Comments on: Handleshaus

By: Handle

Handle — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 21:29:58 +0000

It has the formula of a joke, but both the setup and punchline needs work. See what you can do to it:

Who won the war for China’s future between Chiang Kai-Shek and Hirohito?

Mao Tse-tung.

Who won the war for China’s future between Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-tung?

Deng Xiaoping and Adam Smith.

Now, who will with the war for the future of the American Right between the Neos, Paleos, Social Conservatives, and Libertarian Economists?

The Progressive and The Reactionaries.

By: spandrell

spandrell — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 14:37:08 +0000

To go on with your metaphor, China was screwed anyway.

The American Right is just a category error.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:05:34 +0000

I’m not sure about this. The neoconservatives are quite slippery about democracy, certainly if Leo Strauss is considered exemplary. I think the war for democracy is more important to them than democracy itself. (That ordering might even be defensible.)

By: Handle

Handle — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 11:49:31 +0000

Clarification:

“The War” in my piece is about the bitter struggle between the neoconservatives and paleoconservatives for influence over (perhaps ‘the soul of’) the American Right. No about who is ‘correct’ or who you prefer, but who achieved the dominant position most often during the judo match

I don’t think anyone can argue that the paleos completely lost the match and are obsessed with that defeat and trying to claw back a few inches by whatever means available.

But with Obama’s reelection the whole American right finds itself in that position now, and various new interests are jockeying for intellectual influence and control on utterly different battle lines. It’s not that the neo-paleo ideological split isn’t relevant in a larger sense, but it’s not what the new breed – which doesn’t identify with either of those sides – are talking about these days.

When the Chinese Communists and Nationalists fought amongst themselves, the Japanese took ground. Does anyone care to read the frustrated mumblings of some old Kuomintang scribblers anymore? Time took over.

By: Trainspotter

Trainspotter — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 05:56:39 +0000

I don’t know that neoconservatives are into ‘world war’ as such. They’re into permanent war or permanent revolution, which comes from their Trotskyite origins. I suppose you could argue this amounts to the same thing as ‘world war’, as it does appear to involve permanently warring against the rest of world, if not at once, by piecemeal. But there is a geopolitical end for neoconservatives, just as Trotsky’s permanent revolution had a theoretical end. The end is global, hegemonic “democracy”.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 05:09:47 +0000

One riposte to this analysis begins with an examination of the military within the neoconservative imagination. It isn’t simply a means to a geopolitical end, but a source of moral inspiration — associated with values of national unity, Anglo-Jewish (Abrahamic) exceptionalism, patriotic social and economic sacrifice, and the model of the ‘war economy’ as the mobilization of society in the direction of a sublime moral end. There’s no way ‘liberal’ international relations strategies could substitute for this, in fact, they have an opposite moral valency (aligned with Kantian globalist-pacifism). I’m not even sure that neoconservatism, rigorously conceived, can entertain the prospect of a morally ordered society outside the context of a world war.

By: Trainspotter

Trainspotter — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 04:16:45 +0000

That Ron Unz piece was interesting. Lots of juicy inside information.

By: Vladimir

Vladimir — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 04:01:15 +0000

Not really. Neoconservatives and mainstream liberals both agree that an essential function of USG is spreading and enforcing liberalism globally, and their main disagreement is on the question of when this task should be undertaken with fire and sword, and when the more pedestrian and non-violent methods of propaganda and subversion will suffice. But they all believe that there are conceivable (and sometimes actual) circumstances when either of these approaches can be legitimate and necessary. This is just one case where they happen not to disagree.

Historically, in the final analysis, even the deepest and seemingly fundamental disagreements between liberals and neoconservatives have been about these practical questions of tactics, and not about truly essential differences of principle and purpose. For example, in retrospect, it’s clear that Reagan-era liberals and neoconservatives had an almost identical idea of the final outcome they wanted for the world. The disagreement was purely on whether USG should try to coax the USSR gently to join it in working towards the goal of achieving global liberalism, or whether the USSR was a truly reprobate non-liberal entity that would have to be forcibly shoved off the world stage to let the USG do it single-handedly.

By: Contemplationist

Contemplationist — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 02:05:45 +0000

What you may want to say instead is that neoconservatism is the flip-side of liberal internationalism. If the adherents of the latter had decided to become entryists into the Right, I can’t see how their strategy would differ in any significant way from neoconservatism.

By: Psykonomist

Psykonomist — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 01:26:11 +0000

Neoconservatism is the essence of the Cathedral. It’s simply not conservative at all, at least in the fiscal, and/or paleo sense. Political appointments are for show and marking time, not indicating any shift in policy.