[MD] Neoconservatism

[aesuszynski]

David,

She says, "The policies are by now very clear: no gay rights, no
liberated women, no uppity blacks, lots of prayer in the schools, a strong
commitment to the death penalty, and the re-criminalisation of abortion."

Not so clear to me...No gay rights? To my knowledge gays have many rights, 
just as do all citizens in this country. The rights which are currently in 
question are the extension of the rights enjoyed by married couples, which 
at this point does not include gay couples. I think the issue is far from 
settled and will eventually move toward a more equitable situation. Gays 
have gained tremendous  credibility in the past few years and under a 
Rebublican administration for six of those years..

No liberated women? How ridiculous!

No uppity blacks? so are we to assume that Condolezza Rice, Clarence Thomas 
and Colin Powell are just token Uncle Toms? That assertion would be more 
insulting than her original one.

Lot's of prayer in school? OK, I'll give her this one.

commitment to the death penalty, and the re-criminalisation of abortion.... 
and these two.

So in my opinion she got half of these assertions correct. . But since she 
isn't citing any statistics or particular instances, I would say she is just 
preaching to the choir. "You guys know what I mean." I guess I expect more 
from "one of the world's foremost scholar"(s)..

"I think the suggestion that she and her readers "never heard of the pill" 
is
 just plain silly."

It was actually meant to point out the silliness of her statement, "More 
importantly, it will keep women busy
 having babies - lots of babies"

"I imagine she knows that ALL of the major "pro-life"
 organizations in the United States is not just opposed to abortion, they 
are
 also opposed to contraception."

In order to make such a claim, which she actually doesn't, a foremost 
scholar would have to provide me with some proof. From what little I know 
about pro-life organizations, it is only the Mormons and the Catholics who 
are steadfastly against contraception. And even most of those members kind 
of do their own thing, I reckon. It would seem that the uniting feature of 
the pro-life movement is to prevent abortion and to work towards the 
elimination of its legality. I have heard of no legislation which has been 
proposed to eliminate the use of contraception and if there was, there 
wouldn't be a chance in hell that it would pass.

"As you MUST know by now, contraception is the
 best means of preventing unwanted pegnancies and I think its safe to say
 that unwanted pregnancy is the number one cause of abortions"

Yes, contraception is one way of avoiding unwanted pregnancy.  It is 
interesting, however to observe that ever since contraception has come upon 
the scene, the rate of abortions has skyrocketed. This could mean that 
contraception is not the cure-all for unwanted pregnancy that once it was 
thought it was.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Neoconservatism


