I enjoyed Christopher Roach’s excellent essay.  Unfortunately, the Republican Party and the conservative movement have degenerated into mindless jingoism.  The only way towards a foreign policy based on non-interventionism and genuine national interest is to reinstate the draft.  Perhaps then the Christian Zionists and the yahoos who listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News would not be so enthusiastic for war if their sons were doing the fighting in Iraq and Iran.

If world politics were a game of Texas Hold’em the buy-in would be the Holocaust.

Excellent essay on why the Neocons secretly hate the West that goes to the motivations behind their destructive policies and their sabotage of America and non-Zionist-fixated Christianity. I think you were overly charitable in your assessment of the Neocons’ favorite country, “Israel, the chief cheerleader for ‘never again’ politics,” but I guess by now, everyone realizes Israel is an institutionally racialist apartheid state (literally) that codifies discrimination against those of non-Jewish blood, including Christians, so Neocon hypocrisy in that area is by now more or less self-evident.
But I think we can safely look to Israel’s institutionalized Jewish supremacy as the actualization of what the Neocons really have in mind for America in their heart of hearts, too (which is where they differ in motivation from left-liberal radicals); the Neocons just intend to ease America to that state of affairs through a more subtle approach than the brazen one Israel took. Their approach is to reduce America to an assortment of racial and ideological tribes, of which the Zionists (Christian and Jewish) will be the most powerful, and of which the Neocon Jewish Zionists will be the high priests. The high priests and their acolytes will then take America in this direction or that, into this war or that, not unlike the Neocons Bush admin has done.
None of this should be surprising or shocking to those who know history and the ruthless machinations of the power-mad; why, even a simple viewing of “Braveheart” would practically suffice to give anyone the education they need to diagnose the Neocons’ kind of tribal Machiavellianism. But average Americans for some reason have a hard time comprehending bad will and base tribalism, and when they do comprehend it, the left-liberal Church of Political Correctness and its various government and media enforcement arms are there to shout them down as racists and bigots for opposing it. This is why it will take the restoration of non-tribal Christianity to reclaim America from the hellish vision that both the Neocons and the left-liberals have in mind for it, and to prevent the racial and tribal bloodshed that will inevitably follow the further ascension of the Neocons or their partners in hatred-of-the-West left liberals and Neolibs. The Neocons are today talking-up the clash of civilizations of the West and Islam (and even the West and Russia) as if they speak for the West, but this is merely a strategic tactic to further militarize America and “unite” us in bloodshed behind the Neocon high priests.

Egad! Here we go again.  “The neocons are Zionists.” (yada, yada) If this is the case, then why do neocons support a new Islamic state (Kosovo) in the EU?  How does it help the interests of Israel to encourage their enemies to gain strength in Europe? To call the neocons “Jewish” in any serious way is about as absurd as claiming that Obama and Billary are deeply thoughtful Christians.

Equality and nondiscrimination demand that one puts the citizenship of one’s countrymen on an equal plane with that of strangers. -=Roach=-

Arent we all descendants of Noah and Adam? Arent we all Gods creation? Arent all western religions Abrahamic?

Let’s be fair, and let’s be clear. 

The neoconservatives and the far left both look on the past and see much to be ashamed and angry about.  But I don’t think the neoconservatives hate America.  They just think America is finally hitting its stride.  The left, by contrast, concludes the West and America are rotten and deserve to be destroyed, overtaken by other peoples with strange religions, her property distributed amongst the deserving Sacred Other.

Neoconservatives see hope for redemption if America continues the process of jettisoning all from the American identity that is contingent, historical, European, Christian, ethnonationalist, selfish, self-regarding, and nonideological.  They even dismiss our love of America’s beauty and vast expanses as the “love of mud,” to quote Peggy Noonan. 

They are loyal to a Platonic Ideal America based on a minority view that took shape at the time of the Founding--rationalist Jeffersonian liberalism coupled with moderist Hamiltonian energy.  This love of a “creedal” America is amplified their perceived needs as ethnic and religious minorities.

Neoconservatism clearly began as a strain of Jewish thought, but like other Jewish innovations in the field of ideas--Marxism, Freudianism--it has universal appeal and is defended in universalist and rationalist terms.

Thus, neoconservatives abstract from the parochial ethnic needs of American Jews to a more generic formula that also requires interventions in places like Kosovo and Iraq.  It requires Muslim immigration, for example, and the rejection of racial and religious profiling of Muslims.  These other policies are embraced in the interest of ideological consistency and in the interest of publicly rejecting any American ethnic and religious identity.  These policies also reject any ethnic and religious American connection with Europe that may require intervention more readily there (or immigration preferences from there) but not in the Middle East. 

