The American Conservative

I’ve certainly seen this coming for a long time, as a very jaded Russian friend said when it was first announced, it was like Stalin sending Zhukov to the Siberian front.

Now Marty Peretz is asking whatever became of Hillary, and gives frightening evidence of his emerging alliance with the liberal blogosphere by quoting The Daily Beast as urging Obama to let Hillary “take off her burqa”.

This is also significant because it partly answers George’s question, which is that Obama is mostly relying on the military and intelligence community to carry out his foreign policy – to judiciously dismantle the empire and contain such threats to that process as the Israel lobby and the world-police-against-genocide lobby.

Gold star for whoever gets the reference in the title!

Over at Antiwar.com, Matt Barganier took issue with my last post about non-interventionist rhetoric and the mainstream Right. Some of his points reveal instances in which my argument was imprecise, so I should clarify a few of my assertions. Beyond that, however, we clearly disagree on a major issue.

Barganier wrote:

But, of course, we do make coldly consequentialist, self-interested arguments against militarism, war, and empire. We also make arguments on moral grounds, from a number of different starting points (including conservative Christianity, which I hear this GOP base is really into). Why make this an either/or matter? Why should we drop half (or more) of our arguments when they don’t conflict with the other half?

I now realize I was unclear in my earlier post. I should not have implied that non-interventionists must never argue from moral grounds. Rather, I simply think these arguments are not helpful when preaching to the Hannitized, and should therefore be avoided when attempting to persuade them. Barganier, however, clearly thinks arguing with them at all is a waste of time:

As for learning from Limbaugh and Levin, please. I know their audience. I was born into it. If I ever write a political memoir, I’ll name it Up From Hannity. There is a Reasonable Right worth reaching out to, but it ain’t in talk radio.

I am not so sure. Having also been “born into” this audience, I am less convinced that a good portion of the Ditto-heads cannot be convinced by anti-war arguments. I just think they must be framed correctly. There may be a “Reasonable Right,” as Barganier says, but it will never be a major force if we do not at least make some inroads into the Limbaugh-listening community. Perhaps I’m mistaken that many Fox News fans can be brought around. Unfortunately, if I am  there will never again be a politically-significant anti-war Right; the “Reasonable Right” will forever be drowned out by the millions of talk-radio fans united in their belligerence.

If you think most self-described conservatives really hate Big Government, then you stopped paying attention sometime around, oh, the Nixon administration. Good God, man, if they hated Big Government, wouldn’t they at least dislike the most wasteful and intrusive government programs of them all, from the War on Terror to the War on Drugs? No, they love Big Government, from its big, fat boots to its big, fat head. Oh, they’re angry that some of the loot falls on the, um… undeserving, but that won’t stop them from sucking the teats of Social Security and Medicare to the shape and texture of a deflated football.

If I gave the impression that I think the mainstream conservative movement is consistent in its opposition to Big Government, I apologize. I am well aware of the hypocrisy of those who claim to support “limited government” while expanding the empire and pumping up the welfare state. Barganier did touch on an important point when describing populist conservative anger when “loot falls on the … undeserving.” This is actually the sentiment I think non-interventionists should exploit when preaching to this crowd.

Although the idea is ludicrous and utterly offensive, the Hannitys and Limbaughs actually believe we’re doing people a favor when we attack their countries — hence the idiotic celebrations of purple fingers. I think the proper response when arguing with mainstream conservatives is that these people are “undeserving” of our invasions. I think more progress can be made with this crowd by declaring “Iraqi freedom” unworthy of one dollar or one drop of American blood. I think we can outflank the neocons on the callous, tough-guy front by mocking the dewy-eyed, saccharine balderdash they spew every time an Arab votes or an Afghan girl trades in her burqa for a niqāb with empowering eye slits.

I think the cause of non-interventionism can take advantage of the “Screw them!” instincts that drive much of the conservative movement. As absurd as it may sound to us, I think talking about the War Machine’s victims as though they are ungrateful welfare queens is our best shot at converting the mega-dittos crowd.

Stephen Walt has a characteristically sharp post, “10 Lessons on Empire.”

Which brings to mind one aspect of post-Iraq intellectual life in the United States: nobody is making the case for an American empire anymore. True, hawks have still called for the US military to get involved in everywhere from Burma to Iran, but few are arguing outright that an American empire is itself a good thing.

