Posted on 07/10/2007 11:47:23 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
“You know, when I ask people, ‘What do you think the goals of America are today?’ people don’t have any idea. We don’t know what we’re trying to achieve. And I think that in a life or in a country you’ve got to have some goals.” Senator Hillary Clinton, MSNBC, May 11 2007
Senator Hillary Clinton’s worldview, as formulated above, is starkly at odds with that of America’s founders. The idea that the American nation had “goals”, just as individuals do, would have been wholly alien to them. For them the whole undertaking of government was to protect our “self-evident” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This emphasis on the primacy of the individual is the essence of true American exceptionalism.
National goals are a euphemism for concentrated national political power. The “Old World” was full of nations with goals, almost all pernicious. The concept of national goals is not so much un-American as it is non-American. But Mrs Clinton persists in promoting the concept, saying at a recent campaign speech in New Hampshire that rather than an “ownership society” she would “prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society”. She frequently invokes the notion that Americans want “to be part of something bigger than themselves”.
She has an unusual ally in this. The one other powerful political force in the US today that shares her frustration over the lack of national goals is neoconservatism. Neocons call it “national greatness”. Their theorists Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan called President George W. Bush’s willingness to “engage wherever necessary around the world” a recognition of “an essential part of national greatness”.
Perhaps its most articulate proponent, however, is David Brooks, the New York Times columnist. Mr Brooks wrings his hands in a Weekly Standard article that “Americans have discarded their pursuit of national greatness in just about every particular”. And how would he describe that goal? “Individual ambition and willpower are channelled into the cause of national greatness. And by making the nation great, individuals are able to join their narrow concerns to a larger national project.” “Ultimately,” he continues, “American purpose can find its voice only in Washington.”
Mrs Clinton would appear to have found a soulmate in Mr Brooks, if not a future running mate.
Yet there is more to Mrs Clinton’s neocon connections. Another characteristic she shares is the promiscuity with which both camps would use the federal government – as if there simply were no constitutional limits on federal power. Given the neocons’ high profile in pushing us into the Iraq war, it is often overlooked how far their domestic policies unfailingly call for vigorous federal initiatives.
The federal takeover of education, dubbed “No Child Left Behind”, is a neocon project. So, too, was the Faith-based Initiative that funded local religious organisations. Mr Brooks recently called for presidential candidates to “create a flourishing families committee. Get economists, religious activists, and psychologists in one room to figure out how government can reduce stress on struggling families”. This would be the same government that took three days to discover that Hurricane Katrina had created a bit of a problem in New Orleans.
Not to be outdone, in It Takes a Village (the “village” being the federal government), Mrs Clinton suggests the government should fund videos on baby care that “could be running continuously in doctors’ offices, clinics, hospitals, motor vehicle offices, or any other place where people gather and have to wait”. Shades of 1984.
Expansive government is always going to be a project of those who would subject individuals to collective, national goals. The founders were well aware of this danger, which is why they gave us a constitution of enumerated – and therefore limited – powers. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “I consider the foundations of the constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the US, by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people’. To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power no longer susceptible of any definitions.”
Mrs Clinton looks in danger of following the fateful path of the neocons, with her aim to take possession of that boundless field.
The writer is president of the Cato Institute
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
hillary is a national socialist
Agreed. Her “goals” are identical to his - communism thinly disguised as socialism.
Is Ted Nugent a liberal?
Nope - she’s been conning folks for a loooooong time.
Just what is needed to whittle away the time in line.
How is a European styled socialist not a European styled socalist?
I don’t know why the author would ask if Hillary was Jewish.
Shrillery a neo-cON?
Goodness no!
She’s a Move-ON-morON!
Unless she’s mere slug slime.
A growing number would vote for the latter.
The title is worded wrong and the reasoning is tortured. I think it would have been better to keep it simpler and simply ask: Are Neocons as Bad as Hillary?
Hillary is the template of socialism and big government. You don’t have to waste many words imagining what government would be like under Hillary. The question is, do the neocons have the same goals as Hillary does? I think it’s a fair question, and a fairly complicated one to answer, since the Bush government is not all neocon (though some of it is) and isn’t all that successful in pushing its policy goals.
I don’t know the answer, but I would prefer to read a discussion in these terms, rather than the the way it was stated in this article.
Ah, the definition of "neocon".
Coined by Irving Kristol, he would tell you it is any leftist who would even consider pondering a conservative concept. Better would be a leftist who adopted even one conservative concept.
