One Percent America Kennedy’s Wars St. Benedict Option Taki: The Movie ANDREW BACEVICH Justin Raimondo ROD DREHER Taki

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY

WHY THE TEA PARTY CAN’T GOVERN by DANIEL MCCARTHY

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Front Royal, Virginia 800.877.5456 Tomorrow’s Leaders. Here Today. christendom.edu Vol. 12, No. 6, November/December 2013

2224 3228 40

COVER STORY FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS

12 Why the Tea Party Can’t Govern 6 Mike Lee, rugged 40 Goliath: Life and Loathing Its is a product of communitarian in Greater by Max the disco era. Jonathan Coppage Blumenthal DANIEL MCCARTHY 7 The magazine for crunchy cons Scott Mcconnell Gracy Olmstead articles 44 Rebound: Getting America Back 9 Britain’s Tories need a woman. to Great by Kim R. Holmes 16 Benedict Option Emma Elliott Freire Justin Logan The promise of Christian 46 Conservative Internationalism: intentional communities Commentary ROD DREHER Armed Diplomacy Under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and 5 Turning right since 2012 20 One Percent Republic Reagan by Henry Nau Inequality applies to military 11 Has the NSA gone too far? Michael C. Desch service as well as wealth. patrick j. buchanan Andrew Bacevich 48 Collision 2012: Obama vs. 31 Quitting over Syria Romney and the Future of 24 JFK, Warmonger philip giraldi Elections in America by Dan The idol of Camelot was a Balz foreign-policy disaster. 38 Rural America revolts Lloyd Green Justin Raimondo 50 The Man From Mars: Ray 28 Gettysburg Gospel 58 Taki makes a movie Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey Lincoln’s address was about civil taki by Fred Nadis religion, not the Civil War. Jesse Walker Richard Gamble 52 Adam Smith’s Pluralism: 32 Seven Conservative Minds Rationality, Education, and Why Russell Kirk revised his the Moral Sentiments by Jack most famous work Russell Weinstein Bradley Birzer David J. Davis 55 Metamorphoses of the City: On the Western Dynamic by Pierre Manent Daniel J. Mahoney

Cover illustration: Michael Hogue

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 Reactions The American Conservative

Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher Daniel Larison TAXING CARBON ISN’T CONSERVATIVE progressive establishment that is pro- Editorial Director, Digital Andrew Moylan’s “conservative carbon tax and anti-energy. For conservatives Maisie Allison tax” (“How to Tax Carbon,” Sept.-Oct.) to follow Moylan’s advice would be to Associate Editor is political fantasy. If conservative lead- squander their energy advantage. Jonathan Coppage ers advocate a carbon tax, they will di- Gracy Howard vide the movement, demoralize their MARLO LEWIS National Correspondent Michael Brendan Dougherty base, and promote the left’s war on en- Senior fellow, CEI Contributing Editors ergy. via email W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, Moylan faults conservatives for not Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, having a plan to cut income taxes and Andrew Moylan replies: My friend Marlo Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, repeal EPA’s greenhouse gas regula- Lewis dismisses my case for a conserva- Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, tions. They do have a plan. It’s to win tive plan to tax carbon while eliminating Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, big in 2014 and 2016. taxes on entrepreneurship as “political Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, Washington’s big spenders have no fantasy.” Though well-meaning, Lewis Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, interest in “tax reform” that does not is mistaken. He contends that revenue- R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, Thomas E. Woods Jr. also “enhance revenues,” and the envi- neutrality is impossible and that liber- Publisher ronmental establishment has no inten- als will never relinquish their grip on Jon Basil Utley tion of bartering away the litigation- onerous climate regulation. However, Publishing Consultant driven, EPA-run regulatory system. liberals like Sen. Maria Cantwell (D- Ronald E. Burr Yes, British Columbia has a rev- Wash.) have proposed a revenue-neu- Editorial Assistant enue-neutral carbon tax, which so tral “cap-and-dividend” plan, and even Marina Olson far has done no noticeable economic climate crusader Rep. Henry Waxman Founding Editors Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, harm. But the BC carbon tax is not (D-Calif.) included partial preemption Taki Theodoracopulos a model for the U.S. Hydropower of EPA’s regulation in his infamous 2009 provides 90 percent of BC’s electric “cap-and-trade” bill. The American Ideas Institute generation but only 7 percent in the Absent from Lewis’s critique is any President United States. Small service-oriented significant attempt to dispute the posi- Wick Allison businesses are the backbone of the BC tive results from British Columbia’s tax, The American Conservative, Vol. 12, No. economy, whereas energy-intensive which he concedes “has done no notice- 5, September/October 2013 (ISSN 1540- 966X). Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Offic. Published manufacturing and energy produc- able economic harm.” There’s a good 6 times a year by The American Ideas tion are major U.S. industries. reason for that: the tax didn’t increase Institute, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20036-3128. The BC carbon tax actually provides the burden of government one Canadi- Periodicals postage paid Washington, DC a cautionary tale, as only five years after an dime. It simply shifted it away from and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes enactment there have been calls to hike income and toward pollution. Lewis ex- to The American Conservative, P.O. Box 2023, the tax to fund progressive projects. It plains away this success by pointing to Langhorne, PA 19047-9023. Subscription rates: $59.95 per year (6 issues) was a factor in the BC premier elec- BC’s service-heavy economy and its re- in the U.S., $69.95 in Canada (U.S. funds), and tions this year, and the winner, Christy liance on hydropower for electricity. But $79.95 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: $12.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $13.00 in Clark, campaigned on freezing the tax. America’s economy is actually more ser- Canada (U.S. funds). Enactment of any carbon tax, how- vice-oriented than BC’s and our greater For subscription orders, payments, and other ever small, affirms the warming move- reliance on fossil fuels actually provides subscription inquiries— ment’s alarm narrative, but no carbon a broader base for a potential tax, thus By phone: 800-579-6148 outside the U.S./Canada 215-826-8411 tax, however large, ever will be enough allowing for much more dramatic cuts Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com to satisfy the movement’s demands. to anti-growth taxes. By mail: P.O. Box 2023, Langhorne, PA 19047-9023 Conservatives cannot advocate a The real political fantasy is hoping Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your carbon tax without giving credibility that Republicans win the presidency, first issue. Inquiries and letters to the editor should be sent to those who scare the public to justify maintain the House, and secure the 60 to [email protected]. For government control of energy markets. votes in the Senate necessary to disman- advertising sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893- A conservative movement that is tle EPA’s regulatory scheme despite fac- 3632. For editorial, call 202-955-3600. This issue went to press on August 28, 2013. pro-energy and anti-tax challenges a ing approval ratings of 28 percent. Copyright 2013 The American Conservative.

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 { Vol. 12, No. 6, November/December 2013 }

The Turning Tide of 2013

s 2013 draws to a close, it’s worth taking stock of Republican, and John Conyers, a Democrat, forged a bipar- how far conservatives—and the country—have tisan coalition to scale back the NSA’s activities. That coali- come over this past year. tion fell short in its first attempt but continues to grow. Even In March, Sen. took to the Senate the (somewhat) remorseful author of the , Rep. Afloor to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination to head the Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), is helping lead the fight against CIA, calling attention to Obama’s drone warfare at a time the national security state’s abuses. Real reform seems to be when attitudes toward it wavered between approving and in the offing. indifferent. Even as the president courted the Kentucky And a year after Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe helped senator’s fellow Republicans at dinner, Paul spoke about cost Republicans the 2012 election, there were signs this fall the Constitution and the necessity of having explicit, public that the GOP is eager to court working families again. Rom- checks on the government’s war powers here at home. He ney wrote off almost half the country when he said, “there left the Senate floor 13 hours later in a country won over to are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent his view. upon government, who believe that they are victims, who The idea of breaking up the biggest Wall Street banks, believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, meanwhile, found some traction inside the Beltway this who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to spring. Republican Sen. David Vitter joined with housing, to you-name-it.” Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown to introduce a bill What he overlooked was that many Americans pay no in- aimed at curtailing big banks’ implicit government subsidies come tax—but certainly do pay other taxes—because of Re- and preventing future bailouts. publican successes in reducing the burdens on families and This summer, Americans seemed to be once more hur- the poor. Utah Sen. Mike Lee has now unveiled a family- tling into a Mideast war as Obama called for U.S. airstrikes friendly tax reform plan that suggests at least some Republi- against Syria in retaliation for chemical-weapons atroci- cans have learned from Romney’s mistakes. ties in that country’s civil war. But this time a wary public Taken together, these episodes point to a nation whose curbed Washington’s rush to war. Obama felt compelled to citizens are no longer so fearful for their safety that they are seek permission from Congress even for a strike Secretary willing to overlook the infringement of their civil . of State Kerry described as “unbelievably small.” This sur- And Congress, after many years of ceding its authority to prising deference to the constitution—which does, after all, the president and his agencies, is starting to claw back its place the power to declare war in Congress’s hands, not the abandoned responsibilities—and to rein in the executive’s president’s—allowed time for a Russian-proposed diplomat- war powers. Washington has also had to recognize popular ic solution to prevail, saving the United States from becom- concern about the undue influence and rent-seeking of the ing entangled in another war in a Muslim country. wealthy and well-connected. When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed Plenty of roadblocks remain ahead for a genuine politics the overreaches of the surveillance state, recent history sug- of realism and reform. But for the first time in perhaps a gested Congress would simply excuse any extralegal col- decade, Americans are taking a sober look at national se- lection of intelligence conducted under the auspices of na- curity and economics and concluding that they want their tional security. But Michigan congressmen , a republic back.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines

a state that has had strong institutions of civil society, very strong neighbor- Tea Party Communitarian hoods, very connected neighborhoods Can Sen. Mike Lee get libertarian populists to put family first? where people know each other,” the senator tells me. “Sometimes people by JONATHAN COPPAGE are quick to assume that that just re- fers to people who are members of my ike Lee is an unlikely candi- what he called the “Parent Tax Penalty” church, the Church of Jesus Christ of date for conservatism’s most whereby parents doubly contribute to Latter-Day Saints, but it’s not just that. promising policy mind. A entitlement programs through their There’s a very strong neighborhood dy- MTea Party firebrand since he swept into taxes and the expenses they incur rais- namic in Utah that perhaps traces back office in 2010, Lee was the driving force ing future taxpayers. And he insisted, to the way we were settled,” he explains. behind efforts to defund Obamacare “Here, I am not speaking about the “People had traveled great distances, that led to a 16-day government shut- family as a moral or cultural institution, sometimes thousands of miles to get down this October. Yet the past year strictly as a social and economic one.” there to what was initially a fairly deso- has also seen him reveal another side to But that in itself is significant: the family, late desert. The Salt Lake Valley was his populist conservatism: a communi- not just the individual, is what econom- said to only have one or two trees when tarian agenda for policy reform. ics must be about. the first Mormon Pioneers arrived in At the American Enterprise Institute “Conservatives sometimes get criti- 1847, and it required people to work in September, Lee set out a tax-reform cized for putting too much emphasis together a lot to build these communi- proposal centered around a per child on the family in policy debates,” he ties, to make the desert blossom like a tax credit that would apply to income acknowledged. But “the real problem rose. And that has become part of our and payroll taxes alike. At the unveiling, may be that we don’t think about the culture, and it has thrived.” Lee said: “Now, if you are like me—a family enough. For family is not just Communitarian concern for the conservative with a libertarian streak— one of the major institutions through social fabric and libertarian resistance you might at first raise an eyebrow at all which people pursue happiness. Is the to big-government interventions fit to- this. My plan, you might say, may share one upon which all the others depend.” gether naturally for the Utah senator. some features of traditional conserva- At the Heritage Foundation in April, “Lee has been eager to show that social tive tax reform but it’s no flat tax. It’s Lee delivered a communitarian mani- conservatism and concern for the fam- no consumption tax,” two policies long festo of sorts entitled “What Conserva- ily doesn’t speak a different language favored by conservative for their eco- tives Are For.” He emphasized “that the than his kind of constitutionalism and nomic efficiency or ostensible fairness. true and proper end of political subsid- limited government-ism,” says Yuval “That’s right,” he continued. “It’s bet- iarity is social solidarity” and explained Levin, editor of the policy quarterly t e r.” that his “vision of American freedom National Affairs. Levin is encouraged With the slightest hint of braggadocio is of two separate but mutually rein- by the direction he sees leaders like Lee that only a humble Utahn can muster, forcing institutions: a free enterprise taking. Lee broke with the economic individu- economy and a voluntary civil society.” “I think there’s been a tendency for alism of the conservative establishment Lee’s proposals focus on reliev- a decade or more in conservatism to to prioritize instead the family, “the first ing burdens on the institutions that move away from communitarian talk and foremost institution of civil society.” strengthen society in their everyday to a much more individualist talk, and There was a sound economic basis for practice. This outlook goes straight back it’s very much in need of counterforce,” this, to be sure. Lee drew attention to to his Utah origins. “We’ve always been he says. “Conservatism needs to be a

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 counterweight to radical individual- of ‘plain, ordinary kindness, and a little government is for “the happiness of the ism, not an enabler of it, and to me to looking out for the other fellow, too’. ” people” and Abraham Lincoln’s idea see that being expressed again is really He continued, that it ought “to lift artificial weights crucial.” from all shoulders, to clear the paths of At AEI, Lee opened his proposal by In the last few years, we conser- laudable pursuit for all.” speaking of “a new and unnatural stag- vatives seem to have abandoned But can Lee sell his communitarian nancy” that has trapped the poor and words like ‘together,’ ‘compassion,’ message to his fellow constitutional- worn down the middle class. There are and ‘community’ as if their only ists? Levin is hopeful: “He has a shot the beginnings here of a different way possible meanings were as a secret because to a certain extent he’s filling a of talking about the economy, in con- code for statism. This is a mistake. vacuum, and that means he really has trast to the GOP’s old prosperity gospel Collective action doesn’t only—or an opportunity to shape the arena the for the upwardly mobile. Republicans a even usually—mean government way he wants to.” year ago proved all too ready to fan the action. Conservatives cannot sur- As Lee himself said at AEI: “For a flames of upper-class resentment with render the idea of community to political party too often seen as out of talk of the 47 percent of Americans the left, when it is the vitality of touch, aligned with the rich, indiffer- who pay no federal income tax. Lee our communities upon which our ent to the less fortunate, and uninter- rebukes that mentality, pointing out at entire depends. ested in solving the problems of work- AEI that “people who pay no income ing families, Republicans could not tax do pay federal taxes—payroll tax- Lee’s understanding of civil society ask for a more worthy cause around es, gas taxes, and various others,” and redirects what often seems like a pure which to build a new conservative re- squarely declaring, “Working families populist backlash—a mere reaction— form agenda.” are not free riders.” to finding constructive ways in which Lee rails upward instead, against limited-government constitutionalists Jonathan Coppage is associate editor of The the cronyism that big government and can act on James Madison’s notion that American Conservative. big business together have cultivated at the taxpayer’s expense. “At the top of our society, we find a political and economic elite that—having reached Where Wendell Berry Meets Martha Stewart the highest rungs—has pulled up the Kinfolk brings a crunchy ethos to entertaining. ladder behind itself, denying others by GRACY OLMSTEAD the chance even to climb,” he warned at AEI. At Heritage, he went so far as hat’s so Kinfolk.” Nathan has quickly earned an international to say, “The first step in a true conser- Williams has heard friends following. The magazine’s rather bo- vative reform agenda must be to end and acquaintances say this hemian team of designers, writers, this kind of preferential policymaking. “Twith increasing regularity over the and photographers all aim to cultivate Beyond simply being the right thing to past few years. Some say it when they a more thoughtful approach to small do, it is a prerequisite for earning the see a simple, rustic table setting. Oth- gatherings. Williams, the editor in moral authority and political credibil- ers say it when picking apples, canning chief, is a graduate of Brigham Young ity to do anything else.” How, he asked, summer vegetables, or making their University in Hawaii, where he studied could working families take seriously a own brews. economics and conflict resolution—an conservatism that props up and subsi- The phrase refers to Williams’s mag- odd combination in light of his current dizes big banks and corporate agricul- azine, Kinfolk, an up-and-coming pub- career, perhaps. But it was during col- tural interests? lication “for young food enthusiasts lege that the seeds of Kinfolk were sown. For a GOP long seen as the party of and adventure-seekers.” While other Williams’s wife and two best friends entrenched financial interests, popu- magazines focus on place settings and loved to plan small gatherings. They list credibility must be won back, and a recipes, Kinfolk melds the aesthetic art- cooked meals and invited friends into deregulation agenda alone won’t cut it. istry of a photography magazine with their homes regularly. But no blog, web- This is where Lee’s rugged communi- the philosophical underpinnings of site, or publication “resonated” with tarianism is especially vital to his cause. Wendell Berry. It’s a publication that them, according to Williams. Martha In his Heritage speech, he described the refocuses entertaining on its original Stewart Living’s focus on name cards, conservative vision as “not an core: human fellowship. napkins, and centerpieces seemed out novel. It’s a Norman Rockwell paint- Headquartered in Portland, Or- of place in their homes. And publi- ing, or a Frank Capra movie: a society egon, Kinfolk launched in 2011 and cations geared toward their own age

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines group seemed to promote either an of heritage,” Williams says. magazine’s success: it re-enchants the “enormous amount of alcohol, a min- Although the magazine does not fix- everyday. iscule amount of clothing, or a com- ate on getting “unplugged” from tech- The articles can get rather philo- bination of the two.” Barhopping and nology, this strand of thought weaves sophical: take, for instance, one on the clubbing seemed “very unintentional” its way through much of its content. “sacredness of food” by Nikaela Ma- forms of entertainment to Williams. He Williams explains that while they do rie Peters. She opens by mentioning decided to create something else. not oppose online connectivity—and that “the world’s largest religion began Williams and his collaborators want- indeed, have flourished through the with a meal,” sharing thoughts on com- ed to provide an alternate blueprint for support of food and culture bloggers— munion and the beauty of eucharist entertaining, without all the “frilly nap- they also encourage readers to escape from a Christian baker named Ryan, kins,” to make hospitality more acces- from glowing screens through time in who “jumps, in the same breath, from sible to a younger generation. They also quiet, in company, and in nature. While Thomas Aquinas to a recipe for bread hoped Kinfolk could delve deeper into one might picture the Kinfolk staff liv- to the Book of Exodus.” Her story’s con- the meaning of the activity: “We were ing merrily in the woods, Thoreau- clusion mimics the earthy language of keen on focusing on the social element style, some work in urban environ- Berry’s poetry: of entertainment: the fundamentals be- ments. But due to the inspiration its hind it, the people we care about,” he creators draw from writers like Thoreau The approach we take to feed- says. and Berry, Kinfolk fosters an focus on ing one another in our individual In one of his college courses on con- the land: “We bring readers out into the homes, the manner in which we flict resolution, Williams encountered fields,” Williams says. gather around the table, the un- Activities spoken dividing and sharing of like campfire responsibilities, the inarticulate “To grow bored of our tables and foods, therefore, cooking and daily habits, are all bound by ritual would not only be sad and unhealthy, it would be, berry-pick- and rich with ceremony. Like reli- ing empha- gious practices, these details reveal in every sense of the word, irreverent.” size a shared hidden graces and express our re- experience, peating and consistent gratitude. rather than They can reflect the general peace Wendell Berry’s work. The Kentucky a polished finished product. “The proj- of a household, or be the cause of poet and novelist’s ideas of commu- ects complement one another in offer- divide and discord. These “ways of nity rootedness, agrarian support, and ing ideas for things to cook, make, and doing things” are not without con- simple living appealed to Williams, and do,” Williams explains, “while promot- troversy because they are specific he has incorporated many of them into ing the deeper purpose of helping to and savory. Just like religious sac- Kinfolk, with principles of small-scale build communities around ourselves.” raments, their power to include, entertaining centered on simplicity, art- Early last year the magazine began to ground and form our identities, istry, and spending time outdoors. curating and hosting a series of inter- to draw an imaginary line around Kinfolk launched as a quarterly, 144- national dinner workshops. This year, our households, is as profound page, ad-free print magazine. Though they’ve hosted between 12 and 30 per as their power to exclude. In our the design team had no prior experi- month, each with a theme like “Camp- house, we are unified by the way ence in publishing, they sold out their fire Cooking” or “Honey Harvest.” we give and receive acts of com- first edition in a couple weeks. After participating in activities like fort, the timings of our comings The magazine’s main editorial filters, building hammocks or canning pickles, and goings, the type of milk we according to Williams, are centered participants make a meal together. buy, the type of cereal. At their around this question: “Does it help But Kinfolk is more than a series most basic, these housekeeping strengthen neighborhoods, family, or of entertaining how-to’s and recipes. details are a simple system of kind- friends?” This community-centric mis- One of the most intriguing parts of the nesses holding together the fabric sion sets the tone for every issue. In- magazine is aesthetic: every photo and of our families. At their most com- deed, Kinfolk has a recurring feature on article highlights the beauty of tactile plicated, they are an intricate web “How to Be Neighborly.” Every issue, and visual experience. A floured skillet, of histories and beliefs, as para- whether addressing urban or country a swinging hammock, a vase of flow- doxical and tangled and esoteric as readers, encourages a localist invest- ers: in the Kinfolk lens, seemingly com- any religion. To grow bored of our ment in the community. “We put re- monplace items become striking. This tables and foods, therefore, would minders into the magazine of the value perhaps is a deeper reason behind the not only be sad and unhealthy, it

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 would be, in every sense of the sitting back, and breathing deeply.” Conservatives continue to struggle in word, irreverent. In keeping with the magazine’s sensi- the polls and preform poorly in other bility, few of the recipes listed are com- contests ahead of the next general elec- They haven’t run many stories in this plex. But they aren’t meant to be—the tion, that could change. And if Cam- serious philosophical vein, says Wil- peoples and traditions behind them eron loses the election, his departure as liams, yet it encapsulates much of Kin- make them unique and appealing. “The party leader as well as prime minister folk’s purpose: “It’s about being more humble soup or homely bread becomes is assured. intentional how we approach food a feast,” Williams writes. As home secretary in Cameron’s and community. It’s about gratitude Kinfolk may seem overly romantic. cabinet, May runs the department that and reverence for the community we Indeed, its simplicity and ruggedness handles policing, crime, immigration, have. Taking an overly casual approach can feel slightly staged; the bohemian- and counter-terrorism. In recent times, shows an error, that we don’t appreciate ism and hipster touches may be repellent the office has been seen as something them as much as we should.” to some. But underneath the affectation, of a poisoned chalice. But May has Williams has just written a book in there is a true love for simple beauty: for done well with it. “When Labour was conjunction with the magazine’s work: daily pleasures that often go unnoticed. in office, they’d have a new Home Sec- The Kinfolk Table, a combination nar- In our busy, technologically driven age, retary every two years. She’s held the rative and cookbook, with 85 recipes simple gatherings like those Kinfolk rep- post three-and-a-half years, and there and various stories from people en- resents have fallen by the wayside, and have been no major scandals. That is countered throughout Williams’s trav- this whimsical publication does its part a great credit to her,” says Matthew El- els. Each chapter focuses on a place: to bring old-fashioned ideas of commu- liott, who founded the Taxpayers’ Alli- Brooklyn, Copenhagen, Bath, Port- nity, neighborliness, and everyday art- ance and who is sometimes called “the land, and more. And within each, Wil- istry back into vogue. Grover Norquist of the UK.” liams focuses on a handful of individu- Part of May’s success is circumstan- als who “personify the fact that there’s Gracy Olmstead is associate editor of The tial. When the economy is doing well, something to be said for slowing down, American Conservative. the British media closely scrutinizes the types of policies the home secretary handles. Since lately all the attention has focused on the economic crisis, Conservatives’ Leading Woman May has had an easier time of it. Meet Theresa May, Britain’s answer to . “She sees it as a standing post where by EMMA ELLIOTT Freire she can show herself as a competent manger—a figure like Angela Merkel. Sure, she’s gray and lacks humor, but wenty-three years ago Marga- one person rates her chances highly. she is competent,” says Elliott. ret Thatcher resigned as prime During prime minister’s question time The German Chancellor, who led minster of Great Britain. Since earlier this year, Ed Miliband, leader her party to a decisive re-election vic- Tthen, no woman has been a serious of the Labour Party, said to Cameron, tory in September, is widely admired contender to lead the Conservative “I’m looking forward to facing her in Great Britain. Like May, Merkel rose Party. That may be about to change. when you’re in the opposition.” Some slowly but steadily. And the two wom- Britain’s next general election is sched- MPs laughed, but May only gave her en come from similar family back- uled for May 2015, and polls indicate signature steely gaze. grounds. May’s father was a Church Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s problems are deeply of England priest; Merkel’s father was Cameron is likely to lose. Specula- rooted. He has never been a perfect fit a pastor and theologian in Germany. tion about who would succeed him as for the Conservative Party’s traditional Both women are childless, leaving party leader centers on , base, which still blames him for not them free to work long hours. the flamboyant mayor of London. But winning the 2010 election outright, In interviews, May has indicated another prospect should not be over- necessitating a coalition government that she decided on a career in politics looked: Theresa May, named by BBC with the Liberal Democrats. Cameron’s at a young age. She was a member of Radio as the second most powerful push to legalize gay marriage further Oxford University’s Conservative As- woman in the country—after only infuriated much of the grassroots. sociation during her undergraduate Queen Elizabeth II. For now Cameron looks unlikely to years. She met her husband, Philip, at Right now, May is one of several meet Mrs. Thatcher’s fate, toppled by a a Tory student party. He works as a “Not Boris” possibilities, but at least revolt from within the party. But if the banker in London—and networks tire-

