Was “neoconservatism” a reaction to détente?
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 09:12:40 PM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  History (Moderator: Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee)
  Was “neoconservatism” a reaction to détente?
« previous next »
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: Was “neoconservatism” a reaction to détente?  (Read 1846 times)
darklordoftech
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 12,390
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« on: September 25, 2022, 04:33:45 PM »

Rumsfeld was one of the leaders of the anti-détente movement and “we can’t trust the USSR to live up their end of the agreement and not have secret nukes” sure sounds similar to arguments for the Iraq War and against the Iran Deal.
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2022, 11:48:40 AM »

I think it probably came along for the ride as part of that anti-détente movement, but it is a long way from traditional "jacksonian" mistrust of foreign powers (Which can easily be channeled towards isolationism instead of interventionism) and the military adventurism and nation building that would come to define neoconservatism.

One thing I would argue that did happen was that the "realists" via their association with détente came to be marred as "establishment", "moderate" or "liberal" and thus set the stage for the neocons to assert themselves as the "true conservatives" during the 2000s. One calls to mind the intransigence on the part of the Bush people regarding their foreign policy line and the distance between those that W surrounded himself with and the types that worked with Bush 41.
Logged
○∙◄☻Ątπ[╪AV┼cVę└
jfern
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 53,612


Political Matrix
E: -7.38, S: -8.36

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2022, 11:25:11 PM »

Rumsfeld knew that Iraq had WMD because he sold them to Iraq. But Iraq got rid of them. So Rumsfeld just sucks really bad.
Logged
Agonized-Statism
Anarcho-Statism
YaBB God
*****
Posts: 3,802


Political Matrix
E: -9.10, S: -5.83

P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2022, 01:41:29 AM »

There's a lot of continuity, and it's just semantics, but the neoconservatism of the '90s was a successor to the Reagan Doctrine that sought to maintain "benevolent global hegemony" with what Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan referred to as "a Neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military strength and moral clarity". Reagan was reacting to a policy of Détente widely believed to have failed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while the neocons saw themselves as proactive in their opposition to Clinton era reductions in military spending, conversely seen by the public as common sense with the Soviet Union gone. They were pretty pessimistic about building off their idol's success because it seemed like nothing could galvanize a country divided by hot-button '90s Culture War issues, save for what a 2000 defense review described as a "catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor".
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2022, 07:38:04 PM »

There's a lot of continuity, and it's just semantics, but the neoconservatism of the '90s was a successor to the Reagan Doctrine that sought to maintain "benevolent global hegemony" with what Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan referred to as "a Neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military strength and moral clarity". Reagan was reacting to a policy of Détente widely believed to have failed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while the neocons saw themselves as proactive in their opposition to Clinton era reductions in military spending, conversely seen by the public as common sense with the Soviet Union gone. They were pretty pessimistic about building off their idol's success because it seemed like nothing could galvanize a country divided by hot-button '90s Culture War issues, save for what a 2000 defense review described as a "catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor".

Yet at the same time, Reagan's actual approach in action was hardly what I would term to be "neoconservative", though obviously every neoconservative would attach themselves to Reagan's legacy as part of what prior to Trump anyway, was a broad based latching onto Reagan's legacy to legitimize various positions that in a number of cases went beyond what Reagan would have deemed acceptable. Hence the old line that "Reagan couldn't survive a primary today".

The neocons were certainly part of this "True conservative" dynamic and milked it for all it was worth until they ended up on the outs themselves.
Logged
President Punxsutawney Phil
TimTurner
Atlas Politician
Atlas Legend
*****
Posts: 41,136
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2022, 07:38:51 PM »

There's a lot of continuity, and it's just semantics, but the neoconservatism of the '90s was a successor to the Reagan Doctrine that sought to maintain "benevolent global hegemony" with what Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan referred to as "a Neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military strength and moral clarity". Reagan was reacting to a policy of Détente widely believed to have failed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan while the neocons saw themselves as proactive in their opposition to Clinton era reductions in military spending, conversely seen by the public as common sense with the Soviet Union gone. They were pretty pessimistic about building off their idol's success because it seemed like nothing could galvanize a country divided by hot-button '90s Culture War issues, save for what a 2000 defense review described as a "catastrophic and catalyzing event- like a new Pearl Harbor".

Yet at the same time, Reagan's actual approach in action was hardly what I would term to be "neoconservative", though obviously every neoconservative would attach themselves to Reagan's legacy as part of what prior to Trump anyway, was a broad based latching onto Reagan's legacy to legitimize various positions that in a number of cases went beyond what Reagan would have deemed acceptable. Hence the old line that "Reagan couldn't survive a primary today".

The neocons were certainly part of this "True conservative" dynamic and milked it for all it was worth until they ended up on the outs themselves.
They say the revolution eats its own.
Logged
Benjamin Frank
Frank
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 7,069


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2022, 09:57:31 PM »
« Edited: September 27, 2022, 10:02:11 PM by Benjamin Frank »

Neoconservatism was originally known as 'neoliberalism' before that was appropriated for economic issues.