In other words, they idealize a deracinated Platonic ideal of America:  one that is internally mixed up at home and forcefully united abroad under the aegis of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.  It is a land where the English language, the Christian religion, and other retrograde loyalties are subordinate to the “civic religion” of democratic capitalism. I think they really believe this stuff. I do think they’re concerned with their safety and flourishing as a group--what Jewish leaders unashamedly once promoted as “What’s good for the Jews"--but their actions suggest a sincere devotion to an extremely dangerous universalist ideology, a devotion so extreme they’re willing to endanger Jewish Americans rather than admit their formula is wrong.  (Why else do neoconservatives not support mass deportation and profiling of American Muslims?)

Under neoconservative democratic and universalist logic, Israel should be something of an embrassment, as it is an obvious ethno-state. Its defensive “apartheid” policies, quite frankly, bother me no more than South Africa’s did back in the day.  My only concern is that we’re footing the bill and taking part of the blame.

It is notable, along these lines, that Israel is frequently defended by neoconservatives on the ground that it’s a “democracy.” Their surely is a religious and mystic connection of American Jews to Israeli Jews and Israel itself, but their public rhetoric does not make this connection. It would be embarassing and discrediting to the universalist rhetoric we here the rest of the time from neoconservatives.

Unlike the Alan Dershowitzes of the world, the neoconservatives may be results oriented and have dual motives, but they take great pains to be consistent:  they’ve erected an elaborate philosophy that requires support for Israel today and intervention in Europe (and open American borders) in 1939.  Any position that deviates from these two tests is rejected.  So, even facts are obscured or wilfully ignored, including Israel’s various illiberal policies.

But paleoconservatives should not make the same mistake in reverse.  Israel’s elaborate border controls, ethno-religious immigration policies,ethnic and religious profiling, widespread possession of arms, and sense of internal solidarity are things we should immitate.  There’s no reason to venture into Noam Chomsky territory just because we, quite reasonably, see no good reason to pay for Israel’s decision to live in what their leaders rightly call a “bad neighborhood.”

I just don’t want the aggravation, as they say in New York.  But let’s not ignore the universalist logic and thus the broader appeal of neoconservatism.  It’s quite distinct from the crude ethnic solidarity at work in the 1913 case of Leo Frank, a Jewish O.J. Simpson, whose cause celebre gave rise to the ADL.  Neoconservatives are willing to hurt America’s objective interests today to embrace an elaborate series of policies that, like some Rube Goldberg contraption, always yields the following three answers no matter what else they do:  America should have attacked Germany in 1939 and should behave this way today towards similarly situated countries; the U.S. should have let in the St. Louis refuge ship and should behave this way to strange and broke third world immigrants today; the U.S. should support Israel and other embattled democracies today.

Christianity is about unity, Chris, not uniformity.

The left, by contrast, concludes the West and America are rotten and deserve to be destroyed, overtaken by other peoples with strange religions, her property distributed amongst the deserving Sacred Other. -=Roach=-

Bullshirt. I know many conservative democrats and leftist atheists. They are fighting for the constitution more than I see the people here fight for it. They see our idiot illusionary two party system for the triangulating fraud it is. They detest Marx, Strauss, Nietzsche and the rest of the nutty professor teachings.  Take off the strawman blinders and instead of parroting some pedantic piddle pilfered from amplitude modulation radio go out and ask these people what they think before making broad and inaccurate statements before pinning your imagination on others.

Although I have never met the author of this blog, Mr. Roach’s
attempt to find some philosophical consistency in the politics of the neoconservatives
is one of the best hermeneutic efforts of its kind that I have read. Despite my
longtime preoccupation with the same subject, I learned a great deal from looking at his
perceptive comments about “the march of abstractions.” The question that needs to be
addressed, however, is why so many heartland, self-proclaimed conservatives and
patriots thrill to neocon abstractions. Why don’t those who look and sound like Middle
Americans recognize that the neocons are not genuine American nationalists? Perhaps
America’s patriotic rhetoric is now so full of
Wilsonian abstraction and appeals to global democracy that it is no longer possible to
draw distinctions between patriots and Wilsonians--or American nationalists
democratic revolutionaries.

First, thanks so much for your kind remarks, Mr. Gottfried.

On the merits, surely our susceptibility to this appeal of abstractions has something to do with our founding documents, which justify American independence not as the vindication of their rights as Englishmen, but rather as the triumph of a universal principle: Lockean natural rights.  This rhetoric reached its heights in the Platonic appeals to abstract natural right in Abraham Lincoln.  This appeal was tied, as with the neoconservatives, with a grand and religious-sounding rhetoric that promised worldly redemption for our own worldly sins. 

