Posted on 08/22/2003 6:56:29 PM PDT by Brian S
Paul Weyrich Saturday, Aug. 23, 2003
My friend Irving Kristol, the father of neoconservatism, has an explanation of same in the Weekly Standard, the L'Osservatore Romano of neoconservative politics.
He says that although neoconservatism is not a movement as such, its purpose is 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." As usual, Irving is candid and honest.
He says this new conservatism is "hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic." Its modern political heroes? TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater are, in his words, "politely overlooked."
I am surprised that Woodrow Wilson is not among neocon heroes. It is he who wanted to make the world "safe for democracy." And if neocon foreign policy is directed toward that end, then I don't understand it at all.
In any case, Kristol says that neocons are really at home with Bush 43 as he recognizes the responsibility the United States has to use its enormous power acquired following World War II. We either will use this power, according to Kristol, or the world will come up with ways that will require its use.
I will comment on that view in a moment, but first let me say that other parts of the neocon agenda are a welcome influence on the Republican Party. This is a party that didn't really want to govern. I recall some years ago that a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats seized control of the lower house of the New Mexico Legislature. Conservative Democrats, even though there were far fewer of them, had to assume the chairmanships of double the number of committees than the Republicans chaired.
Republicans simply didn't want to govern. They had been in opposition so long they did not know how to use power. When the Republicans unexpectedly assumed control of the U.S. Senate following the 1980 elections, the only committee chairmen who were effective were former Democrats, such as Strom Thurmond and later, Phil Gramm.
Neocon influence in the GOP has changed that. Today, Republican officials in Congress ranging from Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt in the House, to Bill Frist and Rick Santorum in the Senate, as well as committee chairmen such as Sen. Jim Inhofe and Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner (just to name a few), are strong, able governing officials. That influence is welcome.
In addition, neocons have generally supported religious conservatives (and opposed libertarians) in looking toward government solutions for cultural problems. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest neocon support gave legitimacy to the claim by religious conservatives, now 40 percent of the party, that abortion and pornography and the absolute decline in our schools, were real problems that needed government intervention.
In addition, the neocon emphasis on economic growth, which usually means tax cuts, was another welcome influence on the green-eyeshade Republicans. We are in total agreement there, although we worry more than they do about government spending being out of control.
Where I part company with neocons is over foreign policy. Kristol claims this is their least-defined issue cluster. I disagree. I think their influence, at least with this president, is the greatest in this area.
First, let me make it clear that I agree that we should maintain military superiority to the point that a potential adversary would think twice about challenging us. It worked with the Soviet Union. The Soviets were a conservative power in the sense that they attacked only when they believed they were sure of winning. Their only miscalculation was Afghanistan, and there only because the United States equipped the Afghan rebels.
I also welcome their unabashed support for the concept of patriotism that was all but lost in the 1970s. Neocons presented an intellectual backdrop for its revival. Only the Republicans picked it up.
Having said that, I believe our intervention should be limited to cases where our vital interests are at stake. That is where the neocons and I march down a different path.
Kristol says: "A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from non-democratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated calculations of national interest are necessary."
There is some truth to what he says, although in aiding England and France we were on the defensive mode. We had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, and Germany had declared war against us. As to defending Israel, she is our only reliable ally in the region, so our national interests are at stake if her survival is threatened.
But what of Kosovo? How about Bosnia? And now Liberia? Can anyone really make the case that our national interests are at stake there?
We toppled a regime in Afghanistan because we were attacked on 9/11. The case was made that our national interests were at stake in Iraq. Time will tell if that charge will hold up. But there are 26 places right now where there is active warfare. We could just as easily have intervened in one of those places as in Bosnia or Kosovo.
In the Sudan, the Christian population has all but been wiped out. Why not intervention there? In Angola, the late Jonas Savimbi gave refuge to Catholics fleeing from their Communist government. If we had to intervene somewhere, that intervention would have at least protected innocent people (except for the fact that we sided with the Communists against Savimbi).
We can pick any of these places (how about Northern Ireland if war breaks out there again) to intervene. We can't be everywhere. The only rational approach is to intervene ONLY when our interests are directly threatened. Otherwise we will become, as that great President George Washington warned against, entangled in foreign wars.
To what end? We were to have been out of Bosnia "in a year." It was "several years" when candidate George Bush suggested he might well bring the troops home. They are still there. No one ever speaks any more of a departure date. The same for Kosovo. And despite what President Bush has said, it remains to be seen how long we will be in Liberia.
All this would sicken George Washington. Many of us who believe he was right are not feeling very well either. While I welcome neocon intervention in the GOP on a number of fronts, I find their domination of this administration's foreign policy troubling.
Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation
"You might also think that they would recall the notorious Fairness Doctrine, which was used to 'harass and intimidate' right-wing radio broadcasts, in the words of one unabashed Kennedy-Johnson operative. When that censorious policy was ended in 1987 by former broadcaster Ronald Reagan, there was an explosion of talk formats that gave voice to popular concerns (for a while, Rush Limbaugh even billed himself as equal time)." Thomas W. Hazlett, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. His research focuses on law and economics, with particular emphasis on telecommunications policy.
