The Neoconservatives
Chase, Edward T.
Books: THE FREE MARKETEERS I N THE "POSTSCRIPT" of his new book THE NEOCONSERYATIYES explain sufficiently the whys and where- Breaking Ranks, addressed to...
...11-14 Laboratories of the Spirit: Four Mornings an Prayer...
...in an Irving Kristol supporting Nixon, decisions are made by corporate elites, Almost alone among the neoconserva- and a Moynihan serving him...
...But rigmacy and about the identifying charac- mocracy because that dire prospect is in ging all too often is costly, inefficient and teristics of the "new class," for exam- fact being realized, and, while Steinfels perpetuates structural inequities in the ple...
...peoples...
...and it manifest cruelties of a market that for all sequences and, as Keynes once noted, as deserves, accordingly, a thoughtful, ex- its great usefulness can only put a price often as not they are anachronistic ideas...
...Paul and the that increases fear, anxiety and legalism...
...by the kind of elitism they favor...
...ternative...
...He writes the cardinal wrongheadedness of the as, say, affirmative action or Medicare...
...18-21 The Biblical Basis for Mission...
...criticize neoconservatism for "its unwillmentary Norman Podhoretz rejoices that ingness to direct attention to the younger generation are now eager Edward Chase socioeconomic structures and to the "to take their places in the world...
...Mortimer Arias, Latin American Methodist Council of Churches, La Paz, Bolivia...
...It tention to fundamental questions its ri- forces the neoconservatives to accept the demonstrates again that ideas have con- vals have frequently overlooked...
...Their vaunted cam- in northern Tanzania...
...Witness the legitimizing and lubricating ideology made if the market itself is to survive let the rationalizations that have eventuated of an oligarchic America where essential alone serve the public interest...
...14-18 Cultural Problems in Mission: Anthropology Where it Matters...
...surance companies, hospitals, doctors) is But Steinfels illumines the most difficult I have underscored Steinfels's words a device grudgingly accepted by the or disorderly of their ideas as no one has about neoconservatism threatening to at- neoconservatives...
...His book is an irrefutable demonstration that the newly born do face radically disparate life chances depending upon the three factors: wealth, class, or race of their parents...
...This is write, "And yet if the situation of liberal America has radicalized many of the why the "young churches" in Africa capitalism today seems so precarious, it missionaries sent there from Europe and (still "young" after a century) look like is nevertheless to survive for a long North America...
...As their contemporary and a constitute its heart...
...Typically, though, this caveat serves to distract legitimate attention from the palpable inequities we observe daily, and that deLone's Carnegie research statistics verify...
...It vides a clear, subtle gloss of our times...
...Diane Ravitch, in her recentNew York Times review of Small Future: Children, Inequality and the Limits of Liberal Reform, Richard H. deLone's book for the Carnegie Counc l on Children, savaged the author for seeming to suggest that an "omnicompetent" (read totalitarian) state is needed to rectify the undeviating and pervasive inequalities of income and race in America...
...The public transportation, education, welfare known it...
...Missionary Preaching: The Gospel in Context...
...Rigging" the market by using long-time acquaintance, friend, or col- equality and social policy...
...Anna-Marie Aagaard, Aarhus University, Denmark...
...APR...
...Editor, Anthropos International Journal...
...191011's "' #'I/ with these Y , II courses for ~!I EFFECTIVENESS ,i FEB...
...24-28 The Bible, The Poor, and Oppression...
...APR...
...siology and avant garde incamational paigns to discover, through a recourse to Since that day in Antioch when Paul theology...
...and indulgence in mocracy becomes an occasional, ritualissocialist in economics, a liberal in poli- Goldwater-like cold war sloganeering...
...In the spirit of St...
...There is in this book a surprising "wasting time," intensifying the among whom he worked for many years mixture of conservative evangelical misjeopardy we are in...
...21-25 New Religious Movements as Challenge to the Churches...
