Posted on 08/14/2003 9:38:27 PM PDT by quidnunc
"[President Bush is] an engaging person, but I think for some reason he's been captured by the neoconservatives around him." – Howard Dean, U.S. News & World Report, August 11, 2003
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.
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 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight 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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
"A party that in itself was born out of the dreams of a man who wanted an elected king and the federal government to control all."I am about halfway through a very in-depth book about the history of the Whig party in America. While there is a lot about the Whigs that doesn't mesh with my own political philosophies, I can't say that anything I have read so far squares with your characterization of the Whigs-- especially this last part. Wanted an elected King? My God, the whole basis for the founding of the party was an opposition to the accumulation of power Andrew Jackson was organizing (they derisively called him "King Andrew").
Similarly, this phrase in your reply was just plain wrong as well:
"A party that claims it 'needs' to take care of things private industry could take care of better and cheaper because it won't get screwed up the first time."The Whigs never stood for this.
What they did stand for, however, was spending government money on projects which private industry simply could not do at the time. There were projects (road development, canals, et al) for which private industry, back in these early days of the country, would not have been capable of raising. Business was simply not concentrated enough back then.
They were not isolationist, at all. They founded Liberia. They supported western expansion. They extended the Monroe Doctrine to Hawaii.
What they were, however, was very wary of the slavery issue destroying the union. The majority of Whigs (although it was not unanimous) opposed the Annexation of Texas, for example, due to the fact that they feared it would lead to war with Mexico while simultaneously causing the uneasy balance between the north and south in the US to cause the nation to fracture.
It is difficult to look back upon the politics of those days from the perspective of today, because foreign policy played very little role in elections. The crede that all politics are local may be true today, but it was absolutely true back then. Parties won, and lost, elections primarily on issues close to home. And parties often would push very different messages in different parts of the country, taking advantage of the fact that unlike today, what a party was saying in South Carolina might not be heard in New Hampshire. The Whigs in particular would take both sides on an issue- one side to appeal to the Southern states, and one side to appeal to the Northern states.
I refer to the beginnings of the party of internal improvers. Hamilton himself argued for an elected king. The Whigs picked up many of his positions along the way. And considering one of their own all but became an elected king....
What they did stand for, however, was spending government money on projects which private industry simply could not do at the time. There were projects (road development, canals, et al) for which private industry, back in these early days of the country, would not have been capable of raising
Exactly, and lining their pockets while they were bankrupting a government
Further, the Whigs insulated themselves from charges of crony capitalism by advocating indirect involvement in the development of canals and roads and the deepening of rivers. The tariff monies raised would go to the states. Funded mandates, if you will, rather than unfunded mandates. And despite the ominous sounding rhetoric coming from the Democrats about "Southern tariff revenue", some of the largest support for Whig programs came from the South. North Carolina, for example, badly needed infrastructure in order to have much of the state participate in the market economy. In 1840, the only southern state which did not go Whig was Alabama, for example.
Hamilton was not a Whig, and he was dead before the Whigs came to be. Hamilton was a Federalist, the same party as George Washington and John Adams.
As for the Whigs bankrupting the government while lining their pockets, there really is not much evidence to support that contention. For that to be a correct assertion, one should have seen Whigs 'benefitting' from corruption more than Democrats, and the historical record simply does not support that contention.
We disagree wholeheartedly on Andrew Jackson. You see him as being a force against the concentration of power in the hands of the government, and I see the exact opposite.
I realize that!!! My statement was more about his belief systems in line with the Whigs and vie versa. Considering also the 16th President's complete disregard for the Constitution, he was the epitome of what Hamilton would have wanted in an elected king
There was a national bank? No problem. He'd dissolve it-- and direct the funds to be deposited in banks of his choosing. The legislature is the will of the people? Not any more! Jackson felt he knew better the will of the people than any silly legislature. And so forth.
Jackson was the first politician to successfully exploit class envy to accumulate power.
I do every day, when I see the country still existing.
What zealot? A person who looks back over the Civil War and wishes that the outcome was different.
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