The reason for this was because many of these 'neoliberals' nee neoconservatives started off as liberals. Many were hired as staffers by Washington State U.S Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson who ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1976.

He was regarded as the co-front runner along with Arizona Congressman Mo Udall after both Senators Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey declined to run and before Jimmy Carter's campaign took off.

'Scoop' Jackson was an activist liberal who extended this view to foreign policy arguing for military intervention to expand democracy around the world.

So, that's why it was initially called 'neoliberalism' as opposed to the general liberal policy of not using the military in an offensive way.

It's kind of interesting he had so much support given the level of inflation that was blamed on the 'guns and butter' combination of both the Great Society and the Vietnam war, given that he was guns and butter on steroids.

Although I don't think she worked for him, the highest profile 'neoliberal' nee neoconservative at that time must have been Jeane Kirkpatrick, a one time Democrat, who was appointed by President Reagan as U.S Ambassador to the United Nations. She is most famous for having the phrase 'our dictators are better than your dictators' (referring to capitalist dictators vs communist dictators) attributed to her, although I don't think she ever actually said that specifically.
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2022, 11:49:42 AM »

Neoconservatism was originally known as 'neoliberalism' before that was appropriated for economic issues.

The reason for this was because many of these 'neoliberals' nee neoconservatives started off as liberals. Many were hired as staffers by Washington State U.S Senator Henry 'Scoop' Jackson who ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1976.

He was regarded as the co-front runner along with Arizona Congressman Mo Udall after both Senators Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey declined to run and before Jimmy Carter's campaign took off.

'Scoop' Jackson was an activist liberal who extended this view to foreign policy arguing for military intervention to expand democracy around the world.

So, that's why it was initially called 'neoliberalism' as opposed to the general liberal policy of not using the military in an offensive way.

It's kind of interesting he had so much support given the level of inflation that was blamed on the 'guns and butter' combination of both the Great Society and the Vietnam war, given that he was guns and butter on steroids.

Although I don't think she worked for him, the highest profile 'neoliberal' nee neoconservative at that time must have been Jeane Kirkpatrick, a one time Democrat, who was appointed by President Reagan as U.S Ambassador to the United Nations. She is most famous for having the phrase 'our dictators are better than your dictators' (referring to capitalist dictators vs communist dictators) attributed to her, although I don't think she ever actually said that specifically.

It is also not really compatible with the Conservatism for that very reason, at least not long term, which is a point that I have pushed quite hard. In that sense, the fact that the neocons found themselves on the outs on the right is not really that surprising, it is in some ways more surprising that they were able to (for a short time) push themselves as "the true conservatives" in foreign policy discussions.
Logged
The Smiling Face On Your TV
slimey56
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,494
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of


Political Matrix
E: -6.46, S: -7.30

P P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2022, 11:22:08 PM »

It's important to view neoconservatism as a pillar of the "three-legged stool" comprising the fusionism first-espoused by William F. Buckley and manifested in Goldwater campaign. This ideological marriage remained on the fringe of the Overton Window until various elements (e.g. Vietnam for Greatest Generation-era Democrats and their children who served, the desegrationist movement for Dukes of Hazzardesque Dixiecrats) drove their various wedges into the New Deal Coalition. Then stagflation caused the minarchist leg to re-appear as the AFL-CIO's rank-and-file defected (at least temporarily) into the apocryphal Northern Reagan Democrat mold.

Now whole time religious fundamentalists such as Phyllis a55fly Schafly and Moral Majority types created a new cultural framework for a Christian Right seething over Warren/Burger (no pun intended) court rulings and pretty much about everything the Sexual Revolution and second-wave feminism stood for. This Dominionist impulse galvanized the Southern Strategy already livid over the aforementioned racial grievances. I'll leave the details to those who know more what's up w/those subjects, however it's not hard to understand why the people who Satanic Panicked over Dungeons and Dragons would hate those godless commies.

The Cold Warrior plank regained steam both due to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and legitimate concerns of the Warsaw Pact surpassing NATO's capabilities. The Warsaw Pact arguably held the upper hand by 1977 as it not only augmented its long standing conventional forces advantage but also at least equaled NATO's nuclear deterrent via its SS-20 missiles. Reagan himself long desired nuclear abolition and highlighted opposing détente due to atomic fears in his 1976 RNC speech. The Iranian Hostage Crisis proved a final straw for Americans who'd already felt humiliated over Vietnam, the Gas Crunch, and everything in between. Reagan seized the moment over a Carter campaign already hamstrung by a labor-backed Kennedy primary challenge, and the New Right finally had one of the own calling the shots.

From there Reagan's various actions as executive such as massive tax cuts, firing the air traffic controllers, cutting nurturing the military industrial-complex in hopes of driving the USSR bankrupt (which tbh did help get the nuclear treaties done), iinadvertently jump-starting crack epidemic via his perversion the Monroe Doctrine, deriding AIDS as the "gay plague", perpetuating a fossil fuels-dependent economy, founding the mass incarceration state, and reprising old Atwater racial tropes as electorally needed codified neoconservatism as an ideology. Bush Sr. ratcheted up the cultural dialectic. He escalated the disastrous War On Drugs and declared we needed to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. For their part social liberals mostly capitulated into law-and-order rhetoric in face of the violent crime wave; After all, the Congressional Black Caucus and most Black Americans  supported the 1994 Crime Bill. They simply had the wrong phucking solutions.