...servative movement Peter Steinfels iden- and provocative analyses of specific For a social philosophy to fail to confront tifies its doctrines and in the effort pro- political proposals...
...In outlook has nonetheless produced telling vatives...
...For existing economic power...
...Orlando Costas, Howard Hageman, Dotis Roberts, Harvie Conn...
...Some have returned to spiritual colonies of Europe, still subwhile, if only because the modern era has their own countries to preach repentance sidized heavily and staffed extensively failed to come up with any plausible al- to those who enjoy the fruits of a global by Christians of the Western world...
...Commonweal: 664 JAN...
...7-11 4 Christian Witness to Muslims: Issues for Mission Today...
...Third that this irresponsibly ignored by the neoconserappear to be one of accommodation...
...Today it is Kristol and his sage for those who sent him...
...President of International Association FEB.-12-15 for Mission Studies...
...tol himself has written (1970) "So I con- CHRISTIANITY REDISCOVERED: But missionaries were not in fact permitclude, despite Professor [Friedrich von] AN EPISTLE FROM THE MASAI ted to do this outside of Europe...
...Adam Smith's "invisible hand" has never been able to deliver the best of all possible worlds in the mythical past (though capitalism was a stage up from the arbitrary, inherited economic power of feudalism), let alone in the modern world...
...and finally on existing private profit-making league of many of them, I have the sense the troubles the neoconservatives have in mechanisms with publicly funded incenI've been maintaining a close look at at once honoring democracy yet fearing tives and sanctions (Medicare and them for decades now, vacillating be- its consequences unless it is disciplined Medicaid involve rigging-private intween admiration and increasing dismay...
...Harvie - Conn, Westminster Theological Seminary...
...21-25 Announcing the Kingdom: Latin American Perspectives on Evangelization...
...We are indebted to Steinfels for so tradition of Ricci, De Nobili, and Las Some of Donovan's reflections are brilliantly and with such eminent good Casas, Donovan challenges the un- quite thought-provoking: on the church, will presenting the neoconservatives' examined suppositions and the cultural community, sacraments, eucharist, doctrines and showing, in the end, that arrogance of the sending churches...
...Stephen Neill, Oxford, England...
...The priesthood, and prayer...
...4-7 The Church Growth Debate: God's Arithmetic or Ours...
...in superfi- where great inequalities are rationalized tive luminaries, Daniel Bell has retained cial revisionist dismissals of the great by straitened circumstances and a system this sense of needed government inter- gains in welfare and in social justice of of meritocratic hierarchy, and where deventions in the market (he states, "I am a the sixties...
...Samuel Kamalesan, Vice-President-at-Large, World Vision International...
...He goes on to THE EXPERIENCE of life in Latin rejected in its ambiguous totality...
...tics, and a conservative in culture...
...In summing up its vices he does John, neoconservative editor of Com- Simon & Schuster, $11.95, 355 pp...
...Joint seminar with the Continuing Education Center of Princeton Theological Seminary, at Princeton...
...o Send application andmore information NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP , I COUNTRY - - - - - - - The neoconservatives' easy reliance upon the price market system implicates them in a willful -Kristol, Banfield, Glazer, etc., are deeply sophisticated in economics-disregard for the realities: not only (1) the truism of the market's operative indifference to social needs or benefits, but also (2) the fact that the dominating oligopolistic corporations with administered pricing power transcend the market, and pass on their costs to the consumer...
...Housing, medical care, formidable foe to liberalism as we have Bell, "Theoretician and Moralist...
...Is deLone really being either naive or unconscionably demagogic when he suggests structural reforms are called for to effect modification of the extremes in income distribution...
...perception of the price market system's selves by taking their places in a world of First, that a distinct and powerful politi- inadequacies, Kristol has become a proadults" and not looking "to external cal outlook has recently emerged in the totypical marketeer- virtually no social forces for the cure"-either for them- United States...
