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The Essence of Neoconservatism
| Article
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11534 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
3,163 Words |
| Author
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Gary Bullert
Gary Bullert is professor of political science at Troy State
University and is the author of The Politics of John Dewey. |
I.
In The Neoconservatives, Peter Steinfels insisted that his intellectual movement could not be understood apart from its historical roots. Only thereby could the claim that they are legitimate liberals be evaluated properly. Yet, John Dewey, the father of modern American liberalism, is never mentioned. Reinhold Niebuhr is scarcely introduced. These omissions represent a seriously flaw in Steinfels' analysis. Observers have noted that neoconservatives appear to have been largely successful in capturing the soul of the Reagan presidency. An unyielding rhetoric of anti-communism coupled with a critique of federal bureaucratic programs epitomizes this regime. Would it not be ironic if this conservative administration was co-opted by pragmatic liberalism?
John Dewey and the neoconservatives are linked by intersecting public careers, a common methodology of empirical social science, a commitment to democratic politics, and a recognition of a modern crisis of values. During the 1930s, future neoconservatives were educated within the Jewish socialist milieu of New York City. Some of those popularly identified with the movement include Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Daniel Moynihan, William Barrett, Sidney Hook, Edward Banfield, and Lionel Trilling. As a world-renowned philosopher at Columbia University and political activist, Dewy reigned as a patriarchal voice within reinforced Dewey's efforts to mobilize intellectuals of the anti-Stalinist Left. Many of these aspiring New York Jews were initially sympathetic to Trotskyism. Dewey actually chaired the Trotsky Inquiry in 1937, but his devastating critique of both Stalinism and Trotskyism gradually helped to wean independent radicals away from Marxism itself.
Irving Kristol identified the emergence of totalitarianism, World War II, and the failure of socialism as the catalytic historical experiences for his intellectual circle. Totalitarianism epitomized the self-corruption inherent in ideological commitments, the bankruptcy of liberal theories of inevitable progress, and a crisis of values in Western civilization. Dewey attributed totalitarianism more to a revolt against reason and misguided quest for community than to the modern loss of Christian faith. In Freedom and Culture (1939), Dewey espoused a civic ethos for democracy necessary to meet the totalitarian challenge. He held that America's unique political fabric militated against any totalitarian revolution. Group pluralism, the respect for individualism, the legacy of liberty, and a large middle class buttressed a resilient democratic culture. These are recurrent themes among
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