What’s Wrong with the World

Much ink and many pixels have been spilled in disputations over the nature and significance of neoconservatism, particularly as this tendency appears to be the dominant political motif of the present administration. Much of the discussion has been, well, not so much a discussion as an exchange of incandescent invective, and, when it has not been so intemperate, it has tended towards the obfuscatory, as in the attempt to deny that there actually exists a definable tendency corresponding to the term "neoconservatism". Fortunately, prominent neoconservative Michael Novak has obliged those pining for a succinct exposition of neoconservatism. That interview, however, requires some interpretation; for, like a scriptural text, the story of neoconservatism is not a fit one for private interpretation, particularly the self-interpretations of those who authored it. Unlike a scriptural text, which is best interpreted from within the tradition out of which it arose, neoconservatism is best interpreted by outsiders. After all, is it not the case that we are often understood best by those who are, well, not us?

To this end, I propose to provide an interpretation of select passages from the linked Novak interview, refraining from emotionally-freighted language; imagine the deadpan delivery of Bob Dole, and you will have in mind the intended tone.

Neoconservatism is a topic that has received a fair amount of commentary during the course of the past six years, and seems likely to receive still more, as a lame-duck administration continues to wallow in lameness, the war continues to drag, and the host organism of the neoconservative movement, the Republican Party, hurtles toward the abyss of 2008. Neoconservatism is a topic warranting serious reflection, for while the media and the average American might well content themselves with the knowledge that some neoconservatives promoted a foreign policy that resulted in a Mesopotamian quagmire, the tendency is not one that will be slinking off to die on one of history's ash-heaps anytime soon.

In light of these considerations, it seemed preferable - instead of offering a quick response to a thoughtful comment - to elaborate upon the nature and origins of neoconservatism.

Recent arrests of (qualifiedly) indigenous jihadists, four of whom are Muslims from the former Yugoslavia, and three of whom are illegal immigrants, have failed to stimulate even a simulation of the sort of discussion America must have if it is to secure itself from the depredations of such men. Such a discussion would, of necessity, be liberal in scope, encompassing interrogations of everything from immigration policy to the squalor of a foreign policy which issues in the creation of sharia states along the underbelly of Europe, and brings to power sharia regimes further to the east.

The hawks in Reagan’s administration assured him he couldn’t reason with communists. One adviser, the historian Richard Pipes, told Reagan the Russian mind worked in ways fundamentally different from our own. The peasant mentality of the Russian muzhik, Pipes had written in 1977, held “that cunning and coercion alone ensured survival: one employed cunning when weak, and cunning coupled with coercion when strong. Not to use force when one had it indicated weakness.” Reagan disagreed. Ignoring the advice of hard-liners like Pipes and the neoconservative strategist Richard Perle, Reagan preferred jaw-jaw to war-war. “We must and will engage the Soviets in a dialogue as serious and constructive as possible,” he insisted in a 1984 address. ~Dan McCarthy

There is something very powerful about the idea that it is impossible to reason with an adversary, especially one as genuinely perverse as the Soviets. What is striking about this excerpt from Dan's interesting review of Diggin's book is how this episode of Reagan and Richard Pipes compares with the present administration and its acquiescence in the theories of those who embrace such works as The Arab Mind. Whether it is the muzhiki of Russia or the Arabs, you have to deal with "those people" with a firm hand (i.e., threats, weapons build-ups or military action). One is reminded of the ivory tower rationalisations of mass murder by the fictional Dr. Garrigan from The Last King of Scotland: "This is Africa. You have to meet violence with violence. Anything else, and you're dead." Neoconservatives seem to be of the mind that Dr. Garrigan's approach to problem-solving is applicable on every continent. Perhaps the good doctor would have concluded along with certain latter-day enthusiasts of the ends justifying the means that you must get your hands dirty in a good cause. But I digress.

Cardinal Newman wrote very astutely, if a bit acidly, that it is a misfortune to be self-educated. It may be a misfortune; often it is a joy and a calling. But even where joyous it must always be an exception, unless barbarism is ascendant. In that sense we might almost say of a society which, by lassitude, heresy or avarice, forces many men to become autodidacts: “there is a society oppressed by barbarism.” Upon reading a devastating essay by Larry P. Arnn in the Fall 2006 issue of The Claremont Review of Books, one is left with that distinct impression. Ours is a society oppressed by barbarism. Misfortune will be the lot of Americans for some time to come — at least for those Americans who believe that “education” contains a notion of diligent immersion in, and exploration and veneration of one’s own civilization.

