Also BTW, the SPUSA, DSA and SPUSA each claims to be the true heir to the American democratic-socialist tradition of Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Bayard Rustin.
Gotta LOVE that cognitive dissonance! 
Sorry, that should be “the SPUSA, DSA and SDUSA each claims . . .”
Even I get them confused.
Check out Pat Buchanan’s America First Party (http://www.americafirstparty.org/), his policy organization The American Cause (http://www.theamericancause.org/), and his new weekly magazine The American Conservative (http://www.amconmag.com/). Those are the paleocons – nativist-isolationist-populists. They stand for strict limits on immigration, a non-interventionist foreign policy, no budget deficits, nationalist, anti-globalist trade policies, decentralization of political power from Washington to the states and cities, and decentralization of economic power from Wall Street to Main Street. In fact, they have some common ground with the Greens and Ralph Nader – to whom Buchanan gave a very sympathetic interview in TAC last month, and he’s floated the idea that true conservatives should vote for Nader instead of Bush this year.
Strange bedfellows, you know? 
What’s so important about Israel?
If it sunk into the Mediterranean tomorrow, how would the US be worse off in any way?
Wow, I go away for dinner, and everybody’s got questions. Well, now that I’m full, fortified, and waterlogged (It’s pouring out there), I’ll do my best to answer them.
Brainglutton, I’ve never read Strauss, so I don’t know to what extent Shorris is right about what Strauss believed, or to what extent the neocons adopted his philosophy. I have read Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind”, and Bloom was a student of Strauss, if I recall correctly. Bloom argued that modern higher education was failing to actually educate students. He said that it was teaching a kind of moral relativism, where all points of view were seen as equally valid, regardless of what those points of view were. In his view, the purpose of a university education should be to teach students how to think properly and rationally, and he said that the study of the premodern philosophers could do this, because they were concerned with questions like “What is truth, and how do we find it?” and “What is the ‘good life’?”
You’ll also be interested to know, as per your other post, that followers of Max Schachtman, who I had mentioned earlier as influencing the many of the neocons were the ones who founded the SDUSA.
AHunter, I think that neocon ideas are being misrepresented generally, mostly by people opposed to either Israel or the Iraq war, and the media, who tends not to be overly analytical or attuned to nuance, doesn’t help. Should we have gotten involved in Afghanistan before we did? Yes, although I don’t know how easily that would have been to sell politically. I doubt that either Presidents Clinton or Bush would have had or would have wanted to expend the political capital before 9/11. The Taliban was, I’m not afraid to say, a thoroughly evil regime, and really a cancer. I don’t know as much about what’s going on in Afghanistan as I would like, but from what I hear, rebuilding is going well, although there is still intimidation of people registering to vote, and the government doesn’t have full control over the country. Unfortunately, it’s not one of those “democracy is right around the corner” things. If we’re serious about building a democratic state in Afghanistan (or Iraq, for that matter), first the people need to know that the government will protect them if they try to exercise their rights, and also from random violence. You also have to change fundamental antidemocratic attitudes. A lot of people believe that women are inferior, that political problems should be settled with violence, that they don’t have the right to make their voice heard, that their opponents don’t have the right to make their voice heard, and so on. All these attitudes need to change and it takes time.
What do I think about Bush? I think he’s not as much a member of the religious right as he pretends to be, for one thing. I was a lot more worried about him when he first took office than I am now. What’s he done right, from a neocon point of view?
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Invasion of Afghanistan/Iraq-These were governments that needed to be overthrown. They were anti-democratic, they were threats to their neighbors, they were supporting terrorism (Al Qaeda in the case of the Taliban, various Palestinian groups in the case of Iraq)
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The “Bush Doctrine” in general-
To a large extent it’s an enunciation of existing policy, but it’s a good idea.
- No Child Left Behind- It has some problems with implementation, but it’s not a bad thing for the federal government to say to the states “You need to establish some way to measure your educational systems and work to improve results in underpreforming areas”
What Bush could have done better:
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The invasion of Iraq- (and some neocons may disagree with me on this) We could have finessed it better, for one thing. I think if we had tried harder, we could have increased the coalition…we might have been able to get France on board, at least. The administration also seems to have overstated the state of Iraqi WMD programs. While I think this was largely an honest mistake on their part, they should have done better
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That whole anti-gay marriage amendment-it’s stupid pandering to the religious right.
