NeoConservatism: Why we need it

http://obrl.blogspot.com/2006/07/neoconservatism-douglas-murray.html

FrontPageMagazine.com | July 26, 2006

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Douglas Murray, ... the author of the new book Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.

FP: Douglas Murray welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Murray: Thank you for having me.

FP: What motivated you to write this book?

Murray: Anger, mostly. Though a good deal of irritation too. Irritation at basic - as well as specific - errors which have gone unchallenged for too long.

In particular among my generation in the West, the understanding of war, peace, history and human behaviour now seems so fundamentally skewed and misguided that I felt I had to help sort some of this mess out. And I wanted to go back on the front foot - to direct attention onto those who have largely escaped the pummelling they deserve. So as well as being a philosophical and practical explanation of Neo-conservative action, this book is a fierce attack on our enemies without and within. It hits the ball back into the court of freedom's opponents - smoking a few of them out along the way.

FP: So what is Neo-conservatism? Who is a Neo-conservative?

Murray: Well the best description has always been Irving Kristol's - that a neocon is 'a liberal who has been mugged by reality'. But the truth is that plenty of present-day 'neocons' never were liberals, so there's now a technical problem in the description. And of course 'liberals' are no longer liberals.

Lots of people simply think neocons are the hardline section of the Republican party. Which isn't true. Neither Dick Cheney nor Donald Rumsfeld are neocons.

I say that neocons are people who see the world as it is, but act to make it as they would like it to be. This makes us different from traditional conservatives (who often distrust ideological drive) and present-day 'liberals' (who don't see the world as it is). Neocons look at the world through classically liberal eyes, but wear good glasses. A neocon is a realist with morals, or a moralist with good eyesight.

FP: So a Neo-con is much better at fighting political war than a Conservative right? Why do you think that Conservatives are so bad at political fighting?

Murray: No - I don't think neocons are necessarily better at fighting political wars. Our PR would certainly suggest not. But when it comes to actual wars, neocons have undoubtedly been better (though not necessarily any more successful) at explaining - for instance - Iraq, than have traditional conservatives, who rarely explained the manifold humanitarian as well as military reasons for toppling the Hussein dictatorship.

When it comes to culture wars, I do think neoconservatives have had better armoury behind them in recent years to back up their case. One might note the difference between the instinctive conservative and the instinctive and intellectually-based conservative. Faced with the moral and verbal acrobatics of the left, instinctive conservatism on its own is often outflanked by the left and becomes befuddled as a result.

But conservatives of all stripes have been pretty poor at arguing their corner in recent years. This has led to a general trend where the 'left' is regarded as the movement of 'progress' and the 'right' as a movement existing to (at best) only slow down the set pace. My book argues that it is conservatism which should set the pace.

The left has never felt the need to apologise or recant for giving us the horrors of socialism. In fact, worse than that - they still extol that vile creed. A lied-to new generation thinks left-wingery is about peace and love, while the right is concerned only with hate and so on. This is because of a grass-roots problem. The left has continued to fight a grass-roots culture war, which the right has largely given up on.

There are noble exceptions to this, of course, but it seems to me that conservatives of all kinds would do well to fight the culture wars on our own terms. Again - we should be on the front-foot. I mean who has more to apologise for in Britain - a free-marketeer who supported Thatcher, or a goon of the Soviets who propped up communism? In Britain, as in America, it's too often the glad fool who gets away with it, and the free-marketeer who is left feeling defensive. We should work to change that.

FP: Are you a Neo-con? Name some prominent individuals that are Neo-cons and the qualities you think that make them such.

Murray: Of course! I wouldn't have written this book - with this title - if I wasn't one.

George Bush has been a foreign-policy neocon only on and off since 9/11. His 2005 inaugural address was perhaps the high-point. Secretary Rice and others have also flitted in and out of the camp. Democracy-spread has become a core-part of their policy, but I see worrying signs over their treatment of Iran and Syria in particular, which suggest to me that the instinct isn't quite as deep as one might have hoped.

Of the sustained neocons, none is a better example than Tony Blair. His axiom before the Iraq war on toppling dictators 'When you can, you should' seems to me a perfect neoconservative expression. But, that said, he is not remotely a neocon on domestic matters (which I go into at some length in my book) - not even on the domestic war on terror. It's purely a foreign policy thing with him.

