Lazarus
01-04-2003, 12:09 AM
Found an article, "DO NEOCONS EXIST?
DON'T ATTACK THEM - IT'S A "HATE CRIME""
By: Justin Raimondo here...
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/raim010303.shtml
It turns out that it is a review and a critique of another article, "AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?
Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad."
BY MAX BOOT here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840
Since I found the first article at the link I posted first, trying to understand it without having first read the second article (at the second link) proved beyond my limited ability at comprehension. Even the syntax of that last sentence sends chills down my spine so is trying to understand the petty gripes between the two camps.
If you want a comprehensible reading experience, read the second link above first to "What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?" here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840
ONLY Then--if you feel you have that material under your belt do I recommend trying to wade your way through the critique of it, "DO NEOCONS EXIST?
DON'T ATTACK THEM - IT'S A "HATE CRIME"
By: Justin Raimondo--here:
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/raim010303.shtml
Raimondo has decided to try to take the MAX BOOT article to task. Boot's I think tried to write a "Down home" expository of what neoConservatism means today. If you don't mind the "puffing" you can read his article, when you do, then you should grasp what Boot thinks it means:
1. "In social policy, it [neoConservativism] stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism.
2. "On economic matters, neocons--like pretty much all other Republicans, except for Mr. Buchanan...embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are."
3. In international relations, neoConservatives "...embrace Woodrow Wilson's championing of American ideals but reject his reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish our objectives."
Boot, then asserts that this is his view also--making him a member of the newconservative movement--although with the caveat that the "label" neoconservative has lost its original meaning.
Now, to the reason I am writing this, since I wish to address Raimondo's critique. Style: "D." This is a boring article. Substance: well, you decide if I get it right!
In Raimondo's critique, Raimondo's cites ANOTHER of Raimondo's critique of Boot...
http://www.etherzone.com/2001/raim112601.shtml
If I am not mistaken, then either Raimondo will be throwing Molatov cocktails from the gates of Hade's for the rest of eternity in Boot's general direction or these two will need to get a cheap motel room and work things out mano a mano. ;D
But seriously, it is extremely bad form to go around harping on the feature editor for the Wall Street Journal. Not that you can't send him a zinger once, but this has all the earmarks of cyberstalking.
Back to the "critique". I found Raimondo being just a bit picky about Boot's writing style. For example, this passage:
"What is a neoconservative in the year 2003?" asks Boot in the first paragraphs of his screed, and by the end he seems considerably less puzzled:..."
Is Raimondo playing stupid here? Isn't it obvious that the purpose of Boot was to explain what Neocons stand for? Why would you read an article with that title and EXPECT to be left with the unanswered question in the TITLE? Too picky.
Then, Raimondo attemts to "label" Boot, not as a neocon, but as a Communist along the lines of Trotsky...
"As many of the original neocons were ex-Trotskyists, or independent left-wing critics of Stalinism – whose Russian colleagues were sent to the gulag, and whose leader met his end on Stalin's orders – their foreign policy monomania is best understood as Trotsky's revenge....
"All this is ancient history, Boot and his fellow crusaders complain. Yet "benevolent world hegemony," the fatuous phrase in which William Kristol and Robert Kagan summed up the goal of a neocon post-cold war foreign policy, has a positively Soviet ring to it."
So, is McCarthy not dead? :o Are there Communists and their fellow travellers in the Republican Party and the U.S. State Department? ::) Come on, this "trick" of assassinating the character of somebody you disagree with by insinuation is as old as the Pharisees and Sadducees who tried to say that Jesus Christ cast out demons by the power of Satan--if not older!
And this...
"Like the commies of yesteryear, the neocons of today proclaim that the triumph of their ideology, "democratic capitalism," will lead to the same universal convergence of interests."
...must make it plain that Raimondo just declared that the Right's house is divided against itself, unable to decide whether to be isolationist or interventionist.
The article meanders painfully on, tarring people of various ethnic groups, then FINALLY concludes with something that seems unsupported by all that preceded it:
The new grand inquisitors of political correctness, neocon-style, have proscribed an entire list of subjects. Like the compilers of a Newspeak dictionary, in George Orwell's 1984, they are busy getting rid of words, constricting the permitted limits of language to a very narrow spectrum so that it is increasingly impossible to think incorrect thoughts.
Yes, Justin, I have read 1984, too, but what had THAT to do with anything but what maybe, just maybe one person's comment?
So, on substance, I think Raimondo tries to weave a conspiracy web that links neoconservatives to 1930's ex-Stalinists and it simply defies the stretch of crediulity that would be required to sustain that. I note that "Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of AntiWar.Com." But why would anyone oppose a war where WE were attacjed? And don't governments exist to provide for the common defense against just such attacks? If being "neocon" means allowing for a country that was attacked to defend itself, then I guess I would have to be counted as a neoconservative also. I think that is probaly where most of the people live in their political ideology. We are at war, so stifle these stupid petty backbiting political squabbles until we make the world safe for our children to live in. (BTW, I give it a "D" on substance only because of all of the imbedded hyperlinks).
