...any book that makes a broad call for caution against a kind of state-sponsored rationalist utopianism, gets a thumbs up from this Conservative. That is the fundamental lesson that we keep trying to teach. But when Jonah Goldberg says so, y'all get hysterical.Right. Because attempting to establish a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq and remake the Middle East is the height of realism. Look, you can make the case that there was bipartisan support for the Iraq War because, well, there was. But here's what you can't do: Having watched one of the greatest foreign policy overreaches in American history committed with the near-uniform support of conservative institutions, committed while conservatives controlled every major branch of government, you can't ever, in any seriousness, pretend that utopianism is somehow merely the product of a brain addled by liberalism. I find it amazing that such a charge would be made in a discussion Neibhur. Simply amazing
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I wanted to pull this out of so as not to derail the thread below. Here's Cobb on liberals and utopianism:
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TNC, you remember when I first got on this blog I sent you a note asking what the differences were between your (liberal) and Andy's (conservative) politics?
This liberal/conservative things is dead. DEAD. It's been dying for 30 years at least, and now GWB has killed it. You heard it heard first: GWB & Co didn't just kill conservatism, they killed our entire political paradigm.
The question is: what will come next?
T-NC, thanks for taking this gentleman to task in much, much more articulate and coherent way than I did back in the comments section 2 posts ago.
TNC - Damn right. Any anyway, talking down to the 'liberal rationalist utopia' is just a convenient way to ignore the fact that the liberal project has changed. We aren't trying to create a utopia, we're trying to prevent free-market ideologues from bankrupting our country and selling off one piece at a time until there are 2 million super-rich people in this country and everyone else is starving. We're trying to prevent de-regulation ideologues from turning the southern US into a wasteland from global warming. This is hardly some pie-in-the-sky utopia creation scheme. What they used to dismiss as the fantasy creations of liberal minds are now difficult realities which MUST be confronted. They became these realities because they were dismissed by conservatives for so long. So to anyone who wants to talk about what we can't do or shouldn't try at this point, I say shut the hell up.
Don't you read the news? There are no free-market ideologues.
@Tony..
Yes, right...because everyone's for regulations.
Good point, but I think you can get a little misguided by claiming that the motivation behind the invasion of Iraq was a utopian vision of building a Jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the middle east.
It is true that this is how it was sold in large part, but I doubt Dick Cheney was under any such impression.
Am I the only one here who thinks TNC is a woefully inadequate liberal voice on this site? I know Matt Y. blogged about basketball all the time, so TNC's WoW obsession can be put aside, but seriously, Matt commented on a variety of issues, mostly in an informed and educated way, while TNC's approach seems to be "Let me read up on this and get back to you, at which point I'll regurgitate everything I've read on other blogs for the past two weeks". No offense, but if Matt was still here, Sully would not be saying right now "Let Detroit die" because his ass would get handed to him. Jesus man, put up a fight for us.
DP, one quibble with your comment. The war in Iraq was most certainly NOT sold to the American public as an exercise in building a Jeffersonian democracy. It was sold to the American public on the basis of Saddam's purported (and specious) possession of weapons of mass destruction, and his flouting of UN authority. It was only after no WMDs were found that the rationale suddenly shifted to exporting democracy.
I don't think half of the people who supported the war (and I didn't) would have done so if it hadn't been sold as a response to a supposedly credible threat.
Capn America,
Three words: Fight. For. Yourself.
"This liberal/conservative things is dead. DEAD. It's been dying for 30 years at least, and now GWB has killed it. You heard it heard first: GWB & Co didn't just kill conservatism, they killed our entire political paradigm."
You base this on what?
Us?
Capn America...
i think everyone here knows why detroit needs to be, well if not saved, then atleast revamped....and it's not even a matter of principle. under normal circumstances i would even call Andrew's approach a "sane" one (im talking bankrupcy court) ...but now in this climate, it's insanity bottled up and sold to people as "fiscal conservatism"...wow, really? after 8...sorry 20 years of fiscal irresponsibility?
Reagan came into office with america as the worlds biggest exporter of goods...worlds biggest creditor, worlds biggest importer of raw materials. every last check-off that makes a industrial power has now been negated. and everyone who step into the white-house from reagan up until bush 43 are to blame.
"Jesus man, put up a fight for us."
For who? Liberal Atlantic readers? Its his duty to take Sullivan to task? MY pretended to be knowledgeable about things which he had no idea. He was just really, really partisan. If you really like that type of thing, I'm pretty sure MY still has a blog.
Explain to me how support of hate crime or hate speech laws is a "liberal" position.
Explain to me how support of anti-sodomy laws is a "conservative" position.