These very same 1960s liberals cum neocons who smeared Goldwater are the ones who created a fear among stations owners that stifled political discussion for decades. Now some of them want traditional conservatives to either convert or be purged, dumped into the dust bin of history as Jonah Goldberg put it.
IMO we'd be much better off if the neocons had stayed on to fight and purge New Left traitors who took over the Democrat Party in the 1970s. It's very likely that their Party would have dominated the politics anyway but the Democrat party would be a honorable, patriotic and traditional American political party instead of a party lead by leftists ideologue traitors.
Does this intimate that the neoconservative movenment is an advocate of expanded government? I think it does.
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Here is a Kristol quote from his lastest self defining piece which was posted on FR here and here .
-"Neocons ... are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable."
And more Kristol quotes:
> Irving Kristol writes in Reflections of a Neo-Conservative: "a conservative welfare state... is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."
> IK: "[We] are conservative, but different in certain respects from the conservatism of the Republican Party. We accepted the New Deal in principle'
True we are doing things differently than the Europeans of old so I guess we can call it Neo-imperialism and Neo-overstretch
Please do a search on FR and then google for Imperialism, Empire, Colonial, Colonialist, Colonialism, etc. and you will find a plethora of articles just from the last year alone from National Review, The Weekly Standard, other magazines and newspapers Op Eds all written by neocons and all defending these terms as they apply to us, how we shold not be embarrassed by them but embrace them. And how this is a peachy keen future for the world - Pax Americana, Benevolent Gobal Hegemony, etc.
To start here's a dandy little line for you by Jonah Goldberg in his article Time to Return to Colonialism:
"Max Boot, the features editor of The Wall Street Journal, has written a cogent and measured essay in the Oct. 15 issue of The Weekly Standard explaining that our problems abroad don't stem from too much American "imperialism," but too little. "
Then there was a featured column in National Review by the Editor himself - The Colonialist Consensus by Rich Lowry
And a snappy title like the following - Two Cheers for Colonialism by Dinesh D'Souza. These articles are the tip of the iceberg.
Those who are deluded into thinking heaven on earth can be acheived by US bayonets forget that America was born out of revolution against colonialism. Localized self government is the natural yearning of man. Nobody likes some foreigner telling them how to live and they like foreign troops on their territory even less. Our far flung bases to "project force" to ensure the peace will only ensure more trouble and heartache.
Modern Conservatives have been no friends of Goldwater either. Look what they did to Dole and Goldwater in the '96 election. Rush even had the gall to call Goldwater a "Limosine Liberal Republican" when Goldwater was the one who had led the fight to drive Rockefeller and friends out of control of the party.
Goldwater was conservative fiscally, libertarian socially, and a cold warrior in foreign affairs.
So9
But the real point I would stress is that Weyrich, here, is giving Kristol far too much credit for respectable advocacy. His (Kristol's) premises, quoted at the beginning of the piece are inherently flawed. There is no more positive view of the future than one that is based upon a true appreciation of the past, and a determination to build on all that is valid in that past. It is this drawing of strength from strength, and building on that strength, that is the essence of Conservatism. The alternative is self-destructive. The pursuit, after all, is to find what is true, what is real, what works, and use the tools that you have. The endless experimentation--really a repetition of what has failed at other times, and among other peoples--that is the alternative to a firm building upon developed strength and understanding, leads to one disaster after another.
It is also very clear, that Kristol is, like FDR, a duplicitous fellow. Else, why would he even call his movement "conservative" when it really is not. George Washington's single greatest point for the future, was that "honesty is always the best policy."
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
As Ronald Reagan would say, it'd be far better to link to someone who understands that Karl Marx quote. Good luck.
First published in French as a pamphlet at the beginning of February 1848
Do neo-coms think we don't understand the outcome of adopting Marxist thoughts on globalism?
Eight. Two paleocon pundits to write hysterical articles and profitable books blaming the neocons for the dark, three paleocon pundits to screw in the dark in a drunken orgy while pretending to have been spending their time in prayerful reflection, two paleocon fundraisers to create the appeals for various paleocon foundations to raise money while complaining bitterly about how impacted they are by the dark, and one union payscale electrician to screw in a new light bulb.
Better than having some dang Mexican do it for $1. F-in' illegals, all of them.
I saw this documentary the other day about how hard life currently is for the average American. This guy's little girl wanted a pony so he got it for her, but in able to afford the pony, he had to get a second full-time job requiring him to work nearly 24 hours a day. His first job was bad enough, working for some evil CEO at some nuclear power plant, but with the new job he was reduced to working at the local convenience store at night for some crazy Indian guy who yelled at him for falling asleep! The nerve of that f'in' immigrant!! Man, in 1950, every high school graduate lived in a mansion and had a tropical island. Now, with all this immigration and crap, we're all starving to death and rummaging through dumpsters. (Well, I mean, I'm not... my family has 4 cars and a country club membership, but I don't care about me... I care about "the little man" dammit!)
So, pray tell, who are the members of this forum that claim free trade and globalism only benefit the ruling-class, while the "little guy" is shafted? Who claims that the rights of workers need to be protected against the predations of free-market capitalism? Neo-cons, free-traders, or paleo-protectionists?
Furthermore, you have piled a logical fallacy on top of your misinterpretation of Marx, namely: Marx favored free trade; Kristol favors free trade; therefore, Kristol is a Marxist. Open your eye.
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