It’s time to see history as others see it.
Okay, I’m convinced. The President’s critics have made their case. The man is a complete and utter fool — and a dangerous one at that.
His shortcomings are almost too many to cite, but we can list the most egregious ones.
● It’s become all too clear that the President has used the war to proscribe civil liberties. The war is just an excuse to silence his critics and deny people their personal freedom. The man is nothing less than a tyrant hell bent on stripping us of all our Constitutional rights in the name of “protecting” the country.
● As far as the prosecution of the war is concerned, he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. His policies are chaotic and confused at best, grossly incompetent at worst. We’re losing to a ragtag band of misfits who are cleaning our clock at every turn. There’s only one way this war is going to end, and that’s badly.
● What’s more, the people he’s placed in charge of the war effort are no better. They won’t listen to reason, lack vision, and haven’t the slightest idea what they’re doing. In occupied areas the local population despises them, and the only times they show any military success is when they use overwhelming power to brutalize and destroy. Yes our army is vastly superior to theirs, and in this sense we can clearly “win,” but again what price victory?
● And finally, let’s not forget about his reasons for going to war in the first place. He lied. There’s just no other way to describe it. Just when did “freeing the slaves” become part of our reason for attacking Georgia, or Mississippi, or Alabama for God’s sake? Besides, these people had nothing to do with the assault on Fort Sumter (a one-time episode to be managed; certainly not a reason for going to war!), and never fired a shot at us until we shot at them. We should redeploy our troops now.
I’m speaking of course of Lincoln and the Civil War.
The withering criticism of Lincoln’s effort to hold the nation together so a different political agenda could be advanced seems cruel and self-serving with the light history has shed on his actions. And yet, each of these arguments was treated with the utmost seriousness — as least superficially — at the time they were made. Lincoln was an incompetent tyrant who suspended habeas corpus, brutalized the South with his heavy-handed policies, killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent people (soldiers and civilians alike), and offered the original bait-and-switch reason for pursuing the war when he emancipated the slaves.
Yes, there are certain uber-conservatives and white nationalists who want to debate whether Lincoln actually had the Constitutional authority to prosecute the civil war in the first place, and will lament the implications of freeing the slaves instead of shipping them all back to Africa so we could keep the nation pure, white and Christian. But these represent the “out of touch” views today, not the actions for which Lincoln was so roundly criticized a hundred and fifty years ago.
And from this we should all take note. If your judgment about the President and his actions is based solely on the contemporary consensus of men and women with a vested interest in an opposing policy outcome, then be honest enough to admit that you’re not engaging in a reasoned analysis, but rather a partisan political hit.
When the issue is whether to build an unnecessary bridge in rural Alaska or another Robert K. Byrd memorial facility somewhere in West Virginia, the stakes are important — but not crucial. Lose the fight and your taxes go up, but your head still remains firmly attached to the rest of your body. But when the issue involves a fundamental clash of civilizations that threatens the present and future security of every American — if not every Westerner — then your support or opposition for the war against Islamic fascism carries with it a much greater implication.
As citizens of a free country whose opinions actually matter, we have a responsibility to do more than merely support or oppose an elected official simply because it dovetails with our own personal agenda. Republicans and conservatives in general have applied this principle to their actions. Those who support an aggressive war against Islamo-fascism of the kind prosecuted by George W. Bush have also opposed the immigration and domestic spending policies of the kind proposed or implemented by George W. Bush.
It’s the policy, not the person, that is the object of attention, unlike Democrats and liberals in general. The same people who supported a call for regime change in Iraq in 1998 opposed it (after initially supporting it ala John Kerry) when George Bush actually acted on the matter. From Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden, the same people who said that we needed more troops in Iraq before the election so they could criticize Bush’s war policy now oppose the introduction of any new troops into Iraq so they can criticize Bush’s war policy.
The simple fact is, if there was no invasion of Iraq, the same people who oppose the Iraq war but support our efforts in Afghanistan would now be virulently opposed to the death and destruction being wreaked throughout this innocent third world country which, by the way, never attacked the United States. Instead, we should be hunting down that rogue element that temporarily made its home in the mountains of Tora Bora and is now hiding in the mountains of Pakistan.
Of course, the moment Bush went after these people inside the Pakistan border, he’d be accused of invading another sovereign nation and thus radicalizing an entire generation of offended Islamo-fascists, so that any future attack on America under any future Administration could be traced to this seminal event — thus allowing us to forget about the appeasement and indecision of the Clinton years that emboldened our enemies to attack us on 9/11 and start this whole process in motion.