I can go on like this all night, and into almost any aspect of commerce and culture you like, but I'm sure I don't have to. You're bright enough to get my point.
Apropos of nothing, my beautiful wife is baking homemade pizza for dinner. There's nothing ironic about that!
@Tony
Sure there are all kinds of issues with which you can show each side to be hypocritical but that doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day their are large difference between the two camps. What you're talking about are classic notions of what it means to be conservative or liberal. Specifically I'd say it's just for you that these labels have no meaning. Most conservatives are still overwhelmingly anti-poor, anti-city, anti-choice & anti-taxes. Just to name a few.
One thought I've had on check and balances:
I have wondered (more and more recently) if the Founding Fathers (Madison in particular) ever imaged that the country they birthed --either the government itself, or the citizenry--would ever be in a position to borrow so goddamn much money.
It seems that maybe the ability to forge compromise by borrowing vast sums of money, rather than reach a balanced book consensus is what will be the undoing of this great nation.
And yes, that moment when they came on TV, republican and democrat, conservative and republican, and told me to go shopping was the low point of my civic life.
Make that "republican and democrat, conservative and liberal"
you mean they're both spent, bankrupt and discredited forces?
I think it's fair to argue that in his Iraq adventure, Bush is not a conservative and is instead showing his "state-sponsored rationalist utopianism." Just look at his attempt on his just-ended trip to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Some of Bush's advisors (Cheney, Rumsfeld, some of the neocons) don't go for this messianism, but I think Bush honestly does.
Remember in 2000 when one of the candidates ran on a "humble" foreign policy platform? Whatever happened to that guy?
Man, anyone who thinks the Iraq War was about building a utopian society is mistaken. Thems is called false pretenses. It was about making money for military industries. Blago ain't got shit on those gangstas.
This critisism/comparrsion is only meaningful if you think liberalism is genuinely committed to building (their vision of) a utopian society.
At the risk of sounding stupid (albeit no more so than usual) I would like to say that one can make the argument that the conservative movement is dead. The basic tenets of conservative government have found no place in this administration. Nation-building, Increased Federal Power, push to make facts fit ideology, all these things are decidedly anti-conservative. Whatever happened to pluralism, limited government, respect for individual rights, and basic decency? Oh yeah these values can be found mainly in democratic circles.
The basic argument Niebuhr makes from what I gather, (I still need to read him) is a classically liberal argument. Aren't classically liberal arguments generally small c conservative like Isaiah Berlin and his Two Concepts of liberty essay? I don't think that most rational people believe at present that the Republican party stands for concepts that are antithetical to conservative values. In my humble opinion this has to do more with the advent of Falwell and the religious right than anything else. At a certain point religious conservatives stop being conservative and start being religious. Its a question of values, a no man can serve two masters sort of thing, Either one can be conservative or one can be religious I don't think one can be both.
Yes, but George W Bush's Utopianism in Iraq was Liberal Utopianism. A conservative "Realist" would have simply knocked over the joint and put in a better dictator.
Compared to al-Queda, the Islamists, and the Baath Party, George W Bush is a liberal.
Actually, there might not be any "Conservative Utopianism" except on some social issues. But all foreign policy Utopianism in the US seems to be liberal. Even Pax Americana is pretty liberal.
"Man, anyone who thinks the Iraq War was about building a utopian society is mistaken. Thems is called false pretenses. It was about making money for military industries. Blago ain't got shit on those gangstas."
No offense but I disagree. In many respects the military-industrial complex is dead because the U.S. is no longer an industrial nation. There are plenty of companies associated with the military, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Booz-Allen Hamilton, but these companies don't have big enough lobbies to convince congress to vote approval to invade anyone. Has anyone ever considered the possibility that Bush came in to office with the plan to take out Saddam Hussein and that 9/11 simply presented the opportunity.
I refer you to the 2000 presidential debate:
BUSH: Well, I think during the campaign, particularly now during this difficult period, we ought to be speaking with one voice, and I appreciate the way the administration has worked hard to calm the tensions. Like the vice president, I call on Chairman Arafat to have his people pull back to make the peace. I think credibility is going to be very important in the future in the Middle East. I want everybody to know should I be the president Israel's going to be our friend. I'm going to stand by Israel. Secondly, that I think it's important to reach out to moderate Arab nations, like Jordan and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It's important to be friends with people when you don't need each other so that when you do there's a strong bond of friendship. And that's going to be particularly important in dealing not only with situations such as now occurring in Israel, but with Saddam Hussein. The coalition against Saddam has fallen apart or it's unraveling, let's put it that way. The sanctions are being violated. We don't know whether he's developing weapons of mass destruction. He better not be or there's going to be a consequence should I be the president. But it's important to have credibility and credibility is formed by being strong with your friends and resoluting your determination. One of the reasons why I think it's important for this nation to develop an anti-ballistic missile system that we can share with our allies in the Middle East if need be to keep the peace is to be able to say to the Saddam Husseins of the world or the Iranians, don't dare threaten our friends. It's also important to keep strong ties in the Middle East, credible ties, because of the energy crisis we're now in. After all, a lot of the energy is produced from the Middle East, and so I appreciate what the administration is doing. I hope to get a sense of should I be fortunate to be the president how my administration will react to the Middle East.
