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Friday, February 19, 2010
On Neo-Conservatives
A thoughtful reader opens a discussion:
Chaos Manor vs. "NeoCons"
I am a subscriber and a fan, two things that aren't going to change in any foreseeable future, so any vitriol that rises in the following statements should be taken in that light.
I have noticed a trend in your Mail and Columns that the term neoconservative is used with a certain amount of derision by both you and your correspondents. As some one who proudly considers himself to be a neoconservative, I take a small amount of umbrage at the usage. Not enough to be confrontational, or accusatory, but enough that I would like to address some of the stereotypes -- or broad statements -- included under the umbrella term "Neo-Con."
When I read the mainstream media, the term NeoCon is typically used so loosely that it could mean any "conservative" bogeyman -- but it typically is meant to mean "very evil conservatives." One expects such reductionism from an antagonistic media, but one doesn't expect it from those who share certain political philosophies regarding the Founding Documents and the nature of proper Statemanship.
I am prompted to write this letter in response to two recent letters that were particularly antagonistic to neoconservatism.
The first was a letter published on February 10th which stated, "The neo-cons have through their lack of respect for those documents [the Constitution and Declaration] paved the way for the usurpation of the underlying principles of our nation by the socialists." One can, to a certain degree, sympathize with this sentiment if it is meant as a criticism of the Bush Administration's expansion of power and arguable extension of the power of the Presidency beyond its traditional Constitutionally restricted level. One could enter into a long discussion of the Lockean concept of prerogative power and what the Founders would have understood that to mean in relation to the Constitution, but that is best left to another medium/time.
My experience as a neoconservative, who was taught in a kind of neoconservative intellectual tradition, is exactly the opposite of this writer's claim. I was taught to adore the Founding Documents of the Constitution and the Declaration and to view the Constitution through the lens of the Declaration. The Declaration being the frame and the Constitution being the golden apple, if you will. One would find it hard to imagine the publishers of the Claremont Review of Books to be favorable to ideologies that are disdainful of the Founders. One would find it more peculiarly difficult to understand how those who have written so elegantly of the harms the State is capable of perpetrating, to desire to pave a way of the "usurpation of the underlying principles of our nation by the socialists." The socialists, and the progressives who bear no small similarity to their co-Statists, have manipulated the Founding Documents to their ends for over a century. One need only look to Woodrow Wilson's argument that the Constitution needed to be transferred from a Newtonian worldview to a Darwinian one, to see that this is the case. A mechanical Constitution is a much different construct than an "evolving" one. That said, even the idea that the Constitution is a Newtonian construct would be anathema to a neoconservative in my tradition. The Constitution is a reflection of Classical rather than Modern political thought -- thought that treats the human questions philosophically rather than "scientifically."
This writer and I obviously have a different definition of neoconservatism. His is, apparently, those who advocated the policies of the Bush Administration. Mine is those who follow in an approach to Conservative thought after rejecting modern liberalism, usually due to the introduction of a philosophic approach to political questions.
To wit, it is often assumed that neoconservatives are amenable to large government and that things like the "no child left behind" act or expansion of the medicare benefit somehow fit within a neoconservative agenda. They may fit within a Republican seeking re-election agenda, but they have no place in a truly neoconservative outlook. One would point immediately to Irving Kristol's essay "Welfare: The Best of Intentions, the Worst of Results" to find that historic neoconservative thought -- in this case incorporating observations by Tocqueville -- isn't sympathetic to the State. Kristol's argument is that Welfare destroys the family and creates a perpetual cycle of "pauperism." If one looks at politics through a Classical lens, the destruction of the family -- the primary political institution in an Aristotelian model -- would be one of the worst crimes that any political policy could commit. To destroy the family is to destroy the foundation of the City, and eventually the foundation for the healthy State. A Hegelian would disagree, but he/she would most likely be a progressive and not a conservative of any stripe.
One might also mean that neoconservative's support the use of force in the creation of new states created to model a "more just order," in particular Francis Fukuyama's argument for the democratization of the world which was partially used as a justification for the Iraq War, is one of the crimes of neoconservatism. "Those rascally neocons believe in pre-emptive war, which our Founders would despise." Lets set Washington's pleas for neutrality in the affairs of other nations and Jefferson's pre-emptive war against the Tripolitan pirates aside as a potential distraction regarding the Founders' actual thoughts regarding pre-emptive war and look at the particulars. Is it a necessary condition of neoconservative politics to favor State-building? I don't believe so, nor do I believe that many of those accused of being "neocons" are in actuality such animals. Bill Kristol may be a descendant of a neoconservative, but he himself is more a political animal concerned more with political victory than philosophic approaches to politics. The same could be said of most of those pointed at as neoconservatives.
I tire of the use of the word to imply "conservatives I disagree with" and much prefer your more useful term "Creeps." I fear that I could rant far longer about the topic and with specifics, but the time of day and prudence prevent me from doing so.
-- -- Christian
Well said. You raise a number of valid points.
First, it should be clear from much that I have written that I have no great quarrel with Irving Kristol, whom I once called the sanest man in America, and during the 80's I often said that Commonwealth was the best intellectual magazine worth our time. Commonwealth and Kristol's Public Interest had many principled discussions.
Second, the current crop of people who call themselves neo-conservative seem to have a wide spectrum of views, and the label is probably not terribly useful any longer. Perhaps it never did, although during the Cold War it certainly had some utility.