I’m not the first person to draw a parallel between the criticisms of Lincoln and Bush, and I suspect I won’t be the last. America’s willingness to take the fight to our enemies before they attacked us sent a powerful message throughout the world that there would be no safe harbor anywhere for those who intend us harm. It’s no coincidence that a certain Libyan dictator got rid of his nuclear program shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq.
But several years of relentless partisan Democrat attacks, gleefully carried by a willing national and international press, have undercut this message and instilled an exact opposite one. Bush will continue the fight until the day he leaves office, but after that all bets are off. Even if the Democrats don’t succeed in undercutting victory in Iraq, they’ve already shown that the U.S. — as a whole — has no stomach for a sustained fight.
Our enemies do, unfortunately, and it will take another 9/11 to wake the country up again.
I’m hoping you find the textus receptus acceptable.
Here are some great articles showing how neocons hold the same philosophical views of the Left:
The Real Cabal
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/September2003/0903Francis.html
For “Jacobin” read “neocon.”
Where in the World are we Going
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/ryn2.html
Jacobin In Chief
http://www.amconmag.com/2005_04_11/article2.html
“The Real Cabal.” After whining about paleos being left out of the discussion (as if their mere existence is somehow sufficient for the leftist press to give them notice), the author engages in obtuse ramblings about nothing in particular. One wonders finally if there is ever going to be a point. Ultimately, the answer is “no.”
Its quasi-intellectual tone is barely penetrable. No wonder paleos have such trouble expressing themselves. Even their pre eminent spokespersons can barely do so themselves.
Peter,
As my son approaches his teenage years, I’m teaching him to debate and test ideas using reason, logic, persuasive skills, and most of all his moral frame of reference as a Christian. He’s young (11) and it’s slow, as his natural inclination is to simply call people names and declare himself the winner in any argument.
It’s refreshing to see you wade right in after several hundred posts with all the finesse of my 11-year old.
Since we’re apparently expected to defend our usernames, it might be of interest for you to note that I am a full-time single father (not by choice) and I also work full-time. I’m also white and heterosexual, as I’m sure that’s germane as well.
Demonstrating that all-essential loyalty and responsibility to kith/kin/blood/tribe, I figured it was maybe a good idea to raise my son myself. You know, try to fill the dual role of father/mother instead of outsourcing this to a not-my-tribe nanny. So I am, in a very real sense, a true Mr. Mom. But I’m also a Mr. Breadwinner, a Mr. Change-the-oil-on-my-car, a Mr. teach-my-son-how-to-shoot-a-gun, and a Mr. many-other-things.
It’s likewise refreshing to see that you’ve been studying your masters so attentively. Namely, call names (leftist, Marxist, Jacobin, PC, liberal, emasculated, woman, neocon) and then cite books and websites sympathetic to your cause. Don’t argue, don’t persuade, don’t convince, don’t reason, don’t actually present your own views in any detail. Just call names, tell those of other viewpoints to read the appropriate manifestos, and then mock them as lesser intellects. You’re superior because you’ve studied under the right masters and read their books. Welcome to paleoconservatism, where recitation is the key to success.
I always that thought the above approach to debate was the sole domain and strategy of liberals.
But now I know better.
Anyone can find, as Ryn does, superficial similarities between different political philosophies. But a truly exhaustive comparison must involve a more serious discussion of the differences.
One difference between neoconservatives and Jacobins that I think ruins the comparison is that neoconservatives do not want to toss out the existing social order in their own country. The Jacobins did. In fact, neoconservatives are more comfortable in the existing social order than paleoconservatives.
There is a superficial similarity between the neocons and Jacobins: they both want to export democracy. Neocons want this, however, because they adhere to the ancient political belief that a great power is more secure when it establishes regimes like its own in countries of high interest. This is more Spartan than Jacobin.
The Francis article, I think, makes some fair points. My point was never to defend neoconservatism from all criticism. It deserves plenty of criticism. But I do think talk of a “cabal” is paranoid, conspiratorial nonsense. Neoconservatives are not a secret society, sitting (as Gottfried has written) in Chinese restaurants plotting wars. They are just another group of people with another set of opinions.
And about that, there is a great deal of variation within the persuasion known as neoconservatism. On immigration, Bill Kristol holds one opinion, Charles Krauthammer holds another, and Victor Davis Hanson holds another. Irving Kristol has written that neocons admire FDR and ignore Coolidge, yet Jonah Goldberg has often praised Coolidge, and equally as often criticized FDR.
When the elder Kristol described neoconservatism as a “persuasion,” I think he meant that neoconservatism has no key tenets (Max Boot’s opinion notwithstanding). Neoconservatives are individuals moved rightward to varying degrees by a frustration with the liberalism of the 1960s and since. To say that they should be more right-wing, or that they are too compromising, or that they joined the party too late, are both fair criticisms. To call them “leftists” and “Jacobins” and “Trotskyites” is unfair.