I’m sure I could think of other things to put in his pro and con column, but that’s what I can think of for now. And, since this post is getting long, I’ll end it, and continue in another one.
Part II
xtisme, I would say your impression is right. Lemur said what I would have said on the matter of neocons and religion, and said it better. And neocons aren’t wedded to things like a balanced budget (although who can be against balancing the budget in theory?)
iwakura43 wonders if I’m an imperialist, and I wonder what s/he means by the phrase. There’s a story of a conversation in 1913 between the American ambassador to London and the British foreign minister. Mexico was on the brink of a revolution, and civil war was about to break out, so the foreign minister asked the ambassador what the US was planning on doing, and got the answer,
“We’re going to go in, and make them vote, and abide by their decision.”
The foreign minister asked what would happen if the Mexicans wouldn’t abide by the decision, and the ambassador said something like,
“Then we’ll go in again. America’s going to be around for 200 more years, and if we have to spend a little of that time going around teaching other countries how to be democratic and stable, we will.”
I don’t think the US should create colonies, and I don’t think we should exploit the people of other countries, but I do think we should interfere with “foreigner’s affairs” sometimes. If genocide is going on, we should try to stop it. If an ethnic or religious group is suffering from a pattern of discrimination, we should try to fix it, if a government’s exploiting its people, we should get them to stop. This doesn’t mean we need to go to war with everybody. War should be the last resort. But we can’t just turn a blind eye and say nothing’s wrong, just because we’re not directly affected. That’s what a coward does. If we really believe in our founding documents, if we really believe that all men are created equal and endowed with basic rights, then that has to mean all men. Not just Americans, not just people in democratic countries, but everybody, from the Kurd, to the Sudanese, to the Tibetans.
Sevastapol, Israel’s important because it’s a liberal, stable, democracy that shares our values, and has been since it’s founding. It’s not perfect, and it needs to solve the whole Palestinian problem, but it’s a lot better than any of its neighbors, although Jordan is starting to move in that direction too. It’s also an ally of ours. If it were to disappear, it would be just as bad as if, say, the Netherlands or Denmark disappeared.
You’ve misunderstood the question. Why so important that it is the principal recipient of aid & political problem the US endures and puts up with in the region. What hard-headed benefits do the neo-cons derive from that support, given the associated detriments?
“Ally” is just begging the question. The Netherlands/Denmark analogy only holds insofar as the disappearance thereof would have no appreciable affect on the US. The analogy falls apart in that removing Israel from the equation would accrue many and obvious benefits to the US.
And my life would be easier if money fell from the sky; but given that Israel isn’t going to magically disappear, how do you propose to “remove it from the equation?”
I don’t. I’m asking a question.
To re-phrase the question for furt’s benefit. What hard-headed, real-politik, material benefits do the neo-cons promulgate as flowing from the support the US gives Israel, to merit the substantial costs/detriments of that support.
I’m mystified by the Bush administration neocons. I’ve read more than once that they (some of them, at least) want to distroy our social programs, so that govt will no longer be supplying much of anything to either the poor or the middle class – because this will make it easier to destroy the govt.; to make it (govt) “small enough to strangle in the bathtub”.
This seems completely and utterly at odds with much of what the administration is doing to move in the direction of a more powerful govt. Examples: They’re reducing civil libterties. They’re heavy-handedly overruling the states who’ve legalized medicinal marijuana. They’re gung-ho on the war on drugs. They’re hard at work trying to see to it that judges thoughout the land stick to their rigid dictates as to what sentence to mete out for which crime. And surely advancing the relig-right agenda is a move in the wrong direction? Increased snooping into citizens’ bedrooms is surely not the direction in which to move if one wants to reduce the scope and power of govt.
Wanting to cut way back on social programs and reduce the size and scope of govt is libertarian. But in so many ways, the Bush admin neocons seem the antithesis of the libs. Libs want to end the war on drugs, beef up civil liberties, return to full enforcement of the bill of rights, etc. Just the oposite of the neocons.
Captain, can you explain all this?
I can’t help but think of the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea when reading this
Sevastapol, I’m saying we need to support Israel because it’s the right thing to do. And, I don’t know that supporting Israel does hurt us that much. It makes the Arabic world like us a little less, but they’re not going to like us very much anyway, because right now, the Arab countries don’t tend to be liberal democracies.
