I’d like to believe that Jack Hunter is right, but the more I think about it the more I think that the conservative base in this country, barring some cataclysmic event, will never be anti-war in any meaningful sense. The sort of limited government and distrust of power advocated by folks over at The American Conservative like Daniel Larison will never appeal to the red-meat, America-first crowd unless it’s framed as opposition to the liberal agenda. So when you have people like Rep. Jason Chaffetz calling for a withdrawal from Afghanistan or claiming the mantle of the anti-war right, it’s really little more than an opportunistic gambit. It can work because the strategy of opposition can work quite easily in this political climate. It’s the same tactic neoconservatives use to get the base fired up in the first place.
The thing that I find so depressing is that the actual stance of the right toward interventionist war won’t change at all. While Chaffetz and those sharing his political views may have some luck in the future convincing the American right that it is opposed to Obama’s wars, once conservatives are back in power and faced with their own foreign entanglements, the right will have forgotten entirely any opposition it once held toward interventionism. Such opposition is grounded entirely in political maneuvering rather than any moral or philosophical framework.
In fact, I’ve argued myself away from my Glenn Beck piece almost completely at this point. Not only is Beck the ultimate opportunist, the people he may convince of American empire or the danger of American foreign policy would be convinced as easily the next day of the need for more American power and further interventions once it is their own team were making the case. There is no philosophical bond between the current conservative base and the concept of limited government in foreign affairs. Limited government extends only to domestic issues, while the security state can grow unabated.
At best the new anti-war right will be something of a paradox, and doomed to expire. I think Jack is engaged mainly in wishful thinking here, another problem currently afflicting many on the right.
Through all this, it should be remembered that Daniel Larison, antihegemonic conservative hero that he truly is, supports the Afghanistan war and its escalation. http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/104023/Obamas_dangerous_surgeReport
The, ahem, “non-interventionist” types will always be able to be shouted down.
Don’t you care that there are rape rooms?
Don’t you care that abortion isn’t allowed in that country?
Don’t you care about womens’ rights?
Don’t you care about human rights?
If you had the opportunity to save Akhmedena’s life, wouldn’t you take it?
It’s a simple question, after all.
Do you hate this woman or would you save her life if given the opportunity to do so?
Hell, you can even cow the so-called “liberal” objectively pro-fascists with this particular argument.Report
Excellent point. When the time rolled around for invading Iraq, all I could ask myself was, “Weren’t you the guys who were complaining about nation building when Clinton was president?” The complete inability for one side to attribute anything but malign intent to the actions of the other party makes this sort of thing possible. There is no true battle of philosophies in our politics, just two differently colored sides shouting at each other across the Hippodrome. Perhaps it shows a better bit of honesty from the Democratic party that I can’t tell if there is anything they actually pretend stand for.Report
Jack Hunter is not a politician, hence he can remain principled, hew to his conservative beliefs. Bravo!Report
This reminds me of something that came up in the third-party discussion thread. There is a school of thought that has similarities to both the American left and right, but is unrepresented by either party. It’s isolationist, pro-union, and anti-immigration. They’re mostly populists.
You could get them to rally for English-only education and fences along the border. They may have supported Perot or Paul. They don’t necessarily fit on either side of the “culture wars” as they’re currently depicted. Pat Buchanan and the American Conservative crowd represent a conservative branch of this thinking. It should be no surprise that they’re anti-war.Report
E.D. have you been following the conversation between Drs. Wilson and Scott over at FPR? Comments?Report
I think you’re right, E.D. It’s hard to draw any other conclusion when the Republicans followed up years of complaining about Clinton’s interventionism with starting an aggressive war on the flimsiest of rationales.Report
Beck has made it clear that he is not anti-war — he believes Obama is not in it to win, and, therefore, he thinks it puts our young men and women at risk, unnecessarily. Beck has a nephew in Afghanistan, I believe, and he doesn’t want the war to last if it’s not fought all out. You can disgree whether we should have a full-fledged offensive, or not, but it doesn’t seem like opportunism.
