[Face Ache]

Link.

There�s No Such Thing as Neoconservatism
by Steven Greenhut

After reading New York Times columnist David Brooks decry "the era of distortion," in which he portrayed as anti-Semitic critics of neoconservatism, I was left with the same feeling I had after having a discussion with a friend of mine who subscribes to "New Age" religious beliefs.

My friend reads all the latest New Age fare, hangs out with other people who call themselves New Age, and identifies in every way with that religious/philosophical movement. But anytime I would try to discuss with her any point of her theology, she would insist that there really isn�t a New Age movement or theology per se.

It�s a collection of various and sundry beliefs, she would say, and the New Age moniker is mainly used by narrow-minded Christians who want to attack bands of free thinkers.

She believes in certain philosophies that are part of a modern religious movement, but she wouldn�t allow herself to be pinned down by any of its specific ideas. It was the ultimate in having it both ways, being able to be part of something, without having to defend any of its actual beliefs or even admit that it exists.

As a piece of advice, don�t let yourself get sucked into one of these fruitless and frustrating discussions. That brings me to the Brooks column. My advice here should be: Don�t get sucked into reading such fruitless and frustrating drivel. Too late for me.

As a columnist for such a prestigious newspaper, one would think that Brooks would be a more disciplined thinker than my well-intentioned but intellectually dishonest friend. You�d think he could admit that he is part of a political movement, then defend its beliefs rather than pretend that the movement doesn�t exist.

In that Jan. 6 column, Brooks takes to task those who criticize Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Bill Kristol and other influential policy wonks as neoconservatives. He explains the term "neocon" this way: "con is short for �conservative� and neo is short for �Jewish�." In other words, those who criticize neoconservatives and their possible influence on the Bush administration foreign policy are anti-Semites.

There isn�t a neoconservative cabal, Brooks insists. These men and women generally associated with neoconservatism "travel in widely different circles and don�t actually have much contact with one another. ... I�ve been told by senior administration officials that [Perle] has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office." In Brooks� world, neocon is just a moniker given to a group of mostly Jewish intellectuals by haters who fear Jewish influence on the world. It�s like my New Age friend, who insists there is no actual, New Age movement even though she is part of it. Likewise, there are no neoconservatives, just "people labeled neocons."

Having dispensed with the existence of neoconservatism, Brooks then goes on to discuss the increase in paranoia and anti-Semitism in the world. There might be some truth to this assertion. But by deciding that neocon is a word for Jewish conservative (as if these Jewish and non-Jewish social democrats/military hawks are in any way conservative!), and that criticism of neoconservatism is evidence of anti-Semitism, Brooks is undermining his own argument. Critics of his views apparently are in league with people who blow up synagogues. How self-serving.

As Brooks explains it, in the new segmented media communities, where people read Internet sites more than the New York Times op-ed page (go figure!), "Half-truths get circulated and exaggerated. Dark accusations are believed because it is delicious to believe them."

After reading the Brooks piece, I went to the American Enterprise Institute Web site (apparently one of the accepted Web sites, where half-truths are not circulated), which is Ground Zero for the neocon movement. I should say it would be Ground Zero if in fact neoconservatism were a movement, although I now know it is not one.

Lo and behold, Irving Kristol � author of the book, Reflections of a Neoconservative � has a long article posted called "The Neoconservative Persuasion."

Although the article claims that neoconservatism is an intellectual undercurrent more than a well-defined movement, Kristol outlines well-defined principles of neoconservatism. He said he is amused and flattered by the discussions about neoconservatives, and admits that he is known as the "godfather" of neoconservatism.

Brooks is offended that critics of a set of policies known as neoconservatism call it neoconservatism, even though the founder of this non-philosophy is amused and flattered by discussions of his movement, if it were a movement.

Don�t try to follow the logic (or my sentence structure).

Just so you understand, neoconservatism is a movement when people who are sometimes known as neoconservatives want it to be a movement, and not a movement when they don�t want to deal with the criticisms. At least my New Age friend could credibly claim there is no hard-and-fast New Age philosophy, but what can Brooks say given that the godfather of his political philosophy has written at length about what it means?

LewRockwell readers know what these tenets are, especially the part about using American military superiority to pursue certain overseas objectives. If we know what they are, and Kristol explains what they are, then why can�t we criticize them without having our motives impugned? Sure, some people are conspiratorial when they talk about neoconservatism, but that doesn�t mean most critics are that way.

