The tarring of the real Right by associating them with the far Left is nothing new. The purveyors of social democracy always like to have a very narrowly defined debate. During his drive for war, Franklin Roosevelt claimed that there was a conspiracy between the isolationist Right and the Communist Party to prevent American intervention in Europe. More than 50 years ago, Arthur Schlessinger wrote The Vital Center, where he claimed the universal acceptance of the New Deal and Cold War liberalism was under attack by forces on the far Right led by Robert Taft and on the far Left led by Henry Wallace. In his economics textbooks, Paul Samuelson complained that the "new radical right allied with the Chicago school" which is really "a form of anarchism" and the radical left "join together in their attack on conventional economics." These two groups are the same, according to Samuelson, because they both don't like bureaucrats. Since September 11, the neocons and their left-liberal buddies have been spewing the same recycled garbage at an ever-increasing rate.
One of the prime examples of this is Frank Foer's preemptive attack on Pat Buchanan's new magazine, The America Conservative, in The New Republic. Foer had recently accused Alexander Cockburn of anti-Semitism, and decided now it was time to turn his guns on the Right. The article had two basic points. The first was that any relevant ideas that the paleoconservatives ever possessed had been successfully co-opted and skewered by the neocons. The second was that Buchanan's magazine would fail because his attacks on "Wall Street, capitalism, Zionism, American power" make Buchanan virtually the same as the anti-globalist Left. In reality it is the neoconservatives who are much closer to the far Left.
I recently saw Dinesh D'Souzsa give a speech about the root of anti-American hatred abroad, which he has repeated in many columns, TV appearances, and I presume is on of the main tenets of his latest book, What's So Great About America. D'Souza said there were three general criticisms of America. The first is what he called the "French critique" which claimed that American economic and cultural hegemony is ruining local traditions. He answered that criticism by making fun of the French for their supposed lack of cultural and intellectual achievements and claimed that if American culture were so bad, so many French people would not buy our stuff. (Presumably Tocqueville, Maistre, Bastiat, Renoir, David and Hugo pale in comparison to Sidney Hook, John Dewey, Andy Warhol, and Brittany Spears.) The second criticism was what he called the "Asian critique" which accepted American capitalism and chain stores, but felt that our culture was morally and socially degenerate, as evidenced by our rampant rates of crime and illegitimacy.
D'Souza responded to this critique by saying that those negative aspects were simply a byproduct of our free society. The final criticism was the Islamic critique that simply said that the American idea of liberty was wrong, because their culture, while not free, was virtuous and based on the rule of God. He answered this by essentially skewering Frank Meyer's idea of fusionism to apply to the Muslim world. D'Souza believed that Muslims couldn't be virtuous unless they have freedom, presumably imposed on them by the American military or the U.N. To illustrate this point he explains how there is nothing virtuous about women who are forced to wear veils over their heads, it's only when they have the freedom to choose whether or not they will wear them that it could be virtuous. He said the belief that not all free actions should be celebrated is what separates his "classical liberal" viewpoint to the "radical libertarian" views that are seen at Reason. Incidentally Murray Rothbard used virtually the exact same example (the only difference is he used kneeling before Mecca) to make the freedom and virtue argument over 20 years ago, but I digress.
The one thing that stood out in my mind about these critiques is that Richard Weaver, Russel Kirk, Eric Voeglin, Robert Nibset, and even Albert Jay Nock would probably have agreed with most of them. While D'Souza did not explicitly condemn any conservatives in his discussion of anti-Americanism, Frank Foer did not hesitate to do so. In his New Republic piece, he quotes Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming as saying that he agrees "with environmentalists on chain stores, fast food, and the Americanization of Europe" as if that makes him some sort of leftist. While I do not agree with all of these positions, only a fool could see these beliefs as left wing and anti-American, while unquestionable endorsement of American cultural hegemony as conservative.
In fact, the things that D'Souza sees as so great about America are essentially left wing shibboleths. He claims that what Arabs don't like about America is our racial diversity and tolerance, our social egalitarianism, our rights for women and homosexuals, our generous foreign aid, and our acceptance of mass immigration. He calls these values classical liberal, and says that to prevent Arab hatred of America, we need convert them to classical liberalism. In truth, as Paul Gottfried shows in After Liberalism, these ideas are generally inimical to classical liberalism and are key tenets of twentieth century managerial liberalism. In a recent article, he explained how in reality the views of the neocons are much closer to those on the far Left.
The Old Right and the isolationist Left have not become the same simply because neither has declared for the neocons, or because both entertain suspicions about the global democratic crusades advocated by the New Republic and the National Review. On almost all social issues, starting with Third World immigration, feminism, and civil rights, neoconservatives are far closer to the Left than they are to the Old Right.
Foer and the rest of the vital center of course push their attack on the extremists well past culture, and focus on foreign policy. In the same article, he goes after Justin Raimondo and Antiwar.com, and claims they now admit they're leftists.
The site posts screeds against American interventionism that complain about "empire" and "increased military spending." And by lifting the language of the left, he has acquired an audience on the left: The Nation's Alexander Cockburn has published on the site, and Salon and alternative newsweeklies plug his work. For his part, Raimondo is unabashed about his ideological transformation. Last month he wrote on the site, "The only voices of dissent are heard, today, on the Left. … This is where all the vitality, the rebelliousness, the willingness to challenge the rules and strictures of an increasingly narrow and controlled national discourse has resided."
Foer presumes that it is self evident that all conservatives support massive defense budgets and the concept of an American Empire. Of course this is precisely what the Old Right fought against. Just because the New Left has used some of that rhetoric does not mean conservatives are now forbidden from using it. Raimondo explained how absurd the accusation was in his column.
As for Antiwar.com or this column appropriating "the language of the left," precisely the opposite is the case – and that is what the War Party (historically embodied, in the world of political magazines, by The New Republic) finds so … disorienting. We frame our arguments against this perpetual war for perpetual peace in terms of the damage it does to the Constitution and the legacy of the founding fathers, a libertarian heritage anchored in the idea of strictly limited government. "A republic, not an empire"! – this is the language of the left?
What these people fail to recognize is that those of us on the real Right have not gone through any sort of ideological transformation. Whatever alliance exists between the paleo Right and anit-globalist Left is based on the few ideas that the two sides believe in anyway, not any ideological program. Just as The New Republic and National Review put aside whatever their disagreements are on domestic policy (if they have any) to jointly support Israel and perpetual war, non-interventionists of all stripes may have to disregard their many differences to fight the War Party.
Even on the few issues that the far Left and Old Right share common ground, they still have many disagreements. Many on the Left see this war as a racist war, and fervently oppose racial profiling or any attacks on Islam, while many paleos see Islam as the enemy of Western Civilization and most would support restricting Muslim immigration and profiling Arabs. Many on the Left would like to see the United Nations and the International Crime Court take care of the terrorist problem, while most of the Right would like America out of the U.N. Many on the Left, as well as some paleocons, view free trade and capitalism as fueling the war, while most libertarians see it as the path to peace. This has nothing to say with all the differences we have on various economic and cultural issues.
As much as the neocons like to pretend that the Communists and Nazis are going to overthrow the Weimar Republic again, the "extreme" Left and Right are hardly united behind anything other than mutual hatred for neoconservatism and this war. The large number of articles coming out of the mainstream and conservative and liberal press complaining about attacks from across the political spectrum on neoconservative foreign policy shows that the establishment is worried that they are losing their grip on what constitutes respectable debate. Hopefully The American Conservative and other new enterprises will help make their fears come to fruition.
August 27, 2002
