The Neoconservative Persuasion

...Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers...

...Suddenly, after two decades during which "imperial decline" and "imperial overstretch" were the academic and journalistic watchwords, the United States emerged as uniquely powerful...

...That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened...

...I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently...

...But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America...

...Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies...

...Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a "persuasion," one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect...

...The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War...

...The Statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies...

...The fact that conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective, surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism...

...Finally, for a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation...

...Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable...

...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...

...It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability...

...Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not...

...And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power...

...Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment...

...That this new Irving Kristol is author of Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea...

...forward-looking, not nostalgic...

...Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak...

...The Neoconservative Persuasion What it was, and what it is BY IRVING KRISTOL "[President Bush is] an engaging person, but I think for some reason he's been captured by the neoconservatives around him...

...Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters...

...This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth...

...This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience...

...But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom...

...But by one of those accidents historians ponder, our current president and his administration turn out to be quite at home in this new political environment, although it is clear they did not anticipate this role any more than their party as a whole did...

...People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government...

...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...

...Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked...

...conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt...

...News & World Report, August 11, 2003 What exactly is neoconservatism...

...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...

...One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth...

...No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary...

...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...

...upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists...

...Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies...

...And it is a fact that if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you...

...The Soviet Union spent profusely but wastefully, so that its military collapsed along with its economy...

...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...

...This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed...

...Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment...

...Those of us who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending on the context...

...But Europeans, who think it absurd to look to the United States for lessons in political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility...

...It is reasonable to wonder: Is there any "there" there...

...Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination...

...With power come responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not...

...The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives...

...It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would have it...

...International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion...

...Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan...

...And then, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention...

...A larger nation has more extensive interests...

...A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neo-conservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism...

...It is hopeful, not lugubrious...

...Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy— because it seems to be in the nature of human nature— that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth...

...Journalists, and now even presidential candidates, speak with an enviable confidence on who or what is "neoconservative," and seem to assume the meaning is fully revealed in the name...

...Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy...

...That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II...

...Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American grain...

...and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic...

...Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny...

...As a result, neo-conservatism began enjoying a second life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published...

...Howard Dean, U.S...

...The "magic" of compound interest over half a century had its effect on our military budget, as did the cumulative scientific and technological research of our armed forces...

...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...

...Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his The Man Versus the State, was a historical eccentricity...

...The older, traditional elements in the Republican party have difficulty coming to terms with this new reality in foreign affairs, just as they cannot reconcile economic conservatism with social and cultural conservatism...

...This leads to the issue of the role of the state...

...It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning...

...There is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy...

...Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk...

...To a large extent, it all happened as a result of our bad luck...

...Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services...

...In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the "have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle...

...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...

...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...

...Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism...

...These attitudes can be summarized in the following "theses" (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions...

...This superiority was planned by no one, and even today there are many Americans who are in denial...

...This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed...