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Thread ID: 9127 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-08-18
2003-08-18 05:59 | User Profile
THE NEOCONS COME OUT Kristol's 'persuasion' ââ¬â big government at home, empire abroad by Justin Raimondo
August 18, 2003
The neocons are ââ¬â finally! ââ¬â coming out of the closet. Irving Kristol, the Godfather of the neocons, has come out with the neocon equivalent of a papal bull outlining the ideological parameters of this heretofore mysterious sect, wherein he unveils the secrets of "The Neoconservative Persuasion."
I say "secrets," because a spate of commentary on the neoconservatives as the vanguard of the War Party, emanating all the way from this site to Howard Dean, provoked a series of angry denials. Jonah Goldberg stomped his foot, and declared that "neocon" is just a euphemism for "Jew." While this victimological view seemed to unfairly slight Bill Bennett, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, it was, until very recently, shared by many neocons, who apparently decided that the best defense was to deny their own existence.
Max Boot whined in the Wall Street Journal that Pat Buchanan has "ulterior motives" in pointing to the existence of an ideological cabal that hijacked American foreign policy and lied us into war. Professor Robert J. Lieber, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, attributed the ubiquity of the neocon meme to a sudden explosion of neo-Nazism among prominent American intellectuals:
"It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal.
"'A small band of neoconservative (read, Jewish) defense intellectuals, led by the 'mastermind,' Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (according to Michael Lind, writing in the New Statesman), has taken advantage of 9/11 to put their ideas over on an ignorant, inexperienced, and 'easily manipulated' president (Eric Alterman in The Nation), his 'elderly figurehead' Defense Secretary (as Lind put it), and the 'dutiful servant of power' who is our secretary of state (Edward Said, London Review of Books)."
Perhaps the author of Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, was irked at being relegated to the founder-leader of a "little-known" movement (or "persuasion," as Kristol insists). In any case, Kristol has kicked the ladder out from under Lieber, et al. The resounding crash is music to my ears.
I always found the mysterious disappearance of neoconservatism as an above-ground, self-conscious ideological current rather inexplicable. In previous years, volumes had been written on the subject of neocons, especially in the realm of foreign policy, yet suddenly it became a hate crime to even whisper the "n-word." But all is explained by Kristol, who traces it back to an error etched by his own stylus:
"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."
Aside from the self-mystifying claptrap about a movement ââ¬â excuse me, persuasion ââ¬â so awesomely world-historic that it's glorious meaning can only be appreciated by posterity, all this is very interesting, and very true. The neocons only surface when they have to: that is, when it's time to whip up a little war hysteria so the hostilities can commence a.s.a.p. That's why we call them the War Party.
What "disillusioned" those liberal intellectuals was the unwillingness of the Democratic party to go along with the Vietnam war: the neoconservative critique of the welfare state, as mild as it was, was merely an afterthought. During the Cold War years, the neocons functioned as the cutting edge of Reagan era militant anti-Communism, always urging war even when peace would have been a far more effective strategy. The implosion of Communism didn't put them out of business: instead, they went quiescent, but not idle, patiently building their own institutions and alliances with other elements on the Right. The birth of the Weekly Standard, spawn of Rupert Murdoch and Kristol the Younger, represented the marriage of neoconservatism and Big Money: neocon domination of major conservative institutions was virtually complete.
Read the rest [url=http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j081803.html] HERE [/url]...
2003-08-18 23:16 | User Profile
Brilliant. :)
[color=blue]"Lovingly he ticks off what he regards as the high points of human history in the modern era: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Gulf War II. There is something distinctly weird, and unhealthy, in this litany of mass slaughter."[/color] :dung: