Posted on 08/20/2003 1:36:11 PM PDT by Korth
Irving Kristol, who identifies himself as the "Godfather" of neoconservativism, is finally beginning to come clean and admit what neoconservatism stands for: statism at home and imperialism abroad. He makes this candid admission in an August 25 article in The Weekly Standard entitled "The Neoconservative Persuasion."
Congratulating himself for becoming an "historic" figure (at least in his own mind) he declares:
[T]he historical task and political purpose of neoconservativism 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 (emphasis added).
Like all neocons, Kristol claims to be a champion of democracy, but his words and actions often contradict this claim. Consider the language in the above quotation, "against their respective wills." According to the traditional theory of democracy, the role of competing ideas in politics is supposedly a matter of persuasion. Political debates are supposedly aimed at persuading voters that you are right and your rival is wrong. But Kristol will have none of this. He is the "Godfather," after all. What he apparently means by transforming traditiona l conservatives against their will is not to attempt to persuade them to become statists and imperialists like himself, but to intimidate and censor them by conducting campaigns of character assassination against anyone who disagrees with the neocon agenda. He means to purge all dissenters, Stalin style.
This decidedly un-democratic tactic was on display in David Frum’s National Review attack ("Unpatriotic Conservatives") on any and all conservatives who disagree with the neocon agenda of endless warfare around the globe. Indeed, the neocons are well known for resorting to personal smears rather than intellectual debate, beginning with their vicious campaign of character assassination against the late Mel Bradford when he was nominated by President Reagan to head the National Endowment for the Humanities in the early 1980s. That smear campaign established their political modus operandi.
Kristol claims that the three biggest neocon idols are Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Ronald Reagan; all other Republican party worthies are "politely ignored." Teddy Roosevelt, whom the neocons affectionately call "TR," was simply nuts. Mark Twain, who met him twice, called him "clearly insane." In any number of "TR" biographies we learn that after an argument with his girlfriend as a young man he went home and shot his neighbor’s dog. When he killed his first buffalo – and his first Spaniard – he "abandoned himself to complete hysteria," as biographer Edmund Morris recounts.
While president, TR would take morning horseback rides through Rock Creek Park wildly shooting a pistol at tree branches, oblivious to the harm he might do to residents or houses in the area. He once strung a wire across the Potomac River so that he could hang on it while crossing the river because, he said, his wrists needed strengthening. The TR biographies are filled with similar stories of his asinine antics.
Like the neocons, TR was a Lincoln idolater. (His secretary of state was John Hay, Lincoln’s personal White House secretary). After being lambasted in the US Senate over the fact that he had launched a military intervention in the Philippines that costs thousands of American lives and resulted in an incredible 200,000 Philippine deaths, Edmund Morris recounts in his latest biography of TR, Theodore Rex, how he responded to his senate critics during a Memorial Day address to aged Union army veterans. The criticisms against him were invalid, he told the white-bearded veterans of Lincoln’s army, because the mass killing of Philipinos was for their own good – its purpose was to spread democracy. Besides, he said, it was the exact same policy of the sainted Lincoln, so how could anyone object? Southerners were also killed by the hundreds of thousands for their own good, according to TR’s logic.
Like the neocon Lincoln idolaters, TR was a consolidationist who had no respect for states’ rights – or for constitutional restraints on government in general. He loathed Jefferson but idolized Lincoln, naturally. He nationalized millions of acres of land, initiated numerous antitrust witch hunts that were enormously harmful to the economy, imposed onerous regulations on railroads that led many of them into bankruptcy, and responded to the socialist Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle by regulating food and drugs. (FDA drug lag has been proven to have caused hundreds of thousands of premature deaths due to the inaccessibility of life-saving drugs available in other countries).
His fellow Republicans accused him of trying to concentrate all governmental power in Washington, abolishing state lines, and creating a stifling bureaucracy to control the population. They were right, of course, which is why the neocons love TR so much. (Bill Clinton also said that Teddy Roosevelt was his favorite Republican in all of American history).
