The American Conservative

George Packer’s essay on the fall of conservatism has generated a bit of internet buzz — rather more than the substance of the piece merits. The best line of Packer’s article comes from Pat Buchanan, who paraphrases Eric Hoffer, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” (George Nash, the historian of the conservative intellectual movement, applied this same line to the movement at a Philadelphia Society event two years back, though Nash then pulled back his punch.) I think Buchanan is right, but the sad thing is that a scam can be just as self-sustaining as any honest movement or business — maybe more. If the conservative movement is dead, it’s the living dead.

A further problem with pronouncing the death of conservatism, though, is that this isn’t the first time the patient has died. Conservatism was dead after Goldwater went down in a landslide in ’64. It was dead again after Watergate. It was cracking up in the Bush I years which, of course, ended just as the Bush II years will probably end, with the Democrats controlling both elected branches of government. In the late ’90s, David Brooks was telling us that conservatism was running out of ideas and needed to embrace “national greatness” (i.e., the welfare-warfare state). As before, so today: Packer quotes Brooks saying, “An anti-government philosophy turned out to be politically unpopular and fundamentally un-American … People want something melioristic, they want government to do things.”

Of course, the thing that turned out to be most unpopular was a melioristic program of waging war to build Democracy in the Middle East, and if the Republicans were running these past few elections as government-cutting insurgents, I sure don’t remember it. I seem to recall the GOP running on a “values agenda” in ’06, at the same time as Ted Haggard and Mark Foley were showing us that values conservatism was for preaching, not practicing. But why blame corruption and war, the issues that actually sank the Republican Congress, when you can blame the ghost of Barry Goldwater?

(I’m digressing a bit. Brooks is a special case: a liberal who presents himself as a conservative who wishes he were a liberal. No wonder the official Right has identity issues.)

Conservatism in crisis is nothing new. It’s one of the major themes, in fact, of Donald Critchlow’s quite good recent book on the movement, The Conservative Ascendancy. The question which goes unanswered and unanalyzed by Packer and most other critics is how this movement that lurches from one rout to another is able to score big wins at least once a decade. Part of the answer is, again, that scams can be more effective than honest efforts. Part of the answer, too, is that however intellectually bankrupt conservatism may be, it looks positively solvent next to the intellectual Left.

And part of the answer is something that David Brooks and George Packer alike don’t want to hear: that limited-government principles are, on some level, popular and true. (More true than popular, it must be said.) If only conservatives stood up for them more often, they might not be in the shape they’re now in.

Someone was sleeping in the Knesset. Just days ago, President Bush was promising to end appeasement in our time by denying terrorists what they most want: dialogue. Now Israel, clearly understanding less about 1938 than the American president, has gone and gotten chatty with Syria. (Not face-to-face; Turkey is passing notes.)

If we weren’t obligated to view this as a show of weakness, the U.S. might see some advantages. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Israeli proponents of peace talks with Syria have argued that normalization of ties with Damascus would count as an important reversal of Iran’s growing power within the Middle East. Syria serves as an important link to two Iranian allies that have threatened Israel: as a conduit of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and as host to the offices of Hamas’s political politburo in exile.

It’s hard to keep up. Washington withdrew its ambassador from Syria but is willing to talk to North Korea, who the administration accuses of collaborating with Syria to build a nuclear reactor. Perhaps Bush’s vow of silence isn’t absolute. Paging Mr. Khaddafi…

But we’d rather not talk about talking like that. Let’s get back to talking about no one talking to Hamas—especially not Barack Obama—because they deny Israel’s right to exist. Except that Israel is engaged in indirect talks with Hamas over a ceasefire in Gaza. And we’re frozen-smile pleased about the Lebanese deal that elevates Hezbollah—as long as we don’t have to start talking to them.

It comes down to this: when you have a real security interest, you try talking—something Israel, pressed from many sides, understands well. But when you’re just putting on a moral show, and there are no real interests to bring to the negotiating table, discussion would expose the nakedness of your agenda. “Because Cheney told me to” isn’t an ideal talking point.

So we’re left on the outside. Two major peace efforts have been launched without our help and in violation of our stated strategy. They’re all talking—and no longer listening.

NRO has an editorial up excoriating Bob Barr for changing his views on war, civil liberties, and drugs. But after two paragraphs of hitting Barr for inconsistency, the Lowry-Lopez editorial combine assures us, “We don’t begrudge anyone the right to change their view.” They certainly didn’t begrudge Mitt Romney his reversals on abortion, gay marriage, and gun control. But Romney wasn’t a potential third-party spoiler. “In a close presidential race, every vote is important,” NRO avers, even though “It will probably be Barr’s fate to be ignored.”

Got it? Barr is irrelevant, which is why NRO puts up an editorial attacking him for changing his mind, even though of course the magnanimous editors have nothing against a little flip-flopping. Hey, don’t think about it — just vote McCain.

