The American populist tradition appeared to have reversed itself; populism now openly supported giving more to the wealthy and battling economic regulations. In fact, a distinction should be made between right-wing populism, which emphasizes cultural questions, and left-leaning populism, which focuses on economics. A few people, like Fred Harris in the seventies, and Molly Ivins, advocated left-populism, but it was right-wing populism that often was to carry the day. Some traditional conservatives have objected to referring to New Right thought as populism and prefer to call it “corporate populism” because it is so much the result of affluent sponsorship. Right-sing populism emerged before there was gridlock in government, but the appearance of gridlock seems to have brought more frustrated voters under the banner of the New Right. This movement to the right was fed by a growing preoccupation with the decline in traditional values, impatience with dissent and pluralism, which appeared as grave threats for longed-for unity, and uneasiness with some traditional elites. By the early years of the Twenty-First Century, the growth of the right was further enhanced by belief in redemptive violence--this time in support of warfare in the name of combating terrorism.
Right-wing populism is very close to the fundamentalism that Jimmy Carter has identified as an ascendant force in society and religion. Andrew Sullivan spoke of the “fundamentalist psyche” which seeks absolute truths and all encompassing ideologies, leaves no room for discussion or debate, and stifles individual thought. Historically, movements for social change have often been instruments of status groups that felt an intense need to assert and legitimize their identities. Right wing populism, here in the form of the New Right, usually is fed by the bitterness and frustration of people facing status loss. These people do not want to be like people in the so-called "blue" states; they are simply intent upon expressing their identity as "decent" people and their anger over being mistreated because of that decency. Their status group anger has been framed in terms of a misguided notion of authenticity. They believe they are the real Americans as opposed to the phonies. The essential element is the populist belief that good decent people are being conspired against by some sort of elite. Left wing populists worry about an economic elite; right wing populists are concerned about what they think is a cultural elite. In many respects, right wing populism is a classical mass movement. Many of its members become true believers, who are dogmatic, intolerant, and often-angry believers in a soul-stirring ideology. They believe they have the absolute truth and often become fanatically devoted to their movement and its leaders. Membership in the movement rather than individual liberty is what is important to them. Perhaps this explains why these people have shown no concern about the rapid erosion of individual liberties since 9/11.
Economic stagnation and the breakdown of welfare capitalism in the United States disoriented millions of people, who sought answers and affirmation of their identities. One might expect them to drift into a political movement that clearly and directly addressed their situation. However, cultural arguments touch people more deeply, and they accepted an ideology that somewhat tangentially offered them some economic relief. Economic historian Alexander Cershenkron noted that even nations with long democratic traditions can become democracies without democrats. It is not so difficult to have a generous view of fellow citizens when living standards are rising. Economic growth makes the expansion of democracy possible. When people's economic prospects are declining, it is so much easier to be less inclusive, less trusting, and more inclined to accept views that place blame on a nation's woes on others.
The 2004 U.S election provides clear evidence of the extent to which anxiety rooted in economic concerns was displaced to cultural matters. Sixty one percent of white voters refused to support John Kerry. In 1991, Stanley Greenberg wrote that "unless there are some limits to the [ Democratic] Party's moral agnosticism," it will not win over the average family. In Europe, those who lost their jobs, faced great insecurity or had to accept less income and benefits are loosely called the "abandoned workers." In the United States, there is a very broad definition of middle class, and the New Right here is considered a middle class phenomenon. Among the recruits to right-wing populism were many Reagan Democrats, who faced great economic insecurity but also believed their cultural and religious values were under assault. What has emerged in the last thirty years is a self-conscious status group in the United States, the members of which would not object to the descriptive term "Middle America."
Over time, this vast status group became desperate and anxious, believing their social and economic positions were slipping or in danger of slipping. These middle class Americans developed a sub-culture or collective consciousness made up of orientations that guide their actions, particularly at election time. These orientations represent a form of conservative populism. Invariably, conservative populists identified their own fates with that of the nation, which also faced very grave threats. They, like their nation, were virtuous and deserved primacy among other people and nations. Their opponents were not just somewhat wrong; they were "evil."
Max Weber argued that there is a strong need for psychic comfort or a feeling of established worthiness. He thought that class-consciousness was essentially "psychological thoughts of men about their lives. " In this instance, we are not dealing with a class. Status groups also shaped by a very similar form of consciousness. In the late Twentieth Century, marketing and other techniques that make it possible to frame information and arguments in such a way as to shape the content of group consciousness. Weber believed the most compelling ideologies developed when a powerful set of ideas were taken up by the disadvantaged. That is why it was so important to persuade a vast slice of Middle Americans, regardless of their economic status, that they are somehow disadvantaged. Today, the party of the right-wing populists often controls every branch of the national government state governments. Nevertheless, the anger of the right-wing populists has not abated because they believe that the media, press, universities, and entertainment are still dominated by liberals who are committed to destroying American culture.
Inevitably, complaints about the opinions of these so-called elites evolved into efforts to censure and punish them. Actors who voiced unpopular opinions faced boycotts of their TV programs and films, and state legislators concocted ways to discipline unpopular professors. In Florida, Representative Dennis Baxley recently introduced a bill enabling college students to sue professors who strayed from “mainstream beliefs” and turned their classrooms into a “totalitarian niche.” His main example was claiming that evolution was a fact.
To some degree the belief that they are conspired against gives victims a tonic and confers upon them special identities. They cannot congratulate themselves on their political success or the fact that the press largely has been intimidated into soft-peddling or ignoring stories that would offend conservatives. Their radio and television shockmeisters continually remind them that they are not safe as long as there is a Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy in the Senate or as long as The New York Times or Washington Post remain in print. Cultural crusades have been powered by anxiety rooted in economic and status tensions. Concern over economic and status questions is redirected by clever conservative information specialists to cultural quests where the chances of success seem greater. At work is an historical process that somehow displaced feelings of deep economic anxieties, which reappeared as cultural resentments. The "somehow" means we cannot explain how or why it happened other than to note that these occurrences from Roman times forward could best be seen as examples of the irrational and unconscious in history.
What can be called psycho-cultural climates exist in history, as the great Lucien Febvre suggested, but the followers of Clio have made little progress in deciphering them. Intense stress and fear of losing control of one’s destiny generates the emotional energy that drives these psycho-historical situations. Some experience an intense need to belong, which adherence to the New Right satisfies. Economic anxiety occurred after a period of great abundance and what seemed to be the promise of continued affluence, or fulfillment of the American Dream. It occurred simultaneously with the emergence of postmodern culture, which brought in its wake ambiguity and contradiction in respect to values. A great majority of the same people experiencing economic anxiety was also troubled by new threats to their values. Perhaps some found the new mental freedom an invitation to inner anarchy, as Adorno noted half a century ago. In any event, they lacked the mental structures to address the cultural disorientation of the period and its potential threats in matters of conscience. Some probably found that their central cultural and religious beliefs were not as strong as they had though, and that craved a consistent and rigorous way of thinking. They were unprepared for a pluralistic culture and moral ambiguities. The crusade of the New Right seemed to resolve these inner conflicts and allowed them to cope with the anxieties of these times.
An event in March 2005, seemed to demonstrate that there may be limits to how far political capitalizing on popular cultural concerns can go. Congress rushed to facilitate moving of the case of Terri Schiavo, a woman in a persistent vegetative state, from the Florida Courts to the federal courts. The issue was reattaching her feeding tube. ABC News turned up a Republican internal memo that suggested that this was a political bonanza and offering talked points. Surprisingly, over 60% of the public rejected this blatant politicization of a family tragedy. This suggests that even some Evangelicals Protestants and traditional Catholics were not on board, and it might also suggest that growing right wing populism might become more difficult in future.
The behavior of the Right suggests that conservative leaders though the New Right must take advantage of situations like this to be sure that its followers remain sufficiently inflamed to assure the GOP election victories. The episode, and the GOP’s response to it, probably insured that the most reliable portion of its base would turn out in record numbers in 2006. Far from having overreached, the GOP deepened the commitment of evangelical voters to the party and planted the thought among the elderly that the GOP was there to prevent the ending of their life support. Reverend Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, implied as much when he said, “That is what I see as the blessing of dear Terri’s life, “ providing” the conservative Christian movement in America” a cause with which to galvanize itself.
After the 2004 defeat of John Kerry, many concluded that it was how one spoke about cultural issues that made the difference, and that George W. Bush’s appeal to conservative religious people explained what had happened. For many on the Christian Right, it was not a matter of language. They were convinced that God had made Bush president of the United States Pat Robertson called Bush a “prophet,” and Ralph Reed said God picked Bush to become president. Bush consistently encouraged this belief and told a group of Amish in 2004 that “I trust God speaks through me.” In fact, a more powerful and complex force was at work in establishing Republican dominance in the United States-- right-wing populism as embodied in the New Right. At work was much more than many people responding to several hot button, values-laden issues. The Democrats were up against a complex, powerful social movement that took decades to build and a mind-set that will prove very difficult to change. True, the outlook of the Christian Right lends itself to right-wing populism, but they are two different although closely related phenomena. Today’s incarnation of Right-wing populism is equated with evangelical religion, but it could stand-alone as it frequently does in Europe. Right-wing populism is at the heart of the New Right’s identity and is largely a reaction against social change. It comes wrapped as ultra-Americanism and assertive nationalism, which got a great boost from the terrible events of September 11, 2001.
Failing to understand fully what they were up against, some Democrats slightly toned down their support for all forms of abortion, and many of them acquired a book on cognitive linguistics that correctly showed that Republicans were very skilled at recasting unpopular policies in favorable language and at "branding" Democrats as very undesirable political products. The reading will do them some good, but it is necessary for them to learn much more about right-wing populism. The main elements of populism are celebrating "the people" and battling elites. American right-wing populists believe an elitist coalition of big government bureaucrats, old money aristocrats, and the so-called “New Class” of academicians, intellectuals, media people, and technocrats dominate the country. The belief that the elite looks down on other Americans gives right-wing populism its great force which is expressed in anger, resentment, and determination to go to the polls and strike a blow against their enemies This view emerged as part of Richard Nixon’s effort to blame the lack of success in Vietnam on dissenters. It was a version of the old right wing “stab in the back” position, and was preceded by the claim that Eastern Europe was sold out at Yalta and that Truman liberals prevented MacArthur from winning in Korea.
The New Left of the 1960s unwittingly made it very easy to develop the New Class argument and apply it to liberals and Democrats, both of whom the New Left despised by the late sixties. Though deeply committed to creating a republic based on peace, love and brotherhood, the young radicals were unwilling to acknowledge the common humanity of those who opposed them. Indeed the New Left was extremely intolerant and made it clear that those who disagreed with them were greedy, stupid and evil. They seemed particularly angry with ordinary Americans because they did not respond to calls to leave factories and fall behind the banners of the New Left. Although the leadership of the Democratic Party feared and disliked the New Left, Republican publicists successfully identified liberals and Democrats with the New Left, calling them the New Class. Many ordinary Americans bought the argument and came to despise those who allegedly despised them. Occasionally in coming years Democratic intellectuals, who generally did not share the outlook of the New Left, foolishly expressed their befuddlement at why so many working class Americans identified so strongly with policies that all but guaranteed that prosperity would not trickle down to them. Their unguarded remarks revealed an ignorance of the emotional and spiritual needs of other Americans and were grist for the propaganda mill devoted to showing that all Democrats were elitists who had contempt for ordinary Americans. The New Class argument was a brilliant political ploy and would eventually play a big role in guaranteeing that Republicans would almost always control both houses of Congress after 1994.
White House speechwriter William Safire crafted Vice President Spiro Agnew’s attack on “an effete corps of impudent snobs, who characterize themselves as intellectuals,” but the word Agnew really had in mind was “fags.” It was as though Nixon had been present at the creation of politics; he had a genius for “ looking beneath social surfaces to see and exploit subterranean anxieties...” in the words of Rick Perlstein. Decades later, as the cultural war got much rougher, there was constant talk about the “gay agenda” of the left. The culture war argument became the main theme of right wing rhetoric. And it was never more powerful than when coupled with promoting a war. Kevin Baker was probably wrong when he suggested that “The whole purpose of the war in Iraq -- and the war on terrorism seems to have been to foment divisions and to win elections....” But he was right in noting that the cultural argument in a war context was so powerful that most Americans reluctantly accepted torturing foreigners and easily came to terms with the executive’s new claims to power, including spying on American citizens and even imprisoning a few without the protections of due process.
Christopher Lasch has suggested that the “New Class” argument has been persuasive because liberals, unable to persuade the masses to accept some democratic reforms have relied upon the courts to accomplish them--essentially using undemocratic means to achieve democratic ends. Moreover, they have lost the popular touch, labeling working class fears about programs to establish economic injustice “working-class authoritarianism.” In social science terms, what is occurring may be negative deference on the part of people who consider themselves in society’s periphery toward those who they think illegitimately occupy the center.
The so-called elitists are accused of trying to destroy American culture, and the New Right sees a nation divided by two starkly different cultures, one good and one evil. The term "liberal" has been redefined to mean people who are trying to overturn traditional American culture by supporting moral relativism, permissiveness, softness on crime, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and stem cell research. For the New Right the word “liberal” meant this snooty and destructive cultural elite and its adherents. In addition, conservative Christian propagandists continually told Godly people that they were under siege by immoral secularists. People came to see themselves as a despised and put-down minority, and they yearned to even the score and demonstrate that they were worthy of respect. In creating the mental structures of this growing subculture, conservative publicists linked threats to traditional culture with policies that damaged free enterprise and weakened the U.S. position in the Cold War. All this contributed to a mindset in which scapegoating and acceptance of simplistic explanations for a variety of phenomena became common. Conservative spokesmen are able to blame almost all the moral evils they find on liberalism, usually because of its advocacy of permissiveness.
Yet the New Right blamed the corporate scandals of 2000-2001 on just a few people, thus precluding thorough efforts to prevent more abuses. This “bad apple theory” has been seen as a form of New Right permissiveness. The same “Bad Apple” theory has been used to explain the abuses of prisoners by American soldiers and private contractors. It was much easier to blame all manner of difficulties on a liberal cultural elite and to blame other problems on the poor below them, who were considered sinful and lazy and bent on living off others. Even worse, in the eyes of some, was the fact that many of the poor were black. The great danger is that their behavior would contaminate society and that other Americans would emulate them. The objects of their fear and loathing included homosexuals, feminists, immigrants, welfare mothers, and criminals. A certain amount of bullying of other unpopular minorities, such as homosexuals and Muslims, was also to be expected, but so far the New Right’s founders and leaders have managed to prevent the kinds of excesses that would permanently alarm middle class America.
Right wing populist worldview is a simplistic black and white picture that bears little resemblance to reality but, with the help of a small army of propagandists, pundits and preachers, it has become the core frame of reference for the New Right. Growing belief that liberals are conspiring to undermine American culture and are contemptuous of ordinary Americans has generated paranoia and rage which has activated the New Right and enabled it to grow steadily as a political force over three decades. The fear and loathing of so-called elitists and their alleged plans to destroy American culture is far more important in motivating political action than particular issues like abortion or gay marriage. American right-wing populism’s four main characteristics are majoritarianism -- even in defiance of constitutional government, anti-elitism, intense nationalism, and anti-intellectualism.
Historically, populism has led to anti-Semitism and racism. Polish writer Adam Michnik suggested that populism always contains an element of envy and employs demagoguery. When mixed with intense nationalism, it can produce fascism. However, it is likely that right populism would lose some of its charm in the United States if it were to spawn overt and excessive authoritarianism and obvious anti-Semitism or racism. In the past, forms of populism in the United States have burned themselves out fairly quickly because they soon were manifesting more than a little bizarre and outrageous behavior. This latest incarnation has steadily grown over three decades, and zealous followers have been kept on somewhat acceptable paths by an army of radio talk show hosts, pundits, and very adept political managers. It has been no small accomplishment.
There seems no accurate way to determine how far and how fast right-wing populism can continue to spread across a population. Right wing populism is growing by leaps in bounds in Islamic countries, where conditions are more than ripe for its spread. Experience in the United States has demonstrated its steady growth, and the continual spread of evangelical Christianity seems to prepare its way for still more New Right growth. In the 1950s, people who held views similar to those of the New Right were considered part of the so-called lunatic fringe. By the 1980s, there were many more of these people, but their views were not considered mainstream. Today, the New Right dominates the nation’s most powerful political party and has reason to claim that its outlook is becoming that of mainstream America.
As late as 2002, Republicans continually played on the twin themes of a liberal conspiracy to damage America and their own victimization. In February 2002, Republicans who attended the annual meeting of the Conservative Action Conference were in high spirits. A poll in April 2002 demonstrated that 52% of voters believed George W. Bush was either a liberal or a moderate--- this despite a clearly conservative record on domestic issues except for a moderate approach to education in his first year and his reluctantly and almost stealthily signing the Campaign Reform Act in his second. Polls were showing that President Bush’s towering popularity was being translated into much greater public support for Republicans on a broad range of domestic issues. Most speakers agreed with Bush strategist Karl Rove that the voters would reward Republicans for Bush’s handling of the war. Polster Kellyanne Conway rejoiced,” George Bush has been more Reagan than Bush.” Even though the press was handling the president with kid gloves, some felt it necessary ritualistically to repeat GOP complaints about a biased press. Governor Marc Racicot lamented that it was so hard “to get a conservative message across” because to the heavy liberal bias of the media and because it requires a “higher level of incisive analysis.”