Like Kristol, Max Boot, Charles Krauthammer, and many other neocons, TR was infatuated with war and killing. A college friend of his wrote in 1885 that "he would like above all things to go to war with some one. He wants to be killing something all the time" (See Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power, p. 36). As president, he constantly announced that America "needed a war," which is exactly what the neocons of today believe. War – any war – the neocons tell us, gives us "national unity."
TR was a statist in domestic policy, a foreign policy imperialist, and an inveterate warmonger. He was, in other words, the real "Godfather" of neoconservatism.
As for FDR, the neocons idolize him as well because the older ones like Kristol are all former leftists – like FDR – and they have never abandoned their statist beliefs. Further evidence of this lies in the one reason Kristol gives for why neocons idolize Ronald Reagan: Although they had nothing to do with initiating the "Reagan tax cuts," neocons supported them because they believed they would spur economic growth, which in turn would enable them to fully fund the welfare state. (In this regard California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is a neocon: In his initial press conference announcing his candidacy he said he wanted to "bring business back to California" so that the Golden state’s massive welfare entitlement bureaucracy could be fully funded).
Kristol claims that democracy used to mean "an inherently turbulent political regime," but not so once a country becomes prosperous. This is a breathtakingly absurd proposition. The very existence of the neocon cabal, at a time of the greatest world prosperity in history, contradicts it. If the neocons are about anything they are about political bullying to impose their will on others – turbulent democracy, in other words. Moreover, in The Birth of the Transfer Society Terry Anderson and P.J. Hill discuss how, as the idea of democracy replaced individual liberty as the reason for government in the post-1865 era, politics inevitably became more and more "turbulent" with one rent-seeking group after another cropping up to use the powers of the state to plunder its neighbors. The transfer state has continued to grow virtually unabated over the last century, making American democracy ever more turbulent and divisive. There has been a relentless shift away from the traditional constitutional functions of government and toward an ever-expanding transfer society. Kristol’s notion that twentieth century prosperity brought an end to "political turbulence" is preposterous and absurd.
Equally preposterous and ahistorical is his further claim that, with prosperity, Americans will become less susceptible to "egalitarian illusions." But the U.S. today is as prosperous as it has ever been, and mindless egalitarianism reigns. Just a few weeks ago one of Kristol’s favorite Supreme Court justices, Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor, wrote a majority opinion that said racial discrimination against whites in college admissions was desirable because, in her opinion, the mixing of skin colors on college campuses – to supposedly promote egalitarianism – trumped the constitution she once swore to uphold. A thousand other examples could readily be used to disprove Kristol’s thesis.
Kristol further admits that neocons do not in any way favor limited government. He mocks the idea of limited constitutional government by calling it "the Hayekian notion that we are on the road to serfdom." He is not just mocking Hayek, but the entire classical liberal tradition, as well as the Enlightenment ideas that informed the founding fathers in their limited government philosophy. In chapter 1 of The Road to Serfdom Hayek lamented the abandonment of classical liberal ideas in countries that had been adopting fascism and socialism (and its close cousin, New Dealism) during the 1930s and '40s by saying:
We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.
This is what Kristol and his fellow neocons are so opposed to: the same philosophy of individualism that early and mid twentieth century tyrants from Mussolini to Hitler to Stalin understood as being their biggest philosophical roadblock. "Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm of anxiety about the growth of the state," Kristol smugly pronounces, repudiating the ideology of the American founders.
And it is not an exaggeration to say that the neocons repudiate the basic political philosophy of the founders, even if they hypocritically invoke the founders’ words from time to time in their political speeches and writings. Just recall some of the harsh anti-government rhetoric of the founders. To Jefferson, "on the tree of liberty must spill the blood of patriots and tyrants." And, "a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."
