The Dish

Aussie hawks have been less contrite over Iraq than America’s, argues Michael Fullilove.

A reader offers a cogent challenge to my book:

Leaving aside all quarrels about the meanings of words, the central fact is that any intellectual position is subject to the danger of authoritarianism. Clearly that happened to Enlightenment liberalism with communism. The right is at least equally susceptible,  however. For me, the right is more susceptible precisely because of this business of privileging tradition and longing for the past (even allowing for your desire to disavow the explicit aristocratic leanings of the Aristotle crowd). Thus, your book comes off to me as an exercise in trying to avoid facing what the consequences of historical conservatism have always actually been, no matter how lovely and poetic its expression. Those consequences are for me typified by the Bush Administration. The powerful will always find ways to believe that it is in everybody’s interest for their traditional grip on power to be maintained and expanded (just as rich people will hire economists to prove that giving more money to rich people will make society better – I hope you tumble to that scam someday). In the service of that end they will be secretive and cruel, all the while feeling that they are nobly doing what must be done. Our only real hope is constant agitation against tradition, however much loss we risk by it. Don’t worry that it will be overwhelmed – plenty of powerful people will defend it, and love will defend it, too. In almost every age of the world it’s the other side that needs help, I believe. 

This is too long already, and I am still full of the things your book made me think about. Maybe just two more thoughts, staccato. First, I liked what you said about Leo Strauss, who is an icon here at St. John’s, where I teach. He read books, that’s what he did; he would be horrified to have his name connected to the launching of wars. I think your diagnosis was right that he was afraid, too afraid, and – in theory, mind you, which was all that was ever asked of him – consequently too willing to surrender the open society into the hands of the powerful elites offering an illusory freedom from fear.

Second, I believe this was your problem, too. You exaggerated the danger of terrorism and consequently surrendered your critical judgment into the hands of the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration shared your exaggerated fear and foolishly decided to elevate the status of these people to that of warriors, rather than the relatively small group of criminals that they are. I admit that it is another reason I dislike conservatism, that it seems to me always to be exaggerating fear as the first concern of human life. I disagree with Hobbes on that point, at least as you present him. In the terms of your book, prior to being afraid that our families and homes will be taken away, surely we built them? Building and loving are our first concern – fear is second, and should always be servant to the first. Isn’t it true that the most frequent command from God in Scripture is "Be not afraid?" I think that is practical advice, and that the world has suffered far more from an excess of fear than from an excess of hope.

A diverting and fascinating glimpse into American public religiosity: "Bible Road: Signs of Faith in the American Landscape". The photographs of roadside religious messages speak for themselves, but Paul Elie has written a typically elegant introduction as well.

It was fine for bishops to publicly condemn Kerry for dissent, but a quiet sit-down is more appropriate for Sean Hannity. Hmmm.

Brad DeLong, a writer consumed with hatred of conservatism in any form, argues that even Burke just made it all up as he went along, supporting tradition when it agreed with his principles and junking it when it didn’t. Money quote:

What are good institutions? Burke sounds like Madison: checks-and-balances, separation of powers, rights of the subject, limitations on the state. Burke’s views on what good institutions are are Enlightenment views – that branch of the Enlightenment that took people as they are and politics as a science, that is, rather than the branch that took people as Rousseau hoped they might someday be and politics as the striking of an oppositional pose.

Because he finds that the English past is usable as a support for his Enlightenment-driven views, Burke makes conservative arguments in Reflections. But whenever conservative arguments lead where Burke doesn’t want to go – to Richelieu or Louis XIV or the plunder of Ireland or the Star Chamber or Warren Hastings or imperial centralization – Burke doesn’t make them. England’s inheritance of institutions and practices is to be respected wherever it supports Burke’s conception of properly-ordered liberty, and ignored wherever it does not.

