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Interesting article from Pat Buchanan’s think tank, The American
Conservative. Guess what the
author compares these New Jacobins to? - KWC Appetite for Destruction
Neoconservatives
have more in common with French revolutionaries than American traditionalists. By
Claes G. Ryn, The American Conservative, January 19, 2004 issue During his recent
visit to England, President Bush enunciated a “forward strategy of freedom in
the Middle East.” He pledged, “We will consistently challenge the enemies of
reform and confront the allies of terror.” The speech was yet another sign that
a new and hugely ambitious foreign policy, conceived by intellectuals many
years ago, is being implemented. For those who have
been the most influential in shaping the Bush administration’s foreign policy,
the war in Iraq was not a response to 9/11. It was a step in the execution of a
long-standing plan to expand America’s role in the world, especially the Middle
East. In his speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, on Nov. 6, the
president referred to the invasion of Iraq as “a watershed event in the global
democratic revolution” and said that America needs to give the Middle East its
full attention for decades to come. He not only affirmed the mentioned
strategy, but also employed the ideological language in which sweeping
political reconstruction had been justified from the beginning. Though centering at
present on the Middle East, this agenda is global. It existed in broad outline
even before the end of the Cold War. With the implosion of the Soviet empire,
Americans who had seen a need for resisting communism broke into two camps.
Many liberals and conservatives felt that a national emergency was over and
that America could now afford to reduce its military and other international
commitments. But some of the most ardent Cold Warriors sharply disagreed.
According to them, the new historical situation presented the United States,
now the only superpower, with an opportunity: America should assert its power
throughout the world in behalf of democracy and capitalism. It should remove
questionable regimes and other obstacles to a better world. These Cold Warriors
were mostly liberals of a special, ideologically zealous variety: many of them
had come from the extreme Left. They had opposed communism because they had
universalistic objectives of their own and did not want any competition. These
proponents of a single model for all societies were able to form an alliance
with putative conservatives, who had come to believe during the Cold War that
to be conservative was always to be hawkish and assertive in foreign policy.
Used to “standing up for America,” these nationalistic and saber-rattling
conservatives found in the cause of a better world a new outlet for their
desire to exercise American power. Oddly, this coalition to remake the world
became known as neoconservatism. According to
proponents of this ideology, the United States is based on universal principles
and has a higher mission than all other countries. America is unique, the hope
of all humanity. It should bring its principles to the rest of the world—a
belief that gave rise to an ideology of American empire. Having originated
among intellectuals, the ideology reached political and journalistic maturity
in the 1980s. Neoconservatives held key positions in the Reagan and Bush I
administrations and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Clinton administration.
In the Bush II administration, they have wholly dominated foreign policy-making. Neoconservatism draws
from many intellectual sources. It has deep roots in the kind of anti-communist
socialism that the late Sidney Hook represented. Its advocacy of universal
principles owes much to the more conservative-appearing Leo Strauss (1899-1973)
and his disciples. A refugee from Germany who taught for many years at the
University of Chicago, Strauss contributed to an anti-traditional impetus by
advocating an ahistorical way of thinking about political right. Only a
universal standard for the good society deserves respect. Growing numbers of
“Straussians,” most of them a good deal less subtle than Strauss, formed an
extensive network of markedly sectarian traits that reaches far into
government. They helped spread the notion that historically evolved societies
and traditions should yield to what is universally right. One of Strauss’s many
doctoral students was Allan Bloom (1930-92), who also became a professor at the
University of Chicago. Many celebrated his best-selling book, The Closing of
the American Mind, as a defense of traditional Western values, but it was in
fact a defense of Enlightenment civilization and of America insofar as it
manifests that civilization. The book seemed conservative to careless readers
because it defended this enlightened “American mind” against even more radical
attacks on traditional Western civilization, specifically, those of the leftist
campus extremism whose banner year was 1968. Conservatives grateful for any
kind of intellectual defense of America read past Bloom’s sharp attacks on
“reactionaries,” that is, those who were uncomfortable with Enlightenment and
progressive thinking. They included Burkean conservatives and other traditional
Christians and especially American Southerners, people whom Bloom called
“malcontents.” Bloom’s book actually
exemplified just the anti-traditional, ideological universalism that is at the
heart of the current push for American empire. Bloom wrote, for example, “When
we Americans speak seriously about politics, we mean that our principles of
freedom and equality and the rights based on them are rational and everywhere
applicable.” This kind of thinking
bears a strong resemblance to that of the Jacobins, who inspired and led the
French Revolution of 1789. Their ideology was summed up in the slogan “liberty,
equality, and fraternity.” Equally universalistic and monopolistic, they
demanded that other countries change their ways. Good stood against evil.
