Truly remarkable are those uncompromising foreign-policy moralists on the Right who boast of “clarity” yet manage to make generous allowances for moral

compromise in the conduct of war. Their certitude of the justice of the cause is matched only by their willingness to condone assaults on innocent life and human dignity.

“War is all about moral compromise,” wrote columnist Dean Barnett in an article defending the use of torture. Of the World War II fire-bombings of cities that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, Barnett added, “While all these actions were terrible, they were also necessary. And justifiable.” The heart of his argument? One war crime justifies another. Just before he wrote this, Barnett said, “I strongly feel that abortion is the taking of an innocent life.” Some lives, it would seem, are more innocent than others.

Barnett’s article elicited condemnation from some on the Right, but his attitudes toward torture, mass bombings and, of course, the war in Iraq are widely shared by Republican politicians and pundits. Where some still insist on euphemisms or ignore the war’s essential brutality, Barnett spoke bluntly of his belief in the necessity of “cruelty” and “savagery.”

And if the positions of most GOP presidential candidates offer any indication, Barnett’s views are representative of the opinions of a considerable number of conservative elites. The recent Republican debates have been illuminating for what they tell us about the sorry state of much conservative thought. Should we torture people to gain information? Only two candidates—John McCain and Ron Paul—flatly objected. The rest endorsed “enhanced interrogation techniques” or, in the case of Congressman Tom Tancredo, invoked 24’s primetime pain fetishist: “I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time.” Rudy Giuliani said he would allow “every method [interrogators] could think of, and I would support them in doing it.” Should we use tactical nukes against Iran? “You don’t take any options off the table,” Jim Gilmore answered, echoing the views of most of his competitors. With the exception of Ron Paul, who argued that by “accept[ing] the principle of preemptive war, we have rejected the just war theory of Christianity,” the question of whether it was legitimate to launch aggressive attacks was never even considered.

Almost without argument, the Right has embraced the logic of total war and its corrosive corollary: dehumanization of the opposing side. Call it a “conservative” culture of death. Some lives are deemed worth protecting while others are expendable. Respect for human dignity is non-negotiable—until it becomes useful to violate it.

Thomas Sowell has written approvingly of the “annihilation of much of Germany and Japan,” and Charles Krauthammer has argued for the necessity of reducing Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki to “cinders.” During Israel’s war with Lebanon last year, Walter Williams could be found complaining about “our weak will” preventing American first strikes with nuclear weapons against “our Middle East enemies” in Syria and Iran, though he did allow that there were probably “less drastic military options” available.

At the same time that war supporters boast of our great restraint, many chafe at the strictures imposed by traditional morality and common decency. They emphasize the difference between terrorists and us, but regret that we no longer target civilian populations with the ruthless efficiency of earlier times.

That noxious utilitarian calculus that reduces people to a mere means to an end—provided our wartime government is doing the reducing—seems untroubled by its unusual neighbor: the enduring conservative defense of the unborn. But then its support for President Bush’s policies has already taken the Right many places it never planned to go—down the treacherous paths of nation-building, democracy promotion, and fighting someone else’s civil war.

Grim headlines tally the practical toll of conservative complicity. The cost to the movement is still being counted, but acquiescing to the warfare state has already had a debasing effect on the moral imagination of the Right. Patriots have become nationalists, constitutionalists now defend arbitrary executive power, and pro-life conservatives champion what can only be called a culture of death.

What better reason to recover a traditionally conservative, healthy desire to limit and disperse the power of government, to reduce the temptations of abuse and limit the extent of the damage that can be done? Corruption of the moral imagination is not simply some temporary wartime excess with no lasting consequences. As morality falters, so does the capacity to cultivate and practice virtue and promote a culture of life at home.