No Clash of
Civilizations: Q&A with Michael Novak
By Dr. Paul Kengor &
Dr. Michael Coulter
US
Contrary
to what Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington foresaw
as an eventual clash between the Western and Islamic
worlds, Michael Novak believes that an enduring
clash is not inevitable because “there are
so many people in Islamic countries who share our
hunger and desire for liberty.” Novak is the
George Frederick Jewett Scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute, a former US ambassador, and
the author of several best-selling books. He participated
in a recent conference hosted by The Center for
Vision & Values at Grove City College titled,
“Mr. Jefferson Goes to the Middle East: Democracy's
Prospects in the Arab World.” During the conference,
Mr. Novak sat for a question-and-answer session
(1,189 words) with two professors of political science
at Grove City College: Dr. Paul Kengor and Dr. Michael
Coulter.
Q: Mr. Novak,
before discussing your recent work, The Universal
Hunger for Liberty, we would like to acknowledge
one of your earlier books, the Spirit of Democratic
Capitalism.
Michael Novak: Of all my books, I think that’s
the one that had the most worldwide effect; it is
in all kinds of languages. It was translated, for
instance, into Polish in 1984, a copy of which is
one of my proudest possessions. In those days, you
could be arrested for carrying a copy of that book
in Poland. It was published by Solidarity, the labor
union and democratic movement that was banned by
the communists.
Q: Speaking of which, you did some important work
in Eastern Europe as an ambassador in the 1980s.
Behind the Iron Curtain, what was the reaction when
Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil
Empire?”
Novak: I’ll share an anecdote that sheds light
on that question. One of my friends, Richard Perle,
who was deeply involved with the arms negotiations
in the 1980s, visited Russia after the fall of the
Soviet Union, where they had a kind of alumni meeting
of the Soviet generals and others who had been involved
in tense Cold War era talks.
At one point in the dinner, one of the Soviet generals
smashed his fist down on the table, and said, “He
was right! He was right!” Everyone looked
at him, and he said it again, “He was right!”
pounding the table as the mashed potatoes jumped
in the air. He said, “Ronald Reagan …
he said it was an ‘Evil Empire,’ and
it was an ‘Evil Empire.’” That
phrase really got to them.
Q: So, is that why Reagan used that phrase? Was
the point to get under the skin of the Soviet leadership
and military?
Novak: I’ll tell you why Reagan said it, and
I know this as a fact: He told the speechwriter
to write that phrase into the speech. They send
speeches for presidents all around—they go
to the State Department, to national security, and
all around for clearances. Everybody said to Reagan,
“You can’t say that!” They kept
striking out that sentence, and Reagan kept putting
it back in.
He had a reason for it, which was this: the communist
morality was that “if it’s good for
the Communist Party, it’s good; if it’s
bad for the Communist Party, it’s bad.”
There was no such thing as good and evil, which
was [considered] a bourgeois notion, an obfuscation.
So, Reagan wanted to plant the word “evil,”
because he knew that sooner or later journalists
would go to the Soviet leadership and ask, “Do
you agree that the Soviet Union is an evil empire?”
Then other important questions would come, “Do
you agree with Stalin’s purges? Do you agree
with this, with that, and so on.” They would
have to start making distinctions regarding what
they agreed was good and wasn’t. This would
introduce the calculus of good and evil into the
political discourse of the Soviet Union. That was
Reagan’s idea, and it was very smart….
He forced the Soviets to talk the language of good
and evil and to apply it against their own behavior,
which is something they had refused to do for 70
years, and this, as a result, began the process
of self-criticism on a very deep level.
Q: Moving ahead to the current dearth of freedom
and democracy in the modern Middle East….
In The Universal Hunger for Liberty, you make the
argument that it is part of the nature of being
human to desire political liberty.
Novak: You have to realize that most of the human
race has not lived in political liberty for most
of its history. Take my grandparents, who came from
Slovakia, in the center of Europe, in about 1900.
My grandfather’s passport would have said
“Austria-Hungary”…. He was not
a citizen, he was a subject—a subject of the
emperor and of the empire. I think of it this way,
though it is admittedly an exaggeration: my grandfather
and his generation had three fundamental duties
in Europe: “Pray, pay, and obey.” …
They were not citizens…. To be a citizen means
that the politicians work for you. There isn’t
a lot of power that people have, but one basic political
power is the right as citizens to remove their political
leaders on a regular basis….
People don’t want to live as adolescents and
be told what to do. People want to be adults and
want to take responsibility for their own lives,
and that very old concept is spreading faster and
faster today. Therefore, I was not surprised at
the jubilation that you saw in Afghanistan, not
only at the liberation—they suddenly had the
ability to play music again, the ability to have
music at weddings and so forth—but also when
they finally had the opportunity to vote. And nor
was I surprised at the widespread voting that took
place in Iraq, once they had a similar opportunity,
even at the risk of their lives.
Q: Dr. Samuel Huntington foresaw an eventual clash
between the Western and Islamic worlds, which you
believe is not inevitable. Why not?
Novak: Because, among other reasons, there are so
many people in Islamic countries who share our hunger
and desire for liberty.... There are very few people
on this planet who have suffered more than the people
of the Middle East, particularly in the Arab-Islamic
world, over the last 50 or 70 years. Despite the
oil wealth, a great many of them are very, very
poor, but poor especially in opportunity….
It’s amazing how—with the right economic
institutions in place—how quickly things like
freedom and democracy can develop, whether in Poland,
in Chile, or elsewhere.
Q: Can it be argued that elections and voting, which
we have had in Iraq, are not decisive or determinative,
and that a political culture supportive of democracy
is light years away in Iraq and the rest of the
Middle East?
Novak: Those things are important, but we are still
far from a democratic Middle East. I would not give
odds greater than 40 to 50% that democracy will
succeed there; we just don’t know.
The main thing I want to emphasize is that building
democracy is really, really hard work. It's not
easy. It doesn’t end in one generation. The
trouble with democracy is that you must rebuild
it in every generation; that’s why it’s
the most fragile system available. When it is said
that “the price of liberty is everlasting
vigilance,” that’s quite true.
It only takes one generation to give it all away,
to say, “It’s too much trouble.”…
It only takes one generation to fail to heed the
lessons and take responsibility.
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