...It is that market prices do not his deft, cogent analysis of the neocon- critiques of contending political views reflect social costs nor social benef ts...
...The axiom of the tional mood change is problematic, but on Daniel Patrick Moynihan "The Pro- dynamics of supply and demand is a bitclearly they epitomize it and comprise a fessional Politician," and on Daniel ter joke for them...
...A compassionate, fairminded response is "no," for the discrepancies, the injustices he describes are intolerable for a just society...
...most of the introverted and psywith the intentions of its intellectual Roman Catholic officialdom had al- chologized theology that passes for sponsors...
...While searching for the meanconservative principles, the elements withstood Cephas to his face on the issue ing of the missionary ministry, the author needed to nourish our spiritually im- of imposing Jewish customs on gentile finds the meaning of Christianity prepoverished civilization are carping and converts to Christianity, missionaries cisely in the missionary outreach for the mean and they threaten the viable mixed have been struggling with, for, or sake of announcing to all peoples the economic order that can serve us well if against, the ethnocentrism of the "good news" that brings real human we are neither doctrinaire nor cavalier in churches that sent them out to foreign hope, joy, and liberation: not bad news our use of it...
...There is a basic Podhoretz may be right: the prepon- and diminish the promise of American economic truth that is consistently and derant mood in the waning 1970s does democracry (italics mine...
...APR...
...Norman Horner, Associate Director, OMSC, and Archbishop Athanasius Samuel, Syrian Orthodox Church...
...tic gesture...
...Now Father Donovan, sent people, and in the light of his fresh readshall have time-though not an endless to Africa twenty-five years ago, has an ing of the New Testament...
...David Kerr, Selly Oak Colleges, `or 1> Birmingham, England...
...Yes, we are in the ways given lip service to the principle of spiritual reading today...
...There is more "neoconservatism may prove dangerous keepers of Europe's folk religion may be valuable meditation material here than in in ways that have little or nothing to do expected to "frown" upon his effort...
...Each chapter is a neoconservatives' debt for the serious at- "incarnating" the faith in the varied cul- new reminder and a further verification Commonweal: 666...
...aptly pinpoints the threat, he does not system...
...4-7 Middle East Mosaic: Christian Churches Witness in a Muslim World...
...He presents ings of Roland Allen and Hans Hoekenneoconservative colleagues who are this as "an epistle from the Masai" dijk...
...with a precision and style lamentably un- movement...
...tensive and careful evaluation...
...Knee-jerk faith in the market is off, the losers in our society who aren't American life and blind and complacent central among the neoconservatives, "Making It, " the title of Podhoretz's ear- toward others, justifies a politics which, Daniel Bell alone seeming uncomfortalier memoir...
...Irving Kris- tures of the peoples being evangelized...
...perience of Christianity, with all of its the marketplace-seen merely as historical accretions, structures, and limaccidents-as the basis for an enduring Eugene Hillman itations, as a package inextricably bound and legitimate entitlement to power, up with the Gospel, to be accepted or privilege and property...
...What needs to be said is not that deLone is a foolish (or malevoAPR...
...So we poor poorer...
...In his painstakingly close look last third of his book focuses on the "new and structural unemployment historically at the neoconservatives Steinfels is ad- class" and on the role of intellectuals that have been bypassed by the price market mirably fair...
...The liberal tradition has in the past demonstrated and can continue to demonstrate a genius for pragmatic adjustments...
...The mixed economy that 23 November 1979: 665 has matured from its New Deal origins tention neoconservatism "pays to the Steinfels's concluding words are comtestifies to this fact...
...Miriam F. Perlewitz, M.M., and David Moore...
...In a dismaying disavowal of his earlier are "assuming responsibility for them- "The premises of this book are simple...
...These youngsters, to quote Podhoretz, common in political analysis today...
...It is these hard realities of the American economic order that underlie the point of Steinfels's astute perception that "neoconservatism threatens to diminish the promise of American democracy...
