Thanks to the Neocons
(To the tune of "Thanks for the Memories.")
Thanks to the neocons
Their websites full of dreck
The magazines they wrecked
The foundations they took over
In service to a sect.
How easy it was…
And thanks to the neocons
Our girls are off at war
On a hateful foreign shore
Our cluster bombs trashed Lebanon
But strengthened Hezbollah
How heady it was…
But when the voters demote us
Send us skulking home in a daze
Like whipped dogs we lick our disgrace
And learn to get used to the taste.
But thanks to the neocons
For every war a shill
We’re driven from the Hill
But their mission was accomplished
Since our troops are dying still
A cakewalk it was…
Thanks for the neocons
Those late-night shows on Fox
We watched while drinking shots
Sure Cheney lied and soldiers died
But ain’t Ann Coulter hot?
A kegger, it was…
Thanks to the neocons
Pelosi runs the House
The Court’s still Blackmun’s spouse
Today the way things look
I need a book by Leo Strauss
How subtle he was…
Gone are those brunches on K Street
With salmon, and champagne, and Perle
Now we’re chewing corndogs on Main Street
We wish that Frum
Would also come…
I once heard a prophecy
That the people can’t be fooled
And ridden like a mule
But for five years we deluded them
And it felt really cool.
What chutzpah it took….
This little lied I composed on the morning after past November’s electoral devastation of Republicans across the country—from senatorial seats in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island to district attorney races in places like Dallas County, Texas. I sent it to a few friends, who duly forwarded it to their circles of contacts, one of whom, Scott McConnell was kind enough to reprint part of it in The American Conservative. As I step in as managing editor of this site, assisting the gifted and delightful Taki in his endeavor to broaden the range of discussion on the Right from its current cramped and paranoid state, I thought it fitting to reproduce it—and to append a note of explanation.
First of all, let me anticipate the chorus of innuendo which will arise from my use of a single word—chutzpah. While it is indeed of Yiddish origin, it long ago passed through Ellis Island and enriched the English language. It is by now a good American word, and perhaps the only word, really, to express a certain jaunty, masculine courage (with a hit of gall) which to dusty European émigrés like me characterizes some of the best attributes of Americans—the spirit which drove them to conquer a continent, and eventually (if only for a brief, historical moment which is ending) dominate the globe.
But there is what you call in American English a “down-side” to this kind of courage. It is an engine, and a powerful one, which can drive a man or nation forward against all manner of obstacle, in the face of the cautions of the timid and the calculating, the pessimist and the realist—sometimes to achieve what few had imagined possible.
And sometimes to unmitigated catastrophe. By overriding the virtue of prudence with the voice of manly vigor, it can silence reason itself. It was chutzpah that led Lenin to seize St. Petersburg in 1917. His bold move directly inspired Mussolini—in 1917 still, like so many neocons, a recovering Marxist—to march on Rome. Chutzpah again. While both of those decisions were in the short run successful, each one ended in misery for millions of innocents—from the gulags of Siberia to the plains of Ethiopia, and the death camps where the Duce sent Italian Jews.
The United States is currently governed by a man who possesses chutzpah in abundance. Indeed, he displays few other positive qualities. (I do hear that he’s kind to his dog.) A man who failed at every private business venture which he managed—despite the significant advantage of being the son of a vice president, then of a president, of the world’s most powerful country. A man who cannot string together a coherent sentence, or reliably read from a teleprompter the words of more articulate men. A man who seems utterly deaf to counsel, bored by ideas, resentful of contradiction, and implacable in his determination to pile blunder upon blunder—to dig his every limb into the tar baby, as one of your folk tales would have it. A man who labored mightily during wartime to avoid combat service—and whose vice president said of the Vietnam years that he had “other priorities” than combat. Well, yes, Mr. Vice-President. I imagine that some of the middle-aged men currently residing in V.A. hospitals with prosthetic limbs or incurable trauma might have had other priorities, too.
Growing up as a Catholic of the old school, I learned that the business of virtue and vice is never so simple as it looks. There is not simply courage and cowardice, standing in stark opposition. No, as Aristotle taught St. Thomas Aquinas who taught the Jesuits who taught the Sartos, the good stands not at one extreme, but in a mid-way position, upon the balance of the Golden Mean, between two opposing errors. One’s conscience can be too lax—think of some corrupt Renaissance pope—or too harsh and scrupulous. The latter was what damned Judas, goading him into despair when forgiveness was at hand. Likewise, a man can be too lazy, or too energetic. Too stingy or foolishly lavish. And so on.
In the matter of courage, the Greeks and the priests tell us that virtue lies between the cowardice which leads a man to flee the field of battle (in pursuit, no doubt, of “other priorities”), and the rashness which drives him to throw his life away in a useless attack. The coward flees a necessary fight; the rash man picks fights, desperate to prove something to himself.