Despite their success in nearly destroying the Clinton presidency, others complained that Democrats are better political street fighters than Republicans. Although Republicans had good reason to expect to come out of the November elections with workable majorities in both houses of Congress, they seemed to need to continue to see themselves as a beleaguered, put-upon minority. It was as though some realized that these beliefs produce cohesiveness and empowerment. A few expressed some concern about the growth of federal power that the events of September 11 had brought about, but none blamed the Bush administration. On January 8, 2006, US Senator John Cornyn of Texas appeared on Meet the Press and managed to answer each question by calling liberals “outsiders.” He could not have deployed this winning GOP strategy more obviously.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Friday, February 22, 2008
The New Right
Intense reaction against many elements of postmodern culture fueled the emergence of the New Right. It was a potent political movement that accepted neoliberal political and economic thought but was largely built on cultural traditionalism and a social agenda that the right expected to be enforced by conservative judges and legislation. Its membership included followers of George Wallace and many from the John Birch Society. The New Right did not welcome people from the Liberty Lobby, American Nazi Party, or the Ku Klux Klan, but the votes of these people doubtless go to New Right candidates. The New Right’s attachment to traditional values and critique of contemporary culture has supplied its energy and cutting edge. The New Right was strongly attracted by anti-big government rhetoric. After several decades of harping on this issue, the New Right allowed a “healthy skepticism about government [to] sink into something unhealthy, an embittered loathing of the federal government,” a development that Republican Senator John McCain deplored.
Religious traditionalists often believed they possessed a purity that their perceived enemies lacked. They had a sense of collective and personal humiliation, which gave them a righteous sense of purpose, and a deep commitment to recreating through politics the traditional America liberals had taken from them. They had no doubt that God was with them in their epochal battle against godless liberals. Republicans were able to tap a large constituency when they responded to the concerns of religious traditionalists. The number of people they potentially could alienate by doing so was much smaller. In focusing on cultural issues, they were able “to organize discontent,” in the words of Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. They recognized there was a great deal of fear and resentment in Middle America and found a way of orchestrating a revolt against an “elitist upper class” that was promoting a hostile cultural takeover. A Pew Research Center study in 2003 found that almost half of Americans had unfavorable views of nonbelievers. This was about twice the number of people who feared the Religious Right.
This fear and anger made possible what Seymour Martin Lipset called “extremism of the centre” because most of its support came from the middle classes. Lipset was using the term to refer to fascists, and, of course, that term should not be applied to the New Right. The New Right certainly is not a form of fascism but is similar in that it represents a powerful, emotion driven right-wing mass movement. For that reason, it makes sense to examine “how social class and psychological tendencies shaped what appeared to be just an irrational set of fears, hatreds, and prejudices.” Unlike the fascists, the New Right is strongly attached to capitalism and has a distinct economic theory. However, both were allied with traditional economic elites. Their greatest points of similarity are the tendencies to exploit extreme nationalism and being energized by very powerful hatreds and fears.
The indictment of cultural liberalism became the nucleus of the New Right thought that emerged in the 1970s. Like the Old Right, its spokesmen sometimes criticized the moneyed elite but never failed to back policies that enriched big business and big money. Some complained about the wealth of the Buckleys and Rockefellers, but their complaints were mainly about the fact that these families offered different views of Republicanism
The New Right had a fierce moralistic tone that often unsettles conventional conservatives and neoliberals. The rhetoric of the New Right was an amalgam of remedies drawn from the Religious Right and chambers of commerce. Even though the New Right accepts neoliberal economic views, it is possible to draw a clear distinction between the neoliberals and New Right, naming them laissez faire conservatives and social conservatives. There is significant difference between them in that the neoliberals usually were not interested in legislating morality. But the fact is that these two groups have melded to a considerable extent as time passed. The social conservatives advocate economic neoliberalism with conviction, and the neoliberals employ the cultural rhetoric of the social conservatives; they doubtless blame liberals for the breakdown of morality. Republican practice has been such as to assure them that the social conservatives will be given symbolic victories from time to time, but the bulk of their agenda will be continually deferred.
The New Right professes a morality of a strict father and calls for tough anti-crime measures, defense of the death penalty, opposition to welfare, abortion, and affirmative action. The latter was usually called “reverse discrimination” to emphasize the idea that someone was receiving unfair preference. Similarly, conservatives who opposed bussing to achieve racial balance called it “forced bussing.” In this instance, the word forced connoted oppression and a federal incursion on state sovereignty. The inheritance tax was called the “death tax,” which meant someone was being taxed for dying and that wealth was being confiscated from someone who had worked very hard. In time, complaints about unfair taxation undermined support for the progressive income tax and win backing for policies that moved toward a straight tax because it allegedly would be fair to everyone. Becoming part of the New Right’s anti-liberal cultural philosophy, these views acquired a populist coloration. New Right spokesmen presented themselves as champions of little people in Middle America and marched under a populist banner. The New Right claimed it was fighting the liberal elite that had captured government, the schools, and media. They were aggrieved because the courts put an end to prayer in the public schools.
According to New Right talk show host Neal Boortz, “Liberals are not lovers of freedom. Liberals believe the average person is simply too ignorant to be free.” He claimed liberals thought most people needed to be guided by a big government run by “the leftist intelligentsia.” These right-wing populists were convinced that government was in the hands of people determined to frustrate the popular will. They resorted to popular referenda to get around this problem. In 1978, Californians approved Proposition 13, which sharply reduced taxes. In 1977 and 1978 alone, there were six referenda opposing civil rights for homosexuals. All but one of them were successful. Many came to believe that the state could not do a good job of providing public education and backed a voucher system, whereby parents received vouchers they could use to pay for private school educations for their children. This became more attractive as Protestant Evangelicals joined Roman Catholics in providing private school educations for their children. Ostensibly, the vouchers plan was to give parents a way of escaping failing public schools. However, a number of conservative political operatives have admitted that their primary objective was weakening the teachers’ unions, which were major supporters of the Democratic Party.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Religious traditionalists often believed they possessed a purity that their perceived enemies lacked. They had a sense of collective and personal humiliation, which gave them a righteous sense of purpose, and a deep commitment to recreating through politics the traditional America liberals had taken from them. They had no doubt that God was with them in their epochal battle against godless liberals. Republicans were able to tap a large constituency when they responded to the concerns of religious traditionalists. The number of people they potentially could alienate by doing so was much smaller. In focusing on cultural issues, they were able “to organize discontent,” in the words of Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus. They recognized there was a great deal of fear and resentment in Middle America and found a way of orchestrating a revolt against an “elitist upper class” that was promoting a hostile cultural takeover. A Pew Research Center study in 2003 found that almost half of Americans had unfavorable views of nonbelievers. This was about twice the number of people who feared the Religious Right.
This fear and anger made possible what Seymour Martin Lipset called “extremism of the centre” because most of its support came from the middle classes. Lipset was using the term to refer to fascists, and, of course, that term should not be applied to the New Right. The New Right certainly is not a form of fascism but is similar in that it represents a powerful, emotion driven right-wing mass movement. For that reason, it makes sense to examine “how social class and psychological tendencies shaped what appeared to be just an irrational set of fears, hatreds, and prejudices.” Unlike the fascists, the New Right is strongly attached to capitalism and has a distinct economic theory. However, both were allied with traditional economic elites. Their greatest points of similarity are the tendencies to exploit extreme nationalism and being energized by very powerful hatreds and fears.
The indictment of cultural liberalism became the nucleus of the New Right thought that emerged in the 1970s. Like the Old Right, its spokesmen sometimes criticized the moneyed elite but never failed to back policies that enriched big business and big money. Some complained about the wealth of the Buckleys and Rockefellers, but their complaints were mainly about the fact that these families offered different views of Republicanism
The New Right had a fierce moralistic tone that often unsettles conventional conservatives and neoliberals. The rhetoric of the New Right was an amalgam of remedies drawn from the Religious Right and chambers of commerce. Even though the New Right accepts neoliberal economic views, it is possible to draw a clear distinction between the neoliberals and New Right, naming them laissez faire conservatives and social conservatives. There is significant difference between them in that the neoliberals usually were not interested in legislating morality. But the fact is that these two groups have melded to a considerable extent as time passed. The social conservatives advocate economic neoliberalism with conviction, and the neoliberals employ the cultural rhetoric of the social conservatives; they doubtless blame liberals for the breakdown of morality. Republican practice has been such as to assure them that the social conservatives will be given symbolic victories from time to time, but the bulk of their agenda will be continually deferred.
The New Right professes a morality of a strict father and calls for tough anti-crime measures, defense of the death penalty, opposition to welfare, abortion, and affirmative action. The latter was usually called “reverse discrimination” to emphasize the idea that someone was receiving unfair preference. Similarly, conservatives who opposed bussing to achieve racial balance called it “forced bussing.” In this instance, the word forced connoted oppression and a federal incursion on state sovereignty. The inheritance tax was called the “death tax,” which meant someone was being taxed for dying and that wealth was being confiscated from someone who had worked very hard. In time, complaints about unfair taxation undermined support for the progressive income tax and win backing for policies that moved toward a straight tax because it allegedly would be fair to everyone. Becoming part of the New Right’s anti-liberal cultural philosophy, these views acquired a populist coloration. New Right spokesmen presented themselves as champions of little people in Middle America and marched under a populist banner. The New Right claimed it was fighting the liberal elite that had captured government, the schools, and media. They were aggrieved because the courts put an end to prayer in the public schools.
According to New Right talk show host Neal Boortz, “Liberals are not lovers of freedom. Liberals believe the average person is simply too ignorant to be free.” He claimed liberals thought most people needed to be guided by a big government run by “the leftist intelligentsia.” These right-wing populists were convinced that government was in the hands of people determined to frustrate the popular will. They resorted to popular referenda to get around this problem. In 1978, Californians approved Proposition 13, which sharply reduced taxes. In 1977 and 1978 alone, there were six referenda opposing civil rights for homosexuals. All but one of them were successful. Many came to believe that the state could not do a good job of providing public education and backed a voucher system, whereby parents received vouchers they could use to pay for private school educations for their children. This became more attractive as Protestant Evangelicals joined Roman Catholics in providing private school educations for their children. Ostensibly, the vouchers plan was to give parents a way of escaping failing public schools. However, a number of conservative political operatives have admitted that their primary objective was weakening the teachers’ unions, which were major supporters of the Democratic Party.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Conservative Critique of Postmodern Culture
The Conservative Critique of Postmodern Culture
The political and cultural turbulence of the 1960s ushered in postmodern culture, which was marked by far less respect for authority, a breakdown of conventional morality, and an enormous emphasis upon personal autonomy. For the postmoderns, the central value is that there are no universally applicable values.. Postmodern society does not appear to value reason or careful argumentation. Fashion and slogans rather than argumentation seem to prevail. John W. Kluge Prize winner Leszek Kolakowski noted that the West’s greatest cultural legacy to the world was its capacity to manage without certainty. This may be true, but it likely that most of those in the United States who have had the most difficulty coping with postmodern uncertainty have sought to remedy this situation by enlisting in the ranks of the New Right , or identifying with Republican Neo Conservatives. The triumph of postmodernity in the United States was seen in the fact that by 2003 a rather simplistic insistence upon reproductive choice under any circumstances prevented most liberals from even considering any arguments for limitations upon abortion. Even last-minute abortions were seen by many as acceptable.
In Europe, there were restrictions, and even liberal Sweden had strict regulations for abortions after the eighteenth week. In 2004 Christian Right leader Gary Bauer explained, “Joe Six-Pack doesn’t understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn’t have a say in it.” George Will, the most astute of conservative Republican pundits sometimes stops short of blaming the “coarsening of the culture” on liberals. But he notes that this is the most important question and adds that the liberals see it is not very important and something they cannot fix. He adds that the “post- materialist cadre” on the far left approve of the decay in morals and coarsening of culture, seeing them “a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race.”
Conservatives convinced many that liberals, allied with Hollywood and a media elite, had somehow brought about undesirable changes in the culture and were wildly out of touch with what most Americans wanted. In fact, Democratic leaders since 1980 have been rushing toward the center. A scientific study found that “Democratic activists in 2002 were actually slightly more moderate than run-of-the-mill voters who identify with the Democratic Party.” Nevertheless, the general impression of Middle Americans is the exact opposite. Those who have sold the public on the idea of cultural wars are usually reasonable in tone, and they have been adept at conveying the impression of reasonableness. An exception was Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue. In 1993, he announced that his goal was to end pluralism and create a Christian Nation; “We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time.... We want theocracy.” Whether the tone was strident or seemed reasonable, the message has been repeated so often that it has become received truth for a vast number of Americans. The new culture horrified religious and cultural conservatives and fueled their anger against liberals, whom they considered responsible for these aberrations.
With little proof, they believed that liberals were deeply committed to a permissive society and somehow were not alarmed by rising crime rates, deterioration of traditional norms for sexual morality, and increasing signs that traditional family structures were breaking down. Conservatives saw the counterculture of the 1960s as ushering in sexual permissiveness, nihilism, moral weakness, and self-indulgence; and they were certain liberals were behind these developments. Conservative writer James Nuechterlein has noted “The counterculture of the sixties has become the common culture today and Americans are united only by an insistence on even fewer restraints on the sovereign self’” and the desire for more pleasures and material comforts. Above all, there has been a rejection of” the theatrical individualism and unfettered sexual freedom” of that period.
Religious conservatives view the breakdown of families and the large number of single mothers are seen as signs of a moral deterioration and a rejection of their traditional family values. Increased divorce rates, greater violence, and the prevalence of single parent households were seen as hallmarks of a threatening Anew morality.”
Secular Humanism
Secular humanism has been blamed for many of the problems of the late Twentieth Century, and it has been portrayed as being synonymous with liberalism. One definition of a secularist is “someone who rejects scriptural authority, has no religious affiliation, never attends a religious service or prays, and says religion provides no guidance in his daily life.” Yet, so-called secular humanists were often more concerned for the poor, promoting racial justice, and bringing about economic justice for the workingman than quite a few backers of organized religion. The humanism that many liberals espoused included self- esteemed self-sacrifice and esteemed community over the individual. Nevertheless, they were accused of wanting to dissolve social bonds, glorify the self, and idealize material indulgence--all characteristics of the maladies so many thoughtful liberals sought to combat. Yet liberals seem blind to the sensibilities of ordinary people, and too often equate opposition to their views with racism, superstition, and working class authoritarianism. Even worse, by quickly dismissing many community folkways and traditions, they appear to lack common sense.
The most conservative members of the New Right imagine that there is a vast secular humanist conspiracy to destroy religion and American capitalism. The networks, the major newspapers, intellectuals, and academicians are thought to be involved. Also included in this vast conspiracy were businessmen who favored trade with Communist countries, all “moderate” elected officials, and public school administrators. They were all in league to thwart the people’s will. Religious conservatives’ image of the dreaded secular humanist inspires great fear and intense hatred. They feel great urgency in trying to preserve the influence of what they consider “true religion” and their way of life, which translates to “Family Values.” They see the crusade for gay and lesbian rights as the symbol of everything wrong with secular humanism; it is viewed as a quest for a Godless immorality
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The political and cultural turbulence of the 1960s ushered in postmodern culture, which was marked by far less respect for authority, a breakdown of conventional morality, and an enormous emphasis upon personal autonomy. For the postmoderns, the central value is that there are no universally applicable values.. Postmodern society does not appear to value reason or careful argumentation. Fashion and slogans rather than argumentation seem to prevail. John W. Kluge Prize winner Leszek Kolakowski noted that the West’s greatest cultural legacy to the world was its capacity to manage without certainty. This may be true, but it likely that most of those in the United States who have had the most difficulty coping with postmodern uncertainty have sought to remedy this situation by enlisting in the ranks of the New Right , or identifying with Republican Neo Conservatives. The triumph of postmodernity in the United States was seen in the fact that by 2003 a rather simplistic insistence upon reproductive choice under any circumstances prevented most liberals from even considering any arguments for limitations upon abortion. Even last-minute abortions were seen by many as acceptable.
In Europe, there were restrictions, and even liberal Sweden had strict regulations for abortions after the eighteenth week. In 2004 Christian Right leader Gary Bauer explained, “Joe Six-Pack doesn’t understand why the world and his culture are changing and why he doesn’t have a say in it.” George Will, the most astute of conservative Republican pundits sometimes stops short of blaming the “coarsening of the culture” on liberals. But he notes that this is the most important question and adds that the liberals see it is not very important and something they cannot fix. He adds that the “post- materialist cadre” on the far left approve of the decay in morals and coarsening of culture, seeing them “a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race.”
Conservatives convinced many that liberals, allied with Hollywood and a media elite, had somehow brought about undesirable changes in the culture and were wildly out of touch with what most Americans wanted. In fact, Democratic leaders since 1980 have been rushing toward the center. A scientific study found that “Democratic activists in 2002 were actually slightly more moderate than run-of-the-mill voters who identify with the Democratic Party.” Nevertheless, the general impression of Middle Americans is the exact opposite. Those who have sold the public on the idea of cultural wars are usually reasonable in tone, and they have been adept at conveying the impression of reasonableness. An exception was Randall Terry, head of Operation Rescue. In 1993, he announced that his goal was to end pluralism and create a Christian Nation; “We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time.... We want theocracy.” Whether the tone was strident or seemed reasonable, the message has been repeated so often that it has become received truth for a vast number of Americans. The new culture horrified religious and cultural conservatives and fueled their anger against liberals, whom they considered responsible for these aberrations.
