“To
expect that all the world should, and must, adopt the peculiar political
institutions of the United States—which often do not work very well even at
home—is to indulge the most unrealistic of visions; yet just that seems to be
the hope and expectation of many Neoconservatives.” Russell Kirk, The
Politics of Prudence, 1993
“A
conservative welfare state … is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative
perspective.” Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative, 1986
Our
savior once chilled an audience by telling them, “Not everyone who says to me
‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.” History has similarly shown
that not everyone who self-identifies as conservative fits the bill. Some of my
conservative friends have asked why I keep ranting about the dangers of
neo-conservatism, as opposed to the values embodied in what Thomas Fleming and Samuel Francis have called the Old Right, or more jokingly the
Paleo-conservative grouping.
I want to look at what neo-conservatism is and to
show some of the havoc that it has wrought in American politics and beyond. If
we really want America to return to its roots as a federal republic, it will be
imperative that everyone who places himself under the banner “Conservative”
learn the vital distinction between the lefty sham of neo-conservatism and the
permanent verities of Old Right patriotism.
One
of the toughest obstacles to sane government in America is the fact that many
well-meaning boosters and Babbitts (usually lifelong GOP voters) have been seduced. Wolves in
sheep’s clothing have enthralled sincere but clueless voters who are often
perfectly sound in their recognition and rejection of most forms of Big
Government, but who obediently swallow another variety of poison when it is
offered by a different brand of statist charlatans. These confidence men call
themselves neo-conservatives. The label itself is a bit cockamamie, and ought
to raise alarm bells to the uninitiated. New Conservatives? What is novel about
conservatism? What kind of innovation, besides the kind that comes through
patient reform, have wise defenders of tradition endorsed? It has been
axiomatic of Western conservatism from Burke to Goldwater that any change in government must be filtered into practice
under the scrutiny of long-established custom before its policies are unleashed
upon the people.
The
truth is that the neo-con ideology involves a subtle deception whereby its
champions claim to offer voters the best of what is old and the best of
what is new. This is a bit like saying that a married man can enjoy his
girlfriend without betraying his wife. For the last 40 years, the neo-con
canard of Democratic-Capitalism-For-All has virtually eclipsed clear thinking
even among self-described conservatives. Neo-con “ideas” are indeed so strong
that very few self-described conservatives are even able to state their
political philosophy with any coherency, and the same folks seem impervious to
the fact that they constitute a confused Janissary in what amounts to a
full-dress Marxist victory.
Since
infiltrating older conservative circles and the Republican Party in the 1960’s,
neo-conservatives have expedited and reinforced the leftward drift of American
government while dishonestly attacking their “opponents” in the Democratic
Party. But any opposition that neo-cons have offered to Democrats has been
strictly in the area of contests for office. When it comes to the substance of
their policies, neo-cons in office (Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Bush Junior), in print,
and on the air, have shown that they are in near uniform agreement with the
leftist vision of progressive statism, vast centralized power, and contempt for
states’ rights.
The popularity of neo-conservatism is magnified by a phenomenon
that goes by the name of “Conservative Talk Radio”, a form of entertainment
whereby millions of otherwise normal Americans tune in to hear that
conservatives must always support the military, conservatives must
recognize our Christian duty to wage war on terror and protect Israel, and that conservatives must
fulfill the heavenly mandate to rid the whole world of evil. Somehow the
hearts and minds of millions of Americans have been won to the neo-con cult in
spite of years of destructive policies. Neo-con philosophy as applied by
Reagan, William Bennett, Donald Rumsfeld while they were in power, has
facilitated and hastened the growth of all the pet policies of the left, from
affirmative action to education subsidies. To see why, we must look closely at
the original ringleaders of the movement and their roots.
The
neo-conservative ideology began to coalesce in the late 60’s when several
well-known political theorists sought to distance themselves from the radical
agenda of the New American Left, particularly the latter’s insistent defense of
communism both at home and abroad. The neo-cons included Norman Podhoretz and
Irving Kristol of the New York Intellectuals.
