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

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

[Restorer]

Please excuse typos in above post.

[Deb]

I like Irving Kristol. Both he and Norman Podhoretz have made amazing journeys from Communism to reality.

Has Lew Rockwell ever published a piece condemning radical islam, radical islamics, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or anyone besides Bush, Republicans, the dreaded neo-cons or Dick Cheney?

I seem to remember that just a day or so after 9/11 he blamed those murders on American policies.

Lew, and all of his apologists, are true enemies of the people.

[rdb3]

And yet you took the time to log in and post a response. On behalf of all the conservatives at FreeRepublic.com, thank you.

I was pinged to this thread, thank you very much.

As far as you are concerned, take a look at what ya boy Rockhead said, "Thomas calls the segregation of the Old South, where he grew up, 'totalitarian.' But that's liberal nonsense. Whatever its faults, and it certainly had them, that system was far more localized, decent, and humane than the really totalitarian social engineering now wrecking the country." He's talking about SJ Clarence Thomas here.

DiLorenzo has been shown to be loose with the truth.

Since his site seems to be your cup of tea, screw you and your whole clique. Just goes to show where your head is; up your third point of contact.

[Burkeman1]

A real amazing journey isn't it? They have gone from slaven worship of the Soviet state and the forcible spread of communisism all over the globe to the slaven worship of the American Federal government and the foricble spread of "democracy" around the globe. Real "intellectuals".

[liberallarry]

Read the last paragraph of "Theodore Rex" and its book jacket. You'll find that Edmund Morris adored TR - and that Dilorenzo is a lying, distorting, viscious piece of foul excrement.

[Burkeman1]

Not quite: The war didn't end in 1901- it continued on and off for some time:

http://www.boondocksnet.com/centennial/sctexts/zwick99a.html

[liberallarry]

Southerners were also killed by the hundreds of thousands for their own good, according to TR’s logic.

Is this guy still refighting the Civil War? And if he wants to make a sarcastic statement like that then for whose good were all those slaves brought to the Americas? For whose good did millions die in the Middle passage? What a crock.

The fact is "Manifest Destiny" was the wisdom of the time - a justification for European conquest and expansion. And - whether voiced or denied - it's a justification for all conquests by all peoples at all times.

[Restorer]

Is this guy still refighting the Civil War?

Uh, Yeah! That's all he's really interested in.

Lincoln as the Lenin, Stalin and Hitler of the 19th century. Quite amusing, actually, if you have a lot of tolerance for historical inaccuracy and ludicrous distortions.

[WRhine]

Irving Kristol writes in Reflections of a Neo-Conservative: "a conservative welfare state... is perfectly consistent with the neo-conservative perspective."

Conservative Welfare State? What's next? Conservative Marxism? This is definitely one of the funnier oxymorons I have ever read. Though it is clear the “Welfare State” has a home with neo-conservatives.

As others have pointed out, there is little that is conservative with this bunch of Wild-Eyed Zealots. In the interests of Truth in Labeling the CONS should change their name to Neo-Statists. It would end the sullying of true conservatism and be a far more accurate description of their true ideology.

[WRhine]

They must be quite angry at the old man after wasting the last few months and expending whatever credibility they once had on the laughable "neocons don't exist" argument.

I tried to explain this to some Freepers a while back-- that it was the neo-cons themselves that conjured up the term "neo-conservative" to define their ideology.

I'm not sure where the confusion on this started but it was around the time the CONS where coming under fire in the press on the revelation of the now infamous letter. The letter that a number of high profile Cons wrote back in the early Clinton days revealing their plans of global conquest if they ever got into power.

I suspect that their initial reaction upon this disclosure was to deny that their nefarious political movement even exists...lol. Glad to see their God Father clear the air on this.

[u-89]

Deb: Don't ever expect the truth from this crowd. They exist only because the average reader is ignorant of the real facts.

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Hey Deb,

Have you read the original Kristol article which this thread is a responce to? You can see it in black and white here or see some of the quotes below.
Since you think the Lew Rockwell crowd is dishonest let me test your credentials. Do you consider yourself a conservative? Does any of this stuff below sound conservative to you? If not then don't be so quick to slander the critics and dismiss their claims.

Irving Kristol:
-"the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics"

-"Neoconservatism is ... not nostalgic... Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR"

-"Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked."

-"policies.... cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth... it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth." (u89 note: notice they do not oppose taxes on moral grounds. They support lower taxes as a gimminck to give more money to the government)

-"Neocons ... are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable."

-" foreign policy... a great power, the "national interest" is not a geographical term..... A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests "

[RaginCajunTrad]

"Anyone who admires the socialist/statist FDE cannot be a "neo"con; they're a "noncon."

How about socialist/communist?

Is there any difference between a neocon and a neodem?

[x]

Here's hoping most Americans, Republicans and conservatives, being neither imperialists or libertarian anarcho-capitalists will shun both Kristol and DiLorenzo. Sanity and sensible views ought to prevail over both statist/imperialist zeal, and anarcho-libertarian nonsense.

