A Return to First Principles
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
A Return to First Principles Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead By Irving Kristol Basic. 226 pp. SI9.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Author, "A Better World: The...
...We must set aside altruism and pursue our national interest, he declares...
...One of our assets in the Cold War is the recognition-less widespread than it ought to be but nevertheless important-that our foreign policy, unlike the USSR's, goes beyond opportunism...
...steamroller...
...Accordingly, censoring it is not undemocratic because in every healthy society the people take care "not to let themselves be governed by the infantile and irrational parts of themselves...
...Governments like that of El Salvador do us no good...
...Yet in advancing the claims of limited government and individual liberty, it was revolutionary as well...
...Where liberals will first part company with Kristol is over theextent and nature of our present crisis...
...He is, as he says, a hawk, critical of efforts to promote human rights, in favor of aid to allies or prospective allies no matter how deplorable...
...Fortunately Kristol's section on foreign policy, the weakest part of his book, amounts to fewer than 50 pages...
...With all respect, it seems to me that Kristol exaggerates...
...One need not accept this argument...
...One has only to read Dean Acheson's memoirs, Present at the Creation, to see that the Marshall Plan and nato and the other Cold War initiatives were taken to strengthen our side in the struggle against Communism, and not out of liberal illusions...
...Tolerating "under-the-counter pornography," as he calls it, recognizes human frailty while protecting society as a whole...
...Kristol agrees with feminists that pornography degrades women and is therefore an offense against morals...
...Liberals will disagree most of all with Kristol over foreign policy...
...don't-to see that it is both sensible and humane, qualities present to some degree in all his better essays...
...They relate to his function as political philosopher and ideologist-he does not shrink from the term-of the Republican Party...
...Of all the major industrial nations we have the weakest central government, and the strongest commitment to localism and to individual rights...
...Americans are, as we have been for so long, believers in capitalism and democracy...
...Like the Federalists, Kristol believes in " mild government ."Like them, too, he believes there is a national interest that transcends any special interest...
...Most of the rest may be read with profit, especially by those who differ with him...
...For one thing, he supports the welfare state, or, as he perhaps more accurately calls it, the social insurance state, distinguishing himself thereby from the real conservatives...
...An advocate of moderation and compromise at home, Kristol finds it easy to urge the use of force abroad...
...It would be foolish to throw away such an asset for the sake of authoritarian governments that offer us nothing except embarrassment...
...For another, to the degree that Kristol is conservative he is so in the tradition of Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers who were, of course, the liberals of their day...
...Kristol is mistaken also in believing that liberal programs, notably President Carter's human rights campaign, fail to benefit us...
...That enlightenment was meli-oristic, skeptical, undogmatic...
...Leftism, a powerful force in many democracies, is here confined mainly to intellectuals...
...The rest, including the most interesting, came out in the last 12 or 13 years...
...Further, we are closer to our roots than he realizes...
...A few date back to the beginning of his career when he wrote for Commentary...
...The UN was promoted by us because of the certain knowledge that we would control it, as indeed we did...
...Indeed, the double standard applied to the Soviets and ourselves is a kind of flattery, resulting as it does from the belief that since we are the better nation we have an obligation to observe higher standards of conduct...
...Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Author, "A Better World: The Great Schism-stalinism and the American Intellectuals" In this book of essays Irving Kristol, a prominent neoconservative who has been a journalist and editor of journals of opinion for many years and is today Professor of Social Thought at New York University, puts his best foot forward...
...Kristol's essays are genuinely reflective, products of a well furnished and civilized mentality...
...Kristol's neoconservatism does not separate him from liberals on domestic issues as much as might be supposed...
...He feels in addition that it degrades the "quality of public life...
...Even the United Nations is a case in point...
...As an historian 1 am particularly grateful for his reminder that despite the centuries separating us we can still learn from the Founding Fathers, who built better than they knew or than we always realize...
...His solution is to restore censorship as it existed 30 years ago, when pornography was illegal but not unavailable...
...In them Kristol explains that our system of democratic capitalism is rooted in the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment, which has made us rich and free...
...Kristol errs in believing that American foreign policy has ever been based on anything other than self-interest, broadly construed...
...Any American not enamored of the European revolutionary tradition will find much here to agree with...
...The French Enlightenment, by contrast, was Utopian and messianic, less dedicated to freedom than to virtue-that is, right conduct as defined by itself????And inclined to think that men and women could be made virtuous by the state...
...My favorites are "The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution" and "Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism...
...It is not cheaper energy or higher incomes that we most need, but a return to first principles...
...Kristol is good company, stimulating, a writer with something to say and an engaging way of saying it...
...That was why Americans at the time resented the great power veto, insisted on by the Soviet Union as an obstacle to the U.S...
...He doesn't see America's domestic problems as being largely economic...
...Pressuring them to treat their citizens more decently costslittle and, besides being morally right, enhances our reputation...
...The end result of such reasoning has turned out to be the Communist and totalitarian way of political life...
...That is why the wretched of the earth still seek to become Americans...
...We remain healthy and free...
...He rejects aspects of 20th-century liberalism, but also disdains much of the liberalism of the 19th century, with its glorification of individual enterprise and contempt for the state...
...Though the UN no longer serves our purposes we should not forget that it once did, justifying for years the expectations of its American creators...
...It may be that no one reads the Founding Fathers any longer, yet we continue as a people to be dedicated in practice to the institutions they established...
...To him the danger stems from the erosion of those moral and political ideas that made America great, hence his emphasis upon our national roots in the American Revolution, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers...
...How this works in practice is illustrated by his argument for censoring pornography and obscenity...
Vol. 66 • December 1983 • No. 23