With little proof, they believed that liberals were deeply committed to a permissive society and somehow were not alarmed by rising crime rates, deterioration of traditional norms for sexual morality, and increasing signs that traditional family structures were breaking down. Conservatives saw the counterculture of the 1960s as ushering in sexual permissiveness, nihilism, moral weakness, and self-indulgence; and they were certain liberals were behind these developments. Conservative writer James Nuechterlein has noted “The counterculture of the sixties has become the common culture today and Americans are united only by an insistence on even fewer restraints on the sovereign self’” and the desire for more pleasures and material comforts. Above all, there has been a rejection of” the theatrical individualism and unfettered sexual freedom” of that period.
Religious conservatives view the breakdown of families and the large number of single mothers are seen as signs of a moral deterioration and a rejection of their traditional family values. Increased divorce rates, greater violence, and the prevalence of single parent households were seen as hallmarks of a threatening Anew morality.”
Secular Humanism
Secular humanism has been blamed for many of the problems of the late Twentieth Century, and it has been portrayed as being synonymous with liberalism. One definition of a secularist is “someone who rejects scriptural authority, has no religious affiliation, never attends a religious service or prays, and says religion provides no guidance in his daily life.” Yet, so-called secular humanists were often more concerned for the poor, promoting racial justice, and bringing about economic justice for the workingman than quite a few backers of organized religion. The humanism that many liberals espoused included self- esteemed self-sacrifice and esteemed community over the individual. Nevertheless, they were accused of wanting to dissolve social bonds, glorify the self, and idealize material indulgence--all characteristics of the maladies so many thoughtful liberals sought to combat. Yet liberals seem blind to the sensibilities of ordinary people, and too often equate opposition to their views with racism, superstition, and working class authoritarianism. Even worse, by quickly dismissing many community folkways and traditions, they appear to lack common sense.
The most conservative members of the New Right imagine that there is a vast secular humanist conspiracy to destroy religion and American capitalism. The networks, the major newspapers, intellectuals, and academicians are thought to be involved. Also included in this vast conspiracy were businessmen who favored trade with Communist countries, all “moderate” elected officials, and public school administrators. They were all in league to thwart the people’s will. Religious conservatives’ image of the dreaded secular humanist inspires great fear and intense hatred. They feel great urgency in trying to preserve the influence of what they consider “true religion” and their way of life, which translates to “Family Values.” They see the crusade for gay and lesbian rights as the symbol of everything wrong with secular humanism; it is viewed as a quest for a Godless immorality
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
CULTURAL WARFARE AND THE RISE OF THE NEW RIGHT
By 1980, a new conservative coalition was taking shape, which was heavily dependent upon the New Right. The New Right reacts strongly against what it considers the breakdown of American morality and culture and blames liberals for these developments. Other elements in the new Republican coalition included Neo Conservatives, the emerging Republican South, libertarians and other traditional Republicans Changing social and cultural conditions made it possible for the New Right to emerge and for Republicans to expand their mass constituency. To some degree, economic conditions in the late Twentieth Century also prompted some to turn to Republican economic policy, The coming of the information age and knowledge economy placed a high value on radical individualism and helped to devalue social solidarity. The decline of community has been greatly accelerated by economic forces such as globalization and the business community’s continual trimming of benefits and jobs to become more competitive. Often economic forces that led people to seek political outlooks that seem to promote individualism and to de-emphasize social responsibilities meshed with social and cultural forces that prompted them to accept conservative religious views.
Factors Behind the Rise of the New Right
Many believed that their families were threatened by a moral breakdown in society. They saw many more single parent households, sexual promiscuity, drugs, abortion on demand, and a sex-saturated media, to name only a few problems. In the early seventies, many white Evangelicals did not see abortion as a major problem, and many wanted it legalized. But they had reversed themselves on this question by 1980. They sensed that spiritual values were in decline, and they felt a hunger for meaning and spirituality. They found clear answers and meaning in the rapidly growing conservative Protestant communities, and there they moved into the Republican base. For some, Republicanism answered the twin crises of their age, the threats to the family and deep economic anxiety. Others could not accept Republican economic doctrine but saw the party as offering the only hope for protecting the family against moral chaos. Democrats, on the other hand, refused to address spiritual values and were even more disinclined to speak of God. It was ironic that ordinary working people sought to cure the spiritual and emotional deadness they experienced by supporting politicians whose economic agenda meant more emphasis on materialism, ruthlessness in the marketplace, consumerism, and” me-firstism,” all of which were root causes of the nation’s essential spiritual problems. These policies guaranteed that private lives would become more meaningless and empty.
The triumph of secular values and the decay of traditional morality alarmed many, particularly white Protestant Evangelicals and fundamentalists as well as their conservative counterparts within the Roman Catholic Church. Conservative Protestants Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and fundamentalists were deeply concerned that the nation was moving away from values rooted in Christianity. White Fundamentalists and Evangelicals were uncomfortable with cultural pluralism and believed they were losing the position of cultural and political power that they had historically enjoyed, especially in the South. Evangelical Protestants had not played an important role in the revival of conservatism that began in the 1950s, but they became major players in the 1970s when they became concerned about sex education, the end of prayer in the public schools, liberalized pornography laws, and threats to the tax exemptions of segregated Christian schools. Near the end of the decade, they came to oppose Roe v. Wade, and concluded that it along with these other issues would seriously undercut the morality of Protestant families.
Opposition to desegregation was also a major factor that drew them into the political area. The Republicans recognized their concerns and, quickly fashioned a message to attract them, and went to great lengths to offer them the legitimacy they craved. Evangelical leaders wanted to play a larger role in setting national policy and many of them thought the separation of church and state was “a lie of the left.” Even when they came to play major roles in national politics, it was necessary to claim to be “outsiders” in order to keep their followers enraged about an alleged liberal establishment. Historian Scott Appleby thought that playing “bad winners” would not play for long, but his predication seemed to be wrong. It would soon become clear that the conservative Protestant Churches had functioned as first-rate schools of democracy, where people learned networking, organizing, and proselytizing skills that would prove to be extremely effective in the secular area, whether it was electing members of local school boards or turning out voters for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
The term “Religious Right” has many weaknesses as a generic term because there were such sharp differences between conservative Catholics, conservative Jews, and conservative Protestants. For whatever reason, all of these groups are less inclined to affirm a common humanity of all peoples than to think in terms “ Us v. the evil Other.” This outlook fit perfectly with the mindset continually offered by the Republican information machine. There was mutual dislike among the groups, and the Evangelicals were even on record as teaching that Catholicism was the greatest single threat to American democracy. Over time, there was more and more reason to use the term without apology. They managed to put their differences aside as they became convinced that they were facing a very dangerous common enemy.
The conservative Catholics seemed to become more like their evangelical allies and less like other Catholics in that they seemed to simply turn their backs on the Vatican’s teachings about peace, justice, and a preferential concern for the poor. Conservative Jews seemed to let concerns for the welfare of Israel and cultural concerns trump their historic concern for underdogs in American society. The Religious Right became convinced that Democrats and liberals supported policies that led to moral decay and the dominance of secular humanism. Peggy Noonan, a leading Republican intellectual, saw undesirable cultural developments as proof that “the problems of our country derive more from a spiritual crisis than from anything else.” Research indicates religious institutions have far more influence upon voting behavior than television or newspapers.
In conservative Christian congregations, people forged very close ties and came to share the same cultural and political values. Religious and cultural conservatives allied with the Republican Party, which offered them some symbolic victories in their battles against abortion, homosexual rights, and thoroughly secularized public schools. These cultural warriors formed the New Right, which eventually became the dominant force within the Republican coalition, a rise that was fueled by the economic and cultural grievances of the middle class.
The prescriptions of neoliberalism were designed to meet their economic complaints. Despite out-sourcing of jobs and massive lay-offs in industries known for paying good wages, many feel they are doing quite well and believe that Republican economic policies will preserve their prosperity. In 2005, that the average household income for people between the ages of 26 and 59 was around $63,000. Polls show that these people were satisfied with their lot and did not seem to believe that their places in the middle class were threatened. As late as 2005, 40% of Americans believed it was not difficult to climb the economic ladder. Given this outlook, cultural arguments were likely to weigh heavily with them. Republican strategist Kevin Phillips said in 2006 that these developments had transformed the Republican Party into “the first religious party in U.S. history,” one that uniquely merged theocracy with plutocracy.
Republicans developed a cultural agenda that attracted large numbers of adherents, many of whom hailed from the South. Traditional Republicans--the so-called Country Club Republicans-- were initially put off by the near fanaticism of the New Right. Traditional, country club Republicans have demonstrated time and again that advocacy of tax cuts is what they most expect from the party. Over time, the traditional Republicans may have thought they would change the New Right, but what occurred was the partial conversion of the traditional Republicans to the cultural crusade of their allies. It was partly a matter of the old saying about being in for pence meant being in for a pound. Success is also a powerful recruiting tool, and aspiring Republican politicians came to realize in order to be victorious, they needed to win the full support of the New Right. A political “tribe” that is more inclined than not to vote with the Republicans are the so-called “White-bread Protestants,” they attend mainline churches and are more less moderates on cultural matters. Decades ago, they were certain Republican voters. In 2004, 60% of them supported George W. Bush. Some have speculated that excessive concessions to the Hard Right could drive some of them away. But for the moment, the appeal of the national defense issue is likely to keep the vast majority of them in the Republican fold.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Factors Behind the Rise of the New Right
Many believed that their families were threatened by a moral breakdown in society. They saw many more single parent households, sexual promiscuity, drugs, abortion on demand, and a sex-saturated media, to name only a few problems. In the early seventies, many white Evangelicals did not see abortion as a major problem, and many wanted it legalized. But they had reversed themselves on this question by 1980. They sensed that spiritual values were in decline, and they felt a hunger for meaning and spirituality. They found clear answers and meaning in the rapidly growing conservative Protestant communities, and there they moved into the Republican base. For some, Republicanism answered the twin crises of their age, the threats to the family and deep economic anxiety. Others could not accept Republican economic doctrine but saw the party as offering the only hope for protecting the family against moral chaos. Democrats, on the other hand, refused to address spiritual values and were even more disinclined to speak of God. It was ironic that ordinary working people sought to cure the spiritual and emotional deadness they experienced by supporting politicians whose economic agenda meant more emphasis on materialism, ruthlessness in the marketplace, consumerism, and” me-firstism,” all of which were root causes of the nation’s essential spiritual problems. These policies guaranteed that private lives would become more meaningless and empty.
The triumph of secular values and the decay of traditional morality alarmed many, particularly white Protestant Evangelicals and fundamentalists as well as their conservative counterparts within the Roman Catholic Church. Conservative Protestants Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and fundamentalists were deeply concerned that the nation was moving away from values rooted in Christianity. White Fundamentalists and Evangelicals were uncomfortable with cultural pluralism and believed they were losing the position of cultural and political power that they had historically enjoyed, especially in the South. Evangelical Protestants had not played an important role in the revival of conservatism that began in the 1950s, but they became major players in the 1970s when they became concerned about sex education, the end of prayer in the public schools, liberalized pornography laws, and threats to the tax exemptions of segregated Christian schools. Near the end of the decade, they came to oppose Roe v. Wade, and concluded that it along with these other issues would seriously undercut the morality of Protestant families.
Opposition to desegregation was also a major factor that drew them into the political area. The Republicans recognized their concerns and, quickly fashioned a message to attract them, and went to great lengths to offer them the legitimacy they craved. Evangelical leaders wanted to play a larger role in setting national policy and many of them thought the separation of church and state was “a lie of the left.” Even when they came to play major roles in national politics, it was necessary to claim to be “outsiders” in order to keep their followers enraged about an alleged liberal establishment. Historian Scott Appleby thought that playing “bad winners” would not play for long, but his predication seemed to be wrong. It would soon become clear that the conservative Protestant Churches had functioned as first-rate schools of democracy, where people learned networking, organizing, and proselytizing skills that would prove to be extremely effective in the secular area, whether it was electing members of local school boards or turning out voters for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
The term “Religious Right” has many weaknesses as a generic term because there were such sharp differences between conservative Catholics, conservative Jews, and conservative Protestants. For whatever reason, all of these groups are less inclined to affirm a common humanity of all peoples than to think in terms “ Us v. the evil Other.” This outlook fit perfectly with the mindset continually offered by the Republican information machine. There was mutual dislike among the groups, and the Evangelicals were even on record as teaching that Catholicism was the greatest single threat to American democracy. Over time, there was more and more reason to use the term without apology. They managed to put their differences aside as they became convinced that they were facing a very dangerous common enemy.
The conservative Catholics seemed to become more like their evangelical allies and less like other Catholics in that they seemed to simply turn their backs on the Vatican’s teachings about peace, justice, and a preferential concern for the poor. Conservative Jews seemed to let concerns for the welfare of Israel and cultural concerns trump their historic concern for underdogs in American society. The Religious Right became convinced that Democrats and liberals supported policies that led to moral decay and the dominance of secular humanism. Peggy Noonan, a leading Republican intellectual, saw undesirable cultural developments as proof that “the problems of our country derive more from a spiritual crisis than from anything else.” Research indicates religious institutions have far more influence upon voting behavior than television or newspapers.
In conservative Christian congregations, people forged very close ties and came to share the same cultural and political values. Religious and cultural conservatives allied with the Republican Party, which offered them some symbolic victories in their battles against abortion, homosexual rights, and thoroughly secularized public schools. These cultural warriors formed the New Right, which eventually became the dominant force within the Republican coalition, a rise that was fueled by the economic and cultural grievances of the middle class.
The prescriptions of neoliberalism were designed to meet their economic complaints. Despite out-sourcing of jobs and massive lay-offs in industries known for paying good wages, many feel they are doing quite well and believe that Republican economic policies will preserve their prosperity. In 2005, that the average household income for people between the ages of 26 and 59 was around $63,000. Polls show that these people were satisfied with their lot and did not seem to believe that their places in the middle class were threatened. As late as 2005, 40% of Americans believed it was not difficult to climb the economic ladder. Given this outlook, cultural arguments were likely to weigh heavily with them. Republican strategist Kevin Phillips said in 2006 that these developments had transformed the Republican Party into “the first religious party in U.S. history,” one that uniquely merged theocracy with plutocracy.
Republicans developed a cultural agenda that attracted large numbers of adherents, many of whom hailed from the South. Traditional Republicans--the so-called Country Club Republicans-- were initially put off by the near fanaticism of the New Right. Traditional, country club Republicans have demonstrated time and again that advocacy of tax cuts is what they most expect from the party. Over time, the traditional Republicans may have thought they would change the New Right, but what occurred was the partial conversion of the traditional Republicans to the cultural crusade of their allies. It was partly a matter of the old saying about being in for pence meant being in for a pound. Success is also a powerful recruiting tool, and aspiring Republican politicians came to realize in order to be victorious, they needed to win the full support of the New Right. A political “tribe” that is more inclined than not to vote with the Republicans are the so-called “White-bread Protestants,” they attend mainline churches and are more less moderates on cultural matters. Decades ago, they were certain Republican voters. In 2004, 60% of them supported George W. Bush. Some have speculated that excessive concessions to the Hard Right could drive some of them away. But for the moment, the appeal of the national defense issue is likely to keep the vast majority of them in the Republican fold.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Thursday, February 21, 2008
NeoConservative Foreign Policy
Neo Conservatives used the pages of Commentary and The Public Interest to defend the Vietnam War and advance their aggressive anti-communist policies. The Vietnam War began the gradual destruction of foreign policy bipartisanship in the United States. In foreign affairs, the Neo Conservatives tended to take a Manichean viewpoint, seeing only “good” and “evil” and this attitude persisted after the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Even with the collapse of Soviet power, the Neo Conservatives were eventually to convert most of their Republican allies to a unilateralist, assertive, crusading approach to foreign policy. On the other hand, the Neo Conservatives quickly embraced modified laissez faire economics. Indeed, their conversion to conservatism was often related to the appeal of market fundamentalism and their disillusionment with the welfare state. Many of them came to excel as apologists for so-called market fundamentalism, often writing on behalf of conservative think tanks. They eventually succeeded in shifting the “popular focus from workers to entrepreneurs, from income to wealth, from job creation to share-price increases, and from government policy innovation to private-sector autonomy.”