Link http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2000b.html
When I did support the Iraq war it was for humanitarian, not security, reasons. However I didn't think they'd become a utopia and I also didn't think it was a conservative thing to do. There's a part of me that is idealistic and likes to believe the US should use its power to improve human rights in the world. That's not a conservative impulse, it really is more of a liberal one.
Real conservatism is anti-utopian. This is simply definitional. It does not change because Republican Presidents, or even pundits, support certain things. All this means is that they are willing to abandon conservatism on some issues because they feel something else is more important. I consider myself moderately conservative, but I would still say that we should've done something in Rwanda and were right to be part of the Bosnia mission. That is not a conservative position, it might even be anti-conservative, but I consider it more humane than the conservative position.
In Iraq, in hindsight, there was no imminent genocide going on and there was no clear plan of success.
Anyone who thinks the conservative/liberal divide is dead needs only to read Ross Douthat's shameful rambling on torture today. For a man who thinks abortion is, apparently, Man's Greatest Sin, his deepseated ethics and Christian faith don't seem to apply as strongly to positions the Republicans support.
Republican Party. Conservatism. George W. Bush. Iraq War.
These are four tangents each with encyclopaedic information which I don't intend to follow up - but thanks for calling me out, it will help me be more specific in the future.
A. The context of Jonah Goldberg was raised with regard to domestic politics, not foreign policy. In his book Liberal Fascism, he identifies a very particularly American tendency, reflected here, by people fed up with one thing or another to declare the death of ideology. And so you get people hungry for anti-ideology: a kind of 'fix the damned thing' attitude that basically doesn't care where your intellectual roots are, so long as they're 'pragmatic'. We are, by definition of Obama's success living in that era and the danger is clearly that of American fascism.
As an example I would merely and lightly point to Obama's rhetorical take on his approach to healthcare in which he spoke of a relative who was cursed with cancer. In the context of the right of every American, he used that specific example, implying that we should all be cured of cancer. That my friends is utopian. If he would have said free immunizations for all school age children, I would have backed him. There's your lifeboat scenario right there, and he chose the utopian end of it.
B. Also at the risk of sounding stupid, I know from my reading of Cornel West that Neigbur was the author of the old serenity prayer.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
I don't see how it has been Democrats in any stretch of the imagination who might say such 'Christianist' things during a campaign or daresay defend any candidate who might and properly righteous.
But that nit aside, the wisdom to know the difference is what I'm on about. It's a safer presumption that the deliberative bodies of government will not have the wisdom to know the difference, and so it is better to defund them than not.
C. Any Goldwater Republican will remind you that the Ba'athists were Arab Socialists armed by the Russians. You really don't need much more reason than that to finish the job Colin Powell wouldn't.
"That is the fundamental lesson that we keep trying to teach."
First of all, I disagree this is the "fundamental lesson" of conservatism. Second, that comment drips with condescension. Conservatives just love to look down at liberals from their soapbox, reminding us how insensible and impractical we are. Yeah, nevermind that Iraq didn't have all that shit, and forget about that mushroom cloud, "the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein." Nevermind that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, or that terrorism is on the rise, "we haven't had a terrorist attack in this country since 9/11". This is what conservatives peddled in the recent election, and they rely on people to be idiotic enough to buy that nonsense. Maybe they should stop "teaching" and start "listening"...
Cobb
C. Any Goldwater Republican will remind you that the Ba'athists were Arab Socialists armed by the Russians. You really don't need much more reason than that to finish the job Colin Powell wouldn't.
dont' want to nitpick here...but...with Saddam, the whole socialist-meme goes out the window with the fact that, the US, armed and gave Saddam incentives to go after Marxist elements in the Baath party in early 1960's...Baathist's where certainly socialist in the "grand-arabia"-sence. But weighing that against the power-flexing of the US, it's easy to see where Saddam ultimately went for help. Hence the coup against the Qassim-fraction of the Baath-party, and Hussein's rise to power.
Thomas R, you state the difference between a generic Conservatism which is *not* about nation-building, and geopolitical neoconservatism, which is more inclined to be about such.