> Alice and all:
>
> Alice said to dmb:
> First impression is that the piece is quite slanted and because of that, 
> it
> makes me sceptical. She makes a lot of assertions and doesn't back them 
> up,
> like this one... "The policies are by now very clear: no gay rights, no
> liberated women, no uppity blacks, lots of prayer in the schools, a strong
> commitment to the death penalty, and the re-criminalisation of abortion. 
> The
> latter is particularly important. Of course it will keep the women at home
> and out of the way so that world can be ruled by men in the proper manly
> fashion; but that's not all. More importantly, it will keep women busy
> having babies - lots of babies"
>
> dmb says:
> This makes you skeptical? Really? I think she says that these "policies 
> are
> by now very clear" because the only thing one needs to back it up is read
> just about any newspaper. These are the policies that the Republican party
> has been using to motivate their voters for years.
>
> Alice said:
> Maybe she never heard of the pill or thinks her readers haven't.
>
> dmb says:
> As it says at the end of the quoted article, "Shadia Drury is among the
> world's foremost scholars on the history, philosophy and politics of
> neoconservatism. She is the author of the acclaimed books Leo Strauss and
> the American Right (1998) and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988)." 
> So
> I think the suggestion that she and her readers "never heard of the pill" 
> is
> just plain silly. I imagine she knows that ALL of the major "pro-life"
> organizations in the United States is not just opposed to abortion, they 
> are
> also opposed to contraception. As you MUST know by now, contraception is 
> the
> best means of preventing unwanted pegnancies and I think its safe to say
> that unwanted pregnancy is the number one cause of abortions. Doesn't that
> strike you as rather unfriendly to women?
>
> Alice said:
> Also, I have read Bloom's book "The Closing of the American Mind" While it
> does mention with disdain, some of the events which occured in the 
> sixties,
> I think it had more to do with the decline of academic rigor and the
> abandonment of the classics by the university.
>
> dmb says:
> Books like Bloom's lend intellectual respectability to the cause. Clearly,
> neither he nor Strauss are idiots. And, personally, I have a great deal of
> sympathy for the idea that the classics are classics for a reason and they
> should be preserved. But I think that if we look at the Republican party's
> attitude toward the 60's in light of Pirsig's diagnosis, Bloom is just the
> least offensive example of America's present neo-Victorian moral decline.
> Pirsig's diagnosis says that the hippy movement of the '60s was a moral
> movement that failed. This is actually what I've been getting at with all
> the quotes from George Nash's book. Again, this is a book by a 
> conservative,
> for conservatives and about conservatives. It has an entire chapter on the
> Struassians. The polcies and attitudes described by Shadia Drury may seem
> slanted to you, but Nash said the very same things about his own ideology
> over 25 years ago.
>
> Alice said:
> One thing I heartily agree with is that neo-conservatism has nothing to do
> with conservatism. The latter is much more concerned with tradition and 
> slow
> change, while the neo-cons seem to be all about making change for others,
> something conservatives for years have complained that liberals do.
>
> dmb says:
> Well, neoconservatism is different than Burkean conservatism. Libertarians
> are different than the religious right too. But I don't think these
> distinctions are very important. There are factions within the Republican
> party and they don't agreee on every point, but it sure seems clear to me
> that the general thrust of the overall coalition is an anti-liberal and
> anti-modern. It sure seems clear to me that virtually everyone in this
> coalition buys into the neocon myth of good and evil.
>
> In the interest of fairness, I've quoted an article from THE WEEKLY
> STANDARD, which is the voice of neoconservatism. (Owned by the same guy 
> who
> ownes FOX NEWS) As Wikipedia says... "The Weekly Standard is an American
> neoconservative political magazine published 48 times per year. It made 
> its
> debut on September 17, 1995 and is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News
> Corporation. It is viewed as a leading outlet of the influential
> neoconservative movement. Its current editors are founder William Kristol,
> chairman of the Project for the New American Century, and Fred Barnes."
> Actually, having just read George Nash's book again, I can tell you that 
> the
> following article is full of omissions, distortions and statements that
> simply aren't true. I can't say if the author is just ignorant or if this
> nonsense is intentionally inaccurate, but it seems to support Drury's
> assertion that neocons are "compulsive liars". I mean, I'm actually 
> stunned
> at how inaccuately Berkowitz paints the picture here. You'd think that a
> neocon writing about a neocons for a neocon audience should be able to get
> it right. But this article flies in the face of what both Nash and Drury
> have written about this movement. Personally, I think the following 
> "Weakly
> Standard" article is mostly bullshit. What do you think?
>
> dmb
>
> What Hath Strauss Wrought? From the June 2, 2003 issue: Misreading a
> political philosopher. by Peter Berkowitz
>
> THE NEW YORK TIMES, the New Yorker, and the Boston Globe, among others, 
> have
> sounded the alarm: The Bush administration, particularly its foreign 
> policy
> team, is in the grip of a coterie of neoconservative intellectuals who are
> themselves in the grip of the antidemocratic and illiberal teachings of 
> Leo
> Strauss, a political philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago 
> in