Talk-radio host Sean Hannity has recently devised a plan for Republican success in November, aptly titled: “Hannity’s Top 10 Items for Victory.” Among the listed items are some probably helpful but ultimately bland and predictable suggestions such as supporting tax cuts, a border fence, free-market healthcare and, puzzlingly but not suprisingly, support for the “American Dream.”

But on a couple of the perennial issues of the day–the Iraq War and appeasement–Hannity is notably paralyzed. In order to be the “Candidate of National security” the presumably Republican candidate needs to support “Victory in Iraq” according to Hannity, as well as be a candidate that will fully support NSA wiretapping, the PATRIOT Act, “tough interrogations,” and “keeping Gitmo open.” On appeasement, Hannity calls for a candidate that will “oppose any and all efforts to negotiate with dictators of the world in places like Iran, Syria, N.Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela without ‘pre-conditions.’” Lets throw in Reykjavik (circa 1986) and Beijing (circa 1972) while we’re at it!

A sensible idea, one would assume, when considering a path to victory in an election season, would be to check with relevant polling data on the issues you hope to address. Apparently this is not true of Hannity, who chose to ignore the ever-growing divide between the GOP and the American people on Iraq. Not only does recent polling reveal that around 70% of Americans disapprove of the current situation in Iraq, but more than 70% of the American people disapprove of Hannity’s presumed definition of victory, defined as “keep troops in Iraq as long as needed.”

All signs point to the Republicans continuing to lose favor with the people, especially when the only plans for victory presented–like those presented in the Davis Memo or from talking heads like Sean Hannity–ignore the major causes of the Republicans’ dilemma.

On a somewhat unrelated note, someone should explain to Hannity, who wants a candidate who will promise to balance the budget, that “victory” is quite an expensive policy. Without major tax hikes, victory and a sensible budget are seemingly incompatible.

You’ve probably read Philip Weiss’ recent profile of Zbigniew Brzezinski in TAC in which he quoted yours truly a few times. But for some reason, Philip didn’t pick up my brain for his new cover story in New York magazine, “The Secret Lives of Married Men”, The trouble with sex and marriage. It’s an informative and entertaining piece. And I particularly liked these somewhat conservative observations on the Human Condition:

Susan Squire, the author of a forthcoming history of marriage called I Don’t, told me that marriage wasn’t made to handle all the sexual pressure we’re putting on it. For one thing, the average life span is far greater than it was 100 years ago; what is marriage to do with all that time? And in days gone by, marriage was a more formal institution whose purposes were breeding and family. Squire says that cultural standards of morality have changed dramatically. In ancient aristocracies, rich men had courtesans for pleasure and concubines for quick sex. In the Victorian age, prostitution was far more open than it is today. America is a special case. By the early-twentieth century, she says, the combined impact of egalitarian ideals and the movies had burdened American marriage with a new responsibility: providing romantic love forever. Squire says that the first couples therapy began cropping up in the thirties, when people found their marriages weren’t measuring up to cultural expectations.

“Marriage isn’t the problem; it’s the best answer anyone’s come up with,” Squire says. “Men and women are equally oppressed by expectations. Expectations are ridiculously high now. Nobody expected you to find personal fulfillment and happiness in marriage. Marriage can be very satisfying, but it’s not going to be this heady romance for 40 years.” Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion. “What does Bataille say?” Squire continues. “There is nothing erotic that is not transgressive. Marriage has many benefits and values, but eroticism is not one of them.”

A long and supportive marriage may be more valuable than a sexually faithful one, Squire says. “Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children’s lives maybe forever, just to be able to f— someone with whom the f—— is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?”

I suppose that these words of wisdom could apply also to “nation building.” There is something boring and unsexy about fixing your own neighborhood or helping your own poor. Which explains why Bush is so, so “envious” of soldiers serving “romantic” missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Foreign intervention as a form of adultery?

 And enjoy my latest film review.

Amid widespread reports of electoral corruption, Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili has tightened his grip on power. Following yesterday’s election, Saakashvili’s United National Movement party looks to have secured 62 per cent of the popular vote.

It is hard to know how true the accusations against Saakashvili are. But clearly Georgia’s leader is no model democrat, despite his popularity among western pols. Last year, for example, he sent in riot troops to beat down what appeared to be peaceful protests in Tbilisi.

Yet all three main U.S. presidential candidates unequivocally– even aggressively–support Saakashvili and back him in his war of words with Russia. Why?

The Western establishment, in its determination to see Georgia as a “pro-western democracy” struggling against Russia’s dark “autocracy”, seems happy to ignore the possibility that Georgia’s regime is itself quite murky, even–heavens forbid–undemocratic.

Further proof that, where international diplomacy is concerned, democracy is in the eye of the beholder.