Both of these men and several
more in their cohort abandoned youthful flirtation with Marxism for a new kind
of flirtation with conservative politics. Although Podhoretz, Kristol and most
of the men who identified with the neo-con ethos were themselves disciples of
Leon Trotsky (as evidenced by their writings up to that time), they began in
the 60’s to declare their independence from the liberal mainstream in America.
But a look at their neo-con phase reveals that they never did shed what James
Burnham, writing in a National Review column from 1972, called, “the
emotional gestalt of liberalism, the liberal sensitivity and
temperament.” Like their ancestor Trotsky, the neo-cons broke officially from
prevailing lefty ideology while retaining many of the core ideas of the
dominant party. In the case of the neo-cons in America, what mainly united them
was a rather nebulous anti-Communism. In his 1996 essay “Neo-Con Invasion”, Sam
Francis wrote that many of them regarded themselves as, “ ‘liberal
anti-Communists’ who favored a policy of containment in Vietnam…They were also
alarmed by what they regarded as the ‘isolationism’ expressed by the New Left.”
As we shall see, the neo-con objection to New Left isolationism had far more to
do with utopian schemes for American imperialism and state-capitalism than it
did with a desire to contain communism.
Having
declared their independence, these newly self-minted conservatives began to
found magazines, publish books, and to insinuate themselves with lightning
speed into the welcoming arms of many old-style conservatives. Their ability to
gain so much influence so rapidly sprang from two elements: the prestige they
had garnered with their old brethren on the Left, and the credulity with which
their claim to have seen the light was swallowed by their new brethren on the
right. The neo-cons said a lot of the right things, and seemed to share so many
of the same values as Old Right thinkers and political authors, that the
conservative mainstream embraced their new brothers in spite of the neo-cons’
recent origins (and an increasingly ideological bent in their activity).
Conservative leaders like Brent Bozell, William F. Buckley, and for a while
James Burnham (himself a former Trotskyite who underwent a conversion to true
small-government conservatism), cherished the hope that the prestige these
ex-liberals enjoyed in liberal circles could be conveniently fused with the
existing conservative vision and might lead to a mighty and united front in
resisting the steady erosion of American culture and traditional morality.
Francis summarizes the situation well:
“By the eve of the Reagan administration,
neo-conservatives were generally welcomed into conservative circles, and their
ideas began winning acceptance as ‘respectable,’ ‘credible,’ ‘results-oriented’
expressions of conservatism. But it was not long before old conservatives began
to perceive that they would have to pay a price for their new allies.”
What
Old Right thinkers had hoped would be a fusion of compatible worldviews arrayed
against common enemies turned out to be a very brittle mixture. True enough,
the neo-cons condemned communism, as well as certain forms of the evolving
welfare state. But from the beginning of their period of influence, the
neo-cons have affirmed and pursued an absolutely liberal faith in the power of
Big Government, in both domestic and international terms. Behind their
conservative posture and sloganeering there continues to lurk and thrive a
heart of darkness with its roots embedded in democratic socialism. The
hypocrisy of the neo-con ideology has taken several forms.
In
discussing cold war foreign policy, the neo-cons attacked communism, but
endorsed the theory that all good governments require a democratic form, even
if implementation meant using American military force to topple regimes deemed
undemocratic by the neo-cons. That theory found its full flower during the
administration of George W. Bush, whose wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were
orchestrated and executed by the many neo-conservative thinkers who surrounded
him. In fact, it was the issue of non-interventionism which was perhaps most
archetypical of the incoherent neo-con ideology, and a profound
misunderstanding of anti-war arguments still haunts neo-con thought today.