> the '50s and '60s and who died in 1973.
>
> On its face, this scenario is wildly implausible. It supposes that 
> President
> Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, Secretary of 
> Defense
> Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Rice, non-Straussians by all
> accounts, are stooges and dupes. It insinuates that neoconservative
> intellectuals--Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is at the top of
> everybody's list--have craftily ascended to positions of power in the
> federal government from which they aim to implement Strauss's teachings. 
> And
> it invests Strauss, a student of political philosophy whose life's work
> consisted in writing learnedly about thinkers from Plato to Heidegger, and
> sharing his discoveries with students, with almost superhuman powers:
> Through the force of his ideas, we are told, this scholar and teacher is
> able, a generation and a half after his death, to command the respect and
> loyalty--and indeed, to compel the actions--of highly successful and
> well-placed individuals not only in politics but in the media and the
> academy.
>
> Despite its wild implausibility, the scenario is in one important respect
> true. And that has to do with the influence of Leo Strauss on a generation
> of neoconservative thinkers, some of whom are active in our politics (and
> some of whom can even be found writing in these pages).
>
> Judging from the recent hubbub, which restates an accusation that has 
> gained
> much currency in the academy, that influence is nefarious. Strauss is said
> to be an elitist who scorned democracy. He is attacked as an atheist who
> encouraged his students to see through the falseness of religion, while
> manipulating it to discipline and mollify the masses. And the realization 
> of
> his ideas, we are warned, requires his followers to establish by force of
> arms a foreign empire for America.
>
> These accusations, similar versions of which are often leveled at
> neoconservatives, are nonsense, and in parts vicious nonsense. Yet the 
> ideas
> that the accusations pervert are those of Strauss, and when those ideas 
> are
> restored to their true shape they can be seen as articulating core
> neoconservative convictions.
>
> Strauss was not an elitist--but he was a lover of excellence. He believed 
> in
> the cultivation of the mind, and sought to restore respect for its
> manifestation in the ambition for honor and nobility in the soul, which he
> understood to be not only compatible with but essential to democracy. On 
> the
> occasion of Winston Churchill's death, he told his class that "We have no
> higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our
> students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human
> excellence." Strauss also shared Churchill's famous praise of democracy as
> the worst regime except for all the others that have been tried from time 
> to
> time. Although he regarded modern democracy as flawed, it is, Strauss
> suggested, the form of government best suited to the protection and
> enjoyment of human liberty, and therefore should be defended 
> wholeheartedly.
>
> Strauss may have been a religious doubter, but he showed time and again 
> that
> the question of the truth of religion seemed to have been left unsettled 
> by
> the greatest figures in the history of political philosophy, and that
> therefore religious teachings, which concern man's highest and deepest
> longings, must be studied with care and an open mind. He loved the Hebrew
> Bible and sought to show that it was rich in wisdom about the human
> condition. He saw that religion could be either salutary or destructive,
> depending on the circumstances and the religious teaching in question. And
> he certainly believed that in our day religion could play a positive role 
> in
> counteracting the tendency of liberal democracy to indiscriminately break
> down custom and convention.
>
> Finally, Strauss was not a proponent of American empire--but he did teach
> the importance of American strength in defense of liberty. Writing in the
> midst of the Cold War, as a refugee from Nazi Germany and as a student of
> tyranny, Strauss insisted that totalitarians of the left and the right 
> posed
> a profound threat to liberal democracy--a threat that liberal democrats
> tended to underestimate because of their habit of supposing that all
> individuals and nations are as open to reason and persuasion as liberal
> democrats consider themselves to be. Strauss encouraged liberal 
> democracies
> to be strong in defending themselves and forceful in conducting a foreign
> policy in accord with their principles.
>
> Strauss was no ordinary liberal democrat, but he was a staunch friend of
> liberal democracy. The urgency of defending liberal democracy by 
> encouraging
> its virtues, combating its vices, and never losing sight of its enemies is
> the great political lesson that those of his students who became
> neoconservatives embraced. To be sure, Strauss seemed to prefer the
> classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle to modern political
> philosophy. He was a proud Jew and took the claims of religion with utmost
> seriousness while keeping his distance from organized religion. He dwelled
> at length on liberal democracy's undemocratic and illiberal tendencies, in
> part because he loved the truth and in part because he was devoted to
> America's well-being. He was the kind of friend who makes one better by
> constantly exhibiting, through example and argument, the look of 
> excellence.
> Not always an easy sort of friend, but the sort of friend, you would 
> think,
> whom true liberals in every time and place would appreciate.
>
> Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University School of Law and is a
> research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
>
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