Evangelicals came to the GOP's center stage through Gingrich's '94 revolution sweeping across the South. Neoconservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation drafted ill-advised policy prescriptions such as DOMA and welfare reform passed a Clinton administration clawing for any scrap of political capital. You also saw the "us vs. them" mentality during the 90s government shutdown which both paved the way for Karl Rove's "majority of majority party" tactics and the Tea Party-infused Obama era budget fights. By 2000 the New Right wrestled control from endangered Rockefeller Republicans as well as warded off the Buchananite impulse. Bush Jr. dominated the South and Plains in the primary via consolidating the conservative vote against McCain, and after that whole Florida thing the think tank-drafted (you may be noticing a theme here) Project for a New American Century got its turn at the wheel.

I won't spend too much time writing about the Bush Jr.'s implementation of the 3-legged stool (e.g. squandering the budget on tax cuts, passing bankruptcy laws which really blew during the Great Recession, the litigated ad nauseam foreign policy unilateralism, preying on post-9/11 fears to encroach on privacy rights, letting the Assault Weapons Ban expire, codifying the idiocy of unfunded mandates through NCLB, etc. etc.) because its failures are still relatively fresh with most. By 2008 the three-legged stool had thoroughly splintered and turned its sights more towards state-level control via ALEC and other Koch-funded enterprises which flourished after Citizens United.

Tl;dr: It's a gross oversimplification to define "neoconservatism" as an interventionist foreign policy impulse born out of Red Scare fears. Rather, it is a facet of the fusionism which emerged as a reaction towards the postwar economic consensus then absorbed traditionalist grievances over the countless sociocultural upheavals during the 60s and since. Overall, the ideology glorified hubris through divinely-inspired American exceptionalism, consistently generate(d) some of the worst public policy failures in postwar history, and caused mass wealth concentration and environmental challenges which we are still struggling with to this day. One must understand its deep sociopolitical roots to fully grasp how phucking lemon-headed these people are.
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2022, 11:55:07 PM »

It's important to view neoconservatism as a pillar of the "three-legged stool" comprising the fusionism first-espoused by William F. Buckley and manifested in Goldwater campaign. This ideological marriage remained on the fringe of the Overton Window until various elements (e.g. Vietnam for Greatest Generation-era Democrats and their children who served, the desegrationist movement for Dukes of Hazzardesque Dixiecrats) drove their various wedges into the New Deal Coalition. Then stagflation caused the minarchist leg to re-appear as the AFL-CIO's rank-and-file defected (at least temporarily) into the apocryphal Northern Reagan Democrat mold.

Now whole time religious fundamentalists such as Phyllis a55fly Schafly and Moral Majority types created a new cultural framework for a Christian Right seething over Warren/Burger (no pun intended) court rulings and pretty much about everything the Sexual Revolution and second-wave feminism stood for. This Dominionist impulse galvanized the Southern Strategy already livid over the aforementioned racial grievances. I'll leave the details to those who know more what's up w/those subjects, however it's not hard to understand why the people who Satanic Panicked over Dungeons and Dragons would hate those godless commies.

The Cold Warrior plank regained steam both due to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and legitimate concerns of the Warsaw Pact surpassing NATO's capabilities. The Warsaw Pact arguably held the upper hand by 1977 as it not only augmented its long standing conventional forces advantage but also at least equaled NATO's nuclear deterrent via its SS-20 missiles. Reagan himself long desired nuclear abolition and highlighted opposing détente due to atomic fears in his 1976 RNC speech. The Iranian Hostage Crisis proved a final straw for Americans who'd already felt humiliated over Vietnam, the Gas Crunch, and everything in between. Reagan seized the moment over a Carter campaign already hamstrung by a labor-backed Kennedy primary challenge, and the New Right finally had one of the own calling the shots.

From there Reagan's various actions as executive such as massive tax cuts, firing the air traffic controllers, cutting nurturing the military industrial-complex in hopes of driving the USSR bankrupt (which tbh did help get the nuclear treaties done), iinadvertently jump-starting crack epidemic via his perversion the Monroe Doctrine, deriding AIDS as the "gay plague", perpetuating a fossil fuels-dependent economy, founding the mass incarceration state, and reprising old Atwater racial tropes as electorally needed codified neoconservatism as an ideology. Bush Sr. ratcheted up the cultural dialectic. He escalated the disastrous War On Drugs and declared we needed to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. For their part social liberals mostly capitulated into law-and-order rhetoric in face of the violent crime wave; After all, the Congressional Black Caucus and most Black Americans  supported the 1994 Crime Bill. They simply had the wrong phucking solutions.