Rashness in a man is typically self-destructive—which tends to weed this sort of fellow out of the gene pool. It becomes a more serious matter when this vice pervades a leader, or the men who influence him. It is bad enough to waste your own life; it is far worse to squander the lives of others, whose well-being you will answer for on the Day of Judgment. When rashness corrupts a political faction, it acts like a Midas touch in reverse, transforming gold into dung. It takes a political philosophy and by applying heat, kills off the rich complexity which mirrors external, historical reality, creating the highly distilled and toxic brew which American thinkers like Russell Kirk labeled ideology. It transubstantiates patriotism into nationalism, of the sort which ruined much of Europe in 1914, and again in 1939.
I daresay that the vice of rashness has pervaded much of the conservative movement in America (as it once did right-wing movements in Europe—see Justin Raimondo’s excellent column for more on that). In fact, it has almost destroyed that movement. I challenge the reader to visit a public library and go through old numbers of long-standing conservative magazines, and compare the essays they published 30 or 20 years ago, to the sort of thing they are pumping through the editorial pipes today. The experience, I must warn you, will prove depressing.
Likewise, the reaction on the left against the excesses of the right has driven liberals to paroxysms of mindless rage, to reactive anti-Americanism, to a mindless and promiscuous embrace of an Islamic world which is theologically programmed to overwhelm and destroy every opposing view. A left which once was inspired by Herbert Marcuse (a fool, but an educated one) now marches to the tune whistled by Michael Moore. In this intellectual and moral race to the bottom, it unclear which side will win. But we may with confidence predict who will lose: Americans, especially those brave and self-sacrificing enough to put on the uniform of their country when it led by an unaccountable fool, a dry drunk, a blustering coward, who moves their lives into hazard like the Risk counters he used slide around in his gothic dormitory at Yale. The key to that game, as players will recall, is to control the Middle East.
Franz-Josef Sarto, managing editor of this site, is an Austrian-born journalist residing in Rhode Island.
Comments
The left has been consistently correct on Bush’s disastrous regime, yet you still feel the need to insult us...why? From old, engrained, habit? It takes a bit of, well, chutzpah for a right winger to insult the anti-war left after the experiences of the last four years.
Our rage against Bush is not mindless, but quite justified. And the idea that the left has engaged in a “promiscuous and mindless embrace” of Islam is frankly risible.
The left has learned a great deal from the excesses of the 1960s and early 70s. I for one read plenty of reading of Burke and Hayek in my effort to explore where the left had gone wrong. How much will you learn? I suggest reading some Chomsky.
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Certainly some on the left are not mindless, but groups like ANSWER are still the leading voices against the war on the left, no?
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No, I would say there are several U.S. senators who are now the leading voices against the war. Even on the radical left, the problems with ANSWER are well understood by the serious intellectuals such as Chomsky, etc.
ANSWER did play an important role in setting up the initial antiwar demonstrations. Most people participating in ANSWER, and certainly the vast majority of those who went to the demonstrations, had no idea of the true politics or nature of the small group of people who set up ANSWER. This group is a small Stalinist organization called the Worker’s World Party. These small communist organizations are expert at infiltrating larger movements, concealing their politics, and taking lead roles in organizing. They are parasitic in ways that were learned by militant Communist movements earlier in the century.
The occasional ability of tiny groups like the Workers World Party to worm their way into organizing positions is sued by the right as a propaganda technique to discredit all thought that is at all left of center, or even liberal. . This is like trying to use David Duke to smear Pat Buchanan.
If you want a good perspective on the role of ANSWER written by actual non-crazy but radical left wing intellectuals, try this discussion of anti-war organizing on Z-NET. Note this antiwar piece was written in 2002. Item #8 deals with ANSWER and other groups. Ask yourself whether you generally agree with the piece. If you do, you have something in common with the radical left—Z-NET is about as radical as it gets before you get into these tiny groups of kooks, who really are the left-wing equivalent of neo nazis.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2527
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The war is a very serious issue, and I am willing to take a lot of “pain” conservatively speaking to stop it. I am willing to put up with somewhat higher taxes (Bush’s spending has all but guaranteed it), gay right (didn’t really care too much about that in the first place), and even modification of the medical system (not very free market anyway) to put an end to this war, and future wars like it.
So, I am “coming around.”
I draw the line at immigration, however, and you should too if you ever want to see the poor climb out of poverty.
I am a reasonable netroots fan at this point, and contributed to some netroots candidates (including James Webb).
Maybe I was too strong in saying ANSWER was a leader, but when it comes to the public protests they are always there and the agenda always moves beyond anti-war.
Anyway, peace my friend. I really hope we can get out of Iraq and get out soon.
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I’m right with you on all you said. Stopping U.S. aggression is the most important issue. I would vote conservative anti-war (like Hagel) over more liberal pro-war (like Hilary ?). The truth is, if we were able to spend less on the military we’d have enough money for both tax cuts and some more spending on programs liberals like. Peace.
