Enterprise and read "Anti-Globalism = Anti-Americanism" by Jean-Francois Revel.
Step One in Revel's exaggeration is what I like to call the "anti-family fallacy." The debater introduces an idea into the debate that no sane person could possibly be against: the family, for example. The debater then says, "My opponent is anti-family!" Revel uses the anti-family fallacy with globalization, observing, almost harmlessly, that "Globalization simply means freedom of movement for goods and people, and it is hard to be violently hostile to that." The sentence after this is implied: "And yet, somehow, people against globalization really are against freedom of movement for goods and people! Isn't that amazing?"
Step Two: Use the "M-word." The M-word is "Marxism," and in liberal economic circles, an opponenet labeled a Marxist is immediately discredited. "That person must be some sort of CommieNaziFascist," thinks the gum-chewing public. Revel blends the M-word seamlessly into his piece: "The simplistic article of Marxist faith that capitalism is absolute evil, and that it is incarnated in and directed by the United States, may be the most important principle shared by the current crop of anti-globalizers." It also helps when you boil Marxism down to a simple, easily-digestible, bite-sized ideology that is framed in such a way that makes it sound like only Satan and Hitler could be in favor of it.
Then Revel does something that I never thought anyone could do: "But ultimately it is something even bigger that the anti-globalizers want to destroy: liberal democracy and free-market economics. Or quite simply liberty itself." Whoa! Not only is Marxism anti-Capitalism, it's anti-liberty! Bring out the army; it's time for a War on Marxism. Nope, forget it. We had that already. (And Reagan won it.) This is a rhetorical home-run: "My opponent hates everything you value, and what's more, he doesn't want you to have it. He will actively work to destroy your values and replace them with his!" This is the beginning of mob mentality. I bet I could write quite a paper on the rhetorical connections between Revel and any of the villagers in the film Frankenstein.
And it goes on like this. In describing the acts of anti-globalism extremists, he depicts the bombing of McDonald's restaurants (I think this happened a grand total of once) and rioting in Seattle, Genoa, and Nice as the rule for anti-globalists, rather than the exception. I could make the claim that pro-life Christians are hypocritical terrorists who further their opinions by blowing up abortion clinics and abortion doctors, taking lives when they allegedly believe in the sanctity and value of life. But that would be a ridiculous claim, since only a few crazies are responsible for blowing up abortion clinics. I bet that if they had been pro-choice instead of pro-life, they would have been equally crazy. They're just crazy people, and in every ideological movement, there's a few of them who take things to the extreme. So it is with anti-globalization. I guess I would call this the "metonymical fallacy," meaning that the debater takes the actions of a small part of a larger group as representative of the actions of the entire group.
Nevertheless, "Anti-globalists have tried to replace democracy with a despotism of the mob, advancing the brutal proposition that street demonstrators are more legitimate than elected governments." There's that warning again: "They want to replace democracy with despotism!" Juxtaposing two words with such strong meanings elicits strong emotions, and very often, the sentiment generated by the emotions overwhelms the rhetorical objectivity of the listener. This is demgoguery, appealing to emotions rather than to reason. It's why politicians kiss babies: to elicit a positive emotional response without appealing to reason ("Sure, he's kissed a lot of babies, but what has he done for me lately?").
"Anti-globalizers have no ambition to advance a program by democratic means, for the simple reason that they don’t have a program, or coherent ideas, or facts on their side." This is a wonderful idea, and I think it's a neoconservative one: if you don't have a plan, then get out of the way! Even if the plan is one that involves the destruction of all people named "Phil," we are expected to cheer the person espousing it because it's a coherent plan. ("Sure, my plan is t kill everyone named Phil, but at least I have a plan!") This rhetoric is used by opponents of John Kerry.
While it is important to have a plan, Revel is right that a lot of those protesters don't have plans. But they're the exceptions, remember? There are seven jillion scholars in think tanks and universities throughout the galaxy that have coherent plans for an anti-globalist viewpoint. The metonymical fallacy rides again.
Revel decries the form of the rioters' protests, suggesting that they aren't worthy of talking to:
So it is astonishing when European leaders declare themselves "impressed" by the rioters, and convinced of the necessity to "dialogue" with them. It is grotesque to see the leftist press and political stratum, seemingly having learned nothing from the socialist catastrophes and absurdities of the last generation, now greet this new crusade against capitalism with open arms. The president of the French republic, Jacques Chirac, paid tribute to a "global social consciousness" and pleaded before his peers in favor of "normal and permanent dialogue" with the demonstrators.
Why even bother with asking what they have to say? says Revel. They're just protesters. He never stops to think that they resort to protesting precisely because no one will listen to them. Perhaps if someone sat down with them and listened to them, we could get some dialogue going. And yes, neocons have dialogue. It's too touchy-feely and it sounds like that awful word -- compromise! To compromise means to partially give in to your opponents, and neocons want everything they asked for, plus some for the road. Who needs to negotiate? That's for wusses and socialists!
By the way, when Chirac referred to "global social consciousness," I believe that he meant he was happy to see that they were aware of the world around them -- at all! No doubt most Americans didn't know where Iraq was before the Persian Gulf War. Americans are, by and large, ignorant of the world around them. Why should they care what happens an ocean away? American Idol is on, and the ongoing struggle between Reuben Studdard and Clay Aiken is more important than the less immediate struggle between Ariel Sharon and Yassir Arafat.
