Feeding America’s natural isolationism — no country relishes sending its sons and daughters to fight in a far-off desert — can create a momentum of irresponsibility that moves beyond control. ~Michael Gerson

So says that deeply realistic man who wrote the speeches for Mr. Bush in which the President declared that America would “end tyranny” on earth.  He understands foreign policy and what the real world requires. 

Of course, Gerson is right in that he recognises that no people wants to send off their sons and especially their daughters to fight overseas, but it never occurred to me that this was “‘natural isolationism.”  It just seems like natural humanity to me.  I don’t know of many other peoples in the world who truly relish sacrificing their young men to war.  Peoples around the world may glorify soldiers and celebrate their deeds in war, but most people, normal people, would rather that there be no war if at all possible.  One might just as misleadingly call this desire to live in peace a “natural pacifism,” since the desire to live in peace (or the desire to have your children live that way) can be of the most powerful motivations to fight in a war.  I have seen more than a few reports in which soldiers in Iraq have explained their belief in the cause in terms of making sure that their children do not have to return in another generation.  This, too, is a natural desire, even if it makes for bizarre policy choices.  In the end, Gerson’s remark is just one in a long line of confused uses of the word isolationism by people who wouldn’t understand the instinct for what they call “isolationism” if they spent a lifetime trying.

From George Ajjan and another commenter at the Scene, I have learned that the Arabic for blog is mudawwinah.  You never know when a piece of information like that may be useful.

The missing Republican realists have been worrying Ross for a while now, so he may be gratified by the recent speech of Sen. Lugar on Iraq, which reads like an “internationally-minded” realist’s how-to guide for Near East policy.  The speech has begun having an effect on the Senate GOP, mainly among those members, such as John Warner, who have been most skeptical of the “surge,” but the speech may have emboldened them to do something more than stand there and look gravely unhappy.  As we might expect, Lugar’s view seems to be, summed up briefly, “We really ought to follow through on those ISG recommendations, while investing heavily in ethanol!”  He makes the statement in the most authoritative establishmentarian way as he can–he blames sloganeering and opportunism and (egads!) “partisan political calculations” for the present state of affairs–and gives a lecture on the irrelevance of benchmarks.  His view seems to be that Iraq is in such bad shape that trying to get some measurement of progress is ridiculous–better to just drop all talk of these measurements, while shaking a cragged, aged finger at those proposing to use such measurements as a way of determining whether or not the new tactical plan was having its intended and desired effect.  In a sense, he has a point.  As he admits, the plan is not working, so why bother with anything so tiresome as a debate over benchmarks? 

Of course, he gives that lecture on benchmarks in the context of remarks declaring that political progress in Iraq is essentially a fantastic, incredible dream, and he notes, “Few Iraqis have demonstrated that they want to be Iraqis.”  If “sectarian factionalism” is not going to abate and it “probably cannot be controlled from the top,” what exactly is the flaw with the position arguing for relatively more rapid American withdrawal?  Suppose that I grant that “we” have “vital interests” in other parts of the Near East–Lugar nowhere persuades any skeptic that withdrawal from Iraq, be it “phased” or “precipitous” or whatever, actually does more to damage our ability to protect those “vital interests” (i.e., ready access to the oil supply) than remaining where we are.  It is as if withdrawal from Iraq must also mean a pell-mell abandonment of every other commitment in the region.  Gradual disentanglement from these commitments would be desirable, but this isn’t on the agenda for a while yet, as there are more immediate concerns.  Even though “sectarian factionalism” will not abate, and there seems to be no military means that Lugar sees that can overcome the lack of security, departing from Iraq–even if it is done as part of an effort to contain and limit the further spread of instability outside Iraq–is simply not allowed in Lugar’s arrangement.  His main argument against withdrawal, after citing the potential for greater instability (a greater future instability that is not necessarily being prevented by continued presence in Iraq), is that it would take some time to do it right, as if this were not in itself a strong argument for beginning the preparations now.

