My Dogs Watch Fox News (Gottfried on Neocons)

This morning, when I turned on FoxNews for our three dogs, who seem to like the staccato sounds on Rupert Murdoch Central, I caught sight of the well-publicized visage of David Frum. Apparently Frum was being asked to comment on the Christian faith of George W. Bush, a spiritual disposition that had just received high grades from an Evangelical Republican who was particularly struck by the Prez's remarks about everyone having the potential for democracy. Frum, who was in agreement with the Evangelical, spoke about how effusively Bush's faith had come out in his speech before the American Enterprise Institute. Supposedly, someone who is about to bring democracy to the Middle East should be a man of strong Christian faith.

As a cultural historian, I find all of this indescribably interesting. Why is a Jewish agnostic authorized to speak with pontifical authority on a "conservative" news channel about the Christian spiritual well-being of an American president? And why would anyone, particularly a "conservative," believe that someone is a devout Christian because he intends to impose a facsimile of the current US regime upon countries in Asia with vastly different cultural and social traditions?

Most important, what does this conversionary goal have to do with Christianity or with the constitutional understanding of limited republican government provided by the American Founding Fathers? Needless to say, the answer to all these rhetorical questions is: nothing at all. What has become the acid test for a lot of things, especially in the utterly misnamed "conservative movement," is accepting and promoting a Trotskyist vision of permanent revolution under neoconservative auspices.

One of the best treatments of this subject I've recently encountered is by a French scholar who teaches at the London School of Economics, Nicholas Guilhot; he delivered the study at the most recent plenary gathering of the French Political Science Association in Lille. What makes this paper, which a former student of mine sent from France, especially intriguing is that Guilhot is clearly on the Marxist Left and, moreover, apparently unfamiliar with my writings. Nonetheless, he arrives at identical conclusions about "la matrice trotskiste" that nurtured the neoconservative view of the American managerial state as an instrument of world revolution.

Guilhot goes back to the contacts among the Russian Marxists who paved the way for the neoconservative moment. Surveying the dissident Marxist Max Schachtman and other members of the anti-Stalinist Left, which is the subject of a distinguished monograph by Alan Wald, and the leadership of the Young People Socialist League at City College, Guilhot treats these figures and anti-Stalinist Marxism generally as the architects of a distinctly neoconservative worldview. He is right to present both the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the work of S.M. Lipset as representing an inchoate neoconservatism.

By the fifties the anti-Stalinist Left is depicting the working class as authoritarian and anti-Semitic, but at the same time continues to favor a global movement toward a scientifically managed, pluralistic society. This would be brought about, explains Lipset in 1963 in Political Man, by pushing other countries toward the "American model," which he found the only morally acceptable one. What made the US exceptional was the acceptance by the middle class of economic redistribution and extensive public administration for progressive ends. Thus the reactionary deficiencies of blue-collar voters would not matter in the end because of the openness of the American bourgeoisie to managerial direction.

Guilhot is correct to observe that such ideas foreshadow the entire history of neoconservatism as a political position. The notion of "permanent revolution" drawn from Trotskyist ideology is given a new meaning by being linked to an expansive American public administration that tries to replicate itself throughout the world. And though neocons in the seventies and eighties turn fanatically anti-Communist, Guilhot recognizes that his subjects are "anti-radical radicals," opposing the Communists for betraying the revolutionary vision.

Alan Wald makes the observation that "the anti-Stalinist Left moves to the right for social and not ideological reasons." What may be more accurate to say is that they appear to move to the right in response to improved social positions, especially after taking over policy positions in the Reagan administration from a WASP establishment gone bad in the teeth. But this ascent to power does not really signify that those who are ascending are on the right. It merely enables the ascending group to pull toward the managerial Left the American Right and Right Center, while concluding a compromise with corporate capitalists.

In return for the support of an expanding welfare state, neocons would deal Big Business in, exactly the way the Fascists did with European capitalists, that is, conditionally. Thus neocons would defend "democratic capitalism" or a mixed economy, together with global democratic military crusades and the opening up of foreign markets as a method of global transformation. Guilhot notes that the neocon usage of "modernization," since the popularization of the term by Lipset in the fifties, has meant positive revolutionary change. It is a bootlegged Marxist value judgment pretending to be a neutral descriptive term.

Finally I would note that the "droitisation ," or veering rightward, that Guilhot ascribes to the neocons in the seventies and eighties is entirely an optical illusion. Rather what happens is that the Right, by then in its Buckleyite revised version, does the veering, toward the social democratic Left, partly in response to neocon guidance. The neocons took over a pliant conservative movement organization, whose leaders and staff scurried to do their bidding. Guilhot, as I have told him, would do well to read the second edition of my book on the conservative movement, which explains the phases of this friendly take-over that occurred in the 1980s. What my book failed to deal with, however, is the profound stupidity and utter venality that drove this process on the American Right. Today's "conservatives" shout Trotskyist slogans that they mistake for patriotism and religion. Unlike my two wizened Dachshunds and a Basset puppy, I would prefer not to listen.