Evangelicals came to the GOP's center stage through Gingrich's '94 revolution sweeping across the South. Neoconservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation drafted ill-advised policy prescriptions such as DOMA and welfare reform passed a Clinton administration clawing for any scrap of political capital. You also saw the "us vs. them" mentality during the 90s government shutdown which both paved the way for Karl Rove's "majority of majority party" tactics and the Tea Party-infused Obama era budget fights. By 2000 the New Right wrestled control from endangered Rockefeller Republicans as well as warded off the Buchananite impulse. Bush Jr. dominated the South and Plains in the primary via consolidating the conservative vote against McCain, and after that whole Florida thing the think tank-drafted (you may be noticing a theme here) Project for a New American Century got its turn at the wheel.

I won't spend too much time writing about the Bush Jr.'s implementation of the 3-legged stool (e.g. squandering the budget on tax cuts, passing bankruptcy laws which really blew during the Great Recession, the litigated ad nauseam foreign policy unilateralism, preying on post-9/11 fears to encroach on privacy rights, letting the Assault Weapons Ban expire, codifying the idiocy of unfunded mandates through NCLB, etc. etc.) because its failures are still relatively fresh with most. By 2008 the three-legged stool had thoroughly splintered and turned its sights more towards state-level control via ALEC and other Koch-funded enterprises which flourished after Citizens United.

Tl;dr: It's a gross oversimplification to define "neoconservatism" as an interventionist foreign policy impulse born out of Red Scare fears. Rather, it is a facet of the fusionism which emerged as a reaction towards the postwar economic consensus then absorbed traditionalist grievances over the countless sociocultural upheavals during the 60s and since. Overall, the ideology glorified hubris through divinely-inspired American exceptionalism, consistently generate(d) some of the worst public policy failures in postwar history, and caused mass wealth concentration and environmental challenges which we are still struggling with to this day. One must understand its deep sociopolitical roots to fully grasp how phucking lemon-headed these people are.

I prefer a more restrictive definition of neoconservative then one that encompasses the entirety of Reaganite Conservatism, because doing so is itself an oversimplification of the nuances and differences on the right with regards to foreign policy.

Not everyone this side of Ron Paul, is a neocon.
Logged
Person Man
Angry_Weasel
Atlas Superstar
*****
Posts: 36,681
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2022, 09:56:25 AM »
« Edited: September 30, 2022, 03:43:51 PM by Person Man »

It's important to view neoconservatism as a pillar of the "three-legged stool" comprising the fusionism first-espoused by William F. Buckley and manifested in Goldwater campaign. This ideological marriage remained on the fringe of the Overton Window until various elements (e.g. Vietnam for Greatest Generation-era Democrats and their children who served, the desegrationist movement for Dukes of Hazzardesque Dixiecrats) drove their various wedges into the New Deal Coalition. Then stagflation caused the minarchist leg to re-appear as the AFL-CIO's rank-and-file defected (at least temporarily) into the apocryphal Northern Reagan Democrat mold.

Now whole time religious fundamentalists such as Phyllis a55fly Schafly and Moral Majority types created a new cultural framework for a Christian Right seething over Warren/Burger (no pun intended) court rulings and pretty much about everything the Sexual Revolution and second-wave feminism stood for. This Dominionist impulse galvanized the Southern Strategy already livid over the aforementioned racial grievances. I'll leave the details to those who know more what's up w/those subjects, however it's not hard to understand why the people who Satanic Panicked over Dungeons and Dragons would hate those godless commies.

The Cold Warrior plank regained steam both due to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and legitimate concerns of the Warsaw Pact surpassing NATO's capabilities. The Warsaw Pact arguably held the upper hand by 1977 as it not only augmented its long standing conventional forces advantage but also at least equaled NATO's nuclear deterrent via its SS-20 missiles. Reagan himself long desired nuclear abolition and highlighted opposing détente due to atomic fears in his 1976 RNC speech. The Iranian Hostage Crisis proved a final straw for Americans who'd already felt humiliated over Vietnam, the Gas Crunch, and everything in between. Reagan seized the moment over a Carter campaign already hamstrung by a labor-backed Kennedy primary challenge, and the New Right finally had one of the own calling the shots.

From there Reagan's various actions as executive such as massive tax cuts, firing the air traffic controllers, cutting nurturing the military industrial-complex in hopes of driving the USSR bankrupt (which tbh did help get the nuclear treaties done), iinadvertently jump-starting crack epidemic via his perversion the Monroe Doctrine, deriding AIDS as the "gay plague", perpetuating a fossil fuels-dependent economy, founding the mass incarceration state, and reprising old Atwater racial tropes as electorally needed codified neoconservatism as an ideology. Bush Sr. ratcheted up the cultural dialectic. He escalated the disastrous War On Drugs and declared we needed to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. For their part social liberals mostly capitulated into law-and-order rhetoric in face of the violent crime wave; After all, the Congressional Black Caucus and most Black Americans  supported the 1994 Crime Bill. They simply had the wrong phucking solutions.

