Asymmetrical debate

It`s been difficult to me to write a text on my own here, but the last articles wrote by Olavo and others, are so clarifying on what`s goin on - not just here in Brazil, but in the rest of the world - that I decided to put it directly here. This is an amazing article. Hope the translation went ok (I made on my own). LA

PS.: Many thanks to John Ray (from Dissecting Leftism) that helped in translation and published this article on "Majority Rights" website, under the title "The cultural weakness of the Brazilian Right". Thanks a lot, John.
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Asymmetrical debate - OLAVO DE CARVALHO (Philosopher)
From Brazilian newspaper "Zero Hora" – 12/06/05

The North-American political debate has two opposing streams of thought, with very well differentiated points of view, on politics, economics, morality, culture and religion. On one side, "liberals"”, or leftists, with their program of state interventionism, assistance for all, secularism, feminism, multiculturalism, pro-choice-ism, etc. On the other side we have the "conservatives"”, with their defense of economic freedom, federalism, individual independence and Judeo-Christian moral values.

They are two complete world-visions that oppose each other in all fields of thought and action, in a more or less balanced way, with an advantage to the left in the mainstream media and the cultural establishment, and an advantage for the right on the Internet and radio (Rush Limbaugh alone, for instance, has 38 million daily listeners, surpassing in audience all the chic leftist periodicals out of New York).

These two systems of thought correspond to two geopolitical orientations - the left is globalist, and the right nationalist - and there are two projects of government clearly differentiated: the project of world-wide government via the U.N. versus the "new American century" of George W. Bush (I will say more about that in a later article).

Further, these two projects have clearly distinct support sources: From one side, George Soros and mega-foundation types like Rockefeller and Ford; from the other side, the petrol industry and the "“new money" , as Ronald Reagan called it, from thousands of small capitalists on the make. Although the borders of these two fields do not fully coincide with the line dividing Democrats and Republicans, the American public easily recognizes one spokesman from another one and understands the nature of what is at stake in this game. And what is at stake is not only the U.S.A´s fate but humankind´s: the North-American political struggle expresses perfectly the options that humankind faces at the beginning of this century.

This is far different of what´s going on in Brazil, where the political debate features a totally non-symmetrical struggle.

The dominant left, as with icounterpartn counterart, fights on all fronts - from economic policy to gay marriage -—with inexhaustible persistence and aggressiveness. Its conservative adversaries, however, come up with an almost ashamed defense of offended group interests or go in for limited criticism on a legal-administrative level with no ideological content. At their boldest, all they can do is argue in favor of a free market economy. On all other points of division they totally forbear to speak or fall in line as soon as possible with the leftist secularist causes, pretending that educational, moral, cultural, philosophical, religious or civilizational questions have nothing to do with a confrontation that is in essence economic. The first result that they get from that is that they sound ridiculous when they accuse Marxism as "economicist"”. The second result is that they convince the crowd that all capitalists just think about money, while their socialist counterparts are worried about questions of philosophical and humanitarian values. The third result is that, unlike the American debate, the national debate here only serves to dig deeper the abyss between Brazil and the universe of history, helping the leftist establishment to enclose the country more and more within a limited circle of ideas. The fourth result is a little subtler, but not less disastrous. Because the socialists have given up on goals such the total nationalization of the economy, conceding the necessity to give space to private companies, the defense of the market economy is easily absorbed and proclaimed by the leftist establishment too , so that they can give lip service to each word of liberal economic ideals without doing or representing any harm to themselves. But without its cultural, moral or religious substance, liberal economic speech can become nothing more than an unconscious form of collaborationism.

The redemption of this country depends on the adepts of the capitalist economy losing their hesitancy to defend, not only the market economy but also the moral, cultural and religious values that made the rise of the market economy in the U.S.A. and Europe possible.