{"id":70217,"date":"2008-09-22T22:36:32","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T22:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/09\/22\/cette-seule-nation-sous-le-regard-de-dieu\/"},"modified":"2008-09-22T22:36:32","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T22:36:32","slug":"cette-seule-nation-sous-le-regard-de-dieu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/09\/22\/cette-seule-nation-sous-le-regard-de-dieu\/","title":{"rendered":"Cette seule Nation sous le regard de Dieu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Le caract\u00e8re religieux de la perception am\u00e9ricaniste du monde, ce caract\u00e8re si fort qu’il exerce probablement une forte influence sur la psychologie am\u00e9ricaniste elle-m\u00eame, joue \u00e0 plein dans l’affrontement avec la Russie. Il joue d’autant plus que les USA, en \u00e9tat d’inf\u00e9riorit\u00e9 sur ce th\u00e9\u00e2tre et dans une phase notable d’affaiblissement, ont peu de moyens concrets \u00e0 opposer \u00e0 la Russie. Les USA conservent leur attitude manich\u00e9enne, religieuse, et s’appuient d’autant plus sur elle pour fonder leur violente critique anti-russe, critique de plus en plus violente du point de vue dialectique, d’autant plus violente qu’elle s’\u00e9loigne de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 de la politique. (Malgr\u00e9 cet \u00e9loignement de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, les effets psychologiques sont tr\u00e8s forts et l’hostilit\u00e9 anti-am\u00e9ricaniste des Russes \u00e0 cause de cette attitude US ne cesse de se renforcer et devrait rapidement devenir structurelle.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tL’auteur et historien Lee Congdon d\u00e9veloppe, dans le num\u00e9ro du 22 septembre<\/a> de The American Conservative<\/em>, une analyse de cet aspect \u00e9trange, radical et messianique de la psychologie am\u00e9ricaniste, et sa p\u00e9n\u00e9tration dans la politique ext\u00e9rieure des USA. Il s’agit ainsi d’une politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re bas\u00e9e sur l’acceptation implicite que l’am\u00e9ricanisme, dont cette politique fait la promotion, est la quatri\u00e8me grande religion occidentale, selon les mots du professeur Gelernter, de l’universit\u00e9 de Yale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abAmericans, of course, also spurned communist ideology and feared that it might succeed in dominating the world, including the United States. They seemed not to notice that they themselves were in thrall to a political religion; recently, in fact, Yale professor David Gelernter described Americanismthat is, American democracyas the fourth great Western religion. No doubt he cheered when President Bush, in his second inaugural address, declared it to be the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. In practice, this imperial ambition, for that is what it is, has meant constant meddling in the affairs of governments the U.S. considers to be insufficiently democratic.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThere is no doubt, for example, that the National Endowment for Democracy played a significant role in Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004-05. In 1999, the NED initiated the World Movement for Democracy, which presupposes the universality of the democratic idea and the inevitability of democratic transition, even in a Middle East that lacks democratic traditions. One of the least convincing reasons for waging war on Iraq was to plant the seeds of democracy, with the expectation that they would germinate and grow throughout the region.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbSuch visions should come as no surprise. America has always prided itself on being the world’s last best hope, a shining city upon a hill. But Woodrow Wilson’s call for a world made safe for democracy focused and intensified that missionary zeal. Most Americans believe democracy to be the only legitimate form of government and the U.S., as the leading democratic nation, to be duty bound to evangelize the world. American officials are quick to lecture leaders of sovereign states who violate one or another of democracy’s commandments, and few of them question their right to impose our system, by military force if necessary, upon those who resist conversion. They would be puzzled by the question once posed by Edmund Burke: Is it then a truth so universally acknowledged that a pure democracy is the only tolerable form into which human society can be thrown, that a man is not permitted to hesitate about its merits, without the suspicion of being a friend to tyranny, that is, of being a foe to mankind?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIt is a truth acknowledged by neoconservatives, many of whom have the president’s ear. Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, has written that large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. (The word internal here is particularly revealing of an interventionist mentality.) That being so, democratic Georgia must, at all costs, be defended against autocratic Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIt is not without interest that Kristol is an ex-Trotskyite. Like him, most of his followers have a leftist past, and that accounts for the fact that they are attracted to ideological movements. If communism did not save the world, perhaps democracy will. One can see something of the same instinct in the ex-communists who gathered around the old National Review. Frank Meyer was a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Max Eastman translated several works by Trotsky. James Burnham, another ex-Trotskyite, argued that a new managerial class would replace the old capitalist class; different class, but the same structure of analysis.