There are of course a number of writers who I would say are great examples of neoconservative thinking. From very different directions, Christopher Hitchens and Charles Krauthammer spring to mind. But again it's worth pointing out that whenever you get more than one neoconservative in a room they're as likely to disagree as agree with each other. It's not a doctrine or fraternity - simply a way of looking at the world which, in my opinion, is particularly relevant to the world in which we live.

FP: What are some myths about Neo-conservatism? Why do some charge it as being a "Jewish cabal"?

Murray: Well the myths are too many to mention, but I try to bust many of them in this book. The notion that neocons are a sinister power-cult at the top of the American government is of course conspiracist lunacy. As is the accusation that neocons are bent on world domination. Only in such a moronic age could the allegation that freeing a country from a dictator constitutes 'empire-building' be taken even half-seriously.

And as for the Jewish cabal. Well we all get this. I was asked again recently whether I was Jewish. I pointed out that my Scottish name didn't exactly suggest so, but was told it looked like 'one of those names a Jew has changed to make themselves look non-Jewish!' So you see, you can't win. And anti-Semitic slurs in time of war are of course sadly perennial.

But to answer the substance of the question - lots of first generation neocons were Jews, though just as many weren't. But it seems fairly obvious to me why a Jewish person might be particularly attracted to neoconservatism. Many Jewish people have a strong sense of what is right and wrong which is now lacking from vast swathes of the West. And of course Jewish people are more than usually likely to sympathise with the lot of people living under oppressive and genocidal regimes, and understand the need to address humanitarian crises before they reach their end-point.

FP: You argue that the West needs Neo-conservatism more than ever. Why?

Murray: Because the West is getting lost. Not just the Western way of life - which is increasingly becoming little more than a 'lifestyle choice'. But lost in the sense that it is forgetting what it believes in and therefore why it should even believe in itself. A combination of historical ignorance and moral posturing has led to what Ratzinger called the 'dictatorship of relativism'. In this situation moral clarity - which is one of the things neoconservatism provides - is desperately lacking. And I think this situation is dangerous. Dangerous because into this vacuum any of the worst creeds can stalk. Relativism's descent into nihilism is not the end of the problem. It is the beginning of it.

So we need to explain to people that it isn't enough to sit back when something bad happens to us and say 'well we once did x, y, or z.' Or to continually draw parity between democracies and tyrannies - or terrorists and free states. We have to persuade people that self-flagellation and ahistorical posturing are not expressions of intellectual and moral worth, but a substitute for them.

Neoconservatism - as explained in this book - provides a way out of the mental and moral inertia which now prevails and which allows people to think they are good human beings because they once went on a march to stop a tyrant's overthrow, or feel they 'understand' what drives a Palestinian terrorist to become a Jew-murderer.

FP: What perspective does/should Neo-conservatism have -- in general -- on the war breaking out in the Middle East right now and on the terror war in general?

Murray: Well I hope the war isn't 'breaking out', but rather coming to a close with a complete operational success for the IDF. The idea of this escalating from a war with a state-proxy into a war between Israel and one or more states is terrible.

That said, if Iran and Syria continue to flaunt their sponsorship and support of terror then it becomes not just a duty, but a necessity, to deal with them. Whenever they get away with an attack or a snub, they are emboldened. At present they calculate that we do not have the stomach to enter another fight. Whether this is the case or not, we cannot allow this presumption to perpetuate. It is, as so often, our weakness which is a provocation.

I've just got back from the region, and while there I witnessed - and experienced - the rocket bombardment in Northern Israel, as well as the terror of the people of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where suicide bombers have been caught in recent days about to detonate.

We must emphasise that parity does not exist when there is a war between a democratic state and a terror organisation. This is something that large swathes of the media - and the UN - simply cannot understand. Such a conflict is not a 50/50 event. And the scales do not tip against Israel because Israel has suffered fewer casualties to date.

You do not decide who is right by affecting a body-count. Germany lost more troops than Great Britain in the last World War, but it didn't make Germany right. Would those who talk so idiotically of disproportionate response against Hezbollah be happier if more Katyushas were making direct hits on Israeli citizens?

Any decent person must emphasise that this is a conflict between free people and terrorists - an army that does everything it can to limit civilian casualties and an organisation whose aim is to maximise civilian casualties. Between two such sides no equivalence can be made.