Back in 2002-03, remember, mainstream commentators were calling for a US version of Pax Romana. Max Boot was typical of that hubristic mindset: “Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”

The insurgency in Iraq killed those fantasies off. If nothing else, the war in Iraq has been good for bringing a measure of humility (even if just a measure) to US imperialists. The tragedy is it took a war to do it.

In the years since I abandoned my status as a typical neoconservative chicken hawk and adopted Old Right non-interventionism, I’ve been somewhat uneasy with much of the movement’s rhetoric. Specifically, I often find much of the anti-war Right a little too reminiscent of the anti-war Left. That is, many anti-war conservatives and libertarians expend a great number of keystrokes lamenting the American war machine’s innocent foreign victims (see Chronicles or LewRockwell.com just about any day of the week for examples). This is often my own preferred argument. My concern is that this kind of rhetoric does little to grow the non-interventionist movement’s ranks.

The neocons spent the last decade smearing their opponents to the Right as delusional or cowardly “liberals” – when they aren’t calling them anti-Semites, that is. They respond to non-interventionist arguments with inanities like, “freedom isn’t free,” and then tell some heartwarming story about a soldier who lost his leg but still supports the war and hopes the American people are “tough enough to see it through.” It is utterly disingenuous for the epicene dweebs who lead the neoconservative movement to sell themselves as authorities on old-fashioned American manliness. They get away with it because, when it comes to speaking Middle America’s language, the neocons are pretty much the only game in town. Although their message is utterly vacuous, the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Levins know exactly how to frame their arguments in a way that appeals to the GOP base. It’s time for more doves on the Right to learn to do the same.

The tendency to categorize everything into dichotomous categories is a major problem with contemporary American political thought. One idea that unfortunately survived the 60s is that only limp-wristed hippies care about peace, and if you don’t want to be lumped with those indolent, unshaven wusses, you should make it a point to support whatever you think they hate. My suspicion is that a great percentage of the GOP’s voters think very little about American foreign policy, but instinctively believe that only America-hating wimps are against America’s wars, whereas Real Men “support our troops.” These people don’t really care about Iraqi or Afghani civilians, and consider stoically accepting American casualties a sign of “American Grit.” This does not mean they cannot be persuaded by non-interventionist arguments, but doing so will require a message stripped of all traces of humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook.

Americans have not always associated peace with poltroonery. As far as I know, few people argued that the America First Committee was primarily motivated by spinelessness. Still, since the 60s, the anti-war movement has unfortunately been associated with “Flower Power” and other sissy slogans. Anyone serious about reviving an older, pre-hippy anti-war tradition and making it a major political force would be wise to eschew all rhetoric that conforms to this unfortunate stereotype.

Lamenting the suffering created by harsh economic sanctions and bombing campaigns is a good way for non-interventionist right-wingers to suck up to their leftist friends and colleagues, but so what? The people moved by such arguments are already anti-war. Building a powerful anti-war coalition on the Right will require an entirely different rhetoric. At all costs it must avoid sounding like Code Pink.

Luckily, we already have a pretty good format that has worked pretty well in America’s Red regions, and can be applied to the cause of peace. There is a certain ethos that characterizes a great number of ordinary Republicans – or at least the ordinary Republicans with whom I prefer to spend my time. For the lack of a better term, I will call this frame of mind, “Who-Gives-a-Damn? Conservatism.” This is the type of thinking that leads to support for standard GOP policies, but not for particularly-sophisticated reasons. I have no doubt that a great number of grassroots Republicans oppose ideas like universal health care and more federal spending on public schools because they understand, and find compelling, conservative and libertarian arguments about the utility of such policies. I suspect much of the opposition to these schemes, however, is based on a more primal emotion. That is, a lot of people don’t like Big Government because they don’t want to pay for it and don’t really care about the people it is supposed to help. They don’t care about inner-city standardized test scores or the indigent without health insurance, and wouldn’t want their taxes raised to deal with those issues even if every government program worked exactly as well as it was supposed to work. This line of conservative thinking runs as follows: “Why the f*** should I care? I have my own problems, and don’t want to give a penny to those bums. Screw them.” Though it is at odds with much of the peace movement’s sensibilities, this is the attitude right-wing non-interventionists should display if they seriously want to grow the movement.