The Marshall Plan is inspirational to geopolitical neoconservatives, and imperialism is not. The notion that we can topple dictators and encourage the establishment of democratic institutions is just a good American idea, and it has a great deal of consistency on both sides of the fence.
I may be a new kind of Republican, coming as I do from the Post Soul Generation, but you do not live through the Apartheid Era as I did not wishing that Americans might have accellerated the process with some GI boots in the ass of PWBotha. You don't look at the liberation of Namibia and watch all kinds of proxy wars in Africa and Central America knowing America plays *some* role without thinking that the American superpower can do some good.
I happen to be one of those people who grew up in a relatively knucklehead neighborhood, and I know what it means when smart kids get beat down by dumb kids. It means dumb kids establish hegemony at school. Maybe TC can relate that to his corner of B'more. Sometimes you have to kick ass, and there is no substitute, just to deliver a smackdown to the evildoers. I don't think that's particularly liberal or conservative. It's courageous or cowardly.
One thing you can never say about George W. Bush is that he snuck around like Reagan doing deniable proxy stuff. This conservative says that's cowardly - then again we had a cowardly electorate. Just go back and watch 'Clear and Present Danger' on the DVD to remind yourself of how prissy America used to be.
I know that today, America *is* better at nation-building, that the US military *did* learn all of the cultural lessons Democrats said we could never accomplish, and that we *did* get rid of ethnic minority rule in that country. I know that Democrats have spent millions of inches of print criticizing GWB because he *didn't* create a utopia in Iraq - (Missing explosives, stolen antiquities, faces burned on car hoods, and a thousand other insults over years of conflict that don't compare to two months of fighting on Peleliu).
sorry, acidentally pushed the submit-button...the point of the post was...the conservative approach to iraq had already failed. as with the conservative approach to iran had failed (the re-instatement of the shah), as with most of the operations in south-america. the conservative approach being that instead of a "utopian" solution, you choose the lesser of the evils and hope that the shit will work. A practical, certainly non-utopian way of doing things right???
I don't mind the nitpick Bruce, so long as you'll accept the counter-nitpick that sometimes for stupid political reasons, namely the seducing of American voter, that different American administrations will reverse good foreign policy.
So long as we don't have our own Saddams in power for decades, I guess we'll have to live with that stupid inconsistency.
Cobb...don't really understand your point there...please be more specific.
since when did u have a problem with coup d'etats?
I think that the 'lesser of two evils' approach is inferior to one that attempts to simply overturn tyrants and replace them with democratic institutions. It doesn't mean we can always accomplish that, but I think we should always try.
I wouldn't suggest that the installment and maintenance of the Shah of Iran was anything more or less than a 'lesser of two evils' approach - one which is the legacy of the CIA.
I say that no matter how small and fragile the multinational coalition of regular army fighters you can assemble and maintain in a shooting war, it is always preferable to a CIA operation. This is about overt vs covert. GWB established that coalition, which meant he was obligated NOT to put an American puppet in charge. This is why I believe history will judge him favorably.
You may prefer to call his rhetoric about liberty for the Iraqi people a lie and a cover story, but NOBODY knows what Haliburton is doing today in Chile or what the CIA is doing in Turkey. Do you see my point?
well...in the case of the shah...it was to the detriment of western oil-companies to have someone like Mossadegh in charge of a country. the Shah, was in this case the lesser of two evils...Mossadegh was arguably, with regards to the islamic revolution, a better choice for the iranian people. But, as you point out, the argument becomes moot if he actually succeeds. If bush succeeds, his "liberal! policies will become conservative in an instant.
I didn't mention anything about the selling-point of the war. I was just clearing up something very basic in Iraqi-US relations over the centuries. But yes, i see your point.
Cobb and Thomas,
Thanks for the responses. I'd throw one more thing at you guys. This idea that the Iraq War wasn't really conservativism is interesting. But only as interesting as the idea that Russia wasn't really Communism. In other words, the theoreticians of the Iraq War certainly would have considered themselves conservatives. And the most diehard supporters of the Iraq War--for the most part--consider themselves conservatives.
Theory isn't static. There are certainly ideas put forth by "liberals" that I disagree with. But I wouldn't go so far as to say they aren't "liberal ideas.
Let me offer a suggestion based on all this Niebuhr-talk--overreaching, overconfidence, overestimation (the building blocks of utopianism) are not the products of ideology, but of humanity. There is nothing inherently prudent about believing in lower taxes, to being anti-abortion, to being pro-death penalty, to being anti-gay marriage that--in and of itself--would guard you against being imprudent. Ditto for believing universal health care. For being anti-death penalty. For being anti-drug war.
Anyone can take it to far. The urge to remake the world is ancient. It was here before liberals. It will likely be here after.