The battle will - and must - be over only when Hezbollah's weaponry of terror is entirely destroyed. Neither the US nor any other ally of Israel should demand a ceasefire at any date before the time of Israel's choosing. If they do demand it, Israel should ignore it. A ceasefire which returns us to the status-quo ante would be a temporary ceasefire which would make the sufferings of recent weeks and months not just pointless, but perpetual.

The conflict currently going on is a local version of the war in which we are all engaged. Trace back just one step, in Iraq, Lebanon, London or New York, and you get the same story, and the same ring-leaders. Israel's war is our war, and we should be proud that at least one of our allies is successfully fighting this war for us as well as for themselves. Victory for Israel against Hezbollah will be a victory for all free peoples, not least the people of Lebanon.

The Hezbollah are already holding one country - Lebanon - hostage. We cannot allow them to hold another country - Israel - hostage as well. A draw in this conflict will be a loss for Israel, and neither Israel, nor the West as a whole, can afford any losses in this global war against Islamist terror.

FP: Douglas Murray, thank you for joining us.

Murray: Thank you.

Alright Pure, I'll take the bait - a little bit:

The West is getting lost. Not just the Western way of life - which is increasingly becoming little more than a 'lifestyle choice'. But lost in the sense that it is forgetting what it believes in and therefore why it should even believe in itself. A combination of historical ignorance and moral posturing has led to what Ratzinger called the 'dictatorship of relativism'. In this situation moral clarity is desperately lacking. And I think this situation is dangerous. Dangerous because into this vacuum any of the worst creeds can stalk. Relativism's descent into nihilism is not the end of the problem. It is the beginning of it.

So we need to explain to people that it isn't enough to sit back when something bad happens to us and say 'well we once did x, y, or z.' Or to continually draw parity between democracies and tyrannies - or terrorists and free states. We have to persuade people that self-flagellation and ahistorical posturing are not expressions of intellectual and moral worth, but a substitute for them.

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No surprise - I agree with this. (We had an epic debate on this subect about nine months ago. Which I won. )

Note the one little excision I made from that passage, underlined: "moral clarity - which is one of the things neoconservatism provides [/U] . . . "

I'm not going to wade into that swamp.



Edited to add: I better clarify this, too, as I did in a related thread: It should go without saying, but of course nothing does, that my interpretation of "Western way of life" does not have anything to do with sexual preference. It is, rather, in the broadest terms, the desire of those in the West to be left alone by politicians, preachers, generals and social activists, enjoy a comfortable material existance, and have protected their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with all the freedoms that entails.

Roxanne Appleby said:

Edited to add: I better clarify this, too, as I did in a related thread: It should go without saying, but of course nothing does, that my interpretation of "Western way of life" does not have anything to do with sexual preference. It is, rather, in the broadest terms, the desire of those in the West to be left alone by politicians, preachers, generals and social activists, enjoy a comfortable material existance, and have protected their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with all the freedoms that entails.

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Here, here!

Excuse me. But I regard the neo-cons as enemies of Western civilization.

Western civilization begins with Socrates and the breaking of the Homeric dictatorship. Before Socrates, the Gods and The Fates ruled, your destiny was set in stone and little could be done to change it. Questioning it was something not done, it had to be accepted.

Socrates ended that. He taught that we could question everything. And that we could act on these questions to change the course of our lives.

Mixed in with this was the idea of ethics, personal responsibility for our actions.

And there was the idea of responsibility towards society, the other people that made up our civilization.

At the centre of the neo-con's philosophy is a new divine dictatorship, an economic one. We are born into our roles and little can be done to change it.

And like all ideologies, the ideology takes on the responsibility, freeing the individual from it. If the ideology demands, the individual must act that way.

As I've said so many times before, the neo-cons are not conservatives, they're revolutionaries.

rgraham666 said:

Excuse me. But I regard the neo-cons as enemies of Western civilization.

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Hopefully I am not included in whoever you've directed your "excuse me" toward, because I have never identified myself as a "neocon," or even expressed an opinion here on the foreign policy projects they are most identified with. I was very cautious in my post to refer to one very narrow slice of the cited article, its reference to moral relativism.

