Relativism on Rights Stands Up for Injustice

Just as Kremlinologists pore over statements from the Soviet Union to discern subtle shifts in state policy, much is being made of the last three words of a sentence that appeared in President Reagan’s message to Congress last Friday. He said, “The American people believe in human rights and oppose tyranny in whatever form, whether of the left or the right. “

Those three words, coupled with events in the Philippines and Haiti and with a recent statement concerning Chile, have led some to call it a “welcome reversal” and to wonder if Reagan has become a “force for human rights.”

Others have speculated that it means a rollback of the Kirkpatrick doctrine, the pattern for foreign relations under Reagan marked by friendship toward right-wing regimes (quiet diplomacy, constructive engagement) and ferocious rhetoric (evil empire, looney tunes) and military threat (the contras ) toward left-wing governments. This doctrine, advanced by former Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, helped Reagan claim that right-wing dictatorships were less venal than those of the left.

Kirkpatrick argued, in a 1979 essay in Commentary, that rightist “authoritarian” regimes tend to be more in touch with their populations’ needs, capable of change and, above all, friendly to the United States. On the other hand, “totalitarian” regimes, behind a facade of advocacy for change, quickly become rigid and cruel to their people, entrench themselves forever, and are uniformly hostile to U.S. interests.

Now that Jean-Claude Duvalier and Ferdinand E. Marcos, two previously friendly traditional autocrats, are recognized as abusers of their peoples’ human rights, does this reveal a crucial defect in the previous formulation? A shift in policy?

Kirkpatrick’s “moderate autocrat”--Anastasio Somoza was one example--may not be a democrat, but he is so tied to his people by strong personal bonds that without him society collapses like an arch without its keystone. The autocrat, she wrote, permits people to “worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos” and maintain “the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fulfill.”

Kirkpatrick’s cultural relativism enables her to appreciate the autocrat who favors “an affluent few and maintains masses in poverty.” By applauding the coping behavior of these untouchables, she ratifies injustice with racism.

Her authoritarian government provides order through tradition. Its victims cannot cry out to us, because their oppressors, our friends, tell us that it is habitual, and our government believes them.

Curiously, we know more about the victims of totalitarian--that is, left-wing oppression. Since those rulers are liars and enemies, and not to be believed, we can observe the level of misery of their population directly. Here, cultural relativism does not impede our capacity to protest left-wing abuses of human rights.

Kirkpatrick has given us a distinction without a difference. She also has given the President a vocabulary and a set of rhetorical instructions with which to bash the evil empire while finding virtue in numerous tinhorn dictators. Not intellectually respectable, but powerful.

This doctrine is foundering not on faulty logic but on intractable reality in spite of Reagan’s will. In February the President found evidence of a “vigorous two-party system” in the midst of the fraud and violence of the Philippine election; as recently as last October his secretary of state said that Haiti was making progress toward reforms including “political parties, free elections and freedom of the press.” Even now, by ignoring the atrocious human-rights record of the contras, Reagan clings to the seductive but wrong Kirkpatrick philosophy.

Reagan’s job is made more difficult by the latest turn of events. To a limited extent he now associates himself with human rights in Haiti and the Philippines and endorses criticism of Chile, hoping to pick up support for his contra aid request. But he knows that the real risk in advocating human rights in Chile, South Korea and South Africa is that he would have to treat tyrants like tyrants, thereby abandoning all that he believes in.

Events in Haiti and the Philippines have taught Americans to listen more carefully. Human-rights abuses are not abstractions, do not require interpreters and are not easier to bear because the sufferers are “traditional.”

Recent events have eclipsed Kirkpatrick’s efforts to spare tyrants a “bad rap”--Reagan’s excuse for Guatemala’s Gen. Efrain Rios-Montt. As Daniel Schorr remarked, “Marcos has given tyranny a bad name.” Not even the Great Communicator can undo that.