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Front Lines lessly on behalf of his wife’s career. said, “Twice we went to the country un- until his term ends in 2016, by which May’s rise through the ranks has changed, unrepentant, just plain unat- time the Conservatives may already been anything but fast. She was elect- tractive. And twice we got slaughtered. have lost; if Johnson became leader ed to local government in 1986 and You know what some people call us? then he would face five years of being to Parliament in 1997. Along the way, The nasty party.” The phrase has since an opposition leader—a difficult job she made it her business to get other entered the British political lexicon. with a lot of slog and very little glory. women elected. She helped develop the At the time her speech created an Johnson is a star who loves the lime- “A-list” system of candidate selection uproar. Will those words come back to light. He might prefer to sit out the next that dramatically increased the number haunt her if she seeks the leadership? “It Tory leadership race—sure to be a bit- of Conservative women and minor- will be brought up by supporters of her ter affair, full of recrimination—only to opponent in a hypothetical swoop in and become leader closer to leadership race. But most 2020, overthrowing whoever held the Theresa May’s career, much like Angela people will recognize that post after Cameron. There is some igno- Merkel’s, has taught her that slow and it was a long time ago,” minious precedent for this: Iain Duncan steady wins the race. says Elliott. “People real- Smith led the Conservative Party be- ize that’s a mentality that tween 2001 and 2003 but was replaced all the party’s leadership before he ever got to contest an election. ity MPs. She also co-founded Women- shared. It should be considered as part If Johnson does not run at the next 2Win, a group that supports Conserva- of a wider analysis of where the Con- opportunity, the likely prime contenders tive women for office. A byproduct of servative Party was at that time.” are May, who has supported gay mar- these efforts is that a lot of MPs owe And where is the Conservative Party riage and would represent the party’s her favors, which could come in handy today? Cameron is dogged in the polls “modernization” wing, and another can- because, under Tory rules, it’s the MPs by—among other things—the rise of didate who would stand for the party’s who choose their new leader. the UK Independence Party (UKIP), traditional base. That could be Michael ’s Gaby Hinsliffe re- which is aggressively courting Tory tra- Gove, the education secretary, who is cently summed up the 57-year-old ditionalists tired of Cameron’s progres- very popular with the grassroots. Re- home secretary’s career: sivism. UKIP has never done well in a ports of verbal spats between Gove and British general election, but the party May during cabinet meetings not infre- Once dismissed as an over-pro- seems set to win perhaps 25 percent quently reach the media. moted token woman, she has held of the vote in the EU election sched- May is not without some appeal to the her own in one of the toughest uled for May 2014. The bounce from right, however, and has come under fire jobs in cabinet, combining classic that could well see them winning 5-7 from the left for proposing more restric- conservative values of frugality, percent of the national vote in 2015— tive policies to crub illegal immigration. propriety and stoicism with thor- probably enough to deny Cameron a She told BBC Radio 4: “Most people will oughly modern instincts. parliamentary majority. say it can’t be fair for people who have no That threat, atop of all the other dis- right to be here in the UK to continue to Feminist causes she was once contents, has Conservatives already exist as everybody else does with bank mocked for championing are now contemplating life after Cameron. Bo- accounts, with driving licenses and with mainstream Tory thinking, and ris Johnson is the most popular politi- access to rented accommodation. We her legacy includes two things cian in Great Britain, and many Tories are going to be changing that because which arguably shaped the mod- dream of turning to him for rescue. we don’t think that is fair.” ern party … the A-list scheme “Boris has election-winning form. He’s Could she find the balance between for candidate selection, which just won two successive elections as outreach and the base that has eluded gave birth to several rising stars, London Mayor. London is a Labour Cameron? Even if not, should the next and the infamous “nasty party” city. He is also very popular with the Tory leadership contest come down speech, which made Tories take a Conservative grassroots who pack in to perseverance rather than charisma, long, hard look in the mirror. whenever he speaks at a party confer- she may have an edge. Theresa May’s ence,” says Elliott. career, much like Angela Merkel’s, has That moment of reflection came in But Johnson is currently ineligible taught her that slow and steady wins 2002, when May served as chairman of to become prime minister because he the race. the Conservative Party. At the annual is not an MP. British law permits him party conference that year, she gave the to hold two offices concurrently, but Emma Elliot Freire is an American writer now infamous address in which she he has pledged to serve only as mayor based in England.

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Made in America Patrick j. Buchanan

Don’t Spy on Friends

he first reports in early May from terror attacks. And there remains cross. The lines of unethical conduct of 1960 were that a U.S. a deposit of trust among Americans and criminality. To learn that an owner weather plane, flying out of that the NSA, the CIA, and the Defense or coach of one NFL franchise had wire- Turkey, had gone missing. Intelligence Agency are not only work- tapped the home phones of coaches and TA silent Moscow knew better. After ing for us, they are defending us. How players of a Super Bowl rival would, if letting the Americans crawl out on a long Americans will continue to repose revealed, be regarded as rotten business. limb, expatiating on their cover story, this trust, however, is starting to come What kind of camaraderie, coop- Russia sawed it off. into question. eration, or friendship can endure in an Actually, said , we Last week, we learned that a high environment where constant snoop- shot down a U.S. spy plane 1,000 miles official of the U.S. government turned ing on one’s closest friends is accepted inside our country flying over a restrict- 200 private phone numbers of 35 practice? ed zone. We have the pilot, we have the friendly foreign leaders, basically the In the Nixon White House, there camera, we have the pictures. We have Rolodex of the president, over to the were serious leaks that revealed our the hollow silver dollar containing the NSA for tapping and taping. secret bombing of Communist sanc- poisoned-tipped needle CIA pilot Fran- Allied leaders, with whom America tuaries in Cambodia and of our fall- cis Gary Powers declined to use. works toward common goals, have for back position in the strategic arms Two weeks later, Khrushchev used years apparently had their private con- talks. Wiretaps were planted on aides the U-2 incident and Ike’s refusal to versations listened to, transcribed, and to and White House apologize to dynamite the Paris sum- passed around. Angela Merkel has ap- staffers who had no knowledge of what mit and the gauzy Spirit of Camp Da- parently been the subject of phone taps had been leaked. Relationships were al- vid that had come out of his ten-day since before she rose to the leadership tered, some poisoned for a lifetime. visit to the U.S. Eisenhower’s reciprocal of Germany. A victim of the East Ger- Why should we not expect a similar trip to Russia was now dead. man Stasi, Ms. Merkel is not amused. reaction among foreign friends who A year later, President Kennedy We are told not to be naïve; every- discover their personal and political would be berated by Khrushchev in one does it. Spying, not only between secrets have been daily scooped up and Vienna. The Berlin Wall would go up. enemies but among allies, is common- filed by their American friends, and And Khrushchev would begin secretly place. But why are we doing this? Is it found their way into the president’s to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 all really about coping with the terror- daily intelligence brief? miles from Key West. ist threat? Or is it because we have the The Cold War was a clash of ideolo- Had there been no U-2 incident, ability to do it, and the more informa- gies and empires for the future of the would the history of the Cold War have tion we have, even stolen surreptitious- world. Men took drastic measures to been different? Perhaps. ly from friends and allies, the better? preserve what they had. At the end of Yet while there were critics of U.S. diplomats say that one of their the Cold War, the old tactics and mea- launching Power’s U-2 flight so close assignments abroad is to know what the sures were not set aside, but improved to the summit, Americans understood host government is thinking and plan- upon, and now are no longer restricted the need for espionage. Like us, the So- ning politically, economically, strategi- for use against the likes of al-Qaeda but viets were installing ballistic missiles, cally. That this is an aspect of diplomacy. against allies. every single one of which could incin- But relations among friendly nations At the Cold War’s end, the late Am- erate an American city. are not unlike the NFL. While films are bassador Jeane Kirkpatrick talked Post-9/11, too, Americans accepted taken of rival teams’ games and studied, hopefully of America becoming again the necessity for the National Secu- scouts observe practices, and rumors “a normal country in a normal time.” rity Agency to retrieve and sift through are picked up of injuries, there are lines Seems as though the normal times are phone calls and emails to keep us secure that most opposing NFL teams do not never coming back.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Cover

Why the Tea Party Can’t Govern A populist spin can’t save purely negative principles.

by Daniel Mccarthy

omething is seriously wrong with conser- insist that if only conservatives support the “right- vatism. Since ’s last year in wardmost viable candidate,” with an emphasis on office, Republicans have only twice won a “viable,” they may elect another Reagan. This, of majority of votes cast for president—both course, is what Republican voters did every time Stimes with a George Bush atop the ticket. And nei- between 1988 and 2012, when they nominated two ther Bush was a conservative. Bushes, Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. For 25 years, something has prevented conserva- What the NR editors won’t say is that, for them, tives from winning the White House and prevented this is good enough: they had their differences with the Republicans who do win from governing as George W. Bush, but on the whole his economic, conservatives. What could it be? social, and especially foreign policies were praise- The Tea Party has an answer: RINOs—liberal worthy. To those who disagree with that judg- Republicans in Name Only—have sabotaged the ment—the Tea Party, libertarians, crunchy cons, right, most recently in October when they collabo- millennials, and a majority of Americans—the rated with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling and conservative establishment has nothing to sell. The end the government shutdown. Once RINOs are viable right had its turn in power, and the country extinct, true Tea Party conservatives like Ted Cruz decisively repudiated the results. will prevail. They will close down the federal bu- The virtue of the Tea Party is that it has shaken up reaucracy and stop Washington from borrowing a a Republican Party that under Bush had become a penny more until Obamacare is defunded and the failure on every level: in foreign policy, in respond- welfare state brought to heel. If this is extremism, ing to a changing culture, in preserving prosper- it’s what Barry Goldwater called extremism in de- ity. Some of the new leaders and new ideas the Tea fense of . Party encourages are among the most promising But the Tea Party is wrong: this is not extremism developments on the right in a generation. in defense of liberty, it’s extremism in defense of But the vices of the Tea Party are just as real, and failure—the failure of conservatism as it has been Senator Cruz exemplifies them. His foreign policy defined since the 1970s to become a philosophy of is characterized by reflexive, if partisan, national- government. ism—before opposing Obama’s plan to bomb Syria, The Tea Party’s critics in the conservative estab- Cruz had in fact called for “a clear, practical plan lishment—’s Rich Lowry and Ra- mesh Ponnuru, for example—are also wrong. They Daniel McCarthy is the editor of The American Conservative.

12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 to go in. … The United States should be firmly in toward capitalism with Chinese characteristics; the lead to make sure the job is done right.” The ’s Islamic revolution toppled the Shah; and Texas senator’s domestic policies, meanwhile, are Communism’s final, fatal struggle with the same ones the right has championed since the and religion commenced with Pope John Paul II’s 1970s. Indeed, Cruz represents a brand of conser- visit to Poland and the Soviet invasion of Afghani- vatism that belongs to that era. stan. American politics was likewise swept by the efore the days of platform shoes, mirror global revival of nationalism, religious fundamen- balls, and , a different kind of talism, and free-market economics. The formation conservatism held sway. It was less populist, of the Moral Majority in 1979 announced the birth Bless confrontational, and far less successful. There of the religious right as a national force. In 1978, was a reason William F. Buckley Jr., founding fa- Jude Wanniski published what became the bible ther of the ‘50s right, could only say of National of the supply-side revolution, The Way the World Review’s mission, “It stands athwart history, yell- Works, while activist Howard Jarvis organized the ing Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, successful referendum campaign for Proposition or to have much patience with those who so urge 13 in California, which constitutionally limited it.” The 40 years from Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 to ’s re-election in 1972 were an epoch of center-left hegemony. That was true even Each time the populist wave returns, it falls a little farther when Republicans won the White from the shore. But what is receding is not conservatism, House. President Eisenhower was it’s the 1970s version of the American right. a “modern Republican,” not a con- servative, and National Review refused to endorse him for re- election in 1956. President Nixon imposed wage and price controls on the country, Sacramento’s power to tax. Earlier in 1978, William expanded affirmative action, and inaugurated the F. Buckley Jr.—representing a now mellowed Cold Environmental Protection Agency. War conservatism—debated Ronald Reagan over Through most of the Western world, the gamut the treaties to return control of the Panama Canal of practical politics ran from social democracy and to the Panamanians. Reagan, though older than socialism on the left to the mixed Keynesian econ- Buckley, gave voice to the new nationalist mood on omy on the right. Nixon himself said in 1971, “I the right that saw no reason to deprive America of am now a Keynesian in economics,” a remark often a strategic asset merely to honor another nation’s conflated with Milton Friedman’s 1965 pronounce- sovereignty. ment, “We are all Keynesians now.” The one Re- The new conservatism of the 1970s was striking- publican leader who bucked the consensus, Barry ly populist: the religious right, the anti-tax move- Goldwater, was dealt a crushing defeat in Novem- ment, and neo-nationalism mobilized voters as the ber 1964. conservatism of the 1950s never could. This New The eventual Reagan revolution of 1980 was less a Right, as it came to be called, not only propelled culmination of conservatives’ toil during the 1950s Reagan to victory in 1980 but that same November and ’60s than the result of an unexpected twist in ended the Senate careers of liberal leaders Frank the 1970s. All around the world, the postwar con- Church and George McGovern. sensus on what modernity meant—steady, scien- The Tea Party today can be forgiven for thinking tific progress toward political and economic cen- that this rebuilt conservative movement—evangeli- tralization—shattered, as foreign-policy journalist cal, anti-tax, and proudly American—offers a time- Christian Caryl shows in his recent book Strange less formula for success. It would re-elect Reagan Rebels. Caryl points to 1979 as the bellwether year: and elect George H.W. Bush by landslides, and that was when Margaret Thatcher became leader of though the coalition cracked in 1992, after Bush Britain’s Conservative Party; rose to failed to keep the factions happy, in 1994 Republi- power in Beijing and moved the People’s Republic cans would take both houses of Congress and make

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Cover

tremendous gains in state governments. That the the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. As mid-century GOP still holds the House today is a legacy of this secularism, socialism, and internationalism lost tide—particularly of the redistricting that Repub- their luster, the right rode to power atop the rising lican-controlled states carried out after 2000 and forces of religion, neoliberalism, and patriotism. 2010 censuses. But the right’s ideological laboratories kept refin- Yet the electoral returns have been diminishing. ing the product, making it ever less user-friendly The 1984 and 1988 elections were landslides, but in the quest for theoretical perfection. Being out of 1994 was an off-year victory bracketed by presi- power afforded the luxury of irresponsibility—of dential defeats. In 2000 Republicans again lost the not having to live within the limits that governing popular vote for president and were reduced to par- imposes on what one can imagine as desirable and ity with Democrats in the Senate. A rally effect af- possible. ter 9/11 and high hopes for the War bolstered Consider the religious right. There was an abso- Republicans in 2002 and 2004. But as the war’s lutely natural backlash in the late 1970s against the popularity ebbed, the GOP lost everything in 2006 hasty push from the left for further sexual revolu- and 2008. A comeback in the midterm elections of tions. Contraception, abortion, and homosexu- 2010 failed to retake the Senate, and the right was ality had all gone from being little spoken of and disappointed again in the Senate and presidential sometimes restricted by law to becoming “rights.” contests of 2012. Many Americans, particularly Christians, felt dis- Each time the populist wave returns, it falls a enfranchised. little farther from the shore. But what is receding So they voted. But they did so in reaction: what is not conservatism, it’s the 1970s version of the they were against was always more clear than how they could create an alterna- tive—a modern alternative, not simply a return to an Being out of power afforded the luxury of irresponsibility— idealized past. Because the emphasis was on negation of not having to live within the limits that governing imposes rather than a creative agenda, on what one can imagine as desirable and possible. the question of what com- promises power must make with imperfect reality could be avoided. In “principle,” di- vorced from practice, one can American right: the coalition of fundamentalists, outlaw every abortion without exception and send anti-tax activists, and nationalists. And the reason homosexuals back to the closet. this tide continues to retreat is not only demo- Christian conservatives are as well-adjusted as graphic: populist conservatism has never outgrown anyone else on these questions in their own lives. the conditions of the era in which it was born—it’s But the Christian conservative who accepts sinful- still fighting the battles of 1980. ness in reality cannot accept it in theory, and one who tries is liable to be trumped within the com- eing out of power during two pivotal move- munity by someone who asserts a harder line. Reli- ments of the last century—in the FDR- gious right activists thus radicalize one another and Truman era, when the New Deal/Cold War continually refine their ideology—then demand Bconsensus took shape, and in Carter years, when it professions of principle from candidates. collapsed—proved a mixed blessing: the right was This kind of ideological straitjacketing condi- free to experiment ideologically, but the ideas it tioned Todd Akin—last year’s hapless Republican devised were fundamentally negative and discon- nominee in Missouri’s U.S. Senate contest—to nected from the practices of power: they were not believe that conception cannot take place when a of government or cultural creativity woman is a victim of “legitimate rape.” Akin could but modes of resistance to “big government” and believe this medical myth because it answered a the countercultural left. real problem that the principle of banning all abor- The New Right’s attitudes struck a chord with a tion could not otherwise confront: namely, what to great many Americans, sometimes a majority, for a do in cases of rape, where the public is not sympa- particular historical moment—roughly the era from thetic to the no-exceptions approach. If there are no

14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 pregnancies resulting from rape, then the problem Lifted by the populist tide that rose in response to is solved and the principle saved. midcentury statism’s collapse, Reagan could achieve What is true of Christian conservatives is true a great deal by accelerating that collapse with tax as well of the libertarians and economic conserva- cuts and deregulation at home and by encouraging tives. A legalistic and strictly negative conception Communism’s dissolution abroad. But the next step of principle prevents them from discussing such beyond hastening the destruction of the old order things as the minimum wage, income inequality, was never clear. and unemployment with any flexibility—any liber- In terms of creating a new kind of state to replace tarian who attempts to do so risks being outflanked Franklin Roosevelt’s social-insurance state, Reagan by some more “principled” ideologue who insists and his supporters were bereft of vision. The Re- that only by liquidating the banking system will we publican Congress of 1994 ran into the same prob- see unemployment vanish before our eyes. lem. The negative vision was not enough even on The tendency throughout the right is for the its terms because the only way to truly transform extreme view to crowd out all others because the or get rid of existing institutions is to propose new criteria of debate were set long ago by conditions ones. Absent that, a negative agenda quickly runs of opposition, not governing. (To be sure, liberals afoul of the needs and demands of the public—and have the opposite problem: the Democratic Party without an alternative to propose, the revolutionar- has been so shaped by the experience of wielding ies revert to the ways of the ancien regime. power, dating back to FDR, that its ex- The populist conservatism that arose in the late hibits few principles that aren’t wholly subordinate 1970s proved adept at winning elections for a time. to expedience.) But because it was every bit as much a negative phi- From the Moral Majority to the Tea Party, a right losophy as the electorally unsuccessful conserva- forged in opposition offers only images of a mythic tism of the 1950s, it never learned how to govern. past in place of present economic and cultural real- ities. Instead of a modern conservatism competing y embracing the 1970s right, the Tea Party against what is in fact a creaky liberalism—whose ensures that all it can do is and ob- corporate cronyism and cultural atomism have en- struct. Conservatives are better off looking gendered wide dissatisfaction—we have only the Bdeeper and thinking more creatively about the arc conservatism of what was versus the liberalism of of history. They might begin by rediscovering how what is. 19th century conservatives resolved their culture This accounts for why the Republican Party, even wars of their time—between Catholics and kinds as it has grown more right-leaning and “extreme,” of Protestant—and met the challenges of the In- has failed for 25 years to nominate a conservative dustrial Revolution, which offers the closest paral- for president. No one can take the no-compromise lel to the upheavals of our own age of globalization ideology of or Christian conserva- and technological disruption. tism and make it electorally viable, let alone a phi- Being out of power once again, the right can af- losophy of government. Rather than find leaders ford to be entrepreneurial, to rethink its premises as who can build plausible resumes in elected office well as to criticize its opponents’. Indeed, the shared before running for president, the activists of the assumptions of both parties—neoliberalism, mili- right lend their support to symbolic candidacies tarism, and social atomism—are those that most that represent negative ideals—the ideals not of need reconsideration. The Tea Party’s insurgency government but of protest. has at least cleared the way for some Republicans to Because ideological conservatives cannot accept attempt this: one sees the beginnings in Rand Paul, the compromising complexities of a positive phi- Justin Amash, and Mike Lee. But the Tea Party has losophy, the Republican old guard wins every time. also injected new life—or a Frankenstein’s sem- The result is doubly perverse: instead of a serious blance of life—into the dead right of decades past conservative who speaks softly, Republicans wind in the shape of Ted Cruz and his tactics. up with unprincipled figures who become shrill in The present moment may be as much a turning attempting to appeal to the right. point as the Roosevelt-Truman and Carter eras Even Ronald Reagan, the closest thing to a con- were. If so, this time conservatives should define servative candidate who governed as a conserva- themselves not as the party of reaction, but as a tive once he took office, could not overcome the party with a positive philosophy of government—a failings of an ideology designed for opposition. philosophy to shape the age.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 15 Religion

Benedict Option A medieval model inspires Christian communities today.

by ROD DREHER

re we Rome? The question weighed on the order took a vow of “stability,” meaning they were minds of 2,000 libertarians who gathered sworn to stay in that place until they died, Benedictine this summer at FreedomFest in Las Vegas monasteries emerged as islands of sanity and serenity. to talk about whether America is headed These were the bases from which European civiliza- Athe way of the Roman empire. Bureaucratic decay, tion gradually re-emerged. massive public debt, an overstretched military, a po- It is hard to overstate what Benedict—now Saint litical system seemingly incapable of responding to Benedict—and his followers accomplished. In the re- challenges—the late Roman empire suffered these cent Thomas Merton lecture at Columbia University, maladies, and so, some fear, does contemporary law professor Russell Hittinger summed up Benedict’s America. lesson to the Dark Ages like this: “How to live life as a If libertarians on the right worry about structural whole. Not a life of worldly success so much as one of collapse, cultural and religious conservatives add a human success.” moral and spiritual dimension to the debate. Rising Why are medieval monks relevant to our time? Be- hedonism, waning religious observance, ongoing cause, says the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, break-up of the family, and a general loss of cultural they show that it is possible to construct “new forms coherence—to traditionalists, these are signs of a pos- of community within which the moral life could be sible Dark Age ahead. sustained” in a Dark Age—including, perhaps, an age Christians have been here before. Around the like our own. year 500, a generation after barbarians deposed the For MacIntyre, we too are living through a Fall of last Roman emperor, a young Umbrian man known Rome-like catastrophe, one that is concealed by our to history only as Benedict was sent to Rome by his liberty and prosperity. In his influential 1981 book Af- wealthy parents to complete his education. Disgusted ter Virtue, MacIntyre argued that the Enlightenment’s by the city’s decadence, Benedict fled to the forest to failure to replace an expiring Christianity caused pray as a hermit. Western civilization to lose its moral coherence. Like Benedict gained a reputation for holiness and gath- the early medievals, we too have been cut off from ered other monks around him. Before dying circa 547, our roots, and a shadow of cultural amnesia is falling he personally founded a dozen monastic communi- across the land. ties, and wrote his famous Rule, the guidebook for The Great Forgetting is taking a particular toll on scores of monasteries that spread across Europe in the American Christianity, which is losing its young in tumultuous centuries to follow. dramatic numbers. Those who remain within church- Rome’s collapse meant staggering loss. People for- es often succumb to a potent form of feel-good rela- got how to read, how to farm, how to govern them- tivism that sociologists have called “moralistic thera- selves, how to build houses, how to trade, and even peutic deism,” which is dissolving historic Christian what it had once meant to be a human being. Behind moral and theological orthodoxy. monastery walls, though, in their chapels, scriptori- A recent Pew survey found that Jews in America ums, and refectories, Benedict’s monks built lives of are in an even more advanced state of assimilation to peace, order, and learning and spread their network secular modernity. The only Jews successfully resist- throughout Western Europe. ing are the Orthodox, many of whom live in commu- They did not keep the fruits of their labors to them- nities meaningfully separate and by traditions distinct selves. Benedictines taught the peasants who gathered from the world. around their monasteries the Christian faith, as well as practical skills, like farming. Because monks of the Rod Dreher blogs at www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher.