Although
many neo-cons are adept at offering gestures of protestation when Democratic
presidents or lawmakers take aim at the Constitution, such outrage is always a
dumb show. As Clyde Wilson has shrewdly observed of the neo-con dominated GOP,
“Republican opposition to any left-wing action is always a feeble and temporary
prelude to surrender”. And when the two presidents most
closely and proudly aligned with the neoconservatives were in office (Reagan
and Bush 43), they each contributed enormously to the increasingly comedic
levels of national debt. Much of the financial irresponsibility that began on
Reagan’s watch (and has flourished ever since) sprang from the neo-con ideology
of endless military expansion under the thin guise of protecting American
interests. George W. Bush was no better as a fiscal conservative than Reagan,
and was in fact much worse. Bush Junior enmeshed America in two long and
pointless wars, whose official raison d’être has long since been refuted. What
have not disappeared yet are the enormous bills to be paid for Iraq and
Afghanistan. But even more tragic than the financial disaster of the Bush wars is
the extent to which they deepened the delusion among American conservatives
that it is absolutely normal and appropriate for patriotic Americans to comply
happily with whatever war their government suggests. This psychotic complicity
on the part of the American right is not only suicidal; it is also completely
counter to a long and sturdy tradition of non-interventionism among American
conservatives.
Nowadays,
anyone criticizing America’s endless military adventures for the sake of
Democracy is attacked from the Right (or those who regard themselves as
representing the Right) by cries of “Isolationist!” or “Pacifist!” But playing
the “Isolationist!” card was not always the default response of Conservatives
to non-interventionist arguments. Before the neoconservatives completed their
hijacking of conservative sentiment (around the time of Ronald Reagan’s 1981
inauguration), wise patriots like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles
Lindbergh, and Robert Taft were vociferous in their articulation of the vital
importance of non-interventionism for a healthy American polity. In his
farewell warning against “entangling alliances”, President Washington’s famous
phrase established a tone of national sovereignty and self-sufficiency that
came to dominate a statecraft centered upon minding our own business. Jefferson
echoed Washington’s phrase at his own 1801 inauguration. Ohio Senator Bob Taft
was perhaps the most vocal and influential opponent of the New Dealers under
FDR, and Taft was also a passionate and insightful proponent of
non-interventionism, doing all he could to keep America firmly out of World War
Two. The fact that Taft’s nickname in the Senate was Mister Republican reveals
that the GOP has not always been defined by its present agenda of warfare and
welfare.
Although
the neo-cons claimed that they were responding to the ‘isolationism’ of the New
Left in the 60’s (which in reality was heretical pacifism), the truth is that a
stubborn commitment to staying out of foreign wars has always been part and parcel
of Old Conservative thought in America. Long before the misguided Chicago Seven
hippies raised hell over the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention, conservative heroes like Charles Lindbergh of the America First
Committee were preaching against the war-baiting actions of FDR for far
different reasons. The Chicago Seven were simply expressing a primitive, if
sincere, objection to any use of military power. The America First Committee
campaign to dissuade America from thrusting itself recklessly into the fray of
World War Two was a far more substantive endeavor. Their campaign was in
perfect agreement with a longstanding conservative commitment to keeping
Americans out of wars unless there existed a threat to our obvious national
interests.
But
no one has ever honestly gotten Abbie Hoffman confused with Charles Lindbergh,
or Cindy Sheehan with Pat Buchanan. In order to understand how the neo-cons who
rule the GOP today are able to get away with a scale of warmongering that runs
absolutely counter to the previous grain of American conservatism, it is
essential to recognize the centrality of political correctness to the neo-con
ideology. Like all Marxists, neo-cons realize that Americans are slavishly
committed to never saying or doing anything that is unrespectable. This
obsequious desire to seem upright in all ways allows neo-cons to silence
conservative criticism of, say the Iraq war, by implying that all such noise is
the result of pinko cowardice. Such insults are absurd (and would never have
been brooked by the likes of the warrior Lindbergh), but they have proven
astoundingly effective in persuading American “conservatives” to accept the
preposterous notion that defending the American way of life requires us to have
an international military presence everywhere, and that bombing women and
children is the bread and butter of our nation.