In short, he declares every assumption central to the new plan being implemented since January to be wrong, announces the impossibility of the “surge” to accomplish its goals and essentially states that the political situation in Iraq is so miserable that no one should pretend it will be getting better anytime soon, but from this he nonetheless concludes that it can’t possibly be the best of all bad options to leave Iraq.  He wants a re-deployment to Kuwait and non-urban and Kurdish areas of Iraq, which is effectively an admission that the military presence in Iraq will not be used to improve the security of non-Kurdish Iraqis–so why keep them in Iraq itself?  There are no real answers to this, except fear of a greater instability for which the realist will not be able to prevent in any event.  That is what establishment Republican realism amounts to in the end: a recognition of the exact same problems that opponents of the war have been describing for months and years and a refusal to do anything except more or less soldier on for lack of imagination.

From the film Nagin (1954), the instrumental theme composed by the great Hemant Kumar and Man Dole Mera Tan Dole.

Take a look at my Sceneposts on Johann Hari’s new TNR article, Western (mis)perceptions of Iraqi and Yugoslav identity and the charge of Dolchstoss in the Iraq/foreign policy debate.

The new American Scene is up and it is looking good (or tayyib, to use a word I have heard about 100 times in the last week).  My first posts there should be up before too long.

Many pages toward the end are devoted to building up Wendell Willkie—a man risen from the world of business, like Hoover (and like him called a “wonder boy”)—as a sympathetic, charismatic anti-Roosevelt, but it all comes to anticlimax with Roosevelt’s easy electoral victory, for an unprecedented third term, in 1940. Willkie in his campaign indicted the President’s “philosophy of distributed scarcity” and asserted that it was only “from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power.” These seem to be Amity Shlaes’s views also, but in 1940 there was no breaking the bond between Franklin Roosevelt and the bulk of the American people. Time, which had backed Willkie, summed it up: “Whether Mr. Roosevelt is Moses or Lucifer, he is a leader.” ~John Updike

Most of Updike’s review is unremarkable as a description of Shlaes’ argument.  He does seem to marvel at the idea that anyone would have something good to say about Calvin Coolidge.  For her part, Ms. Shlaes seems to treat the subject of Depression revisionism as something that has never been done before, which would be misleading if that is her view.  The most striking thing about the review is this mention of Shlaes’ approval of Wendell “One World” Willkie, a former Roosevelt delegate and preposterous New York internationalist who had been a Republican in 1940 for a shorter period of time than has Mike Bloomberg.  While Roosevelt was actively lying to the public that their sons would not be sent to fight in any foreign war, Willkie provided a suitable bipartisan echo that was appropriate to someone who had been in FDR’s party until 1939.  As FDR continued to nudge and pull the country towards conflict, the GOP offered up token opposition in the ’40 election.  There may have been a candidate somewhere in the country that could have broken “the bond” between FDR and a majority of the public, but it obviously wasn’t the ridiculous Wendell Willkie.

Scratch a liberal, and you’ll often find a fascist underneath. ~Jack Kelly

Since we’re engaging in hyperbole, shouldn’t that be Islamofascist?  This is an old line, and I know what Kelly means, but it seems to me that the far more damning criticism of liberals is not that they are crypto-fascists, but that they are liberals.  This is something that has never made sense to me about the desire to conjure images of fascism as a way of discrediting your opponents.  Oh, yes, calling someone a fascist is a very nasty insult, and it is a good way to express real contempt for someone, but it isn’t an argument.  It also doesn’t really say anything, except that you strongly disapprove of this other fellow’s views. 