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tD’autres ont une interpr\u00e9tation plus abrupte de cette attitude, la transcrivant en des termes plus terrestres et triviaux, hors de toute consid\u00e9ration religieuse. Le r\u00e9sultat est une politique stupide, selon le jugement que donnait l’anonyme Spengler<\/em>, le 19 ao\u00fbt<\/a> sur le site Atimes.com<\/em>. Le jugement \u00e9tait port\u00e9 sur la politique US face \u00e0 la Russie, la fa\u00e7on dont les Russes, tr\u00e8s intelligents dans leur politique, sont d\u00e9sar\u00e7onn\u00e9s par la sottise de la politique US. Les Russes jouent aux \u00e9checs, les Am\u00e9ricains jouent au Monopoly<\/em>, observait Spengler<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abThe fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them. That is what the informed Russian public believes, judging from last week’s postings on web forums, including this writer’s own.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThese perceptions are dangerous because they do not stem from propaganda, but from a difference in existential vantage point. Russia is fighting for its survival, against a catastrophic decline in population and the likelihood of a Muslim majority by mid-century. The Russian Federation’s scarcest resource is people. It cannot ignore the 22 million Russians stranded outside its borders after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, nor, for that matter, small but loyal ethnicities such as the Ossetians. Strategic encirclement, in Russian eyes, prefigures the ethnic disintegration of Russia, which was a political and cultural entity, not an ethnic state, from its first origins.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe Russians know (as every newspaper reader does) that Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili is not a model democrat, but a nasty piece of work who deployed riot police against protesters and shut down opposition media when it suited him in short, a politician in Putin’s mold. America’s interest in Georgia, the Russians believe, has nothing more to do with promoting democracy than its support for the gangsters to whom it handed the Serbian province of Kosovo in February.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAgain, the Russians misjudge American stupidity. Former president Ronald Reagan used to say that if there was a pile of manure, it must mean there was a pony around somewhere. His epigones have trouble distinguishing the pony from the manure pile. The ideological reflex for promoting democracy dominates the George W Bush administration to the point that some of its senior people hold their noses and pretend that Kosovo, Ukraine and Georgia are the genuine article.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThink of it this way: Russia is playing chess, while the Americans are playing Monopoly. What Americans understand by war games is exactly what occurs on the board of the Parker Brothers’ pastime. The board game Monopoly is won by placing as many hotels as possible on squares of the playing board. Substitute military bases, and you have the sum of American strategic thinking. <\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCes diverses appr\u00e9ciations nous disent beaucoup de choses vraies. On peut les rassembler en un constat essentiel, du point de vue du jugement sur la politique ext\u00e9rieure; on peut avancer que l’affirmation US en faveur de la d\u00e9mocratie, qui est l’affirmation constante centrale de la politique ext\u00e9rieure US puisque la d\u00e9mocratie est pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e comme l’application politique de l’am\u00e9ricanisme, n’a rien \u00e0 voir avec un montage, un complot, une manuvre, une hypocrisie ou une tromperie. (Bien entendu, il s’agit de la vision am\u00e9ricaniste de la d\u00e9mocratie, on le comprend et on comprend de quoi il s’agit.) L’un appelle ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne la quatri\u00e8me grande religion occidentale, l’autre la stupidit\u00e9 de la politique US; en aucun cas, il ne s’agit d’autre chose que de sinc\u00e9rit\u00e9, d’une croyance ing\u00e9nue et aveugle. La principale chose \u00e0 comprendre, c’est sans aucun doute cette sinc\u00e9rit\u00e9 (qui est alors plus l’automatisme d’une psychologie contrainte qu’une vertu du caract\u00e8re); ceux qui ont du mal \u00e0 accepter cette id\u00e9e ou qui la rejette ont beaucoup de mal \u00e0 appr\u00e9cier et \u00e0 comprendre, encore moins \u00e0 pr\u00e9voir le comportement US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIl appara\u00eet \u00e9galement, d’une fa\u00e7on d’ailleurs absolument logique avec ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de, que les avatars ne d\u00e9couragent nullement les USA de leurs croyance en eux-m\u00eames et, bien entendu, dans leur religion de l’am\u00e9ricanisme. Ils pr\u00e9f\u00e8rent alors se retirer du jeu, m\u00eame si cela doit leur co\u00fbter cher en termes politiques, et, de toutes les fa\u00e7ons, \u00e9carter la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 au profit de leur propre interpr\u00e9tation, laquelle conduira \u00e0 une r\u00e9affirmation d’une r\u00e9alit\u00e9 modifi\u00e9e \u00e0 mesure. Le virtualisme est donc une d\u00e9marche religieuse, r\u00e9alis\u00e9e gr\u00e2ce au miracle des technologies de la communication. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 22 septembre 2008 \u00e0 22H36<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Le caract\u00e8re religieux de la perception am\u00e9ricaniste du monde, ce caract\u00e8re si fort qu’il exerce probablement une forte influence sur la psychologie am\u00e9ricaniste elle-m\u00eame, joue \u00e0 plein dans l’affrontement avec la Russie. Il joue d’autant plus que les USA, en \u00e9tat d’inf\u00e9riorit\u00e9 sur ce th\u00e9\u00e2tre et dans une phase notable d’affaiblissement, ont peu de moyens… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3253,7801,6379,4607,3778,4351],"class_list":["post-70217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-americanisme","tag-congdon","tag-exterieure","tag-politique","tag-religion","tag-spengler"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}