@Cobb Says: "As an example I would merely and lightly point to Obama's rhetorical take on his approach to healthcare in which he spoke of a relative who was cursed with cancer. In the context of the right of every American, he used that specific example, implying that we should all be cured of cancer. That my friends is utopian. If he would have said free immunizations for all school age children, I would have backed him. There's your lifeboat scenario right there, and he chose the utopian end of it."
Obama wasn't implying that all people should be cured of cancer but that every person has a right to access affordable healthcare. I don't consider that utopian, given that we'd probably have less incidents of cancer if people had better access to healthcare in the first place.
Dude, you've got kids with asthma whose parent are $100k in the hole on healthcare bills, and you've got politicians on the podium talking about how environmental legislation is bad for business, and the U.S. has "the best healthcare system in the world." The irony.
Both sides have their planks of utopianism, the libertarian leaning ideas of conservatism have their share of this.
As far as Tony's point, I agree with it to a fair extent, though I am not sure I would credit or blame Bush. Things often have flipped in the past, and maybe a lot of it is dependent upon who is in power when something happens. If GW Bush signed into law, Clinton's welfare reform, liberals like Barbra Streisand would be denouncing Bush as a child murderer. But Clinton did it and Babs still stares longingly into Bill's eyes and serenades him with Evergreen. Then when Clinton bombed the hell out of Serbia, Republicans opposed it, largely because it was Clinton's war.
Our nation's biggest foreign policy blunder, Vietnam, was started in the name of idealistic liberalism during what is said to be our most liberal hour. By the end of it, liberals came to detest the war and many have not lost their distaste for military action.
Issues sometimes seem to wane as a consensus forms. When I was growing up, liberals were for gun control and against the death penalty. We now have a President-Elect who thinks the Supreme Court is too liberal in its view of the DP, and has agreed with a very conservative opinion that the 2nd Amendment applies to individuals, not some state militia. I think shortly, you will see the right move towards the democrats on health care in a similar way that democrats moved towards guns and lethal injection.
As for Tony's question on sodomy and hate speech. Both sides have strong authoritarian streaks if you let them, no matter what John Dean says. They both will overuse powers to prevent what they think will bring about destruction to society. So conservatives think that too many carnal pleasures will ruin the fabric of society lead us into the gutter. On the liberal side, some think that the right is so adept at fooling the average person, that the well intentioned liberal must step in and protect society from getting duped or persuaded.
I am not saying all or even most liberals are like this. Many are staunch defenders of freedom of speech and don't want anything to do with campus speech codes or the fairness doctorine.
"DP, one quibble with your comment. The war in Iraq was most certainly NOT sold to the American public as an exercise in building a Jeffersonian democracy. It was sold to the American public on the basis of Saddam's purported (and specious) possession of weapons of mass destruction, and his flouting of UN authority. It was only after no WMDs were found that the rationale suddenly shifted to exporting democracy.
I don't think half of the people who supported the war (and I didn't) would have done so if it hadn't been sold as a response to a supposedly credible threat."
This is mostly true, but as someone who has unfortunately had to read too many Bush speeches, that rationale [i]was[/i] included, it was just second or third on the list. Prez Dumb Nuts would spend several paragraphs talking about weapons of mass destruction and terrorists and then might segue for a paragraph or two about freedom and such.
The decision to go into Iraq meant different things to different people in the admin and its closest supporters: macho dick politics (the Ledeen doctrine); showing off the latest military wares (Rummy); oil and American power (Cheney); democracy (Wolfowitz); Israel (Perle). Which one truly dominated the President's thinking will probably never be solved, unless Obama reverses Bush's presidential order on presidential papers.
Debating whether the Iraq invasion was a Conservative or Liberal boondoggle is like arguing the merits of airplane food vs. hospital food.
The lesson to be learned here is that the political landscape has been remade over the last eight years and no one is sure what to make of things anymore. We are in the midst of redefining both political parties and anyone who comes along trying to trot out these old tired stereotypes from the Reagan years needs to be told to shut the fuck up and instead get to helping us figure out who stands for what in the new era.
Brand new world out there, the old clothes don't fit anymore.
puhlease, all this yearning for america to do good in this world
stop doing evil
stop blowing up people in Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Jemen...
stop torturing other human beings
stop supporting the strangulation of the the people of Gaza
THEN people might be prepared to listen to this "American Exceptionalism" crap again
"Debating whether the Iraq invasion was a Conservative or Liberal boondoggle is like arguing the merits of airplane food vs. hospital food.
