Elliot Abrams writes a mostly anodyne piece about neoconservatism bookended by references to a zombie that cannot be killed, and gets the predictable reply from Daniel Larison, who for his part does not seem to notice that with a few adjustments most of what Abrams has written could have been taken from some horripilating American Conservative column on that same zombie’s death-grip on the Republican Party. Larison, writing at a magazine co-founded by Pat Buchanan, perhaps wisely avoids going into Abrams’ discussion of “‘the Jewish Question,'” since Buchanan figures prominently in Abrams’ treatment of claim, counter-claim, counter-counter-claim, etc., on the role of putative Semitisms anti- and philo-, open or veiled or semi-veiled, in relation to the neocons and their zombie-work. Yet Larison re-tweets a summary from Matt Duss that goes there for him: [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/mattduss/status/343026984240173056″] That a question – for instance, regarding the phenomenal forms of co-developing Americanist and Judaic concepts in and as world history – is easily polemicized is a sure sign that it is too deep for polemics, or for political discussion, or for polite discussion, or perhaps for discussion at all, and at the same time that the temptation to go ahead anyway will not be successfully resisted, including right here.
too strongly felt by all to be reasonably discussed at all
11 comments on “too strongly felt by all to be reasonably discussed at all”
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[…] an explanation, since normally I don’t get into this kind of thing: In a post on his blog CK Macleod criticized Daniel Larison’s response to (finally) this post, a longform by Elliot Abrams in […]
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[…] an explanation, since normally I don’t get into this kind of thing: In a post on his blog CK Macleod criticized Daniel Larison’s response to (finally) this post, a longform by Elliot Abrams in […]
If people mean “warmonger” by a phrase, I think it’d be more helpful & direct to just use “warmonger”. The arguments of the spread of people referred to as “neo-cons” when they try to get philosophical about it are too cluttered & contradictory for the most part anyway, so the coherent relevancy left over is merely knee-jerk support for war.
Seems obvious to me that the term “warmonger” and the idea of “knee-jerk support for war” are obviously as or more prejudicial than polemical generalizations about anti-neocons as pacifist, isolationist, utopian, knee-jerk anti-American, tyrant- or terrorist-coddling, etc., etc.: a pre-emption of discussion rather than a basis for discussion. The claims on both sides can even be true without being useful. Compared to you, virtually all neocons are warmongers, or the most warmongering members of a warmongering American mainstream. Compared to that mainstream, you’re a utopian America-hater. So what?
If “neo-conservatism” is to be treated as an actual philosophy, it should be defined beyond cheerful sloganeering. “Patriotism” smears disagreement as Un-American, “American exceptionalism” gives no indication of where the logic is headed unless one takes a cynical use of the second word, and “democracy promotion”…well, tell that to the populace of the countries the U.S. has friendly relations with that smack down dissent.
I see it as cutting to the chase. They can say imposition of American will on the world is doing it a favor, but if they can’t explain why they think so with a straight face, what option do I have left but to assume it’s because they just enjoy the idea?
HeAbrams summarizes neoconservatism as based on four elements: “American exceptionalism, American power, patriotism, freedom.” For him, they go together. There is a rather elaborate discourse explaining why neocons believe they or some roughly equivalent set of aims are interdependent.It goes without saying that everyone who believes each of these elements to be good in itself and all of them together to be interdependent believes that anyone supporting some other idea is offering a weaker form of “patriotism.” If you believe patriotism is good, and that you and your friends have the best idea of it, then it’s not a smear to say that other people’s ideas are weaker, and that the differences are morally important: That’s the whole point of the exercise on both sides.
He mentions “democracy promotion” somewhat favorably, and as a typical objective of neocons, but he also seems to claim that it is not central to neoconservatism when he differentiates his views from Bolton’s, and neconservatism from liberal internationalism. :
So what you see as a contradiction, he seems to view as realism or flexibility on important but secondary or dependent priorities.
As for enjoying the idea of American power being imposed on the world, all of us can be said to “enjoy” our ideas more than the ideas we reject. It’s hard to say, assuming we even can finally say, where some rational or objective or simply true calculation takes over from emotional investments or other unstated real or imaginary interests or preferences.
I’m expanding on this at my own site at the moment (it’s getting long).
Condolences? Let me know when you publish.
If by “condolences” you mean beer money, sure. ;^)
Well I didn’t read that far, Larison didn’t really give me any reason to, I’ve made the point that what was considered the legitimate regimes in Egypt and Iraq, were particular variants of factions installed by Eichelberger and Copeland, Syria had some of the same factors, although more imput from KGB and certain German expatriates like the late George Fischer, now there really has been no notion of a polity behind the Egyptian rebels,
By “he” I meant Abrams. Will correct.
Well the support of the Arab Winter, has not helped their case, but it is important to understand neoconservative’s foreign impulses, as a reaction to the realist school that regarded Alawite and Sunni
tribal Baathism, and Wahhabism in the Arabian Peninsula as the default school.
Israel is not a perfect regime, by any means, but ‘compared to all the others’ as Churchill would say, it is a good bet better then most, Yet Saddam whose only service was really to harvest an army of martyrs from the Palestinians, that was considered a decent regime, Syria is much the same way, an oligarchy
perched atop a committed sectarian majority, serving as a proxy for the Mullahs.