Presumably, you regard the ideas of your opponents as sufficiently terrible as they are that there is no need to impute, usually through exaggeration or tendentious argument, fascist tendencies to them.  There are certain general similarities between some assumptions of left-liberalism and fascism, as I have said before, but for the most part the problem with liberals is not that they are fascistic (though they may be sympathetic to similar state capitalist arrangements and the aesthetics and rhetoric of revolutionary modernism).  The problem with liberals is that they tend to think and have thought that human beings are autonomous creatures with “rights”; they tend to think that all people are inherently free and rational and are only being prevented from enjoying an enlightened existence–as defined by them–because of the burdens and constraints of tradition, history and religion; they tend to believe in the therapeutic use of the state for the purposes of social improvement and regard human nature as malleable and perfectible through the reordering of social norms and institutions.  Part of this reordering involves getting everyone to think and believe the ‘right’ things, as defined by them, which means that discourse must be artificially narrowed and confined to a permissible range of expression of a range of different kinds of liberal ideas.    Fascism for the most part is just a lot of nationalist hysteria and rhetoric about renewal through conflict, which is in many ways more manageable and less corrupting than this liberalism.  Fascism imposes its restrictions on speech through the law and through threats of violence; liberalism imposes them more subtly and pervasively through a dogma of “social tolerance” that inculcates loathing for anyone who fails to be sufficiently “tolerant.”  The latter is much more effective as a means of social and thought control, which is why liberals use it, why those in power tend to prefer liberalism as a reigning ideology and why nominal conservatives who acquire power in our day and age adopt all of the tropes of “social tolerance” as a way of policing, with varying degrees of success, their opponents and their own constituents (“if you don’t like Harriet Miers, you must be a sexist!”).  The point is that what Kelly calls fascism is simply normal liberalism.  There’s no need to bring fascism into it at all.  Doing so indicates a certain intellectual laziness and a proclivity to adopt the very same habits of enforcing conformity and “social tolerance” that liberals use against you.  Flinging the label fascist at someone, without having a fairly good argument for using that label, is the mark of an ideologue who wants to limit and shut down speech.  It is particularly ironic that it should come at the end of a column protesting impositions on conservative speech. 

Kelly’s remark comes at the end of a column complaining, I think rightly, about PBS’ decision to pull a documentary, “Islam vs. Islamist.”  No one would mistake me for a fan of anything associated with the Frank Gaffneys of the world, but PBS’ move is heavy-handed and stupid.  If PBS pulled the documentary for political reasons, which seems probable, they are pretty clearly making a mistake–it is in the interest of their “side,” broadly defined, to emphasise the distinctions within the Islamic world, thus highlighting the impressive ignorance of the people prattling on about the unified Islamofascist threat and the nonsense uttered by Mitt “It’s About Shia And Sunni” Romney.  A documentary that purports to show the opinions of anti-Islamist Muslims, while potentially misleading in entirely different ways, would drive home just how counterproductive and misguided, say, Bush administration policies and Republican rhetoric about “Islamic fascists” are, since these have had the effect of deeply alienating the so-called “moderate Muslims” and turning Muslims against those who push these policies and this rhetoric and against the U.S. in general.  Many Muslims have come to view all of this as a generic attack on Islam as such; when they hear “Islamic fascist,” they do not think of it as a phrase that distinguishes jihadis from “moderate Muslims” but as a wholesale assault on Islam as being fascistic.  Whatever else you might want to say about this point, it is exceedingly poor PR if the goal is not to drive these people into the arms of jihadi groups.  If I wanted to cynically sabotage the agenda of people allied with someone like Frank Gaffney, I would encourage and broadcast every project that actually undermines the more general Republican arguments about “Islamic fascism” and the like, which is ironically what this documentary seems to have been capable of doing. 

The discovery that PBS has a built-in liberal bias will not come as news to anyone who has, well, ever watched PBS.  This is the network of the NewsHour where the conservative “balance” against Mark Shields for many years was Paul Gigot.  It’s come to this because a vicious cycle in viewing and donation patterns: PBS programming has always tended to attract a more left-wing audience (for some reason opera is not a big draw for the NASCAR and 24 set!), and consequently PBS’ supporters tend to be disproportionately favourable to documentaries and news coverage that match their presuppositions.  This is then reflected in donations from these people, which encourages PBS to air programs that these people like. 