When the US withdrew from Vietnam, the Neo Conservatives knew that battling another menace was necessary to revitalize the martial spirit of the American people. In foreign affairs, the Neo Conservatives were impatient with the gradual, moderate approach of those who pursued containment as the basic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. The Neo Conservatives were anxious to confront more directly the Soviets and to deploy American power to reshape the world to conform to American ideals. Neo Conservative intellectuals had contempt for Henry Kissinger, who worked for accommodation with the Soviet Union. They were hawkish, critical of deterrence, and inclined to exaggerate the power of the Soviet Union. They were convinced that theirs’ was a righteous cause and that any means were justified in battling Communism. Though they were highly moralistic, their policies were amoral. Since President Richard Nixon opened relations with China and pursued détente, there was a tendency for politicians and writers to believe the Cold War was on the way to being ended. One reason they so disliked Jimmy Carter and called him an “isolationist” and “appeaser” is that they understood that the Georgian was pursuing Nixon’s policy of defusing the Cold War. It is doubtful that many liberals grasped this. They followed Norman Podhoretz in warning that the United States was about to be “Finlandized” into economic and political subordination to the Soviet Union. In the eighties, they eagerly worked for Ronald Reagan because he harped on the evil of communism. Working for him, they called the right-wing Contra thugs in Nicaragua and Angola’s Jonas Savimbi “freedom fighters.”
The Neo Conservatives eventually developed a core doctrine that held that democratic states were friendly states and that the US should vigorously be promoting democracy around the world. In 1976, some of them formed the Committee on the Present Danger. In addition to Neo Conservatives there were traditional nationalists Elmo Zumwalt, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Nitze, Eugene Rostow, and William Casey. These people also believed that the Soviets were employing terrorism as a major weapon in the Cold War. Under Reagan, the new conservatives and their allies assumed important posts. Jean Kirkpatrick became Ambassador to the United Nations, and Bill Casey led the CIA. Richard Perle became assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, and Elliott Abrams became assistant secretary of state for international relations. He is a strong friend of Israel, having said, “there can be no doubt that Jews..are to stand apart –except for Israel- from the rest of the population.”
Perle has been an important figure in the Republican foreign policy apparatus for a long time. But for some reason he has maintained his political registration as a Democrat. Paul Wolfowitz ran the State Department’s policy planning staff for two years.
For a time Wolfowitz was the leader of a group at the CIA called “Team B,” an assemblage of conservative scholars who were very critical of CIA estimates and developed an alarmist projection of Soviet power that p[roved to be wrong and inaccurate on many counts. Gerald Ford permitted Director George H.W. Bush to put them in high places when Ronald Reagan showed strength in the 1976 primaries. They wanted the CIA to estimate that the Soviet Union was more powerful than it was. Wolfowitz, a former academician, also served as Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Indonesia, where he was a strong booster of President Haji Suharto, known as “the most corrupt world leader in recent history.” Wolfowitz backed policies that threatened human rights and aspirations for democracy and helped inspire the reckless deregulation of banking there which resulted in the economic collapse of 1997.”
The Neo Conservatives loved Reagan’s belligerent rhetoric but were deeply frustrated because he did not close in to kill off the Soviet Union --the “evil empire.” Yet they eventually concluded that Reagan embraced enough of their new foreign policy fundamentalism to bring down the Soviet empire, and this became the paradigm for the future. Results came from engagement, bold actions, and a potent and threatening military. Paul Berman has noted “Neo Conservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a romance of ruthlessness- an expectation that small numbers of people might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their ferocity could be released. In the Reagan years they had some opportunities to shape events. Casey ousted and marginalized CIA analysts whose views did not coincide with his. Oliver North and his associates illegally supplied right wing rebels in Nicaragua and protected their drug trade. The unleashed ferocity of these people resulted in the Iran Contra scandal.
Typical of the Jewish NeoCons was Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was to have a strong influence on Republican military and foreign policy in the administrations of the Bushes. While at the University of Chicago, he became the protégé of Albert Wohlstetter, a hawkish geo-military thinker who would later become a bitter critic of détente. Although Wolfowitz used promotion of democracy as a reason for the second Iraq War, some accuse him of having a “passionate hatred of democracy.” This was because he and other Neo Conservatives were strong backers of brutal tactics in the 1980s to quell democratic movements in Latin America. He had been pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein since 1979 and eventually fashioned a doctrine that called for a U.S. war to overthrow Saddam as a first step in remodeling the region to make it safe for Israel. In time he would exert enormous influence.
Because the Neo Conservative were urban and intellectuals, they were not entirely accepted by the New Right. Eliot Abrams, Norman Podhorentz’s son-in-law, was another influential Neo Conservative who served in the Reagan administration and was convicted of lying to Congress. He was to direct White House Middle East policy for George W. Bush. Perhaps the most influential Neo Conservative foreign policy spokesman was Richard Perle who worked with Donald Rumsfeld in the Ford Administration to damage the Salt II Arms Treaty. Known as the “Prince of Darkness,” – a title he shared with Bob Novak-- Richard Perle became another key advisor in the second Bush administration. As Assistant Secretary of Defense, he played a major role in persuading Ronald Reagan to spend vast amounts on defense and to launch the so-called Star Wars defensive missile system. Perle and other Neo Conservatives occupied second and third tier positions in the Reagan administration. James Baker, Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State, was uncomfortable with their foreign policy moralism and grandiose designs and “couldn’t wait to sweep [them] out.” Their moralism would later be called “hard Wilsonianism.”
Perle and other Neo Conservatives believed that the end of the Cold War gave the United States a golden opportunity to reshape the Middle East. While working for the Reagan administration, he was discovered assisting an Israeli arms manufacturer. By the 1990s, he came to oppose the Israel-Palestine peace process, used his influence with Israel to scuttle Bill Clinton’s Camp David Peace Conference, and advised Israel to set aside talks with the Palestinians and concentrate on overthrowing the Iraqi government and reconfigure the political dynamics of the region. Once in power, Wolfowitz urged the administration to give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians. The Neo Conservatives had worried that the fall of the Soviet Union would mean the loss of “a defining foreign demon,” as Norman Podhoretz put it. For that reason, they welcomed the First Gulf War. Irving Kristol thought it was always an excellent sign when the people wanted to fight a war.
At the end of the First Gulf War, Neo Conservative Paul Wolfowitz believed that George W. Bush muffed an opportunity to oust Saddam Hussein. In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, working for then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney wrote a paper entitled “Defense Planning Guidance Defense” stating that the United States should pay less attention to the opinions of allies and be more willing to use force to gain its ends in the world. It justified the use of preemptive force when necessary to reshape the world as the US wanted. Zalmay Khalilzad, who was then the Bush administration’s ambassador to Iraq, assisted them. This paper embodied what came to be known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Secretary Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, his undersecretary for policy, looked to the day when the US would cash in on its military preeminence to reorder the world along the lines of American democracy and values. They looked forward to a permanent military presence on six continents as a means of preventing “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” These views conflicted with the outlook of the senior Bush and the paper was put aside. Their proposals were considered rash and extreme at the time, but these views were to become the nucleus of the Bush Doctrine, which was enunciated in 2002.
Richard Perle was a key architect of Neo Conservative foreign policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and attends meetings of the editorial board of the Jerusalem Post. Perle is a close friend of David Wurmser, another AEI scholar, known for his hawkish, pro-Israel views. In the administration of the younger Bush, he operated an intelligence and disinformation shop first in the State Department and then in the Pentagon, where his task was to build a case for invading Iraq and to shoot down CIA reports. Other NeoCons to operate out of the AEI were Michael Ledeen and Irving Kristol. As ayoung man, Ledeen was a journalist in Rome where he developed respect for the Italian Fascists. He became a leading NeoCon theorist. Allies Matthew Sculy and John Shattan are well positioned in the White House and I. Lewis Libby is Vice President Cheney’s chief-of-staff. Prize-winning London based journalist John Pilger considered Perle a dangerous person who thought about “total war” in the 1980s against the Soviet Union and later applied the same approach to Iraq. Perle became head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Council under George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. As the secretary’s chief advisor in the administration of George W. Bush, he is credited with foreshadowing the administration’s new defense doctrine of pre-emptive threats and strikes. Paul Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and subsequently served two years as president of the World Bank.
In the second Bush administration, Wolfowitz’s unilateral militarism found eager supporters in an administration shaped by traditional deep- southern militarism. The United States started to dismantle test treaties and agreements, question the value of the Oslo Accord, and refused to sign Kyoto Agreement It also did all it could to undermine the International Criminal Court and persuaded one hundred countries to sign treaties exempting U.S. citizens and employees from its jurisdiction Larry Franklin, a Neo Conservative Pentagon analyst, was not a Jew but shared the Neo Conservative view that there was no difference between the foreign policy objectives of the United States and Israel. In January 2006, he was sentenced to twelve years incarceration for passing secret information to the Israeli embassy and two operatives for the IIPAC. The judge noted he was a nice fellow who thought he was helping his country.
Perle and the Neo Conservatives used the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to push the United States into invading Iraq in 2003. After no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Perle brushed aside the questions of weapons of mass destruction ( WMDs) and praised the administration for getting into Iraq in time. Next on his agenda were North Korea and Iran, whom he saw as states that sponsored terrorism.
The Neo Conservative hawks found strong support coming from the New Right, with the exception of Patrick Buchanan and his followers. The Buchananites saw imperialism as unconservative and believed young Bush’s war in Iraq was a massive blunder. In foreign affairs, the Neo Conservatives and Religious Right frequently found common ground. Members of the Christian Right had supported what was had been called foreign policy fundamentalists who were impatient with restraint in the use of force against Communism. It was a somewhat older form of foreign policy fundamentalism than that of the Neo Conservatives. It was less into Wilsonian crusading and more into the use of brute force when necessary variety. Still, it was a very good match. By playing to the cultural and military fundamentalism of the Christian Right, the Neo Conservative had a very good shot at capturing the heart of America. Neo Conservatives worked hard to win over the Religious Right, but they grew uneasy when the Christian Evangelicals started to dominate the party. Charles Krauthammer and Chris Caldwell were heard to complain about “yahoos” who emitted the rebel yell and were most probably racists.
The foreign policy fundamentalists of the 1960s and 1970s were impatient with foreign policy professionals who seemed to be too concerned with complexities, nuances, and desire to avoid a unilateralist foreign policy. Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of State, could be classified as a foreign policy fundamentalist. He once stunned Howard Baker and Michael Deaver by talking about bombing Cuba, saying, “We can make that fucking place look like a parking lot!” Neo Conservative hawks shared this impatience and were idealists who believed that the United States should be more willing to use its power to transform the world to greater proximity to US ideals. Their concerns converged most frequently in the Middle East. The Christian Right had theological reasons to protect Israel, and many of the Neo Conservative hawks were Jews and supportive of the aggressive and militant Likud Party. Overlooking the already greatly deteriorated State of the Soviet Union, they saw the Reagan defense program as a “Hail Mary pass” that worked. They also saw George H. W. Bush’s victory in the 1991 Gulf War as another bold stroke for which they deserved much credit.
These successes reinforced the idea that by just “leaning forward,” in Wolfowitz’s words, the US could make great positive changes in the world. As the Soviet Union imploded, Neo Conservatives saw a golden opportunity for the United States to deal with its remaining enemies. Charles Krauthammer wrote a column entitled ”Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World,” in which he spelled out the Neo Conservative doctrine of “a unipolar world whose center is a confederated West” led by the sole superpower, the United States. The term “unipolar” did not survive, but Neo Conservatives continued to build on their vision of the United States using its power to reshape the world.
Many Neo Conservatives were members of “the Vulcans,” the team Condoleezza Rice assembled to tutor George W. Bush in foreign affairs. Rice was not a Neo Conservative, but NeoCon hardliners managed to make a convert of George W. Bush. Many of their views could be found in an influential policy paper, which would become an outline for Bush foreign policy. In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century.” It called for a regime change in Iraq, which would make that country a key American base for effecting other changes in the Middle East, where there was to be a permanent US military presence in several countries. The authors believed that corrupt and undemocratic governments in the Middle East bred terrorism and that in order to combat terrorism it was necessary to replace these regimes with democracies. For this reason, changing regimes in Egypt and Jordan was also desirable. When Joshua Micah Marshall asked Richard Perle about upending the regime in Egypt, Perle responded, “Surely we can do better than Mubarek.”
Both the Neo Conservatives and the Bush family retainers were agreed that the US should invade Iraq, but they had somewhat different reasons for doing so. Almost certainly, George H.W. Bush expected that and family retainers like James Baker III, Brent Scowcroft, and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia would guide the younger Bush and keep the NeoCons in line. They trusted Dick Cheney to be a faithful trustee, even though he was very close to the elder Bush’s long-time enemy, Donald Rumsfeld. They did not expect old line nationalists Cheney and Rumsfeld to form an alliance with the Neo Cons or for the younger Bush to often ignore the advice of Baker and Scowcroft. In the end, the major voices in policy making became those of Cheney and Rumsfeld. However, Baker and the Big Oil elements did manage to prevail holding down Iraqi oil production to boost gasoline and fuel oil prices.
The occupation of Iraq was to be the first of a series of victories in “multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.” It indicated that getting U.S. troops into the Gulf area “transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The PNAC position paper also recommended reviving a biochemical weapons program, the creation of a Star Wars type missile defense system, increased defense spending, and repudiation of the ABM treaty. It was critical of the old policy of deterrence and noted that past Pentagon plans for a war against North Korea did not include force requirements for entering that country and removing an abhorrent regime. The United Nations was portrayed as a potential rival and obstacle. Martin Perez, publisher of The New Republic, and James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, were connected to this think tank.
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and his mentor Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz were also associated with PNAC. The report was rewritten for the National Security Council in 2002. Robert Kagan and William Kristol were among those who founded PNAC in 1997. Kagan, a classical scholar, believes that Americans by nature are warriors and that Europeans are pacifists. Americans are at their moral best when engaged in battle. Bill Kristol, son of a founder of the Neo Conservatives, is sometimes called a “mini-con,” suggesting that the second generation of Neo Conservatives lacked the profundity of their fathers.
PNAC had a staff filled with people who had been with the Committee for the Present Danger, which wanted to win the cold war, and Friends of the Democratic Center, which worked hard to support right-wing elements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. PNAC founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which worked with Condoleezza Rice to develop plans to educate Americans about the danger Iraq posed to US security. Perle headed a committee of eighteen that recommended reemphasizing the peace process and looking more toward the eventual democratization of the Middle East as a means for solving Israel’s problems in the region. Douglas Feith, one of the drafters, was to become Under-Secretary for Policy in the Bush Pentagon. The PNAC white paper reflected views expressed in an earlier position paper that was prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netenyahu, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Middle East” by a team led by Richard Perle. They wanted Bibi to stop pursuing policies in accordance with the Oslo Accords and focus on weakening Syria and working to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They believed that Turkey and Jordan would work with Israel toward these goals. William Kristol and Robert Kagan also urged pre-emptive action against potential terrorist states in a 1996 Foreign Affairs article. Neo Conservatives in 1998 wrote a letter to President Clinton demanding preemptive action against Iraq. When Clinton bombed Iraq for four days, many Republicans criticized him for taking aggressive action and trying to distract public attention from his sex scandal.
There were other Republican elements that viewed an attack on Iraq as desirable because it would reduce energy problems. The extent to which a concern for a rapidly growing dependence on Arab-controlled hydrocarbons influenced Neo Conservative policy is unclear. The Baker Institute, which was not a Neo Conservative operation, produced a report for Cheney’s energy task force in April 2001, in which it focused on this energy problem and added that Iraq was “a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets. The Cheney task force recommended “military intervention” to eliminate this threat to U.S. security. It is possible that Bush was not “duped” by the Neo Conservatives. It may be more likely that traditional conservatives exploited “the Neo Conservatives’ ideological arsenal to advance his preferred set of policies than visa versa.”
The Neo Conservatives were within the mainstream of modern American foreign policy to the extent that they genuinely want material prosperity, democracy, and freedom for other peoples. Even their belief that this is the moment for the United States to move decisively to make the world better is in line with the call for an American Century that was heard after World War II. However, their insistence upon preemptive action is a radical departure, and their unilateralism and scorn for international cooperation are sharp departures from decades of American policy. The hawkish Neo Conservatives were in a position to have a great influence on public opinion. William Safire had a New York Times column, and Krauthammer repeatedly pressed for war in his Washington Post column. Robert Bartley was editor of The Wall Street Journal. A network of Perle friends was well positioned in the think tanks. Meyra Wurmser was at the Hudson Institute and had founded The Middle East Media Research Institute, which turned out to be financed by Israeli military intelligence. Her husband, David Wurmser headed Middle East Studies at AEI.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists launched an horrific attack on the United States, which gave the Neo Conservatives a golden opportunity to implement their policies. Nine days later, Neo Conservative leader Bill Kristol, published an “Open Letter to the President” in the Weekly Standard, a magazine founded with $10 million Rupert Murdock donated for the creation of a Neo Conservative magazine. Kristol demanded that an effort be made to remove Saddam Hussein from power due to his hostility to U.S. interests and possible links to terrorism. By removing him, the U.S. would be establishing a “safe zone” in the Middle East. He also called for retaliation against Iran and Syria because they had backed Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that had repeatedly attacked Israel. Forty-one Neo Conservatives signed the letter, including William Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, Midge Decter and her husband Norman Podhorentz, Deputy Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, Jean Kirkpatrick, Robert Kagan, Frank Gafney, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman. The latter was affiliated with the Center for Strategic Studies, and Kagan wrote for the Weekly Standard.