Ever since David Horowitz converted from being a dedicated Communist to embracing a fervent convervative ideology, the left (those who would control language) has sought to co-opt the meaning of neo-con.
Did Kristol use "con" to mean "convert"? Or, as the left would co-opt the entire concept, as new "conservative", the fervent Horowitz or William Kristol types who wouldn't mind American capitalist free enterprise under the rule of law representative democracy as a world model ("goal of a nation")?
See, the left can't have anyone think a leftist could even consider one aspect of conservatism, let alone become a convert. Therefore, the attempt to make the term "neo-con" a pejorative by ignoring Irving Kristol's definition and substituting their own. To wit, "conservatives want to rule the world".
yitbos
Regarding Hillary, any idiot knows she's not a neocon.
We just aren't sure if she is Satan or the Anti-Christ.
Didn’t leftist ‘journalists’ create the term in the first place?
NO SHE IS A NINCOMPOOP
“Is Hillary Clinton a neocon? “
NO, she is a murdering, pervert enableing, p.o.s.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, whose presidential campaign has been overshadowed in recent weeks by charismatic rival Sen. Barack Obama, D-IL, today walked into a K-Street beauty salon in Washington, D.C., commandeered the clippers and shaved her head down to the bare skin. “If Britney Spears can milk a week’s worth of top headlines from this trivial act, so can I,” said a visibly-agitated Mrs. Clinton, who, as it turns out, has “magnificent head shape,” according to the stylist on duty. The candidate said she has not ruled out visits to tattoo and piercing parlors, and will do “whatever it takes.” “I’m in, and I’m in to win,” she said. “The American voters can now see that I have much a larger cranium than Sen. Obama, and I think they’ll draw their own conclusions.” http://www.scrappleface.com/
Nope. Just a con.
Ya beat me to it.
Does anyone claim to be a neocon?
Hillary is an old “I don’t recall” con.
Authoritarians on the right and totalitarians on the left, both will take away my liberty. The constitution limits government as a necessary evil. No other institution has ever created nuclear weapons or weaponized deadly diseases.
She is whatever the polls tell her to be... just like the sack of sh!t she married!
LLS
Okayyyyyy .......
That definition would probably include President Reagan.
The national goal is to keep her sorry @ss from becoming president.
Well-stated, Sam. That’s an important point—or points.
Good one.
"The Neoconservative Persuasion - What it was, and what it is" - by Irving Kristol
yitbos
No, it's not. Despite the revisionism by the founder of the movement in the article you cite, those of us who read his true self-definition in the WSJ around 1980 (and the analyses in NR and The Alternative [now The American Spectator]), know that the article is dishonest.
With the possible exception of Jeanne Kirkpatrick, whom the article describes appropriately, the founders of the Neo-Conservative movement were "former" Communists who changed their ideas about nothing except that the Soviet Union should be resisted at all costs. They wanted a total socialist economy, and the big-government mantra was the way to disguise their goals.
Reagan shared that one goal, and therefore became a strange bedfellow. But nothing else I know of that he did was consistent with their philosophy and stated goals. It is dishonest to maintain otherwise.
I’m much more comfortable with a “former communist” like Dave Horowitz than with a democrat like Gore, Kerry, Obama, the Clintons, et al.
The discussion (debate) over the definition or origin of "neo-con" has been the topic of some of the better threads at FR. Other threads are older, longer and more emothional, especially those including Buchananites, this one is 2003, jammer is prominent.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/904111/posts
Having said that, I am interested in your definition of the original "neo-con".
yitbos
The left uses “neocon” for Republican JEW!! The term neocon is used as a slam.
FR *bookmark*
It was a communist who turned on the Soviet Union and became a Cold War hawk, retaining the socialist/government control impulse. That's what it was, and that's what Kristol was (and probably still is).
Notwithstanding what the term really defines, it is bastardized today to mean any foreign policy hawk. Irving Kristol just isn't one of us, no matter how much he protests. And neither you, nor I, nor Reagan (when alive), nor Dick Cheney, nor Rumsfeld is/was one of them. Frankly, I'm not sure I belong in either group anymore.
Buchanan has nothing to do with the discussion. I don't know why you brought him up, unless it was to somehow smear me by implication when we have a phantom link nobody can reference.
And the rest is consistent with what I said in this thread (and what is true, protestations of people who weren't out of nursery school at that time, notwithstanding). The Buchanan reference of yours was low, cheap, and untrue.
The rest of the replies were worthy efforts.
yitbos
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