Cowlesy
05-17-2010, 07:28 PM
I thought this was a really, really good read. Check it out!
(reprinting part of it here)
http://the-classic-liberal.com/authoritarian-fetish-death-of-conservatism/comment-page-1/#comment-16008
The American political process has become its own worst enemy. It divides people. It pits us one against one another. Far from being the "solution" to anything, politics creates conflict.
Politics is an immoral, zero-sum game of theft and control. The "left" claims virtue is found by stealing other people's goods and services to "spread them around," while the "right" claims virtue is found by limiting rights and controlling vice. And both sides will gladly pursue their version of utopia down the barrel of a gun.
Disagree with the "left," you're a hate-filled racist. Disagree with the "right," you're a libertine anti-Semite.
Fun, isn't it?
It's amazing our country has lasted this long.
The Rise of the Authoritarian Right
I'm not going to bother getting into the authoritarian impulses on the "left" right now. Why? Because most of my readers are on the "right." So consider this post self-reflection.
According to George Nash, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, "American conservatism is not, and never has been, univocal." The intellectual movement began in earnest with libertarians in the 1940's, particularly economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, with novelist Ayn Rand bringing it more popular appeal.
Around this same time, traditionalists (known at the time as New Conservatives) like Russell Kirk arose, men who were "appalled by totalitarianism and total war," along with the rise of New Deal liberalism and its mass culture. A third group of intellectual conservatives later arose in the sixties - the anti-Communists like Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, and William F. Buckley.
While the traditionalists and libertarians found more than enough to work together (fusionism), the ideologies of these 3 different groups of conservatives ultimately proved incapable of holding together a successful coalition. So when the neoconservatives first appeared in the late 1960's, the movement was permanently torn apart by these "liberals who had been mugged by reality."
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that draws heavily from the teachings of Leo Strauss (9/20/1899 - 10/18/1973), an American philosopher who specialized in the "relativism" of classical philosophy at the Universty of Chicago. Strauss taught such things as the importance of Plato's "Noble Lie," and that the masses can be kept complacent through the use of religion, as both a distraction and as a powerful voting bloc. Thus, the Religious Right movement was born.
Neither the traditionalists or libertarians were fond of the neoconservatives. They found them to be "secular, Wilsonian internationalist, and welfare statist." They didn't like the Religious Right either, complaining that they were "insufficiently anti-statist." History has proven them correct too. The conservative movement has done nothing during my lifetime to stop the growth of the state.
The Old Right (traditionalists and libertarians) considered itself a Remnant (borrowed from the Prophet Isaiah). Now, according to Nash, there’s a "conservative conglomerate," yet "even as conservatives escaped the wilderness for the promised land inside the Beltway" the culture has turned away from what conservatives desire and thus, right-wing sectarianism was born - neocons, paleoncons, social conservatives, Big Government conservatives, compassionate conservatives, and so on ...
The Noble Lie
The weak thread that held these factions together for as long as it did was anti-Communism - or more specifically, war. But the thread was broken on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell, and with it the anti-Communism that held the conservative movement together. So without communism to define itself against, the Right sought new enemies around which to coalesce.
(reprinting part of it here)
http://the-classic-liberal.com/authoritarian-fetish-death-of-conservatism/comment-page-1/#comment-16008
The American political process has become its own worst enemy. It divides people. It pits us one against one another. Far from being the "solution" to anything, politics creates conflict.
Politics is an immoral, zero-sum game of theft and control. The "left" claims virtue is found by stealing other people's goods and services to "spread them around," while the "right" claims virtue is found by limiting rights and controlling vice. And both sides will gladly pursue their version of utopia down the barrel of a gun.
Disagree with the "left," you're a hate-filled racist. Disagree with the "right," you're a libertine anti-Semite.
Fun, isn't it?
It's amazing our country has lasted this long.
The Rise of the Authoritarian Right
I'm not going to bother getting into the authoritarian impulses on the "left" right now. Why? Because most of my readers are on the "right." So consider this post self-reflection.
According to George Nash, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, "American conservatism is not, and never has been, univocal." The intellectual movement began in earnest with libertarians in the 1940's, particularly economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, with novelist Ayn Rand bringing it more popular appeal.
Around this same time, traditionalists (known at the time as New Conservatives) like Russell Kirk arose, men who were "appalled by totalitarianism and total war," along with the rise of New Deal liberalism and its mass culture. A third group of intellectual conservatives later arose in the sixties - the anti-Communists like Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, and William F. Buckley.
While the traditionalists and libertarians found more than enough to work together (fusionism), the ideologies of these 3 different groups of conservatives ultimately proved incapable of holding together a successful coalition. So when the neoconservatives first appeared in the late 1960's, the movement was permanently torn apart by these "liberals who had been mugged by reality."
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that draws heavily from the teachings of Leo Strauss (9/20/1899 - 10/18/1973), an American philosopher who specialized in the "relativism" of classical philosophy at the Universty of Chicago. Strauss taught such things as the importance of Plato's "Noble Lie," and that the masses can be kept complacent through the use of religion, as both a distraction and as a powerful voting bloc. Thus, the Religious Right movement was born.
Neither the traditionalists or libertarians were fond of the neoconservatives. They found them to be "secular, Wilsonian internationalist, and welfare statist." They didn't like the Religious Right either, complaining that they were "insufficiently anti-statist." History has proven them correct too. The conservative movement has done nothing during my lifetime to stop the growth of the state.
The Old Right (traditionalists and libertarians) considered itself a Remnant (borrowed from the Prophet Isaiah). Now, according to Nash, there’s a "conservative conglomerate," yet "even as conservatives escaped the wilderness for the promised land inside the Beltway" the culture has turned away from what conservatives desire and thus, right-wing sectarianism was born - neocons, paleoncons, social conservatives, Big Government conservatives, compassionate conservatives, and so on ...
The Noble Lie
The weak thread that held these factions together for as long as it did was anti-Communism - or more specifically, war. But the thread was broken on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell, and with it the anti-Communism that held the conservative movement together. So without communism to define itself against, the Right sought new enemies around which to coalesce.