Tom Donnelly of PNAC joined the chorus of those calling for an attack on Iraq, noting that this time a half million troops would not be necessary. The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg used the so-called “Ledeen Doctrine” to justify an attack on Iraq. Former Pentagon official Michael Ledeen was described as believing that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” Ledeen had taught at Washington University and also assisted Lt. Colonel Oliver North to sell arms to the Ayatollah. In his book The War Against Terror Masters, Ledeen identified the countries that should be attacked: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Ledeen revealed a bit of the Neo Conservatives’ Jacobin streak, stating “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad.” It was necessary to destroy enemies “to advance our historic mission” because they “have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions--and names them for their inability to keep pace.” On September 24,2002, Michael Ledeen wrote in The London Times that “The real foe is Middle Eastern tyranny” and called for regime change in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority as well as Iraq. After the Second Gulf War, he put Iran and Syria on the future hit list, saying “No one I know wants to wage war on Iran and Syria, but I believe there is now a clear recognition that we must defend ourselves against them.” The NeoCons saw a successful war against Iraq as the first step in bringing democracy to the Middle East and moving decisively against Israel’s enemies. Ledeen once claimed,” Americans believe that peace is normal, but that’s not true. Life isn’t like that. Peace is abnormal.”
James Woolsey would later tell a UCLA Republican audience that the United States was involved in “World War IV” and said it would last “ considerably longer than World Wars I or II.” He spoke strongly of forcing Syria into line with US policy. At about the same time, Wolfowitz was telling a congressional committee “we need to think about our policy in respect to a country [Syria] that harbors terrorists or harbors war criminals.” When the UN failed to back Bush’s invasion of Iraq, conservative circles began to hum with plans for replacing it.
Perle caused a great stir when he brought Laurent Murawiec to the Pentagon Policy Council on July 10, 2002, and she suggested that the US attack Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as Iraq. He was a Rand Corporation analyst who had also worked for Lyndon La Rouche. Murawiec identified Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent of the United States”.
The Bush Doctrine
Though most of the leading Neo Conservative hawks had no particular expertise in the Middle East or Islamic affairs, they were behind President Bush’s drive in 2002 and 2003 for war against Iraq. They were brilliant people capable of concocting brilliant schemes that sometimes worked; the problem was their impatience with detail and the opinion of other people and nations. They adhered to a domino-like theory that the dictator’s fall would bring democracy to much of the Middle East. They played a major role in Bush’s successful efforts to transfer fear of Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. A major long-term triumph for these Neo Conservative hawks was the Bush Doctrine, which was unveiled September 20, 2003. The roots of this aggressive foreign policy go back to a position paper Wolfowitz, and his deputy I. Lewis Libby, wrote for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. These ideas were more fully fleshed out in a paper issued by the Project for the New American Century in September 2000. The Bush Doctrine envisioned a new American global empire, in which the United States would act as a world policeman and impose its will by force when necessary, and it justified preemptive strikes against enemies who could damage the United States and its interests. In effect, Bush was saying that the rest of the world must accept American judgments about when its interests are so threatened that it must use force preemptively. It later developed that the intelligence claims the US used to invade Iraq in 2003 were so flawed that the administration had squandered much credibility elsewhere in the world. The doctrine’s logic was faulty in that it was argued that other nations must not resort to preemptive war, but it was a noble venture when the US undertook it.
Critics charged that it was fashioned by zealots who saw no limits to U.S. power and were intent on militarizing U.S. Foreign policy. The authors of the doctrine saw no problems in unilateralism and the U.S. throwing its weight around so long as its intentions were good.
National security professionals in the State and Defense Departments were infuriated by the “cowboy tactics” these people recommended. The national security establishment saw force as a last resort, and preferred to use it only in concert with allies. Moreover, they worried about unintended consequences of rash actions and feared that, though getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing, that the aftermath of a war could create great problems. They were of the opinion that Clinton had put Saddam “in a box” and believed that the UN inspections further neutralized the Iraqi dictator. Those who took this position maintained that Saddam would not supply terrorists with weapons because he knew what the consequences would be. Moreover, it was believed unlikely that he would attack a U.S. ally. They note that it was unclear in 1990 whether the U.S. was committed to Kuwait before Saddam invaded.
In 2002, it soon became clear that Bush had made up his mind that the U.S. must go to war with Iraq, but it not quite clear why the matter had become so urgent. At West Point’s spring, 2002 commencement, Bush argued that the war against terrorism made it necessary for new thinking about defense and noted that the U.S. “cannot put our trust in the word of tyrants.” It would soon become clear that he thought it necessary to turn away from deterrence and containment and move toward preemptive action against perceived enemies, among whom was Iraq. In a major address before the American Enterprise Institute in March 2003, the President echoed the PNAC position paper in justifying his call for war. He saw the creation of a democratic Iraq as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian problem. A democratic Iraq would lead to the transformation of the region and the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
The enunciation of the Bush Doctrine in September 2002 marked the triumph of Neo Conservative foreign policy. The Bush administration sent a position paper on national security strategy to Congress on September 20, 2002 that Bush Doctrine was enunciated. Law required this submission to Congress, but this was no ordinary paper. This “National Security Strategy for the United States” outlined a bold and somewhat aggressive stance that downplayed the long-standing doctrine of containment and announced that the US must have the right to preemptive strikes and war against its new enemies, terrorist states and terrorist organizations. Because the new foes were able to easily attack the United States with various weapons of mass destruction, the point was that the US must engage in “preemptive deterrence” (“anticipatory self-defense”) before the enemy had developed the capacity to attack the US or its friends. This approach had the obvious advantage of surprise and the use of a smaller force. But this preemptive deterrence was straining long-standing alliances and setting a precedent for other nations to use the same doctrine.
This extraordinary doctrine announced that the United States would never again allow another state to equal it in military power, and claimed the right to use its power to advance the cause of freedom anywhere in the world. The doctrine proclaimed that there was “a single sustainable model for national success,” and it was comprised of democracy, free enterprise, and democracy. The Bush Doctrine left to the United States to define these terms.
It was not completely clear if free enterprise meant unfettered capitalism and opening other countries to the ministrations of the International Monetary fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. However, in discussing lower taxes and pro-growth regulatory policies in messianic terms, it left little doubt that the Washington Consensus policies of the IMF and World Bank were to be applied everywhere. Its discussion of economics was couched in the terms of a closed intellectual system; there was no room for doubt or discussion. It is possible that the authors of the document saw 9/11 as a reaction against American economic policies. Around the time of that tragedy, trade representative Robert B. Zoellick suggested there were “intellectual connections” between opponents of US globalism and terrorists. In the same vein, Bush said “the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and we will defeat them by expanding and encouraging world trade.”
While the document appeared at a time when the administration was preparing public opinion for a preemptive strike against Iraq, much more was involved. It justified and placed in perspective the unilateral foreign policy the Bush administration had been following since its inception. The foundations for this sharp departure from American was a repudiation of the traditional policy of the first Bush, who was committed to multilateralism and international institutions, and who accepted the view that America was strongest when it was leading international efforts. Wolfowitz and the other designers of the Bush Doctrine may well have been operating out of genuinely utopian instincts, believing others would not react adversely to American unilateralism when they saw that it produced good results.
The Bush Doctrine assumes that lasting peace consisted of a world so ordered as to be friendly to American values and enterprise and preservation of the US position as sole superpower. The US was to assume the roles of “high-noon sheriff and proselytizing missionary.” One observer thought that it was only the logical extension of the general American belief that God gave the US a special role in history and that it had every right to be Number One. He noted that while a few radicals and intellectuals objected, and that the new Bush Doctrine “commands broad assent in virtually all segments of American society.”
The invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity to implement NeoCon doctrines It is difficult to find agreement on the extent to which oil influenced the decision to invade. There is a methodological problem here because no official went on record saying oil was a major consideration. Indeed, several said the exact opposite, but they eventually established records for lacking truthfulness. Many apply strict social science method in this case to accept the default position—that is, lacking airtight proof to the contrary, we accept official statements. Yet few think Bush would have invaded Iraq if it only exported rugs and pottery.
Paul O’Neill, a former Bush Secretary of the Treasury , said as much and talked about how White House officials were studying Iraq oil maps. We know that several energy position papers noted that Saddam Hussein was a “wild card” and a “swing producer” in the words of a Council on Foreign Relations Report. A report by the Baker Institute at Rice portrayed him as an irresponsible player on the international oil market.
Saddam could not be expected to always play by the rules and might sharply raise or lower production, creating an instability that the world’s oil barons deplored. According to OPEC general secretary Ali Rodriguez, Saddam and Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi were discussing a sharp reduction of oil exports to the West in April 2002. Those reports probably led to the US backed but unsuccessful coup against Chavez in Venezuela. That country had helped combat the 1973 oil embargo but could not be expected to do so again in 2002 with Chavez in power.
It is known that there were two approaches to moving against Iraq in 2003. The State Department organized a planning meeting at the home of Falah Aljibury, who worked for Regan and the senior Bush on Iraqi affairs. The plan was to insert forces to assist a coup, which would replace Saddam with a Bathist general we could control. There would be no long and costly occupation. Iraq’s oil transactions would b3ecome stable and predictable.
The Neo Conservative had very different ideas, and they had the upper hand in the Bush foreign policy operation. Their views were contained in a document entitled “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth.” In order to privatize Iraqi’s state owned industries—especially oil, a full invasion and occupation were required. The Pentagon supported this effort to create a private enterprise utopia.
The first American pro-consul in Iraq was retired General Jay Garner, a well-trained historian. He understood the Middle East, and promised elections in 90 days. Of course elections would have nullified NeoCon plans, which he read and rejected, but they would have produced friends rather than enemies for the United States in Iraq. He was soon “relocate,” and his replacement was Paul Bremer, III, a NeoCon and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates. He quickly privatized most businesses and banking, but ran into a huge roadblock when it came to oil. The problem was the NeoCon plan was that privatizing oil would weaken OPEC and, by increasing production, lower gas prices. Not the least of the problem, it offered no guaranteed that U.S. producers would control Iraqi oil. Speaking for U.s. big oil, Chevron CEO Philip Carroll, with the strong support of James Baker, III and US-Saudi interests, intervened and vetoed the plan. The Bush Administration accepted Carroll’s intervention, and soon Bremer was gone. The new US dispensation for Iraq oil would be a state controlled monopoly that would be guided and work through big US firms. Historically, Iraqi oil production had been held down to keep prices up, and this pattern was to continue. Now production levels were far below pre-invasion levels. The NeoCons lost their bid to battle OPEC and drive down oil prices, but they were successful in privatizing a great deal of Iraq’s economy.
The NeoCon foreign policy doctrines represented a form of militant foreign policy fundamentalism, and they provided a convenient means for the U.S .to short-circuit international law and the United Nations Charter. The Bush Doctrine reflected the impatience of its framers with international criticism and the gradualism and care required to implement containment policies. At a more fundamental level, it was another aspect of the New Right’s cultural wars to restore the old doctrine of Manifest Destiny and remove the deep shame that had attended the evacuation of Saigon and was a frontal attack on all those who thought America was in danger of doing sometime wrong. It would vanquish moral relativism and restore moral authority and the imperial presidency.
Most attributed the failed George W. Bush adventure in Iraq to the influence of the NeoCons, but they nevertheless retained great influence in his White House. They worked ceaselessly to build a case for attacking Iran appeared to fall short of gathering enough support to accomplish this. Russell Kirk once sadly remarked : “They aspire to bring about a world of uniformity and dull standardization, Americanized, industrialized, democratized, ‘logicalized’, and boring. They are cultural and economic imperialists, many of them.”
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When the US withdrew from Vietnam, the Neo Conservatives knew that battling another menace was necessary to revitalize the martial spirit of the American people. In foreign affairs, the Neo Conservatives were impatient with the gradual, moderate approach of those who pursued containment as the basic strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union. The Neo Conservatives were anxious to confront more directly the Soviets and to deploy American power to reshape the world to conform to American ideals. Neo Conservative intellectuals had contempt for Henry Kissinger, who worked for accommodation with the Soviet Union. They were hawkish, critical of deterrence, and inclined to exaggerate the power of the Soviet Union. They were convinced that theirs’ was a righteous cause and that any means were justified in battling Communism. Though they were highly moralistic, their policies were amoral. Since President Richard Nixon opened relations with China and pursued détente, there was a tendency for politicians and writers to believe the Cold War was on the way to being ended. One reason they so disliked Jimmy Carter and called him an “isolationist” and “appeaser” is that they understood that the Georgian was pursuing Nixon’s policy of defusing the Cold War. It is doubtful that many liberals grasped this. They followed Norman Podhoretz in warning that the United States was about to be “Finlandized” into economic and political subordination to the Soviet Union. In the eighties, they eagerly worked for Ronald Reagan because he harped on the evil of communism. Working for him, they called the right-wing Contra thugs in Nicaragua and Angola’s Jonas Savimbi “freedom fighters.”
The Neo Conservatives eventually developed a core doctrine that held that democratic states were friendly states and that the US should vigorously be promoting democracy around the world. In 1976, some of them formed the Committee on the Present Danger. In addition to Neo Conservatives there were traditional nationalists Elmo Zumwalt, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Nitze, Eugene Rostow, and William Casey. These people also believed that the Soviets were employing terrorism as a major weapon in the Cold War. Under Reagan, the new conservatives and their allies assumed important posts. Jean Kirkpatrick became Ambassador to the United Nations, and Bill Casey led the CIA. Richard Perle became assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, and Elliott Abrams became assistant secretary of state for international relations. He is a strong friend of Israel, having said, “there can be no doubt that Jews..are to stand apart –except for Israel- from the rest of the population.”
Perle has been an important figure in the Republican foreign policy apparatus for a long time. But for some reason he has maintained his political registration as a Democrat. Paul Wolfowitz ran the State Department’s policy planning staff for two years.
For a time Wolfowitz was the leader of a group at the CIA called “Team B,” an assemblage of conservative scholars who were very critical of CIA estimates and developed an alarmist projection of Soviet power that p[roved to be wrong and inaccurate on many counts. Gerald Ford permitted Director George H.W. Bush to put them in high places when Ronald Reagan showed strength in the 1976 primaries. They wanted the CIA to estimate that the Soviet Union was more powerful than it was. Wolfowitz, a former academician, also served as Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Indonesia, where he was a strong booster of President Haji Suharto, known as “the most corrupt world leader in recent history.” Wolfowitz backed policies that threatened human rights and aspirations for democracy and helped inspire the reckless deregulation of banking there which resulted in the economic collapse of 1997.”
The Neo Conservatives loved Reagan’s belligerent rhetoric but were deeply frustrated because he did not close in to kill off the Soviet Union --the “evil empire.” Yet they eventually concluded that Reagan embraced enough of their new foreign policy fundamentalism to bring down the Soviet empire, and this became the paradigm for the future. Results came from engagement, bold actions, and a potent and threatening military. Paul Berman has noted “Neo Conservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a romance of ruthlessness- an expectation that small numbers of people might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their ferocity could be released. In the Reagan years they had some opportunities to shape events. Casey ousted and marginalized CIA analysts whose views did not coincide with his. Oliver North and his associates illegally supplied right wing rebels in Nicaragua and protected their drug trade. The unleashed ferocity of these people resulted in the Iran Contra scandal.
Typical of the Jewish NeoCons was Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was to have a strong influence on Republican military and foreign policy in the administrations of the Bushes. While at the University of Chicago, he became the protégé of Albert Wohlstetter, a hawkish geo-military thinker who would later become a bitter critic of détente. Although Wolfowitz used promotion of democracy as a reason for the second Iraq War, some accuse him of having a “passionate hatred of democracy.” This was because he and other Neo Conservatives were strong backers of brutal tactics in the 1980s to quell democratic movements in Latin America. He had been pushing for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein since 1979 and eventually fashioned a doctrine that called for a U.S. war to overthrow Saddam as a first step in remodeling the region to make it safe for Israel. In time he would exert enormous influence.
Because the Neo Conservative were urban and intellectuals, they were not entirely accepted by the New Right. Eliot Abrams, Norman Podhorentz’s son-in-law, was another influential Neo Conservative who served in the Reagan administration and was convicted of lying to Congress. He was to direct White House Middle East policy for George W. Bush. Perhaps the most influential Neo Conservative foreign policy spokesman was Richard Perle who worked with Donald Rumsfeld in the Ford Administration to damage the Salt II Arms Treaty. Known as the “Prince of Darkness,” – a title he shared with Bob Novak-- Richard Perle became another key advisor in the second Bush administration. As Assistant Secretary of Defense, he played a major role in persuading Ronald Reagan to spend vast amounts on defense and to launch the so-called Star Wars defensive missile system. Perle and other Neo Conservatives occupied second and third tier positions in the Reagan administration. James Baker, Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State, was uncomfortable with their foreign policy moralism and grandiose designs and “couldn’t wait to sweep [them] out.” Their moralism would later be called “hard Wilsonianism.”
Perle and other Neo Conservatives believed that the end of the Cold War gave the United States a golden opportunity to reshape the Middle East. While working for the Reagan administration, he was discovered assisting an Israeli arms manufacturer. By the 1990s, he came to oppose the Israel-Palestine peace process, used his influence with Israel to scuttle Bill Clinton’s Camp David Peace Conference, and advised Israel to set aside talks with the Palestinians and concentrate on overthrowing the Iraqi government and reconfigure the political dynamics of the region. Once in power, Wolfowitz urged the administration to give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians. The Neo Conservatives had worried that the fall of the Soviet Union would mean the loss of “a defining foreign demon,” as Norman Podhoretz put it. For that reason, they welcomed the First Gulf War. Irving Kristol thought it was always an excellent sign when the people wanted to fight a war.