Europe was thrown into protracted wars and upheaval. The new Jacobins differ
from the old in that they have appointed the United States rather than France
as the savior nation, but, like the old Jacobins, they have no deep attachment
to the actual, historically formed nation in which they live. That America,
which is indivisible from the original U.S. Constitution, is an offshoot of
ancient Western and especially English traditions. What the new Jacobins defend
is America as they choose to understand it: a fresh start for humanity, an
enlightened “idea” rather than a nation with a past. The America of which they
approve is an instrument for enacting their cherished universally applicable
principles. The new Jacobins are, as it were, nationalists without a nation. The new Jacobins are
intent on global reconstruction and rooting out “evil.” After 9/11 President
Bush became their chief spokesman. Paradoxically, in his election campaign,
Bush had repeatedly promised a more “humble” foreign policy and a move away
from interventionism and nation building. If he had meant what he said then,
9/11 brought a metamorphosis. Neo-Jacobins who had worried that Bush might be
an obstacle to their plans were delighted by the ease with which he could be
converted to their cause. He adopted the neo-Jacobin rhetoric of his
speechwriters with evident relish, explicitly committing America to armed world
hegemony, portraying it as the savior nation: “There is a value system that
cannot be compromised, and that is the values we praise. And if the values are
good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others.” Bush’s conversion, if
indeed there was one, was no accident. Especially since the end of the Cold
War, neo-Jacobin ideology had spread quickly through think tanks, magazines,
newspapers, the electronic media, and the two main parties, especially the
Republicans. The ideology had long been propounded by a profusion of writers
and activists such as Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol.
In the president’s inner circle, it had a leading spokesman in Paul Wolfowitz.
One of Wolfowitz’s old professors was Allan Bloom, with whom he had stayed in
touch. Politicians and businessmen like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had
been drawn into the neo-Jacobin ambit through protracted cultivation. The new Jacobins are
not content to promote and protect American and Western interests and to
nurture a common ground with other countries. They have a panacea and insist that the world
adopt it.
Virtually all Americans recognized the necessity of an emphatic response to
9/11. The reason this atrocity did not elicit focused action against the
perpetrators but became instead the justification for war against Iraq and a
worldwide battle against terrorism is that neo-Jacobin intellectuals and
activists had long prepared to launch such a policy. After 9/11 they could push
through policies whose full implications were not obvious to their less
ideological bosses. President Bush had the excuses that he confronted wholly
unanticipated and unsettling circumstances and was not an intellectual and historian
able fully to understand the cause that he adopted. His recruitment to the
ideology of empire and the war against Iraq were great victories for the new
Jacobins. Now they are working towards the further implementation of their
plans for an expanded American role in the world, especially in the Middle
East. Other countries—Syria and Iran first of all—are said urgently to need
“regime change.” Toppling the Saudi government is another important goal. Some
neo-Jacobins want the U.S. to develop “small” nuclear weapons for use against
entrenched terrorists and guerrilas and their buried weapons. Some seriously
advocate a World War IV against the Muslim world before it has had a chance to
build up its power. Discouraging reports
from Iraq are reinforcing the old American reluctance to commit military power
abroad. When the American public becomes more fully aware of the ambitious,
messianic strategy behind U.S. foreign policy they may come to realize that
this design is a recipe for perpetual war and chronic domestic insecurity. They
may also recall an older
American sense of limits and humility and realize that only great conceit could inspire a dream of armed
world hegemony. The ideology of
benevolent American empire and global democracy dresses up a voracious appetite
for power. It signifies the ascent to power of a new kind of American, one
profoundly at odds with that older type who aspired to modesty and
self-restraint. That former personality was inseparable from, indeed, the
creator of, the notion of limited, decentralized government. Traditional,
constitutionalist America derived its moral and political assumptions from the
classical, Christian, and British traditions. For Christians as for
the Greeks, pride is the most dangerous human weakness as it threatens to
unleash the desire for power and invites nemesis. The push for American empire
is contemporaneous with a gargantuan accumulation and centralization of federal
power and a precipitous erosion of traditional American checks on power. This
should surprise no one. Those who assume that they know better than all others
consider themselves entitled to power. As if by sheer coincidence, their every
new declaration of human need, in America or the world, places more power in
their hands and undermines the ability of others to shape their own lives. The notion of
benevolent American empire is made to order for individuals of great pride who
desire great power. In recent memory, the only ideology to have provided a
better justification for unchecked power was communism, whose assertion of a
need completely to remake the world supported giving unlimited authority to
leaders who knew what to do. America is witnessing
nothing less than an inversion of its traditional self-undertstanding and sense
of priorities. Claes G. Ryn is Professor of Politics at Catholic University
and Chairman of the National Humanities Institute. He is the author of America the Virtuous: The Crisis of
Democracy and the Quest for Empire. http://www.amconmag.com/1_19_04/article.html |
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