When arguing for America’s speedy withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t think it does much good to talk about horrific examples of collateral damage. I think more converts can be won with the following argument: “Who the hell cares about Iraq or Afghanistan? If they want to spend the next fifty years blowing themselves to bits, let them have at it.” The same logic should be used to argue for our withdrawal from our bases in Korea and the Middle East, leaving Russia alone, getting out of NATO, and for finally abandoning the fantasy that we will somehow insure Taiwan’s independence.

The neocons will inevitably counter that this is exactly the kind of thinking that gave us 9-11. I think this argument is losing its power. I suspect few people still believe that our national security is actually tied to women’s suffrage in south-central Asia, or any of the the other ludicrous neoconservative claims. As 9-11 recedes in memory, there are fewer and fewer imbeciles who believe America will be absorbed by the Caliphate if we fail to convince Pashtuns to beat their Kalashnikovs into ballot boxes.

The neocons’ democratist ideology should be treated as just another example of fuzzy-headed utopianism. Bringing “liberal democracy” and “democratic capitalism” to the entire world should be added to the category of ridiculous, never-going-to-happen ideas. The best argument against the neocons is that they are delusional. They are the eggheads dreaming up sentimental, utopian schemes, not us. The non-interventionists should start selling themselves as hard-headed realists who know better than to get mixed up with every damned-fool conflict in the Third World. If countries or ethnic groups on the other side of the globe want to duke it out, well, so much the worse for them, but it’s not our problem. It’s the neocons who think otherwise who are the pie-in-the-sky hippies.

Conservative TV and talk-radio show hosts have a sickening tendency to portray their views as those of practical, hard-nosed tough guys. Perhaps the pro-war types of other eras could realistically make such a claim about themselves, but they certainly cannot do so today. I do not think accusing the pro-war propagandists of being moral monsters has done much good; instead, going forward, I think it will be more effective to call America’s war mongers a bunch of puerile, harebrained fantasists with no inkling of how the real world works.

This kind of rhetoric will not win any accolades from the Left, but it just might win a few more converts on the Right. A movement built on this line of thinking will probably not lead to a Kauffmanesque foreign policy of peace, love, and freedom, but it may at least lead to policies more in line with Andrew Bacevich’s views, which would certainly be a great improvement over what we have now.

As someone whose taken kindlier to Cameron then some others in the TAC orbit, I welcome this post.  Having said that, I think its a complete fools’ errand to look for “communitarianism” in the Republican Party of the tea partiers.  That David Brooks is Cameron’s best friend among ostensible conservatives this side of the pond speaks volumes on this score.

The best bet remains, as I’ve said before, in what will be the more conservative half of the eventual liberal crack-up, which certainly won’t take place any time before 2016 and possibly not for many a year after that.

(Cross-posted at The Other Right)

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Strange (best middle name ever, by the way) McNamara died on Monday.  McNamara arrived in Washington with JFK at the apogee of the old Progressive faith in the power of technocrats to plan the economy, end poverty, manage foreign affairs–in short, to centrally plan the whole world.

That belief first arose around the turn of the century as a challenge to the classical liberal belief in the power of free people and the invisible hand of the market coordinate most world events.  In short order, the mindset gave this country the income tax, the FDA, and the Federal Reserve.  When the latter failed to put an end to the business cycle as promised and instead produced one of the biggest bubbles in history, the answer for progressives was clear: more technocratic planning, and that is precisely what they got under both Hoover and FDR.  But it was World War II that firmly ensconced this ideology in the minds of most Americans.  In the popular telling, a combination of daring generals, wise politicians, steely-eyed bureaucrats, and brilliant scientists beat back two of the greatest war machines the world had ever seen (Italy doesn’t count) and mastered the mysteries of the atom to boot.  Add in the theories of containment and mutually assured destruction, and there is little the government and its experts can’t handle.

McNamara firmly believed in the ability of experts to quantify and solve any problem that came their way, and he applied that belief in all his public roles whether it be scientifically wiping Japanese cities off the earth, calculating the speed at which a Ford steering wheel will crack a human skull, defoliating large chunks of Southeast Asia to spot the Viet Cong, or measuring the effectiveness of a World Bank loan to some African kleptocrat.