What Arnn — President of Hillsdale College — lays out in some detail is an arraignment of education in America so shattering as to induce the reader to a kind of despondency, followed by, it is to be hoped, a very solid kind of defiance. As Arnn tells it, with subtlety and incision, the agents of barbarism are in the driver’s seat; and the would-be defenders of civilization are reduced by bafflement, misconception, and disarray. Deriving from work by a committee of the President’s Advisory Council, the verdict is grim: “our kindergarten students rank with the best in the world in their knowledge of science and math. For each year that they are subjected to the capable attentions of our public education system, they fall a step behind. By the time they graduate from high school, they rank at the 10th percentile in math internationally, struggling to keep ahead of the unschooled goatherds of the Third World.” It might be added, of course, that a goatherd at age eighteen is probably the master of quite a variety of useful skills, such that his education is, in its own way, quite adequate.

The dilemma:

[UPDATED 12:25 est.]

When Richard Nixon promised an "honorable end" to the Vietnam war it had specific resonance because of Nixon's record as an anti-Communist hawk. Anti-Communists trusted that Nixon understood the real threat of Communism. Hillary may have — until recently — burnished her hawkish credentials, but she's hardly a Democratic Nixon. And her supporters are hardly the war-on-terror equivalent of raging anti-Communists. Does anyone think that Hillary is particularly passionate about the Islamist threat? Is there anything like a Nixon-to-China move she could pull off? And the rest of the Democratic field is far more dovish than Hillary. ~Jonah Goldberg

Against this, Ross makes the important point that the Iraq war is far more unpopular than Vietnam, which may make this “only Nixon could go to China” logic irrelevant. It is true that Iraq is more unpopular in May 2007 than Vietnam was in July 1967. One reason for this greater unpopularity of the Iraq war may be that July 1967 was relatively earlier in the escalation of American involvement in South Vietnam than May 2007 is for the deployment to Iraq. 1967 and 2007 are useful points of comparison as years before presidential elections, but otherwise comparing poll results from these years may be misleading. From the first large-scale American deployment in March 1965 to the time of that poll was obviously a little over two years (even though there had been some level of involvement in South Vietnam going back to before the 1960 election), while we are beyond the four-year mark and, as things are going right now, the war seems likely to continue well beyond Inauguration Day 2009. 2007 for Iraq is actually more directly comparable to 1969, and you will find that a fairly similar percentage of Americans (58%) believed the Vietnam War to be a mistake by October 1969 as now believe the Iraq war to be a mistake (61%). Update: Ross has taken this objection into account in a later post.

Jeff makes an important observation before he gives the citation from the always insightful Prof. Bacevich. Jeff writes:

That strategy of openness has been structured around the imperatives of economic growth and expansion, on the assumption that the construction of an integrated global order will ensure not only the economic preeminence of the United States, but her geopolitical preeminence.

It is interesting that Jeff should bring up this discussion of a "strategy of openness," since Fareed Zakaria has come out this week with an affirmation of key elements of that strategy as the appropriate post-Bush strategy for the United States. In other words, the policy establishment will continue business as usual, minus the glaring incompetence of management. This has the feel, as all paeans to "open society" have, of whistling past the graveyard.

In an earlier thread, in which I sought to challenge some of the presumptions and delusions of the economistic modes of analysis that too often shape public policy, a reader commented that mass immigration is the greatest issue confronting the Western world today. It is incontrovertible that immigration is one of the most salient of all the momentous questions that confront us; whether we are considering the disruption of the social fabric, the alteration of the economic patterns and relationships that prevail in our country, the devolution of our political culture, or the immigration-driven presence among us of devotees of the jihad, immigration is implicated in all of these developments. But it seems to me somewhat precipitous to pronounce that immigration is foremost among these issues, in the sense that doing so might be placing proverbial carts before proverbial horses. Rather, or so it seems to me upon reflection, immigration is an element - a critical and integral element, nonetheless - of a broader historical tendency, a tendency often presented to us under the aspects of inevitability and progress. We might even look through the historicism with which we are often confronted, seeing in it merely the masquerade of a doctrine of fate, of the totality to which all of the particulars of our societies are to be sacrificed.