Patrick Henry urged his fellow Virginians to take up arms against the British government "in the holy cause of liberty" and warned that it is the tendency of all centralized governmental powers to "destroy the state government[s], and swallow the liberties of the people." This of course finally happened in April of 1865, a month the neocon "Civil War" historian Jay Winik says "saved America."
In his Farewell Address George Washington warned that special interest groups in a democracy "are likely, in the course of time . . . to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reigns of Government." Sounds like a perfect description of the neocon cabal.
James Madison pronounced that "it is in vain" to expect that politicians in a democracy would ever render clashing political interests "subservient to the public good." And Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense that "Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, and in its worst state an intolerable one."
Kristol repeats his old refrain that "libertarian conservatives" are different from neocons because they are supposedly "unmindful of the culture." He is either oblivious to or willfully ignores the fact that it has been libertarian scholars who have done more than anyone to research and write about the damage to the American culture inflicted by the welfare state (family breakup, rampant illegitimacy, loss of work incentives, short-sightedness, slothfulness, etc.). Neocons ignore all of this vast libertarian literature and continue to champion an expanded welfare state while pretending to be protectors of "the culture."
Nor does Kristol acknowledge that it is libertarians who have done more than anyone to expose how the government’s war on drugs has created a criminal culture, a bloody and violent culture, a culture that traps young children into short crime-ridden lives, and a culture that corrupts the police and the judicial system. Neocons all support an even more vigorous war on drugs while pretending to be ever so concerned about "the culture."
I can’t help but point out that the self-appointed neocon culture and morality czar, "Blackjack" Bill Bennett, recently revealed to the world what his idea of "culture" is: Sitting on a vinyl stool at a Las Vegas casino at 3 A.M. pouring thousands of dollars into one-armed bandits while being served free drinks by cocktail waitresses barely out of their teens and dressed like hookers. (Bennett admitted to having blown some $8 million at Vegas casinos in recent years).
In foreign policy Kristol says neocons are, well, imperialists. For a "great power" there are no boundaries to its pursuit of "national interest." He says we have an "ideological interest" to defend, and that means endless warfare all around the globe to ostensibly "defend" that ideology. (And Mark Twain thought TR was insane.) Of course, someone has to decide for us what that "ideological interest" is, and then force the population, with the threat of imprisonment or worse (for nonpayment of taxes, for instance) to support it.
In Kristol’s case, his primary ideological rationale for military intervention is: "We feel it necessary to defend Israel today" in the name of democracy. Well, no we don’t. If Irving Kristol wants to grab a shotgun and take the next flight to Tel Aviv "to defend Israel" then Godspeed, and I will offer to buy him a first-class plane ticket. But leave me and my family out of it.
Translating "we feel it necessary to defend Israel" from neoconese, we get this: "Young American soldiers must die in defense of Israel." Like hell they must. Young Americans who join the military for patriotic reasons do so because they believe they are defending their country. It is a fraud and an abomination to compel them to risk their lives for any other country, whether it is Israel, Canada, Somalia, or wherever.
The Godfather concludes his essay by gloating over how neoconservatism is "enjoying a second life" in the current Bush administration, with its massive expansion of domestic spending, record budget deficits, lying us into war, TR style, and of course killing. Lots of killing. That he used the word "enjoyed" to describe all of this speaks volumes about "Godfather" Kristol and his neo-comrades.
No I don't and I never claimed them to be.
>You keep on omitting Kristol's reference to Ronald Reagan as a "neo-conservative" 20th Century hero, according to Kristol. Why? And why no ellipsis to tip people off to the omission?
I did that to avoid my critique of neooconservatism from getting side tracked to a discussion of the cold war since most conservatives have a knee jerk admiration for the cold war - any criticism would result in a barrage of posts but damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Kritsol made it clear that on domestic issues he is no Reaganite. Reagan was against the welfare state and high taxes. Kristol admits he needs the latter to fuel the former which he sees as a virtue not a vice. What attracts neocons to Reagan then? An aggressive foreign policy i.e. meddling in other countries affairs.
