The extremism of R2P’s leading proponent is exhibited in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s op-ed in today’s New York Times. Slaughter likens the Wall Street protesters to those demonstrating against oppressive regimes in the Middle East and recommends removal of the US system of checks and balances that protect minority views and avoid poorly developed political stampedes. (Slaughter doesn’t mention or give credence to the more numerous, mature citizenry participating in or supporting the Tea Parties more peaceful protests for more limited government intrusions into Americans’ private lives and earnings.)
R2P’s leading proponent, Anne-Marie Slaughter of Harvard, believes that US foreign policies and military interventions should prioritize the Right To Protect severely repressed peoples through US obeisance to liberal internationalist elites’ sentiments in favor of some they like regardless of the US Constitution or laws or national or security interests.
In today’s New York Times, Slaughter takes her R2P home to the US, advocating that majorities rule regardless of the formal and informal checks and balances of our political system and overriding the rights of political minorities. Again, it is the majorities that liberals like who should be given more powers.
Without any sense of proportionality or of core differences between the US and Middle East satrapies, Slaughter says, “Indeed, the twin drivers of America’s nascent protest movement against the financial sector are injustice and invisibility, the very grievances that drove the Arab Spring.” Slaughter then concludes, “The only effective response is a political response, of a nature and magnitude that convinces protesters on the streets that they can in fact secure the change they seek within, rather than outside, the system.”
Slaughter’s system, however, would reduce the ability of permanent or transitory political minorities to protect their interests. They would, also, further factionalize the US and make compromises more difficult as the power of centrists is reduced.
Slaughter would eliminate the filibuster that ensures that a temporary electoral minority in the US Senate cannot be ridden over roughshod by the majority of the day (which, in the latest 1-vote US Senate Democrat majority vote has – as Politico headlines – put the “Senate in chaos”). Slaughter would install proportional representation, which often result in more unstable governance and unsavory alliances that revolve around access to the public purse and less accountability to any but each faction's die-hards. Slaughter would bar private funding in elections, by which the smaller number of wealthy can counterbalance the votes of the poorer who blithely may support expropriatory programs. (Note: The US Supreme Court has ruled such laws unconstitutional.) In effect, Slaughter supports transitory mob rule, politely of course.
Slaughter ends by commenting, “I am beginning to suspect that people abroad with long experience of disenfranchisement and trampling of their dignity may in fact understand the fissures in our society better than we do ourselves.”
Instead, Slaughter exhibits her liberal elitist view of the US, and demonstrates that she is as extremist in domestic policy as in foreign policy.
What makes me suspect Slaughter and her ilk would be more hesitant to endorse simple majority rule after the 2012 elections?