At the end of the First Gulf War, Neo Conservative Paul Wolfowitz believed that George W. Bush muffed an opportunity to oust Saddam Hussein. In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, working for then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney wrote a paper entitled “Defense Planning Guidance Defense” stating that the United States should pay less attention to the opinions of allies and be more willing to use force to gain its ends in the world. It justified the use of preemptive force when necessary to reshape the world as the US wanted. Zalmay Khalilzad, who was then the Bush administration’s ambassador to Iraq, assisted them. This paper embodied what came to be known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Secretary Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, his undersecretary for policy, looked to the day when the US would cash in on its military preeminence to reorder the world along the lines of American democracy and values. They looked forward to a permanent military presence on six continents as a means of preventing “potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” These views conflicted with the outlook of the senior Bush and the paper was put aside. Their proposals were considered rash and extreme at the time, but these views were to become the nucleus of the Bush Doctrine, which was enunciated in 2002.
Richard Perle was a key architect of Neo Conservative foreign policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and attends meetings of the editorial board of the Jerusalem Post. Perle is a close friend of David Wurmser, another AEI scholar, known for his hawkish, pro-Israel views. In the administration of the younger Bush, he operated an intelligence and disinformation shop first in the State Department and then in the Pentagon, where his task was to build a case for invading Iraq and to shoot down CIA reports. Other NeoCons to operate out of the AEI were Michael Ledeen and Irving Kristol. As ayoung man, Ledeen was a journalist in Rome where he developed respect for the Italian Fascists. He became a leading NeoCon theorist. Allies Matthew Sculy and John Shattan are well positioned in the White House and I. Lewis Libby is Vice President Cheney’s chief-of-staff. Prize-winning London based journalist John Pilger considered Perle a dangerous person who thought about “total war” in the 1980s against the Soviet Union and later applied the same approach to Iraq. Perle became head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Council under George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. As the secretary’s chief advisor in the administration of George W. Bush, he is credited with foreshadowing the administration’s new defense doctrine of pre-emptive threats and strikes. Paul Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and subsequently served two years as president of the World Bank.
In the second Bush administration, Wolfowitz’s unilateral militarism found eager supporters in an administration shaped by traditional deep- southern militarism. The United States started to dismantle test treaties and agreements, question the value of the Oslo Accord, and refused to sign Kyoto Agreement It also did all it could to undermine the International Criminal Court and persuaded one hundred countries to sign treaties exempting U.S. citizens and employees from its jurisdiction Larry Franklin, a Neo Conservative Pentagon analyst, was not a Jew but shared the Neo Conservative view that there was no difference between the foreign policy objectives of the United States and Israel. In January 2006, he was sentenced to twelve years incarceration for passing secret information to the Israeli embassy and two operatives for the IIPAC. The judge noted he was a nice fellow who thought he was helping his country.
Perle and the Neo Conservatives used the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to push the United States into invading Iraq in 2003. After no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Perle brushed aside the questions of weapons of mass destruction ( WMDs) and praised the administration for getting into Iraq in time. Next on his agenda were North Korea and Iran, whom he saw as states that sponsored terrorism.
The Neo Conservative hawks found strong support coming from the New Right, with the exception of Patrick Buchanan and his followers. The Buchananites saw imperialism as unconservative and believed young Bush’s war in Iraq was a massive blunder. In foreign affairs, the Neo Conservatives and Religious Right frequently found common ground. Members of the Christian Right had supported what was had been called foreign policy fundamentalists who were impatient with restraint in the use of force against Communism. It was a somewhat older form of foreign policy fundamentalism than that of the Neo Conservatives. It was less into Wilsonian crusading and more into the use of brute force when necessary variety. Still, it was a very good match. By playing to the cultural and military fundamentalism of the Christian Right, the Neo Conservative had a very good shot at capturing the heart of America. Neo Conservatives worked hard to win over the Religious Right, but they grew uneasy when the Christian Evangelicals started to dominate the party. Charles Krauthammer and Chris Caldwell were heard to complain about “yahoos” who emitted the rebel yell and were most probably racists.
The foreign policy fundamentalists of the 1960s and 1970s were impatient with foreign policy professionals who seemed to be too concerned with complexities, nuances, and desire to avoid a unilateralist foreign policy. Alexander Haig, Ronald Reagan’s first Secretary of State, could be classified as a foreign policy fundamentalist. He once stunned Howard Baker and Michael Deaver by talking about bombing Cuba, saying, “We can make that fucking place look like a parking lot!” Neo Conservative hawks shared this impatience and were idealists who believed that the United States should be more willing to use its power to transform the world to greater proximity to US ideals. Their concerns converged most frequently in the Middle East. The Christian Right had theological reasons to protect Israel, and many of the Neo Conservative hawks were Jews and supportive of the aggressive and militant Likud Party. Overlooking the already greatly deteriorated State of the Soviet Union, they saw the Reagan defense program as a “Hail Mary pass” that worked. They also saw George H. W. Bush’s victory in the 1991 Gulf War as another bold stroke for which they deserved much credit.
These successes reinforced the idea that by just “leaning forward,” in Wolfowitz’s words, the US could make great positive changes in the world. As the Soviet Union imploded, Neo Conservatives saw a golden opportunity for the United States to deal with its remaining enemies. Charles Krauthammer wrote a column entitled ”Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World,” in which he spelled out the Neo Conservative doctrine of “a unipolar world whose center is a confederated West” led by the sole superpower, the United States. The term “unipolar” did not survive, but Neo Conservatives continued to build on their vision of the United States using its power to reshape the world.
Many Neo Conservatives were members of “the Vulcans,” the team Condoleezza Rice assembled to tutor George W. Bush in foreign affairs. Rice was not a Neo Conservative, but NeoCon hardliners managed to make a convert of George W. Bush. Many of their views could be found in an influential policy paper, which would become an outline for Bush foreign policy. In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century.” It called for a regime change in Iraq, which would make that country a key American base for effecting other changes in the Middle East, where there was to be a permanent US military presence in several countries. The authors believed that corrupt and undemocratic governments in the Middle East bred terrorism and that in order to combat terrorism it was necessary to replace these regimes with democracies. For this reason, changing regimes in Egypt and Jordan was also desirable. When Joshua Micah Marshall asked Richard Perle about upending the regime in Egypt, Perle responded, “Surely we can do better than Mubarek.”
Both the Neo Conservatives and the Bush family retainers were agreed that the US should invade Iraq, but they had somewhat different reasons for doing so. Almost certainly, George H.W. Bush expected that and family retainers like James Baker III, Brent Scowcroft, and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia would guide the younger Bush and keep the NeoCons in line. They trusted Dick Cheney to be a faithful trustee, even though he was very close to the elder Bush’s long-time enemy, Donald Rumsfeld. They did not expect old line nationalists Cheney and Rumsfeld to form an alliance with the Neo Cons or for the younger Bush to often ignore the advice of Baker and Scowcroft. In the end, the major voices in policy making became those of Cheney and Rumsfeld. However, Baker and the Big Oil elements did manage to prevail holding down Iraqi oil production to boost gasoline and fuel oil prices.
The occupation of Iraq was to be the first of a series of victories in “multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.” It indicated that getting U.S. troops into the Gulf area “transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The PNAC position paper also recommended reviving a biochemical weapons program, the creation of a Star Wars type missile defense system, increased defense spending, and repudiation of the ABM treaty. It was critical of the old policy of deterrence and noted that past Pentagon plans for a war against North Korea did not include force requirements for entering that country and removing an abhorrent regime. The United Nations was portrayed as a potential rival and obstacle. Martin Perez, publisher of The New Republic, and James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, were connected to this think tank.
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and his mentor Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Eliot Abrams, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz were also associated with PNAC. The report was rewritten for the National Security Council in 2002. Robert Kagan and William Kristol were among those who founded PNAC in 1997. Kagan, a classical scholar, believes that Americans by nature are warriors and that Europeans are pacifists. Americans are at their moral best when engaged in battle. Bill Kristol, son of a founder of the Neo Conservatives, is sometimes called a “mini-con,” suggesting that the second generation of Neo Conservatives lacked the profundity of their fathers.
PNAC had a staff filled with people who had been with the Committee for the Present Danger, which wanted to win the cold war, and Friends of the Democratic Center, which worked hard to support right-wing elements in Nicaragua and El Salvador. PNAC founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which worked with Condoleezza Rice to develop plans to educate Americans about the danger Iraq posed to US security. Perle headed a committee of eighteen that recommended reemphasizing the peace process and looking more toward the eventual democratization of the Middle East as a means for solving Israel’s problems in the region. Douglas Feith, one of the drafters, was to become Under-Secretary for Policy in the Bush Pentagon. The PNAC white paper reflected views expressed in an earlier position paper that was prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netenyahu, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Middle East” by a team led by Richard Perle. They wanted Bibi to stop pursuing policies in accordance with the Oslo Accords and focus on weakening Syria and working to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They believed that Turkey and Jordan would work with Israel toward these goals. William Kristol and Robert Kagan also urged pre-emptive action against potential terrorist states in a 1996 Foreign Affairs article. Neo Conservatives in 1998 wrote a letter to President Clinton demanding preemptive action against Iraq. When Clinton bombed Iraq for four days, many Republicans criticized him for taking aggressive action and trying to distract public attention from his sex scandal.
There were other Republican elements that viewed an attack on Iraq as desirable because it would reduce energy problems. The extent to which a concern for a rapidly growing dependence on Arab-controlled hydrocarbons influenced Neo Conservative policy is unclear. The Baker Institute, which was not a Neo Conservative operation, produced a report for Cheney’s energy task force in April 2001, in which it focused on this energy problem and added that Iraq was “a destabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets. The Cheney task force recommended “military intervention” to eliminate this threat to U.S. security. It is possible that Bush was not “duped” by the Neo Conservatives. It may be more likely that traditional conservatives exploited “the Neo Conservatives’ ideological arsenal to advance his preferred set of policies than visa versa.”
The Neo Conservatives were within the mainstream of modern American foreign policy to the extent that they genuinely want material prosperity, democracy, and freedom for other peoples. Even their belief that this is the moment for the United States to move decisively to make the world better is in line with the call for an American Century that was heard after World War II. However, their insistence upon preemptive action is a radical departure, and their unilateralism and scorn for international cooperation are sharp departures from decades of American policy. The hawkish Neo Conservatives were in a position to have a great influence on public opinion. William Safire had a New York Times column, and Krauthammer repeatedly pressed for war in his Washington Post column. Robert Bartley was editor of The Wall Street Journal. A network of Perle friends was well positioned in the think tanks. Meyra Wurmser was at the Hudson Institute and had founded The Middle East Media Research Institute, which turned out to be financed by Israeli military intelligence. Her husband, David Wurmser headed Middle East Studies at AEI.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists launched an horrific attack on the United States, which gave the Neo Conservatives a golden opportunity to implement their policies. Nine days later, Neo Conservative leader Bill Kristol, published an “Open Letter to the President” in the Weekly Standard, a magazine founded with $10 million Rupert Murdock donated for the creation of a Neo Conservative magazine. Kristol demanded that an effort be made to remove Saddam Hussein from power due to his hostility to U.S. interests and possible links to terrorism. By removing him, the U.S. would be establishing a “safe zone” in the Middle East. He also called for retaliation against Iran and Syria because they had backed Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that had repeatedly attacked Israel. Forty-one Neo Conservatives signed the letter, including William Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, Midge Decter and her husband Norman Podhorentz, Deputy Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, Jean Kirkpatrick, Robert Kagan, Frank Gafney, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman. The latter was affiliated with the Center for Strategic Studies, and Kagan wrote for the Weekly Standard.
Tom Donnelly of PNAC joined the chorus of those calling for an attack on Iraq, noting that this time a half million troops would not be necessary. The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg used the so-called “Ledeen Doctrine” to justify an attack on Iraq. Former Pentagon official Michael Ledeen was described as believing that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” Ledeen had taught at Washington University and also assisted Lt. Colonel Oliver North to sell arms to the Ayatollah. In his book The War Against Terror Masters, Ledeen identified the countries that should be attacked: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Ledeen revealed a bit of the Neo Conservatives’ Jacobin streak, stating “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad.” It was necessary to destroy enemies “to advance our historic mission” because they “have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions--and names them for their inability to keep pace.” On September 24,2002, Michael Ledeen wrote in The London Times that “The real foe is Middle Eastern tyranny” and called for regime change in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority as well as Iraq. After the Second Gulf War, he put Iran and Syria on the future hit list, saying “No one I know wants to wage war on Iran and Syria, but I believe there is now a clear recognition that we must defend ourselves against them.” The NeoCons saw a successful war against Iraq as the first step in bringing democracy to the Middle East and moving decisively against Israel’s enemies. Ledeen once claimed,” Americans believe that peace is normal, but that’s not true. Life isn’t like that. Peace is abnormal.”
James Woolsey would later tell a UCLA Republican audience that the United States was involved in “World War IV” and said it would last “ considerably longer than World Wars I or II.” He spoke strongly of forcing Syria into line with US policy. At about the same time, Wolfowitz was telling a congressional committee “we need to think about our policy in respect to a country [Syria] that harbors terrorists or harbors war criminals.” When the UN failed to back Bush’s invasion of Iraq, conservative circles began to hum with plans for replacing it.
Perle caused a great stir when he brought Laurent Murawiec to the Pentagon Policy Council on July 10, 2002, and she suggested that the US attack Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as Iraq. He was a Rand Corporation analyst who had also worked for Lyndon La Rouche. Murawiec identified Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent of the United States”.
The Bush Doctrine
Though most of the leading Neo Conservative hawks had no particular expertise in the Middle East or Islamic affairs, they were behind President Bush’s drive in 2002 and 2003 for war against Iraq. They were brilliant people capable of concocting brilliant schemes that sometimes worked; the problem was their impatience with detail and the opinion of other people and nations. They adhered to a domino-like theory that the dictator’s fall would bring democracy to much of the Middle East. They played a major role in Bush’s successful efforts to transfer fear of Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. A major long-term triumph for these Neo Conservative hawks was the Bush Doctrine, which was unveiled September 20, 2003. The roots of this aggressive foreign policy go back to a position paper Wolfowitz, and his deputy I. Lewis Libby, wrote for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. These ideas were more fully fleshed out in a paper issued by the Project for the New American Century in September 2000. The Bush Doctrine envisioned a new American global empire, in which the United States would act as a world policeman and impose its will by force when necessary, and it justified preemptive strikes against enemies who could damage the United States and its interests. In effect, Bush was saying that the rest of the world must accept American judgments about when its interests are so threatened that it must use force preemptively. It later developed that the intelligence claims the US used to invade Iraq in 2003 were so flawed that the administration had squandered much credibility elsewhere in the world. The doctrine’s logic was faulty in that it was argued that other nations must not resort to preemptive war, but it was a noble venture when the US undertook it.
Critics charged that it was fashioned by zealots who saw no limits to U.S. power and were intent on militarizing U.S. Foreign policy. The authors of the doctrine saw no problems in unilateralism and the U.S. throwing its weight around so long as its intentions were good.
National security professionals in the State and Defense Departments were infuriated by the “cowboy tactics” these people recommended. The national security establishment saw force as a last resort, and preferred to use it only in concert with allies. Moreover, they worried about unintended consequences of rash actions and feared that, though getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing, that the aftermath of a war could create great problems. They were of the opinion that Clinton had put Saddam “in a box” and believed that the UN inspections further neutralized the Iraqi dictator. Those who took this position maintained that Saddam would not supply terrorists with weapons because he knew what the consequences would be. Moreover, it was believed unlikely that he would attack a U.S. ally. They note that it was unclear in 1990 whether the U.S. was committed to Kuwait before Saddam invaded.
In 2002, it soon became clear that Bush had made up his mind that the U.S. must go to war with Iraq, but it not quite clear why the matter had become so urgent. At West Point’s spring, 2002 commencement, Bush argued that the war against terrorism made it necessary for new thinking about defense and noted that the U.S. “cannot put our trust in the word of tyrants.” It would soon become clear that he thought it necessary to turn away from deterrence and containment and move toward preemptive action against perceived enemies, among whom was Iraq. In a major address before the American Enterprise Institute in March 2003, the President echoed the PNAC position paper in justifying his call for war. He saw the creation of a democratic Iraq as the solution for the Israeli-Palestinian problem. A democratic Iraq would lead to the transformation of the region and the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian problem.
The enunciation of the Bush Doctrine in September 2002 marked the triumph of Neo Conservative foreign policy. The Bush administration sent a position paper on national security strategy to Congress on September 20, 2002 that Bush Doctrine was enunciated. Law required this submission to Congress, but this was no ordinary paper. This “National Security Strategy for the United States” outlined a bold and somewhat aggressive stance that downplayed the long-standing doctrine of containment and announced that the US must have the right to preemptive strikes and war against its new enemies, terrorist states and terrorist organizations. Because the new foes were able to easily attack the United States with various weapons of mass destruction, the point was that the US must engage in “preemptive deterrence” (“anticipatory self-defense”) before the enemy had developed the capacity to attack the US or its friends. This approach had the obvious advantage of surprise and the use of a smaller force. But this preemptive deterrence was straining long-standing alliances and setting a precedent for other nations to use the same doctrine.