Evangelicals came to the GOP's center stage through Gingrich's '94 revolution sweeping across the South. Neoconservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation drafted ill-advised policy prescriptions such as DOMA and welfare reform passed a Clinton administration clawing for any scrap of political capital. You also saw the "us vs. them" mentality during the 90s government shutdown which both paved the way for Karl Rove's "majority of majority party" tactics and the Tea Party-infused Obama era budget fights. By 2000 the New Right wrestled control from endangered Rockefeller Republicans as well as warded off the Buchananite impulse. Bush Jr. dominated the South and Plains in the primary via consolidating the conservative vote against McCain, and after that whole Florida thing the think tank-drafted (you may be noticing a theme here) Project for a New American Century got its turn at the wheel.

I won't spend too much time writing about the Bush Jr.'s implementation of the 3-legged stool (e.g. squandering the budget on tax cuts, passing bankruptcy laws which really blew during the Great Recession, the litigated ad nauseam foreign policy unilateralism, preying on post-9/11 fears to encroach on privacy rights, letting the Assault Weapons Ban expire, codifying the idiocy of unfunded mandates through NCLB, etc. etc.) because its failures are still relatively fresh with most. By 2008 the three-legged stool had thoroughly splintered and turned its sights more towards state-level control via ALEC and other Koch-funded enterprises which flourished after Citizens United.

Tl;dr: It's a gross oversimplification to define "neoconservatism" as an interventionist foreign policy impulse born out of Red Scare fears. Rather, it is a facet of the fusionism which emerged as a reaction towards the postwar economic consensus then absorbed traditionalist grievances over the countless sociocultural upheavals during the 60s and since. Overall, the ideology glorified hubris through divinely-inspired American exceptionalism, consistently generate(d) some of the worst public policy failures in postwar history, and caused mass wealth concentration and environmental challenges which we are still struggling with to this day. One must understand its deep sociopolitical roots to fully grasp how phucking lemon-headed these people are.

I prefer a more restrictive definition of neoconservative then one that encompasses the entirety of Reaganite Conservatism, because doing so is itself an oversimplification of the nuances and differences on the right with regards to foreign policy.

Not everyone this side of Ron Paul, is a neocon.

Most rank and file Republicans don't like the Pauls. I talk to people. As you are seeing in current polling, there are still themes that are keeping the Republican Party together, such as Race Relations,  Sexuality/Spirituality, and TAX CUTS. On the other hand, they are as incoherent as ever on FP (though unilateralism is still the name of the game). With the discrediting of the PNAC folks, the neoconservatives are just one competing special interest out of many (instead of the one that is running the show, like the Religious Right is currently).

Which make sense with how the sands are shifting. Places with a strong MIC presence are beginning to soften up for Republicans (look at Colorado Springs), but other places that are relatively dovish but somewhat conservative are trending rapidly in their direction (Iowa, Wisconsin). We are basically seeing the Republican Party disown some liberal parts of Neoconservatism (Globalism, Interventionalism) and keeping the more aggressive parts (Unilateralism, a belief in Total War/Gitmo situations). It is actually proving to work for Republicans as they still are mobilizing the Religious Right even more so than ever, but also now turning out Nationalists in big numbers when they in the past would not vote or vote for someone like Obama because he supported a pet cause of theirs.
Logged
The Smiling Face On Your TV
slimey56
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,494
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of


Political Matrix
E: -6.46, S: -7.30

P P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2022, 10:32:31 AM »

I prefer a more restrictive definition of neoconservative then one that encompasses the entirety of Reaganite Conservatism, because doing so is itself an oversimplification of the nuances and differences on the right with regards to foreign policy.

Not everyone this side of Ron Paul, is a neocon.

It is true the post-modern American conservative movement on aggregate featured foreign policy dissent from paleoconservatives and minarchists. In addition, neoconservatism enjoyed its own ideological diversity during its Vietnam-era infancy. Some proto-Reaganites remained relatively warm towards social liberalism when not concerned with reproductive rights; foreign policy hawk and supply-side tax cut architect Jack Kemp staunchly supported racial integration and even broke with religious conservatives on not viewing the LGBT community as the scourge of God. However, it’s hard to summarize a foreign policy predicated on American exceptionalism without understanding why they viewed American hegemony spreading freedom as a moral imperative in the first place. Hence Karl Rove coining the Bush Jr. administration’s foreign policy detractors as the “reality-based community” vis a vis their own “faith-based community”. I challenge you to produce a self-described “neoconservative” who was merely an American unilateralist and outright rejected fusionist orthodoxy before the Tea Party replaced the 3-legged stool with an empty chair.
Logged
All Along The Watchtower
Progressive Realist
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 15,426
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #12 on: September 30, 2022, 01:08:05 AM »

No, neoconservatism was a reaction to domestic political and cultural upheavals in the 1960s.
Logged
FEMA Camp Administrator
Cathcon
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 27,284
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #13 on: September 30, 2022, 01:16:56 AM »

The bigger question, as evidenced by this thread: what is neoconservatism? Huh
Logged
The Smiling Face On Your TV
slimey56
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,494
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of


Political Matrix
E: -6.46, S: -7.30

P P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #14 on: September 30, 2022, 08:42:22 AM »

The bigger question, as evidenced by this thread: what is neoconservatism? Huh

Quote from: George Orwell
The word Fascism neoconservatism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality

2meirl4meirl
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #15 on: September 30, 2022, 11:20:37 PM »

I prefer a more restrictive definition of neoconservative then one that encompasses the entirety of Reaganite Conservatism, because doing so is itself an oversimplification of the nuances and differences on the right with regards to foreign policy.