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Is there a lesson here for Christians? Should they lifestyle. The lay Catholic community centered on the take what might be called the “Benedict Option”: abbey now has about 100 people in it. communal withdrawal from the mainstream, for the Though the Benedict Option is about creating a sake of sheltering one’s faith and family from corro- community of shared values, the Clear Creekers are sive modernity and cultivating a more traditional way not separatists. These Catholics get along well with of life? their Baptist neighbors. What’s more, says Pudewa, Progressive Evangelicals are engaged in a widely the community’s lack of formal structure is a secret publicized lay movement called the New Monasti- to its success. cism, which typically involves single adults—and “Everybody’s on their own,” he says. “If you find sometimes families—living in an intentional commu- property around here, that’s great, but nobody’s orga- nity, usually among the urban poor. Yet most people, nizing this for you. If you love the monks and want especially those with spouses and children, will not be to go to mass every day, you can, but if not, nobody’s able to live so radically. Are there any models for them critical. There’s very much a live-and-let-live attitude to follow? around here.” Two contemporary lay Christian communities with Many Clear Creekers are teaching themselves old- roots planted in both the ancient church and the rural fashioned skills that will allow the community to get countryside offer glimpses into how the Benedict Op- by in case of emergency, but they are not neo-Amish. tion might work for ordinary people today. Some work the land, but no family supports itself with farming. The monastery’s abbot tells me relative mate- ndrew Pudewa and his family, traditionalist rial poverty exists among the laity, but there’s also a Catholics, embraced the Benedict Option in richness in spirit and family life that you can’t put a 2006, leaving their home in San Diego for ru- price on. Aral eastern Oklahoma. They wanted a more intensely “I think there’s a kind of gratitude we all share,” Catholic life and to live in a place where they could Pudewa says. “That’s what bonds people together a learn to be more self-reliant. In their case, the Bene- little more, rather than that we want to push our ver- dict part of the Benedict Option was literal: the Pude- sion of how to be more Catholic on other people.” was moved to be closer to the Benedictine monks of Clear Creek’s mothers and fathers bring up their Clear Creek Abbey. children largely disconnected from mainstream Seven years earlier, 12 Benedictines from the tra- American popular culture. Yet, though home- ditionalist Fontgombault Abbey in France established schooled, the community’s children are not being a daughter house in the rolling Ozark foothills an raised in, well, a monastery. They go to Tulsa for swing hour east of Tulsa. Some of the monks were returning dancing twice a week, for example. Still, their relative Americans, former students of the late John Senior, a isolation makes the mission of forming the children’s University of Kansas professor whose popular Great character easier, Pudewa says. Books courses in the 1970s revived interest in the Catholic sources of the Western tradition. “We just follow the old monastic life. Like the early medievals, we too have been cut off We pray, worship, and do manual labor from our roots, and a shadow of cultural amnesia and give counseling to people,” Ab- is falling across the land. bot Philip Anderson, a former Senior student, told in 2003. “There’s a whole culture war going on and a series of disappointments with the Catholic Stressing that the kids are not being taught to shun Church in America. People look to this monastery as life outside the Oklahoma hills, Pudewa adds, “The a new beginning, as a new element that has a solid purpose of the cocoon is not to be wrapped up in backing in a long tradition of monastic life.” yourself forever; the purpose is to prepare the butter- Now in its second decade, Clear Creek is home to fl y.” more than 40 white-robed monks and to a growing The Clear Creek Benedictines may remain for community of laymen like the Pudewas, who—in- ages, but if the lay Catholics are going to enjoy any spired by the writings of Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chester- longevity, they need long-term means of material ton, and Wendell Berry—moved to the countryside to support. Some fathers work in the area construction be near the monastery and embrace a more agrarian business. Another sells insurance in Tulsa. Others

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Religion

telecommute—like Pudewa, dependent on the In- strong bonds. Though everyday life is much easier now, ternet for an income. (Ironically, the same technol- the St. John’s community still works to care for each ogy accelerating the broader culture’s unraveling also other in times of struggle. Recently, neighbors realized enables latter-day pilgrims to sustain their families in that a church member was going through a difficult rural exile.) personal time and stepped forward to help cook and Pudewa, whose booming homeschool-teaching care for her children. business employs members of four community fami- “Christian love can be expressed in very practi- lies, balances his religious idealism with a practical cal ways when people are close by,” says Dunaway. “A friend is never far away. Also, community re- lationships can help people rub off their rough edges. This is necessary for spiritual growth.” These communities offer a way for believers to Like the Catholics of Clear Creek, the Eagle thicken Christian culture in a time of moral River Orthodox don’t live in a community with a formal structure. Its members mostly revolution and religious dissolution. work around the Anchorage area and see each other at worship, at the parish school, or at social events. Sharing the church, a school, streak. Holding on to future generations in such a and the neighborhood, though, gives the community a geographically remote place requires commercial cre- sense of cohesion and camaraderie. ativity and entrepreneurial initiative, he says. Spiritual Over the years, some believers have parted ways, conviction isn’t enough. leaving in search of a stricter Orthodox communal ex- “You have to grow. You can’t have a community perience. This is a perennial challenge to communities where everybody sits there doing nothing until they organized around ideas, religious or otherwise. What die,” he says. “We need to be about building things do you do when some members believe others are fall- and thinking evangelically. That’s what attracts kids: ing away from right belief or right practice? There are doing things.” no simple answers. A certain flexibility is necessary. “I think the cure for any community to avoid these he Alaska town of Eagle River is now part of sad troubles is to be open and generous, and to resist greater Anchorage. But in the early 1970s, the urges to build walls and isolate itself,” Dunaway the settlement at the base of the Chugach says. TMountains was more or less the outback. Back then, As newcomers to Orthodoxy, the communal part of Evangelical ministry leaders Harold and Barbara St. John’s life seemed off-putting to Shelley and Jerry Dunaway bought five acres of land in the middle of Finkler, who converted with their children in 2007. a spruce and birch forest and moved their flock north The Finklers lived in an exurb a 20-minute drive from from Anchorage. Their model was L’Abri, the legend- the cathedral, which made full participation in services ary—and still extant—Protestant ministry Francis throughout the week difficult and hindered the family’s Schaeffer founded in Switzerland. spiritual life. They loved the liturgies and vespers but In 1987, the entire church community converted to thought living among the people you went to church Orthodox Christianity, and entered the Antiochian with was strange. Orthodox Church. Harold became Father Harold; A brief experiment in living within walking distance the church became St. John Cathedral. Cheap land of the cathedral changed their view. “Even though we in Eagle River allowed congregants to buy and build were way poor that year, the quality of our life was so houses within walking distance of the church. Today, rich because of being able to make it to the services, and about 70 families live within a mile of St. John’s, in also because of the relationships we had with the people what looks like an old-fashioned village. there,” Shelley Finkler says. Father Marc Dunaway, a high-school junior when When the Finklers moved back to their exurban his parents, now deceased, moved to Eagle River, is to- house, they were surprised by how much they missed day the community’s spiritual leader. It wasn’t founded Eagle River. on a particular religious vision, he says, but rather out “In our old neighborhood, everybody was of simi- of “a desire to hold on to the normal, human commu- lar economic status, and we all knew each other, but nity that existed everywhere until the modern era.” there wasn’t the sense of the common good that you The hardships the community went through in the have when you’re living around people who share early years—grim winters, no running water—built your faith,” she says. “That made a big difference when

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 it came to reaching out to help each other.” France.” This past summer, the Finklers sold their house and Zmirak, a traditionalist Catholic, concedes the ap- moved back to the St. John’s community—this time, peal of Benedict Option communities to beleaguered as the host family for the St. James House, a cathedral Christians. Staying true to your values in a world that ministry in which single young adults come to live for aggressively challenges them at every turn is exhaust- a year of prayer, work, and discernment. ing. But withdrawal rarely works, he insists. “It’s look- “We think it is healthier for our children, ourselves, ing for a bushel where your light will be safe from the and everybody who lives around us to know that if w i n d .” you have a problem, there are 150 helping hands and Yet the Clear Creek and Eagle River Christians com- hearts around you,” Shelley says. “There are no rules munities have stumbled onto models that are mod- here, and we’re not closed off. There’s no weirdness. It est, balanced, and so far sustainable. They hold on to just exists, and the center of it is the church.” distinctiveness without becoming rigid, intolerant, or controlling, by standing apart from the world without t’s easy to be pessimistic about the viability of demonizing it. Benedict Option-style communities. History “If you isolate yourself, you will become weird,” gives countless examples of intentional commu- Father Marc Dunaway warns. “It is a tricky balance Inities that began with high ideals but foundered on between allowing freedom and openness on the one human frailty. hand, and maintaining a community identity on the In recent years, pizza tycoon Tom Monaghan’s other. The idea of community itself should not be al- attempt to found a conservative Catholic commu- lowed to become an idol. A community is a living or- nity in southwest Florida fell apart largely because ganism that must change and grow and adapt.” of Monaghan’s eccentric authoritarianism. In central There is no way to have Benedict Option commu- Texas, Homestead Heritage, a Pentecostal-style back- nities without giving up a significant measure of indi- to-the-land with Anabaptist overtones, vidual autonomy—and the opportunity for career ad- has been the target of scathing accusations. A 2012 vancement—as the cost of stability. For those who take Texas Observer investigation revealed what the news- the Benedict Option, though, its rewards are a pearl of paper called “families broken apart, child abuse and great price. These communities offer a way for believers allegations of mind control, cover-ups and secrecy.” to thicken Christian culture in a time of moral revolu- In a statement, Homestead Heritage denounced the tion and religious dissolution. And if they’re successful charges as “slanderous and inflammatory.” over time, they may impart their wisdom to outsiders Experience suggests that in the modern world, Bene- who crave light in the postmodern darkness. dict Option settlements have to be both relatively open In this way, they might fulfill Pope Benedict XVI’s to the world and vigilant about respecting personal lib- prophecy that believing Christians in the West would erty. soon be fewer, but would serve as a “creative minor- “I think trying to understand that freedom is pretty ity”—and in so doing, determine the future. important,” says Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who Those taking the Benedict Option—Protestants, leads a pioneering New Monastic community in Dur- Catholics, and Orthodox—are tiny minorities, cer- ham, North Carolina. “Part of the grace of stability is tainly, but they may yet have more influence than knowing that everything’s a gift. You have to hold gifts anyone can now imagine. After all, St. Benedict didn’t loosely.” set out to save Western civilization; he only wanted to This is a special challenge when your community’s start what he called a “school for conversion.” He was very existence depends on renewing a calling to stand the right man for his moment, a period of calamitous apart. That awareness of difference can turn toxic. transition—but also one of opportunity. “Students at some small Catholic colleges are being Wilson-Hartgrove, who has lived in the New Mo- taught to feel that as Catholics living in America they nastic community he founded for a decade, says this are members of an alienated, aggrieved, morally supe- is another era of profound civilizational transition, rior minority,” says John Zmirak, who was writer-in- and yes, opportunity. For Christians responding cre- residence at Thomas More College in Merrimack, New atively to it, it’s a time of trial and error. Yet all the Hampshire until resigning in 2012. “They are learning major religious orders and movements in Christian that they owe no loyalty to our institutions, but should history arose from experiments undertaken by ordi- be working to replace them with an aggressive, intol- nary people engaging the challenges of their place and erant Catholic regime. In other words, they are being time. “That’s the only way the church ever finds these taught to think and act like radical Muslims living in things out,” he says.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 America

One Percent Republic Without citizen soldiers, plutocracy rises unchecked.

by ANDREW J. BACEVICH

n evaluating the Global War on Terrorism, the the political benefits of democracy and human overriding question is necessarily this one: has rights, [and] the educational and health benefits of more than a decade of armed conflict enhanced all things modern.” At the dawning of the new mil- the well-being of the American people? The war lennium, he concluded confidently, “the sun will al- Ifought by citizen-soldiers at the behest of Abraham ways rise on America as long as each new generation Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did so. Can we say lights the fire of freedom.” the same for the war launched by George W. Bush What the president’s remarks lacked in terms of and perpetuated in modified form by ? insight or originality they made up for in familiar- Before taking stock of what a decade of war has ity. During the decade following the Cold War, such actually produced, recall the expectations that pre- expectations had become commonplace. Skillful vailed shortly before war began. On the eve of World politician that he was, Clinton was telling Americans War II, the mood was anxious. For a nation still what they already believed. caught in the throes of a protracted economic slump, The passing of one further decade during which the prospect of a European war carried limited ap- U.S. forces seeking to ignite freedom’s fire flooded peal; the previous one, just two decades earlier, had the Greater Middle East reduced ’s fin- yielded little but disappointment. By comparison, de-siècle formula for peace and prosperity to tatters. expectations on the near side of the Global War on In Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the United States Terrorism were positively bullish. For citizens of the touched off a conflagration of sorts, albeit with re- planet’s “sole remaining superpower,” the 20th cen- sults other than intended. Yet for the average Ameri- tury had ended on a high note. The 21st century ap- can, the most painful setbacks occurred not out peared rich with promise. there in wartime theaters but back here on the home Speaking just prior to midnight on December 31, front. Instead of freedom wisely used, the decade’s 1999, President Bill Clinton surveyed the century theme became: bubbles burst and dreams deflated. just ending and identified its central theme as “the Above all, those dreams had fostered expectations triumph of freedom and free people.” To this “great story,” Clinton told his listeners, the United States Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University. This essay had made a pivotal contribution. Contemplating the is adapted from Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed future, he glimpsed even better days ahead—“the tri- Their Soldiers and Their Country, published in hardcover by umph of freedom wisely used.” All that was needed Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, to secure that triumph was for Americans to exploit LLC, in September. Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Bacevich. All and export “the economic benefits of globalization, rights reserved.

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 of unprecedented material abundance—more of Great Recession begun a Great Recessional, with the everything for everyone. Alas, this was not to be. United States in irreversible retreat from the apex of Although “crisis” ranks alongside “historic” atop global dominion? any list of overused terms in American political The political response to this economic calamity discourse, the Great Recession that began in 2007 paid less attention to forecasting long-term implica- turned out to be the real deal: a crisis of historic pro- tions than to fixing culpability. On the right, an an- portions. gry Tea Party movement blamed Big Government. With the ongoing “war” approaching the 10-year On the left, equally angry members of the Occupy mark, the U.S. economy shed a total of 7.9 million movement blamed Big Business, especially Wall jobs in just three years. For only the second time Street. What these two movements had in common since World War II, the official unemployment rate was that each cast the American people as victims. topped 10 percent. The retreat from that peak came Nefarious forces had gorged themselves at the ex- at an achingly slow pace. By some estimates, actual unemployment— including those who had simply given up looking for work—was double the official figure. Accentu- As much as or more than Big Government or Big ating the pain was the duration of Business, popular attitudes toward war, combining joblessness; those laid off during the Great Recession stayed out of detachment, neglect, and inattention, helped create work substantially longer than the the crisis in which the United States is mired. unemployed during previous post- war economic downturns. When new opportunities did eventually materialize, they usually came with smaller salaries and either reduced benefits or none pense of ordinary folk. By implication, the people at all. were themselves absolved of responsibility for the As an immediate consequence, millions of Ameri- catastrophe that had befallen them and their coun- cans lost their homes or found themselves “under- try. water,” the value of their property less than what Yet consider a third possibility. Perhaps the people they owed on their mortgages. Countless more were were not victims but accessories. On the subject of thrown into poverty, the number of those officially war, Americans can no more claim innocence than classified as poor reaching the highest level since the they can regarding the effects of smoking or exces- Census Bureau began tracking such data. A drop in sive drinking. As much as or more than Big Govern- median income erased gains made during the previ- ment or Big Business, popular attitudes toward war, ous 15 years. Erstwhile members of the great Ameri- combining detachment, neglect, and inattention, can middle class shelved or abandoned outright helped create the crisis in which the United States carefully nurtured plans to educate their children or is mired. retire in modest comfort. Inequality reached gaping A “country made by war,” to cite the title of a popu- proportions with 1 percent of the population amass- lar account of U.S. military history, the United States ing a full 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. in our own day is fast becoming a country undone Month after month, grim statistics provided by war. Citizen armies had waged the wars that made fodder for commentators distributing blame, for the nation powerful (if not virtuous) and Ameri- learned analysts offering contradictory explanations cans rich (if not righteous). The character of those of why prosperity had proven so chimerical, and armies—preeminently the ones that preserved the for politicians absolving themselves of responsibil- Union and helped defeat Nazi Germany and Impe- ity while fingering as culprits members of the other rial Japan—testified to an implicit covenant between party. Yet beyond its immediate impact, what did citizens and the state. According to its terms, war the Great Recession signify? Was the sudden ap- was the people’s business and could not be other- pearance of hard times in the midst of war merely wise. For the state to embark upon armed conflict of an epiphenomenon, a period of painful adjustment any magnitude required informed popular consent. and belt-tightening after which the world’s sole su- Actual prosecution of any military campaign larger perpower would be back in the saddle? Or had the than a police action depended on the willingness of

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 America

citizens in large numbers to become soldiers. See- making it possible to prolong “indefinitely” conflicts ing war through to a conclusion hinged on the state’s in which citizens are not invested. ability to sustain active popular support in the face Yet such news is hardly good. Apathy toward war of adversity. is symptomatic of advancing civic decay, finding ex- In their disgust over Vietnam, Americans with- pression in apathy toward the blight of child poverty, drew from this arrangement. They disengaged from homelessness, illegitimacy, and eating disorders also war, with few observers giving serious consider- plaguing the country. Shrugging off wars makes it ation to the implications of doing so. Events since, that much easier for Americans—overweight, over- especially since 9/11, have made those implications medicated, and deeply in hock—to shrug off the manifest. In the United States, war no longer quali- persistence of widespread hunger, the patent failures fies in any meaningful sense as the people’s business. of their criminal justice system, and any number of In military matters, Americans have largely forfeited other problems. The thread that binds together this their say. pattern of collective anomie is plain to see: unless the As a result, in formulating basic military policy problem you’re talking about affects me personally, and in deciding when and how to employ force, the why should I care? state no longer requires the consent, direct participa- For years after 9/11, America’s armed force tion, or ongoing support of citizens. As an immedi- floundered abroad. Although the invasions of Af- ate consequence, Washington’s penchant for war has ghanistan and Iraq began promisingly enough, in appreciably increased, without, however, any cor- neither case were U.S. forces able to close the deal. responding improvement in the ability of political With the fall of Richmond in April 1865, the Civil and military leaders to conclude its wars promptly War drew to a definitive close. No such claim could be made in connection with the fall of Kabul in November 2001. When it came to dramatic effect, the staged April 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Apathy toward war is symptomatic of advancing Baghdad’s Firdos Square stands civic decay, finding expression in apathy toward the on a par with the September 1945 surrender ceremony on blight of child poverty, homelessness, illegitimacy, the deck of the USS Missouri. and eating disorders also plaguing the country. There, however, the comparison ends. The one event rang down the curtain; the other merely signified a script change. Mean- while, Americans at home paid little more than lip service to the or successfully. A further result, less appreciated but travails endured by the troops. with even larger implications, has been to accelerate Beginning in 2007—just as the “surge” was os- the erosion of the traditional concept of democratic tensibly salvaging the —a sea of troubles citizenship. engulfed the home front. From those troubles, the In other words, the afflictions besetting the Amer- continuation of war offered no escape. If anything, ican way of life derive in some measure from short- the perpetuation (and expansion) of armed conflict comings in the contemporary American way of war. plunged the nation itself that much more deeply The latter have either begotten or exacerbated the underwater. Once again, as in the 1860s and 1940s, former. war was playing a major role in determining the Since 9/11, Americans have, in fact, refuted George nation’s destiny. Yet this time around, there was no C. Marshall by demonstrating a willingness to toler- upside. Virtually all of the consequences—politi- ate “a Seven Years [and longer] War.” It turns out, as cal, economic, social, cultural, and moral—proved the neoconservative pundit observed, that negative. To a nation gearing up for global war, an absence of popular support “isn’t necessarily fa- FDR had promised jobs, help for the vulnerable, tal” for a flagging war effort. For an inveterate milita- an end to special privilege, the protection of civil rist like Boot, this comes as good news. “Public apa- liberties, and decisive military victory over the na- thy,” he argues, “presents a potential opportunity,” tion’s enemies. To a considerable degree, Roosevelt