...Publishers l•The OccasionalRut/e Bulletin ---- of Missionary Research - --- _ OVERSEAS MINISTRIES STUDY CENTER Ventnor, NJ 08406 Gerald H. Anderson, Director, Norman A. Horner, Assoc...
...The neoconservatives also must willfully ignore the fact that (3) the very structure of the corporation, an abstract entity that by charter has but one overriding objective, to return a profit to the shareholder, cannot be depended upon as a vehicle individually or collectively to see-,to the broad public interest and to social justice...
...it has devoted its at- this fact is nothing short of disastrous...
...Indeed the most repugnant which the punditry of Podhoretz, Irving vatism, then summarizes the doctrine, aspect of neoconservatism is its lack of Kristol, Pat Moynihan, Dan Bell, Ed then devotes a lengthy chapter each on compassion for the disadvantaged...
...Director In a setting that invites reflection and renewal, we offer highly relevant courses of study for cross-cultural and international ministries, and accommodations with a family atmosphere...
...should it prevail threatens to attenuate ble with such simplism...
...and his motivation is social compassion-not sentimentality-rather a recognition of Out of Africa the need to alleviate to a degree the cosmic tricks played upon us all...
...on the problem of system...
...Johannes Aagaard, Aarhus University, Denmark...
...Second, that this outlook, problem can't be solved by the "free" selves and certainly not for those worse preoccupied with certain aspects of market...
...lent) totalitarian who fails to record progress we have made (actually his book does record this progress), but rather that, as John Kenneth Galbraith has correctly emphasized, American capitalism is extraordinarily adaptable, if one has the will to adapt it...
...The pros- danger posed by and to neoconservatism our economic order but governmental in- pect we seem to face now, however, is a is that it will become nothing more than terventions can be made and must be degeneration in their critique...
...Precisely...
...has influenced this na- Irving Kristol, "The Standard Bearer," poor have demands...
...Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D...
...on, can only respond to, effective deSteinfels has written a very necessary Steinfels proceeds to trace the social- mand, that is, cash-backed demand, not book for these times...
...Gerald Anderson, Director, OMSC...
...but he has also amount of it, for we have already wasted even more radical and disturbing mes- been influenced significantly by the writ-, a great deal...
...Socialism, communism, and economic system which pollutes the Donovan's discovery was made fascism have all turned out to be either earth while making the rich richer and the through his experience among the Masai utopian illusions or sordid frauds...
...REGISTRATION: $25 per course, with room and meals additional...
...Books: THE FREE MARKETEERS I N THE "POSTSCRIPT" of his new book THE NEOCONSERYATIYES explain sufficiently the whys and whereBreaking Ranks, addressed to his son Peter Steinfels fores...
...The price market moral culture that is a fundament of our mandingly to the point: "The great system can remain the basic dynamic of political and economic life...
...The degree to political dynamics that led to neoconser- social need...
...Instead Hayek's ingenious analysis, that men Vincent J. Donovan they simply transported the Western excannot accept the historical accidents of Fides/Claretian, $6.95 paper, 200 pp...
...The Banfield et al...
...Her review is an archetypal neoconservative critique and she is correct in demonstrating the considerable progress that has been made in moderating our facial caste system since the 1960s (thanks to the very government interventions neoconservative philosophy would bar...
...That is a tacit admisever done before-notions about legiti- tenuate and diminish the promise of de- sion of the market's limitations...
...29 - MAY 2 Jesus Christ, Salvation, and the World's Religions...
...N 4-1 1\,, spring info ' . .41111116- e-- tilt...
...Here, in its them there is to be no more of that "mis- Steinfels accomplishes this by opening economic analysis or more accurately in taken idealism" that deplored America's with a quite dazzling essay on the signifi- its avoidance of economic analysis lies inequities and led to such ameliorations cance of neoconservatism...
Vol. 106 • November 1979 • No. 21
