In his book, America the Virtuous, Claes Ryn points out that the Lincolnian worshipping of “democracy” by the neocons is rooted in the philosophy of Rousseau, the philosophical inspiration for communism, which is diametrically opposed to the natural rights philosophy that informed James Madison and the other founders. This helps explain why the Neocon Review (NR) crowd routinely refers to their critics as not just wrong but “crazy” or “unpatriotic” or worse.
The great Felix Morley, who edited the Washington Post from 1933-1940 and then became the editor of Human Events, also warned against this totalitarian impulse in his 1959 treatise, Freedom and Federalism (p. 44):
“Since the general will [i.e., “democracy”] must come to a precise conclusion in any particular issue, and if this single conclusion alone is ‘right,’ then there can be no justification for political opposition. The party that represents ‘the people’ is the only one that speaks for democracy. It must not only dominate, but must extinguish all organized opposition to its program.”
Morley also provides an explanation of why the neocons idolize Lincoln so slavishly: The worshipping of democracy leads to “the denial of local self-government in behalf of centralized power; the steady usurpation of the legislative and judicial functions by the executive; the elimination of any organized opposition . . . but always with ironic lip service to ‘the people.'”
Exactly: “Father Abraham” waged war against states’ rights, deported an opposition congressman and suspended habeas corpus, thereby suspending the separation of powers, and shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, imprisoning their editors and owners. And of course he did it all so that government by the people, for the people, and of the people could supposedly be preserved.
It makes perfect sense that the youngsters at Neocon Review are no longer even pretending to be conservatives but have come out of the closet as pure, unadulterated Republican Party hacks. It is “the party of Lincoln,” after all, as they remind us ad nauseum.
9:27 am on January 20, 2004