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The antiwar left is led by Senators now? What Senators? Feingold and Byrd are the only two that are even possibilities and neither is at the forefront of any movement.
The truth is that the left has no dominate movement or organizational center at this point. They haven’t in years. ANSWER can organize a rally, but they have no clout or influence on the general politics of the people that attend the rallies. There is no “program” on the left and no common critique.
None of this is a bad thing in my view, but it is a reality.
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I don’t see how not having a single “leader” is a problem. Virtually every left-leaning organization is against the war.
Netroots/dailkos is certainly A leader in the effort on the left, but there are others.
Is James Webb a leading senator agains the war? I would say yes. How about the the Obama/Murphy/Thompson de-escalation act?
Is the Biden bill part of that effort? I think so.
Certainly I would like to see more, but there are powerful forces preventing democrats from “getting out in front” on this issue. Can’t do much but try to expose them, contribute money and make phone calls/faxes.
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No, as far as I can tell, the Left’s opposition to Bush is still mindless. Like some robot who is programmed to take the opposite view. The war is wrong and the left (who didn’t push democrats or liberals when it might have mattered) happen to be right only in the sense that a stopped clock and a sundial will agree at least once every day.
But the reason I consider the left still mindless are such examples as Texas now mandating STD vaccinations. So they will drag young girls kicking and screaming “But it’s MY body!” into the nurses office where they will be forcefed the vaccine. What next, comatose female patients in hospices (if they aren’t starved to death first)? Oh, and the person advocating this utter lack of choice was from an organization called “NOW”. I do know quite a few rational and reasonable women, so I must put this down to liberalism.
But to return to the war, during the 8 years of the Clinton administration, we could have dismantled the hundreds of bases of our empire’s archipelago, and made the “peace dividend” something real and such that it would keep on giving, but didn’t. And they were all but silent when we were blowing up bridges and the passenger trains crossing them in Serbia. Hence my point that the left is merely a compass with a reversed polarity magnet.
And go further - how much of the left is complaining about the expansion of executive power? No one is suggesting lowering that. It is like a perpetual lotto where the jackpot of increasing and tyrannical power never grows smaller, so when the next democrat wins, they can send anti-abortion activists to GITMO with the “enemy combatant” rubber-stamp. I do remember at the first Clinton inaugural, that when the jets flew over someone said “they are OUR jets now”. The left can stare into the mirror and see what happens when hubris meets power, but don’t realize that it is a mirror and merely a reflection of what they would do (and have done) themselves.
Hagel is an exception, but most senators are merely dead fish that simply go with the stream of public opinion. Since the public is a roiling mass, you have eddies and whirlpools and rip-tides, a particular fish might go opposite but it will be with their part of the stream. Again, you see the republicans caving in when Brokaw, Rather, and Jennings complained about the government shutdown. Then when Bush shouted fire loud enough in the theater of the absurd which is DC, the democratic deadfish went along. (or maybe slightly higher life-forms, the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind - “She turned me into a Newt!”; but lacking the sotto voce “I got better” as there has been no signs of a recovery).
On Chomsky, everything I needed to know about his true nature were revealed in the last sentence in the audiobook version of his latest writing: “Copyright 2006, the Chomsky Grandchildren Trust”. Not that he would want himself, his estate, or his grandchildren to have to pay the taxes for what he advocates. I hope the offspring enjoy their limousines.
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I don’t see how not having a single “leader” is a problem either. In fact I would suggest it’s beneficial. Nor do I see a problem with a lack of a coherent ideological framework.
On the other hand, I don’t see much in these fradulent resolutions. Biden, Obama, et. are political animals. In the case of Biden he did little and said little when it would have mattered. Obama doens’t seem to have opinions of his own. Neither is a leftist.
Webb I rather like, but he’s not much of a leftist either.
Of course I may not be a good judge of what is and isn’t “left”. I think the term has basically no meaning at this point. Oddly the relevancy of the term is at least partially in question because of the fact that much of the intellectual left was very much opposed to the Balkans wars and the fraud of humanatarian intervention. But there are other issues, and the emerging decentralizationist trend on the left makes the gap between the Democratic parties safe liberalism get larger and larger, even as the gap with the Old Right gets smaller and smaller.
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The Left is fundamentally wrong in its economics. It thinks the visible industrialists run things, and systematically occludes the bankers.
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Nice article on the “balance” of virtues - the Good being the mean between two extremes - which is refreshing after all the dualism we hear today about
Left vs. Right or Good vs. Evil.
On a related topic, I just posted another piece about historian Arnold J. Toynbee which may be of interest to persons of conservative bent. Check it out:
http://from-the-catacombs.blogspot.com/2007/02/dissing-toynbee.html
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