Forget Reaganreagan His Foreign Policy Was Right for His Time—Not Ours
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Our Lousy Generals Immigration Reformed American Pravda Sex, Spies & the ’60s ANDREW J. BACEVICH WILLIAM W. CHIP RON UNZ CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD MAY/JUNE 2013 IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY ForgetForget ReaganReagan His foreign policy was right for his time—not ours $9.99 US/Canada theamericanconservative.com Meet Pope Francis The Pope from the End of the Earth This lavishly illustrated volume by bestselling author Thomas J. 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Available at booksellers everywhere and at TANBooks.com e Publisher You Can Trust With Your Faith 58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 1-800-437-5876MAY/JUNE 2013 Vol. 12, No. 3, May/June 2013 22 28 51 COVER STORY FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS 12 Reagan, Hawk or Dove? 7 Defense spending isn’t 40 The Generals: American The right foreign-policy lessons defense strength Military Command From to take from the 40th president WILLIAM S. LIND World War II to Today DANIEL LARISON 8 How to debunk the BBC’s by Thomas E. Ricks war fever ANDREW J. BACEVICH ARTICLES NEIL CLARK 44 Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American 16 Immigration Made Right 9 Mrs. Thatcher’s Hong Kong diplomacy Idea in an Age of Discontent Can reform be comprehensive by E.J. Dionne TODD CROWELL and conservative? P ATRICK J. DENEEN WILLIAM W. CHIP COMMentarY 46 After Tocqueville: The Promise 22 Our American Pravda and Failure of Democracy by How the media miss key stories 6 The age of Keynes Chilton Williamson Jr. of espionage and corruption DANIEL J. MAHONEY R ON UNZ 11 Europe’s faith no more pa TRICK J. BUCHANAN 49 American Diplomacy: Sixtieth- 28 Sex, Spies, and the 1960s Anniversary Expanded Edition Tabloid culture began with the 21 Drones for “regime protection” PHILIP GIRALDI by George Kennan Profumo Affair. JRDO AN MICHAEL SMITH COHRIST PHER SANDFORD 38 For President Buchanan BILL KAUFFMAN 51 Devouring Freedom: Can Big 34 Clive James at Last Government Ever Be Stopped? He’s a wit, but can he confront 58 Goodbye to the 1980s by W. James Antle III evil? TAKI JAMES BOVARD R .J. STOVE 54 Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic by Mark David Hall KEVIN R.C. GUTZMAN 56 Most Likely to Secede ed. by Ron Miller and Rob Williams KIRKpaTRICK SALE Cover illustration: Michael Hogue MAY/JUNE 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions “The WAR’S MOST LASTING LEGACy” That doesn’t mean Vietnam was ir- Gov. Huntsman’s argument in “Why True, there’s no necessary connection relevant, but in the absence of the cur- Marriage Equality Is Right” (March/ between the Bush administration’s Iraq rents of domestic social change, I sus- April) is unsubstantial. How can the floundering and, say, the right’s set- pect the Vietnam debacle would have governor implore the value of Amer- backs in the gay-marriage debate. But looked more like, say, the Korean War, ica’s political traditions while, in the cultural change is a complicated thing, the memory of which did contribute same breath, dismiss the very moral built on narratives and symbols and in- to the Democrats’ losses in 1952 and principles that lay the foundation for tuitive leaps. 1956, but did not lead to a long-term America itself? As The American Conservative’s Dan realignment. There is a tendency to Not unexpected, Mr. Huntsman ne- McCarthy noted in a shrewd essay attribute those social changes to the glects to provide any compelling evi- (“The GOP’s Vietnam,” March/April), disillusion caused by the Vietnam War, dence to his position, instead obscuring the Vietnam War helped entrench a but I suspect this is also a mistake—the the issue with references to an emerging narrative in which liberal social move- Generation of ’68 was a global phe- Hispanic population, fiscal responsibil- ments were associated with defeat in nomenon. ity, and the personal testimony of his Indochina—and this association didn’t NOAH MILLMAN own marriage. It is more of the same have to be perfectly fair to be politically Excerpt from a blog post at The hollow rhetoric that quickly rendered and culturally potent. American Conservative Mr. Huntsman irrelevant among his In a similar way, even though Don- Republican peers this past election year. ald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney weren’t The war was instrumental in driving Whatever misperceived political op- culture warriors or evangelical Chris- younger voters away from the GOP portunity Mr. Huntsman found in tak- tians, in the popular imagination their and into the Democratic coalition in ing this position has undeniably shown