Even our must run-of-the-mill wars--such as those against hostile Indians--often found rhetorical justification as a civilizing mission of world-historical importance:  Manifest Destiny. 

Americans instinctually do not like going to war.  We are not a particularly imposing or bellicose people. But the rhetoric of crusading for justice has always appealed to us.  The neoconservaties are close to this tradition, but with a twist, and that twist is the massive significance of the Holocaust as symbol in the mind of Americans and Europeans in the late 20th Century.

In World War I, the appeal of “making the world safe for democracy” was rooted in a confidence in the superiority of American institutions.  American democracy was dueling with retrograde European empires. 

Today, the neoconservative rhetoric is rooted in the language of shame and redemption.  Shame at America’s alleged earlier failures to stop the Holocaust that we must now atone for and make right. 

The rhetoric has a certain appeal because when Americans go to war, as when they do something as normal as punishing criminals, they like to do so with a sense of abstract right and mission.  Americans are uncomfortable with raw appeals to force and interest and identity. 

Consider the historiography of WWII in recent memory. There seems a certain ambivalence about the Pacific campaign because it lacks the ideological relief of our conflict with Germany. The European campaign, as memorialized in Capra’s films, represented the clash of the democracies with the regimented stoodges of old world dictatorships: the moral validity and practicality of our chosen way of life was on the line.

Studying the clash of Nazis and America lets us condemn ourselves and praise ourselves (as in our Western selves) all at once, with the Nazis as the old, illiberal, ethnic-defined west, and America as the vangaurd of modernism and liberalism.

In contrast, our battle with Japan had as much in common with the ancient battles of Greece and Persia; it was a classic fight for the integrity of a homeland, brutally attacked by another nation. The Japanese were fighting for little more principle than their own interest in dominating the Pacific. It was perhaps the least ideological war the U.S. ever fought. The Pacific Campaign, fought for the modest principle that people should not attack our country, shows that our fighting men fight quite well when the stakes are concrete and tangible. But rhetorically we are not comfortable with this; it’s as if we collectively lack faith in the value of our own survival and the survival of that way of life to praise it now that the spread of liberalism is complete.

Grant Havers wrote: ‘“The neocons are Zionists.” (yada, yada) If this is the case, then why do neocons support a new Islamic state (Kosovo) in the EU?’

Fair point. I would argue it is because they hate the Christian Serbs and their ally, Christian Russia more than they fear the impact on Israel of Islamic inroads into Europe, which they already regard as anti-Semitic anyway. I would also argue that the Neocons like the idea of conflicts between native Europeans and Muslims in Europe because it hastens the path to WWIII (or IV...whatever) which will then hasten the West’s conquer and occupation of the Middle East in a replay of WWII in a different theater. The Neocons believe this sequence of events would, in the long run, be good for Israel. Now the Israeli government was indeed opposed to the recognition of Kosovo, and its nationalist real politic (as opposed to abstract theoretical) perspective is one reason I have more respect for Jewish Zionists living in Israel than I do those living in America (although I disagree with Israel’s state-enforced racialism, which, like affirmative action in America, begets resentment and tribalism, only there it begets terrorism, too). Jewish and Christian Zionist Neocons dwelling in America live in an abstract, insular universe where the consequences of their pretentious schemes and bizarre superstitions never touch them, and so the sky is the limit. Indeed, they are probably as dangerous to Israel as they are to America, if not more so. What if their WWIII didn’t go the way the Neocons planned, as the Iraq war hasn’t, and Israel paid the ultimate price? The Neocons would just shrug and blame someone else, as they have with Iraq. The Neocons can probably best be described as half-assed Zionists, half-assed Americans, half-assed state capitalists and half-assed socialist universalists. They’re a jumble of contradictions; no wonder their polices are so screwed up, and have screwed over America so badly.

Leo Frank a Jewish OJ Simpson? I thought the it was supposed to clear that Frank was innocent and it was the black janitor who was the likely guilty party.

Not that I’ve actually studied the case.

An outstanding analysis and persuasive defense of nationalism.

Oy.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Roach falls into the same muddled thinking as neocons vis-a-vis Nazis and refugees. The Nazis were not German nationalists. There were Pan-Aryaninsts, and in the case of der Fuherer, happily saw the unworthy Germans burn before them. a union of Norse/Germanic countries is anti-Nationalist and the Nazis despised true nationalism and conservatism. I’m sure that JP Zmirak could do a better job explaining this.