Here's more misrepresenation of history: "In fact, the Left has always hoped for globalization without the market -- an ideologically correct world government. Soviet and Maoist communists always felt the vocational urge to impose their models on the whole of humanity, if need be by armed subversion, which they did not hesitate to use on five continents." Actually, Stalin abandoned the goal of international communism (Comintern) in 1943.
And still, Revel continues misinterpreting history:
The beneficial effects of widening commerce were evident as far back as the Middle Ages and ancient Rome. But it was not until after the great explorations of the late fifteenth century and the growth of transatlantic trade that globalization in the modern sense of the term began. Merchant capitalism developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the industrial revolution spread throughout Europe and North America from about 1840 to 1914.
Actually, there was no capitalism in the Middle Ages, if indeed that is what Revel is suggesting. Under the feudal economic system, a person's station in life was largely predetermined. A serf, for example, could never hope to be landed nobility. A person could earn a lot of money, but he would never be any better than a regular person with money. It was only after the mid-17th century that a person could actually move up in the world, and yes, it was thanks to capitalism. Capitalism was the friend of the little guy. It said that, if you work hard, then you will earn rewards. Economic benefit will be assigned based on merit, not birth. The person who can do the most work the best deserves to be rewarded, not the aristocrat who lies about all day.
"After World War II, the United States became a powerful advocate in favor of free world commerce," says Revel. Whoa, there. Not so fast. America talks big about globalization, but it only talks big. America still subsidizes a whole lot of its industries, especially agriculture. If we let the market determine the price of wheat, American farmers would be out of a job. The agriculture industry is a great example of a perfectly competitive market, where the individual firm (or farmer) is a price-taker. Since the product is homogenous (wheat is wheat), the individual farmer cannot raise the price of his wheat, or else consumers will go to another farmer. To protect against this, the U.S. government subsidizes American agriculture, making it more expensive for foreign wheat to come in here. (As a side note, I personally agree with this: a country should not have to rely on another country for its food supply. What I don't agree with is pretending that these actions constitute normal, free-market capitalism, when in fact, they reek of socialism!)
There's also the steel industry. Remember two years ago, when President Bush instituted steel tariffs? He did this, ostensibly, to save steel jobs in America, since steel could be imported to the U.S. and sold more cheaply than steel made in America. The WTO and the European Union balked, the latter threatening to raise tariffs on some of its goods. Someone else balked: it was American auto makers, who use steel as a raw material. Increase the price of steel (through tariffs, or by forcing auto makers to buy it here, where it's more expensive), and you increase the price of cars, since it costs the auto company more for overhead. Finally, Bush relented and took the steel tariffs down. Is this the U.S. being "global"? Absolutely not; this is the U.S. talking about globalism for everyone else.
Despite being French, Revel is more conservative than French, and can't resist taking a stab at the French:
We French have had little to say against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, the imams of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the bosses of China and Vietnam. We reserve our admonitions and our contempt and our attacks for the U.S., for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and for Europeans like Margaret Thatcher, Silvio Berlusconi, and Tony Blair, because they are insufficiently hostile to capitalism. Our enemy is not the dictator but the free market economy.
Revel uses another great rhetorical trick here: he boils down the choices to two sides and only two sides (even though there may be more than two), and he gets to pick what the sides are. On one side are dictators and socialists. On the other side are capitalists and democracy. Since the French aren't in favor of capitalism, they must, therefore, be on the side of the dictators and socialists. In fact, this isn't true. The French don't hate capitalism because of its virtues ("ooh, I hate freedom!"); this is the same "they hate us for our freedoms" crap that sits well with the simple-minded. By saying, "Your opponent hates your values!" its easy to hate your opponent. The French dislike capitalism for its moral problems: it puts the poor at odds with the wealthy; it's a zero-sum game; there will necessarily be those who have and those who have not. They feel that the moral problems outweigh any "liberty" that we may see, and indeed, they feel that their system has more liberty than ours. No one is against liberty; rather, we're all trying to get to liberty in different ways. Analyzing this argument, it looks ridiculous: they hate capitalism . . . because they hate capitalism? Hatred of capitalism is not an end, but a means to some end, and Revel never explains what that end is.
Revel seems to live in a magical wonderland where the U.S. is perfectly globalist. Do you suppose he would favor the free movement of people across the Mexican-American border? Of course not -- but in order to remain consistent with his hyper-globalist views, he would have to. Nevertheless, we restrict the amount of immigrant labor that we let into this country, afraid that Mexicans will steal jobs from Americans. In a perfectly globalist world, if a Mexican can do the same job for less, that benefits everyone -- except the person who lost that job to the Mexican. Revel never addresses the problem of Mexican immigrants, probably because, as a neocon, he would be staunchly against it -- something which flies in the face of globalist ideology.
My point in writing this entry is to show that Mr. Revel is a manipulative hypocrite. He waxes poetic about globalism, but fails to acknowledge that even the U.S., the country he venerates as a bastion of globalization, is not nearly as globalized as he portrays it. He uses a multitude of clever rhetorical techniques to vilify his opponents, thus negating the need to respond to their arguments. "What about Mexican immigrants? What about steel tariffs and farm subsidies?" He'd probably decry me as a socialist, throw a smoke bomb on the ground, and then fly off like some deranged, neoconservative Batman.
