A Neoconservative Lion Roars Again

ONE BY ONE the great conservative voices are falling silent. The great generation of Mises, Hayek, Strauss, and Voegelin are long gone. Irving Kristol is silent, though his wife continues to write. Buckley is ageing and not as rambunctious as in his prime.

But the ageing neoconservative lion Norman Podhoretz is still roaring. And in OpinionJournal.com he gives what may be his last great contribution to this great nation. He commends President Bush’s grand strategy for World War IV and beats back the critics who claim that Bush has given up.

Not at all, he claims. Just like Ronald Reagan, Bush is a practical politician who lives by the art of the possible and the prudential.

In the 1980s pundits like Podhoretz frequently chided Reagan for his tactical retreats—that seemed like betrayals at the time. Now we have critics from the right feeling betrayed and critics from the left relieved that he has abandoned his cowboy diplomacy.

But in the end, Podhoretz writes:

what these acts of Reagan's turned out to be was a series of prudential tactics within an overall strategy that in the end succeeded in attaining its great objective.

Just like Reagan, Bush is constrained by the tactical possibilities. We shouldn’t expect miracles.

Anyway, we make a mistake when we compare Bush to Reagan. World War IV is in its Truman stage. It was Truman who set up the grand cold war strategy of containment, just as Bush has set up the World War IV grand strategy of Middle East transformation.

In 1953 the Republicans gained the White House and, despite all their criticism in the previous four years, continued the Truman grand strategy.

The great test will occur when the Democrats next win the White House. Will they turn away from the Bush strategy, as they seem to suggest and certainly want their “netroots” to believe? Or will they quietly continue the Bush strategy?

For it is not that the Bush strategy is so brilliant. It is merely the strategy of common sense. We believe in capitalism, democracy, and the rule of law. What else can we do but promote and support them throughout the world, and what else can we do but resist the forces arrayed against them?

Podhoretz concludes:

I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a president who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

What else would you expect Podhoretz to say?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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