Putting the critical back into American thought
A McMaster prof warns of the death of U.S. democracy
As President George W. Bush’s approval ratings plummet, critics of the once- buoyant leader are counting the months until he is out of office. But they also say that changes made during Bush’s two- term presidency have altered the country’s politics in a way that will last long after he leaves the White House.
“ Since Bush has been in power, a number of anti- democratic elements have come together,” says McMaster University English professor Henry Giroux. “ When you add them all up, a dangerous pattern emerges. This is not a short- term thing.”
Giroux, an internationally acclaimed educator, has just published Against The New Authoritarianism: Politics After Abu Ghraib, outlining what he says is the dismantling of democracy under a radically right- wing administration that has managed to silence most of its political and media critics in a way not seen since the Cold War era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Through the pursuit of “ market fundamentalism,” the corporatization of the media, an attack on the barriers separating church and state, the intrusion of militarization on everyday life, the polarization of the world into friends and enemies, and the destruction of education aimed at critical thought, Giroux says, America has betrayed its democratic roots.
“ What we have now is a rabid individualism coupled with rabid intolerance,” he says in an interview. “War and warriors are the only enduring symbols of this way of life. In this patriotic frenzy, the aim is to assassinate enemies, not to hold a dialogue with them.” By giving in to the most negative elements, Giroux says, there is an “ inability to imagine a future that doesn’t involve the most sordid interests of the present. There is no sense of the future, except in the near term. Billions are made quickly for a few, but billions suffer. There is no sense that we can imagine the future will be better.”
Education is the key to restoring the interaction between America’s people and its politicians, an underlying condition for democracy. And, Giroux says, it should also prepare students to ask critical questions when things go wrong. The images of sexual and physical abuse from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where American forces held suspected insurgents, shocked people in the U. S., as well as other countries.
But, Giroux says, the meaning of the pictures “ does not rest with the images alone but with the ways in which they are aligned and shaped by larger institutional and cultural discourses,” including the condemnation of torture, how it comes about, and preventing it in the future.
“ We have to look at the hardness, racism and indifference that are now wrapped up and sold as a way of life,” he says.
And, he argues, it’s time for a new kind of education that emphasizes critical thinking, independence and the ability to question; traits he says have been increasingly denigrated in America’s schools today.
“ The idea of citizenship without that is meaningless. And you can’t talk about democracy without critical agents. People must be able to defend the public spheres that are vital to democracy. For the Bush regime, it’s clear there is a link between education and democracy, and that the link is dangerous.”
Giroux, who left the United States for Canada a year ago, is one of a number of Americans raising the alarm about American democracy. And, he says, although Canada has not succumbed to the same authoritarian tendencies, “ we should be wary. It’s a nightmare heading our way.”
Defenders of the neoconservative Bush government say that, rather than being authoritarian, it has put its finger on the pulse of Middle America and is expressing the values of most of the country’s people.
And, says Princeton University historian Sean Wilentz in The New York Times, “ modern conservatism has outlived every expectation of its demise. Even today, unsettled by hurricanes, scandals and an increasingly unpopular war, the ( Republican Party) nonetheless stands for conservative principles and speaks a political language readily understood by voters.” But former Vice President Al Gore, in a recent speech in New York, declared America’s democracy in “ grave danger.”
“ Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by this practice?” he asked. “ And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behaviour is being carried out in the name of the American people?
“ If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low- income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?” The “marketplace of ideas” that allowed a reasoned public debate no longer exists, Gore said. Public meetings and written exchanges have been replaced by commercially dominated television that is controlled by corporations friendly to the White House.
“ Every day ( the Bush administration) unleashes squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President,” Gore said, joining a chorus of critics who argue that fascism has entered American politics.
And, says Giroux, the form it takes is one dominated by corporate interests and opposed to public participation in the process of government.
“This type of politics does more than celebrate its own intolerance; it also lays the groundwork for a kind of authoritarianism that views democracy as both a burden and a threat,” he says.
Harper’smagazine editor Lewis Lapham also charges that a creeping fascism has emerged in America in recent years.
In a cutting satirical essay, he says that the new variety has no need to burn books, as happened in Nazi Germany; “to people who don’t know how to read or think, they do as little harm as snowflakes falling on a frozen pond.”
America, he says, is now a country in which, “Darwin’s theory of evolution ( is) rescinded by the fiat of ‘ intelligent design;’ a state of perpetual war and a government administering in generous and daily doses the drug of fear; two presidential elections stolen with little or no objection on the part of a complacent populace; the nation’s congressional districts gerrymandered to defend the White House for the next 50 years against the intrusion of a liberal-minded president; the news media devoted to the arts of iconography, busily minting images of corporate executives like those of the emperor heroes on the coins of ancient Rome.” And Lapham says, a lost capacity for critical thought has allowed this authoritarian trend to surface.
“ It’s one of the reasons Bush is in office,” he says in an interview. “ It’s the product of a dumbed-down education system, which has been getting worse over the last 30 years. There’s a cutting back of people’s vocabulary, and language itself is an endangered species, in the same way that the flora and fauna are endangered. Critical thought depends on language.” The political landscape offers little hope for people who are concerned about threats to democracy, Lapham says: “The Republicans have lost faith in the Republican Party, but the Democrats have also lost faith in the Democratic Party. This is a moment of felt crisis. But how it will be addressed is in doubt.”
Regaining hope is part of the process, says Giroux.
“ We have to steer into the face of anti-democratic tendencies and ask the question, Can the future be better?” The remedy, he says, is a new vision that springs from a recognition that democracy is worth struggling for, in spite of the pervasive cynicism about American political life.
“ The goal of educated hope is not to liberate the individual from the social. . . but to take seriously the notion that the individual can only be liberated through the social.”