Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: A Neoconservative Categorical Imperative Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_neoconservative_categorical_imperative#26050 Post contents: Mr. Roach, I appreciate the response. "Let us be precise. Neocons are disloyal Americans. They demand bellicosity by America to serve a complicated ideology espousing universalist and unpatriotic principles refracted through an uncritical, pro-Israeli lens." Uncritical pro-Israel lens? Neo-cons attack Israeli policies all the time. However, your basic assumption is just wrong. The entire Neocon project undermines Zionism. It's just that neocons lack the maturity to see the damage they are doing to Israel, just as they do to America. Were neocons to win, a democratic middle east would simply vote for war with Israel, while Israel's desire not to join in a binational "Palestine" would lose any international support. On the other hand, the current reality certainly hasn't helped Israel. While Iraq was techincally at war with Israel in 2003 and was funding the PLFP, the effects were minimal. On the other hand, Iran's nuclear program and aid to Hezbollah and Hamas was a threat. Since then, things have gotten worse for Israel. Meanwhile, to help Bush's policies that help ISrael not one bit, Israel has been pushed to give up land and do nothing in retaliation to attacks on Israeli cities. "Most self-identified neoconservatives are Jewish, and they identify America’s moral failing in the mid-20th Century as an excessive and selfish nationalism." I'm not certain about your figures. There are a heck of a lot of real neocons who are Catholic and that isn't even counting the sloppy definition of neocons which include any moderate Republican or right-of-center internationalist. "Obviously, they see this same failing in Nazi Germany. They believe that everyone, but particularly Jews and other minorities, are safer and societies are better that are founded on universalist principles in which Jews are not easily identified within nationalist societies as “The Other.” " True for some, but there are also Irish Americans who remember those cute "No Dogs or Irish Allowed" signs. This is an endemic problem among under assimilated ethnic whites. "They are partisans for modernism and its expansion through US power. So there is an internal program--liberalism, mass immigration, multiculturalism, American “civic religionism,” Lincoln fetishism--and there is an external program: wars and diplomacy to spread liberal democratic and capitalist values" So they are JFK Democrats who have moved slightly to the right. " Invade-the-world/Invite the world, as they say at vdare.com. Neoconservatives clearly view the US and Israel’s respective interests as the same, because they view any nation’s good as defined by (a) fidelity to the universal principles of liberalism or (b) the expression of healthy Jewish ethno-nationalism. The former values serve the later, even if they serve other interests as well." You do realize how universal principles undermine Judaism and Jewishness. They are an anathema to a tribal religion. “If the neoconservatives would not serve here in the United States military, one might imagine they’d serve over there in Israel itself, since this is their only tangible ethno-religious loyalty.” Of the conservatives I went to schools with, all those who volunteered for military service, all but one were neocons who joined the US military. (And before anyone make a smarmy comment, although I am not a neocon, I volunteered for the Air Force in 2001, but was rejected due to medical condition. ) “(They love America only for its power; they want everywhere from Iraq to Vladivostock to be identical and indistinguishably liberal, capitalist, and non-nationalist.) But no dice. They’re war-mongerers, transparent nationalists (for Israel), and possessed of dual loyalties, but they’re also cowards.” All Jewish ones? Like Paul Wolfowitz, who when not cheating on his wife with an Arab, spent his time pressing Jewish groups to accept a two-state solution? “I don’t think any Arab state presents a conventional threat to Israel with or without democracy. Israel has nukes, remember. They’ll be fine, and no one will be dumb enough to attack them.” Really? I suppose that Hamas and Hizbollah are non-state actors. However their benefactors, Syria and Iran (the latter being non-Arab) are real states and are conducting a proxy war. Once Iran goes nuclear, what makes you think that they won’t attack if they think that they can take Israel out with 3 or 4 weapons? “I also think the romantic portray of Israelis as the stalwart democratic capitalist’s outpost in the Middle East is an exageration too.” It is a rather disgusting liberal line. However, Israel is a western ally in the region. “They’re an old-fashioned ethno-nation, like Turkey or mid-century India. I wish we were more like them, but I don’t think we should foot the bill for their crummy neighborhood, festering Palestinian problem, or semi-socialist government.” The UN through UNWRA and the Arab states festered the Palestinian problem. That said, I agree that we should not foot the bill for any of it. And that includes aid to Egypt, Jordan, and UNRWA. “Real nationalism means taking pride in standing up on your own two feet, i.e., the virtue of strategic independence.” Too true. “Read Slezkine on communism and Jews in his tour de force work, the “Jewish Century.” They were clearly the vanguard group and liked communism for much the reason they like American modernism: its universalist and being a Jew under such a regime is not supposed to be a demerit.” That was the theory that sucked in self-hating retards. Of course from Marx on, communism was one of the most anti-Jewish movements out there. “Slezkine reports that even with the Doctors’ Plot, Jews on a per capita basis suffered less under Stalin and his purges than ethnic Russians.” 1 .Except that Judaism suffered as much as any other religion and since Jewishness does not exist for long without Judaism this a recipe for extinction. (Again, see “On the Jewish Question”) 2. The death count was low because Stalin died first. “The anti-Jewish paranoia of Stalin in the Doctors Plot episode has been a useful means of papering over the disproportionate participation of Russian and Ukranian Jews in the Bolshevik atrocity, the anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian character of these years particularly from 1917-1948.” And the continued existence of ethnic Jews, largely deracinated, papered over the anti-Jewish nature of the regime. Judaism was a crime. Moreover, look at Poland where antisemitism was official policy and those Maexist former Jews, once convicted in show trials, became scapegoats for the crimes of communism and its inherent violence. “ After the establishment of Israel proper, Stalin and other Communist non-Jewish leadership worried about dual loyalties, plots, and the like.” Stalin’s dislike of Jews was much older. Moreover, having all Zionist leave would have worked just as well. No, the goal was the end of a cohesive ethnic group. “Nonetheless, Jews remained disproportionately represented in party leadership and important ideological positions--media, law, universities, secret police, NKVD, KGB--until 1989.” And Jews caught practicing their faith were sent to the Gulag right up till then. “We needn’t hate Israel, Jews, nor eschew a magnaminous concern for the weak and the downtrodden to realize that neoconservatism is one more variant on universalist liberalism promoted by people whose self-interest as a group will be furthered by its triumph. Its fundamental driving force is the destruction of traditional nations, national identities, and the necessarily subordinate position of minorities in healthy nation-states.” But we also needn’t pretend that the inherent contradictions of neo-conservatism don’t exist, blame it all on Jews, or pretend that liberalism does not hurt Jews. Sent at: 2008 05 22