The lesson to be learned here is that the political landscape has been remade over the last eight years and no one is sure what to make of things anymore. We are in the midst of redefining both political parties and anyone who comes along trying to trot out these old tired stereotypes from the Reagan years needs to be told to shut the fuck up and instead get to helping us figure out who stands for what in the new era.
Brand new world out there, the old clothes don't fit anymore."
This is nonsense. Nothing has been redefined. This is like the argument that 9/11 changed everything. Politicians have always been malleable in their "principles". That doesn't mean that libs aren't libs anymore & conservatives are any saner than they were 20 years ago. Show me where America has changed. Iraq isn't semantic. It was thought up by idealistic conservatives but they are still conservatives. Being idealistic doesn't make them into pseudo-liberals.
Pacifist theologian John Howard Yoder in "Nevertheless: Varieties of Religious Pacifism":
"This utopian pacifism trusts less to an irrational leap of faith than does the rhetoric which tells us that by forcibly making refugees, we are defending self-determination; or that by supporting a puppet government, we are enabling democracy to grow. There is no more utopian institution than an idealistic war. [...] War is utopian both in the promises it makes for the future and in the black-and-white way of thinking about the enemy, which it assumes" (76)
While I'm sure he can find rationalization from philosphy or political science or the writings of various smart, brilliant people to somehow "prove" that the Iraq war is the result of liberal utopian, I'm sure Mr Cobb can understand why it would piss off liberals to somehow be blamed for the war, right? A war started by a Republican administration, in which people who were againsts it were called un-patriotic, cowardly, reflexive pacifist, dirty fucking hippie etc etc. Now that things aren't going well, suddenly it's all - hey, that's YOUR FREAKIN' IDEOLOGY, that's why it was a disaster, it's not based on conservative ideology.
This is a wholesale rewriting of history, not just on this issue. Bush was a bad prsident because he wasn't a conservative, he embraces things like big government and liberal utopia, so the failure of his presidency does not prove any flaw in conservative principles, but liberal principles instead. Take that, suckers!
Give me a freaking break! Bush is a Republican, the principles that matter is the one actually enacted by the administration, not how it is defined in pages of books or by philosophers. Between Cobb, and Andrew Sullivan constantly denying that Bush is "one of us conservatives", I just FUCKING HAD IT. Take some responsibility. You guys voted this guy in twice. Where was the concern about him not being "a real conservative" in 2004?
While I disagree with Capn America's criticism of TNC (are you kidding me? TNC and Fallows are the best writers here), I do think there is an ideological imbalance in the Alantic bloggers. From the left, it's basically just TNC and Fallows, isn't it? And neither of them are primarily political or policy writers. This is not a criticism - the stuff I enjoy most from both of them are the cultural and social stuff anyway - just stating a fact.
Meanwhile, from the other side, we have Dhoutat, McArdle and Sullivan. Sure, we can quibble some about Sullivan because he hates Bush and Palin and love Obama, but wait until the issue is health care or economic stimulus, he'll be on the same page as Republicans. Yeah, yeah Megan's a libertarian bla bla bla, but at the end of the day, she often comes down on the same side anyway. Goldberg is mainly a one issue guy, Ambinder is a day-to-day political reporter, I'm not really sure what to make of Clive Crook.
Sure, The Atlantic is not a political magazine like TNR or The Nation, so it's not like they have a responsibility for ideological balance or anything. And TNC or James Fallows don't have a responsibility to respond to every cockamamie idea from Sullivan et al (one recent cockamamie argument - Brits don't complain much about their nationalized health service because they are naturally stoic, uncomplaining people, not because NHS work ok for the most part). But I understand a bit where Capn America is coming from, even though I disagree that it's TNC's job to do something about it. It's not, it's the magazine's.
None of this is to say that I think TNC should change anything - you're my second favorite writer here. (Sorry, dude, Fallows with his annotated State of the Union and his continuing crusade againsts the boiled frog metaphor is still my favorite). It's just some observation about the magazine and its bloggers.
Take some responsibility. You guys voted this guy in twice. Where was the concern about him not being "a real conservative" in 2004?
I agree, even look at Ms. Mcardle. All this talk about how she supports Obama blah, blah, blah. Then she ends up not voting for anyone, after talking about how important it is to vote. It's the best of both worlds, every Obama misstep can be framed as "well I didn't vote for him" despite "supporting" him. Secondly, where were the libertarians when Bush was in office? Why weren't they roundly criticizing him 2 months before he even took office for random internet rumors?
Of course, another point that can be made is neither Sullivan nor McArdle are primarily policy writers either, they just pretend that they know what they are talking about. (I'm giving Dhoutat a pass because he's actually written a book about the Republican party and its policy, so presumable he does know what he's talking about). So there's really no point for anyone from the other side of the aisle to engage in policy discussions with these guys - it's a complete waste of time.
