[MD] Neoconservatism

[Arlo J. Bensinger]

All,

"Neoconservatism" is based on a simple premise. That people, being too selfish
and stupid to be left to their own devices, need to be controlled by "myths" in
order to keep from sinking to horrendous depravity.

>From The Power of Nightmares...

"Strauss believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom led people to
question everything—all values, all moral truths. Instead, people were led by
their own selfish desires. And this threatened to tear apart the shared values
which held society together. But there was a way to stop this, Strauss
believed. It was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that
everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary
illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation."

>From a MOQ standpoint, Strauss could be said to be addressing the same malady as
Pirsig, but rather than pointing to a way "out", he offers only a way "back".
That is, rather than challenge the fundamental underpinnings of the
metaphysical firmament, Strauss argues for a return to Victorianism. This
should hardly be a surprise, as it is endemic of those here who argue for "a
return to values".

>From Lila, "And from the early seventies on there has been a slow confused
mindless drift back to a kind of pseudo-­Victorian moral posture accompanied by
an unprecedented and unexplained growth in crime.... The Hippies have been
interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their
departure as a "return to values," whatever that means. The Metaphysics of
Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral
movement. The present period is the collapse of values."

Whereas Strauss, and the Neocon Children, advocates retreating to bygone days of
Unquestioned Patriotism and Obedience to God's Will, hammers used to control
the masses, Pirsig advocates abandoning the inferior frame of SOM, and moving
in a new direction.

To the cyclical social ills of all ages, Campbell wrote, "schism in the soul,
schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the
good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal
projected future (futurism)." Here we see another attempt to cast the current
dichotomy as incomplete. Of the two choices offered, archaism represents
neoconservatism and futurism represents modern liberalism. We are told, always,
that these are our only two choices. But they are not.

It was, in fact, this same archaistic-futuristic dichotomy that underscores the
rise of Nightmare, as described in the afforementioned series...

"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different
ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic
visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people
have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as
managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores
their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now
promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from
dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand."

Neoconservatism, or Pirsig's "pseudo-­Victorian moral posture", emerged during
the period Pirsig describes as "The great intellectual revolution of the first
half of the twentieth century, the dream of a "Great Society" made humane by
man's intellect, was killed, hoist on its own petard of freedom from social
restraint." This is paralleled by The Power of Nightmare, which advances
that...

"Leo Strauss’ ideas about how to transform America were about to become powerful
and influential, because the liberal political order that had dominated America
since the war started to collapse.... Only a few years before, President
Johnson had promised policies that would create a new and a better world in
America. He had called it "the Great Society."...ut now, in the wake of some of
the worst riots ever seen in America, that dream seemed to have ended in
violence and hatred."

Into this schism, the failure of "futurism", emerged Neoconservatism. An
emergence Pirsig describes as "The end of the twentieth century in America
seems to be an intellectual, social, and economic rust-belt, a whole society
that has given up on Dynamic improvement and is slowly trying to slip back to
Victorianism, the last static ratchet-latch."

How we move depends on the choices we are given. In the modern dialogue we have
two. Both cast in a polar war of Absolute Good versus Absolute Evil. We can
choose to side with the Neocons, and move unquestioningly back towards
adherence to Myth, to unchallengeable social control via Patriotism and God. Or
we can move with modern liberalism, a floundering belief in futurism that is
bogged down in rhetoric it no longer understands.

But this is simply another myth...

Arlo