This extraordinary doctrine announced that the United States would never again allow another state to equal it in military power, and claimed the right to use its power to advance the cause of freedom anywhere in the world. The doctrine proclaimed that there was “a single sustainable model for national success,” and it was comprised of democracy, free enterprise, and democracy. The Bush Doctrine left to the United States to define these terms.
It was not completely clear if free enterprise meant unfettered capitalism and opening other countries to the ministrations of the International Monetary fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. However, in discussing lower taxes and pro-growth regulatory policies in messianic terms, it left little doubt that the Washington Consensus policies of the IMF and World Bank were to be applied everywhere. Its discussion of economics was couched in the terms of a closed intellectual system; there was no room for doubt or discussion. It is possible that the authors of the document saw 9/11 as a reaction against American economic policies. Around the time of that tragedy, trade representative Robert B. Zoellick suggested there were “intellectual connections” between opponents of US globalism and terrorists. In the same vein, Bush said “the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and we will defeat them by expanding and encouraging world trade.”
While the document appeared at a time when the administration was preparing public opinion for a preemptive strike against Iraq, much more was involved. It justified and placed in perspective the unilateral foreign policy the Bush administration had been following since its inception. The foundations for this sharp departure from American was a repudiation of the traditional policy of the first Bush, who was committed to multilateralism and international institutions, and who accepted the view that America was strongest when it was leading international efforts. Wolfowitz and the other designers of the Bush Doctrine may well have been operating out of genuinely utopian instincts, believing others would not react adversely to American unilateralism when they saw that it produced good results.
The Bush Doctrine assumes that lasting peace consisted of a world so ordered as to be friendly to American values and enterprise and preservation of the US position as sole superpower. The US was to assume the roles of “high-noon sheriff and proselytizing missionary.” One observer thought that it was only the logical extension of the general American belief that God gave the US a special role in history and that it had every right to be Number One. He noted that while a few radicals and intellectuals objected, and that the new Bush Doctrine “commands broad assent in virtually all segments of American society.”
The invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity to implement NeoCon doctrines It is difficult to find agreement on the extent to which oil influenced the decision to invade. There is a methodological problem here because no official went on record saying oil was a major consideration. Indeed, several said the exact opposite, but they eventually established records for lacking truthfulness. Many apply strict social science method in this case to accept the default position—that is, lacking airtight proof to the contrary, we accept official statements. Yet few think Bush would have invaded Iraq if it only exported rugs and pottery.
Paul O’Neill, a former Bush Secretary of the Treasury , said as much and talked about how White House officials were studying Iraq oil maps. We know that several energy position papers noted that Saddam Hussein was a “wild card” and a “swing producer” in the words of a Council on Foreign Relations Report. A report by the Baker Institute at Rice portrayed him as an irresponsible player on the international oil market.
Saddam could not be expected to always play by the rules and might sharply raise or lower production, creating an instability that the world’s oil barons deplored. According to OPEC general secretary Ali Rodriguez, Saddam and Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi were discussing a sharp reduction of oil exports to the West in April 2002. Those reports probably led to the US backed but unsuccessful coup against Chavez in Venezuela. That country had helped combat the 1973 oil embargo but could not be expected to do so again in 2002 with Chavez in power.
It is known that there were two approaches to moving against Iraq in 2003. The State Department organized a planning meeting at the home of Falah Aljibury, who worked for Regan and the senior Bush on Iraqi affairs. The plan was to insert forces to assist a coup, which would replace Saddam with a Bathist general we could control. There would be no long and costly occupation. Iraq’s oil transactions would b3ecome stable and predictable.
The Neo Conservative had very different ideas, and they had the upper hand in the Bush foreign policy operation. Their views were contained in a document entitled “Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth.” In order to privatize Iraqi’s state owned industries—especially oil, a full invasion and occupation were required. The Pentagon supported this effort to create a private enterprise utopia.
The first American pro-consul in Iraq was retired General Jay Garner, a well-trained historian. He understood the Middle East, and promised elections in 90 days. Of course elections would have nullified NeoCon plans, which he read and rejected, but they would have produced friends rather than enemies for the United States in Iraq. He was soon “relocate,” and his replacement was Paul Bremer, III, a NeoCon and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates. He quickly privatized most businesses and banking, but ran into a huge roadblock when it came to oil. The problem was the NeoCon plan was that privatizing oil would weaken OPEC and, by increasing production, lower gas prices. Not the least of the problem, it offered no guaranteed that U.S. producers would control Iraqi oil. Speaking for U.s. big oil, Chevron CEO Philip Carroll, with the strong support of James Baker, III and US-Saudi interests, intervened and vetoed the plan. The Bush Administration accepted Carroll’s intervention, and soon Bremer was gone. The new US dispensation for Iraq oil would be a state controlled monopoly that would be guided and work through big US firms. Historically, Iraqi oil production had been held down to keep prices up, and this pattern was to continue. Now production levels were far below pre-invasion levels. The NeoCons lost their bid to battle OPEC and drive down oil prices, but they were successful in privatizing a great deal of Iraq’s economy.
The NeoCon foreign policy doctrines represented a form of militant foreign policy fundamentalism, and they provided a convenient means for the U.S .to short-circuit international law and the United Nations Charter. The Bush Doctrine reflected the impatience of its framers with international criticism and the gradualism and care required to implement containment policies. At a more fundamental level, it was another aspect of the New Right’s cultural wars to restore the old doctrine of Manifest Destiny and remove the deep shame that had attended the evacuation of Saigon and was a frontal attack on all those who thought America was in danger of doing sometime wrong. It would vanquish moral relativism and restore moral authority and the imperial presidency.
Most attributed the failed George W. Bush adventure in Iraq to the influence of the NeoCons, but they nevertheless retained great influence in his White House. They worked ceaselessly to build a case for attacking Iran appeared to fall short of gathering enough support to accomplish this. Russell Kirk once sadly remarked : “They aspire to bring about a world of uniformity and dull standardization, Americanized, industrialized, democratized, ‘logicalized’, and boring. They are cultural and economic imperialists, many of them.”
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Meet the Neo Conservatives
The new Republican coalition of the late Twentieth Century garnered many highly talented and zealous recruits from the ranks of the Neo Conservatives, people who were once liberal intellectuals and former leftists who joined conservative ranks in the 1970s and after. Many of them became conservative journalists or worked for the emerging network of conservative think tanks. Some who once espoused socialism became its determined critics. They were fiercely anti-communist, supported the Vietnam War, and were put off by the New Left, which opposed the war and took cultural positions, which the Neo Conservatives denounced as destructive. These refugees from the left and liberalism found it comfortable to ally with conservatives who still believed that the Cold War was not over and that the USSR was an enormous threat to the US. They have been described by suspicious conservatives as “ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP.”
There was an unsuccessful Neo Conservative effort in 1976 to win the Democratic presidential nomination for hawk, Henry M. Jackson. Thereafter, most Neo Conservatives migrated to the Republican Party. While still liberals of different stripes, the Neo Conservatives moved away from a critique of capitalism and capitalist culture. The vast majority of them would eventually kick off all the traces of liberalism. They decided to privilege individualism and autonomy over the community. With time and the increasing rightward drift of the party, the Republican Neo Conservatives tended to show less and less interest in economic and social justice.
As they became strong advocates of neoliberal economics, they adopted the view that allowing the poor to deal with market forces was preferable to their old New Dealish positions. They had concluded that liberal solution had not worked and described themselves as liberals who had been “mugged” by reality.
Neo Conservatives become outspoken supporters of neoliberal economics and its Social Darwinian views of society and of helping the poor be responsible for themselves. They were not adverse to some state assistance in guiding the poor toward economic independence. However, it took some time for many of them to turn their backs on the New Deal heritage. As late as 1983, Irving Kristol was defending the long-standing liberal position on welfare. It was not long, however, before he too was talking about eliminating the welfare state. In time, less was heard from Neo Conservatives about this; however, there is little evidence that the Neo Conservatives ever got over their distaste for libertarians.
In the 1970s, there was a great upsurge of "backlash populism,” or right-wing populism that swept up many of these former left-wing intellectuals in its wake. They became Neo Conservatives. In the process, some of them accepted an anti-statism, for which some unorthodox forms of Marxism had conditioned them. Others employed anti-statist language while working to enlarge governmental and executive branch power as tools for the implementation of their plans. Neo Conservatives of most stripes would gradually become somewhat less distinguishable from all but the most extreme elements in the New Right. Like the New Right, they believe they are justified in using any hardball techniques to get what they want, including dirty tricks and lies. Unlike many on the New Right, they believe in expanding the federal government, and there is evidence that over time they have converted Republican colleagues on the New Right to this view. Both Neo Conservatives have contempt for libertarians, and both have a tendency to reshape traditional views of the constitution to suit their purposes. While the New Right believes that a godly and moral elite should exercise power, the Neo Conservatives expect power to be in the hands of an elite composed of highly educated individuals who are guided by their ideology.
Neo Conservatives are essentially secularists who want to preserve what is best of the Enlightenment heritage. Most are skeptics but value religion as a guarantor of order and morality. Oddly enough, some prominent Roman Catholics are Neo Conservatives despite the fact that Neo Conservatives have been historically hostile to religion. The New Right had reason to be suspicious of the Neo Conservatives, but over time they have worked well together. In temperament, they are not as different as might be expected, as both groups tend to produce zealots and ideologues.
Many of the Neo Conservatives were followers of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. They seemed to be unscrupulous, manipulative, and perfectly willing to manufacture information to support their goals. They were idealists whose conduct suggested that they believed that great truths needed to be protected by an army of small lies. Unlike their teacher, however, they were optimistic about the future of democracy, especially if the nation’s affairs were in their hands. They were able to use the terrorist attack on the United States to persuade the president and his chief advisors to adopt their positions and proclaim them as the Bush Doctrine. They insisted that 9/11 be exploited as a justification for an attack on Iraq. Liberal critics saw a successful Straussian conspiracy to hijack US foreign policy, but it may have been just as likely that Bush and Rumsfeld used the Neo Conservatives and Straussians for their own ends. It should also be remembered that there was not a great deal of difference between Neo Conservative and Straussian views and the position of foreign policy fundamentalists and unilateralists. Of course, the NeoCons were far more convinced than the foreign policy fundamentalists that aspects of Muslim civilization were antithetical to liberal democracy, social and economic progress, and intellectual freedom.
Dr. Rice described the Bush Doctrine as calling for “anticipatory self-defense,” which sounds less arrogant than preemptive strikes. She is not usually considered a NeoCon, but she certainly had leanings in that direction prior to 2001. She wrote in World Affairs in 2000 condemning “the reflexive appeal … to notions of international law and norms, and the belief that the support of many states –or even better, of institutions like the United Nations—is essential to the legitimate exercise of power.” These were the words of a mainstream American foreign policy expert, who simply carried some long established views farther than most. The fact is that the United States has long exempted itself from parts of the United Nations Charter and has withdrawn from international obligations on a regular basis whenever its interests seemed to demand it. There was a precedent of sorts for the Bush Doctrine in the Clinton Doctrine. The latter reserved for the United States the right to use military force to obtain “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” The Bush Doctrine of the NeoCons went a few steps beyond these precedents, and was, as Henry Kissinger said, “revolutionary.” It simply discarded traditional American homage to international principles, which the US frequently violated in practice. Previous administrations thought it foolish to make such brash assertions of power and to then implement them in a manner that would infuriate even its allies. The NeoCons and Bush claimed a right others assumed existed, but should not be claimed openly and was to be used only as a last resort. As Henry Kissinger noted, anticipatory self-defense was a right that only the United States of America possessed. The NeoCons took this so-called right out of the back pocket and used it as a tool in normal statecraft.
It has been said that the late University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss was the spiritual godfather of the Neo Conservatives. He had a profound influence upon Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhorentz, William Kristol, and Gary Schmitt, leader of the Project for the New American Century. Strauss was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago for twenty-five years. He never accepted the label of conservative, but his thinking was to have a great appeal to conservatives. It was quite different from what constituted mainstream conservatives in his lifetime and after his death. His outlook was very critical of much in modern culture and was rooted in pre-modern thought. Strauss saw the wreckage of the Weimar Republic and came to distrust democracy, seeing that Weimar’s weakness led to the barbarism of the Nazis. He favored a hierarchal society and saw the need for a populace animated by rabid nationalism and fervent religiosity.
No doubt most Neo Conservatives have not read the works of Leo Strauss, but their thinking has been strongly influenced by him. Staussians seemed to view themselves as superior persons, perhaps because they possess esoteric knowledge and value ancient virtues Neo Conservatives are Straussians to the extent that the fear the masses and democracy, believe in a government by an elite which should enjoy special dignity, accept the notion that the wise lead by telling noble lies, and insist that the worst thing that could befall the United States would be if its people no longer believed in the superiority of the American people.
Straussian thought did not revere tradition, as did conservatives of the stamp of Edmund Burke. Though not religious, Strauss valued religion, along with patriotism, as necessary to hold states and societies together. His basic outlook was that pre-modern philosophers had found it necessary to say what they had to say “between the lines” to protect themselves from the masses and governments. Most of them had concluded that there were no truths, no natural law, and no gods. They saw morality as necessary for order but knew it was only based on customs and prejudices. Straussians shared an esoteric approach to knowledge; knew that their basic beliefs should be shared with only an elite and believed that modern philosophy, in trying to address the common man, eventually exposed ordinary people to knowledge they could not live with comfortably. This led to nihilism and relativism, which Strauss and his followers deplored, and ultimately the wreckage of modern culture and the spawning of the New Left. The Straussians opposed moral relativism, but at root they were philosophical relativists. Strauss and his followers valued authority, heroism, and creativity and believe that democracy threatens these qualities. They placed a premium on truth and justice; some saw them as salutary myths and others thought it possible to almost approximate them.
Professor Strauss and his followers thought their mission was to work to salvage what they could of liberal democracy and the best of Western Culture, but they differed among themselves on accomplish this. He had contempt for the weakness of the German Weimar Republic and taught that masses need strong leadership, which is willing to deceive them when necessary. He believed that perpetual deception was necessary to give the people the leadership they needed, and feared the disorder that could flow from excessive dissent. He noted that the best way to insure a stable political order is to bring about unity through fear of an external threat and said such a threat should be” manufactured if it did not actually exist.”
Strauss’s teachings laid the groundwork for an aggressive foreign policy that was to include unilateralism, preemptive strikes, and frequent warfare. He taught that the “liberal democracies live in constant danger from hostile elements abroad.” Given this situation, “to make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic.” Democracies have a natural right to battle their barbarous opponents and have an obligation, as victors, to teach conquered peoples western democratic values. Strauss had a great influence on Neo Conservative thought, but it would seem that most of them overcame elements of his pessimism. If anything, they were to become very Wilsonian in their optimism over what America could accomplish in the world.
Leo Strauss told his inner circle that religion must be used by “true wise men” to control the masses and lead them in the correct direction. Strauss claimed that religion was false, but its deception must be hidden from the people. Most Neo Conservatives did not crusade against abortion or fight to restore prayer to the schools, but they developed many other themes to ingratiate conservative Christians. The Neo Conservatives found that by exploiting questions of promiscuity, drug use, rising crime, homosexuality, pornography, and assaults on traditional culture, they could activate fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. It did not matter that Strauss, himself, said the drug problem could be handled by handing out free doses on a daily basis.
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, William Bennett, George Weigel and Michael Novak were representative of Catholic Neo Conservatives. These Catholic intellectuals had once been sympathetic to distributive justice and had worried about how capitalism nurtured materialism and egoism. In time, some like Michael Novak distanced themselves from these social concerns of their church and became apologists for relatively unrestrained capitalism. For example, Fr. Richard Neuhaus seemed to distance himself from Catholic views about private property and held that progressive taxation amounted to theft. His main concern was that strict enforcement of the First Amendment seemed to drive religious considerations from the public square. He seemed willing to embrace market economics of corporate America in return for its support in inserting religion into public discourse. Novak and papal biographer George Weigel reconfigured Catholic teachings on just warfare to justify George W. Bush’s Second Gulf War and rejected John Paul II’s clear position on that conflict because, by the 1970s, so many Catholics had distanced themselves from the natural law thought of their church. The thought of Catholic Neo Conservatives is almost indistinguishable from that of secular Neo Conservatives, except in respect to abortion. However these Catholics maintain that life begins at conception, a view grounded more in natural law than in science. On the broader question of the meaning of the First Amendment, they have coalesced around legal scholar Michael McConnell’s view that a secularist approach to the amendment denies equal consideration of the rights and concerns of religious people.
Many of the NeoCons were Jewish, and their presence in the conservative movement would eventually move it into close alignment with the most militant elements in Israel. They were strongly attached to the Likud Party and its vision of a Greater Israel. In the 1980s, they had considerable influence but did not have their hands directly on the levers of power. They greatly overestimated the Soviet Union’s military power and worked hard to convince the Reagan administration to pursue the Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative) weapons system and vastly increase defense spending. They were convinced that this program brought an end to the Cold War. It may have contributed to the collapse of the USSR, but it is an open question whether the enormous expense and increased tensions were worth it.