Despite what Brooks suggests, no one I know believes there is some cabal of neocon intellectuals pulling the strings of the Bush administration. No one I know suggests that they travel in the same little world. No one I know uses criticism of neoconservative foreign policy as a means to promote a noxious anti-Semitic agenda. When we talk about neoconservatives we simply mean adherents of the political philosophy outlined by Kristol. When we talk about neoconservative influence on the president, we don�t mean anything bizarre or conspiratorial, only that those people who advocate certain ideas seem to have influence with the president.

This has nothing to do with Judaism. Many of the most prominent neoconservatives one can think of � Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice � wouldn�t know Gouda from goyim, although Donald Rumsfeld does have a last name that sounds Jewish.

Even some black civil rights activists have moved beyond the point where any criticism of their agenda is de facto racism. Perhaps one day the people known as neoconservatives will be less apt to play the anti-Semitism card and more apt to discuss real issues.

January 7, 2004

Now the next bit...

[Face Ache]

... is the article mentioned above, from the "Godfather of neoconservatism"

The Neoconservative Persuasion
By_Irving Kristol
AEI Online _(Washington)

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

Since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, neoconservatism has been an intellectual undercurrent that surfaces only intermittently and one whose meaning is glimpsed only in retrospect. It has flowered again of late, and President George W. Bush and his administration seem to be at home in the political environment created by neoconservatism's renaissance.

What exactly is neoconservatism? Journalists, and now even presidential candidates, speak with an enviable confidence on who or what is "neoconservative" and seem to assume the meaning is fully revealed in the name. Those of us who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending on the context. It is reasonable to wonder: is there any "there" there?

Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment. A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently. It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would have it. Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a persuasion," one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect.

With the "American Grain"

Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican Party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy. The fact that conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective, surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism. But Europeans, who think it absurd to look to the United States for lessons in political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility.

Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its twentieth-century heroes tend to be Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican Party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies.

One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.

The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy--because it seems to be in the nature of human nature--that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.

This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the nineteenth-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his The Man versus the State, was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.

But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives--though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government's attention. And since the Republican Party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.

<continues...>

[Face Ache]

<...continued>
Foreign Policy

And then, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale University, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following "theses" (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing.

Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-�-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. This superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial. To a large extent, it all happened as a result of our bad luck. During the fifty years after World War II, while Europe was at peace and the Soviet Union largely relied on surrogates to do its fighting, the United States was involved in a whole series of wars: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. The result was that our military spending expanded more or less in line with our economic growth, while Europe's democracies cut back their military spending in favor of social welfare programs. The Soviet Union spent profusely but wastefully, so that its military collapsed along with its economy.

Suddenly, after two decades during which "imperial decline" and "imperial overstretch" were the academic and journalistic watchwords, the United States emerged as uniquely powerful. The "magic" of compound interest over half a century had its effect on our military budget, as did the cumulative scientific and technological research of our armed forces. With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it or the world will discover them for you.

The older, traditional elements in the Republican Party have difficulty coming to terms with this new reality in foreign affairs, just as they cannot reconcile economic conservatism with social and cultural conservatism. But by one of those accidents historians ponder, our current president and his administration turn out to be quite at home in this new political environment, although it is clear they did not anticipate this role any more than their party as a whole did. As a result, neoconservatism began enjoying a second life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published.

Irving Kristol is a senior fellow at AEI and the author of Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea.

So that seems to be the non-existent "neocon agenda" in a nutshell.

I notice he points out neoconservatism won't fly in Europe because they can't harness religious fanaticism. Okay I paraphrase.

And since the Republican Party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.

[dialo]

Just to add the other two essential readings:

The recently much acclaimed Twilight of the Neocons? Excellent history.

http://billmon.org/archives/000924.html

And Norman Podhoretz's Eulogy, an insider's history to the 'movement' or 'persuasion.'

http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.16009/news_detail.asp

However, he apparently spoke too soon, seeing as how defined the group has become once again post-9.11.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by Face Ache:
Link.

LOL! an amazing lack of posts from people who called me insane for saying the same thing. (crickets chirp)

thanks, face ache.