F. Nietzsche

The news abounds with references to “rights,” “diversity,” and “justice.” But what do these terms signify? Allegations of Libyan “rights” abuses were powerful enough to justify a more widespread and large-scale Western version of what Gaddafi did—namely, demolishing an existing government and then oppressing and killing a lot of people.

In more local news, one of my alma maters has received over $19,000 for a “diversity initiative” program. It’s unclear what a diversity initiative program is, because university spokespeople have explained it in vague terms about “providing ongoing assistance and guidance to newly admitted international students,” “supporting travel,” “developing leadership and community service,” “promoting team building and unity,” and “assisting in breaking down barriers in communication.” In short, a diversity initiative is so vague that it can mean anything—hence nothing—at all.

“Justice” is another matter. Families of 9/11 victims recently told reporters that justice has not been served because no one has produced a public timetable for trying suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Family members lamented everything from “the years I’ve got left” to see justice done, to looking “pretty weak” for not bringing “these people” to trial, to sending a “terrible message” to people of the “free world” and to “those who are out to harm us.” Still, these cries don’t do much to clarify what is meant by “justice.”

If we can’t settle on the above terms’ meanings, perhaps we can glean insights about their purpose—that is, why people employ them and their intended effects.

In his recent article about politically correct orthodoxy on university campuses, Professor Paul Gottfried recalled accusing a colleague of embodying what Nietzsche called “slave morality.” Nietzsche’s slave morality is tied to Christianity, Platonism, and Enlightenment idealism: philosophies that celebrate weakness and mildness as virtues, champion mankind’s unremitting progression, and emphasize self-negation at the expense of self-actualization. Slave morality is, in short, sickly.

Aristocratic morality, by contrast, is virile and noble—so much that envious slaves seek to undercut it. Nietzsche used the French word ressentiment to refer to slaves’ contempt for the aristocracy. Slaves convince aristocrats that it is virtuous to deny the self and to pity others. Slaves use pathos to bring about a revolt in morals: the outright reversal of good and bad, valued and devalued. As a result, aristocrats actively seek to minimize their power through self-sacrifice and compassion: bad things that slaves recast as good. Eventually, with the help of the priestly caste—made up of those who belong among aristocrats but force aristocrats to internalize guilt and shame—slaves succeed in redefining morality as immorality. Aristocrats exhaust their power by suppressing it in the pursuit of what they think is goodness. At length, aristocrats become indistinguishable from slaves, and selflessness becomes the dominant criterion for determining what’s good.

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Writing in the 1880s, Nietzsche depicted Jews and Christians as quintessential slaves. The analogy is now dated, for today’s slave morality emanates from the left-wing priestly caste of secular humanists who defend others’ interests at their own expense. Who are these priestly figures? People such as John Kerry and Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Warren Buffett and Garrison Keillor and Ben Bernanke and Michael Moore and Oprah and all those screeching dimwits on The View. They promote egalitarianism, which sucks the life out of culture and transforms aristocrats into servants of compassion. They have exalted multiculturalism over their own heritage, have imposed oppressive systems on themselves and other aristocrats, and have catapulted an inexperienced, underequipped, indecisive, conniving, awkward, sinister, spiteful man—Barack Obama—to the US presidency.

Professor Gottfried wrote this about his colleague:

Despite his screaming about Christian sentimentalists, this fellow was always going on and on about the “marginalized.” Although a self-proclaimed free thinker, he was the incarnation of what Nietzsche rightly or wrongly despised as Christian silliness.

It seems this colleague was invested in what Derridean postmodernists call “recontextualization,” the remaking and reshaping of meaning—in this case, the application of Christian vocabularies to secular causes. Slave morality at its best.

The failure of the aristocratic class—what’s left of it—to distinguish the moral from the immoral, the good from the bad, has created a society that determines public policy and (mis)educates its citizens based on indefinable concepts with no direct relation to the phenomenal world. Diversity and multicultural mania, besides signifying nothing, have made us slaves of false virtues, enablers of cultural and economic regression, and perpetuators of self-imposed discipline and denial.

