"The Loyal Opposition"

It is past time we ceased to apologize for an imperfect democracy. Find its equal. It is time we grew out of our initial--not a little condescending--supersensitivity about the feelings of new nations.

So urges Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who returned recently to Harvard after two years as U.S. Ambassador to India. In the March issue of Commentary, he calls on the U.S. to adopt a tougher stance toward the Third World. He excoriates Americans for an "extraordinarily passive, even compliant" policy that tries--but fails--to appease the developing nations by remaining silent when Third World leaders blame the West for famine and poverty.

Moynihan says the world majority is now composed of nations that share a Socialist but not a Communist ideology, and a vested interest in blaming the West for their shortcomings and failures. The U.S. should therefore act as "the new [world] society's loyal opposition" and go on the offensive in three areas: 1) "forcefully" broadcast the achievements of Western liberalism such as the multinational corporation--"arguably the most creative international institution of the 20th century"; 2) assert that "inequalities in the world may be not so much a matter of condition as of performance," citing Brazil, Nigeria, Singapore and other Third World success stories; 3) compare the political and civil liberties that the Third World countries "provide their own peoples [and] those which are common and taken for granted in the U.S."

Only by taking such a belligerent stand, writes Moynihan, can the U.S. "seek common cause with the new nations" and hope to reach a relationship "at the level of principle."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.