Regarding the canard about the St. Louis and 1939, it is all wrong. There is a huge difference between immigration and refugee policy. The US would not have been substatially changed had Jews been interned in Cuba rather than be sent to their deaths. But the failure of the US to allow in refugess, or even of the anti-Semitics bastards at the State Department to FILL QUOTAS, does not change the fact taht the US had no moral obligation to intervene against Nazi Germany until Hitler followed the Tripartate pact and declared war on us. The only moral obligation was to help refugees, which could have been done in Cuba.

Israel is subject to the same, if not worse, liberal thinking as America. Hence Israel supported the Bosnian Muslims and Croats against Serbia and the Kosovars. Israel even let in Bonsian Muslims, knowing full well that many “Palestinians” and “Arab"-Israelis are actually descended from Yugoslav Muslim colonists/refugees of the Ottoman collapse, and knowing how Haj Amin Al-Husseini raised an SS Division from Bosnia, which killed more Jews than Russian soldiers.

Neocons make unprincipled exceptions from liberalism for Israel, just as they do for America. The number of and specifics of the exceptions varies by individual. However, most neocons recoil at real nationalism.

I apreciate Mr. Havers for pointing out the obvious, that neocons are not real Zionists. Find one neocon who supports a serious Israeli nationalist party like National-Union (especially Moledet faction) or the Feiglin faction of Likud.

Neocons speak of security and democracy when talking of Israel’s borders, sounding like Rabin-light.

for all the delusions of neocons fomenting a European-Islamic war, I don’t know weather to laugh or cry. I wish it were true. However, neocons lack the sense or intellectual honesty to admit that the problem is Orthodox Islam, which calls for eventual World Caliphate and dhimmitude. Neocons cannot accept this, since race and religion cannot matter. Hence they oppose reducing Muslims immigration into Europe and support Turkey’s entry into the EU. (Who says neocons know history. I suppose Manzikert and 1453 mean nothing.)

Finally, Ed.
Zionism means supporting the existence of the state of Israel. 80%+ of Americans are Zionists.

Thank you Mr Gottfried, could you please explain to us simple folk what the Hermaneutic dialectic really is?

Thanxx

Christian Zionists want the borders of Israel to expand to the biblical promise of all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates rivers.  They want a Third Temple built on the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque now stand.  The believe that these things must occur for the Second Coming of Christ.
Arabs and Muslims know this and I suspect that is what has them all fired up.  Take a look at a map of
“Greater Israel”.  It would help alot if Israel would show some humility and compensate the Palestinian refugees for the land and homes they once owned.  Israel should also set the Christian Zionists straight about their unrealistic expectations.

The third temple cannot be built until a perfect red heifer is born.

LarryS and Jet,

You are conflating all Christians, who ahppen to be Zionists, with a specific group of Protestants. It is a little like suggesting that all Jewish Zionists are members of National-religious movement, or its more radical splinters.

Larry,

“Arabs and Muslims know this and I suspect that is what has them all fired up.  “
Taht type of propoganda does do so. However, no Zionist group with any membership above a few hundred believe that Israel’s boarders should be that of the Solomonic empire. The River to the Sea is universally mistranslated. It is actually the Litani river (in Lebanon) and a Wadi in the Sinai. the borders are within a few percent of the current state of Israel + the disputed territories (Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan Heights).

“ It would help alot if Israel would show some humility and compensate the Palestinian refugees for the land and homes they once owned.  Israel should also set the Christian Zionists straight about their unrealistic expectations.”

I’m fine with compensation, even for the renters who owned nothing, or those whose rents were sold to Jews.

We’d be a lot better off if American Jews saved up for this rather than donating to leftists.

blah, blah, blah....Every essay on this website is basically the same.  We’ve been hearing this for so long - has anyone anything else to say?

God, how damn boring!

“Finally, Ed. Zionism means supporting the existence of the state of Israel. 80%+ of Americans are Zionists.”

Nice try, Ron. Zionism comprises all of the Greater Israel initiatives Larry mentioned, and then some. It also includes notions of institutionalized racialism, Jewish supremacy, and a petite Pan-Hebrew version of the Pan-Aryaninsm you mentioned above, international in scope. 80% of Americans probably THINK it means merely supporting the existence of Israel, but if that’s all it amounted to, even I would be categorized as a Zionist. In fact, moderate Israeli Jewish nationalists who merely want to live in a Jewish state without all the baggage might do well to distinguish themselves from the Zionists and Zionism, which has grown into a full blown international ideological and social network. You think all those wealthy AIPACers don’t do big business together (some of it of questionable legality) based on their Zionist ties, that has nothing to do with Israel? Now duplicate them by hundreds of similar organizations around the world, and you’ve put your finger on Zionism. Sure, they’re entitled to freedom of association, but lets not pretend they operate in the best interests of their respective countries, or that the extent of their agenda is ensuring the existence of Israel. Come on, Ron, do the writers on this site appear to you to have hay on their shoulders?