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 made good on that promise. Judged by those same currently defined) constitutes a form of prolonged criteria, the Bush-Obama global war came up short ritual suicide. Rather than building muscle, it cor- on all counts. rupts and putrefies. The crux of the problem lay with two symmetri- The choice Americans face today ends up being cal 1 percents: the 1 percent whose members get as straightforward as it is stark. If they believe war sent to fight seemingly endless wars and that other essential to preserving their freedom, it’s incum- 1 percent whose members demon- strate such a knack for enriching themselves in “wartime.” Needless to say, the two 1 percents neither intersect nor overlap. Few of the very rich send their sons or daugh- Americans have begun to discover that trusting ters to fight. Few of those leaving the military’s ranks find their way in the present-day American way of war to into the ranks of the plutocracy. preserve the present-day American way of life Rather than rallying to the colors, entails exorbitant and unexpected costs. Harvard graduates these days flock to Wall Street or the lucrative world of consulting. Movie star heroics occur exclusively on screen, while millionaire professional athletes manage to satisfy their appetite for combat on the bent upon them to prosecute war with the same court and playing field. seriousness their forebears demonstrated in the Yet a people who permit war to be waged in 1940s. Washington’s war would then truly become their name while offloading onto a tiny minority America’s war with all that implies in terms of com- responsibility for its actual conduct have no cause mitment and priorities. Should Americans decide, to complain about an equally small minority milk- on the other hand, that freedom as presently de- ing the system for all it’s worth. Crudely put, if the fined is not worth the sacrifices entailed by real war, very rich are engaged in ruthlessly exploiting the 99 it becomes incumbent upon them to revise their percent who are not, their actions are analogous to understanding of freedom. Either choice—real war that of American society as a whole in its treatment or an alternative conception of freedom—would of soldiers: the 99 percent who do not serve in uni- entail a more robust definition of what it means to form just as ruthlessly exploit the 1 percent who do. be a citizen. To excuse or justify their conduct, the very rich Yet the dilemma just described may be more engage in acts of philanthropy. With a similar aim, theoretical than real. Without the players fully un- the not-so-rich proclaim their undying admiration derstanding the stakes, the die has already been of the troops. cast. Having forfeited responsibility for war’s de- As the bumper sticker proclaims, freedom isn’t sign and conduct, the American people may find free. Conditioned to believe that the exercise of that Washington considers that grant of author- global leadership is essential to preserving their ity irrevocable. The state now owns war, with the freedom, and further conditioned to believe that country consigned to observer status. Meanwhile, leadership best expresses itself in the wielding of the juggernaut of mainstream, commercial culture military might, Americans have begun to discover continues to promulgate the four pop Gospels of that trusting in the present-day American way of American Freedom: novelty, autonomy, celebrity, war to preserve the present-day American way of and consumption. Efforts to resist or reverse these life entails exorbitant and unexpected costs. tendencies, whether by right-leaning traditionalists Yet as painful as they may be, these costs repre- (many of them religiously inclined) or left-leaning sent something far more disturbing. As a remedy secular humanists (sometimes allied with religious for all the ailments afflicting the body politic, war— radicals) have been feeble and ineffective. at least as Americans have chosen to wage it—turns Americans must therefore accept the likelihood of out to be a fundamentally inappropriate prescrip- a future in which real if futile sacrifices exacted of tion. Rather than restoring the patient to health, the few who fight will serve chiefly to facilitate meta- war (as currently practiced pursuant to freedom as phorical death for the rest who do not.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Politics

JFK, Warmonger His foreign policy was worse than George W. Bush’s.

by JUSTIN RAIMONDO

ifty years is long enough to mold history into Free World in Southeast Asia,” he declared in 1956, mythology, but in the case of John Fitzgerald “the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike.” Kennedy it only took a decade or so. Indeed, As Eisenhower neared the end of his second term, long before Lyndon Johnson slunk off into Democrats portrayed him as an old man asleep at Fthe sunset, driven out of office by antiwar protes- the wheel. This narrative was given added force by tors and a rebellion inside his own party, Americans the sudden appearance of a heretofore unheralded were already nostalgic for the supposedly halcyon “missile gap”—the mistaken belief that the Soviets days of Camelot. Yet the graceless LBJ merely fol- were out-running and out-gunning us with their lowed in the footsteps of his glamorous predecessor: ability to strike the United States with intercontinen- the difference, especially in foreign policy, was only tal ballistic missiles. in the packaging. This storyline was advanced by two signal events: While Kennedy didn’t live long enough to have the 1957 launching of Sputnik, the first artificial much of an impact domestically, except in introduc- satellite to go into orbit around the earth, and the ing glitz to an office that had previously disdained equally successful testing of a Soviet ICBM earlier the appurtenances of Hollywood, in terms of Amer- that summer. That November, a secret report com- ica’s stance on the world stage—where a chief execu- missioned by Eisenhower warned that the Soviets tive can do real damage quickly—his recklessness is were ahead of us in the nuclear-weapons field. The nearly unmatched. report was leaked, and the media went into a fren- As a congressman, Kennedy was a Cold War hard- zy, with averring the U.S. was liner, albeit with a “smart” twist. After a 1951 trip in dire danger of becoming “a second class power.” to Southeast Asia he said the methods of the colo- America, the Post declared, stood “exposed to an nial French relied too much on naked force: it was almost immediate threat from the missile-bristling necessary, he insisted, to build a political resistance Soviets.” The nation faced “cataclysmic peril in the to Communism that relied on the nationalistic sen- face of rocketing Soviet military might.” timent then arising everywhere in what we used to The “Gaither Report” speculated that there could call the Third World. Yet he was no softie. While the be “hundreds” of hidden Soviet ICBMs ready to Eisenhower administration refused to intervene ac- launch a nuclear first strike on the United States. As tively in Southeast Asia, key Democrats in Congress we now know, these “hidden” missiles were nonex- were critical of Republican hesitancy and Kennedy istent—the Soviets had far fewer than the U.S. at the was in the forefront of the push to up the Cold War ante: “Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Justin Raimondo is editorial director of Antiwar.com.

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 time. But the Cold War hype was coming fast and attacked Eisenhower for his alleged complacency in thick, and the Democrats pounced—none so hard as the face of a “Soviet threat” a mere 90 miles from Kennedy, who was by then actively campaigning for the Florida coastline. This left Kennedy’s rival, Vice president. “For the first time since the War of 1812,” President Richard Nixon, in the uncharacteristic he pontificated on the floor of the Senate, “foreign position of defending a policy of caution. It was a enemy forces potentially had become a direct and typically disingenuous ploy on Kennedy’s part: the unmistakable threat to the continental United States, Democratic nominee had been briefed on the CIA’s to our homes and to our people.” regime-change plans shortly after the Democratic To arms! The Commies are coming! convention. It was all balderdash. Barely a month after Ken- Kennedy, for his part, was enthusiastic about nedy was sworn in, this was acknowledged by De- eliminating Castro. Once in office, he eagerly ap- fense Secretary Robert S. McNamara: there were “no proved the CIA’s plan, and preparations began in signs of a Soviet crash effort to build ICBMs” he told earnest. The operation was a farce from the begin- reporters, and “there is no missile gap today.” Ken- ning. It depended on two projected events, neither nedy’s apologists have tried to spin this episode to of which occurred: the assassination of Castro and a show that Kennedy was misled. Yet Kennedy was widespread uprising against the Cuban government. briefed by the CIA in the midst of the 1960 presiden- tial campaign, by which time the CIA’s projection of Soviet ICBMs had fallen from 500 to While Lyndon Johnson usually gets the blame for a mere 36. Kennedy chose to believe much higher Air Force escalating the Vietnam War, it was Kennedy who ordered estimates simply because they the first substantial increase in direct U.S. involvement. fit his preconceptions—and were politically useful. When Eisenhower came into office, he swiftly conclud- ed the and instituted his “New Look” This was the “they’ll shower us with rose petals” ar- defense policy, which cut the military budget by one gument advanced 40 years before George W. Bush’s third. He repudiated the Truman-era national-se- “liberation” of Iraq. It took less than two days for Cu- curity doctrine embodied in “NSC-68,” a document ban forces to squash the invaders. prepared by Truman’s advisors that said the U.S. Lurching from disaster to catastrophe, Kennedy, must be ready to fight two major land wars—and after barely a year in office, authorized an increase several “limited wars”—simultaneously. The U.S. in aid to South Vietnam and sent 1,000 additional was instead to rely on the threat of massive nuclear American “advisors.” While Lyndon Johnson usually retaliation, a defensive posture derided at the time gets the blame for escalating the Vietnam War, it was by Kennedy and his coterie as “isolationist.” Kennedy who ordered the first substantial increase As president, Kennedy swiftly reversed Eisen- in direct U.S. involvement. hower’s course. McNamara rehabilitated NSC-68 In his famous “pay any price, bear any burden” in- and embarked on a massive buildup of conven- augural address, Kennedy put the Soviets on notice tional land, sea, and air forces in order to “prevent that his administration would prosecute the Cold the steady erosion of the Free World through lim- War to the fullest, declaring that we “shall meet any ited wars,” as Kennedy put it in a 1961 message to hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in or- Congress. The promise of “limited” wars would soon der to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” be fulfilled by the two of the biggest disasters in the In Vietnam, this meant supporting the regime of Ngo history of American foreign policy: the Bay of Pigs Dinh Diem, whose dictatorship became increasingly invasion and the Vietnam War. repressive as Viet Cong forces gathered strength. While plans to overthrow Fidel Castro originat- While the initial strategy, originated under Eisen- ed during the Eisenhower administration, the Bay hower, was predicated on supporting indigenous of Pigs plot was conceived by the CIA shortly af- anti-Communist forces with aid and as many as 500 ter Kennedy was sworn into office. During the last “advisors,” by 1963 U.S. troops in Vietnam num- presidential debate before the election, Kennedy had bered some 16,000. Long before the “COIN” theory

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Politics

promoted by Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq and Af- turned out to be not so strategic after all. The ranks ghanistan, President Kennedy championed the doc- of the communists increased by 300 percent. trines of counterinsurgency to fight the Communists Kennedy, instead of holding his advisors—or him- on their own terrain: the idea was to not only defeat self—responsible for this abysmal failure, instead did the enemy militarily but also to materially improve what he always did: he blamed the other guy. After the lives of the populace, whose hearts and minds the Bay of Pigs ended in what the historian Trum- must be won. bull Higgins called “the perfect failure,” Kennedy put Thus was born the “Strategic Hamlets” program, the onus on the CIA—although he had approved the which involved forcibly relocating millions of Viet- original plan, which called for U.S. air support for namese peasants from their villages and corralling the Cuban exile force, only to withdraw his promise them in government-run compounds. The idea was on the eve of the invasion. Similarly when it came to to isolate them from the pernicious influence of the the unraveling of South Vietnam, he blamed Diem. Communists and provide them with healthcare, By 1963 Diem had opened back-channel talks subsidized food, and other perks, while compensat- with the North Vietnamese and sought to end the war with a negotiated settlement, but Kennedy was having none of it. The president soon concluded that the increasingly unpopular Diem was the cause of America’s failure in the region and— disdaining the advice of the Pentagon— agreed to a State Department plan to overthrow him. A cash payment of $40,000 was made to a cabal of South Vietnam- ese generals, and on November 2, 1963, the president of the Repub- lic of Vietnam was murdered, along with several members of his family. The coup leaders were invited to the American Embassy and congratulated by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. Chaos ensued, and the Viet- cong was on the march. In re- sponse, U.S. soldiers increas- ingly took the place of ARVN troops on the battlefields of Viet- nam. The Americanization of the war had begun. According to Rob- ert Kennedy—and contrary to Oliver Stone’s overactive imagination—JFK never gave the slightest consideration to pulling out. Michael Hogue The mythology of Kennedy’s “dazzling” lead- ership, as hagiographer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. once ing them with cash for the loss of their dwellings. described it, reaches no greater height of mendacity The program was a horrific failure: torn from their than in official accounts of the Cuban missile cri- homes, which were burned before their eyes, Viet- sis. In the hagiographies, the heroic Kennedy stood nam’s peasants turned on the Diem regime with a “eyeball to eyeball” with the Soviets, who—for no vengeance. The compensation money that was sup- reason at all—suddenly decided to put missiles in posed to go to the dislocated villagers instead filled Cuba. Because Kennedy refused to back down, so the pockets of Diem’s corrupt officials, and the ham- the story goes, America was saved from near certain lets, which were soon infiltrated by the Viet Cong, nuclear annihilation.

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 This is truth inverted. To begin with, Kennedy “soft on Communism.” provoked the crisis and had been forewarned of the Thus for domestic political reasons, rather than to possible consequences of his actions long in advance. address a real military threat, Kennedy risked an all- In 1961, the president ordered the deployment of in- out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. His blockade termediate range Jupiter missiles—considered “first of Cuba and the public ultimatum delivered to the strike” weapons—in Italy and Turkey, within range Soviets—withdraw or risk war—brought the world of Moscow, Leningrad, and other major Soviet cit- to the brink of the unthinkable. Yet as far as anyone ies. In tandem with his massive rearmament program and the con- tinuing efforts to destabilize Cuba, this was a considerable provoca- tion. As Benjamin Schwarz relates in , Sen. Albert Gore Stripped of glitz, glamour, and partisan myopia, Sr. brought the issue up in a closed the Kennedy presidency was the logical prelude to hearing over a year and a half be- the years of domestic turmoil and foreign folly fore the crisis broke, wondering aloud “what our attitude would be” that followed his assassination. if, as Schwarz writes, “the Soviets deployed nuclear-armed missiles to Cuba.” Kennedy taped many of his meet- ings with advisors, and those relevant to the Cuban knew at the time, it worked: the Soviets withdrew missile crisis were declassified in 1997. They show their missiles, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. that Kennedy and his men knew the real score. As Only years later, as new materials were declassified, Kennedy sarcastically remarked during one of these was the secret deal between Kennedy and Khrush- powwows: “Why does [Soviet leader Nikita Khrush- chev revealed: Kennedy agreed to withdraw our mis- chev] put these in there, though? … It’s just as if we siles from Turkey and promised not to invade Cuba. suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs Another aspect of the Kennedy family mythology was [medium-range ballistic missiles] in Turkey. Now exposed by these releases: brother Robert, far from that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think.” being the reasonable peacemaker type he and his fam- National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, not ily’s chroniclers depicted in their memoirs and histo- known for his sense of humor, helpfully pointed out: ries, was the most Strangelove-like of the president’s “Well we did it, Mr. President.” advisors, calling for an outright invasion of Cuba in Kennedy and his coterie realized that the deploy- response to the ginned up crisis. ment of Soviet missiles in Cuba didn’t affect the nucle- Perhaps in this matter he was taking his cues from ar balance of power one way or the other, although the his brother, who during the Berlin standoff had actu- president said the opposite in public. In a nationally ally called on his generals to come up with a plan for a televised address on the eve of the crisis, the president nuclear first strike against the Soviets. portrayed the Soviet move as “an explicit threat to Stripped of glitz, glamour, and partisan myopia, the peace and security of all the Americas.” In coun- the Kennedy presidency was the logical prelude to cil with his advisors, however, he blithely dismissed the years of domestic turmoil and foreign folly that the threat: “It doesn’t make any difference if you get followed his assassination. President Johnson was blown up by an ICBM flying from the Soviet Union or left to carry the flag of Cold War liberalism into what one that was 90 miles away. Geography doesn’t mean became the “Vietnam era,” but that tattered banner that much.” In conference with the president, McNa- was lowered when LBJ fled the field, McGovernites mara stated, “I’ll be quite frank. I don’t think there is a took over his party, and the hawkish senator Scoop military problem here … This is a domestic, political Jackson’s little band of neocons-to-be made off to the problem.” GOP. This is the real Kennedy legacy: not the mythi- The “crisis” was symbolic rather than actual. There cal “Camelot” out of some screenwriter’s imagination, was no more danger of a Soviet first strike than had but the all-too-real—and absurdly hyperbolic—idea existed previously. What Kennedy feared was a first that America would and could “pay any price” and strike by the Republicans, who were sure to launch “bear any burden” in the service of a militant inter- an attack on the administration and accuse it of being ventionism.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 Ideas

Gettysburg Gospel How Lincoln forged a civil religion of American nationalism

by RICHARD GAMBLE

incoln’s Gettysburg Address has achieved a speech can be interpreted as a highly compressed Peri- status as American Scripture equaled only by clean funeral oration, as Garry Wills showed definitive- the Declaration of Independence, the Consti- ly in his 1992 book Lincoln at Gettysburg. But unlike tution, and Washington’s Farewell Address. Pericles’ performance, this speech names no Athens, LIn merely 271 words, the wartime president fused no Sparta, no actual time, place, people, or circum- his epoch’s most powerful and disruptive tenden- stances at all. cies—nationalism, democratism, and German ideal- Into this empty vessel Lincoln poured the 19th-cen- ism—into a civil religion indebted to the language of tury’s potent ideologies of nationalism, democratism, Christianity but devoid of its content. and romantic idealism. Together, these movements That the Gettysburg Address achieves so much in have become inseparable from the modern American so little space has a lot to do with what Lincoln didn’t self-understanding. They have become part of our civil say on that November day in 1863. An odd vacancy religion and what we likewise ought to call our “civil runs through the speech. Pronouns without anteced- history” and “civil philosophy”—that is, religion, his- ents carried Lincoln’s words away from the things he tory, and philosophy pursued not for their own sake, was supposedly talking about. The speech was ab- not for the truth, but deployed as instruments of gov- stracted from the place where he stood and the suf- ernment to tell useful stories about a people and their fering he memorialized. Lincoln mentioned “a great identity and mission. Polybius praised Rome’s forefa- battle-field” but not the town and surrounding farms thers for having invented religion for just this public of Gettysburg. He invoked the “fathers” but left them purpose. Religion, history, and philosophy can all be unnamed. He extolled the “proposition that all men domesticated to make them tools for the regime. are created equal” but left the Declaration of Indepen- In 1967, sociologist Robert Bellah launched the dence implied. modern career of “civil religion” as a concept, a way to He honored “brave men” but not a single com- examine how, on the one hand, the state adopts reli- manding officer or soldier by name. He spoke of a gious language, ritual, holidays, and symbolism to bind “nation” five times but avoided anything as definite as a nation together and how, on the other hand, it elevates geographic America, the United States, the republic, its own values and ideas to the status of holy doctrine. the Constitution, the North, the South, or even the Regarding the first type, University of Toronto political Union. The Union was the very thing he had been theorist Ronald Beiner recently defined civil religion insisting since 1861 that he fought to preserve. Per- as “the appropriation of religion by politics for its pur- haps most striking of all, even though this speech fol- poses.” Lincoln had been doing this to the Bible since at lowed Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation by nearly least 1838. He ended his Lyceum Address by applying a year, he never mentioned slavery. Instead, we have Matthew 16:18 to American liberty: “the gates of hell “freedom.” shall not prevail against it.” More famously, in 1858 he Lincoln omits these tangible details of place and quoted Matthew 12:25 to characterize the precarious moment with such skill that readers do not notice the state of the Union: “A house divided against itself shall empty spaces. For anyone who does not already know not stand.” something specific about the Civil War, the speech Such an appropriation of Christianity for politics creates no picture in the mind. It could be adapted to dominates the Gettysburg Address, from its open- almost any battlefield in any war for “freedom” in the ing “four score” to its closing “shall not perish.” In the 19th century or thereafter. Perhaps the speech’s vacan- cies account for its longevity and proven usefulness be- Richard Gamble is the author of In Search of the City on a yond 1863—even beyond America’s borders. Lincoln’s Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

1970s, literary scholar M.E. Bradford, in his essay, “The the Constitution, and the laws to serve as America’s Rhetoric for Continuing Revolution,” identified the sustaining “political religion” now that the founding Gettysburg Address’s “biblical language” as the speech’s generation was passing away. In 1863, Lincoln filled “most important formal property.” That is undoubtedly the Gettysburg Address with the words “dedicated,” so. Lincoln drew from the King James Version’s archaic “consecrated,” and “hallow.” The cumulative effect of words and cadences, as he opened with the biblical- this sacred language was to set the American Found- sounding “four score,” an echo of the Psalmist’s “three ing, the suffering of the Civil War, and the national score and ten” years allotted to man on this earth. He mission apart from the mundane world and transport continued with “brought forth,” the words in the Gos- the war dead and their task into a transcendent realm. pel of Luke that describe Mary’s delivery of Jesus—the Bellah, a defender of American civil religion who first instance of what turns out to be a repeated image wanted to globalize it in the post-Kennedy years, of conception, birth, life, death, and new birth, culmi- claimed that Lincoln and the Civil War gave America nating in the promise of eternal life in the words “shall a “New Testament” for its civic faith: “The Gettysburg not perish”—a startling echo of Jesus’ words to Nicode- symbolism (‘…those who here gave their lives, that mus in John 3:16 (“whosoever believeth in Him shall that nation might live’) is Christian without having not perish but have everlasting life”). anything to do with the Christian church.” Lincoln’s speech also engages the other side of civil To this civil religion, Lincoln added his distinc- religion—not the appropriation of the sacred for the tive civil history and civil philosophy. Subtracting the purposes of the state but the elevation of the secular “four score” years from 1863 takes us back to 1776. into a political religion. Early in his career, Lincoln had America was “brought forth” in 1776—not in 1787 or explicitly promoted this kind of civil religion. Again 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by state con- in his 1838 Lyceum address, he called for fidelity to ventions. In his First Inaugural in 1861, the Republi- “the blood of the Revolution” and the Declaration, can president had insisted that the Union was older

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Ideas

than the states: it had formed at least as early as 1774 Just above these words, which Herndon and had organically “matured” through the war years. paraphrased, Parker referred to the “American idea.” But now at Gettysburg, the Union vanished and the Parker warned of “two principles” struggling for claim appeared that a “new nation” was born in 1776. “mastery” in the United States. Only one of them was Lincoln’s exclusive use of “nation” in this speech truly the “American idea.” “I so name it,” he said, for the thing that was founded, tested, and awaited rebirth deserves careful notice. In the domestic and because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all international context of the 1860s, this was a power- our truly original, distinctive and American in- ful word. In the first place, it answered the most con- stitutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed tested political question from 1787 to 1861—and not of three subordinate and more simple ideas, just between the North and the South but between namely: The idea that all men have unalienable anyone who argued over whether a citizen’s allegiance rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created belonged first to his state or to the Union. “Nation” equal; and that government is to be established swept aside all other options. Secondly, the mid-19th and sustained for the purpose of giving every century was the age of Europe’s wars of national uni- man an opportunity for the enjoyment and de- fication. To be a “nation” in 1863 meant something velopment of all these unalienable rights. This quite different from what it had before the French idea demands, as the proximate organization Revolution. It now signified an organic “people,” uni- thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all fied at the core, and raised up by a Providential history the people, by all the people, for all the people; to fulfill a unique mission. of course, a government after the principles of Key to understanding that mission is the idealism eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for embedded in Lincoln’s civil philosophy. That philoso- shortness’ sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom. phy relied on what Lincoln famously called a “propo- sition,” a word exposing Lincoln’s highly abstract and Read alongside the Gettysburg Address, Parker’s ahistorical way of talking about America. He took contribution to the speech is unmistakable. At points the Declaration’s affirmation that “all men are cre- the wording is nearly identical. This is not to say that ated equal,” turned it into a proposition, dedicated the Lincoln plagiarized from Parker. The point is to draw nation to it, and then pulled all of American history attention to how much Lincoln compressed into his through and from that proposition. brief speech. His civil philosophy, indebted to Ger- Lincoln’s propositional apriorism mirrors the Ger- man Idealists like Parker, distilled something as com- plex, diverse, untidy, and contested as the formation of the American republic into one proposition, and then from that fragment of Lincoln’s propositional nation helped move a fragment of the past extrapolated both the America from the old exceptionalism to the new. essence of America in 1863 and its purpose in the future. No part of any sentence of any document, even if that document is the Dec- man idealism imported into the United States in the laration of Independence, can carry this load. first half of the 19th century (at times secondhand via Embedded in the Gettysburg Address, the proposi- France and England). We know from Lincoln’s law tion defined the making of America and why it fought partner, William Herndon, that Lincoln admired Bos- a costly war. We cannot know how Lincoln would ton’s radical Unitarian and Transcendentalist minister have wielded the proposition in pursuit of Amer- Theodore Parker. Parker, who died in 1860, had been ica’s postwar domestic and foreign policy; his death one of the principal conduits of avant-garde German in 1865 left that question open, as Republicans and philosophy and theology into New England. We also even Democrats used the martyred president and his know from Herndon that in 1858 he brought Lincoln words to endorse everything from limited govern- a copy of Parker’s 1850 sermon “The Effect of Slavery ment to consolidated power, from anti-imperialism on the American People.” Herndon recalled that Lin- to overseas expansion. Under all this confusion, coln “liked especially the following expression, which however, Lincoln’s propositional nation helped move he marked with a pencil, and which he in substance America from the old exceptionalism to the new. He afterwards used in his Gettysburg address: ‘Democ- helped America become less like itself and more like racy is direct self-government, over all the people, for the emerging European nation-states of mid-century, all the people, by all the people.’” each pursuing its God-given benevolent mission.