Well, yes and no. Burke’s fundamental point is that everything in society is contingent and that change must always begin with what came before and is most successful when it works inferentially from that tradition rather than being imposed from outside according to abstract theories or texts. Tradition is also a very expansive term. An American can reach back deeply into the American past and resurrect an ancient tradition and make it fresh again – thus appearing to be quite radical, while still fitting into the definition of a Burkean conservative. It is always up to the statesman at any period of time to make a prudential judgment about what change is good and what isn’t.

Hence, to a liberal who wants a clear and timeless theory about what makes something just or unjust, right or wrong, Burke looks unprincipled. To a conservative, however, he seems, well, prudent. Conservatives in the Anglo-American tradition have many strains to draw on – Schmittian and Burkean, among many others. Increasingly, it seems to me, there is a divide between conservatives who look to Madison and Burke, and those who look to more authoritarian impulses. The crisis in American conservatism came to a head when the South took over. The South has never been fertile soil for Madisonian or Burkean conservatism. And I doubt whether any party based in the South will ever be conservative in the manner I admire.

The Terminator meets Jesus.

A reader writes:

You’re the guy who’s supposed to be an independent thinker, just wrote a book, but can’t quite voice what he doesn’t like about Hillary, so he falls back on linking no-substance 1984 propaganda ads or praises Maureen Dowd for her usual smears and character assassination (labelled "insightful"? Just like any other 13-year-old at the mall?).

How about taking a day off blogging and instead of playing with your dogs, try to at least come up with some sensible written explanation for your stand?

In my defense, I have defended her reasonable positions on the Iraq war, and don’t regard her policy proposals as uniquely half-baked or far too liberal for my taste. I come back to character, which I’ve learned matters a lot. I simply see her opportunism and focus-group politics to be disconcerting. This isn’t about gender. My long passion for Margaret Thatcher should lay that to rest. But I see in Clinton the antithesis of Thatcher: an instinct always to say what she thinks we want to hear. At this point in time, America needs better.

A reader writes on why we went to war:

The fact is: we relied so heavily on the weapons of mass destruction argument because it was the easiest rung on which to hang our hat. Everyone knew that Iraq had stockpiles of at least chemical weapons. And once we got in there, who knows what we’d find on the biological weapon or nuclear weapon front?It wasn’t even a question in anyone’s minds, us or other foreign intelligence services. So we relied on that rationale, because it’s hard to make an argument that "we need to go in there and knock heads." Even if that is what needs to be done.

Obviously, the strategy of relying on that justification was a horrible mistake. We’ve now lost total control of the narrative.

It doesn’t make D’Souza’s point any less relevant though. The problem is not that the United States went into the bar to rough up some thugs and show that there was a new sheriff in town. The problem is that if you are the sheriff, you can’t go into the bar and get your ass kicked.

Walking into that bar is about demonstrating your power and credibility. If you get beat up, you’ve only demonstrated how weak you are, even if you are eventually victorious. If the sheriff manages to beat the local thugs into submission, but suffers a broken nose and cracked ribs and has to take the next few days off recuperating, then he’s lost all credibility both with both the thugs and the townsfolk.

This is basically the situation we are in now and why, instead of victory, we’re fighting for a narrow loss.

And it’s why the architect of this strategy is now sounding more and more hysterical. When Dick Cheney looks weak, when he has made the U.S. look weak, we are in trouble. Weakness invites attack. If and when the next attack comes, Cheney’s failed strategy will be partly responsible. He hasn’t just undermined the soft power of the U.S. He has deeply undermined American hard power.

Money quote:

I think that the most important quality for a president is character. All the decisions that the president has to decide, the most important ones are very close decisions. And I have great confidence that John will help us solve the toughest problem for any administration and for our country – to take us from where we are to where we haven’t been, and I think John is the man to do this."

More interesting to me is the following:

McCain said he would stop rendition and immediately close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba if he were elected president. McCain said he would make those moves to help improve the country’s image abroad.

Why wasn’t McCain’s pledge to shut down Gitmo a news story?