csua.org/u/40h -> coldfury.com/reason/comments.php?id=P820_0_1_0
What exactly constitutes an "overly intrusive government"? Now we come to the passage which explains the inclusion of Reagan in Kristol's pantheon of heroes -- and please keep in mind that one of Reagan's signal achievements was providing the Religious Right the opportunity to rise to a position of great political influence in the early 1980s, an achievement whose deleterious effects we continue to feel today (and which Bush does nothing to ameliorate): But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives--though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government's attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak. Note carefully that list of issues which the neoconservatives "regard as proper candidates for the government's attention" -- and then consider the extent to which individual rights and personal freedom will necessarily be trampled. What should also be noted is Kristol's admission of a theme which I have discussed in a number of previous posts: what the neoconservatives propose -- and what they want -- is not just any kind of big government. They want a big government explicitly grounded on religious views -- in short, they want 10 a theocracy. If you didn't believe me when I said it, perhaps you'll believe it now. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing. Once again, the number of unanswered questions is almost limitless. Just how should "private and public institutions" "encourage" patriotism? Why exactly is world tyranny so awful -- when the logical conclusion, and ultimate meaning, of those policies Kristol himself endorses would lead to a tyranny here in the United States? In other words, Kristol only wants home-grown despots telling us how to live, and what we may and may not do. And how exactly do we "distinguish friends from enemies"? Not much help is provided here by Kristol, except to note the utterly unexceptional fact that the Soviet Union was an enemy. To put the matter bluntly: Kristol's "attitudes" are nothing more than platitudes. The words are awfully similar, so perhaps he just confused them. Kristol goes on: Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. It's almost impossible to tell what this means in terms of specific answers to specific questions of foreign policy, and where and under precisely what circumstances the United States ought to become involved beyond its own borders. But this passage does accomplish one important objective: it attempts to define the self-interest of the United States in terms that are so broad that they could justify foreign intervention virtually anywhere, at any time. That we ought to engage with any country that attacks the "ideas" which we supposedly represent in any form at all? Kristol says we will feel "obliged" to defend other democratic nations under attack "if possible" -- but again he gives no indication at all as to how we are to determine just when it is possible. He continues: Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis--vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination. This superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial. To a large extent, it all happened as a result of our bad luck. During the 50 years after World War II, while Europe was at peace and the Soviet Union largely relied on surrogates to do its fighting, the United States was involved in a whole series of wars: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War. The result was that our military spending expanded more or less in line with our economic growth, while Europe's democracies cut back their military spending in favor of social welfare programs. The Soviet Union spent profusely but wastefully, so that its military collapsed along with its economy. The lie contained at the heart of this paragraph is probably the worst and most shameful in the entire article (and the article contains a number of stupendous lies, so this is no mean achievement). To term our involvement in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War "bad luck" is an intellectual crime for which capital punishment would be too good, and too swift. In this context, "bad luck" has only one possible meaning: that we had no choice but to become involved in these conflicts, that the conflicts were "forced" on us against our will, and that we were merely passive observers in world affairs who became embroiled in one conflict after another, in an unceasing train of war, altogether against our better judgment. This is a vicious and reprehensible rewriting of history. If I thought Kristol were capable of experiencing the emotion, I would say he ought to be ashamed of himself. Every single one of those wars was one that the United States deliberately and intentionally chose to become involved in after a long period of deliberation. I will be offering some excerpts from Barbara Tuchman's masterful history of the Vietnam War (in her book, The March of Folly) in the near future -- but I would have thought everyone knew that our involvement in Vietnam was the result of an intentional and very deliberate process of decision-making over a very long period of time. It was utterly mistaken and based on what ought to have been obviously dubious premises at almost every single step, but it was hardly a course of action foisted on us when we were simply minding our own business. And the same is true with regard to every other war in Kristol's list. But Kristol's intellectual legerdemain accomplishes one objective, and it is a significant one: it absolves us of all responsibility for our past decisions in the foreign policy sphere. In effect, Kristol's analysis entirely negates the element of moral judgment when it comes to issues of war and peace, at least so far as the conduct of the United States is concerned. It's not enough that Kristol engages in intellectual suicide before our eyes: he also wishes to prevent anyone else from engaging in critical analysis of historical events, in an attempt to ascertain if there just might be any lessons to be learned from such a study. And Kristol...
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