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 A propositional nation like Lincoln’s is “teleocratic,” Americans have come to believe that we have always in philosopher Michael Oakeshott’s use of the word, been a democratic nation animated by an Idea. The al- as distinct from “nomocratic.” That is, it governs it- ternatives have been excluded from the national creed self by the never-ending pursuit of an abstract “idea” as heresy. The way most Americans today interpret rather than by a regime of law that allows individu- the Declaration of Independence, the purposes of the als and local communities to live ordinary lives and War for Independence, the principles that underlie to find their highest calling in causes other than the America’s Constitution, the causes and consequences nation-state. Lincoln left all Americans, North and of the Civil War, and the calling of the propositional South, with a purpose-driven nation. nation to the rest of the world comes largely from the One hundred and fifty years ago, President Lin- Gettysburg Address. To the degree we allow Lincoln’s coln, in the midst of a long and brutal war, deployed words to mediate how we read American history, they a powerful civil religion, civil history, and civil phi- will continue to settle, preemptively, the most con- losophy to superimpose one reading of American his- tested questions about America’s origin, purpose, and tory onto any competitors. Ever since, generations of destiny.

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

he release of the White House “Government interceptions of telephone conversations implicating Assessment” on August 30, providing the the Syrian army in the attack, but it was widely be- Tpurported evidence to support a bombing lieved that the information might have been fabricated attack on Syria, defused a conflict with the intelligence by Tel Aviv, meaning that bad intelligence was being community that had threatened to become public used to confirm other suspect information, a phenom- through the mass resignation of a significant number enon known to analysts as “circular reporting.” Other of analysts. The intelligence community’s consensus intelligence cited in passing by the White House on the view on the status of the Syrian chemical-weapons trajectories and telemetry of rockets that may have program was derived from a National Intelligence been used in the attack was also somewhat conjec- Estimate (NIE) completed late last year and hurriedly tural and involved weapons that were not, in fact, in updated this past summer to reflect the suspected use the Syrian arsenal, suggesting that they were actually of chemical weapons against rebels and civilians. The fired by the rebels. Also, traces of Sarin were not found report maintained that there were some indications in most of the areas being investigated, nor on one of that the regime was using chemicals, while conceding the two rockets identified. Whether the victims of the that there was no conclusive proof. There was consid- attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed, erable dissent from even that equivocation, including and no autopsies were performed to confirm the by many analysts who felt that the evidence for a Syr- presence of the chemical. ian government role was subject to interpretation and With all evidence considered, the intelligence possibly even fabricated. Some believed the complete community found itself with numerous skeptics in the absence of U.S. satellite intelligence on the extensive ranks, leading to sharp exchanges with the Director preparations that the government would have needed of Central Intelligence John Brennan and Director to make in order to mix its binary chemical system and of National Intelligence James Clapper. A number of deliver it on target was particularly disturbing. These analysts threatened to resign as a group if their strong concerns were reinforced by subsequent UN reports dissent was not noted in any report released to the suggesting that the rebels might have access to their public, forcing both Brennan and Clapper to back own chemical weapons. The White House, meanwhile, down. This led to the White House issuing its own as- considered the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of sessment, completely divorcing the process from any the NIE to be unsatisfactory, resulting in consider- direct connection to the intelligence community. The able pushback against the senior analysts who had spectacle of CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind authored the report. Secretary of State Colin Powell in the United Nations, In a scenario unfortunately reminiscent of the providing him with credibility as Powell told a series of lead up to Iraq, the National Security Council tasked half-truths, would not be repeated. the various intelligence agencies to beat the bushes and come up with more corroborative information. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive Israel obligingly provided what was reported to be director of the Council for the National Interest.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 Culture

Seven Conservative Minds Russell Kirk’s revisions trace the right’s evolution—and his own.

by Bradley j. Birzer

ussell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind became an immediate sensation upon its publica- tion in May 1953. Prominent newspapers, magazines, and journals throughout the REnglish-speaking world reviewed the book when it came out, sometimes twice, and almost always with depth and respect. Many disagreed with its 35-year- old Michiganian author, to be sure, but they did so with a bit of awe. Amazingly enough for any work of such depth, The Conservative Mind over seven edi- tions sold well over one million copies during Kirk’s lifetime, and has continued to sell well 20 years after his death. One might readily identify The Conservative Mind as seven books rather than as one. While the first four editions possess a righteous anger about them—Kirk even happily describing himself as reactionary at times—the last three editions carry a more comfort- able feel. What had been “extreme” in 1953 had, by the seventh and final edition in 1986, become wise and almost commonplace during the second Rea- gan administration. Between the first edition and the last, Kirk had gone from a young Bohemian rebel to a respectable elder philosopher, the grey eminence be- hind conservatism’s success. Now celebrating 60 years since it was first pub- Michael Hogue lished, The Conservative Mind and its permutations have as much to teach us about Kirk as they do about Bradley J. Birzer is co-founder of The Imaginative Conserva- the meaning of postwar conservatism and libertari- tive and the author of intellectual biographies of Charles Car- anism over a period of nearly four decades. No fan of roll of Carrollton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Christopher Dawson. He Kirk, Sidney Blumenthal of the Washington Post rec- is completing a biography of Russell Kirk to be published by the ognized in 1986, the year the final edition appeared, University Press of Kentucky.

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 of the Whigs,” Kirk called him—at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. While Kirk had earlier found good professors and friends at Michigan State as an undergraduate, he had disliked his one graduate year at Duke, where he earned his history M.A. in record time with a thesis on the eccentric Jeffersonian John Randolph of Roanoke. Drafted into the military and stationed in Utah from 1942 to 1946, a wanderlust overtook him after the war. He discovered the work of D’Arcy Thompson, a scientist who described St. An- drews in idyllic terms, and presuming the traditional Scottish university everything he had imagined for an institution of higher education, Kirk applied and was accepted. His days at St. Andrews were some of the best of his young life, and he relished every class and en- counter. Williams, his director, had once earned a solid academic reputation, but by the 1940s students knew him only as a terror in grading, a lazy lecturer, and a drunk. He and Kirk, however, got on famously. Williams “now lives wholly in the world of whiskey, sherry, and literature,” Kirk wrote appreciatively. It is not clear that Williams ever read the dissertation in any form, but the University of St. Andrews awarded Kirk its highest degree, a D. Litt.—essentially a double Ph.D.

rom the beginning, Kirk intended the disser- tation as a means to revive—or at least give cohesion to—conservative thought in art, Fliterature, and culture. On the day he conceived of the project, he wrote in his diary that he hoped it would provide an “invigoration of conservative principles.” So upon returning to the U.S., where he took up teaching at Michigan State, Kirk sought a publisher. Alfred Knopf accepted the book, provided Kirk delete roughly a third of the work. Kirk refused, and instead he submitted the manuscript—then called The Conservative Rout—to the publishing firm of Henry Regnery. The book, he wrote in his submis- sion letter,

is my contribution to our endeavor to con- serve the spiritual and intellectual and politi- cal tradition of our civilization; and if we are to rescue the modern mind, we must do it very that “The Conservative Mind was crucial in establish- soon. What Matthew Arnold called ‘an epoch ing the cause as a valid intellectual enterprise,” as it of concentration’ is impending, in any case. If “offered a genealogy of conservatism.” we are to make that approaching era a time of Kirk had written the book as his Ph.D. dissertation enlightened conservatism, rather than an era between 1948 and 1952, under the laissez-faire direc- of stagnant repression, we need to move with tion of Professor John William Williams—the “last decision. The struggle will be decided in the

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Culture

minds of the rising generation—and within seemingly disconnected persons together, but each, that generation, substantially by the minority as the young author saw it, also embodied or pro- who have the gift of reason. moted some permanent—or “timeless,” as Kirk wrote—truth in his own life, being, actions, or writ- Regnery accepted the manuscript as it was, but he ing. The timeless truth one person exemplified need wanted a title change. The two men exchanged sev- not be the same another did. Indeed, given the vast, eral ideas: The Long Retreat, Conservative Ideas, The often incomprehensible differences among human Conservatives’ Course, and The Conservative Tradi- beings, a multiplicity of finite individuals would tion. On December 1, 1952, Kirk wrote to Regnery reveal a variety of infinite truths, some seemingly from his office at Michigan State: “Your servant is contradictory, others simply incompatible. He de- hard at work amending The Conservative Mind—for scribed this trait of humanity over time as a “prin- such, pending your approval, I am calling the book.” ciple of proliferating variety.” John C. Calhoun and This decision, Kirk remembered in 1986, “seemed to Abraham Lincoln, consequently, could equally share have converted a rout into a rally.” space in Kirk’s understanding of American history, as each understood a different aspect of something eginning with Edmund Burke and John Ad- eternally true. ams, Kirk traced the theme of his study from the French Revolution, a horrific event that de- lmost immediately upon the publication of Bmanded an expression of conservatism, to the pres- The Conservative Mind in the United States, ent age—From Burke to Santayana, as the subtitle T.S. Eliot wanted to publish an edition re- originally read, or later From Burke to Eliot. Avised for an English audience with his firm, Faber All editions of the book had three main charac- and Faber. Kirk met with Eliot in the late summer of ters—Edmund Burke, John Adams, and T.S. Eliot. 1953, and the two became fast and intimate friends— Twenty-six other figures—many of whom had been though one has to take into account that neither man largely forgotten by 1953, such as George Gissing was overly demonstrative or gregarious. Eliot wanted and Orestes Brownson—made up the supporting Kirk to slow down in his writing, take his time with scholarship, and get a serious aca- demic job; he wanted Kirk to take a position at the University of Chi- cago. Elated to receive such praise Kirk never backed down from his horror at the rise what from such an important figure, but determined to make his own way, he labeled “the machine,” anything in man’s world that Kirk took the invitation for a sec- ond edition to answer some of the lessened the particular gifts and purpose of each person critics of the first, to fix typographi- as realized in relationship and community. cal and factual errors, and to refo- cus the book toward what he had discovered in the year since he had finished the dissertation in St. An- drews. cast. (The fourth edition omitted Thomas Macaulay, And as he continued to learn, he continued to re- though he appeared fully in the other six versions.) vise. Thus, Kirk published seven versions of The Con- The list of the characters who support the sup- servative Mind over his lifetime. Regnery, or one of its porting characters, though, changed throughout all imprints, brought out editions one (1953); two, along seven editions. In the first two, published in 1953 with Faber and Faber (1954); three (1960); five (1972); and 1954, a number of libertarians, anarchists, and six (1978); and seven (1986). Avon Publications pub- individualists made this third tier. Albert Jay Nock, lished the fourth revised edition (1968) in its “Discus” , and Friedrich Hayek, to name a few, series. Though the Avon iteration is the shortest, it appear early on. The latter two fall out in the third is the most powerful in terms of argumentation and edition, never to return. Others, such as English poet writing. Strangely enough, Avon, a Hearst imprint, John Betjeman, appear in the third edition and re- was known mostly for publishing pulp romances. Its main through the seventh. 1968 edition of The Conservative Mind sold for $1.65 Not only did a Burkean outlook hold these as a mass-market paperback, and Kirk seems to have

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 been at the height of his powers with this revision, of the Mont Pelerin Society, a gathering of classical balancing the righteousness of his youth with the wis- liberals and libertarians, in 1957. Kirk attended at dom of his later years. the invitation of his friend Wilhelm Röpke, the Ger- Most of the changes from version to version were man economist, only to become an unnamed object modest. Kirk understandably amends dates or modi- of attack in an address by the society’s president— fies some political comment that had ceased to be rel- Friedrich Hayek, whose remarks became the basis evant—for example, when a figure in power in 1953 for his 1960 essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” was no longer by 1972. Kirk also took advantage of Kirk responded to Hayek extemporaneously at the each new edition to dedicate it to a different friend or meeting—and, one may gather, less extemporane- relative. ously in revising The Conservative Mind. Other changes are complex and often subtle, but clearly reflect Kirk’s evolving mind. The most signifi- cant changes over the seven versions come in his last chapter of each. The conclusions of versions one through three have much in common. The There can be little doubt that Kirk moderated conclusions of versions five through his language and arguments in the later seven are identical, except for a date versions of The Conservative Mind. change here or there. Again, it is the fourth edition that seems most in- teresting among the bunch, proudly proclaiming the poet the center of all true civilization. Three of the larger changes suffice to show the adaptations and permutations of Kirk’s Despite the separation from any formal connec- thought between 1953 and 1986. First, Kirk’s inter- tion to libertarianism, Kirk continued to assault the est in libertarianism or its variations declines rapidly rise of Leviathan through all seven editions, often after the second version, to almost nonexistent with very effectively. He warned of a new statism: the third. In the first edition, Kirk lauded the work of individualists and anarchists such as Friedrich This would not be capitalism, nor yet socialism; Hayek and Albert Jay Nock. He questioned the intent it is the colossal state created chiefly for its own behind the word “individualist” but still appreciated sake. Socialists may help erect this structure; the thought of those who promoted it. His hesitations they will not endure to administer or enjoy it. about “” were no stronger than the ones The New Society, if constructed on this model, he had originally offered about T.S. Eliot and the po- at first might seem a convenient arrangement et’s “ambiguities.” for enforcing equality of condition; but its In the second edition, Kirk both removed any ten- structure—as if a diabolical [later, “chthonian”] tative critical judgments of Eliot, now a close friend, instinct had inspired its building—especially and argued rather bluntly that “the principal inter- facilitates ends quite different, the gratification ests of true conservatism and old-style libertarian of a lust for power and the destruction of all democracy now approach identity.” With the third ancient institutions in the interest of the new edition, however, published in 1960, Kirk not only dominant elites. It is C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous included Eliot in the subtitle—officially making Eliot Strength. the culmination of modern conservative thought— but he also erased any explicit references to libertar- Certainly these are arguments that should make any ian thinkers or libertarian thought. Nock remained, libertarian proud. Kirk never backed down from his but he was noted for his criticism of, in Kirk’s words, horror at the rise what he labeled “the machine,” any- “the ascendancy of plutocrats and politicians, exer- thing in man’s world that lessened the particular gifts cising the influence of an aristocracy of the Old Ré- and purpose of each person as realized in relationship gime without the compulsions of noblesse oblige.” and community. The machine—whether governmen- What had happened between the second edition tal, corporate, or educational—always diminished in 1954 and the third in 1960 was a fateful meeting the dignity of man. Kirk considered attacking the

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Culture

machine one of the most important aspects of his life increasing conviction. “Society’s regeneration and writings. cannot be an undertaking purely political,” he The second significant shift over the course of The explained in 1968. “Having lost the spirit of con- Conservative Mind’s revisions is the toning down of secration, the modern masses are without expecta- religious language, especially between the first several tion of any better than a bigger slice of what they editions and the later ones. Tellingly, the first of Kirk’s possess already.” Thinking of Homer, Virgil, Dante, six canons of the conservative mind begins as follows and Milton, and reflecting lines from T.S. Eliot’s in the first five editions: “Belief that a divine intent “Murder in the Cathedral,” he claimed, “More than politicians, great poets shape the destinies of mankind.” By 1972, however, Kirk argued instead, “No less than politicians do, great poets move nations.” Does The Conservative Mind have the power to There can be little doubt that Kirk moderated his language and bring together the numerous factions of modern arguments in the later versions of conservatism and libertarianism? The Conservative Mind. In large part, this reflects Kirk’s own views as he aged. After all, the Kirk of 1953 had no real experience in pol- itics or marriage. The Kirk of 1972 had been involved in several cam- rules society as well as conscience.” By 1978, with the paigns, many of them national, and he was a hus- sixth edition, Kirk had changed this to a much more band, as well as a father of three daughters. What’s naturalistic, “Belief in a transcendent order, or body of more, despite the radicalization of culture and re- , which rules society as well as conscience.” ligion during the 1960s, a conservative vision and Even more revealing, in the fourth edition he had movement had begun to take shape. proclaimed: “Thus the indispensable basis of any con- servative order, religious sanction, remains tolerably oday, sixty years after it was first published, secure.” Kirk removed “indispensable” in the fifth does The Conservative Mind have the power edition, and lost it remained. Originally Kirk wrote: to bring together the numerous factions of “It remains to be seen, within this century, whether Tmodern conservatism and libertarianism? That the conservatives can contribute to force Sin, the an- was, in a way, what Kirk had tried to do at the be- cient corruption of man, the proclivity to violence, ginning. Implicitly, while never succumbing to the envy, and appetite, back within the moral confines dangers of systematic or ideological thinking, Kirk of Western society, injured as the old order has been attempted to link five schools of thought together by the repeated explosions of social .” With in The Conservative Mind: the “New Humanism” the fifth edition, this became the much less robust: “It of Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More; the Eng- remains to be seen whether, within this century, the lish traditionalism of Edmund Burke and Cardinal conservatives can contrive to restore the old motive Newman; the libertarianism and individualism of to integrity.” Hayek and Nock; the agrarianism of G.K. Chester- Third, and perhaps most significantly, politics ton and Hilaire Belloc; and the dystopian fabulism takes on increasing significance and even, arguably, of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. surpasses the importance of poetry for Kirk. When Tensions existed between these schools, of course, the first reviews of the book began to appear in 1953, but Kirk remarkably walked the fine line between Kirk revealed considerable frustration over them. them by maintaining the focus of the book on per- Not even the followers of the conservative humanist sonalities and how those personalities manifested Irving Babbitt had laid “stress enough upon the ethi- eternal truths in their own particular times and plac- cal aspect” of The Conservative Mind, he lamented. es. That path is still open to conservatives—and not “Politics, I never tire of saying, is the diversion of just conservatives. After all, if we accept the prem- the quarter-educated, and I do try to transcend pure ise of any of the seven versions of The Conservative politics in my book.” Mind, every person is a new and particular reflection In the first four editions, Kirk affirmed this with of a divine and timeless truth.

36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Visit alphapub.com for FREE eBooks and Natural-law Essays

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This public-service message is from a self-fi nanced, nonprofi t group of former students of Mr. Wetherill. Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN What Rural America Is For

nder a slate sky that mutes gun shows are stygian gatherings of more on the human scale—is a sign all that is glorious around edentulous Junior Samples lookalikes, of hope, of an abiding faith in small- us, I drive to the Alexander but they are really rural swap meets. scale democracy, of, perhaps, the Gun Show, as I do on the This show, like most, is held in a vol- rekindling (or is it the last flicker?) Ufirst Sunday of most Octobers. unteer fire department, an institution of the old American ideal of local It is election season, though an off that is the modern analogue of yester- self-government. I write about this year—“off year” meaning we vote for year’s militia. The dealers and brows- at length in my history of American the offices that ought to matter most ers are the kind of men who serve in secession movements, Bye Bye Miss (county legislature, city council, town the wars that our liberal imperialists American Empire. supervisor) but, under our centralized (Vietnam) and neoconservatives (Iraq I can’t think of a time when rural dispensation, barely register. When 80 I & II) design but never get around and small-town Americans were so percent of the county budget is effec- to shipping their own progeny off disprized. That we have fed America, tively drawn up in Albany, what does to. Absent is any glorification of the produced most of its enduring litera- it matter? American Empire. My guess is that ture, and, politically, stood for peace Yard signs endorsing candidates dot you’d find more vegans than Lindsey and place—well, that was then. But ru- the roadside, though they are vastly Graham fans here. ral America is still good for one thing. outnumbered by the red, white, and Walking the aisles, I see Winchesters, Addressing Virginia farmers (in- blue placards that have dominated ru- fishing lures, knives, and ammo, inter- cluding the great Joel Salatin) and ral New York for months now and that rupted by “National Instant Gun Back- agribusiness reps, Secretary of Ag- read REPEAL NY’S SAFE ACT. ground Check” signs, an ugly intrusion riculture Tom Vilsack noted that al- The SAFE Act was the panicked of the surveillance state. though the rural population of the response to the Connecticut school The mood is alternately defiant and U.S. has declined to just 16 percent, shooting by Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned; there is a frustration borne it makes up 40 percent of the nation’s (Mario without the intellect or intro- of powerlessness. While huffy displays armed services. How can we occupy spection) and an urban-suburban of bravado are rare, some of these the world and destroy its traditional- controlled legislature. Drafted with men—and women—have pondered ist cultures, asked Vilsack, if the clod- appalling sloppiness—its definition the question once posed by The Clash: hoppers stop reproducing? (Okay, he of “assault weapons” is almost broad didn’t put it in quite those terms.) enough to include your kid’s squirt When they kick at your front door During the First World War, the gun—the SAFE Act is a suffocating How you gonna come? Kansas Socialist Kate Richards O’Hare welter of prohibitions, restrictions, and With your hands on your head was thrown into prison for sedition. mandated background checks that se- Or on the trigger of your gun? Her crime? Telling a North Dakota verely constrict the historic liberties of audience that their rulers regarded my neighbors. (Whose violent crime Hardly a week goes by without a farm mothers as “brood sows, having rate, as is the case elsewhere in rural news dispatch about the rural outliers sons to be put into the army and made America, is minuscule.) of some state—New York, Maryland, into fertilizer.” A century later, Kansas Fifty-two of the state’s 62 counties Colorado, California—seeking to take Kate is confirmed. have registered their opposition to the advantage of a legal anachronism (the From Western Maryland to the law, but these do not include the only U.S. Constitution) that permits new Southern Tier of New York to red- counties that count in statewide poli- states to be formed out of existing woods-and-weed Northern Califor- tics: those containing ones. (Every such article includes a nia, the brood sows are wondering if and its suburbs. Several county sher- stern admonition from Professor So- maybe they shouldn’t have some say iffs, unlikely embodiments of Robert and-So that the deluded hicks had in the political arrangements under Frost’s “insubordinate Americans,” are better shut up.) which they live. No man born with refusing to enforce the act. The quickening talk of state a living soul would deny them that In the rusti-phobic imagination, scission—of recalibrating governance right.