Paul Gottfried is professor of history at Elizabethtown College and author of, most recently, the highly recommended Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt.

"anti-Stalinist Marxism generally as the architects of a distinctly neoconservative worldview" - "favor a global movement toward a scientifically managed, pluralistic society"

The root of today's "conservative movement"

"what does this conversionary goal have to do with ... the constitutional understanding of limited republican government provided by the American Founding Fathers?"

And why would anyone, particularly a "conservative," believe that someone is a devout Christian because he intends to impose a facsimile of the current US regime upon countries in Asia..

He's got a point.

Sure, Christians value freedom & democracy, it's a given.

However, that's not a good litmus test for Christians in general because many pagans value it also.

It's completely meaningless and if it truly does mean something, who's next? The Saudi's?

While President Bush has gone out of his way to claim this is not a war on Islam his speach the other night at the AEI said otherwise. The Arab world was put on notice that they will reshape their governments, their foreign policy and their domestic civil rights attitudes according to our designs or they will suffer the same fate as Iraq. Those goals are nothing short of a culture war. The neocons pundits are at least open about this being a war of western values against Islam. Your question of "who's next, the Saudi's" is on the mark though the Saudi's are not named on public hit lists as Iran and Syria are. Basicaly we are attempting to "moderize" Islam on a universal scale. We are going to make them accept western values of "tolerance and diversity,etc.".

The Christian aspect of the president's beliefs are I am afraid being played for pure political purposes - to solidify support of a base constituency. As the article asked why would a Jewish agnostic be so enthusiastic about Christian beliefs of the president?

Because Jews realise that atheism is worse than Christianity.

Not sure what you mean by this comment or what exactly it is a response to but it is a universal statement and the fact that there are plenty of Jewish atheists makes the meaning more opaque.

Gottfried's article falls to a syllogism: Neocons are Trotskyites. Any deviation from Trotskyism is subterfuge.

I understand you to conclude that Gottfried is saying a Trotskyite can not change his spots any more than a leopard can so therefore no Trotskyite can be a zebra, if one appears that way it is deception. Gottfried is not saying authentic conversion is impossible, what Gottfried is saying that true conversion never happened in the case of the neocons. As the old left progressed certain members did not like the trends and deserted the movement - not their original cause. Their new movement was not a conversion to a new set of beliefs - they did not become traditional conservatives - they wanted to remake the conservative movement in their image, and did. The main point is while they see complete socialism (communism) as untenable and though having modified their theories over the years they never gave up their origianl faith in central planning (they are the planners) and that the heart of their beliefs from the beginning to this day is revolution i.e. changing man and society from what they consider to be wanting to the perfection they envisioned. Having read their works and heard them speak I agree with the analyses.

Not sure what you mean by this comment or what exactly it is a response to but it is a universal statement and the fact that there are plenty of Jewish atheists makes the meaning more opaque.

I was commenting on the disbelif that Jews would support Christians.
as for Jewish atheists, that is like a Christian atheist. You can be one or the other, but not both.

As fopr neo-cons, they reject centralized planning, generally support the free market, and support an activist foreign policy. That is not Trotskyite.
The real joke is today we have the Trotskying Workers World Party leading the anti-war movement against neocons.

I agree with you that one can not be a Christian and an atheist but as far as the Jewish part of you statement goes I can not speak to it authoritatively. I hear one group of Jews claim that being Jewish is a matter of ethnicity while other Jews claim it is a religious matter so they themselves do not agree on who or what is a Jew. As far as the article's question of why a Jewish agnostic would be thrilled about a fundamentalist Christian I answer that it is all politics - a coalition for a common cause against Islam and protecting Israel but it goes no further. Norman Podhorwitz was on C-Span denouncing fundamentalist Christians while talking about his new book on the prophets so this proves the political convenience of certain folk's enthusiasm. Not that I am complaining - merely observing.

Regarding the second part of your post I have heard neocons praise the strong central government developed since the civil war, they accept the involvement of government conceived by FDR and LBJ as just being modern and civilized. They do not renounce the concept of welfare for example, just how it is administered. A couple of days ago Bill Bennett was on TV saying how the Feds need to step into the school district of Newark, NJ because he didn't agree with what was being taught there. If that isn't central planning then what is? Surely I would rather live under neocon authority than Democrat but personally I don't support either variation.

The activist foreign policy is not Trotskyite? Well maybe not in a literal, strict and pure sense of the term but as I stated before the essence, the desire for global revolution i.e. the desire to remake the world according to their brilliant plans has never left this group of original members and it has been embraced by their decendents.

cordailly,

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