Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., leveled a searing critique of the post global get and the crony philosophy that supports it during his confirmation hearing for secretary of state on Wednesday. That philosophy has about unquestionably ruled American foreign policy and ruled the hallways of power in Washington for generations. It hasn’t been useful to us, and it’s much past time to give it away.
Rubio took immediate purpose at the post liberal order in , his entry speech, signaling a significant shift in American foreign policy under a minute Trump administration. Rejecting post ideology, as Rubio explains, means a profit to American foreign policy grounded on the national interest, healing of our identity, and acknowledgement that our national interests are not always going to be matched by those of the so-called “international neighborhood” or international corporations.
Rubio referred to it as a “dangerous delusion” that the end of the Cold War may mean the end of history, that “every country in the world would then be a part of the political western-led group, that “every nation would now be replaced by a foreign legislation that favors the democratic world order, and that everyone in the world was now destined to leave their national sovereignty and national identity and instead would be one human family, and citizens of the world.”
Rubio continued, citing” an almost religious commitment to free and unfettered trade,” which was pursued at the expense of our national economy. Additionally, it included” an irrational zeal for maximum freedom of movement of people,” which has resulted in a “mass migration crisis”. ( Note that Rubio doesn’t qualify or limit this merely to “illegal immigration”. )
Free trade and open borders, the twin pillars of the postwar liberal order, serve as the logical political foundations for the globalist ideology, which emerged naturally at the end of World War Two. However, where did this ideology come from, and why has it been so fervently supported for so long?
Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher who wrote The Open Society And Its Enemies, a significant philosophical work that would have had a significant impact in the decades following its publication in 1945, was one of its key architects. Popper claimed that the authoritarian personality that gave rise to the Second World War was what made fascist dictatorships, creating a tribal or” closed society” that was first and foremost marked by deference to authority and subordination of the individual to the collective. Such societies tend to be nationalistic, authoritarian or totalitarian, and committed to concrete ideas about transcendent or metaphysical truth.
According to Popper, the task that the world had to deal with in the wake of World War Two and the horrors of Auschwitz was to make sure that nothing like that could ever occur again. The only way to do that, he argued, was to banish the closed society altogether, reject transcendence, embrace disenchantment, and pursue a radically open society. Popper was an academic philosopher who wrote in a formal, academic manner, but his anti-metaphysical beliefs led to an open society and a critical questioning and empirical falsification of everything. Nothing was really true, in other words, except the need for openness and a rejection of what R. R. Reno has called” the strong gods” of national identity, religion, and transcendence. Popper thought we must define for ourselves the truths we need, even truth about reality itself:” Facts as such have no meaning, they gain it only through our decisions”.
In his 2019 book,  , Return of the Strong Gods, Reno argues that Popper’s influence on the postwar liberal order cannot be overstated — and that’s a big problem for us today. An open society has a reputation for deteriorating at some point. If nothing binds a nation together, it cannot cohere, and will eventually collapse.
Popper was a dangerously weakened world that has been dangerously weakened by the open society ideology he advocated, not the war-ravaged world that it was. Our issues contrast with those of the men who waged the war to defeat Hitler, writes Reno. A spiritual vacuum and the apathy it engender “are putting an end to us.” The West’s political culture has been sown down by technocratic control of personal freedoms and private utilities. Our danger is a dissolving society, not a closed one, the therapeutic personality, not the authoritarian one”.
This was the point of Rubio’s opening statement, and it’s a theme that’s been permeating every aspect of our political discourse since Donald Trump stepped down in 2015. Will there ever be an endlessly open society, one that will only be committed to free trade and open borders, and who will never feel national solidarity or loyalty to the American people and people? Or will we re-discover the principles that the West abandoned following World War Two and reaffirm their convictions that lead to cohesion and cooperation among peoples in order to pursue their interests collectively and collectively?
Rubio, Trump, and the entire populist MAGA movement contrast with a bipartisan consensus that has ruled Washington for many decades. President Joe Biden repeatedly referred to America as an idea in his televised address on Wednesday. Anyone who accepts the universal claim that all men are created equal can become an American is a fact that is well-known.
However, by now it should be clear that this claim has its limitations. America is more than just a concept; it is a people whose past and future are linked together. We have a distinct language, culture, and way of life. Additionally, we are not, as Elon Musk suggests, just an indifferent meritocracy derived from a notion of human equality. Much of Asia is also a meritocracy, and no one mistakes it for America.
In fact, the idea of equality for all people at the center of our country is above all a religious right, particularly a Christian one. We have to understand” America as an idea” in that context. If America is an idea, Karl Popper’s radical individualism and anti-metaphysics are based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Christian Europe’s inheritance. In another way, the idea is that western civilization was created and sustained by Christian myths about God and man.
A return to a politics of national solidarity and a rejection of the postwar liberal order will mean avoiding the unfettered global free trade that favors multinational corporations while benefiting America’s working families in terms of policy. It will mean rejecting both legal and illegal mass immigration and acknowledging that open borders create social unrest and instability. And acknowledging that American national interests are not always served by regard for international organizations, corporate profits, and a rising GDP will be necessary.  ,  ,