38 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

Arts&Letters

Will Israel Go using guile to vanquish surrounding the history of the 1948 war that created Fascist? brutes, but a militaristic and racist state Israel, with its multiple expulsions of whose electoral majorities have set it Palestinians from their towns followed by SCOTT McCONNELL on a trajectory towards , if it by wiping those towns off the map. His isn’t there already. Even those generally narrative makes regular connections Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater well-informed about Israel and its oc- between this past and the present. For Israel, Max Blumenthal, Nation Books, cupation of the Palestinian territories instance, a section on security proce- 512 pages will have their views challenged by dures in Ben Gurion Airport is intro- Blumenthal’s sharp eye and deadpan duced by a description of the massacre ax Blumenthal’s sprawling factual presentations. of civilians in the Arab town of Lydda portrait of contemporary Goliath eschews the standard liberal in 1948 that was followed by a forced Israel is far more a work of Zionist position that a relatively virtu- march of 55,000 survivors to Ramal- Mjournalism than political theory. It ous and democratic Israel was driven lah, the so-called Lydda Death March. largely avoids sustained argument or off course by some combination of Lydda was then Hebraicized to “Lod,” analysis, allowing its main points to be the post-1967 occupation of territory site of the international airport where inferred through the words of Israelis won in the se-Day War, the burgeon- visitors to Israel and the occupied ter- and Palestinians and short contem- ing political power of the settlers, the ritories are now sorted by ethnicity porary or historical descriptions, pre- authoritarian political culture of Rus- before interrogation, their electronic sented in several dozen vignette-like sian immigrants, or the swelling po- devices often searched or seized. chapters. This is nonetheless a bold litical clout of Jews from North Africa Another episode: during the 1970s, and shocking book, presenting per- and the Arab world. For Blumenthal, the Jewish National Fund planted fir suasively a major theoretical and po- Israel’s 1967 victory was not a turning trees to cover the ruins of three Pal- lemical argument about Israel almost point so much as a new opportunity to estinian towns Israel had bulldozed completely at odds with the image implement the ethnic-cleansing ideol- in the aftermath of the 1967 war. The most Americans have of it. ogy present at the state’s creation. trees were nonindigenous to the re- In Goliath, America’s foremost part- To a degree that has no clear equal gion, though they reminded some Is- ner in the Middle East is not the hu- among American journalists who cov- raelis of Switzerland. Three years ago, manistic and ever resourceful “David” er the Mideast, Blumenthal is versed in they burned in a huge forest fire Israel

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

could not control. Some who fled the in good faith, but from a citizen of a Ben Gurion, who had given such or- conflagration came from nearby Ein country where so much national cul- ders before with a wave of the hand, Hod, which once was an Arab town ture is derived from remembrance of balked at putting them in writing. So built of stone houses. In the 1950s, an wrongs done to Jews, its lack of self- Palestinian Nazarenes, both Christian Israeli artist lobbied for Israel to pre- awareness is remarkable. and Muslim, continue to live in Israel serve the houses as studios instead of Not all the past memories are bitter. today. bulldozing them as planned, and the Blumenthal tells the story of Benjamin A story of one of them, Hanin Zo- town was turned into a tourist desti- Dunkelman, a Canadian officer who abi, is told in one of Goliath’s pivotal nation. When Blumenthal visited, a volunteered to lead troops in Israel’s chapters. Blumenthal arrived in Israel young woman acknowledged that the War of Independence. After signing a shortly before the Mavi Marmara af- bar in which they were sitting was in local peace pact with the notables of fair, when a flotilla of boats sailed from fact a converted mosque. “Yeah, but Nazareth, a cultural and economic cen- Turkey with provisions to alleviate the that’s how all of Israel is … built on top ter of Palestinian Christians, Dunkel- blockade Israel had imposed on Gaza, of Arab villages. Maybe it’s best to let man received a general’s orders to ex- the strip of territory it had evacuated bygones be bygones.” pel the inhabitants. He refused. When settlers from in 2005 and then pulver- Such a sentiment may have some the general sought a formal written ized three years later. Israeli officials practical utility and might be spoken order to override Dunkelman, David joked that Gazans, a majority of whom

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters were suffering from what the United organizers were crazed anti-Semites. privileges. It passed with minimal Nations called “food insecurity,” were Outside the Turkish embassy, Israeli opposition. The next week Zoabi was having “an appointment with a dieti- demonstrators railed against Turkey. deprived of her diplomatic passport. cian” and emailed to journalists sarcas- Blumenthal interviewed several of The Knesset then passed a bill, called tic remarks about the menus of Gazan them, who ranged from self-described the “anti-Incitement act,” promising to restaurants. As the flotilla approached, peaceniks to Meir Kahane supporters. criminalize speech that could be char- the Israeli military and Hebrew-lan- “The longer I spoke with the demon- acterized as disloyal. guage press ginned up a great panic strators,” he relates, “the more likely These maneuvers reflected a broader about the boats, with their crews of ag- they were to merge their nightmare vi- popular spirit: an Israeli grocer of- ing European peace activists and a few sions of the flotilla activists as hardcore fered free groceries for life to anyone Palestinian politicians. While the or- agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran who would assassinate the Nazarene ganizers assumed that Israel would re- and al Qaeda with Holocaust demons. legislator, while an “Execute Zoabi” lent and allow the provisions through, ‘Everything is against the Jews and we Facebook page was created, attracting Israel sent commandos on helicopters have the right to defend ourselves.’ hundreds of supporters. No one in the and attack dinghies to storm the ship. ‘No matter what we do everything is Knesset and few in the media protest- When some passengers resisted against us—everybody. And we know ed. Blumenthal sardonically concludes, by throwing bottles and debris at the we’re right’.” “shouting down Arab lawmakers had boarders, Israeli commandos replied This sentiment was echoed in the become a form of electioneering.” with live ammunition. Nine passengers Knesset, when Hanin Zoabi, a 38-year- Sadly, the episode was in sync with were killed, including a 19-year-old old Palestinian representative from Israel’s broader political culture. Was Turkish-American, shot in the face ex- Nazereth, elected by one of the Arab the verbal violence against a Knes- ecution-style while lying wounded on parties, instigated a virtual legisla- set member more troubling than the the deck. Israel eventually apologized tive riot by challenging Israel’s right regular chants of “Death to the Arabs” to board the shouted out at Israeli soccer stadiums? Mavi Mar- More menacing than legislation de- mara on signed to impede marriages between the high Israeli citizens and West Bank Palestin- An overwhelming majority of the Israeli public felt seas. Zoabi ians? More detestable than the Jerusa- their country’s brutal treatment of unarmed peace holds a mas- lem celebrations of the life of Baruch activists on the high seas was perfectly justified. ter’s degree Goldstein, a Jewish-American doctor from He- who murdered 29 Muslim worshipers brew Uni- in Hebron in 1994? Or the provocation versity and parades through Arab neighborhoods had been a in Jerusalem, where hundreds of young to Turkey for the incident and will feminist activist prior to her election in Israelis and American Zionists join to- probably pay compensation. But Blu- 2009. She was on the boat, and after the gether to march the narrow streets of menthal recounts with some astonish- assault began she grabbed a loudspeak- Jerusalem’s Old City, booming the He- ment that an overwhelming majority er and used her Hebrew to try to get brew slogans “Muhammed is Dead!” of the Israeli public felt their country’s soldiers to stop killing unarmed pas- and “Slaughter the Arabs”? Or the mob brutal treatment of unarmed peace ac- sengers. Returning to the Knesset two violence young Israelis carried out tivists on the high seas was perfectly weeks after the incident, she was inter- against Arabs in the center of Jerusa- justified. rupted by shouts of “terrorist” and “go lem? Or the fact that followers of Kah- In the aftermath, the IDF went into back to Gaza” while the Likud speaker ane sitting in Parliament boast that the public-relations mode. Israeli soldiers of the legislature tried in vain to restore late rabbi’s vision is now widespread in gathered up knives from the boat’s order. Israel’s governing parties? kitchen and laid them out in a photo- A member of Yisrael Beiteinu, one Since the 1920s there has been a graphic display with several Qurans, of Israel’s governing right-wing parties, word in Western discourse for this supposedly evidence the Mavi Marma- presented Zoabi with a mock Iranian style of politics. The Israeli leftists and ra was leading an Islamist terror convoy. passport. Michael Ben Ari, a follower dissidents who became Blumenthal’s Israel jailed the surviving passengers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane—whose friends have now taken it up. “‘Fas- and confiscated their laptops and elec- party had been banned for racial incite- cism’ was a word the leftists used al- tronic equipment. The IDF doctored a ment in the 1980s—initiated a measure most invariably,” writes Blumenthal, sound clip to make it appear that flotilla to strip Zoabi of her parliamentary “as they told me about having their

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 homes defaced with graffiti, death and the interwar era. “If religious president of Hebrew University in threats by right-wing thugs or about are possible,” he wrote, “one Jerusalem—along with his wife, Liz. being summoned to interrogation.” must address the potential—supreme The latter relates, “We could have Speaking with journalist Lia Tara- irony—for fascism in Israel.” He stayed of course, but the fascism had chansky on a Tel Aviv bus, Blumen- noted that Israeli national identity is gotten to be too overwhelming.” thal probed what Israelis meant by the associated with human rights, long Is the situation really so dire? Blu- word. How could she claim fascism denied to Jews in the Diaspora. But menthal arrived in Israel shortly after was in the air when anti-Zionists like he also observes Israel’s demographic the election of Israel’s most right- her were permitted to conduct their shift away from European Jews to wing Knesset ever. Those inclined journalistic and political activities Jews from North Africa and the Mid- to optimism can assert that that this freely? east (and today Russia), where demo- election represented a high tide; The Israeli replied: cratic traditions are far weaker. more recent election results were “By 2002,” Paxton continued, “it somewhat more centrist. To explain fascism in Israel, it’s was possible to hear language within The Israel Goliath depicts would not that easy … it’s so depressing I the right wing of usually repress my thoughts about the Likud Party it. But if you really want me to de- and some of the fine it, then I’d tell you it’s not just small religious the anti-democratic laws, it’s not parties that comes “If religious fascisms are possible, one must the consensus for occupation, it’s close to the func- address the potential—supreme irony— not the massive right-wing coali- tional equivalent tion government, it’s not watching of fascism. The for fascism in Israel.” the people who ask questions and chosen people be- think critically being interrogated gins to sound like by the Shabbak. What it really is, a Master Race … is a feeling that you have sitting on that demonizes an a bus being afraid to speak Arabic enemy that obstructs the realization probably not be denied by liberal Zi- with your Palestinian friends. of the people’s destiny.” onists like Peter Beinart or the lead- Surveying the “mobilizing pas- ers of J Street. But they would argue A young woman who had overheard sions” of fascism, Paxton lists among that the proto-fascism is neither as their conversation interrupted to ask others “the primacy of the group, to- widely nor deeply entrenched, nor Blumenthal, “You with Israel or Tur- ward which one has duties superior as truly representative of the essen- kiya?” to every right, whether individual or tial Israel as Blumenthal maintains, Blumenthal and his Israeli friends universal, and the subordination of and that a fair settlement with the were not the first to broach the sub- the individual to it” and “the belief Palestinians could break the fever of ject of fascism; the word has some his- that one’s group is a victim, a senti- racism and allow more sensible lead- tory in Israel as a term of denigration ment that justifies any action, with- ers to re-emerge as Israel’s dominant against the right by the Zionist left. But out legal or moral limits, against its voices. They could point out, as well, is there substance behind the charge enemies both internal and external.” that Israel remains a functioning de- today? Or is this simply another vari- A reader of Goliath will find a people mocracy for its Jewish citizens and at ant of the promiscuous use of “fascist” thoroughly marinated in such senti- least guarantees some rights to oth- as an epithet, in the style of the Ameri- ment. ers, while true fascist regimes—if can New Left of the 1960s? Blumenthal closes his book with popular at the outset, as they always One scholar who has at least tangen- a short chapter on Israeli expatri- were—eventually dispense with com- tially addressed this is Robert Paxton, ates: fully 13 percent of Israelis now petitive elections and legal norms. an eminent Columbia historian and reside abroad. The United States and It is by no means obvious to me, one of the world’s leading scholars of Germany are the most favored des- however, which interpretation of the fascism, the author of a prize-winning tinations. “The Exodus Party,” he Israeli reality will appear, 10 years work on Vichy France’s murderous calls them. In Brooklyn, Blumenthal hence, to have been closer to the persecution of Jews. In his last book, encounters several Israeli expats, in- truth. The Anatomy of Fascism, published in cluding Rafi Magnes—the grandson 2003, Paxton speculated on fascism as of Judah Magnes, a famous Reform Scott McConnell is a founding editor of The a continuing menace beyond Europe rabbi who was a founder and former American Conservative.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters

How Not to Fix of countercultural values by the lower- of these matters and their role in the income classes has caused an epidemic death of the American dream. America of social dysfunction in poor neigh- This failure to connect dots is what borhoods.” The country “no longer has makes the book itself a failure. While by JUSTIN LOGAN a constitutionally limited government” Holmes makes clear throughout the and “not only are Americans’ historic book what he likes and dislikes, he Rebound: Getting America Back to freedoms at risk; so, too, is their demo- does not explain why the cultural and Great, Kim R. Holmes, Rowman & cratic republican form of government.” political forces he likes keep losing. Littlefield, 264 pages The nation, writes Holmes, is worse off The book offers neither a thorough ex- than it was in 1956. planation of America’s problems nor a nalyzing the gamut of Amer- Each chapter here begins with a fig- plausible path to solving them. ica’s problems and proposing ure Holmes either celebrates or decries. For example, Holmes discusses the solutions for them would be a The introduction celebrates “James,” a enormous national debt and annual Adaunting assignment for any author, fictitious 1956 man who exemplifies budget deficits and advocates cutting particularly in a span of fewer than Holmes’ vision of a good American. spending to deal with them. He also 300 pages. But in Rebound, longtime Harlow Curtice, the president of GM suggests that “every serious economist Heritage Foundation scholar Kim R. in the 1950s; Walt Rostow; Steve Jobs; knows” that remedying U.S. fiscal im- Holmes gives it a try. and all make appear- balances is “the first step in restoring In his introduction, Holmes apolo- ances, but perhaps the most illuminat- the economy.” Except this isn’t what gizes “ahead of time to those who ing vignette consists of two middle-aged every serious economist knows. Plenty would have liked more scholarly lan- women living on a barrier island who of serious economists think otherwise, guage and documentation. Alas, that represent Holmes’s view of good and unless one redefines “serious econo- is not the book I set out to write. This bad Americans. mist” to mean “economist who agrees is popular history and sociology and “Jennifer” is—no kidding—a di- with me.” As for the politics of cutting hopefully it will be judged by that stan- vorced liberal tree-hugger who works spending, Holmes recommends “ad- d ard .” to protect endangered sea turtles, while mitting that the government must have The problem is that popular his- “Mary” is a God-fearing entrepreneur a dramatically reduced role in solving tory and sociology are incapable of who owns hair salons. Where Jennifer our problems,” but he offers no advice doing the hard work Holmes has set deploys the government to back her tur- on how to make this admonition polit- for himself. To pin down the sources tle-protection efforts, Mary deploys civil ically relevant, despite the considerable of America’s problems, to say nothing society to address the epidemic of un- challenges facing it. of describing how to fix them, requires collected dog droppings on the island. The U.S. government doles out the social science Holmes neglects. In the course of Mary’s community roughly $1 trillion per year in tax ex- This book’s thesis appears to be organizing, however, she and Jennifer penditures, subsidizing various en- that “America’s success as a nation de- have it out: “Being an environmental deavors like owning homes, buying pended on its civic and social culture expert Jennifer insisted that [dog waste] health care, and saving for retirement. mixing with the political traditions of was good for the sand dunes. It gave As political scientist Suzanne Mettler liberty.” In Holmes’s view, America is them structure, she said. ‘Besides, dog has pointed out, these subsidies cre- in decline because of the “subtle di- s---t is natural.’ Mary disagreed, saying ate a “submerged state” in which the minishment of expectations over time how it smelled bad and attracted flies.” recipients of government benefits do to where what was once abnormal is What on Earth is this passage do- not recognize that they have benefited normal, and what was unacceptable is ing in a book about “getting America from the government. These programs, now tolerable.” This thesis is notable back to great”? Holmes places it atop combined with Social Security and by its absence from large chunks of Re- a chapter discussing the death of the Medicare, constitute well over half of bound, which at times reads more like American dream, a dream that Mary federal expenditures. They also all ben- a manifesto. embodies and Jennifer threatens. The efit middle-aged and elderly whites, Holmes does not hold back in his chapter flashes through topics rang- the most important constituency of the condemnations of modern America. ing from the decay of religion and civil very Republican Party alleged by some The upper classes are insulated in a cul- society to economic stagnation and to be the best hope for cutting govern- ture that is “not attractive or healthy” overregulation to constitutional dep- ment spending. One would hope that a and “reeks of division, elitism, and a redations. What’s telling here is that book pressing for the sorts of reforms lack of seriousness.” It’s even worse Holmes views his culture-war fable as that Holmes advocates would grapple among hoi polloi since “the absorption an appropriate hook for discussing all with these realities, but Rebound does

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 not. the antiwar side was antiwar. Holmes’s the war in Libya and the proposed war Unfortunately, the foreign policy liberal heroes are “Wilson, Roosevelt, in Syria to trimming the defense bud- sections of the book are even less per- Truman, and Kennedy,” and his villains get. suasive. Holmes, who has worked on are Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Holmes endorses the “apology tour” U.S. foreign policy for decades, misses Obama, in particular, is at heart a narrative beloved by the talk-radio set, basic facts while skewing his interpre- Chomskyite, but one who is “aggres- asserts that the Benghazi attack makes tations in ways that benefit Republi- sively going after terrorists” by running clear that “the threat of terrorism is cans and lampoon Democrats. a drone war that is “arguably more getting worse, not better,” and claims Sometimes, however, his efforts bloody minded than Bush’s war on ter- that an Iranian nuclear weapon would to make the left look ugly compared rorism.” Holmes squares this Chom- “effectively [make] Iran the dominant to the right lead him seriously astray. sky-as-Cheney caricature of Obama by power” in the Middle East. None of For instance, Noam Chomsky is rhe- referring to his “complex” motivations, these claims pass basic scrutiny. As torically burned in effigy, but the work the most important of which, we learn, TAC’s Daniel Larison has made clear, Holmes uses to indict him features is “a desire to avoid getting bogged there was no apology tour. Every recent Chomsky attacking the Lyndon John- down in foreign commitments.” survey of the terrorist threat shows that son administration’s policy in Vietnam Holmes is at pains to point out that it is lower than it has ever been. Even a for being rooted in “a will to power… he does not endorse not so much cloaked in idealism as it is “policing the world” drowned in fatuity.” Is there a historical or “launching military While Holmes makes clear throughout the judgment of Chomsky’s that stands up interventions willy- book what he likes and dislikes, he does better? nilly”—it’s just that For his part, Holmes cannot see that there are no actual not explain why the cultural and political the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution did not U.S. wars he opposes, forces he likes keep losing. rely on “supposed trickery” but rather and the “guiding prin- on actual trickery. Similarly, it isn’t ciple of U.S. foreign clear why he refers to Robert McNa- policy” should be that “America stands nuclear Iran would still possess a very mara as having been “reeducated and for liberty for all.” He seems to hope weak military, and nuclear weapons forced to confess his sins” rather than that the reader will not recognize the are not useful for compellence, mak- changing his mind about the Vietnam echo of George W. Bush’s second inau- ing it very difficult for those weapons War. gural address in that phrasing. to enable Iranian regional supremacy. The nationalistic view of American Holmes has gone through several That a senior scholar at one of Wash- history presented in the book is a ro- ideological incarnations in his career, ington’s most prestigious think tanks mantic rhapsody, despite the obliga- coauthoring an insightful critique of throws out these assertions without tory “to be sure” clauses covering Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol’s 1996 any supporting evidence speaks vol- slavery, the abandonment of Saigon, Foreign Affairsessay “Toward a Neo- umes about the evolution of the think and other U.S. shortcomings. Liber- Reaganite Foreign Policy” that de- tank. Think tanks used to fancy them- als are castigated for believing that nounced it as a “strategy of slaying the selves “universities without students,” “America has sinned,” but is this such a world’s monsters,” unconservative, and but the sort of fanciful story that Kim great offense—or even in dispute? Was “pure escapism.” Holmes then worked Holmes offers in Rebound could not the slaughter of innocent civilians in for the George W. Bush administra- pass muster at America’s worst univer- Southeast Asia something other than tion in its first term. He returned to sity, and the reason would have noth- a sin? What of our subjugation of the Heritage in 2005 and muzzled analyst ing to do with liberal bias. Philippines during our early dalliance John Hulsman, who had quarreled It is easy for those of us trading in with empire, when 200,000 Filipinos with neoconservative Michael Ledeen ideas to oversell their role in politi- died under U.S. occupation? Has the on Iran policy, eventually purging cal outcomes, but over a long enough American state not sinned regularly Hulsman from Heritage altogether. In time, bad ideas do bring bad conse- and grievously? 2007, Holmes praised Bush for making quences to the political actors who In his discussion of the foreign- the view that “America should actively hold them. That time may have come policy debates on the left during the support the spread of freedom and de- for movement conservatism in the middle of the 20th century, Holmes mocracy around the world” a central United States. sides with Truman (over Korea) and component of the war on terror. He has Johnson (over Vietnam) against their opposed the Obama administration’s Justin Logan is director of foreign-policy stud- opponents, mostly on the grounds that foreign policy root and branch, from ies at the Cato Institute.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters

Neoconservatism a Democratic incumbent saddled with foreign-policy circles. Nau himself a nearly 8 percent unemployment rate opens the door to this question, and it Rebaptized and whom a significant fraction of the is only by dint of Herculean willpower Republican base suspected of harbor- that I resist stepping through it. But by MICHAEL C. DEsCH ing crypto-socialist views (when he Nau’s personal vignettes recounting was not praying five times a day in the his travails among the tenured radicals Conservative Internationalism: Armed direction of Mecca). sorely tempt me. Diplomacy Under Jefferson, Polk, If we define success as stimulating To be sure, Nau hardly exagger- Truman, and Reagan, Henry Nau, a fruitful debate about what should ates the leftward political skew of the Princeton, 344 pages be the outlines of a central plank in professoriate. But he fails to leaven his the conservative agenda going for- story of conservative woe with the fact eorge Washington Univer- ward, Nau’s book will undoubtedly be that there has been a rightward skew of sity political science professor a smashing success. If we expect the a similar sort inside the Beltway over Henry Nau has impeccable book to settle this debate, however, or the last 30 years—particularly among Gtiming. He has written a book aim- even clearly define its terms, we are the foreign-policy and national-secu- ing to, in his words, “fill a gaping hole likely to be disappointed: Nau offers us rity communities—that ought to have in the foreign policy literature” with a old wine (neoconservatism) in a new heartened a right-of-center academic, conservative manifesto that “empha- bottle (conservative internationalism). especially one like himself who was sizes the spread of freedom, armed di- There are four problems with Nau’s willing to spend time in government plomacy, and a world republic without vintage, two that I think are not worth service. big government.” This is his pithy defi- arguing about and two that ought to be Finally, the most serious provoca- nition of “conservative international- the heart of the debate his book helps tion I resist is that Nau counts among ism,” the American foreign policy tra- start. the oppressors of conservatives in the dition he wants us to rediscover. One issue ultimately not worth ar- Ivory Tower my tribe, realists. And A number of developments make guing about (though I do think it is it is true that there are a few bastions his timing propitious: the Republican important) is who is the “real” conser- within it where realism’s writ seems to Party in particular and the conserva- vative. This is a definitional matter, and hold sway. But they are so few and far tive movement in general are in crisis. as with all definitions, what counts is between that we realists have our own whether it’s use- counter-narrative of victimhood. The ful and is used late Princeton professor Robert Gilpin consistently. That famously reminded us that “No one That the muscular policy Nau describes as the muscular pol- loves a political realist.” And the reason conservative internationalism has been the con- icy Nau describes we are not loved by our colleagues is servative policy since Reagan seems indisputable. as conservative simple: we’re regarded as too conserva- internationalism tive! has been the con- But rather than niggle about defini- servative policy tions or wallow in my own sense of vic- Eight years of the Bush 43 administra- since Reagan seems indisputable. And timhood, I want to focus instead upon tion left both in tatters. Nau is consistent in how he uses it. two more consequential problems with Internationally, failed wars in Af- Were I of a disputatious bent, how- Conservative Internationalism’s argu- ghanistan and Iraq have discredited ever, I might point out that Nau’s own ment. efforts to use America’s unrivaled mili- definition of conservatism—the belief Nau, in my view, misdiagnoses the tary capability to construct a balance of “that if man cannot govern himself, he problem: the lack of serious engage- power that favors freedom. Domesti- has no business governing others”— ment with a conservative foreign pol- cally, the worst economic crisis since could be presented as prima facie evi- icy is largely an academic pathology. the Great Depression has done more dence that his neoconservative or con- If I had a nickel for every real-world to discredit capitalism than all the servative internationalist foreign policy development my fellow denizens of the Marxists in the world achieved since is hardly conservative at all. How can a Ivory Tower overlooked, I could move the Communist Manifesto rolled off the philosophy that eschews social work at out of it and into my own McMansion. printing press in 1848. home be committed to engaging in it But fortunately, in most cases the Indeed, last year a Republican presi- around the world? real world moves on despite the efforts dential challenger with impeccable The second issue not worth de- of those of us in the groves of academe business credentials could not unseat bating is who the real victim is in to pretend it doesn’t exist. And in this