I believe we have no vital interest there, but that’s me. That’s not opportunistic, either. I suppose there is some opportunistic opposition, but I haven’t heard of any anti-war movement on the right which is strictly anti-war — I think they don’t trust the execution.Report
Unless commentators can get past a strict left-right, Democrat-Republican political understanding, the present opposition to statism will continue to be a mystery. What we are witnessing is an apolitical opposition not only to statism, but political categories as well. We are seeing a reaction from a large part of society which is not led by conservative groups or the Republican Party — it’s an opposition made of people who are mixture of conservative principles and liberal leanings. They aren’t the usual party faithfuls. They aren’t anti-war, they are anti-statism and incompetent intervention.
The Republican Party would be wise to understand these people — so far, few Republicans have shown any understanding at all — they’ve merely tried to marginalize them by framing them as the “conservative base”.Report
Much of the problem is with the label “conservative.” We have Andrew Sullivan proclaiming gay marriage as a conservative goal, much to the chagrin of the social conservatives. The Neocons, who’re really identity thieves who’ve stolen the conservative name to push their big-government agenda, have no problem with warrantless surveillance and pre-emptive wars, which a paleoconservative such as Pat Buchanan would never accept.
Perhaps this is really a symptom of the intellectual sloppiness of our age.Report
Reb, outside of defense issues, can you really call the neo-conservatives “big-government”? And surely Reagan wasn’t afraid of government spending in the name of defense?
Both neo and paleo (if you accept those classifications) have legitimate claims on the word “conservative”. Andrew Sullivan, espousing something that has never existed before, has no such claim.Report
Indeed, Reagan memorably said that defense is not a budget item.Report
Pinky,
The problem with the Neocons is that their agenda derives not from the historical experience Burke, Weaver, and Kirk saw as essential to conservatism, but from an ideology based on anti-Stalinist Marxists, such as Leon Trotsky, Max Shachtman, and Irving Kristol. Rather than supporting the preservation of traditional liberties, Neocons, revealing their Marxist roots, espouse “world democratic revolution” to bring universal standard of human rights to all. In fact, like communism, Neoconservatism serves as justification for the expansion of political and military power.
Hence the Neocons’ enthusiasm for gutting the Bill of Rights and continuous war — things Burke et al would never tolerate.Report
The Neocon attitude dates back earlier than socialism, and is in some respects the precise opposite of Burkean conservatism: it comes from the French Revolution, and the goal of many participants of bringing about democracy in other nations by use of military force.Report
Reb, that’s a pretty broad brush. Again, is there anything other than interventionism that leads you to consider neoconservatives as “big-government” types? Who are these neocons, anyway? I mean, other than a few people whose names are synonymous with the word (Kristol, Wolfowitz, etc.).Report
Katherine,
You’re absolutely right about that. Lenin & Co. saw themselves as the inheritors of the Jacobins, and even adopted the use of the term “comrade” to address co-revolutionaries.
As Burke warned us, the French Revolution was a revolt against tradition.Report
Pinky,
Pat Buchanan has a good introduction to the Neocons here.
But I’ve always been impressed with the masterful presentation and call to arms crafted by Frank Capra in his series, “Why we fight.” He convinced Americans of the Axis powers’ evil intent by letting Hitler and Mussolini speak for themselves — in other words, he spliced in much unedited Axis propaganda so Americans could see how menacing and alien the Axis ideologies truly were.
So in the spirit of Frank Capra, here’s an editorial from the Neocon hive, The Weekly Standard proclaiming the glories of “big government conservatism.”Report
Maybe I’m not asking this question correctly.
There are a few people, most of whom served in the Bush Administration, who are commonly referred to (or refer to themselves) as neoconservatives. There are a couple of magazines as well. Are there any elected officials you would consider neocon? Is there any voting bloc? What do they believe that is so profoundly different from mainstream pro-defense Republicanism? I don’t need to know their intellectual pedigree, I just want one reason that I should take that “neocon” label seriously.Report
Pinky,
If you mean present-day elected officials who describe themselves as Neocons, then the answer’s “no.” However, there aren’t many members of the Obama administration who call themselves “liberal” either.
Most of the Neocons these days are in the think tanks promoting war. Any war.Report