I now step down from my soapbox and the floor is yours and open for discussion. ;D What do you all think>
(Edit: obvious typos)
DON'T ATTACK THEM - IT'S A "HATE CRIME""
By: Justin Raimondo here...
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/raim010303.shtml
It turns out that it is a review and a critique of another article, "AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?
Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad."
BY MAX BOOT here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840
Since I found the first article at the link I posted first, trying to understand it without having first read the second article (at the second link) proved beyond my limited ability at comprehension. Even the syntax of that last sentence sends chills down my spine so is trying to understand the petty gripes between the two camps.
If you want a comprehensible reading experience, read the second link above first to "What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?" here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840
ONLY Then--if you feel you have that material under your belt do I recommend trying to wade your way through the critique of it, "DO NEOCONS EXIST?
DON'T ATTACK THEM - IT'S A "HATE CRIME"
By: Justin Raimondo--here:
http://www.etherzone.com/2003/raim010303.shtml
Raimondo has decided to try to take the MAX BOOT article to task. Boot's I think tried to write a "Down home" expository of what neoConservatism means today. If you don't mind the "puffing" you can read his article, when you do, then you should grasp what Boot thinks it means:
1. "In social policy, it [neoConservativism] stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism.
2. "On economic matters, neocons--like pretty much all other Republicans, except for Mr. Buchanan...embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are."
3. In international relations, neoConservatives "...embrace Woodrow Wilson's championing of American ideals but reject his reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish our objectives."
Boot, then asserts that this is his view also--making him a member of the newconservative movement--although with the caveat that the "label" neoconservative has lost its original meaning.
Now, to the reason I am writing this, since I wish to address Raimondo's critique. Style: "D." This is a boring article. Substance: well, you decide if I get it right!
In Raimondo's critique, Raimondo's cites ANOTHER of Raimondo's critique of Boot...
http://www.etherzone.com/2001/raim112601.shtml
If I am not mistaken, then either Raimondo will be throwing Molatov cocktails from the gates of Hade's for the rest of eternity in Boot's general direction or these two will need to get a cheap motel room and work things out mano a mano. ;D
But seriously, it is extremely bad form to go around harping on the feature editor for the Wall Street Journal. Not that you can't send him a zinger once, but this has all the earmarks of cyberstalking.
Back to the "critique". I found Raimondo being just a bit picky about Boot's writing style. For example, this passage:
"What is a neoconservative in the year 2003?" asks Boot in the first paragraphs of his screed, and by the end he seems considerably less puzzled:..."
Is Raimondo playing stupid here? Isn't it obvious that the purpose of Boot was to explain what Neocons stand for? Why would you read an article with that title and EXPECT to be left with the unanswered question in the TITLE? Too picky.
Then, Raimondo attemts to "label" Boot, not as a neocon, but as a Communist along the lines of Trotsky...
"As many of the original neocons were ex-Trotskyists, or independent left-wing critics of Stalinism – whose Russian colleagues were sent to the gulag, and whose leader met his end on Stalin's orders – their foreign policy monomania is best understood as Trotsky's revenge....
"All this is ancient history, Boot and his fellow crusaders complain. Yet "benevolent world hegemony," the fatuous phrase in which William Kristol and Robert Kagan summed up the goal of a neocon post-cold war foreign policy, has a positively Soviet ring to it."
So, is McCarthy not dead? :o Are there Communists and their fellow travellers in the Republican Party and the U.S. State Department? ::) Come on, this "trick" of assassinating the character of somebody you disagree with by insinuation is as old as the Pharisees and Sadducees who tried to say that Jesus Christ cast out demons by the power of Satan--if not older!
And this...
"Like the commies of yesteryear, the neocons of today proclaim that the triumph of their ideology, "democratic capitalism," will lead to the same universal convergence of interests."
...must make it plain that Raimondo just declared that the Right's house is divided against itself, unable to decide whether to be isolationist or interventionist.
The article meanders painfully on, tarring people of various ethnic groups, then FINALLY concludes with something that seems unsupported by all that preceded it:
The new grand inquisitors of political correctness, neocon-style, have proscribed an entire list of subjects. Like the compilers of a Newspeak dictionary, in George Orwell's 1984, they are busy getting rid of words, constricting the permitted limits of language to a very narrow spectrum so that it is increasingly impossible to think incorrect thoughts.
Yes, Justin, I have read 1984, too, but what had THAT to do with anything but what maybe, just maybe one person's comment?
So, on substance, I think Raimondo tries to weave a conspiracy web that links neoconservatives to 1930's ex-Stalinists and it simply defies the stretch of crediulity that would be required to sustain that. I note that "Justin Raimondo is Editorial Director of AntiWar.Com." But why would anyone oppose a war where WE were attacjed? And don't governments exist to provide for the common defense against just such attacks? If being "neocon" means allowing for a country that was attacked to defend itself, then I guess I would have to be counted as a neoconservative also. I think that is probaly where most of the people live in their political ideology. We are at war, so stifle these stupid petty backbiting political squabbles until we make the world safe for our children to live in. (BTW, I give it a "D" on substance only because of all of the imbedded hyperlinks).
I now step down from my soapbox and the floor is yours and open for discussion. ;D What do you all think>
(Edit: obvious typos)