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Notes on Neoconservatism
| Article
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11660 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1986 |
4,411 Words |
| Author
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Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried is a senior editor of the Modern Thought
section of The World & I and author of The Search for
Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right. |
What follows is a revised version of a paper delivered last spring at the Philadelphia Society. Because the paper was intended to stimulate discussion, the major points are provocatively stated. Distinctions are drawn with bold strokes; conservatives and neoconservatives are placed in stark opposition on both practical and philosophic issues.
Although I believe that polarities exist between the two groups, it is equally true that neoconservatives differ among themselves as well as with others. The same types of qualifications should in all fairness be made for the conservatives treated in my paper, though space does not permit me to do it here. Flesh-and-blood conservatives, like their neoconservatives counterparts, are far messier to classify than might be inferred from my presentation.
Might and power, as Machiavelli reminded us, shape human affairs. Both are also relevant to the theme about to be discussed, the rise of neoconservatism as a force on the American Right. Those identified as neoconservatives enjoy demonstrable respect in conservative circles. The Scaife, Smith Richardson, and John M. Olin foundations, all committed to upholding traditional American values, fund their enterprises generously - indeed almost exclusively. Conservative thinktanks, most notably the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), court neoconservatives celebrities. National Review solicits their contributions. American Spectator and Policy Review feature them with predictable regularity; and the neoconservative publications, Commentary and Public Interest, are often described as the preferred journals of conservative intellectuals. Peter Steinfels The Neoconservatives - whatever its defects – and, more recently, Gillian Peele's Revival and Reaction detail the signs of favor that the American Right has bestowed on the neoconservatives. The hostility to southerners, traditional Christians, and most people to their Right that surfaces in their publications usually fails to catch the attention of their conservative admirers. Even traditionalists like to believe that neoconservatives have come a long way - or that in any case they are still growing.
Such assertions need to be reexamined. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who contributes to neoconservative journals and whose name used to be on the masthead of Public Interest, was in anti-Soviet, pro-Israel liberal democrat in the 1960s, and he remains one today. Carl Gerschman, Sidney Hook, S.M. Lipset, and Daniel Bell, all of whom appear frequently in neoconservative periodicals, have been self-labeled social democrats most of their lives.
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