If I had meant it directed to you, I would have said so, Roxanne.

rgraham666 said:

If I had meant it directed to you, I would have said so, Roxanne.

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OK.

~~~~

I'm both fascinated and shocked by the attitudes this guy expresses. Like Roxanne and Zeb, I hold many of our "Western" ideals in great esteem, but the aggressive stance of this brand of Neo-conservatism seems to be a formula for constant war. There will always be despots and dictators, and while it's one thing to be opposed to oppression in all cases, it's quite another to advocate taking action, especially military action, against it.

If there's one thing that our experience in Viet Nam and Iraq has shown, and Russia's experience in Afghanistan, among other examples, is that military action has severe limitations. Using the military exposes weaknesses, whereas keeping it as a threat enables stronger diplomatic postures.

Of course everyone is against oppression - why is it more "realistic" to think that military action is needed to overcome it, when it was reticence to use military action that overcame Communism? And why do the Neo-cons mislabel as Socialism the far-right governmental system of Fascism? Socialism is mainly an economic system, and one that has had success in modern Western European nations.

I also note the main drive behind Mr. Murray. Anger.

It's a trait I've noticed in many ideologues, their utter fury at anything not of their creed.

As I've noted before, anger is highly addictive, a fact I've learned from bitter personal experience.

Why should we take addicts seriously? Especially when we know how skewed the perceptions of addicts are. And how arbitrary and badly thought out their motivations are.

as one blogger observed, neocons are great for the 'vision thing' but tend to be scarce when it comes to 'heavy lifting,' i.e., military interventions they want. they tend NOT to be soldiers, themselves. last i heard, no famous neocon's kids had served or was serving in the military.

notice it's a complaint of Murray that ordinary conservatives get too cautious about US going abroad.

apparently Murray is an Anglican; it's notable that though you can't *equate neo con and religious right, nor neocon and Randian right, the neocons share, and have in common with both, the moral certainty (see Roxanne's partial endorsement, above).

i wonder if neocon can be defined as consisting of the moral certainty of the above groups coupled with the desire to actively pursue such moral goals, esp. abroad; even the belief that such pursuits are morally obligatory. or more broadly, coupled with the desire to use governement force and authority to advance such moral goals.

Pure said:

as one blogger observed, neocons are great for the 'vision thing' but tend to be scarce when it comes to 'heavy lifting,' i.e., military interventions they want. they tend NOT to be soldiers, themselves. last i heard, no famous neocon's kids had served or was serving in the military.

notice it's a complaint of Murray that ordinary conservatives get too cautious about US going abroad.

apparently Murray is an Anglican; it's notable that though you can't *equate neo con and religious right, nor neocon and Randian right, the neocons share, and have in common with both, the moral certainty (see Roxanne's partial endorsement, above).

i wonder if neocon can be defined as consisting of the moral certainty of the above groups coupled with the desire to actively pursue such moral goals, esp. abroad; even the belief that such pursuits are morally obligatory. or more broadly, coupled with the desire to use governement force and authority to advance such moral goals.

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Quite the slippery slope: Reject moral relativism = moral certainty > imperialism.

I don't buy it. There are many disconfirming counter examples that disprove it. Ever the sly one, Pure.

I got a chuckle out of this quote:

I say that neocons are people who see the world as it is, but act to make it as they would like it to be. This makes us different from traditional conservatives (who often distrust ideological drive) and present-day 'liberals' (who don't see the world as it is). Neocons look at the world through classically liberal eyes, but wear good glasses. A neocon is a realist with morals, or a moralist with good eyesight.

I'd have to disagree with his last sentence.

What a brilliant satirical piece. LOL - Thanks, Pure.

correction

Rox Quite the slippery slope: Reject moral relativism = moral certainty > imperialism.

I don't buy it. There are many disconfirming counter examples that disprove it. Ever the sly one, Pure

I didn't say that: i said the neo con can be defined as one with moral certainty (e.g. of Christian evangelicals or Randian 'objectivists') AND a desire to impose this view, esp. abroad.

moral certainty + desire to intervene abroad (crusade) + belief that such intervention is obligatory (imperialism, perhaps) = neoconservatism (in its foreign policy aspect).

as a proposed definition it's not really subject to defeat by counterexamples of real world dogmatists' and intervenors' actions.

I say that neocons are people who see the world as it is, but act to make it as they would like it to be.

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And I say more Literoti should read, vote and comment on my Lit submissions!

...

Dang. I guess that doesn't work, Mr. Murray.

