America, Celebrate Your Independence Day. But Please Don’t Take Freedom for Granted.

I’ve always appreciated the significance of the 4th of July, having grown up in close proximity to several American families in my hometown which hosts an American military base. Of course, there are the celebrations, parties, food and fireworks, but there’s much more to it than that. The reason for the occasion is to celebrate America’s freedom from autocratic British rule. It goes by the moniker of Independence Day. As a Brit, I’m not supposed to like it, but I actually do. Who are the self-appointed nobility to deny others their freedom?

Ronald Beiner, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto

But before we relegate thoughts of the sheer undesirability of autocratic overlords to the annals of history, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are still those in the west who wish to undo democracy in favour of fascism or communism. On the former of the two, I recently interviewed Ronald Beiner, Professor of Political Science, at Toronto University for an episode of the Real Clear Values podcast. (The episode will likely be published in August.)

Beiner had long assumed that the far-right had been consigned to the rubbish bin of history, only to be shocked when one of his grad students expressed his admiration for the work of Russian fascist Alexander Dugin. That was his first wake-up call, then came the emboldening of the far-right through Britain’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the United States.

(I hasten to add that in no way do I think that all who voted in favour of either Brexit or Trump are ‘alt-right’ or are necessarily associated with the far-right whatsoever, but those outcomes indubitably bolstered the public confidence of those of that extreme persuasion. Charlottesville is evidence of that.)

“Nietzsche is their guy”

The point of my conversation with Beiner was to discuss the dangers of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to the rise of the far-right. One of Beiner’s central arguments in his book Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far-Right is that Nietzsche, a remarkably protean thinker who perhaps has as many interpretations of his work as he has readers, had a clearly identifiable central project: to undo liberal democracy and revert to hierarchical societies ruled by some form of nobility, as was the case prior to both the French Revolution and the popularisation of Christianity. With that in mind, Beiner states that many on the far-right have identified Nietzsche as “their guy”, just as those on the extreme left have identified Karl Marx as theirs. In Nietzschean philosophy, equality is not a good thing.

What also struck me about my conversation with Beiner was the alarming origin of the first review of his book: Greg Johnson. Johnson is an influential neo-fascist with a PhD in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America. Early in his riposte to Beiner’s book, he identifies him as a “Canadian Jewish political theorist”.

Johnson understands the values of liberal democracy better than most, yet chooses to relentlessly promote neo-fascism through a publishing empire that he’s built. Beiner noted that Johnson’s riposte to his book was well articulated – “he’s smart but evil”. Tackling racism and extremist ideologies at both ends of the political spectrum, then, isn’t simply a question of education; it’s a question of values.

A War of Values

As Susan Dunn highlights so well in her book, A Blueprint for War: FDR and the Hundred Days That Mobilized America, FDR recognised WWII as a war for democratic values and freedoms. And while it might be tempting to think that the war for such was definitively won with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the evidence suggests that there are reasons to remain vigilant as citizens in protecting the freedoms that we so often take for granted.

What does Beiner see as the solution to the rising influence of the far-right? There are no silver bullets whatsoever – academics certainly can’t be expected to singlehandedly solve the problem. But engaged, reflective, thinking citizens who are consciously committed to liberal democracy are essential to protect a way of life that so many of us take for granted. The solutions have to be found within the civic domain.

So, America, as you bring your 4th of July celebrations to a close, please spare a thought for what a free, democratic society requires of its citizens. When it comes to free societies, the world looks to you more than anyone else.