‘Godfather’ Kristol’s Statist/Imperialist Manifesto (Neo-cons vs. Classical Liberals)

Lewrockwell.com ^ | August 20, 2003 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[Korth]

Maybe I should post the entire article and get a thread going on it.

Please do so.

[JohnGalt]

We are in agreement.

Why did you feel the need to reply that post back to me?

If there is one thing I had hoped you would take from our exchange is that my side of the culture is free-thinking. Just because you agree with Corporal Hitler on one point, does note mean you subscribe to the whole program. Just like the Irving Kristol and the Marxists.

[Restorer]

Mea culpa.

I assumed you were attempting to discredit what I said by pointing out that Hitler agreed with it. As I noted, this is not a valid debating point.

If this was not your intent, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

[ninenot]

Isolationism beats the hell out of stationing US regulars every 1000 miles or so around the globe.

On the other hand, we could declare the restriction on assasinations void and go get the people who are problems, as long as we can document that such action was defensive.

[Burkeman1]

That one line caused me to start rethinking our actions.

Yes, it was actually that very line that stuck with me and nagged at me.

[u-89]

You compare me to Baghdad Bob yet offer no substantial rebuttal to the facts listed in post 61. Those facts are historic realities so there is only room for a differing conclusion drawn from those facts. Since you don't like my take how do you define our actions?

Your rambling paragraphs about anti-Semitism, paleocons, the New Left, quotas, neocon luminaries, anti-gay remarks and Pearl Harbor are a bit difficult to respond to as the message is somewhat muddled. I'll pick a couple of lines though.

> America IS a good nation

This statement is simplistic and sloppy. You seem to combine many diverse elements under a broad and loose generalization. There are and have been many good people in America who do and have done many good works. What the government is and does should not be included in individual or small private group efforts. The principles that founded our government, a high point in human events, are long dead and gone, betrayed by dishonest activists and judicial tyranny based on socialist/marxist contempt for limited government and personal liberty. Seeing people in the collective and as one enitity defined by the government is a leftist notion. Did you say you were a neocon?

> our military should be as strong as we can make it and as prepared to do what is right and good;

Are you implying there is a mission beyond defense of American territory that is "right and good"? It sounds that way. Do you mean right and good things like securing foreign countries for US oil corporations, er, I mean regime change, nation building, spreading democracy?

> pacifism and isolationism are ross embarassments to any nation

Who among libertarians or traditional conservatives is calling for pacifism? Defense of the nation is constitutional i.e one of the few legitimate functions of the government.
How is peaceable trade with all and permanent entangling alliances with none or not searching the world for monsters to destroy isolation? Really, come on now. Isolation is what ancient China once was - cutting off all contact with the outside world. Just who in America is calling for that? The isolation line is a popular retort but it is inaccurate to the point of being dishonest.

> The original editors of National Review other than Buckley were all refugees from the hard left

And don't forget the CIA connections. Their mission was to get the right wing to accept the establishment's program i.e. the internationalist world vision of the progressives and socialists under the old ruse of the enemy is at the gate. They have served their masters well.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Thank you BE. I had once asked LCS about these distinctions. You just filled in the picture some more.

[RaginCajunTrad]

I guess Rep Paul will be personna non grata at the White House and some other places.

[Burkeman1]

Interesting? Sobran is "brilliant" but yet destroyed himself because he "hates Jews"? Geesh- this "anti semitism" must be a catching disease because it seems anyone one the right who has the slightest question about this current gulf war seems to "catch" this strange disease called "anti semitism" as well?

[BlackElk]

Sobran's problems long predate the Iraqi War of 2003 and the Gulf War of 1991. I do not doubt that a rising tide of left-wing anti-Semitism has fueled the knee jerk antwar mania of the left. There is some on the "right" as well but there are certainly some folks who regard themselves as conservative who are simply allergic to a manly and interventionist foreign policy, recognizing that it is better to batter them in Baghdad than to have to pummel them in Peoria among American wives, children and old fplks. Do you really think Sobran is prospering professionally since being launched by Buckley from NR?

[BlackElk]

I have clicked on the link which identifies Marx as one of 58 individual signatories of the International Workingman's Association and as Corresponding Secretary for Germany. The archivist claims without any prood that the letter was actually written by Marx. It may well have been a letter of CYA boilerplate from the Marxists generally. Though purportedly writtenm in 1864 after the election of that year, it was first published in November, 1865 (in an obscure newspaper), when Lincoln, as a result of assassination, had become a secular saint. I have read the link. Nice find. I am not, however, impressed with the document for the foregoing reasons. I used the volume of Marx's Civil War Dispatches for the London Times as a source for my senior thesis in American Diplomatic History of the Civil War WEra. Marx was brutal in criticism of Lincoln which is another reason to believe that either the document you reference was not written by Marx or was political CYA for his buddies.

Murray Rothbard is a verry interesting guy but there are only so many major philosophical changs that one may undergo without forfeiting some impact. Hanging with Rand's circle of amoral atheists, marrying a "believer" in God (an Episcopalian) and being purged from Rand's dogmatic sewing circle, being a sharp libertarian historian and economist, spending his final years adbvocating alliance of Religious Right and Libertarians. A brilliant career cut all too short by death but not at all consistent from period to period. I had not known that he had flirted with paleos and that is certainly not to his credit nor is the hysterical quote.

There is no "paleo" movement and has not been one since 12/7/41 and even that is a very unfair rap on Lindbergh, Flynn and Garrett to compae them with these modern "paleos."

Once more. There are neo-conservatives and their circle is limited to a small group of aging former liberal scholars, mostly New York Jews, who have contributed much to the conservative movement without being fully on board. There are conservatives: the basic movement since 12/7/41: YRs, YAF, CRs, NR, Human Events, et al. We are nt Menshaviks.