Apologize for the swearing in post 12:34. Getting sick and tired of the Bush-isn't-a-conservative-so-don't-blame-us meme, that's all. I'll try to be more civilized after this.
I did not vote for him in 2004 so criticisms like that don't really say much about me. (I wrote in "Ben Knighthorse Campbell", who I don't agree with on many issues either, as a kind of protest.)
I agree that the Iraq war was largely supported by conservatives. There can be a kind-of conservative justification for it. However a main reason I supported it, the hope human rights would improve, was at best only semi-conservative. However it was possible to support it because Iraq was in a strategic region and financially backed Palestinian suicide-bombers. This is closer to conservative reasoning.
Still the idea of making Iraq a functioning democracy was naive and unrealistic, but not precisely utopian. A functioning democracy is not a utopia. The main utopian thing of Bush's was a "War on Terrorism", which implied we could somehow end all terrorism. I think even when I was a Bush-defender I said something like "he means international terrorism", because the idea you can end all terrorism of all kinds was borderline preposterous.
The idea of 1960s Democratic Presidents of "I see things as they ought to be and say why not", "War on Poverty", etc seemed similarly preposterous to many conservatives. We're not going to end all poverty in America or thoroughly make life the way we think it ought to be. Possibly Democrats/progressives never even meant that, but the idea that the right government reforms or educations can lead to perfection was important to many progressive thinkers. Or at least it was at one time.
And Bush is a conservative in many to most respects. He's just not going to be a 100% conservative in all respects because such a thing is virtually impossible. (Especially as there's disagreement what that would even mean)
The war on drugs
The war on terrorism
The war on the left (Mccarthyism)
The culture-wars?
these aren't just figments of the conservative mind, they're the root causes the conservative movement has been fighting for the last 50 years.
Could someone explain to me how they're not utopian??
Class this BS with "The Soviet Union wasn't really communism..."
None the less, the failure of the Soviet Union was a non-trivial event in the history of the communist movement and the dynamics of East/West politics.
Will the past 8 years be regarded as non-trivial event in the history of the American conservative movement and the dynamics of conservative/liberal politics? I think the answer is yes.
The whole "liberals are naive utopian" thing is something so old that I thought people don't even use it in arguments anymore. Along with "conservatism is a grown-up ideology", or "everyone becomes a conservative once they have kids", or "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" etc etc. Aren't these stuff from the 80's? We're recycling stuff like this again? Talk about being retro.
Still. I salute you both for coming in here and fighting.
I didn't go so far as to read the extent of the blog you cited, TNC, but I think the key here isn't utopianism in general, but, as the writer pointed out, "STATE-SPONSORED" and to a lesser extent, "rationalist" utopianism.
I may not be the only one to have said so in previous comments, but let's try to come together on one simple thing. What GWB and the so-called conservatives in power circa 2000-2006 did in the middle-east was NOT a conservative move. You've heard this bandied about quite a bit over the last couple of years with people from the right beginning to disown GWB as a true conservative. I consider this more than election cycle politics. I consider it to be true. From spending policies to foreign policies, his administration seemed to have two playbooks; one they got elected on and one they governed with.
If you want a good speculative-fiction ideal of a conservative utopia, read "The Probability Broach" by L. Neil Smith. The key being far, far LESS state-sponsered anything and self-determinism to the nth degree. I swear, if libertarians can ever figure out foreign policy and welfare...we win...big.
It's "Night Horse" or "Nighthorse".
A name with "Knight" in it wold be odd for a Northern Cheyenne Chief.
My biggest crazymaking issue about the Bushies is that everything that the "conservatives" hated about Clinton, with the exception of oral sex, was compounded by Bush et al.
Whether it be not doing enough to get UBL and other terrorists, intervening in a place we had to pressing security issues, lying, manipulating the press, using governmental powers to help business associates, being overly partisan in judicial appointments, excessive government spending,whatever the criticism, Bush was far, far more egregious, and had been from almost day 1. The strong tribal blinders were only slightly lifted in 06 and the 08 election, but now they are going back on/
"My biggest crazymaking issue about the Bushies is that everything that the "conservatives" hated about Clinton, with the exception of oral sex, was compounded by Bush et al."
That would be the exact same things that someone with a solid conservative compass would, and do, continue to dislike about GWB's administration.
I'm interested in one last aspect of '92-'00 vs '00-'08 administrations...that of presidential pardons. Billy's bordered on ridiculous. We'll see what croniest/nepotisitc pardons George pulls out of his hat.