It also does a disservice to the Right by obfuscating the fact that paleoconservatives have a lot more in common philosophically with neoconservatives than they have with the socialist Left. Relations between palecons and neocons could be a lot better than they are now. I think National Review could afford to be more tolerant of paleoconservatives. But I also think paleoconservatives could afford to be more tolerant of neoconservatives, and they certainly don’t need to call everyone who disagrees with them a “leftist.” If the Left is that big, the Right doesn’t stand a chance.
O.R.,
I’d be happy to have you teach me, when you grow up. After that, translate #218 and learn it.
I have been gone a few days. This is likely all I have left to say on this subject. My intention from the beginning when this whole race issue came up was to shame rightist for using the r word and playing the game on the left’s terms. As I said early on, if we are going to use the term racism, which rightist shouldn’t, then it should mean only hate. Anyone who makes the accusation without clear and convincing evidence of hate is IMO a demagogue. I was hoping that since no evidence of hate was forthcoming, then we could all move on.
I do not think these extended exchanges have necessarily been helpful except as a way of exposing the mainstream defenders for repeatedly using the above tactic. Let the record speak for itself.
In the future, I think I am going to be less inclined to carry on these debates, unless new and substantial points are made. I will make a blanket statement such as the one above. Until someone can produce evidence of overt hate then they are just gum flapping demagogues. In pop cultural parlance “Show me the hate,” or retract the allegation. Or else defend the leftist definition of racism as something other than hate.
Katzen, a couple of points. The current neocons are not seeking to overthrow the established order at home, a good point, because they are pretty much happy with it. If the year was 1912 (before 1913) or 1860 (before 1961) you can rest assured they would be all about overthrowing the establish order at home.
J.D. is right to remark on the Prussian similarity. I had hesitated to make that point because I didn’t want to be accused of reducing everything to ancient ethnic quarrels. The neocons did not invent a new ideology and impose it on conservatism in the course of 30 or so years. They did a good job of fine-tuning the ideology and dogmatizing it, but they did not invent it de novo. There was an element of American thought, perhaps appropriately placed in the conservative camp and perhaps not, that was Federalistic and nationalistic and in favor of centralization. The neocons attached themselves to that strain of thought, more than they invented a new thought.
Astute readers will recognize that strain of thought as predominantly Northern/urban/industrial and represented by the Hamilton/Webster/Clay axis. Southerners would pejoratively call it Yankee. There is a similarity between the neocon view and the previous manifestation of Manifest Destiny for example.
The other axis is the Southern agrarian view of Jefferson, Calhoun etc. It favored decentralization.
If you accept the Northern = predominately Saxon and Southern = predominately Celtic cultural patterns, then the Prussian analogy makes a lot of sense. (That theory requires a great deal of elaboration that I don’t have time for.)
So the Neocon/German animosity can be partially explained by the fact that they are as my mother used to say “too much alike.” Both favor uniformity, regimentation, and view their culture and world-view as inherently superior. (Read some old WBTS literature about how the Northern camps differed from the Southern camps, for example.) So the Neocon/German animosity is a reflection that there can’t be two bosses or both sides can’t be right.
Both elements (Southern and Northern) existed in the Old Right coalition. Menken, for example, was an urban sophisticate who despised rural Americans and thought them all ignorant, Bible thumpers. See his comments on the Scopes trial and the Dust Bowl Okies for example. And there was also the Southern Agrarians. They were united by a common enemy as much or more than they were a common vision.
This coalition was also evident early on in the modern conservative movement.
The Northern Federalist vision is conservative in that it was distrustful of the masses, and to a certain extent it had royalist leanings. (I realize the North was a hotbed of rebellion and the South had more loyalists, so the above statement requires some elaboration that I don’t have time for now.) The Southern vision was conservative in that it distrusted accumulation of power and revolutionary scheming and favored tradition. There is a potentially healthy tension here that can serve to keep the other in check and is perhaps a fairly unique gift of the American conservative tradition. (Perhaps this is embodied by certain Confederate sympathetic paleos who were fine with the Union, the Constitution, and the Old Republic, but saw Lincoln as driving the final nail in that coffin. Katzen was being smart when he made his comment, but he was making a wise observation.)
The problem is that modern conservatism represents the triumph of the Northern vision (despite lip service paid to decentralization and State’s Rights) over the Southern vision. This was partially the result of the modern conservative movement so closely tying itself to the Cold War. It is partially the result of the neocon infiltration of the right. It is also why the Lincoln issue must be debated and the pro-Lincoln assumptions just can’t be left unchallenged.
