Michael Lind, former Neocon, has a fascinating article in the upcoming Feb. 23rd issue of The Nation on the Neoconservative movement and its leaders. It’s quite long, and I don’t really know how to deal with his personal biases, but it appears to do a great job of explaining who are, and who aren’t, Neocons, and what Neocons believe, and don’t believe. I was particularly struck by his description of the influence of Kipling (and Churchill), and the importance of enemies to Neoconservatism.
Gentle Readers will be aware that I’ve put a good deal of thought into Conservatism, and what it is, isn’t, and might be (tho‘ I’ve given up on the Tenets, I suppose); I’m often annoyed by self-described Conservatives who do not seem Conservative to me at all. I’ve never really known much about the Neocon philosophy; it seems, on the whole, to be more Progressive in instinct than Conservative, focusing rather on the possible gains than losses. Not that the Neocons are Progressives, just that they do not seem to share the essential mindset of Conservatives, even if they share many of the goals.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
My copy of the Feb. 23 _Nation_ arrived yesterday, so I had a chance to read Mr. Lind’s article in the comfort of an armchair. I would agree that his personal biases render the latter portion of his analysis a bit inconsistent, but I found it illuminating. Certainly his account seemed to fit many of the lines of argument that the one neocon with whom I’ve talked politics tends to take.
I think “Neoconservatism” counts as genuine conservatism only insofar as one believes that the threats neoconservatives perceive in the world are actual. If American liberal democracy is critically threatened by totalitarian ideologies, totalitarian states, and liberal appeasers of same, then neocons are seeking to conserve what is good about America. If one sees these threats as overblown, then the neocons appear instead progressive (or, at least, aggressive) rather than conservative.
Incidentally, the one serious shortcoming that I see in Lind’s analysis is that it left out the place of economic policy. I see Dick Cheney, for example, as a fellow-traveler of the neocons because he appears to me to be primarily concerned with protecting the interests of Big Oil. Neoconservatism gives his economic imperialism a more presentable ideology. It would be interesting to bring together the analysis of neoconservatism with the analysis of “the new Great Game,” which found its way to Tohu Bohu long before it reached the pages of _The Nation_, but it has appeared there, I think, in the same issue with Lind’s critique of the neocons. I haven’t had time to re-read the “Great Game” article to refresh my memory of the key points, but I might post more once I have done so. I would also encourage Vardibidian and his gentle readers to offer their analyses as well. These are the central ideological and foreign-policy issues of our time.
I suppose that the con part of neocon (I’ll refrain from the easy joke) comes from a conservative sense of the ‘wondrous, divinely ordained’ US, and its (nonexistent) glory days throwing its weight around in geopolitics. The state we’ve fallen from is some amalgam of Potsdam, the Cold War, and King Arthur storybooks; if we can’t get back, it’s because of some Enemy, probably with a foreign name. Of course, I’m not feeling charitable today.
I think that Lind feels that the neocons are not interested in economic policy much, or only as a means to support foreign policy. You’re right, though, the intersection of the aggressive foreign policy and the aggressive economic policy is very important, perhaps more so because it is a coalition rather than a party. In addition, the economic imperialists are not necessarily the small-government people who were the core of the Gingrich coup. Grover Norquist is not a neocon, but he sure is putting the neocons in comfortable chairs. It does bear some serious thought.
R.I.,
-V.
“The state we’ve fallen from is some amalgam of Potsdam, the Cold War, and King Arthur storybooks”
Hey, aren’t you forgetting “Rome”? 🙂
Oh, yes. Rome. Definitely Rome.
Thanks,
-V.