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Entry: Neocons and the Left: Know Your Enemies Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/neocons_and_the_left_know_your_enemies#2436 Post contents: As always, Professor Gottfried, you’re writing in precisely the right spirit and mood. I see less than no sign in my small corner of the universe that attention is turning toward a possible renewal and restoration of acceptably conservative patterns of thought and behavior. None of the professors or students at my small Midwestern liberal arts college can talk themselves out of a basic acceptance of whatever is the current installment of egalitarianism—“inclusiveness” and “multiculturalism,” the last time I checked. This is true of campus “conservatives” as much as it is of self-identified Leftists. No one can answer basic, obvious challenges to a left-brained reading of history. No one can answer basic questions about history at all. No one can explain what makes a liberal a liberal or a neoconservative a neoconservative. Since knowing about these matters would help a great deal in understanding current social, intellectual, and political reality, they are precisely the matters that never enter public discussion. And why would they? It’s not in the interest of any public figure to address them. I also agree that traditionalists ought not to oppose the forays into the biological sciences you mention. Biological concerns may not be every traditionalist’s cup of tea, but then, neither are rocket science nor viticulture. Why radically oppose potentially worthwhile research in areas outside of one’s focus, especially when they might be able to offer us useful knowledge? Aristotle, for one, did not share an aversion to biology, nor did he keep its insights sealed off from philosophy and politics. At the moment, however, I’m unable to rise even to your level of optimism when it comes to what you call the “paleo movement.” Is there such thing as a paleo house to put in order? Was there ever? “We,” whoever we are, have yet to prove that we can build our house on modern soil, and that the house would matter at all if we built it. The boxing analogy also fails to inspire. Where is there a fight worth entering? Where is there a match that offers the possibility of even a well-fought loss? Doesn’t public debate and discussion operate on premises that ensure “our” ideas will never be heard in any meaningful way? A boxing analogy presupposes the equity of an athletic contest, and this condition exists in no place that I have visited. Assume we find ourselves with loads of funding and influence with the “public.” What would this mean? We would still be working with modern ideas, through institutions formed and run on modernist assumptions. Looking out over the contemporary landscape, I have a difficult time imagining what a “movement” would look like, much less what it would be doing if it were “doing well,” to say nothing of “winning.” Tell me more about the Europe where a “Right” is “doing splendidly”—I can’t get my head high enough above the waves to see that far. Sent at: 2008 05 15