Hazel, “strangle it in the bathtub” is a quote by Grover Norquist, who’s more of a libertarian than a neocon. And the neocons don’t agree with the religious right. I need to get going, but I’ll talk more about this later.
Captain Amazing how would you respond to the statement that the Neocon movement fundamentally misunderstands the nature of US power by overestimating its military strength while underestimating its moral authority?
By that I mean that the US has historically not been an imperialist power, it has relied on good will and encouraging states to act in their own enlightened self interest in order to secure compliance with US wishes. When the US behaves in an overtly hegemonic and militaristic way, as it did in Iraq, the US undermines its status as a moral leader in the world, and given its military and economic power it necessarily triggers an anti-American backlash forcing states into alliances against America that would not have been formed had the US behaved in a more internationalist manner. That is to say, by exercising its power overtly, the US loses a great deal of the source of its power.
Please explain a few things to me. I am a conservative, who believes that:
-it is the duty of government to interfere in the lives of its citizens ONLY when abuses occur
-the US shouldinvolve itself in world affairs ONLT when ABSOLUTELY necessary
-governemnt should SHRINK with time, NOT grow
It seems to me that Bush and company have made some major mistakes. Ever since the end of WWII, we have interfered and intervened in the affairs of foreign countries. Our efforts have usually ended in disaster. Take for example:
-Korea: lost 55,000 lives, still have three army divisions there, 50+years later.
-Vietnam: lost 30,000 lives, blew $200 billion. Result: communist governemnt in Vietnam
-Cuba: supported “Bay of Pigs”, then, withdrew support. Result: Castro’s regime more powerful than ever.
-IRAQ: war shows no sign of ending, 1000 US soldiers dead, bill $200 billion and rising.
Can’t we just STAY OUT?? If you add up what we spent on allof these ill-advised adventures, we could fix every highway in America! And, we could develop enegy sources that would make us INDEPENDENT of the Middle East. Why are you Neocons so hell-bent to repeat the lessons of the past? 
But my point is that even if you answer “nothing,” (which, for sake of argument, I’d grant) you’re still left with the question of what you’re actually going to do. It can be argued that the best reason for supporting Israel is simply that the alternatives are worse.
I’m not a neo-conservative, but I’ll take a crack at Sevastopol’s question.
Why do we support Israel? The answer is simple. Remember the wars between Israel and the neighboring Arab states? Even after the shooting ended, the neighboring states refused to sign peace treaties. They regarded Israel as fundamentally illegitimate. It was clear that just because the shooting was stopped temporarily it meant nothing, a new round of fighting would begin whenever the Arab states felt they had a decent opportunity.
So President Carter (the wily neocon) attempted to broker peace treaties between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the rest. Obviously, whether Israel existed or not, the US didn’t want war in the middle east, since wars were disruptive and threatened the oil supply. Since we couldn’t wave a magic wand and make Israel vanish (Israel having won the last three wars), the policy was to try to get Israel and the Arab states to co-exist…if not in a state of brotherly love, at least not shooting at each other.
In order to induce Israel the Arab states to sign formal peace treaties (and thereby implicitly recognize that Israel wasn’t going to vanish), Carter promised them foreign aid as a reward, that is, we would bribe them to stay at peace. We had to send aid to both sides, because if we sent aid only to one side they could use it to gain a military advantage over the other side. Aid to both maintained rough parity. The dictator of Egypt, Anwar Sadat decided to sign the deal. And so to this day we are still sending both Egypt and Israel aid, because of our agreement that if they remained at peace with each other we would give them aid. Since Israel and Egypt are still at peace, despite Sadat’s later assassination and despite chilly relations between them, we still give them aid. Eventually all the other states signed some sort of peace agreement with Israel, with the notable exception of Syria.
As to why neocons tend to favor Israel, well, as I said earlier many/most of them are Jewish. Of course they are going to be biased to one degree or another. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that most American Jews support Israel, for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. Neoconservative political philosophy simply reinforces support that would probably be there anyway.
Some other points.