One of the defining characteristics of the age is the slow, seemingly inexorable extrusion of elites and establishments from the societies they purportedly represent and 'serve' - if so quaint and republican a term can even be applied to their work in office. While it is fashionable among conservatives to ridicule John Edward's declarations that we are becoming two Americas, and while Edward's understanding of the emerging divisions among us is surely simplistic, conservatives are mistaken to make such quick resort to mockery and scorn. Disdain may be a sign of unassailable loftiness, of a position that cannot be challenged; it can also be a sign of exhaustion and intellectual torpor, a failure to see beyond the poverty of an expression to the reality to which, however inadequately, it points.

Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute has released an "open letter" pointing out that "under existing laws and policies, the majority of immigrants coming to America will automatically be eligible for race preferences and privileges not provided to the great majority of Americans" and arguing that "any legislation addressing immigration should make explicit that while immigrants and their descendants should be afforded the right to compete fairly and freely in every aspect of American life, they should receive no special benefit on the basis of race, ethnicity or national origin."

What is genuine liberal internationalism? It is neither a naïve idealism that ignores the realities of power nor a crude realism that ignores the power of ideals. ~Michael Lind

Oh, well, that clears things up nicely. There is a little more substance to it. Lind goes on to say:

Enduring international peace is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for liberal democracy. Why? In a world of recurring great-power conflicts or widespread anarchy, concerns about security may force even liberal democracies to sacrifice their freedoms to the imperatives of self-defense. This is what Woodrow Wilson meant when he said that the United States and its allies must make the world "safe for democracy." A world safe for democracy need not be a democratic world. It need only be a world in which democracies like the United States are not forced by recurrent world wars to turn themselves into armed camps.

Obviously, even by this lower standard that Lind sets for Wilson's foreign policy, it was nonetheless a magnificent failure, as the rest of the 20th century was to show. That will never dim the faith of the true followers in the wisdom of Woodrow's vision. Behold:

A world of many, mostly small and nonaggressive nation-states will be less dangerous than one of a few empires battling to carve up the world.

One wants to ask: less dangerous to whom? Everyone? Citizens of the great powers? Citizens of the small states? Who knows? Arguably, the age of a few great world empires was better, in terms of the prevention of armed conflict, for large swathes of Africa and Asia than the last century has been. For Europe, the disappearance of their empires has brought two generations of peace and prosperity (under the admittedly artificial conditions of the Cold War and U.S. protection). For Americans, it has been a decidedly mixed picture.

To put into perspective how a great number of Russians regard their first president and his policies, imagine the governor of Illinois striking a deal with the leaders of New Mexico, Texas, and California and offering them support for their independence in order to oust his personal rival, the president, from the White House and take over the rump United States. Imagine, in addition, that he dissolves the US Congress by sending in tanks, resulting in the deaths of over 150 citizens. These patriotic activities then lead to hyperinflation, wiping out the citizens' personal savings. The economy in now in shambles, and high-tech gives way to raw-material extraction. Silicon Valley infogeeks are escaping to China, Europe, and Brazil. Lucrative businesses are "privatized" and handed over to the president's cronies. His reformist economists attempt to fix the economy by not paying wages - for years. Law enforcement virtually disappears, and US cities become the battlefields of endless gang wars. The life expectancy of men falls to 57 years.

One week before last Christmas, the US State Department fast-tracked four European Bank for Reconstruction and Development projects in Serbia, which consisted of a loan to HVB Banka Serbia; an equity investment in Syntaxis Mezzanine Fund I; an equity investment in South Eastern Energy Capital; and a loan to Danube Group Holding of Serbia, which holds a stake in JKR Natural Resource BV.

The State Department claims that these particular investments "will contribute to a stronger and more integrated economy in the Balkans." Therefore, Section 561 of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act was suspended. Section 561 would have prevented US executive directors of the EBRD from voting in favor of these initiatives because of the Serbian government's noncompliance with the Hague Tribunal.

Why is the United States so eager to fund these projects?

Presidential candidate George W. Bush, following a Republican playbook scripted in the mid-nineties as the party lurched from defeat to defeat, its ambitious agenda for the housebreaking of the Federal Leviathan stymied by Clinton's deft triangulations, said little about Social Security. As President, he proposed an audacious (within the narrow consensus of American politics) partial privatization of the gargantuan entitlement program, whose unfunded liabilities foretell all manner of political and economic upheavals, scheduled to begin once the pig-in-the-snake of the Baby Boom generation reaches retirement age.