Not everyone this side of Ron Paul, is a neocon.

It is true the post-modern American conservative movement on aggregate featured foreign policy dissent from paleoconservatives and minarchists. In addition, neoconservatism enjoyed its own ideological diversity during its Vietnam-era infancy. Some proto-Reaganites remained relatively warm towards social liberalism when not concerned with reproductive rights; foreign policy hawk and supply-side tax cut architect Jack Kemp staunchly supported racial integration and even broke with religious conservatives on not viewing the LGBT community as the scourge of God. However, it’s hard to summarize a foreign policy predicated on American exceptionalism without understanding why they viewed American hegemony spreading freedom as a moral imperative in the first place. Hence Karl Rove coining the Bush Jr. administration’s foreign policy detractors as the “reality-based community” vis a vis their own “faith-based community”. I challenge you to produce a self-described “neoconservative” who was merely an American unilateralist and outright rejected fusionist orthodoxy before the Tea Party replaced the 3-legged stool with an empty chair.

You are missing my point. You are the one deploying too expansive a definition of neoconservative and then challenging me to prove what you are saying?

Of course I cannot find such a neoconservative, I never said such existed.

You are saying that everyone who supported a hawkish foreign policy in the Reaganite stool was a neoconservative and that neoconservatism itself was the whole (the fusionism itself). I disagree with this contention because it fails to understand the nuances in the foreign policy space, the divides between Bush and McCain on foreign/military policy, the divides between Rumsfeld's desire for a lean and nimble Department of Defense (as well as McCain's own opposition to wastefulness in the defense budget), in contrast to the "appropriators" and their constant desire to appease the defense contractors.

Bush's entire world operated on a basis of "Daddy failed because he compromised, we just need to get tougher in all quarters and we will not end up like Daddy". Drowning in deficits to avoid tax hikes, "Going all the way to Bagdad", "leaning much more heavily into religious right". Ignore the figures, the facts, the reality, just go all in on faith and philosophically. The Rove quote fits right into this mindset.

What I would say is that there were people who embraced the Reaganite fusionism but were not "neoconservatives" on foreign policy and thus since they weren't so on foreign policy, they weren't so across the board (though I would never use that term to describe the Reaganite stool to begin with, because Reagan himself was not a neoconservative). They were Reaganite conservatives (all three legs even), they embraced a strong national defense and were certainly willing to defend the country and even advance its interests abroad. However, they weren't willing to use military force to nation build, weren't willing to engage in unending foreign conflicts and/or weren't of a mind to turn a blind eye to endless demands of the contractors for wasteful spending.
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #16 on: September 30, 2022, 11:43:41 PM »

The bigger question, as evidenced by this thread: what is neoconservatism? Huh

1. (Wilsonianism) The weaponization of old school foreign policy https://youtu.be/CH1oYhTigyA?t=930idealism/liberalism, into a geopolitical approach that seeks to impose values and systems so as to achieve a liberal democratic utopia across the globe.

2. The insertion of this mindset into the conservative sphere, effectively becoming the "conservative foreign policy", the same way that liberalism inserted itself into the conservative sphere and became "conservative economics". Of course, as I have routinely pointed out, this is fundamentally incompatible with conservativism Reagan or no Reagan and thus its supreme dominance was always on borrowed time.

3. Nation building

4. Long term engagement in a military conflict for the sake of 3, with no clearly definable victory or endgame.

5. Elective/Preemptive War

6. Turning a bling eye to wasteful spending in the Pentagon (less important than 1-5).



Logged
Skill and Chance
Atlas Icon
*****
Posts: 12,522
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #17 on: October 01, 2022, 05:11:41 PM »

It's important to view neoconservatism as a pillar of the "three-legged stool" comprising the fusionism first-espoused by William F. Buckley and manifested in Goldwater campaign. This ideological marriage remained on the fringe of the Overton Window until various elements (e.g. Vietnam for Greatest Generation-era Democrats and their children who served, the desegrationist movement for Dukes of Hazzardesque Dixiecrats) drove their various wedges into the New Deal Coalition. Then stagflation caused the minarchist leg to re-appear as the AFL-CIO's rank-and-file defected (at least temporarily) into the apocryphal Northern Reagan Democrat mold.

Now whole time religious fundamentalists such as Phyllis a55fly Schafly and Moral Majority types created a new cultural framework for a Christian Right seething over Warren/Burger (no pun intended) court rulings and pretty much about everything the Sexual Revolution and second-wave feminism stood for. This Dominionist impulse galvanized the Southern Strategy already livid over the aforementioned racial grievances. I'll leave the details to those who know more what's up w/those subjects, however it's not hard to understand why the people who Satanic Panicked over Dungeons and Dragons would hate those godless commies.