“But paleoconservatives should not make the same mistake in reverse.  Israel’s elaborate border controls, ethno-religious immigration policies,ethnic and religious profiling, widespread possession of arms, and sense of internal solidarity are things we should immitate.  There’s no reason to venture into Noam Chomsky territory just because we, quite reasonably, see no good reason to pay for Israel’s decision to live in what their leaders rightly call a “bad neighborhood.””

Amen.

“Christianity is about unity, Chris, not uniformity.” Jet

Sweet but untrue.  Christianity is about proselytizing, spreading the Good News.  “I am the way, the truth and the life:  no man cometh unto the Father but by me” St. John 14:6
Jet, your interpretation is a secular humanist invention.

I thought Mr. Roach was a supporter of the Iraq War. If I am wrong, I apologize, but if that was the case why did you support it originally and why have you changed your mind?

Ed,
What is the ideology and social network? What is your perceived agenda?

AIPAC is not some hard-right Zionist group. It is a liberal organization, dedicated to a three-state solution (Israel, Jordan, and “Palestine").

Members of all organizations, social or political, meet and form contacts. My local YR club is not a conspiracy to rule NYC.
Capitalism is based on trust and people preffer to work with those they know and trust.
Jews place considerablke trust into other Jews, which is what allowed Jews to conduct international trade (Radanite, Bankers...) at times when institutions among Christians for international trade were limited. Why this trend would not continue today, is beyond me.
Don’t you put extra trust in those attending your church?

Here is a new (4-15-08) Jewish-sponsored organization for promoting peace:
http://jstreet.org/

I supported the war in Iraq at one time with reservations, not least the pollyanish rhetoric about democracy.  I thought, though, on balance it was good to disarm a would-be nuclear power that seemed willing to give such weapons to al Qaeda or a similar organization.  Once Iraq was defanged, we should have left.  And since we didn’t leave, and since it’s now apparent the neoconservatives and Bush were hell bent on the Potemkin Village rhetoric that I thought at the time was just bluster, I don’t believe we should have went.  It’s hard to say what I would have said at the time if I believed as everyone did that they had WMD but if I also knew we’d be tooling around aimlessly in the desert. I share the views of other hawkish paleocons like John Derbyshire and Lawrence Auster on this particular. 

I have been very critical of the war since late 2004, have been particularly critical of the surge, and have been disappointed by the mainstream right’s Pavlovian response to “good news” in Iraq, as if somehow a few painted schools and functioning Iraqi Army platoons could sort out the huge mess at a strategic level. 

Anyway, I’ll write more on this soon.

LArryS

So, do you monger leftist orgs trying to destroy all nations, or just Israel?

They support a Piece plan (ie Israel destroyed piece by piece), not peace.

Do you support leftists who want to create Aztlan?

The Aztlan proponents are correct that we did steal the land from them. I also think we put it to better use, but I’d be willing to give it all up and put a big fence around it if necessary. Fortunately for me, I don’t live in the southwest!

If anyone thinks Singh is joking about the Brits, read the War Nerd. I am afraid I may never be able to give up my anglophilia, so in their defense I will say it was simply the nature of the game they were playing and at least they did so in a more competent manner than the ideologues of today.

Long ago an ancient people, a civilization and culture, were forced from
their sacred land and dispersed to live in foreign countries.
The memories of their homeland and rich spiritual heritage were not
forgotten and each succeeding generation longed for the eventual return
of their people to their holy land.  Eventually they slowly immigrated back to their land.  One day critical mass was reached and this special race finally
attained the majority of the population and they declared the land their own.
Civil unrest broke out as the current residents didn’t like being dispossessed of the land they considered theirs, too.  Violence erupted and many people fled for safety in the countryside.  When the fighting was over the people who had fled were not permitted to return to their homes and farms and means of livelihood.  The land, the homes and the government were now under complete control of the immigrants who claimed the ancient land as their own.  The disposed people became refugees and the neighboring states refused to accept the large numbers of homeless.  The refugees were forced to live in camps in the desert.  In the meantime, the immigrants who claimed their homeland anew called it Aztlan.