I don’t know if choosing Jim Webb as veep could solve Obama’s working class white problem (or perhaps more accurately his “Appalachian” problem) but his nomination surely would give pundits some real meat to chew on. Webb may not quite be an intellectual in politics at the level of the late Daniel P. Moynihan, but he is miles beyond anyone in today’s Senate in terms of willingness to think sociologically and innovatively.

In this NPR interview, Webb notes the similar problems of American blacks and poorer Scots-Irish whites, suggesting they have considerable political common interests. So far at least, the whites turning out in landslide numbers for Hillary Norma Rae Clinton haven’t cottoned on to this yet. Webb doesn’t specify what those interests are, though one obvious direction is the protection of working class manufacturing jobs, long the bedrock of social and economic stability for both communities.

He also makes a fascinating digression about affirmative action, pointing out how it was invented and passed as compensation for the particular African-American experience of slavery and racial discrimination, and then was transformed during the 1970′s into a bizarre anti-white stew in which all groups could benefit so long as they could claim some chromosomal difference from the people who founded and built this country.

Furthermore, (though Webb doesn’t get into this), the way it worked out in practice was that whites who didn’t benefit from legacies or have a cultural history of high intellectual achievement soon found themselves the one group regularly under-represented in elite institutions, the gateway to top positions in American society. Ron Unz pointed this out years ago in the Wall Street Journal.

In his (co-authored with Nathan Glazer) classic “Beyond the Melting Pot”, Moynihan had argued that the black community could follow some of same strategies for upward mobility that the once wild Irish Catholic slums of New York had pursued in previous generations:–political power, patronage, cultural self-discipline. It hasn’t worked out quite that way, but Moynihan’s suggestion of commonality between two seemingly dissimilar groups was provocative and important. Kudos to Jim Webb for raising these kinds of questions again in a new context.

The word ‘torture’ does not appear in our orders…the problem is the FLN wants us to leave Algeria and we want to remain. Should France remain in Algeria? If you answer yes, then you must accept all necessary consequences.
–Col Mathieu, The Battle of Algiers

Regarding “Palestinian hanging”, the film quoted above immediately comes to mind. Recall that early in the Iraq insurgency there was much talk of American officers viewing Gillo Pontecorvo’s classic about France’s early suppression of the FLN, as a training tool on how to wage counterinsurgency. The film opens with a montage of French paratroopers torturing prisoners by waterboarding and “strappado”, or Palestinian hanging, which, according to this Wikipedia article, began with the Inquisition (as of course did water-torture) and was used at Auschwitz.

I couldn’t find the essay Philip Giraldi cites above, but in November 2005 Jane Mayer wrote about the alleged torture death of an Iraqi prisoner at the hands of the CIA in the New Yorker. I can’t help wondering if he’s the man from the photos.

When Americans advocate torture they (at least one hopes) justify it by describing its victims as “terrorist suspects” or simply “terrorists.” But remember the abuses of Abu Ghirab were a desperate attempt to quickly pacify an unexpected insurgency. No matter how brutal their methods, these countless Iraqis who have passed through our military prisons (or languish there still) were never a threat to US interests anywhere until the invasion of Iraq. More foul spoils of George and Dick’s Repellent Adventure.

Endless war ensures an infinite supply of these prisoners and a never-ending “need” to interrogate them. And for those who think that torture can be contained, note that these methods were developed at Guantanamo before being exported for use on what are essentially prisoners of war in Iraq (if you think it will spread no further, I’ve got a war on Iran I’d like to sell you). Aside from the sheer immorality of it, we are developing a culture of torture that is degrading our military. More consequences of empire.

No doubt there are vile Ted Kennedy jokes going around certain right-wing circles, but the most tasteless stuff I have seen was on The Huffington Post, that queen of liberal nu-media. This morning, accompanying a news story about Kennedy, was a Post feature entitled “Brain tumors: Who’s had them, What the symptoms are, and What the X-rays look like (VIDEO)”. The caps are theirs, not mine. The piece then listed, with morbid glee, celebs who had survived a cerebral tumor, and celebs who had died from one. Informative and touching.

Arianna Huffington’s Post often has this sort of thing: it is like People Magazine with the blogosphere thrown in. (In fairness, the site does have the odd good story, as Kelley shows below.)

According to reliable reports, Israel and Syria have publicly acknowledged that they have been holding talks using Turkish mediation. The negotiations could lead to a peace agreement between the two countries, involving Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. I reported last year about these efforts by Turkey to promote Israeli-Syrian peace and the opposition to such moves by the Bush Administration. I also published a long policy analysis promoting a U.S. dipomatic opening to Damascus that could create incentives for the Syrians to end their ad-hoc partnership — not an alliance — with Iran. Facing the mess in Lebanon, the Bushies have finally bought into the idea. Better late than never.