The Cold Warrior plank regained steam both due to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and legitimate concerns of the Warsaw Pact surpassing NATO's capabilities. The Warsaw Pact arguably held the upper hand by 1977 as it not only augmented its long standing conventional forces advantage but also at least equaled NATO's nuclear deterrent via its SS-20 missiles. Reagan himself long desired nuclear abolition and highlighted opposing détente due to atomic fears in his 1976 RNC speech. The Iranian Hostage Crisis proved a final straw for Americans who'd already felt humiliated over Vietnam, the Gas Crunch, and everything in between. Reagan seized the moment over a Carter campaign already hamstrung by a labor-backed Kennedy primary challenge, and the New Right finally had one of the own calling the shots.

From there Reagan's various actions as executive such as massive tax cuts, firing the air traffic controllers, cutting nurturing the military industrial-complex in hopes of driving the USSR bankrupt (which tbh did help get the nuclear treaties done), iinadvertently jump-starting crack epidemic via his perversion the Monroe Doctrine, deriding AIDS as the "gay plague", perpetuating a fossil fuels-dependent economy, founding the mass incarceration state, and reprising old Atwater racial tropes as electorally needed codified neoconservatism as an ideology. Bush Sr. ratcheted up the cultural dialectic. He escalated the disastrous War On Drugs and declared we needed to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. For their part social liberals mostly capitulated into law-and-order rhetoric in face of the violent crime wave; After all, the Congressional Black Caucus and most Black Americans  supported the 1994 Crime Bill. They simply had the wrong phucking solutions.

Evangelicals came to the GOP's center stage through Gingrich's '94 revolution sweeping across the South. Neoconservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation drafted ill-advised policy prescriptions such as DOMA and welfare reform passed a Clinton administration clawing for any scrap of political capital. You also saw the "us vs. them" mentality during the 90s government shutdown which both paved the way for Karl Rove's "majority of majority party" tactics and the Tea Party-infused Obama era budget fights. By 2000 the New Right wrestled control from endangered Rockefeller Republicans as well as warded off the Buchananite impulse. Bush Jr. dominated the South and Plains in the primary via consolidating the conservative vote against McCain, and after that whole Florida thing the think tank-drafted (you may be noticing a theme here) Project for a New American Century got its turn at the wheel.

I won't spend too much time writing about the Bush Jr.'s implementation of the 3-legged stool (e.g. squandering the budget on tax cuts, passing bankruptcy laws which really blew during the Great Recession, the litigated ad nauseam foreign policy unilateralism, preying on post-9/11 fears to encroach on privacy rights, letting the Assault Weapons Ban expire, codifying the idiocy of unfunded mandates through NCLB, etc. etc.) because its failures are still relatively fresh with most. By 2008 the three-legged stool had thoroughly splintered and turned its sights more towards state-level control via ALEC and other Koch-funded enterprises which flourished after Citizens United.

Tl;dr: It's a gross oversimplification to define "neoconservatism" as an interventionist foreign policy impulse born out of Red Scare fears. Rather, it is a facet of the fusionism which emerged as a reaction towards the postwar economic consensus then absorbed traditionalist grievances over the countless sociocultural upheavals during the 60s and since. Overall, the ideology glorified hubris through divinely-inspired American exceptionalism, consistently generate(d) some of the worst public policy failures in postwar history, and caused mass wealth concentration and environmental challenges which we are still struggling with to this day. One must understand its deep sociopolitical roots to fully grasp how phucking lemon-headed these people are.

You are assuming that political movements can be planned in advance in a top-down way to a much, much greater extent than is actually possible in a free country.  While it's true that conservatism went in a historically weird interventionist direction for ~25 years, the idea that anyone was plotting this out and driving everything behind the scenes since the 60's is unreasonable.
Logged
The Smiling Face On Your TV
slimey56
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 1,494
Korea, Democratic People's Republic of


Political Matrix
E: -6.46, S: -7.30

P P P
Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #18 on: October 08, 2022, 04:00:09 PM »

You are missing my point. You are the one deploying too expansive a definition of neoconservative and then challenging me to prove what you are saying?

Of course I cannot find such a neoconservative, I never said such existed.

You are saying that everyone who supported a hawkish foreign policy in the Reaganite stool was a neoconservative and that neoconservatism itself was the whole (the fusionism itself). I disagree with this contention because it fails to understand the nuances in the foreign policy space, the divides between Bush and McCain on foreign/military policy, the divides between Rumsfeld's desire for a lean and nimble Department of Defense (as well as McCain's own opposition to wastefulness in the defense budget), in contrast to the "appropriators" and their constant desire to appease the defense contractors.

Bush's entire world operated on a basis of "Daddy failed because he compromised, we just need to get tougher in all quarters and we will not end up like Daddy". Drowning in deficits to avoid tax hikes, "Going all the way to Bagdad", "leaning much more heavily into religious right". Ignore the figures, the facts, the reality, just go all in on faith and philosophically. The Rove quote fits right into this mindset.