Some people have gotten the impression…either from careless media, or from biased media, that the Bush administration is a neo-con administration. But this is false. Yes, there are neo-cons in the Bush administration. But Bush himself isn’t a neo-con, Dick Cheney isn’t a neocon, Condolezza Rice isn’t a neocon, Karl Rove isn’t a neocon, Colin Powell isn’t a neocon, John Ashcroft isn’t a neo-con (far from it!), Donald Rumsfeld isn’t a neocon (although he probably comes closest), Tom Ridge isn’t a neocon. So when the Bush administration acts contrary to neocon ideals I don’t know why people are suprised, or find it hypocritical. They don’t usually act from neocon principles because they aren’t neocons. Simple, really.
One more thing. BrainGlutton posited: Neoconservatism is heretical and despicable by the standards of modern American conservatism. But this is an odd way of looking at things, like the neocons betrayed the conservative movement. But of course you know that if anybody betrayed anything, the neocons betrayed leftism, not conservatism. The origional neocons were leftists who abandoned the left and decided to make common cause with the conservatives…not because they were now rock-ribbed conservatives, but because they felt that conservatives were better allies for their classic liberal aspirations than the cold war era leftist movement. As BrainGlutton pointed out, modern American conservatism is different than conservatism in most other countries, and those differences made American conservatism a potential ally for the neocons. A more traditional conservative movement wouldn’t be.
Yeah, everyone knows that “neo” means “bad”. 
Madmonk28, I would disagree with that statement. I understand what you’re saying, and I understand that an anti-American backlash can be a danger, but by intervening sometimes, it improves our moral standing with the rest of the world.
If the US was going around saying, “We don’t like your trade policies, so we’re invading” or otherwise being exploitative, then yes, intervention would hurt us. But so long as we keep the well being of the other nation in mind, and let the rest of the world know that that’s what we’re doing.
The problem with our invasion of Iraq isn’t that we invaded, it’s that, first, we didn’t lay the groundwork for the invasion. We should have said that Sadaam needs to go because his being there is hurting his people, that he’s an especially nasty dictator, the Iraqi people deserve to be free, and that while we let the Kurds and the Shiites down before, this time we’re going to help them. And, then, of course, it was stupid of us to restrict reconstruction contracts to companies headquartered in those countries that participated in the coalition. It looked like a payoff, and that’s the one thing we need to avoid. I hope that helps clarify what I’m trying to say.
ralph124c, we’re so hell bent to repeat the lessons of the past because they worked. Let me add to your list of post WWII “boondoggles”
- The Marshall Plan-rebuilt an economically destroyed Western Europe and probably did more than anything else to prevent Communism or Fascism from developing there
- NATO-Created an alliance that stopped the Soviets from overrunning Western Europe
- The Berlin Airlift-Saved the people of West Berlin from surrendering and becoming part of East Germany
- The Korean War-You’re right, we still do have a lot of troops there, and the North is communist of the crazy variety, but the South isn’t. It’s a democratic country, thanks to us and the other UN forces
- Grenada- Ok, you may laugh, and a lot of people did, because Grenada is small and unimportant, and probably always will be. But we did save it from a communist military coup, and it’s a democratic country now. If we didn’t get involved, whose to say it still wouldn’t be communist run.
- The Cold War in general-Our hammering the Soviets everywhere helped lead to communism’s fall in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. By not giving an inch, by fighting for 50 years to stop the Soviets from spreading their influence everywhere, we not only helped keep much of the third world from becoming communist, we helped destroy communism there, by denying the Soviets the plunder they needed to prop up their failing economic and political system, and making them spend more than their economy could afford defending themselves.
Sure we’ve had failures. Vietnam was one, and maybe (although I hope not), Iraq will be one. But there’s a reason that the pro-democracy students at Tienamenn Square built a model of the Statue of Liberty. America is a symbol of what people in other countries want to be, and we don’t do them a service if we “stay out”, if we build walls aroud our country and retreat behind them, begging to be left alone. Ultimately, we don’t do ourselves a service either. The world is more interdependent now than ever, and we have to play a role in it.
Captain Amazing:
::snicker:: Heh. Ha.
Hee hee hee.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha… ROFLMAO!@splurting coffee
::sniff::
Heh.
::hiccup:: ::rubs eyes::
There is undeniably ::giggle:: truth in what you say.
I’m a member of the SPUSA myself . . . we’re not a bunch of fucking splitters! 