The Neo Conservatives were to become analysts for conservative think tanks, cranking out material on foreign policy and economics, and about how the liberals allegedly destroyed traditional American culture. In no time, they appeared to have forgotten that their former friends in the academy and among liberal intellectuals had often been the strongest critics of consumerism, hedonism, and materialistic values. Their new job was to manufacture materials blaming these and other problems on liberals, and they did it well. Although they fit the profile of the hated New Class, NeoCons quickly became proficient in cranking out polemics against the so-called liberal “New Class” of elitist intellectuals who were allegedly out to soften American foreign policy and undermine foreign policy. The gist of their argument was that these people were “elitists” who somehow looked down on the views of ordinary folk. In truth, it was the Straussian Neo Conservatives who were the self-conscious intellectuals who were determined to manipulate the unwashed masses. The new conservative think tanks were established in order to create a “counter-establishment.” Over time they have succeeded in doing this, but they are not places where independent scholars can do their best to serve their country, regardless of party politics. Rather, in the words of Fareed Zakaria, they turn out “lots of predictable polemics and little serious analysis.”
The NeoCons were activists by nature and needed an identifiable enemy. By creating the “New Class” myth, they provided the necessary enemy-- those in the literati, academy, and media who disagreed with them. Later, when even they acknowledged the end of the Cold War, they threw themselves into a war against the remnants of American liberalism. Among their leaders were Michael Novak, James Q. Wilson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett. Mark Lillan of the University of Chicago noted in 2002 that the Neo Conservatives were animated by “ a purely political passion to challenge the intellectuals.’” Maintaining that liberal intellectuals have abandoned scholarly standards, the Neo Conservatives believe themselves justified in the “cavalier use of sources and quotations” and any kind of charge against liberal intellectuals, including treason, bad faith, and cowardice. The Neo Conservatives generally claimed to believe in fixed, absolute principles -- something they shared with their less sophisticated political allies in the evangelical churches and far right. This tendency toward anger and self-righteousness has spread so widely among conservatives, that very few conservatives were heard to question the inconsistent and clearly political decision of the Supreme Court in 2000 to stop the counting of votes in Florida and effectively give the presidency to George W. Bush. Had the shoe been on the other foot, most Democrats would have let partisanship get the better of them, but it is likely that a significant number of them would question what the high court had done. Conservatives came to possess a certainty that lent itself to zeal, self-righteousness, and passion. The liberal outlook was more pragmatic and nuanced in nature and less given to the anger and passion that fuels winning political campaigns.
Their work, and that of other in the conservative think tanks, enabled Conservatives to present their ideas in a manner that made them appear new and attractive to voters. The triumph of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was partly attributable to their hard work on the ideological front. Very few voters have highly developed ideological perspectives, but there has been an increasing tendency for voters to locate themselves somewhere along the liberal/conservative spectrum. By 2003, their publications included the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary, The New Republic, and the Weekly Standard. They also write many syndicated columns and contribute to many magazines. The efforts of Neo Conservative writers and activists most probably account for the decision of more voters to identify with conservative outlooks than liberal one’s. To the New Right, the Neo Conservatives were suspect because they were highly educated, eastern urban dwellers and intellectuals. Nevertheless, the NeoCons served the New Right well by exploiting religious and cultural issues and helping to bring the Christian Right into the conservative coalition.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line. http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum/
There was an unsuccessful Neo Conservative effort in 1976 to win the Democratic presidential nomination for hawk, Henry M. Jackson. Thereafter, most Neo Conservatives migrated to the Republican Party. While still liberals of different stripes, the Neo Conservatives moved away from a critique of capitalism and capitalist culture. The vast majority of them would eventually kick off all the traces of liberalism. They decided to privilege individualism and autonomy over the community. With time and the increasing rightward drift of the party, the Republican Neo Conservatives tended to show less and less interest in economic and social justice.
As they became strong advocates of neoliberal economics, they adopted the view that allowing the poor to deal with market forces was preferable to their old New Dealish positions. They had concluded that liberal solution had not worked and described themselves as liberals who had been “mugged” by reality.
Neo Conservatives become outspoken supporters of neoliberal economics and its Social Darwinian views of society and of helping the poor be responsible for themselves. They were not adverse to some state assistance in guiding the poor toward economic independence. However, it took some time for many of them to turn their backs on the New Deal heritage. As late as 1983, Irving Kristol was defending the long-standing liberal position on welfare. It was not long, however, before he too was talking about eliminating the welfare state. In time, less was heard from Neo Conservatives about this; however, there is little evidence that the Neo Conservatives ever got over their distaste for libertarians.
In the 1970s, there was a great upsurge of "backlash populism,” or right-wing populism that swept up many of these former left-wing intellectuals in its wake. They became Neo Conservatives. In the process, some of them accepted an anti-statism, for which some unorthodox forms of Marxism had conditioned them. Others employed anti-statist language while working to enlarge governmental and executive branch power as tools for the implementation of their plans. Neo Conservatives of most stripes would gradually become somewhat less distinguishable from all but the most extreme elements in the New Right. Like the New Right, they believe they are justified in using any hardball techniques to get what they want, including dirty tricks and lies. Unlike many on the New Right, they believe in expanding the federal government, and there is evidence that over time they have converted Republican colleagues on the New Right to this view. Both Neo Conservatives have contempt for libertarians, and both have a tendency to reshape traditional views of the constitution to suit their purposes. While the New Right believes that a godly and moral elite should exercise power, the Neo Conservatives expect power to be in the hands of an elite composed of highly educated individuals who are guided by their ideology.
Neo Conservatives are essentially secularists who want to preserve what is best of the Enlightenment heritage. Most are skeptics but value religion as a guarantor of order and morality. Oddly enough, some prominent Roman Catholics are Neo Conservatives despite the fact that Neo Conservatives have been historically hostile to religion. The New Right had reason to be suspicious of the Neo Conservatives, but over time they have worked well together. In temperament, they are not as different as might be expected, as both groups tend to produce zealots and ideologues.
Many of the Neo Conservatives were followers of the political philosopher Leo Strauss. They seemed to be unscrupulous, manipulative, and perfectly willing to manufacture information to support their goals. They were idealists whose conduct suggested that they believed that great truths needed to be protected by an army of small lies. Unlike their teacher, however, they were optimistic about the future of democracy, especially if the nation’s affairs were in their hands. They were able to use the terrorist attack on the United States to persuade the president and his chief advisors to adopt their positions and proclaim them as the Bush Doctrine. They insisted that 9/11 be exploited as a justification for an attack on Iraq. Liberal critics saw a successful Straussian conspiracy to hijack US foreign policy, but it may have been just as likely that Bush and Rumsfeld used the Neo Conservatives and Straussians for their own ends. It should also be remembered that there was not a great deal of difference between Neo Conservative and Straussian views and the position of foreign policy fundamentalists and unilateralists. Of course, the NeoCons were far more convinced than the foreign policy fundamentalists that aspects of Muslim civilization were antithetical to liberal democracy, social and economic progress, and intellectual freedom.
Dr. Rice described the Bush Doctrine as calling for “anticipatory self-defense,” which sounds less arrogant than preemptive strikes. She is not usually considered a NeoCon, but she certainly had leanings in that direction prior to 2001. She wrote in World Affairs in 2000 condemning “the reflexive appeal … to notions of international law and norms, and the belief that the support of many states –or even better, of institutions like the United Nations—is essential to the legitimate exercise of power.” These were the words of a mainstream American foreign policy expert, who simply carried some long established views farther than most. The fact is that the United States has long exempted itself from parts of the United Nations Charter and has withdrawn from international obligations on a regular basis whenever its interests seemed to demand it. There was a precedent of sorts for the Bush Doctrine in the Clinton Doctrine. The latter reserved for the United States the right to use military force to obtain “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.” The Bush Doctrine of the NeoCons went a few steps beyond these precedents, and was, as Henry Kissinger said, “revolutionary.” It simply discarded traditional American homage to international principles, which the US frequently violated in practice. Previous administrations thought it foolish to make such brash assertions of power and to then implement them in a manner that would infuriate even its allies. The NeoCons and Bush claimed a right others assumed existed, but should not be claimed openly and was to be used only as a last resort. As Henry Kissinger noted, anticipatory self-defense was a right that only the United States of America possessed. The NeoCons took this so-called right out of the back pocket and used it as a tool in normal statecraft.
It has been said that the late University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss was the spiritual godfather of the Neo Conservatives. He had a profound influence upon Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhorentz, William Kristol, and Gary Schmitt, leader of the Project for the New American Century. Strauss was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who taught political philosophy at the University of Chicago for twenty-five years. He never accepted the label of conservative, but his thinking was to have a great appeal to conservatives. It was quite different from what constituted mainstream conservatives in his lifetime and after his death. His outlook was very critical of much in modern culture and was rooted in pre-modern thought. Strauss saw the wreckage of the Weimar Republic and came to distrust democracy, seeing that Weimar’s weakness led to the barbarism of the Nazis. He favored a hierarchal society and saw the need for a populace animated by rabid nationalism and fervent religiosity.
No doubt most Neo Conservatives have not read the works of Leo Strauss, but their thinking has been strongly influenced by him. Staussians seemed to view themselves as superior persons, perhaps because they possess esoteric knowledge and value ancient virtues Neo Conservatives are Straussians to the extent that the fear the masses and democracy, believe in a government by an elite which should enjoy special dignity, accept the notion that the wise lead by telling noble lies, and insist that the worst thing that could befall the United States would be if its people no longer believed in the superiority of the American people.
Straussian thought did not revere tradition, as did conservatives of the stamp of Edmund Burke. Though not religious, Strauss valued religion, along with patriotism, as necessary to hold states and societies together. His basic outlook was that pre-modern philosophers had found it necessary to say what they had to say “between the lines” to protect themselves from the masses and governments. Most of them had concluded that there were no truths, no natural law, and no gods. They saw morality as necessary for order but knew it was only based on customs and prejudices. Straussians shared an esoteric approach to knowledge; knew that their basic beliefs should be shared with only an elite and believed that modern philosophy, in trying to address the common man, eventually exposed ordinary people to knowledge they could not live with comfortably. This led to nihilism and relativism, which Strauss and his followers deplored, and ultimately the wreckage of modern culture and the spawning of the New Left. The Straussians opposed moral relativism, but at root they were philosophical relativists. Strauss and his followers valued authority, heroism, and creativity and believe that democracy threatens these qualities. They placed a premium on truth and justice; some saw them as salutary myths and others thought it possible to almost approximate them.
Professor Strauss and his followers thought their mission was to work to salvage what they could of liberal democracy and the best of Western Culture, but they differed among themselves on accomplish this. He had contempt for the weakness of the German Weimar Republic and taught that masses need strong leadership, which is willing to deceive them when necessary. He believed that perpetual deception was necessary to give the people the leadership they needed, and feared the disorder that could flow from excessive dissent. He noted that the best way to insure a stable political order is to bring about unity through fear of an external threat and said such a threat should be” manufactured if it did not actually exist.”
Strauss’s teachings laid the groundwork for an aggressive foreign policy that was to include unilateralism, preemptive strikes, and frequent warfare. He taught that the “liberal democracies live in constant danger from hostile elements abroad.” Given this situation, “to make the world safe for the Western democracies, one must make the whole globe democratic.” Democracies have a natural right to battle their barbarous opponents and have an obligation, as victors, to teach conquered peoples western democratic values. Strauss had a great influence on Neo Conservative thought, but it would seem that most of them overcame elements of his pessimism. If anything, they were to become very Wilsonian in their optimism over what America could accomplish in the world.
Leo Strauss told his inner circle that religion must be used by “true wise men” to control the masses and lead them in the correct direction. Strauss claimed that religion was false, but its deception must be hidden from the people. Most Neo Conservatives did not crusade against abortion or fight to restore prayer to the schools, but they developed many other themes to ingratiate conservative Christians. The Neo Conservatives found that by exploiting questions of promiscuity, drug use, rising crime, homosexuality, pornography, and assaults on traditional culture, they could activate fundamentalist and evangelical Christians. It did not matter that Strauss, himself, said the drug problem could be handled by handing out free doses on a daily basis.
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, William Bennett, George Weigel and Michael Novak were representative of Catholic Neo Conservatives. These Catholic intellectuals had once been sympathetic to distributive justice and had worried about how capitalism nurtured materialism and egoism. In time, some like Michael Novak distanced themselves from these social concerns of their church and became apologists for relatively unrestrained capitalism. For example, Fr. Richard Neuhaus seemed to distance himself from Catholic views about private property and held that progressive taxation amounted to theft. His main concern was that strict enforcement of the First Amendment seemed to drive religious considerations from the public square. He seemed willing to embrace market economics of corporate America in return for its support in inserting religion into public discourse. Novak and papal biographer George Weigel reconfigured Catholic teachings on just warfare to justify George W. Bush’s Second Gulf War and rejected John Paul II’s clear position on that conflict because, by the 1970s, so many Catholics had distanced themselves from the natural law thought of their church. The thought of Catholic Neo Conservatives is almost indistinguishable from that of secular Neo Conservatives, except in respect to abortion. However these Catholics maintain that life begins at conception, a view grounded more in natural law than in science. On the broader question of the meaning of the First Amendment, they have coalesced around legal scholar Michael McConnell’s view that a secularist approach to the amendment denies equal consideration of the rights and concerns of religious people.
Many of the NeoCons were Jewish, and their presence in the conservative movement would eventually move it into close alignment with the most militant elements in Israel. They were strongly attached to the Likud Party and its vision of a Greater Israel. In the 1980s, they had considerable influence but did not have their hands directly on the levers of power. They greatly overestimated the Soviet Union’s military power and worked hard to convince the Reagan administration to pursue the Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative) weapons system and vastly increase defense spending. They were convinced that this program brought an end to the Cold War. It may have contributed to the collapse of the USSR, but it is an open question whether the enormous expense and increased tensions were worth it.
The Neo Conservatives were to become analysts for conservative think tanks, cranking out material on foreign policy and economics, and about how the liberals allegedly destroyed traditional American culture. In no time, they appeared to have forgotten that their former friends in the academy and among liberal intellectuals had often been the strongest critics of consumerism, hedonism, and materialistic values. Their new job was to manufacture materials blaming these and other problems on liberals, and they did it well. Although they fit the profile of the hated New Class, NeoCons quickly became proficient in cranking out polemics against the so-called liberal “New Class” of elitist intellectuals who were allegedly out to soften American foreign policy and undermine foreign policy. The gist of their argument was that these people were “elitists” who somehow looked down on the views of ordinary folk. In truth, it was the Straussian Neo Conservatives who were the self-conscious intellectuals who were determined to manipulate the unwashed masses. The new conservative think tanks were established in order to create a “counter-establishment.” Over time they have succeeded in doing this, but they are not places where independent scholars can do their best to serve their country, regardless of party politics. Rather, in the words of Fareed Zakaria, they turn out “lots of predictable polemics and little serious analysis.”
The NeoCons were activists by nature and needed an identifiable enemy. By creating the “New Class” myth, they provided the necessary enemy-- those in the literati, academy, and media who disagreed with them. Later, when even they acknowledged the end of the Cold War, they threw themselves into a war against the remnants of American liberalism. Among their leaders were Michael Novak, James Q. Wilson, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett. Mark Lillan of the University of Chicago noted in 2002 that the Neo Conservatives were animated by “ a purely political passion to challenge the intellectuals.’” Maintaining that liberal intellectuals have abandoned scholarly standards, the Neo Conservatives believe themselves justified in the “cavalier use of sources and quotations” and any kind of charge against liberal intellectuals, including treason, bad faith, and cowardice. The Neo Conservatives generally claimed to believe in fixed, absolute principles -- something they shared with their less sophisticated political allies in the evangelical churches and far right. This tendency toward anger and self-righteousness has spread so widely among conservatives, that very few conservatives were heard to question the inconsistent and clearly political decision of the Supreme Court in 2000 to stop the counting of votes in Florida and effectively give the presidency to George W. Bush. Had the shoe been on the other foot, most Democrats would have let partisanship get the better of them, but it is likely that a significant number of them would question what the high court had done. Conservatives came to possess a certainty that lent itself to zeal, self-righteousness, and passion. The liberal outlook was more pragmatic and nuanced in nature and less given to the anger and passion that fuels winning political campaigns.
Their work, and that of other in the conservative think tanks, enabled Conservatives to present their ideas in a manner that made them appear new and attractive to voters. The triumph of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was partly attributable to their hard work on the ideological front. Very few voters have highly developed ideological perspectives, but there has been an increasing tendency for voters to locate themselves somewhere along the liberal/conservative spectrum. By 2003, their publications included the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, and Commentary, The New Republic, and the Weekly Standard. They also write many syndicated columns and contribute to many magazines. The efforts of Neo Conservative writers and activists most probably account for the decision of more voters to identify with conservative outlooks than liberal one’s. To the New Right, the Neo Conservatives were suspect because they were highly educated, eastern urban dwellers and intellectuals. Nevertheless, the NeoCons served the New Right well by exploiting religious and cultural issues and helping to bring the Christian Right into the conservative coalition.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line. http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum/
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