Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
"...Jacobins are seduced by power. The foundation of their abstract morality is their fantastic claim to a monopoly on virtue. Secure in their belief in their monopoly on virtue, Jacobins are prepared to use force to impose virtue on other societies and to reconstruct other societies in the Jacobin image.
Jacobin society is a centralized one that subordinates individuals and their liberties to abstract virtues. In short, it is an ideological society imbued with assurance of moral superiority that justifies its dominance over others, including its own citizens.
Virtue gives Jacobins a mandate to rule the world in order to improve it. Opposed to the American Republic that is based in traditional morality and limits on power, the Jacobin agenda is to remake America into an empire capable of imposing virtue on the world.
Jacobin morality is divorced from moral character, personal conduct, and treatment of others. Jacobin morality expresses itself in benevolent sentiments toward abstract entities. Human lives and cultural diversity mean nothing compared to “making the world safe for democracy” and “liberating women from the Muslim yoke.” Jacobin morality seeks to achieve a uniform unipolar world.
Possessed of an unrelenting will to power, the Jacobins in the Bush administration, together with their media allies, seized the opportunity afforded by September 11 to meld America’s nationalistic response to terrorism with the Jacobin ideological agenda. Once Americans associated invading foreign countries (Afghanistan) with the “war on terror,” Jacobins shifted the “terrorist threat” to Iraq. Now they are working to shift it to Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. Next will be Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The Jacobin agenda requires large numbers of American troops and heavy taxation to support massive military budgets. It means the return of the draft.
It also explains why Jacobins are unconcerned with our own country’s porous borders while they seek to control Middle Eastern borders. The hordes of young Mexicans pouring into the US are a convenient source of cannon fodder, just as President Lincoln redirected the flow of Irish immigrants in his day into the Union Army.
Jacobins are dangerous because they lack historical understanding and rely on abstract righteousness to impose ideological unity. Their drive for like-mindedness implies coercion, the gulag and the Orwellian state. The Jacobin agenda means the end of Western civilization.
Professor Ryn shows that Jacobins are lost in abstractions and do not appreciate or understand Western civilization as a human achievement resulting from centuries of struggle to create moral character. Self-restraint, empathy, and mutual respect are necessary for pluralistic societies. However, such genuine virtues have no role in the uniform Jacobin state.
It is difficult to quibble when Professor Ryn writes that “monopolistic ideological universalism that scorns historically formed societies is a potential source of unending war and great disasters.”
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Jacobins use their power and influence to suppress dissent. Jacobin ends justify Jacobin means. Thus, lies, deception, and manipulation cause Jacobins no shame.
As Professor Ryn observes, ambition unchecked by intellectual humility and moral self-control is the source of tyranny."
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