For his admittedly desultory effort, he was rewarded with a political rebuke: failure, and falling poll results. Americans cherish all manner of illusions about the nature and stability of the program, and probably even believe in the unbelievable myth of the Social Security Trust Fund; when presented with the dire facts about the future of the program - which become still more sombre when Medicare is incorporated in the calculations - they make quick resort to magical thinking: it cannot happen; things will work out fine; all things will continue as they have since FDR brought salvation to America.

Curiously, financial markets also appear to indulge in magical thought.

Via Rod Dreher:

Islamic extremists embedded in the United States — posing as Hispanic nationals — are partnering with violent Mexican drug gangs to finance terror networks in the Middle East, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

"Since drug traffickers and terrorists operate in a clandestine environment, both groups utilize similar methodologies to function ... all lend themselves to facilitation and are among the essential elements that may contribute to the successful conclusion of a catastrophic event by terrorists," said the confidential report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The 2005 report outlines an ongoing scheme in which multiple Middle Eastern drug-trafficking and terrorist cells operating in the U.S. fund terror networks overseas, aided by established Mexican cartels with highly sophisticated trafficking routes.

These terrorist groups, or sleeper cells, include people who speak Arabic, Spanish and Hebrew and, for the most part, arouse no suspicion in their communities. (Sara Carter, Washington Times for August 8, 2007)

Now, some of us who have taken the measure of the jihad, perceiving in it the nature of an existential threat to the very substance of our civilization, albeit one which will require time to ripen, have contemplated this very possibility for some time. In fact, we might even asseverate that this possibility suggests itself upon consideration of the entities involved: it is in the nature of clandestine organizations, even those that, like some Islamic groups, observe a decentralized, "leaderless resistance" style of organization, that they not concern themselves overmuch with the objectives of partners. Provided that there is sufficient overlap at the point of meeting, and provided, further, that there exist no immediate and overt conflicts of aim, collaboration can occur. That some nationals of Islamic nations may easily pass themselves off as Latin Americans only adds to the synergy.

Daniel Larison on Sullivan's ridiculous Christianist conspiracy theory:

If they existed, Christianists would be interesting people. They would have to believe at one and the same time that they must make God’s will into the law of the land and enforce Christian doctrine throughout society and be convinced that the best instrument for this goal was the utterly secular, Mammon-serving Republican Party. They would have to be completely fanatical and at the same time completely indifferent that their chosen vehicle of political power was basically hostile to everything they sought to achieve (which is one of the reasons why, despite decades of trying, they have achieved next to nothing). They would have to be able to turn their fanaticism on and off with a readily available switch, which makes them rather less worrisome as the founders of the future theocratic nightmare to come.

Growing up, the harder sort of Protestant fundamentalists were wont to argue that the alliance of the Religious Right with the GOP would end in failure, futility having been its lot. Setting aside the question of what, precisely, Christians should have done when the nation slipped into the cultural centrifuge in the Sixties and Seventies, it is remarkable that what began with a mixture of noble aims and low, political farce should now end in tragedy, as the Christian right fragments, and finds itself increasingly marginalized (or perhaps this marginality is being revealed). The only play left is that of refusal - of the role of GOP 'automatics'. This, at least, would be a beginning.

James Poulos, who blogs at Postmodern Conservative and The American Scene, has, in his own words, taken part-time employment as a critic of "our general cultural retreat into the therapeutic meta-ethics of feeling, emotion, and sense - and away from the ethics of fact, act, and responsibility". Critiquing a NYT article on US-Saudi relations which stated that the American officials had consented to interviews in advance of a diplomatic junket in order to "send a pointed signal of deep frustration", Poulos wrote:

No, ladies and gentlemen. The officials were clearly intent on actually expressing deep frustration that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course. (snip) We must cease this constant retreat into meta-narrative. We must insist upon discussing the world where actual actions take place. We must resist the half-conscious urge to make feelings and feints, interpretations and intimations, more important than the behaviors that call them into 'being.' We must stop reading entrails and issuing oracles.

In other words, the US did not send a signal of frustration; they simply expressed it, period. The metanarrative of signals and signs adds nothing but a layer of opaque, baroque ritual, obfuscating what actually transpired.

I want you to consider what it would mean to you, if you learned that a Jim Crow Party were potent and fashionable, and perhaps even ready to shake the political science