What I would say is that there were people who embraced the Reaganite fusionism but were not "neoconservatives" on foreign policy and thus since they weren't so on foreign policy, they weren't so across the board (though I would never use that term to describe the Reaganite stool to begin with, because Reagan himself was not a neoconservative). They were Reaganite conservatives (all three legs even), they embraced a strong national defense and were certainly willing to defend the country and even advance its interests abroad. However, they weren't willing to use military force to nation build, weren't willing to engage in unending foreign conflicts and/or weren't of a mind to turn a blind eye to endless demands of the contractors for wasteful spending.

First of all the Rumsfeld Doctrine primarily disagreed over the implementation of an interventionist foreign policy, not its existence nor its raison d'etre. Even prior to 9/11 Rumsfeld stressed the importance of combined-arms warfare units similar to the 82nd Airborne division. Whatever foreign policy "debate" centered around the practical questions of mobilization, not the moral ambiguity inherent to US unilateralism.

I agree with your contention that not all fusionists are neoconservatives; American fiscal and social conservatives have shared common ground in various forms from Calvinistic determinism to Prosperity theology to justify the respective (and often overlapping) hierarchical power relations from which they personally benefit. However all neoconservatives are most certainly fusionists. The primary differentiation being that while paleoconservatives prioritize curbing any social spending in the name of safeguarding a fiscally responsible budget and preventing wealth redistribution, neoconservatives prioritize economic growth via voodoo economics incentivizing supply-side (e.g. capital) investment and hoping the Laffer Curve compensates the lower rates
Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.


 In addition Neoconservatives do not share this aversion to deficit spending; the 1992 Buchananite insurgency existed partially in reaction to the massive budget deficits Reagan and Bush Sr. racked up as defense spending increased while taxes remained low.

I take issue with asserting there were Reaganite fusionists who advocated an isolationist foreign policy because that was the crux of their deviation from paleoconservatives.  Even during more non-interventionist ebbs, such Bush Jr.'s campaign where he ironically advocated against nation-building, the association remained strong enough within the modern zeitgeist to where King of The Hill's famous Bush limp handshake gag (itself a nod toward Hank Hill's traditionalist understanding of what a man's grip conveys about his personal character) led in lampooning how Hank could predict the end of his speech would finish with calls for "low taxes and a strong national defense."




Consequently, I find it rather difficult to describe the Reagan administration's foreign policy as anything but given its strongest influences featured neoconservative intellectuals. While the Reagan Doctrine did not explicitly condone nation-building, its absolutist interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine drew inspiration from pieces such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick's Dictatorship and Double Standards where she argues "no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic government." This belief ultimately expressed itself in the US invasion of Grenada, various South American guerilla conflicts, (which to be fair spawned some pretty kool video games,) and laid the groundwork for the Rumsfeld doctrine in light of the combined-arms shock and awe tactics during the Gulf War.


You are assuming that political movements can be planned in advance in a top-down way to a much, much greater extent than is actually possible in a free country.  While it's true that conservatism went in a historically weird interventionist direction for ~25 years, the idea that anyone was plotting this out and driving everything behind the scenes since the 60's is unreasonable.


Fair point, my first post does gloss over the numerous sociological and migrational events (e.g. the Sun Belt postwar boom due to Oil/Gas+air conditioning fostering an evangelical constiuency which strongly influenced conservative thought on Israel, stagflation nuturing a sociopolitical environment palatable to Friedmanism, etc.) which bore the "3-legged stool's" conception. I wanted to focus more on a 30,000-foot view of the New Right's ideological development distinct from Calvinist-influenced paleoconservatism.  George H. Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement In America Since 1945 succinctly summarizes the efforts of thinkers such as William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer to create "a unique blend of three main impulses, labeled libertarianism, anti-communism, and traditionalist conservatism. According to Nash, while elements of each strand existed throughout the century, it was not until after 1945 that they gathered enough form and strength to be considered a viable movement. His topical and chronological structure further supports and reinforces this trinitarian, postwar image of conservatism."
Logged
Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderator
Atlas Institution
*****
Posts: 54,123
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #19 on: October 08, 2022, 05:32:06 PM »

For the love of god it is like watching a video by TiK, who claims everything short of libertarianism is a socialist. I don't think this is by accident either.

For the millionth time, I never said there was an "isolationist fusionist". I said there were Reaganites who would "in my opinion", not be worthy of the label neoconservative. There is a spectrum here of views ranging from interventionism to isolationism and included in their are interventions that aren't what I would consider to be "neoconservative".

Retaliation following an attack on the homeland, is not "neoconservative". Launching any old military campaign regardless of purpose or motivation, is not by itself neoconservative. Unilateralism is also not by itself, neoconservative. In my view all of these things spring from more of a Jacksonian tradition than a Wilsonian one and thus doesn't qualify for being neoconservative unless some other factor makes it so.
Logged
Pages: [1]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.078 seconds with 12 queries.