By recycling mantras about the disenfranchised, the Western world in general and the United States in particular have caused the men of ressentiment to become super-enfranchised. By obsessing over the disempowered, aristocrats have disempowered themselves. “Rights.” “Diversity.” “Justice.” Count the number of times you see these words in the mainstream press this week. Consider why and for whom they’re conveyed. And then ask yourself: Are we not all slaves yet?

Washington officials continue to ignore the residents of Okinawa, a small island south of Japan. A poll from last summer revealed that over 70% of Okinawans want America’s Futenma military base relocated off the island entirely. Although Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama had promised to thwart US efforts to relocate the base to another part of the island, he was forced to resign in June of last year after failing to persuade the Obama Administration.

Hatoyama, who studied engineering at Stanford, was no enemy of the United States. He met regularly with American officials and personally voiced his concerns about Futenma to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His rapid rise in popularity reversed quickly when news came out about his administration’s financial scandals and when he failed to follow through with his promises to relocate Futenma outside Okinawa, if not outside Japan entirely.

Hatoyama insisted he would stake his career on the Futenma issue, and he did. His political career is over. The only high-ranking Japanese or South Korean leader who openly challenged Obama and his military plans for the region is now gone.

Hatoyama’s successor, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, sought to ease tensions over the Futenma issue that Obama and Hatoyama had supposedly resolved. In late December, he purportedly told Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima—an anti-Futenma activist—that he wanted to lower taxes and promote tourism in Okinawa. He explained that Japan’s central government would implement subsidies and raise funds to assist Okinawa during her time of political unrest.

On New Year’s Day, however, the Japanese government told Okinawans it would not entertain local residents’ opinions about Futenma’s relocation. With this announcement, Kan, Japan’s fifth prime minister in four years, undermined his already waning popularity and called into question his ability to appease Okinawans.

Japan began discussions with South Korea last week to address a possible Japan-South Korea alliance to share military goods and services. The mere appearance of cooperation between these two nations could validate their leadership by giving the impression that America is not in charge. Both nations host US military facilities and have foreign-policy agendas that, in Asia at least, are in lockstep with Obama’s.

The hundreds of islands comprising the Okinawa Prefecture are not that close to the Japanese mainland. Okinawa Island is nearly 1000 miles from Tokyo. The Japan Self-Defense Forces (calling them a “military” is inaccurate since the Japanese Constitution forbids the use of military force) would likely be the first responders to any act of military aggression against Japan.

Although the US claims its presence in Okinawa deters conflict in Asia, it is just as likely that its presence provokes conflict. Despite the US military presence in Okinawa and nearby South Korea, Chinese submarines and warships have continued and will continue to harass the Japanese over the Senkaku Islands. North Korea will continue to harass South Korea and to lob missiles over Japan and into the Pacific. The US presence has not prevented these events from happening in the past, nor have US forces done anything that South Korean or Japanese forces could not do on their own.

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Although the US military claims that it boosts the Okinawan economy, we do not know what the Okinawan economy would look like without the US military there. Tourism might thrive when foreign troops aren’t running around and American bases no longer occupy prime beachfront real estate. What we do know is that Okinawans are willing to sacrifice whatever economic benefits they enjoy from US bases simply to be rid of them. Their message: “Just leave.”

US troops conduct community-outreach projects that include assisting Okinawans in their Special Olympics programs, but such do-gooding has not convinced Okinawans of our noble intentions. That is not surprising, since one outreach project is to invite Okinawans to the base to join the troops’ Fourth of July celebrations. Apparently lost on US military leaders is the irony of inviting an occupied people to partake in their occupier’s Independence Day festivities.

On top of this, The Telegraph reported last week that US soldiers on Okinawa are compromising security by selling guided tours of the base. Until American troops on Okinawa learn how to behave—they have a long history of criminal activity on the island, including 1995’s notorious group raping of a 12-year-old girl—American media should be ruthless in its investigations of Futenma. Unfortunately, news about the Okinawa base is usually buried in newspapers’ middle pages, if it reaches newspapers at all.

Okinawans do not want US bases on their islands. The US military has other potential locations for such bases, including Guam, a US territory whose residents want to host them. Why won’t we leave the Okinawans alone and give the Guamanians, our “sort-of” fellow Americans, what they want?

Unless Obama knows something that we do not, then he, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the leader of the once-free world, should withdraw our military from an island that can no longer stand our presence and is tired of our officials telling her what to do.