Even though things had been drifting their way for a while, it was the neocons who fired the first shot that seriously disrupted what had been an uneasy truce. It was they who wanted to write paleos out of acceptable mainstream conservatism, a mission that has unfortunately been largely successful. Hence, perhaps paleo prickliness at efforts to label them not conservative and/or too conservative.
“It also does a disservice to the Right by obfuscating the fact that paleoconservatives have a lot more in common philosophically with neoconservatives than they have with the socialist Left. Relations between paleocons and neocons could be a lot better than they are now. I think National Review could afford to be more tolerant of paleoconservatives. But I also think paleoconservatives could afford to be more tolerant of neoconservatives, and they certainly don’t need to call everyone who disagrees with them a “leftist.” If the Left is that big, the Right doesn’t stand a chance.”
I agree to a certain extent. These long exchanges have caused me to veer from my original intention which was to try to explain paleoconservatism to a conservative audience.
The current right is right by the snap-shot of today. Since I am willing to concede that, then I hope Katzen, Phil, Mountain Man, Nevada, Jeff O., rightwingprof, and others would be willing to concede our point that the current right is historically left.
If conservatism is to some degree a sentiment or state of mind, as Kirk suggests, then someone who identifies himself as conservative is a potential ally even if we disagree on certain philosophical principles. The modern right, while paleos believe it is historically left, can be reliably counted on to be anti-modern left. In fact, I think modern conservatism is to a problematic degree characterized by its anti-left attitudes more than by its pro-right attitudes. But that said, we share a common enemy.
Despite our poking fun at Phil’s universal moral code, that idea is anti-left to the degree that the left is morally relativistic. That is why someone like Bloom who wrote The Closing of the American Mind is partially helpful as a defense against the left even if we believe he gets a lot wrong. Strauss, Bloom, etc. were attempting what could be understood as a conservative defense of a conservative form of liberal democracy. There is a reason both men have often been viewed as rightist even though they were defending a brand of liberalism.
I think a truce of sorts is fine. We can mutually attack our common enemies, leftists in academia, leftist moral relativists, almost all Democrats, abortion, taxes, gun control etc., and agree to disagree on certain matters, the War, proposition nation, etc.
We should be able to argue with each other in an intelligent and friendly way. That means the mainstreamers are going to have to drop the r word and stop trying to purge wrong thinkers. I am willing then to consider mainstreamers as part of a current functional right opposition to the current left.
I do wish the mainstreamers would ponder why they react to being placed on the historical left as a label or a slur. And why the paradoxical need to smoke out attitudes among paleos that are admittedly to their right.
One last thing before I sign off. I think that Phil taking responsibility for the daughter of his neighbor is a VERY HONORABLE thing to do. Now hopefully not to be nice and then make a cheap point, I think that is a very paleo thing to do. Phil is convinced that the only thing that motivates paleos is DNA. But there is much more to it than that. That is why I included the example of the little old lady and the best friend. We all have social bonds and obligations that include kin but go well beyond that. The sense of community. Traditional conservatives have always talked of community and have always been very skeptical of the atomistic individualism that animates the libertarian, and to some degree, mainstream right.
It was much better and much more inline with a sense of community with certain obligations and duties, that Phil assumed the responsibility for caring for the girl rather than allowing her care to be turned over to the State. An individualist would have said it is not my responsibility and moved on. In some ways, paleoconservatism is the politics of the human scale and not the mass bureaucratized scale. The benevolent neighbor vs. Child Protective Services. It is a testimony to a failure on the part of her family that the abuse was allowed to go on and her care fell on a neighbor and not extended family, but good thing for her Phil was there to pick up the pieces. That is how the community worked things out long before there was a CPS.
Phil, you frequently mention that we no longer live within 20 miles of where we were born. I certainly agree. This phenomenon is not lost on paleos. In fact, they mourn it. Modernism has allowed for incredible material prosperity, but it has impoverished communities. Paleos are seeking to re-establish this sense of community. We are not a bunch of devils.
Keeping right in character, aren’t you O.R.? If you actually rad my post, I consented to be taught after you grow up. Unless that has happened in the last 36 hours, the pre-condition has not been satisfied.
Nor have you translated #218. Since you demanded that we talk about the New Testament in Koine Greek, I need you to prove your credentials.
Again, when you get out of high school, drop me a line.
OldRepublic,
It looks like you are checking this comment thread, but not some others, so I’ll leave a duplicate message here. Please read post #14 at the link below:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/jimmy-carter-our-worst-ex-president/#comments
P.S. I’m getting the book you recommended by Thomas Fleming at my local library.