There are a few handfuls of "paleos", eccentric trads, not terribly interested in politics because they are not very good at it and their ideas are not very widely acceptable. They are defined by narrow notions of the nation's role in world affairs and resentment of the conservative movement for not taking them seriously. They are soil and bloodline conservatives and they are an embarassment to our country and our conservative movement.

[BlackElk]

Calling itself a NATION.

[BlackElk]

The Republican and conservative places unless the subject is abortion. Ron Paul has gone from courageous brand-new Congressman to irrelevancy.

[BlackElk]

My friend, it depends on where they are stationed and why as to whether foreign deployments make sense. Isolationism is gone forever. Interventionism (unilateral if possible) and pre-emption beat the hell out of the alternatives. If we have to fight them in Milwaukee or Rockford, they better be home grown. Foreign enemies should be stomped on their own turf.

Your second paragraph makes much sense. I have always felt that tose responsible should be first to die and the only ones to diie, if possible. I am flexible on the documentation.

[BlackElk]

If the message seems muddled other than the last paragraph's editing omissions, go to your community college for remedial reading and try to get permission to use conservative texts to kill two educational birds with one stone.

1. You parrot the Iraqi line. Hence: Baghdad Bob.

2. Pay close attention. I am only going to repeat this for you this last time lest you get the idea that neo-Neville Chamberlainism is EVER going to be acceptable again as any kind of "conservatism." NEOCONSERVATIVES: A relatively small group of very old and usually Jewish ex-liberals and ex-leftists who do not fully accept economic conservatism but have made distinguished contributions to conservatism as prebviously posted. See Irving Kristol's Two Cheers for Capitalism. CONSERVATIVES: The conservative movement post 12/7/41 which believes and believed in an aggressive, interventionist foreign and military policy to advance American interests, social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, guns, lowest taxes, low public spending other than military. See Ronald Reagan.

"PALEOs": not conservatives, unemployable social eccentrics angry at Reagan for not hiring them, "constitutionalist" poseurs, people who consort with the likes of Raimondo.

You complain that calling the "paleocons" isolationists is dishonest???????? Your ranting that assumes that actual conservatives have any use for the CIA sounds like a delusion of the International ANSWER crowd. We all thought that Castro got his job via the incompetence of the Ivy League liberal weenies running the CIA and kept his job via the same.

America IS a good nation on balance whther the habitual malcontents like to think so or not.

Ranting about US corporations and oil or the evil CIA does not suggest your conservatism.

Internationalism is another diplo-weenie scheme to tie the US down an restrict its freedom of intervention. In the last analysis, the air power, naval power and infantry power o the US accomplishes far more than a lot more useless diplomatic yak-yak.

Do not assume that I accept your misuse of terms, either.

[JNB]

The term Paleo-Con, as used here on FR is ill defined. Many people will call anyone who wants immigration dramatically reduced and anyone who wants FAIR trade, with use of import duities if need be, and anyone who wants to stop job outsourcing is called a paleo-conservative. Most Freepers including myself who are put in the Paleo-Con group share little of the foreign policy(outside of economics) views of the likes of Lew Rockwell, and realise that isolationism is not a viable option, nor has been since Pearl Harbor.

One thing that many so called conservative smay have a problem with people they view as paleo-cons is that "paleos" tend to not view themselves as Americans first, but as part of somthing bigger, namely Western Civilisation, and defense of the Westeren Culture, and will not be silent when they think the US is doing the wrong thing. "My country right or wrong" is not what they believe in.

[RaginCajunTrad]

"Do you really think Sobran is prospering professionally since being launched by Buckley from NR?"

The last time I checked, prospering professionally did not necessarily correlate with being right or wrong on any particular issue.

[JohnGalt]

And just to be clear Richard Perle is a fine upstanding man, the embodiment of conservatism?

Self-government has nothing to do with Rs and Ds and 'politics' but through sound institutions. You may have accepted the statist mantra of liberal democracy, which by your posts you seem to almost deify, but I cling to a Patrick Henry world view that its the institutions themselves that preserve liberty not 'democracy' my Jacobinist friend.

But then Irving has granted that preservation of liberty is not his intention and yet you call him friend....? Strange days indeed.

[RaginCajunTrad]

"They are soil and bloodline conservatives and they are an embarrassment to our country and our conservative movement."

If you sir are talking about Buchanan, Sobran, Alan Keyes, Howard Phillips, among others, I must disagree. I guess you would be embarrassed by George Washington for advising us to avoid "foreign entanglements."

When intervention is called for, I believe we should take action. However, I believe that whether under Clinton or Bush, we have become promiscuous in projecting our force.

As to projecting our values on other countries, well, it would be nice if we would send them the "right" values. We do not need to export MTV, Planned Parenthood, video games, violent and sexual movies, lewd styles of dress, etc, etc. If we free the women in Afghanistan from their burkas and replace them with lewd dress, Planned Parenthood, abortion, the "right" to exotic dance, we have simply exchanged one form of cruelty for another.


We also do not, should not force democracy on them. If they want a monarchy, it is not for us to decide. If they want a theocracy, it's for them to decide. Myself, I wish we would go back to a true republican form of govt.

Buchanan has reminded us that we are a republic, not an empire. The Roman empire fell, the British empire fell. We will fall too if we stay an imperialist nation. We must find balance.

The neocons are simply big govt imperialists and need to go away or merge with the big govt neodems.

[mr.pink]

This has been a great thread to read and I have one question.

Where exactly has Richard (40,000 troops ought to do it) Perle been hiding the last couple of months?...and why is he hiding?

Considering he was one of the main architects of the Iraqi war, one would think he'd have at least taken a media friendly victory lap by now.