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Ärende: Defining Neoconservatism
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The Neoconservative Persuasion
From The Weekly Standard, August 25, 2003 issue: What it was, and what it is.
by Irving Kristol
08/25/2003, Volume 008, Issue 47



"[President Bush is] an engaging person, but I think for some reason he's been
captured by the neoconservatives around him."

--Howard Dean, U.S. News & World Report, August 11, 2003

WHAT EXACTLY IS NEOCONSERVATISM? 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. Those of us who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or
dismissive, depending on the context. It is reasonable to wonder: Is there any
"there" there?

Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have
had my moments of wonderment. A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that
neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but
by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. 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. It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would
have it. 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.

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
this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is
nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are
highly skeptical of its legitimacy. 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. But
Europeans, who think it absurd to look to the United States for lessons in
political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility.

Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past
century that is in the "American grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious;
forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or
dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such
Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight
Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. 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. 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. Nor
has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies,
not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican
presidencies.


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

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. 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. 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.

This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the
concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study
alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the
Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." 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. 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. People have always preferred
strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking
for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home
in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.
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.

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.

AND THEN, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics
where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is
surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign
policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (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.) 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. 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.

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. A larger nation has more extensive interests. 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. That is why it was in our national
interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is
why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is
threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are
necessary.

Behind all this is a fact: the incredible military superiority of the United
States vis-ā-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.

Suddenly, after two decades during which "imperial decline" and "imperial
overstretch" were the academic and journalistic watchwords, the United States
emerged as uniquely powerful. 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. With power come
responsibilities, whether sought or not, whether welcome or not. 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 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. 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. As a result, neoconservatism began enjoying a second
life, at a time when its obituaries were still being published.

Irving Kristol is author of "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea."



John 

America:  First, Last, and Always!
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