The cold war is an odd and multifaceted event which served many purposes. It was an excuse for the US to keep troops around the world post W.W.II and to expand US influence i.e. build an empire. For New Dealers it was an opportunity for socialist wealth redistribution on a global scale in the guise of foreign aid to keep communism out (funny how we bribed foreign governments to keep the Soviets out while we sent in Marxist US advisors to help their economies but that is another story). See the above W.F.Buckly quote as to how it helped domestic socialism. The arms race, maintaining a large military and supplying guerillas and anti-Communists globally was very profitable for the military-industrial complex.
There are other purposes and reasons but the point is Reagan was an establishment outsider and a true believer in the evils of communism and he wanted to defeat it. The US governing establishment saw the cold war as a perpetually useful tool. That is why Reagan was so opposed. The neocons however were jaded communists and had it in for the Soviet Union which to them betrayed the socialist revolution. Kristol and company may have modified the extreme socialist views of their youth but they still have the passion for world revolution i.e. to remake the world in their image. Kristol admits this. Reagan was a natural vehicle to further their grand designs for mankind. Now they see the war on terrorism as an opportunity. Luckily for them the enemy is nebulous and can be construed to be anywhere they set their sights.
> The suggestion that Bill is a socialist
I contend that Buckley is a company man, he works for the establishment. How can a capitalist country support socialism? The paradox of capitalists supporting socialism is answered when one understands socialism is a tool by which the powerful and wealthy monopolize power and wealth.
> "Peaceful trade with all nations" aka GATT and WTO violates an essential social compact here and is the treason of economic elites against the working people of this country. When enough are unemployed and impoverished to scrape the last nickel out of 3rd World slave labor, those elites will be the first to complain of the political backlash.
How do you construe "Peaceful trade with all nations" into supporting GATT and WTO neither of which I endorsed nor mentioned? That indiscretion aside your critique of them is the first thing you've said that I can agree with.
> Daddy Bush ... did not squash Saddam once and for all when we could easily have done so
In all fairness to Bush he only had authority to liberate Kuwait and the Arabs would have revolted had we invaded Iraq at that time. Trying such a stunt in the heart of Arab territory with Arab military units in our midst would not have been prudent. Everything in due course. Events served their purposes and worked to our advantage better than hoped. The blow back from our permanent presence gave us reason to be in Iraq in perpetuity as well as Afghanistan so now we control access to and policy in both the mid east and central asia. Double plus good for the empire, eh?
Those who need to achieve greatness vicariously through larger entities like the nation would worship presidents who were involved with wars and aggressive foreign policy. I measure presidents by their adherence to the constitution and the principle of limited government. Plus the concern of the public interest over partisan politics and the lack of graft and cronyism. As far as presidents go I think Cleveland was one of the best we've had.
I just don't see a political answer aside from choices between parties who stand for something rather than this charade where they pretend there is a difference and we pretend we believe them.
Andrew Jackson: The very best. He killed thae National Bank of that pecksniff and neo-Federalist Nicholas Biddle and his snob cronies. He was in battle with Jean Lafitte at his side, thoroughly ventilating Brit General Pakenham who, after all, had no business being in the US at all, then stuffed Pakenham's bullet-riddled corpse into a whiskey keg with whiskey as the preservative and sent the old boy back to his tea-sipping relatives. Grabbed Florida for the US, sent John Quincy Adams packing after having the previous election stolen by a cabal of Adams and Clay acting for the big shot interests against the folks, pet banks, spoils, wildly populist and popular. No one even thought of mesing with the US with him in the White House. Openly connived with cronies in early exercises of Manifest Destiny. You wanted him on your side in a personal gunfight too. The best, the very best.
