Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have used recent pieces by
Peter Berkowitz and
Mark Lilla as a jumping-off point for a discussion of
neoconservatism. While neoconservatism is frequently described as
an ideology -- of democratism, of hard Wilsonian foreign policy, of
abstract Americanism -- the early neocons, as both
Douthat and Salam point out, were actually a very pragmatic lot. In
fact, the neocons were most of associated with another
ism: empiricism.
The first generation of neocons questioned the left's
domestic-policy utopianism and emphasized the unintended
consequences of government action. On foreign policy, they could
also be uncompromising realists, unsentimental about Carter-era
burbling about human rights that ignored the larger realities of
the Cold War. Of course, the more idealistic strain of
foreign-policy neoconservatism also existed as well, in addition to
the neocons' high level of confidence in the efficacy of American
military power.
For all the reasons Douthat lists, "over time the messianic and
apocalyptic strands in neoconservatism have tended to crowd out the
pragmatic and the realist strands." But perhaps after the Bush
years, we'll see the pendulum swing back a bit, heroic conservatives notwithstanding.
topics:
Foreign Policy, Military, Conservatism, Neoconservatism