In
order to protect their interests and advance their causes, the neo-cons depend
upon a regime of political correctness just as much as proud liberals do in
their own campaigns. In both cases, lying and threats are essential. For
example, liberals claim to believe that “Diversity is Strength!” If anyone
challenges this maxim by pointing to some of the mountainous evidence to the
contrary, his liberal opponent instantly labels him a racist. End of
discussion. By analogy, the neo-con plays the same game to silence criticism of
his own Marxist agenda. For example, neo-cons claim to believe that America
must “Export democracy, and promote its principles all over the world.” If
anyone dares to point out that every neo-con military campaign to establish
“democracy” around the world has resulted in either civil war or Muslim
theocracy, the neo-con attempts to shut down debate with cries of
“Isolationist!” or “Nativist!”
The
PC sophistry of equating worldwide military adventures with Healthy American
Conservatism is no surprise in light of the intellectual roots of the neo-con
agenda. In pursuing an irresponsible fantasy of Democratic Joy in Iraq, the
neo-con Bush cohort of Donald Rumsfeld/Karl Rove et al, operated in absolute
agreement with their godfather Leon Trotsky. Like Trotsky before them, the
neo-cons abominated Stalinist fascism (really national communism). And like
Trotsky again, the neo-cons placed their faith in what Trotsky deemed the
“permanent revolution” of international democratic feeling. This may explain
why neo-cons continue even now to be such credulous supporters of “exporting
democracy”, an activity they imagine will bring about a perfect world of what
they term “democratic capitalism.” As Russell Kirk observed in his withering
essay The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species:
“I offer you merely a very succinct refutation of the
strange notion that the ideology called Democratic Capitalism can set our
collective American steps aright. First of all the phrase is a contradiction in
terms; for capitalism is not democratic, nor should it be, nor can it
be…Second, capitalism is a term popularized by Karl Marx; it implies that the
selfish accumulation and enjoyment of capital is the sole purpose of our
present society…Do Neoconservatives, in the role of Burckhardt’s ‘terrible
simplifiers’, think they will gain the affections of the peoples of the world
by actually declaring Americans (and their allies) to be the very capitalist
exploiters the Marxists have been denouncing all these years?”
Writing
that in 1993 (but seeming almost to prophesy the precise terms and mentality of
the ongoing fiasco in Iraq), Kirk gives the lie to the claim that neo-conservatism
is a form of authentic conservatism by showing how it is so clearly rooted in
cultural Marxism. The diagnosis has two steps: 1) the recognition that the
primary goal of neo-conservatism (i.e. Democratic Capitalism) is a chimerical
fantasy dreamed up by social engineers; 2) the recognition that all such social
engineering has its roots in utopian Marxist ideology. In essence, the
neo-conservatives set themselves up as the prophets of a dream world not unlike
the one proposed so emphatically and disastrously by Woodrow Wilson, who longed
to make the world safe for democracy. But in shedding the external trappings of
liberalism, the neo-conservatives never managed to rid themselves of lockstep
liberal infantilism, nor the destructive longing to remake the world in their
own image.
The
long-term fruits of such ideas can be seen vividly in the careers of the men
who have taken up the heavy lifting of neo-conservatism in our own day: George
W. Bush and his nation-building war on terror; Bush speech-writer David Frum
and his “axis of evil”; Irving Kristol’s son William (a vocal neo-con
journalist and agitator of war with Iraq in 2003, and active in the Reagan and
Bush Sr. administrations); Norman Podhoretz’s son John (who now fills his
father’s long-time role as editor at the neo-con rag Commentary); and
many more.
Since
the neo-cons originally defined themselves as liberal anti-communists, their
eschewal at that time of trendy support for the Soviet Union is hardly
surprising. In the 60’s the ongoing cold war with the USSR afforded an
opportunity to seize and wield political influence, so Kristol and company
discarded explicit liberalism while retaining its ideological assumptions about
the inevitability of warfare abroad and welfare at home. What is fascinating
about the neo-con dissent from isolationism is that a refusal to entangle
America in wars and international affairs has been quintessential to American
conservatism from the beginning; what is appalling about neo-con cooperation
with a Big Stick approach to domestic policy is that it’s diametrically opposed
to everything Old Right conservatives used to stand for, like subsidiarity and
self-sufficiency.
Sources
· “Your Future as a
Terrorist” by Clyde Wilson in Chronicles:
A Magazine of American Culture, 2009
