19 May 2001
Kristol, Strauss, Whew
I ran across an excellent article this morning that has been on my mind all day. The article is entitled "Great Escape: How Bill Kristol Ditched Conservatism" but it's really far more stimulating than the title suggests. Kristol, of course, is the well-educated son of neoconservative Irving Kristol, but his own conservative credentials, until recently, were unassailable. We began to see that change with his attacks on Newt Gingrich, culminating (maybe?) in the then-inexplicable support of John McCain (who is more a Democrat than a libertarian conservative -- as I have noted for some time) and his constant carping at the Bush administration (such as that hysterical diatribe over the Bush handling of China). Foer's explanation of the change: Kristol is engaged in an ambitious attempt to remake American conservativism!
These lines from the first two paragraphs sum up the project:
Along with his Standard colleague David Brooks, Kristol set out to knock the intellectual underpinnings from beneath Gingrichism. "Wishing to be left alone isn't a governing doctrine," they wrote on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. "And an American political movement's highest goal can't be protecting citizens from their own government."
A manifesto accompanied their critique. In place of the GOP's libertarianism, they proposed "national-greatness conservatism." They spoke of returning the Republican Party to the activist ways of Theodore Roosevelt. . . .
I'm not going to go further into their actual doctrine, although it is worth reading. But what is interesting to me is the brand of conservatism they wish to abandon. It is worth recalling that conservatism as a political ideology generally is aimed towards "conserving" some political value(s). In the case of American conservatism, several different (and sometimes competing) branches aim to conserve various political values (i.e. my branch of conservatism--the libertarian conservatives--wish to conserve the political/economic/legal principles of the Founding; the moral conservatives wish to conserve the moral Protestantism of the Founding Era; etc). Note that Kristol suggests that "protecting citizens from their own government" can't be a political movement's highest goal! They would go further, of course, and reduce concern with that political value to zero. In essence, they would entirely abandon the nation's founding political principles, since the politicians of the Founding Era were absolutely occupied (preoccupied, as Kristol would have it!) with protecting individual rights from intrusive government. That's a little scary! I expect it from that idiot McPain, but not from Kristol (who should certainly know better).Most fascinating, Foer attempts to explain what has motivated this intellectual change in Kristol. The answer: Leo Strauss! Even more fascinating: the first reference to Strauss is halfway down the page! Foer is not the first to suggest Strauss's influence on conservatives; Shadia Drury engaged in that enterprise some time ago in her extremely sloppy (to the point of embarassing) Leo Strauss and the American Right, a book that desperately needed the recent antidote provided by Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime. But his argument that neocons embraced the "public virtue" teachings of Strauss is new to me. I'm not suggesting it isn't true -- I think it probably is -- but the more important question is: Did the Neocons get Strauss right? I don't think so, although Strauss was such a mysterious character that it's hard to say that with certainty, since his major work on textual analysis, Persecution and the Art of Writing, might as easily be applied to his own writing, nay life! Those of us libertarian conservatives who are students of political philosophy and the American regime have been more influenced by Strauss's teachings on natural right (and to a large extent, Harry Jaffa's explication of those teachings in the form of his own voluminous writings on the American founding, and the re-founding under Lincoln), and find that to be a much higher value, not to mention much more compatible with the American Founding.
Indeed, I don't find Kristol's new public virtue/national greatness conservatism to be much different philosophically from Hitler's version of national greatness politics! That raises even more interesting questions, since several Straussian scholars have concluded (with considerable justification) that Strauss himself was enamored with Nietzsche -- the most interesting question being whether or not the justification of the state (be it natural right, public virtue, or what have you) is a noble lie in itself! What did Nietzsche believe? What did Strauss believe?
The most fascinating articles lead to these sorts of reactions. I'm hopeful that someone will be similarly moved by this article and will drop me a note (does that sound familiar, NAB?). If that's unlikely, I'm hopeful that people are pursuing their own passions and finding them just as stimulating.
[Posted @ 08:46 PM CST]