legacy of incompetence has become a 2006 and 2008, and most of them have to be the governor himself “feeling for reason to reject social conservatism as remained there since then. Of course, stones” in the river dividing regional well. Just as the post-Vietnam Demo- Iraq was not the only thing about the and national politics. crats came to be regarded as incompe- Republican Party and mainstream con- JONATHAN ARMESTO tent, wimpy and dangerously radical servatism that alienated Millennials, but Ave Maria, FL all at once, since 2004 the Bush ad- it is correct to say that the Iraq war in- ministration’s blunders—the missing creased and hastened Millennial alien- Huntsman’s argument that support for W.M.D., the botched occupation— ation from both. The important point marriage equality is a conservative cause have been woven into a larger story is that the GOP was already going to be is significant for reasons that don’t neces- about Youth and Science and Reason struggling to appeal to a more diverse, sarily have anything to do with politics. and Diversity triumphing over Old more liberal younger generation, and a As a cultural matter, there are moun- White Male Faith-Based Cluelessness. foreign policy defined by the Iraq de- tains of social science studies that show Of all the Iraq war’s consequences bacle has made that task even more dif- that relationships involving committed for our politics, it’s this narrative that ficult. So the sobering thing for Repub- couples, regardless of the gender pair- may be the war’s most lasting legacy, licans to consider is that the Iraq war is a ings involved, are far more stable that and the most difficult for conservatives liability for them with Americans of all “casual” relationships. Additionally, it’s to overcome. ages, and it has already proven to be a fairly clear that established families are ROSS DOUTHAT disaster for them with younger voters. far better for children than single par- New York Times DANIEL LARISON ent families, and the evolving practice of Excerpt from a blog post at The homosexuals either bearing children via I’m unconvinced that Vietnam is the American Conservative artificial insemination or adoption has key reason why the Democrats lost their shown that such relationships are just as status as the majority party. Rather, I be- THE CASE FOR MARRIAGE beneficial for children as heterosexual lieve it was overwhelmingly domestic Former presidential candidate Jon relationships. What all of this suggests is policy considerations—and particularly Huntsman’s op-ed expressing support that allowing gays and lesbians to enter the nexus of race and crime—that over- for gay marriage literally made news, into a legal marriage tends to lead to ex- whelmingly drove the “Silent Majority” generating enough media attention to be actly the kind of social stability that con- into the arms of Richard Nixon, and, mentioned in a White House press brief- servatives claim that they support. subsequently, motivated the Democrats ing. His endorsement garnered 120,000 DOUG MATACONIS of Macomb County, Michigan, to pull pageviews and 35,000 Facebook shares Excerpt from a blog post at Outside The the lever for Ronald Reagan. on TheAmericanConservative.com. Beltway 4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MAY/JUNE 2013 The American Conservative Publisher Ron Unz E ditor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher CAORPOR TE RELATIONS the pews. But, as David Brooks pointed Daniel Larison In his discussion of sex and culture, out in a recent New York Times column Mark Nugent Rod Dreher (“Sex and Christianity,” (“How Movements Recover,” March 15, E ditorial Director, Digital Maisie Allison March/April) gives scant attention to 2013), an institution that responds to A ssociate Editor the supra-nationalist corporate order crisis by following the impulse to “purge Jordan Bloom that has been imposed upon all of us— and purify” risks sacrificing its author- National Correspondent the very generator of modernist morals ity in its effort to avoid being tainted by Michael Brendan Dougherty and mores. For the extraction of ever- the world it seeks to influence. A case Contributing Editors increasing profit margins, this amoral could be made that it is actually the re- W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, system requires a mass psychology of fusal of the Roman hierarchy to follow Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, narcissistic individualism and the re- the course set by Vatican II that has led Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, lentless creation and stimulation of ar- to the marginalization of the Catholic Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, tificial wants and desires—all of which Church in the western world.