McNamara’s role in Vietnam did more than anything to crack the American faith in experts.  Everyone believed that Kennedy’s Cabinet was composed of the best and the brightest, so how could they have blundered so terribly?  Unfortunately, although that faith weakened substantially by the time McNamara stepped down as Secretary of Defense, it outlives him.  While it never really went away, it made its first real comeback in foreign policy (surprisingly enough) with the rise of neoconservatism and the invasion of Iraq, and we see it now most obviously in the revival of Keynesianism and the concomitant bailouts and “stimulus” packages.

McNamara at least had the decency to apologize for most of his sins by the end of his life.  Somehow, I doubt we’ll get the same out of his contemporary counterparts like Rumsfeld, Bernanke, and Geithner.

Cross-posted at my personal blog.

Lewis McCrary has an excellent post over at @TAC on what is sure to be the major story in American society during the Age of Obama, the resurgence of the cities over the suburbs.  This will surely be accompanied by a suburban crisis on par with the urban crisis of the 60s and 70s, and at the same time be good for rural America as well.

Undoubtedly, the fall of the suburbs and exurbs spells certain doom for the contemporary Republican coalition, if it didn’t have enough problems already.  Whether or not there is still a Republican Party in another generation – a question on which I remain stoically agnostic – I think it is clear that the next era’s party of opposition will come out of a fissure in Obama’s coalition.

I see that eventual split being between the constituency of the liberal blogosphere, whose shocking hatred of life has been quoted on a few different occasions in TAC; and the liberal religious milieu which is the core of what passes for a left in this country and which, even if it is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, still is something of a pillar for bourgeois morality.

The latter sensibility is alive and well in the middle and upper classes of urban America, aptly illustrated in a great piece a couple years ago in the New York Observer which called them The New Victorians.  Indeed, even the more outlandish manifestations of “retroculture” called for in the admirable article by Paul Weyrich and Bill Lind on “The Next Conservatism” are in many instances adopted by this set.

In politics, as McCrary says, Norman Mailer is indeed an excellent example to hearken back to, and here in New York, that spirit is alive and well in the Independent Democratic Clubs which are legacies of that era – real lefties to be sure, but, if given a chance, might be a force for a positive conservatism as they have been in, say, Vermont.

While John Derbyshire’s argument that the children of the New Victorians in their notorious strollers will grow up to be a white nationalist vanguard may be a stretch, the evidence definitely suggests that they will be a markedly conservative bourgeoisie.

While I’ve never been above self promotion, my latest at Taki’s Magazine does examine the politics of a popular, mainstream conservative who has been the subject of much controversy here at Post Right. The following is from my article The Tyranny of Mark Levin’s “Liberty:”

When the average Mark Levin listener hears the phrases “national defense” or “national security,” he naturally thinks of current U.S. foreign policy, automatically assuming that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops stationed all over the world are not unnecessary occupations or imperialism as some claim, but very necessary defensive measures of the American homeland.  That this might be a bizarre way of looking at the world, and that many conservatives have said so—including giants like Russell Kirk whom Levin cites—is something the reader will never know. One even wonders if Levin knows. And Levin gives the impression that global American empire, not merely a republic in which “each state was free to act on its own,” had been the Founders intention from the beginning. 


In his attempt to create a conservative defense for policing the world, Levin promotes neoconservative utopianism and imperialism by denouncing any attempts to pursue utopianism or imperialism. Confused? On the Iraq War Levin writes:

As for the utopian motives for invading Iraq, apparently Levin had forgot about Bush’s many “spreading democracy” speeches or the president’s seeming comfort that “hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror… bringing hope to the oppressed.” I certainly don’t remember Levin criticizing or warning of Bush’s utopianism, even for a war Levin now claims to have supported on non-utopian grounds. I have also heard Levin use similar, utopian language himself, usually in the midst of a heated pro-war rant.

As for imperialism, the subtext to Levin’s argument that “if the war in Iraq is understood as an effort” of actual defense against “real threats,” then virtually any possible future preemptive military action could qualify as “defense.” The talk radio host’s refusal to even reexamine whether Saddam Hussein was ever an actual threat is a curse that continues to plague the mainstream Right—due in large part to the glaring blindness of men like Levin.

Read the entire article

With a tip of the hat to Ezra Klein, I give to you just how silly war-hawkishness really is.

(Oh, lighten up, would you?)