Additionally, like NPR, the management at PBS is itself fairly far to the left, and no wonder.  Why?  For the same kinds of reasons that liberals predominate in the non-public newsroom, the academy, the arts and the studios.  For starters, there is a cultural prejudice against those professions among conservatives and, as a result, there is a prejudice against conservatives in those professions because most of the people in them have no great sympathy for a conservative outlook and feel no need to acquire such sympathy.  As elite professions, especially those that involve education or news reporting, there is a natural tendency to look down on the rest of the country as ignorant, uninformed and confused (that there is more than a little truth to all of these things doesn’t help).  As I have argued before, these jobs are deemed impractical and not all together family-friendly by conservatives, and conservative parents tend to encourage their children towards practical careers in business, medicine, law or different technical professions, because these are the career paths that promise some stability and a means to provide for a family, or culturally conservative people will go into the military. 

So there would already be fewer people with conservative inclinations going into these professions in journalism, education, etc., to begin with, and as fewer go into these professions the wider the gap between those professions and culturally conservative people becomes until there is almost no incentive for the latter to entertain the idea of going into these professions.  In all of journalism, working for public broadcasting is just about as culturally far removed from a conservative background as one can get.  Let’s just say that it is not something to which a lot of young conservatives aspire.  Meanwhile, the military still tends to have more socially and, to some extent, politically conservative members (even if it possesses certain leveling and homogenising elements as an institution), which can be explained in a similar way from the other side. 

There are also certain assumptions that people who work in a given institution will tend to share that may be inherently at odds with some political views.  For instance, journalism, when it is actually doing what it is supposed to be doing, ought to be challenging government authority and undermining official explanations when these are false; there are certain types of conservatives who regard this as wrong, especially during wartime.  Journalists ideally think that the public interest is typically served by more transparency and accountability, while certain conservatives, especially in wartime, seem to believe the opposite.  Academics are predisposed to take an interest in complex and nuanced arguments, while for a certain kind of conservative “nuance” is a dirty word.  On the other hand, academics can tend to be dogmatic about certain bits of received wisdom about politics, religion, cultural values and so on, and tend to float along in a stream of unreflective political correctness pushed by the administration, which blinds them to the surprisingly simplistic views they may hold of their fellow citizens.  This tends to create disconnections of members of these institutions from the general public, and attaches to these institutions a reputation (sometimes well deserved) for alienation from the rest of the country.

Of course, Obama is being dishonest when he pretends that the U.S. government was trying to “ignore the rest of the world” prior to 9/11. Isolationism did not provoke the terrorists. On the contrary, the terrorist attack was partly a result of decades of U.S. intervention overseas–precisely the kind of meddling that Obama euphemistically calls “maintaining a strong foreign policy, pursuing our enemies, and promoting our values around the world.” This is the point made by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), a principled and consistent Iraq War opponent, and it is understood by millions of populist Democrats as well. When you stick your hand in a hornet’s nest, you may get stung. Perhaps the action is worth the possible consequence, but don’t pretend that the sticking of the hand into the nest had nothing to do with the stinging! ~Jeff Taylor

Thompson’s luxury is that, in his stint as senator, he was basically a party regular. So he doesn’t have to shout his fealty to the right from the rooftops. He can send out more subtle signs. ~Jonathan Chait

More subtle signs?  If his anti-Michael Moore YouTube, his RedState blogging, his work on behalf of Scooter Libby’s defense fund, his close association with Cheney’s advisors and one of his daughters, and a trip to go suck up to Margaret Thatcher are subtle appeals to “the base,” I don’t want to see what overt and clumsy moves look like.  There may be nothing terribly politically stupid about most of these moves (his foreign policy speech in London was as appalling to me as it is probably going to be hugely popular with GOP primary voters), but subtle they are not.