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 real world, the “conservative” approach them, seems so unconvincing that it that Nau longs for has characterized leads the reader to look for some deep American foreign policy with few ex- psychopathology at work here. ceptions since Ronald Reagan. (The Ronald Reagan is one of Nau’s he- brief realist interregnum of George roes, and George W. Bush was an ab- H.W. Bush and his Metternich, Brent ject conservative failure. I can’t help but Scowcroft, is the exception that proves see in Nau’s treatment of them a deep the rule.) In important respects—par- unresolved tension that he can only pa- ticularly the hyper-militarization of per over by, first, arguing that Reagan the War on Terror—it has continued and Bush 43 were very different politi- under the putatively liberal auspices of cally—and engaging in some rhetori- the Obama administration and would cal jiu-jitsu by associating realism with no doubt do so as well if the Clintons the latter and his vice president, Dick took up residence again at 1600 Penn- Cheney—and, second, ignoring the sylvania Avenue. connections between the two admin- Having misdiagnosed the problem, istrations: the neoconservatives who Nau prescribes the wrong remedy. served in them both. Rather than needing to return to the The laundry list of their names is too foreign policies of the last 30 years, we extensive and well known to burden need not only to recognize the conti- the reader with it here. And really, one nuity over this period on what looks name suffices to make my point: Paul strikingly like a bipartisan consensus Wolfowitz, who served in increasingly for conservative internationalism but important national-security policy- also to consider the results of having making positions under each Repub- pursued the policies that Nau com- lican president of the last 30 years, is mends. widely regarded as the architect of the To be sure, there were important dif- Iraq War. Indeed, one could go further ferences between Reagan and Bush on and show that the neoconservatives the one side of the aisle and Clinton were the bipartisan glue—remember, and Obama on the other—mostly over they emerged from the Democratic the means we should employ to imple- Party and served also in Democratic ment American foreign policy. Repub- administrations—that held together licans have been far more willing to go the “conservative internationalist” co- it alone than Democrats, who crave a alition during this period. fig leaf of multilateralism when they Finally, could one imagine Nau use military force to spread democracy making his conservative international- and preserve America’s position as “the ist pitch at such hotbeds of neoconser- indispensable nation.” But these differ- vativism as the American Enterprise ences in tactics should not obscure the Institute or the Heritage Foundation larger consensus on strategic ends dur- and receiving anything other than en- ing this period. Their shared dream has thusiastic applause? Do we anticipate been of a world led by the United States anything other than glowing reviews toward ever more political and eco- from neoconservative organs such nomic liberalism, a vision that inspired as , National Re- some people to engage in Hegelian view, Commentary, or the Wall Street flights of fancy about the world having Journal? And if we can’t, how can we reached “the end of history.” believe that conservative international- All of this brings us to the elephant in ism is really much different from neo- the room that Nau hardly talks about. I conservatism? don’t mean that elephant—the GOP— Let me be clear, I do not begrudge I mean the neoconservatives, about Nau those and all of the other acco- whom Nau says little; what he does say, lades his book will receive. What I do Michael Hogue in his effort to separate himself from object to is his running away from his

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters neoconservative roots. In doing so, he 2012’s Lessons for writ small. He was also a reluctant obscures the fact that his formula has candidate who never captured the been tried before, not only by the good Republicans heart or imagination of the party presidents he likes and thinks did well whose nomination he sought. The for- with it—Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and by LLOYD GREEn mer Massachusetts governor—by way Reagan—but also those other presi- of Stanford, Harvard, and Bain Capi- dents in whose hands conservative in- Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney tal—was constitutionally incapable of ternationalism led to wrack and ruin. and the Future of Elections in America, internalizing the fact that the Republi- This is the central weakness of Nau’s Dan Balz, Viking, 400 pages can Party had become the home of the argument: it advances a form of con- white working- and middle-classes, as servatism that has been tried and failed he 2012 election was another opposed to a preserve for America’s already. No wonder neoconservativism chapter in America’s decades- wealthy. Romney meant what he said is the conservatism that dare not speak old semi-civil civil war, and about the 47 percent and never under- its name in his book. TDan Balz’s Collision 2012 gives the stood what all the resulting fuss was ongoing rift between Red and Blue about. That was his downfall. Michael C. Desch is co-director of the Notre Americas the attention it deserves. In In a post-election interview with Dame International Security Program. Balz’s telling, last year’s contest was Balz, Romney could only acknowl- not an ennobling exercise in democ- edge that “well, clearly that was a racy—both candidates were definitely very damaging quote and hurt my found wanting. Balz repeats a senior campaign effort.” But he continued Democrat’s observation that the tele- to channel his inner Mitt, telling Balz prompter was the perfect metaphor that Americans remain most con- for Barack Obama’s aloof persona, cerned about borrowing and spend- while the Washington Post veteran ing—when in fact jobs were and are lets Mitt Romney’s own words re- the top priority for an overwhelming peatedly demonstrate the challenger’s majority of Americans. disconnect from the nation he sought As Balz points out, “Obama won re- to govern. Balz shows the reader what election despite winning just 39 per- went right and wrong with both cam- cent of the white vote and recording paigns. the worst margin among whites of any Obama’s greatest problem was his successful Democrat.” Thus, in a sense, stewardship of the Great Recession. Mitt met a target and still lost. Even He faced a stiff challenge as the elec- that number is deceptive, though, as it tion year approached: in December masks Romney’s problem with white 2011, unemployment stood at 8.6 per- voters on the lower rungs of the social cent. To top it off, Obama had “left the ladder. country even more deeply polarized In the Ohio and Michigan prima- than it was under George W. Bush,” ries, Romney narrowly defeated for- according to Balz. mer Pennsylvania Senator Rick San- Obama’s 2008 rhetoric—that Amer- torum, assembling a bare coalition of ica was “not a collection of red states wealthier voters and college graduates. and blue states” but that “we are the In the general election, Romney man- United States of America”—was by aged only to eke out a five-point plu- then as convincing as Bush 43 declar- rality among the Great Lakes’ white ing himself “a uniter, not a divider.” The working class and did worse among aspirational tropes of 2008 had yielded that bloc in make-or-break Ohio than to the scars and scrums of Obamacare’s he did nationally. enactment, the backlash in 2010’s con- Given an opportunity to reevalu- gressional elections, and the ensuing ate its candidate’s support for race- debt-ceiling fight of 2011. based affirmative action during the Romney’s problems were different. Midwest primaries, Romney’s cam- He was architect and author of Rom- paign demurred. Likewise, Romney neycare, the template for Obamacare never wavered in his opposition to the

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 automobile industry rescue favored by point. In Santa Clara County, Cali- the book, Balz failed to raise the issue George W. Bush and Obama. America’s fornia—the heart of Silicon Valley— of how these two contradictory poll- workers got Mitt’s message. Obama bested Romney by more than ing narratives emerged. Likewise, Balz Oddly, for all of Romney’s smarts 40 points, as statistics blogger Nate does not appear to have pressed Ne- and wealth, his campaign appeared re- Silver recounts. Obama received ap- whouse or Packer Gage as to what ei- moved from the technological advanc- proximately $720,000 in contributions ther did with the knowledge of Rom- es that had been driving presidential from Google employees, while Rom- ney’s likely defeat. campaigns for nearly a decade. The ney collected a paltry $25,000. At Ap- Collision 2012 is not just another failure of Team Romney’s ORCA data ple, the story was almost the same: its campaign chronicle. It is also Balz’s at- operation on Election Day was symp- employees gave more than nine out of tempt to chart where American politics tomatic of the technology deficit that every ten campaign dollars they con- is and where it may be heading. What plagued the Republicans from the start. tributed to Obama. And once again, as he sees is not reassuring. In his words, Balz focuses on the technical edge in every election since 1992, graduate “campaign 2012 settled little.” Indeed, that Obama 2012 carried over from the degree holders voted Democratic. the gap between “ideologically red and 2008 campaign and how the president’s Romney’s donors appear to have blue America” was “as wide as ever.” team honed that advantage into an ever harmed his campaign almost as they Balz notes the country’s changing more potent weapon as Election Day much as they helped it. The GOP do- cultural and demographic landscape approached. While Romney was tell- nor base helped skew the campaign and acknowledges its role in Obama’s ing his family that he really didn’t want toward relying upon media buys, as win. For better or worse, yesteryears’ to run for president, and later when he opposed to seeking votes block-by- outliers have matured into today’s po- was engaged in mortal combat with the block, door-to-door. Whereas the litical dominants. George McGovern’s Republican field, the Obama campaign Obama campaign successfully updated coalition has finally prevailed. was continuously testing and perfect- its 2008 playbook and made local field History says that a Republican win ing new ways to identify, woo, and operations a focal point, the Romney in 2016 is doable because Americans nudge prospective supporters. campaign shuttered its local primary generally tire of the incumbent party Balz rightfully gives kudos to the operations the day after a Republican after two terms. Yet that trend may Bush 2004 campaign for its get-out- contest had come and gone. yield to the fact that the Democrats the-vote operation, and in a sense the As a result, Romney was essentially will be starting with a built-in advan- sophistication shown by Bush 43 and dormant in Ohio from the late winter tage in the Electoral College. Repub- Obama’s respective campaigns reflects until the summer. Balz frames the facts lican must-win states such as Florida, the perks of incumbency. Still, Obama’s on the ground like this, “Obama had at Ohio, Virginia, and New Hampshire campaign manager and former deputy least 130 offices around the state, plus have gone Democratic in the last two chief of staff, Jim Messina, threw him- five hundred staging areas for volun- elections. self into melding the latest in techno- teers working the final days.” Romney Meanwhile, it remains to be seen logical innovation with the needs of had “about forty offices and 157 paid whether Republicans can reach work- the re-election effort. staff.” ing- and middle-class voters in large Messina tapped “Silicon Valley tech Balz recounts the rampant belief in numbers outside of the South. Paul giants” for their expertise and sidled Republican circles that pre-election Ryan’s demands for entitlement re- up to Google’s Eric Schmidt for across- polling was biased in favor of Obama form may sound soothing to high-end the-board advice. With Obama back in and writes that Romney came to believe contributors, but as the GOP becomes the White House, the relationship be- he would emerge victorious based upon ever grayer, that message gets tougher tween Schmidt and Messina has devel- perceived “voter intensity.” Balz makes to sell even to the party’s core mem- oped into Civis Analytics, a consulting no mention of a poll circulated on the bership. firm that stands ready to crunch big Saturday night before the election by Doing better with less affluent vot- data for the highest bidder. Alex Gage, which showed Obama with ers while keeping wealthier Ameri- If the working class had doubts at least 300 electoral votes. That pre- cans happy enough to vote Republican about Romney, the tech world had no election poll was significant, as Gage is no easy task. Understandably, Balz such uncertainty—it was flat-out hos- was a veteran of the Bush 2004 re-elec- does not offer his own predictions. tile. What might be called the moder- tion effort and Romney 2008 primary nity gap is a steadily growing problem quest. His wife, Katie Packer Gage, was Lloyd Green was opposition research counsel for Republicans. Romney’s deputy campaign manager. to the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988 Election Day numbers and cam- While interviewing Romney’s and served in the Department of Justice paign-donor records reinforce the in-house pollster, Neil Newhouse, for between 1990 and 1992.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters

Pulp Paranoia this into a 30,000-word story called “I One is simple madness. Shaver had Remember Lemuria,” and started pro- suffered a rupture with reality after by JESSE WALKER moting it heavily. “For the first time in his brother died in 1934, a death he its history,” he wrote in the May 1944 blamed on a demon called Max. From The Man From Mars: Ray Palmer’s issue, “Amazing Stories is preparing to there a larger worldview grew, with its Amazing Pulp Journey, Fred Nadis, present a true story. But it is a story ancient extraterrestrials and subter- Tarcher, 289 pages you will not find in the newspapers.” ranean cities. The writer later claimed The piece finally appeared at the end to have been kidnapped and impris- ne winter day in 1943 an of the year: a wild account of aliens oned underground for eight years, odd letter arrived at the of- who had come to Earth long ago, then where he witnessed the deros’ tortures fices of the sci-fi pulp maga- retreated to a subterranean world firsthand. In fact, he spent this time in Ozine Amazing Stories. The author, a when they learned that the Sun’s rays mental hospitals and living as a home- steelworker named Richard Shaver could kill them. Eventually most re- less tramp. His first wife died during who had spent some time in mental turned to the skies, but the remnants one of his stays in a psychiatric ward, institutions, claimed to have uncov- they left behind became two grand and he lost custody of his daughter, ered “an immensely important find”: forces, the evil “deros” and the good who was told that her dad was dead. the ancient alphabet of a “wiser race” “teros,” who between them were re- He spent a little time in a regular jail, that preceded humanity on Earth. An sponsible for virtually everything that too. It’s not hard to see how those ex- amused staffer read some entertain- happened in our world. periences might be reimagined as cap- ingly weird bits of the correspondence Palmer arranged for an expanded tivity among the deros. out loud, and dropped the document print run of that edition of the maga- The second stream is mysticism— into the trash. zine. It sold out and prompted about the cultural strains that today are His boss immediately retrieved it. 50 times as many letters as an ordinary widely known as the New Age. There “You call yourself an editor?” he asked. issue. The episode known as the Shav- is a long tradition of allegedly true The man who salvaged and then er Mystery had begun. Shaver kept tales of lost continents, pre-human sending his vi- intelligences, and benevolent and ma- sions to Palm- levolent conspiracies based beneath er, and Palmer the soil. (Mount Shasta in California Replacing his political dream with a kept polishing is a particularly popular location for them into pulp the manipulators’ supposed head- science-fiction fantasy allowed Palmer to fables and pub- quarters.) And the third stream, of gloss over the political conflicts that creating lishing the re- course, is science fiction. a world government would require. sults as true. Occultists and sci-fi writers already In Palmer’s had a history of borrowing ideas from hands, Shaver’s each other. The Theosophists of the worldview be- 19th century were influenced heav- came a sprawl- ily by the science-fiction novels of published the papers was Ray Palmer, ing, immersive tale that deliberately Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, for the Milwaukee-bred subject of Fred blurred the boundary separating fact example. Pulp writers, in turn, had Nadis’s new biography The Man From from fiction. (Even within the stories drawn on the Theosophists’ ideas Mars. Palmer’s editorial instincts themselves, it wasn’t always clear what about the lost lands of Atlantis and turned out to be sound: Shaver’s let- was supposed to be revealed truth and Lemuria for ages before “I Remember ter may have been ludicrous, but it what was just a pulp flourish.) Lemuria” came along. In 1941, several inspired a lot of reader interest. And “While the Shaver stories amused years before Shaver’s stories started it made Shaver a part of the Amaz- some as good yarns and infuriated to appear, Robert Heinlein’s novella ing Stories stable, an association that others as outrageous nonsense,” Nadis “Lost Legacy” imagined a secret or- proved very profitable for Palmer’s recounts, “Shaver’s paranoid vision der beneath Mount Shasta working magazine. beckoned to many as genuine.” Some to expand human potential; it was Shaver followed up with a 10,000- readers started searching caverns for opposed by a Long Island–based psy- word manuscript he called “A Warning the dero and tero technology they chic cabal that controlled “the rack- to Future Man,” a purportedly true ac- read about in Shaver’s tales. eteers, the crooked political figures, count of the ancient beings who lived You can see three streams flowing the shysters, the dealers in phony re- beneath the ground. Palmer rewrote together in the Shaver/Palmer mythos. ligions, the sweat-shoppers, the petty

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 authoritarians.” If he had claimed his political roots were on the right: as a America. tale to be true, we might have had a sheet-metal worker in the ’30s he had As public interest in Shaver’s stories Heinlein Mystery instead of the Shav- spent time, he later recalled, “battling declined, Palmer moved on to new er one. the then-CIO union to maintain an mysteries, mythologies, or participa- The Shaver mythos was also a con- open shop.” Shaver, meanwhile, came tory fictions (take your pick). As edi- spiracy theory, one that fell into two out of the left: before his breakdown, tor of Fate he played a leading role in broad paranoid narratives that have he had given pro-union speeches and forging the legend of the flying sau- been present in America since the joined the radical John Reed Club. cers, most notably by publishing Ken- colonial era. The deros were an en- But they were able to unite behind the neth Arnold, the man who made the emy within: an evil force that per- banner of the teros. first major UFO sighting of the era. meates ordinary society and hides in To an extent, of course, that unity Palmer would edit many more publi- familiar places. In an enemy-within was just a way for Palmer to pursue cations over the course of the 1950s, story, anyone—your coworkers, your some bucks. The neighbors, even your spouse or kids— editor was cagey might be or become one of Them. (At about how much one point, Palmer claimed that the he believed the conspiracy was plotting to kidnap lore he was pub- Nadis offers some good reasons to think him, Shaver, and their families. “To lishing, some- Palmer sincerely believed at least some of cover up the kidnapping,” he wrote, times describing these ideas at least some of the time. “trained doubles for all of us would be it with the fer- substituted.”) vor of a believer Shaver’s enemy-within story was and sometimes all-encompassing: absolutely anything adopting a more that went wrong could be attributed neutral we-report-you-decide stance. ’60s, and ’70s, from the paranormal to the deros’ machinations—as Shaver Privately he is said to have assured magazine Mystic to the science-fiction called it, their “tamper.” “No act was some skeptics that the whole thing was outlet Universe to a personal newslet- too petty for the deros to tamper a publicity gimmick. But while other ter called Forum. with,” Nadis explains. “If you were in writers often assume that Palmer was Near the end of his life, he was in- a car crash this was a result of tamper. just an unscrupulous entrepreneur ex- creasingly attracted to right-wing If you could not find your keys in the ploiting a madman, Nadis offers some conspiracy theories about creeping morning, this was an act of tamper.” good reasons to think Palmer sincere- socialism and the threat of one-world The teros, meanwhile, were a ver- ly believed at least some of these ideas government. (Palmer no longer found sion of another old narrative, the be- at least some of the time. The two the idea of a world government at- nevolent conspiracy: a shadowy force men became bona fide friends, after tractive.) At this point Nadis throws working behind the scenes to improve all, with Shaver eventually settling his up his hands. In those final conspira- people’s lives. During World War II, family on a farm near Palmer’s acreage torial essays, he writes, Palmer “seems before he started publishing Shaver, in Wisconsin. And Palmer continued unhinged—a veteran baseball player Palmer had embraced the idea of a to promote his neighbor’s work long having trouble with his vision and global government, calling on “every- after the Shaver fad of the ’40s faded. swinging wildly at the plate.” one with any idea of freedom in their Nadis also argues, convincingly It’s a strange turn for the book to heads, to begin planning what kind I think, that Palmer’s “exploitation” take. Bizarre as Birchite conspiracy of world state we are going to vote in of Shaver helped the latter get back theories can sometimes be, they’re when this is all over.” It’s not hard to on his feet, and not just in the pro- Brookings Institution white papers see Shaver’s benevolent teros as a dis- saic sense that Palmer paid him fairly compared to that stuff about deros placed version of that utopian dream: well for his stories. Palmer, Nadis and teros. But Nadis, who is capable of an angelic race of supermen keeping writes, “helped Shaver reengage with giving Palmer and Shaver’s strangest an eye out for humanity. the world, bringing out the artistic texts a nuanced and sensitive reading, I doubt it was deliberate, but replac- products of his own vibrant imagina- here just seems puzzled and offended. ing his political dream with a science- tion.” What once were just delusions How, he wonders, could Ray Palm- fiction fantasy allowed Palmer to gloss were transformed into art, and Shaver er, a man who defended the rights over the political conflicts that creat- evolved from a tramp whose visions of blacks and Indians, opposed the ing a world government would re- got him committed to hospitals into a Vietnam War, wrote sympathetically quire. It is worth noting that Palmer’s farmer whose visions were read across about the hippies, and suggested as