During the Cold War the alliance between my brand of conservatism and the neo-conservatives was strong and I thought it made sense. The First Gulf War under George H W Bush changed all that, and for much of that period the neoconservatives were largely defined by interventionist policies. Then came their penetration of National Review, which had never been "paleo conservative" but certainly was closer to that persuasion than to the universalism of the neo-conservatives -- who were, after all, in Irving Kristol's phrase, liberals who had been mugged by reality. Frank Meyer's Fusionism, an attempt to unite libertarians and conservatives into mutually acceptable political actions could and did accommodate neo-conservatives.
Frank Meyer and Fusionism attempted to reconcile fundamentally disparate philosophical positions, and in the long run that wasn't possible; but it could still serve as a general political alliance, with the principle that both National Interest and Public Interest had much common ground, and we could all agree that less government was better than a lot more government -- and that there were distinct limits to what government could do. There lay behind that, apparently, a lot less agreement than many of us had thought: conservatives thought there were distinct limits on what government ought even to attempt. So did the libertarians. This even survived Fukuyama's "End of History", an Hegelian essay that might easily have been written by Leon Trotsky. I suspect that many readers don't know that Kristol and many of the other original neo-conservatives had been Trotskyite -- anti-Stalinist Communists -- before they were mugged by reality. The notion of building a Just and Compassionate World by any means necessary is very attractive. Fukuyama's picture of a world of nations espousing Liberal Democracy and ending war forever was attractive, but it was soon mugged by reality as Utopian schemes always are; but the ideal never quite vanished.
Newt Gingrich did in political action as Speaker what Meyer had done in theory: held together a political action alliance of people of disparate philosophical views, largely by not addressing the fundamental differences. He brought together the Reagan Democrats, conservatives disillusioned by Bush and his tax increases, the ancestors of today's tea party movement, and many fed up conservative American voters to build a strong coalition.
All that came apart when Gingrich left the scene. The liberal Republicans from the Country Club set came to power and declared Big Government Conservatism (and its weaker cousin "Compassionate Conservatism" -- just who can admit not being compassionate?) and about then came the Iraq War. The alliance came apart, and eventually the egregious Frum used the pages of National Review to read out of the conservative movement all those who hadn't bought into the policies loudly espoused by the neo-conservatives. Liberal Republicans and neo-conservatives built an unholy alliance; or so it seemed to me. In order to be in on the triumphalism of the new Republican Alliance, the neo-conservatives, it seemed to me, reverted to their roots and began to believe we could impose Peace and Justice on the world, while building larger and larger government structures. Reagan had proposed to abolish the Department of Education. The new Republican Alliance expanded it and gave us No Child Left Behind. The budget rose, taxes rose, interventionism flourished -- and there seemed to be not very much dissent by the leadership of the neo-conservative movement. The egregious Frum had already read conservatives like me and other followers of the late Russell Kirk right out of the conservative movement; I saw no action by the others in the neo-conservative movement to repudiate that.
Now: I will agree that I may well have applied the neo-conservative label too widely. Many who call themselves neo-conservatives do not accept and possibly do not know about the Trotskyite origins of the original neo-conservatives. Modern education being what it is, I doubt that many of my readers have any notion of what Trotsky believed and advocated, or who he was, or how much his views have influenced modern liberalism. ("A neo-conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.") But the alliance between those who see government as a way to bring the nation and the world to peace and justice, and those who want to expand government to do good, and those who were advised by Jack Abramoff to build bigger government structures for reasons that may not have been entirely idealistic -- that alliance remains quite real.
The philosophical differences are important: if you don't believe that Big Government under the right principles and under correct guidance can bring about peace and justice, both here and abroad, then you aren't likely to be seduced by Jack Abramoff. You reject the expansionist plans because you don't think they will work, and you don't have to know if there are any Crooks and Creeps involved. You reject nationalized education and federal aid to education and federal interference in education because you think it can only do harm and any good it does will be small and temporary; you don't have to care about who profits from universal textbooks and Education Department "credentials." I could continue, but surely the point is made? I put it that no real conservative could have been seduced by "Big Government Conservatism".
I agree that what you describe as "neo-conservatives" are people I have no problems working with. I'd argue that the description doesn't apply to a lot of those who are leaders of "neo-conservatism."
As to the principle of pre-emptive War, I have no quarrel with that. In general I think it is not a good idea because wars always take longer and cost more, but I cheered our initial intervention in Afghanistan. I was much against both invasions of Iraq, but not on the philosophical ground that we had no right to go to war for American interests: my opposition was and remains that neither of those wars was in the American interest, and even if the Second Gulf War was originally in US interest, that interest ended with the collapse of the regime. But those are other questions for discussion at another time: I don't hold those who don't share my views in contempt. I know a case can be made for the US interventions in Iraq and the continued US presence in Afghanistan. I understand that many in the military feel US credibility is at stake in these matters; and I understand the dilemma of the Legions who have to pledge their word to people when they have no control over whether future commanders can keep that pledge. But those are different discussions. I do adhere to the general principle that absent existential threats the US should avoid entangling alliances and involvement in territorial disputes in Europe (and the Middle East).
And this has gone on far enough. But do understand: While there certainly exist "conservatives I disagree with" (implying that they are conservatives, and our disagreement is not fundamental) I do not accept that the neo-conservatives who continue to accept the universalistic principles they held before they were mugged by reality are conservative at all. I do not believe "Big Government Conservatism" describes anyone who holds self-consistent principles. I understand that there are those who believe they can ride all those horses at once. Frank Meyer thought so, too. Kirk and his adherents admired Frank Meyer and regarded him as a friend; but we always thought his fusionist alliance would one day be mugged by philosophical realities. Eventually it was mugged by the egregious Frum.
I'll try to be a bit more careful with my labels in future, and thank you for the discussion.
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