On topic, the Christian Science Monitor has a (IMO) great, evenhanded special section explaining neoconservatism.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Umberto Eco; neoconservatism, as sometimes practiced by the Bush Administration, is Ur-Fascism.

These have probably been posted here before, but they are great conversation fodder. Eco's elements of Ur-Fascism:

1. The cult of tradition.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism and the embrace or irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

The worst villains in history had the best intentions.

thanks, Obl.

great posting.

Nice, link. Oblimo. I thought the following excerpts from the CSM article particularly apt. I'm not sure the author got to the root of the philosophy, however. Eco seems better at this, though much of his 'thing' seems to be a psycological analysis of the protypical 'ur-fascist.'


What do neoconservatives believe?

"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.


Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster. […]

What does a neoconservative dream world look like?
Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon."

In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists.

This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.
Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained.

rgraham666 said:

The worst villains in history had the best intentions.

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So do the GOOD ones. At our time.

Pure said:

Rox Quite the slippery slope: Reject moral relativism = moral certainty > imperialism.

I don't buy it. There are many disconfirming counter examples that disprove it. Ever the sly one, Pure

I didn't say that: i said the neo con can be defined as one with moral certainty (e.g. of Christian evangelicals or Randian 'objectivists') AND a desire to impose this view, esp. abroad.

moral certainty + desire to intervene abroad (crusade) + belief that such intervention is obligatory (imperialism, perhaps) = neoconservatism (in its foreign policy aspect).

as a proposed definition it's not really subject to defeat by counterexamples of real world dogmatists' and intervenors' actions.

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OK. That is a fair distinction.

Pardon my sarcasm. You pissed me off with the sneering earlier today.

rgraham666 said:

The worst villains in history had the best intentions.

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RG, I understand what you're trying to say, but I don't think this formulation is correct. This is a good opportunity for me to clarify something that came up in an earlier discussion, which is that there is a difference between "good will" and "good intentions." Good will as I use it and as I think it is generally understood means general good will toward all humans, as in the golden rules, or love your neighbor. It means wishing well for all humans. Nazis and racists, to cite two examples, by definition don't have this. They wish ill for certain categories of humans. One might play semantic games and say that for a Hitler or a David Duke only "Aryans" or white Protestants qualify for "humanness," and so they actually have good will toward those they define as humans, but I'm just using the plain meaning of the words here.

The rap against "good intentions" is that someone with good will can have good intentions and cause tremendous harm. My personal example is Woodrow Wilson bringing the U.S. into WW I. I believe that this was directly responsible for the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Hitler. Wilson therefore has more blood on his good-intentioned hands than the worst bloody-handed tyrant. We could debate the historical plausibility of my thesis about that, but it serves as an example of what I mean here.

I'm not sure that someone without good will can have good intentions - it seems a contradiction. It's hard to see how a villain like Hitler could be said to have good intentions, following the logic of what I've laid out here. On the other side, one might call Wilson "one of the worst villains," and in a certain sense he might be, but I think "villainy" requires the intent to do evil, and he did not have that. He had - good intentions. God help us.

nice little speech of Murray and a question:

Is Murray channeling Roxanne, or is Roxanne channeling Murray?

Murray's talk on his ideas.
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000636.php

[verbatim excerpts]

And this is our problem. For we live, as Saul Bellow put it, in a thought culture – but it is one in which the thought has gone bad. The thought has gone so bad that in vast swathes of the West, in much of Europe, and to a lesser though growing extent in this country, there are people who are losing us this war. They are the product of a uniquely destructive strand of Western thought: that thought is relativism.

In his homily to the College of Cardinals before being elected Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger fingered this rot at the core of western thought when he identified what he termed the "dictatorship of relativism", a theory and a mode of thought which as he said:
recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure.

The West is now swamped by this notion. In our domestic politics it is epitomised by the nightmares of moral equivalence and political correctness. It is also of course at the root of the barren and - as thinkers as diverse as Fukuyama and Huntington have put it - innately anti-Western creed of multiculturalism. It holds that all things are equal – which would of course be fine if they were: but they are not. The good cannot be equated or judged equal to the bad, nor should the sublime be leveled alongside, or tarred by, the ridiculous.