But back on-topic, I also think that the pursuit of utopia, in and of itself, is not a virtue. First of all...simply because it's an unattainable goal. Do that on your own time with your own funds (lol). Second, the inherent problem of human nature. No two versions of utopia are going to be the same. That, to me, is the inherent problem as you slide from the right (less government) to the left (more government). One-size-fits-all simply doesn't work on the macro level.
"From spending policies to foreign policies, his administration seemed to have two playbooks; one they got elected on and one they governed with."
There's nothing wrong with noting that Bush is straying from conservative ideals or principles. What is utterly galling to me is the effort to blame liberalism for Bush's failures - oh, hey, Bush is embracing liberal policies such as big government, or some liberal utopian notion of foreign policy, ergo the failure of his administration is actually the failure of liberalism. For one thing, it misrepresents liberalism - as if liberals like big government for the sake of big government. Oh hey, let's tax everyone to death or raise the deficit to eternity and spend as much as we want just because we can!
It's passing the buck, pure and simple. Conservatives are free to disown Bush if they want, but please, I beg you, don't try to pass him off as one of ours instead. After 8 years of living under his administration, that is just too cruel to liberals.
“Anyone can take it to far. The urge to remake the world is ancient. It was here before liberals. It will likely be here after.”
And therein lies the rub. Anyone that takes even a cursory glance at our social/political structures should notice one overriding fact…da Boomers done @#$%ed it up for everyone. This generation is not only the most self-serving, self-centered in our nation’s history, but also the most radical. This applies to both sides and has led us to where we are today. Everything has been taken too far in pursuit of ideological purity, entering into a vicious (or viscous even, for that matter, becoming more so each cycle) feedback loop.
It’s going to be a long while before we’re free of the mindset of the 60’s radical socialist left and the 80’s radical religious right.
There is nothing inherently prudent about believing in lower taxes, to being anti-abortion, to being pro-death penalty, to being anti-gay marriage that--in and of itself--would guard you against being imprudent. Ditto for believing universal health care. For being anti-death penalty. For being anti-drug war.
Put it this way, there is nothing guaranteed to be prudent about the way in which people attempt to deal with those issues. But there is something inherently right or wrong in the impetus to deal with them. Think of them on a three dimensional axis of conviction, importance, and implementational prudence. I may need to apologize for thinking in multiple dimensions but I do. We simply will not resolve any large set of these issues in the context of this blog - but I'll be around another 15 years writing on the web.
It should be said that there are surely 100 good reasons for warring against Saddam's Iraq and then putting down the subsequent insurrection. The problem we have had in America is that people cared more about who got credit for those ideas or for debunking those ideas, than paying attention to the war itself. To lay that at the feet of an ideology supposedly embodied in 8 years of this person or 8 years of that person is an egregious example of short attention span theatre.
The war on drugs - This has a utopian element, but it was largely a rection to increased use in drugs and the creation of new drugs. (LSD, maybe meth) If it's limited to reducing drug-usage to pre-1960s levels I don't think that's utopian. However it's correct that if the idea is to end all usage of narcotics or hallucinogens it's preposterous and utopian.
The war on the left (Mccarthyism) - I'm not a defender of McCarthyism, but this was in essence to get rid of a utopian influence namely Communism. An America without Communism would not be a society without crime, poverty, disease, or sin. No evil inherent in humanity would be at all eliminated.
The culture-wars? - This is mostly about maintaining or defending either the status quo or a previous status quo. And there's clearly two-to-tango here. The Counterculture types and the Radical Feminists were cultural-warriors. They were very much about changing the culture to fit their agenda. The expression "Kulturkampf" comes from Bismarck's efforts against the power of the Catholic Church. "Culture war", when it actually exists, has just as much to do with a Radical secularizing agenda warring against traditional norms.
The war on terrorism - I conceded this one was somewhat utopian. At least if applied literally. Internationally motivated terrorism didn't always exist so eliminating it might be possible and not utopian. Terrorism, in a wider sense, has pretty much always existed so eliminating it altogether is basically preposterous. (And I said as much)
"To lay that at the feet of an ideology supposedly embodied in 8 years of this person or 8 years of that person is an egregious example of short attention span theatre."
With all due respect Mr Cobb, who was doing the laying down in the first place? Wasn't it your statement laying it down to "liberal rationalist utopianism" that started this whole discussion in the first place? So now that people are giving you push-back, suddenly WE are the shallow fools who don't really care about the war at all and only care about getting credit and debunking ideas?
Forgive me if I call bullshit on that. You sound like a very smart and learned man, certainly smarter and more knowledgeable than me, so I can understand why your posts drips with condescension/ But please, let's engage in good faith, shall we? Let's not throw stones and then hide your hand and accuse other people of blithely throwing stones without caring about the consequences when they retaliate.