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters early as 1967 that he doubted “there Adam Smith, the godfather of “unfettered markets, is anything either wrong or harmful libertarian governments, interactions in homosexuality,” also be an extreme Communitarian solely for the purpose of satisfaction, individualist who despised the Great and atomistic cosmopolitanism.” What Society, fretted that environmental by DAVID J. DAVIs has been lost is Smith’s “clarion call for regulations were a plot to eliminate personal relationships” as the basis for private property, and voted for Barry Adam Smith’s Pluralism, Jack Russell human society and his advocacy for a Goldwater and George Wallace? Weinstein, Yale University Press, 341 functioning pluralism—though Smith Now, there certainly are some pages did not use the term—that is at the heart unusual combinations here—most of Theory of Moral Sentiments. notably when Palmer, replying to a egend has it that at the age of Adam Smith’s Pluralism is the first black reader, tried to make a case for four, Adam Smith was kid- volume in a trilogy Weinstein intends simultaneously supporting the Wal- napped from his Scottish home to write on Smith. Here he proposes a lace campaign and opposing racism. Lby a travelling band of gypsies. A gen- “Smithian shift” in contemporary liber- But Nadis seems unduly puzzled that tleman passing the gypsies on the road al theory, emphasizing Smith’s key prin- someone could combine Palmer’s noticed the crying baby and alerted ciple of sympathy and his efforts to find socially tolerant leanings with John town officials, who rescued young a method of achieving harmony in the Birch-style conspiracy theories. Adam hours later. Of this near tragedy, disparate motives and passions of indi- There are at least two groups where Smith’s 19th-century biographer John viduals. The book pays particular atten- that mixture isn’t all that uncom- Rae sardonically commented that it tion to the roots of Smith’s moral phi- mon. One is libertarians, and Nadis was very fortunate because Smith losophy found in the works of Thomas frequently stresses the libertarian “would have made … a poor gipsy.” Hobbes, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Ber- strain in Palmer’s political views, to This story is where Jack Russell nard Mandeville, and David Hume. the point perhaps of exaggerating it. Weinstein begins a fascinating exami- With this context and his own mastery The other is New Agers, and Palmer’s nation of Smith’s moral philosophy. He of Smith’s writings, Weinstein hopes to role in forging the modern New Age is convinced that in a way Smith’s phi- rescue Smith’s moral philosophy from a is one of Nadis’s central themes. losophy continues to be held hostage host of abductors and put it to work for My only other substantial com- by political pundits and intellectuals on the 21st century. plaint about the book is its occa- the right and the left. In his academi- After briefly bemoaning the defor- sional tendency to present Palmer’s cally rich study, Weinstein argues that mation of Smith’s philosophy at the accounts of his adventures as though the significance of Smith’s sweeping hands of political pundits, Weinstein they’re true, chiming in only later to exploration of human virtue has been offers a critical assessment of previ- concede that this notorious promoter eclipsed by countless oversimplified ous literature on Smith. Many scholars of dubious tales may have exagger- readings of his economics. Weinstein have investigated what is known now ated or invented a detail or two. No- believes, however, that in the modern as the Adam Smith Problem, which tably, the book opens with a dramatic world of diversity and multicultural- pits the altruism of Theory of Moral visit to Palmer’s office by a pair of FBI ism it is Smith’s moral philosophy that Sentiments against the self-interest of men investigating his interest in fly- we need more than his economics. Wealth of Nations, demanding from ing saucers. Four pages pass before Ever since 1776, the first year of its Smith’s thought a singular, overarch- Nadis acknowledges that it is “pos- publication, The Wealth of Nations has ing cause to explain human action. sible” that Palmer “made up the epi- proved more popular than Smith’s first This oversimplified perspective, Wein- sode,” adding, “there’s no note of it in book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. stein contends, fails to see Smith’s pro- his FBI file.” Smith’s emphasis on free markets, his motion of “multiple motives,” which But these are minor defects in a colorful metaphors like the invisible Smith believed were not only “essen- deeply interesting book. The Man hand, and his farsighted expectations tial” for society but also consistent with From Mars is smart and engross- for the industrial revolution have made human nature. ing, and it expands our understand- Wealth of Nations essential reading in Weinstein also takes issue with phi- ing of the nuts and carnival barkers our market-based, technologically- losophers like John Rawls and Alasdair who have done so much to cultivate driven world. MacIntyre who, in their different ways, America’s homegrown mythology. This favoritism for Wealth of Nations “badly misrepresent Smith.” For Wein- has made Smith a “widely misunder- stein, however, the greatest impedi- Jesse Walker is books editor of Reason and stood” thinker, according to Wein- ment to a thorough appreciation of author of The United States of Paranoia. stein. Smith is too often positioned as Smith’s moral philosophy is the specter

52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Michael Hogue Michael of Immanuel Kant. Weinstein points to Assertions like this alone make the erroneous. Reason and emotion are Kant as an unfortunate addition to lib- book worthwhile. To appreciate Smith too interlinked in the human condi- eralism’s intellectual framework: fully, Weinstein rightly suggests, we tion to be separated. This is why Smith must dispose of Kant’s quest for sin- distrusted any logical or analytical ap- many of liberalism’s shortcom- gularity and uniformity and, following proach to human society that demoted ings are the product of its Kantian thinkers like MacIntyre, acknowledge emotion and intuition to a second or foundation. The conceptions of the permanent reality of differing mor- third tier of experience. Weinstein ex- autonomy and universal reason al traditions. plains that for Smith, far from emo- that Rawls and others build on do Much of the book is spent illustrat- tions being the antithesis of reason, not allow for complex notions of ing Smith’s appreciation for the kind of they regularly “initiate, are the conse- identity, political consideration of variety and depth in human nature and quence of, and are often indistinguish- affection for individual persons, reason that is absent from the Kantian able from reason.” the importance of subjectivity, the tradition. Smith, Weinstein argues, The complexity that Smith sees emotions in moral and political did not bifurcate the human faculties in human reason flows over into his commitments, and variations in of reason and emotion, which is why study of human society. Smith refused human reason. any attempt to develop a single Smi- to accept the cynical view of human thian motivation for human action is nature propounded by Hobbes and

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters

Mandeville. Yet he was also a moral and the ultimate questions related to dismissively referring to “whatever the realist who acknowledged human vice human society are questions of mo- metaphysics that underlie Smith’s sys- and vanity, which were at odds with rality and virtue, not economics and tem.” Further on, in an attempt to as- an equally evident inclination toward politics. Thus, a broad, morally robust sure the reader that Smith’s pluralism virtue. Following from this, in a par- education rooted in a particular com- can transcend its Judeo-Christian heri- ticularly insightful portion of the book munity is essential to forming sympa- tage, he asserts, “there appears to be no Weinstein completely discredits any thetic individuals. While Smith did not divine revelation for Smith.” If this is purely economic reading of Smith. He idealize the role of education—it could true, it is neither self-evident in Smith contends that “life is not a marketplace” not completely eliminate human self- nor evident in Weinstein’s analysis. Nor for Smith. Instead, “it is often familial, ishness and vanity—he believed it had does Weinstein address such obvious pedagogical, spiritual, and natural; it is the power to “direct vanity to proper influences on Smith’s metaphysics as only sometimes commercial.” Compe- objects” and to “convert competing Isaac Newton’s natural theology, which tition and self-interest were means to passions into a harmonious character.” is essential to Smith’s baseline under- an end, not ends in themselves. Rather, The role of language is an essential standing of a created order in both the Weinstein sees the healthy notion of component of Smith’s moral philoso- moral and physical universe. harmony as the most dominant ideal phy because it is the fundamental con- If this were another exposition of running through Smith’s philosophy. nection between the individual and the Smith as the grand economist, then the Weinstein builds upon Smithian community. In his Lectures on Rhetoric neglect would be acceptable. But Smith’s harmony, explaining that while life and Belles Lettres, Smith expounded principle of sympathy is rooted in meta- is not always commercial, it is always on the virtue of both poetry and prose, physical assumptions about human which “provide nature and society and their purpose the capacity for in absolute reality. Without this foun- The state of nature for Smith is one of com- exchange and dation, the argument for sympathy as a munity, and the ultimate questions related to agreement” in compass for morality, as well as a me- different con- diator of competing motivations, loses human society are questions of morality and texts of human much of its potency. The liberal who virtue, not economics and politics. relations. It is embraces Smith’s sympathy but refuses in the sections to deal with his metaphysics must do so of Adam Smith’s either arbitrarily—sympathy being as communal. Community, in turn, de- Pluralism on the importance of lan- good a guiding principle as any other— rives its lifeblood from “imagination,” guage that Shaftesbury’s influence on or, as Steven D. Smith has argued in The because imagination creates the ca- Smith shines through the strongest, Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, pacity for sympathy. Unlike Kant and particularly with Shaftesbury’s stress surreptitiously, smuggling in certain other Enlightenment thinkers, Smith on language as a vehicle for unifying beliefs about human nature without ex- “presumes human difference” as a “the good and the beautiful.” planation or defense. Either way, the op- necessary and inherent aspect of civi- Language is so basic to Smith’s mor- tions are quite pale and shallow. lization, rejecting the Kantian ideal of al philosophy that toward the end of Nevertheless, even without Smith’s “noncontextual normativity.” Smith the book Weinstein feels compelled metaphysics, this is an invigorating recognized that cultural, temporal, and to contend with Michel Foucault and reorientation of liberal theory. There social differences shaped norms and the postmodern critique of the dis- are striking similarities to Burke’s values, making it impossible to create a continuity between language and re- moral imagination, which is particu- single, all-inclusive norm of human be- ality. Though interesting, this chapter larly evident in Weinstein’s analysis of havior. This is why sympathy is so im- is something of a belabored effort, as the intersections of beauty, language, portant. It offers a means that is natural Weinstein’s examination finishes with and moral choice. Weinstein rescues to the human condition—our desire to the same stalemate as everyone else Smith’s moral philosophy from its eco- commiserate with our fellow man—to who contends with the postmodern- nomically obsessed captors will prove bridge the gap between our differences. ists. In Weinstein’s words, “Smith may an extraordinary blessing for conserva- Smith believed that “political society have nothing to say” to them, “but they, tive and liberal alike. is not derived from a social contract,” in turn, have no means of refutation.” according to Weinstein. Instead, so- Adam Smith’s Pluralism is a refresh- David J. Davis is assistant professor in history ciety is a natural expression of what it ing study of Smith, but it is not with- at Houston Baptist University and author of means to be human. The state of na- out its problems. Weinstein neglects Seeing Faith, Printing Pictures: Religious ture for Smith is one of community, the relevance of Smith’s metaphysics, Identity during the English Reformation.

54 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 The Political Form the modern State … rests on the loyalties of men. repression, in any case the frustra- Manent’s account begins with the of Freedom tion, of the two most powerful hu- city, the polis, which is the first politi- man affects: on the one hand the cal form. With the help of Homer, he by DANIEL J. MAHONEY passionate interest in this world treats the “poetic birth of the city,” the as expressed in active participa- world of gods and heroes at the heart of Metamorphoses of the City: On the tion in the common thing, and on Greek political theology. And in very Western Dynamic, Pierre Manent, the other the passionate interest in suggestive readings of Aristotle’s politi- Harvard University Press, 376 pages the eternal and the infinite as ex- cal writings, he shows how democracy pressed in the postulation of an- was the pinnacle and final stage of self- he French political philosopher other world and participation in a government in the city. The classical Pierre Manent has produced community of faith. science of politics is rooted in a search- an unusually rich and varied ing engagement with the free political Tcorpus. He is the author of one of the Modernity represses or frustrates life that is characteristic of life in the most discerning books on the political “two fundamental movements of the city. Classical political science is less thought of Alexis de Tocqueville and soul” and creates a human order that abstract than modern political science: has written numerous works of schol- is both post-civic and post-Christian. in it, science and experience came to arship and commentary highlighting Manent is one of the rare thinkers to light together “in a proximity and in- the strengths and limits of the liberal appreciate that the de-Christianization timacy that were never to be found tradition, as well as the intersection of of the West is part and parcel of the again.” Manent aims to remain faithful religion and politics in modern times. same process as its de-politicization. to this “classical” fidelity to lived expe- Politically, he is a man of the right, or As he writes near the beginning of rience. at least not a man of the left. He is an his book, “In Europe today, the civic Greek political science is a science incisive critic of the European project operation is feeble and the religious of regimes, “the science of the differ- in its present form, lambasting its in- Word almost inaudible. The two poles ent ways of self-government in the attention to the “political form”—the between which the Western arc was city.” Greek—Aristotelian—political nation—that has provided the body bent for so long have lost their force.” science was aware of life outside the or framework for democratic self-gov- Manent’s work as a whole is in large city but did not believe that empire ernment in the modern world. part an explanation of how Europeans was compatible with the “ruling and His works are written with rare lu- arrived at this remarkable depletion of being ruled in turn” that characterized cidity and grace. Yet they are challeng- civic and religious energies. free political life. Even at the height of ing to even the most learned reader, Yet paradoxically, the modern proj- its empire, Athens remained first and not least because of the seemingly ef- ect first came to light as a political foremost a city. Under wise and capa- fortless erudition that informs them. project, a great Metamorphoses of the City is no differ- endeavor of ent in this regard. At the same time, it human thought is perhaps the most ambitious of Ma- and human ac- Christianity and the Christian church offer much nent’s work. It sets out to “propose an tion. One of interpretation, or at least the elements the tasks of needed mediation between God and man, nature for an interpretation, of the political Manent’s book and grace, the universal and the particular. development of the West.” That is high is to locate the ambition indeed, and one Manent de- project of col- livers on with great success. lective action Much of Manent’s previous work that is moder- centered on making sense of moder- nity “in the history of European and ble rulers from Solon to Pericles—the nity as a self-conscious “project” for Western political development.” To “axis of good” in the history of Athens, liberating humankind from the West’s understand our late modern condition as Manent calls it—eminent men put dual classical and Christian heritages. with its “dearth of political forms,” its their prudence at the service of “the This theme finds elegant expression in utopian quest to leave politics behind growing power of the people.” Metamorphoses of the City. As Manent altogether, one must return to the pre- Athens invented politics, the “strange puts it in a particularly notable pas- modern period, when a great variety of activity” that exemplified the polis, the sage, political forms—the city, the empire, political form of self-government par and the Church—competed for the excellence. The empire of Alexander

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters the Great did not rise out of the city but of a private individual.” The magis- and salutary way. But Manent also rather out of what Aristotle would call trate bears the “person” of the city and emphasizes that Christian discourse the “tribal monarchy” of Macedonia. pledges himself to uphold the laws and “is not politically operational.” With these considerations in mind, to protect the rights and property of Neither by reason nor revealed Word Manent establishes a general rule, “a individuals. can it provide a ground for preferring law of physics of political forms,” which As Manent suggests, this is a proto- one regime to another or for guiding states that political forms “do not di- modern vision, an anticipatory sketch collective life. rectly transform themselves one into of the modern state that “elevated above Christian theologians such as St. the other.” society and separated from it, returns Thomas Aquinas had to turn to po- That general rule is true except for to it to assign each member of society litical philosophy, law, and political one remarkably revealing case that is his or her rights.” In Cicero’s writings, history to find the political guidance at the heart of Manent’s exploration. one also finds a new understanding of lacking in the essentially trans-po- the individ- litical New Testament. The fact that ual nature Christian discourse is not politically of human operational makes it much harder Freedom depends on a vivifying framework, and beings, not to find a “Christian” alternative to simply the modernity, since modernity is in no in the modern world the framework for combining individual small part a response to Christianity’s civilization and liberty is the nation-state. application incapacity to govern the body politic of a uni- in anything like a stable and satisfying versal hu- manner. Christians are obliged to ac- man nature knowledge this fact. The city and empire are indeed two characteristic of Greek philosophy. This is not to say that Christianity polar opposites. The city “is the narrow The great republican hero Cato, whose has nothing to offer in a searching framework of a restless life in liberty; suicide reflected a commitment to the examination of political regimes or a the empire is the immense domain of a republic and abhorrence of tyranny, history of Western political develop- peaceful life under a master.” In Rome, is said to have followed his individual ment. Metamorphoses of the City cul- however, one saw the impossible or character, his proper nature. The indi- minates in a hundred-page engage- near impossible, the transformation of vidual thus plays a strikingly new role ment with St. Augustine’s City of God. a city into an empire. in the Ciceronian moral universe. This is as rich an encounter with Au- Of course, the distension of the Ro- The “indeterminate” character of gustine’s famous text as I have come man republic long preceded the formal Rome would survive the fall of the across. Manent shows that Augustine’s establishment of the Augustan prin- Roman Empire itself. Contrary to a critique of paganism is in no way ex- cipate. Rome had lost its republican widely held belief that the Middle Ages aggerated or overwrought. Vulgar pa- luster long before Caesar tried to for- were a time of unparalleled order and ganism still had considerable staying malize that fact by making himself em- community, Manent finds them char- power at the time of the fall of Rome peror. As the political and philosophi- acterized by a wrenching incapacity in 410 AD, and Augustine was obliged cal writings of the great Cicero richly to establish a settled or concrete po- to forcefully take on these essentially illustrate, Rome was caught between litical form. The conflict between city, man-made and fraudulent religions. a dying republic and empire yet to be empire, and Church would persist for But Manent argues convincingly formally established. one thousand years—Europe’s “Cicero- that Augustine did not simply set out to In a brilliant reading of Cicero’s De nian moment,” as Manent calls it—and demolish pagan heroism. It is Hobbes Officiis (On Duties), a work written would be overcome only when Europe and modernity that see in pagan glory near the end of that Roman’s life, Ma- found its specific political form, the only vainglory. Christianity, and Au- nent shows how his political thought nation-state. gustine, in contrast have a “certain already reflected the “blurred” or “in- Manent is deeply sympathetic to sympathy” for pagan glory, since there determinate” character of the Roman what he calls the Christian proposi- is a genuine nobility in “the movement political and moral order. The “citizen” tion. Christianity and the Christian of the soul that aspires to glory.” Where is “practically absent” in On Duties. church offer much needed mediation Hobbes sees ridiculous vanity, Christi- The new duality of politics is between between God and man, nature and anity sees “noble error.” the “magistrate” and the “private per- grace, the universal and the particular. If Augustine could not countenance son.” The magistrate is elevated even as Christianity made the invisible—con- the suicides of Lucretia and Cato—sui- “the citizen is reduced to the condition science—visible to men in a truthful cides rooted in pride or jealousy for

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 glory—he saw only nobility in the sac- feeling” and indiscriminate egalitari- Christian “mark” at its own peril. As rifices of Regulus, another Roman hero anism. The religion of humanity— Manent shows, the liberal state is the who “preferred to suffer the slavery and the global cosmopolitanism that descendant of Christian monarchy and and torture of his enemies rather than accompanies it—is “devoid of political was long compatible with confessional avoid them through death.” In defend- significance.” It is a cheap substitute for religions, whether Catholic or Protes- ing the separation of the two cities, the genuine transcendence to be found tant. “One of the most important polit- the city of God and the city of man, in the City of God. ical questions facing us is whether this Augustine still tries to do justice to Manent offers a rich, dialectical po- origin has kept a part of its power, that whatever nobility is inherent in the pa- litical science and political history that is, whether the original determination gan dispensation. do justice to classical and Christian still remains determinant to some de- Moreover, Augustine does not at- wisdom without eschewing the decen- gree today.” tack social or political inequality per cies of liberal democracy. In providing In this profoundly learned medita- se, but rather the “pertinence of the the richest history of political forms yet tion bridging many disciplines, Manent distinction between the few and the available, he shows that freedom de- helps to make civic life more compre- many, the philosopher and nonphi- pends on a vivifying framework, and hensible and the religious word more losopher, which is so central to Greek in the modern world the framework “audible.” This book is a powerful intel- philosophy.” Without succumbing to for combining civilization and liberty lectual antidote to the de-Christianiza- or humanitarianism, is the nation-state. There is no other tion and de-politicization of modern Christianity offers the same salutary political form available for the taking. European life, as well as a major con- truth to all men, siding neither with There can be no democracy without tribution to understanding the political the egalitarianism of the moderns nor a self-confident nation. It is a mistake development of the Western world. with the “elitism” of the ancients. The to think that the future belongs to a contemporary relevance of these dis- “global process of civilization” and that Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair cussions ought to be apparent enough. human beings can live without a politi- in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption What is so impressive about Ma- cal form. College. He is the author of The Conservative nent’s book is his ability to articulate But the nation-state forgets its Foundations of the Liberal Order. the dignity and seriousness of the great spiritual and moral contents of The New Book Everyone Is Talking About the Western tradition. He is a Chris- tian who does not insist dogmatically The War State: The Cold War Origins of that Christianity has the final word on the Military-Industrial Complex and The the human condition. What he does insist on is that Jewish law “that sepa- Power Elite, 1945-1963 rates the chosen people from the ‘na- Written by Michael Swanson tions,’ Greek philosophy that separates the ‘philosopher’s nature’ from the American civil liberties are being rest of humanity,” and “the Christian eroded away by NSA spying and the Church that separates the city of God federal deficit is exploding due to the and the earthly city,” each have “more substance and coherence” than the ab- costs of empire. It all started during stract modern idea of “human general- the critical twenty years after World ity or universality.” War II when the United States As Manent makes clear in the last changed from being a continental re- section of his book, modernity cul- public to becoming a global imperial minates in a religion of humanity that superpower. Since then nothing has erodes civic life even as it rejects the ever been the same. In this book you “mediation” that allowed Christianity will discover the history of the to bring together the divine and hu- man, the universal and particular. Ma- United States that formed the basis of nent reminds his readers that Chris- the world we live in today. tianity is not humanitarianism, that it refuses the reduction of the moral Buy this book at Amazon.com. Available in paperback or as an ebook. Also for sale at TheWarState.com life to a vague affirmation of “fellow

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki

Last Tango in Cannes

ames Toback is a very intelli- Busson—a childhood friend of mine— has stuck my name on the opening gent screenwriter and director remain unimpressed while lounging in credits; that is the only embarrassing who actually discovered Harvey their hundred million dollar seaside thing about the film. He even had me Keitel and turned Mike Tyson villas. walk the red carpet like a star—no, I Jinto an actor of sorts, mostly play- This is where the fun is. Jimmy and did not use a wheelchair but made the ing Tyson. Toback relishes pushing Alec show clips of Marlon Brando in steps up into the Festival Hall on my people’s buttons and has a devilish one of the filthiest scenes with Maria own, so there—and at the party follow- radar for psychodrama, all of which Schneider in the Paris tango movie. ing the premiere two famous agents comes into play in his latest movie, “Just think of this with bombs falling approached and asked me if I was the riotous “Seduced & Abandoned,” and Alec buttering up Neve Campbell starting a new career at 77. (Mikey had a fly-on-the-wall depiction of how to while she has her fingers you-know- put them up to it.) get—or not get—a movie financed where” is one of the main pitches to So, there you have it. A movie- during the Cannes film festival. It’s investors. Some cringe, others look at within-a-movie, with the profession- also a backhanded homage to Orson their shoes—bare feet rather, this is the als in the know, others taking Jimmy Welles, a man Jimmy Toback is start- Riviera—but the pros simply say, “It’s and Alec seriously and offering serious ing to resemble in girth, who famously not worth 20 million, I’ll give you five.” money for “Last Tango in Baghdad.” declared that 95 percent of his time Then comes the serious part, which It is also a tribute to the Cannes film making movies was spent trying to get in fact has gotten the movie-within-a- festival, which has launched countless financing for them. movie rave reviews from every news- hits and which I used to regularly at- Oh, I almost forgot, yours truly is paper and magazine that has reviewed tend when I was a very horny young also in the picture, playing myself on it—more than 35 as of this writing, man making my way around the Riv- my boat being visited by Toback and even the grey old bag of the New York iera fleshpots armed only with a Jag- Alec Baldwin, also playing themselves, Times called it splendid and a Toback uar convertible, a tennis racket, and and being solicited for funds during a triumph. This is the part when the in- absolutely not a penny in my pocket. very liquid lunch on board Bushido. trepid pair interview Roman Polanski, Returning after all those years was bit- Pitching their project, which they Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, tersweet. I had the yacht and the con- present as a remake of “Last Tango in and Francis Coppola. These serious nections, but what was missing is the Paris” but this time based in Iraq and artists are marvelous because they most important thing in the world: renamed “Last Tango in Baghdad,” To- speak about the movies in general, and Youth. back and Baldwin make the Cannes their own in particular, in unheard of “Seduced & Abandoned”—which is rounds visiting the rich and famous fashion. There are no public relations what always happens when trying to looking for financial backing while of- creeps around, nor journalists, so the put a movie together—is opening for fering prospective stardom for those four geniuses let it rip. I attended the one week in certain art theatres, then willing to pay and play. The pros, the premiere in Cannes, saw the movie, will regularly show on HBO, which men and women who do this type of and did not blink while I was on the bought it with alacrity and has big lending for a living, are not impressed. screen. I heard the cheers after it was all plans for it. Watch it and you will get One horrible type asks rather incred- over, most of them coming from pros an A-to-Z look at how a film is made. ulously, “‘Last Tango in Baghdad’? in the business of moviemaking. And make sure you don’t go out for Who’s the jerk who thought that one One of my closest friends in the popcorn and miss yours truly. Don’t up?” Others, like the financier Arkie world, Michael Mailer, the producer, even look down at the bag, in fact.

58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 His Revolutionary Politics Put Him Behind Bars. Great Conservative Thinkers Set Him Free.

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