The practice of equivalence in our national politics leads governments not to listen to, but to fear minority opinion, concerned lest anyone get the impression that the government knows what's right for the majority who have elected it. Not only does it make politics a glorified (though not glorious) pursuit of the personal – it makes the notion of fixed or natural right a nonsense. Because of course if everything is equal then everything is right: which means nothing is good or true.

I said earlier that much of this bad thought is committed and permitted by perfectly pleasant people. This is true. The impetus to follow relativistic arguments is perfectly understandable.[…]. So what people do when they accumulate this [nihilistic] mode of thought, is to think that they are doing the good, being nice, or tending toward the generous.

What they are actually doing is magnifying the bad within our society, continually undermining our right to assert ourselves as more than individuals, eroding our right to act for the good and right by saying that the good and the right are – at best - in the eye of the beholder.[…] [end excerpts]
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P: Murray seems to waver between asserting a lack of clarity and a lack of nerve. The latter ties in with an old fascist theme: will as a means of national resurrection and a new world order.

Roxanne Appleby said:

My personal example is Woodrow Wilson bringing the U.S. into WW I. I believe that this was directly responsible for the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Hitler.

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Wow. How'd you figure? Wilson fought against the tarrifs and reparations that devistated Germany's post war economy, IIRC. Do you mean his doctine for the League?

Pure said:

Is Murray channeling Roxanne, or is Roxanne channeling Murray?

Murray's talk on his ideas.
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000636.php
. . . in vast swathes of the West, in much of Europe, and to a lesser though growing extent in this country, there are people who . . . are the product of a uniquely destructive strand of Western thought: that thought is relativism.

In his homily to the College of Cardinals before being elected Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger fingered this rot at the core of western thought when he identified what he termed the "dictatorship of relativism", a theory and a mode of thought which as he said:
recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure.

P: Murray seems to waver between asserting a lack of clarity and a lack of nerve. The latter ties in with an old fascist theme: will as a means of national resurrection and a new world order.

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I seem to be channeling lots of people, but none of them in every aspect: Murray, Ratzinger, George Weigel, a fellow named Marcello Pera in Weigel's piece. And of course Rand, Locke, Hayek, Charles Murray, and several more. James Madison and Al Hamilton are rattling around also. It's getting crowded in here!

Excerpts from Weigel's piece in Commentary, "Europe’s Two Culture Wars":

What Bruce Bawer rightly deplores as out-of-control political correctness in Europe is rooted in a deeper malady: a rejection of the belief that human beings, however inadequately or incompletely, can grasp the truth of things—a belief that has, for almost two millennia, underwritten the European civilization that grew out of the interaction of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome.

Postmodern European high culture repudiates that belief. And because it can only conceive of “your truth” and “my truth” while determinedly rejecting any idea of “the truth,” it can only conceive of tolerance as indifference to differences—an indifference to be enforced by coercive state power, if necessary. The idea of tolerance as engaging differences within the bond of civility (as Richard John Neuhaus once put it) is itself regarded as, well, intolerant. Those who would defend the true tolerance of orderly public argument about contending truth claims (which include religious and moral convictions) risk being driven, and in many cases are driven, from the European public square by being branded as “bigots.”

But the problem goes deeper still. For one thing, however loudly European postmodernists may proclaim their devotion to the relativity of all truths, in practice this translates into something very different—namely, the deprecation of traditional Western truths, combined with a studied deference to non- or anti-Western ones. In the relativist mindset, it thus turns out, not all religious and moral conviction is bigotry that must be suppressed; only the Judeo-Christian variety is. In short, the moral relativism of Europe is often mere window-dressing, a mask for Western self-hatred.

For another, related thing, Europe’s soul-withering skepticism goes hand in hand with what Allan Bloom once styled “debonair nihilism”—a nihilism that, in its indifference to everything beyond the imperial self, has made its own contribution to the continent’s unwillingness to create the future by creating successor generations.
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A different and much more persuasive analysis of Europe’s culture wars has emerged from a remarkable dialogue that took place in 2004. The partners in this conversation may seem an unlikely pair: Marcello Pera, an agnostic Italian academic turned politician (and president of the Italian Senate), and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the principal theological agency of the Catholic Church.

