Taki Magazine

Barack’s Born-Again Liberalism

by Grant Havers on December 15, 2009

Despite longheld doubts and suspicions about the president’s resolve in fighting the “War on Terror,” a few prominent neoconservatives have celebrated Obama’s recent Oslo speech as a triumphant testament to the “Christian realism” characteristic of Cold War liberalism.  In The New York Times, David Brooks recently praised The One for soberly recognizing that evil exists in the world.  Obama deserves a place in the pantheon of cold warriors like Harry S. Truman and JFK for (finally) understanding that pretty words and flowery sentiments are no substitute for the use of overwhelming firepower against the enemies of freedom.  Of course, one should not embrace the dark side while one combats one’s foes, as Brooks warns:  “So as you act to combat evil, you wouldn’t want to get carried away by your own righteousness or be seduced by the belief that you are innocent. Even fighting evil can be corrupting.” 

Now this fight against evil, Brooks assures his readers, requires the spread of American democratic values hither and yon.  Yet there is nothing “corrupting” about this.  Perhaps as a way of assuaging potential worries that the project of democracy-building can be as corrupting as any stab at empire-building in the past, Brooks brings in some heavy guns here.  Brooks takes pains to show his awareness of the old biblical truth that every human being is a sinner, even with the best of intentions.  For this reason, he quotes with approval the great Cold War strategist George Kennan:  “The fact of the matter is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us.”

Brooks also quotes Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous statement on democracy as perhaps the best answer to the objection that a democratic imperialism is still an imperialism.  As Niebuhr once put it, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”  In short, the spread of democracy is the best political antidote to the sinfulness that lurks in every human heart.

Now there is nothing new about finding a prominent neoconservative who praises democracy-building as “realistic,” or makes use of a Cold War liberal theologian like Niebuhr.  Other neoconservatives, particularly Michael Novak, have praised Niebuhr for his realistic defense of the moral superiority of democratic capitalism.  Having written elsewhere on Kennan’s and Niebuhr’s opposing views on Lincoln’s legacy in the Cold War era, I was, however, irritated that Brooks shows no awareness of the stark differences between these two stalwart defenders of America’s interests.  For all of Niebuhr’s much vaunted “realism,” this liberal Protestant never doubted that true Christian charity required the assumption that all human beings desire democracy, American-style.  By contrast,  the conservative Protestant Kennan warned America’s leaders in the Cold War era not to assume that all peoples desire American liberty and equality.  Because this seasoned diplomat doubted that there was an inner Jeffersonian democrat lurking in every human heart, Niebuhr accused Kennan of an amoral “egotism.”  Apparently, what was realistic to Kennan was heartless to Niebuhr. 

Brooks is right about one thing:  Obama is indeed marching in the footsteps of Niebuhr.  But it is not a march that Kennan would have followed, for that path leads to the howling wilderness of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

• Print Article
• Email Article
• Email the Editor