Ronaldus Maximus: No need for discussion since he is recent enough. The very best of the 20th Century. Even now in his present condition, he would be a far better president than Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft (Federal Reserve, 16th Amendment gets under way), Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, RMN, Gerald Ford (by a margin of infinity to 1), Bush the Elder and, of course the Arkansas Antichrist. In his prime, he was better than the rest of his 20th century competitors. Gets extra credit for refusing to employ paleos.
Rutherford B. Hayes: Achieved office the old-fashioned way by buying it. He ended Reconsruction to satisfy the fifteenth and independent commissioner fro the South. He only did what was right and he got the presidency for it. He also ended the Civil War Income Tax and redeemed tha Civil War greenbacks in full face value in gold as a lesson to the nation and its politicians as to funny money. Then, having done about all a man could do, he went home to Ohio after one term.
Thomas Jefferson: As Ronaldus Maximus observed to a White House guest list of science pracitioners and professors, theirs was the second smartest average IQ get together in any one room at the White House and second only to Thoms Jefferson using the smallest room by himself. Helped American recover from dread Federalist days and policies.
James K. Polk: Jacksonian and vigorous practitioner of Manifest Destiny. What more need by said?
Warren Gamaliel Harding: There will never be another with a middle name like that. Used to give the slip to Secret Service and sneak out a secret White House exit with a cold case of beer to hand out in casual clothes to bleacher bums at Senators' baseball park. William Henry Harrison: Contracted pneumonia giving inaugural speech in the freezing rain for hours at age seventy. He died forty days later, having done no damage despite being a Whig.
Benjamin Harrison: Grandson of William Henry and a true naif and child of nature. Benny went to see his campaign manager, Matt Quay, the day after the election and said: Thank God, we won, Matt!. Quay realistically replied: God had nothing to do with it, Harrison. We bought every vote you got.
FDR and TR as aforesaid.
Chester Arthur: beneficiary of the marksmanship of a stalwart (conservative) assassin of the radical Garfield, he was expected to be the most corrupt crony-lover ever but disappointed and ran a clean government. Even so, he was very good.
Those are my favorite 11. Honorable mention: Franklin Pierce and ames Buchanan and Dubya.
I am pinging ninenot, a semi-close neighbor of good sense standing a bit between me and thee on the paleo matter and very much an admirer of PJB.
As David Frum's article pointed out so well, the origin of the paleos is in the disgruntled realization of the socially eccentric and politically unsophisticated romantic blood and soil types that Reagan really was not going to hire and credential them. In 1986 at a Philadephia Society or Mont Pelerin Society meeting they announced their discovery that they, and not the consevative movement or Reagan admnistration were the REAL conservatives, that Israel had hijacked conservatism along with about eight elderly New York refugees from McGovern's takeover of the DemoParty and that henceforth they would deal with the phonies who elected Reagan by hiding their heads in the sand and denying our (movement conservatives') existence.
More recently, one local example known well to me and thee in teaching a course entitled Real American History (which in its post-1900 portion is real American fantasy) refused to even cover the Reagan Administration (the pain, the horror!) doing literature such as the Legend of Sleepy Hollow instead. These folks are trying to redefine Reagan who can no longer defend himself as a "paleo whatever". When John Flynn, Charles Lindbergh (as a politico) and Garrett Garrett drank at the primeval wading pools of old, Reagan was an avid and active supporter of FDR and no more an ancestral Republican green-eyeshaded bean counter than me or at least half of thee. He was no isolationist either at any stage of ideology or career.
As conservatives go, Ronaldus Maximus was the master. He was the gold standard (so to speak). He was unbeatable. He was a social normalist. He was not a crank like that "history" teacher and neither Serbia nor Montenegro counted in his foreign policy considerations as did Nicaragua or scrapping arms control proposals or being aggressive towards the soviets or keeping chicoms from thinking bad thoughts. One flaw was free trade but no one is perfect any more.
All that having been said, you do, of course, merit, for lifetime achievement in spite of our few differences, a tip of the antlers which is hereby respectfully tendered since you can be distinguished in many ways from our acquaintances at the institute.
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