Pera had given a lecture on “Relativism, Christianity, and the West” at Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University; Ratzinger, at Pera’s invitation, gave a lecture in the Italian Senate on “The Spiritual Roots of Europe.” The two men then agreed to exchange letters exploring the striking convergence of analysis that had characterized their two lectures. Both the lectures and the letters were published in a small book in Italy in early 2005 and created something of a stir, which only intensified in April when Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. The Ratzinger/Pera volume has now been published in the United States under the title Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam.6

Long before becoming pope, Joseph Ratzinger, a widely respected intellectual who had succeeded the late Andrei Sakharov in the latter’s chair at the prestigious French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, had been warning his fellow Europeans that their dalliance in the intellectual sandbox of postmodernism was going to cause severe problems for their societies and their polities. Those problems, he argues here, are at once intellectual, spiritual, and moral. The “crumbling of [European] man’s original certainties about God, himself, and the universe” has led to “the decline of a moral conscience grounded in absolute values” and to the “real danger” of “the self-destruction of the European conscience.” Why is it, Ratzinger asks, that Europe “has lost all capacity for self-love”? Why is it that Europe can see in its own history only “the despicable and the destructive . . . [and] is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure”?

Europe’s secularists have heard critiques like Ratzinger’s before, and dismissed them as the special pleading of committed Christians. The welcome surprise in Without Roots is Marcello Pera’s answer: in effect, a parallel critique from a self-described non-believer and philosopher of science. “Infected by an epidemic of relativism,” Pera writes, Europeans believe “that to accept and defend their culture would be an act of hegemony, of intolerance, [betraying] an anti-democratic, anti-liberal, disrespectful attitude.” But precisely this toxin has led them into “the prison house” of political correctness, a “cage” in which “Europe has locked itself . . . for fear of saying things that are not at all incorrect but rather ordinary truths, and to avoid facing its own responsibilities.”

. . . In his own essay in Without Roots, Ratzinger, adopting an idea from Toynbee, proposes that any renewal of Europe’s civilizational morale can be effected only by “creative minorities” who will challenge secularism as the EU’s de-facto ideology by means of a re-encounter with Europe’s Judeo-Christian religious and moral heritage. For his part, Pera suggests that the needed “work of renewal . . . be done by Christians and secularists together.” That work, he writes, will involve the development of a “civil religion that can instill its values throughout the long chain that goes from the individual to the family, groups, associations, the community, and civil society, without passing through the political parties, government programs, and the force of states, and therefore without affecting the separation, in the temporal sphere, of church and state” (emphases in the original).



I'm not a Christian like Weigel and Ratzinger, and I suspect there's not much substance to Pera's 'civil religion' ideas. I'm not a genuine "deep thinker," either, just an interested layman. One notion I've had is that the West needs to return to older source than Christianity, even: Aristotlean ethics. The details of which I have only a superficial knowledge.

I cannot see the connection you're drawing, Roxanne. Could you draw me a map? I have some knowledge of that period in history and I can't for the life of me see what you mean.

And, in my opinion, by your reasoning you'll have to include the neo-cons as villains. There are no better intentioned people on the planet, as Murray repeatedly points out.

Pol Pot, Allende, Stalin and Hitler did not believe they were doing evil. Everything they did was for the best.

Oblimo said:

Wow. How'd you figure? Wilson fought against the tarrifs and reparations that devistated Germany's post war economy, IIRC. Do you mean his doctine for the League?

Click to expand...

No, I mean his getting us into the war in the first place. It's an unknowable alternative history question, but if we had not gotten in the sides might have eventually been forced to negotiate a truce that would not have created the dynamic that led to round two in 1939. Remember when Pat Buchanan got in trouble for bashing FDR on getting us into WWII? At the time I thought, "What an idiot - he should be dumping on Wilson." I mean, WWII was as close to a Manichean struggle of good vs. evil as there will ever be in such affairs. WWI was just a bunch of rich boys using the lives of the servants to fight a prestige grudge match. None of them deserved to win. The problem is by getting in we ensured that a few of them did.

BTW, there is a magisterial account of Versailles recently authored by an Canadian woman, Margaret Macmillan: "Paris 1919: Six months that changed the world." I read it last year; it's a tour de force that really unpacks all the details of that otherworldly conference.