We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth- and eighteenth-century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively relinquished.

Typical hyperbole and provinicialism to identify one's own specific views with Christianity and the Western tradition. That tradition accomodates many strands and contains much more than one narrow ideology. Surely one can oppose other people's views without writing them out of Western civilization.

"Erasmus and Montaigne, ... Cicero and Tacitus" were no more Miseans or Rockwellites than anyone else, and it's doubtful that they'd find much to praise in Rockwell or DiLorenzo or anything else in the modern world. The apoliticality of Montaigne can't be identified with dogmatic anti-statism, nor would the fanaticism of Rockwellites sit well with Erasmus. As for Athenian Democrat-Imperialist Pericles, a neocon hero, the less said the better ...

Nor would you get any inkling that TR's fighting spirit came from his mother's (Georgia) side of the family, which included two uncles in the Confederate Navy who stayed in England after 1865. TR was uneasy about his father's draft avoidance and his New York family's pacific and mercantile tradition. He is a good indication of how North and South have merged and mingled in making today's America. Roosevelt's transcending petty animosities, of the sort that DiLorenzo revels in, is one major point in his favor.

[u-89]

I tend to agree with the "neocons" on foreign relations issues because I think we're pretty much doomed if we isolate ourselves

The libertarian view of foreign policy is that of the founding fathers - How does peaceful commerce with all and permanent entangling alliances with none equate to isolation? Isolation might be equated with the hermit status of Japan pre-Admiral Perry arrival but hardly could be applied to the world's leading economy interacting peaceably with other antions just because we decided to stay out of foreign wars that do not concern us.

If the rest of the world goes to hell, we'll eventually follow

How do you figure? More likely if we as a nation keep spending domestically like California Democrats and spread our forces around the globe, engage in war after war and nation building after nation building we will eventually collapse and we will take the rest of the world with us since we are the dominate economy.

[Deb]

Lots of people have pieces of truth. Some have more than others. Almost no one has it all.

Not all the people on the Right are as terrified of big government as the fire-breathing, 100% pure, true American. Get over it or spend your days being eternally frustrated and angry.

Like I said, I like Kristol. I've heard him speak many times and I have a couple of his books. He loves this country and believes we're a force for good in the World.

Coming from where he did, I think that's extraordinary. If he's not your kind of intellectual...keep walking. If the demented Lew Rockwell crowd is your type...you've got problems.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

That smear campaign established [the neocons'] political modus operandi.

I recently became aware of the enmity between traditional conservatives ("paleocons?") and neocons. That and Kristol's comment that neocons "politely" ignore Goldwater triggered something in my mind. The viciousness of the 1964 smear campaign against Goldwater and supporters.

I see a kind of liberal diaspora beginning in the 1970s when the extremists New Left took over the Democrat party. The liberals of that day were patriotic, America-first citizens. They had nowhere to go. They came to conservatism much as ILLEGAL aliens come to America.

They brought with them their language, culture, beliefs, and -- some would say foul habits mentioned above. It is their habit of smearing opponents that dominated the attacks on Goldwater when they were in the Democrat Party of the day. Their stomachs are in conservatism today but their hearts remain in the liberalism of the 1960s and before. Many of them advocate purging "paleocons" from the Party. Go figure.

I do agree with their defense strategy despite criticism from traditional conservatives. I believe defending Israel against radical Islam is defending us also.

[Burkeman1]

Lots of people have pieces of truth. Some have more than others. Almost no one has it all.

Though we disagree on this that is actually a very conservative statement. It would make a good tagline.

[Burkeman1]

Actually- amend that- the line would be perfect if you removed "almost". Does anyone really have "all" the truth?

[mr.pink]

They have gone from slaven worship of the Soviet state and the forcible spread of communisism all over the globe to the slaven worship of the American Federal government and the foricble spread of "democracy" around the globe. Real "intellectuals".

ROTFLMAO....you nailed their MO. Well said.

[Burkeman1]

Laughable is indeed the word. "Neocon" used to be the hippest thing to be called back when I was in college in the early 90's. I even called myself one. I was a "National Review" reading, "Commentary" consuming freak back in those days. Then- when Pat Buchanan came out against the first Gulf War (geesh- I wonder if 9/11 would ever have happened if we fought that stupid war to protect a bunch of corrupt kleptocrats in Kuwait?) my initial reaction was anger and I wondered why he doing this (I had read and admired his stuff for years). But over time and with the end of the Cold War I began to see that our foreign policy was trying to find enemies in order to justify our huge military and in turn justify the welfare state.

Is it a coincedence that because conservatives like Buchanan and Sobran who both opposed the first Gulf War were then drummed out of the "conservative movement" in 1992 with the publishing of a shameful special issue of National Review entitled "In Search of Anti Semitism" written by Buckley himself? That was the first sign to me that something was wrong with "mainstream" conservatism.

It has been a long road since and I have had to let go of a lot of deeply held myths since the first time I heard Buchanan denounce the first Gulf War back in 90. (My first reaction was one of anger- but it planted a seed in me).