Genghis Khan, the Republicans, and the Patriot Act

In the book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford, the social innovation by Genghis Khan that enabled him to overcome the hereditary rivalries of the Mongols is described as follows:

“For a poor family to risk their lives to help him and to give him such valuable resources, Temujin [Genghis Khan] must have had some special attraction or ability. Meanwhile, this humble family impressed him as well. The Tayichiud, with whom he shared a close kinship tie, had once put his family out to die and now appeared eager to kill him. This other family, which had no kinship tie to him, proved willing to risk their lives to help him. This episode seems to have instilled in him not only a distrust of higher-ranking people, but also the conviction that some people, even those outside his clan, could indeed be trusted as if they were family. In later life, he would judge others primarily by their actions toward him and not according to their kinship bonds, a revolutionary concept in steppe society.”

Let’s turn aside for a second from the obvious fact that Genghis Khan made his way in the world through war and terror. He was also a politician, and, given that he created one of the most rapidly expanding political forces of all history, we can admit that there is something we can learn from studying his strategy.

Political progressives in America are, right now, like the feuding Mongol tribes before Temujin became Genghis Khan. We need to become more effective, and more united in purpose – the promotion of our progressive values.

Genghis Khan didn’t beat out all the other Mongol leaders because he was brutal. All the Mongol leaders engaged in the kind of brutality that Genghis Khan became infamous for. Genghis Khan beat out all the other Mongol leaders because he didn’t allow family loyalties to interfere with the alliances he made, and the people he brought into his movement. It is in this respect that I believe that we progressives need to emulate Genghis Khan.

We have been trapped in a system of political party power just as the Mongols were trapped in a system of kinship power. We need to cast loyalty to political parties aside just as Genghis Khan cast aside loyalty to bloodline.

Practically, that means that whoever engages in a progressive political act becomes, for that moment, our ally. Whoever engages in a right wing political act becomes, for that moment, our adversary.

This week, 66 Democrats voted for the Patriot Act and thus treated progressives as their adversaries. They’re counting on us to overlook the insult, out of party loyalty. We must not do so.

For the same roll call, 13 Republicans allied themselves with the progressive cause and voted against the Patriot Act. The Democratic Party leaders would tell us that doesn’t matter. I say that it’s time for serious progressives to Genghis Khan the Democratic Party.

This doesn’t mean that reject Democratic candidates just because of one bad vote, or that we embrace Republican candidates for just one good vote. What it does mean is that we do not allow party loyalties to make us blind and mute to the political reality. We will shame Democrats when they vote with the right wing agenda, and applaud Republicans when they reject that agenda and vote to support a more progressive vision of America.

Let us start to strengthen the progressive agenda by thanking the following 13 Republicans from the House of Representatives, for voting to reject the infamous Patriot Act. They did better for us than 66 of their Democratic colleagues, and that kind of courage should not be ignored.

13 Republicans Who Did the Right Thing and Voted Against the Patriot Act: