Although it had been in circulation for decades, it was only during the tenure of our last president that the term \u201cneoconservatism\u201d really gained traction.\u00a0 It is a funny thing, this word, for while it was a Jewish intellectual, Irving Kristol, who first coined it, those to whom it was ascribed would alternately embrace it or, which was more frequently the case, eschew it as \u201canti-Semitic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether \u201canti-Semitism\u201d is or ever was a meaningful concept is a matter with which we needn\u2019t concern ourselves.\u00a0 What we know is that it is commonly equated with anti-Jewish animus.\u00a0 The point I wish to make here is that not only is it illegitimate to view the word \u201cneoconservatism\u201d as the function of this sort of animus, but it is wrong to think that it is a pejorative term of any<\/em> sort. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Neoconservatism is <\/em>a distinctive political orientation.\u00a0 In fact, not only is it distinct from what I will call the classical conservative tradition, it is fundamentally different in kind <\/em>from the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n We have a tendency to define political orientations in terms of the specific policy positions typically associated with them.\u00a0 For example, a \u201cliberal\u201d is someone who supports \u201cabortion rights,\u201d \u201clabor unions,\u201d expansive \u201cwelfare\u201d entitlements, etc. while a \u201cconservative\u201d opposes abortion and favors \u201climited government\u201d and a \u201cstrong national defense.\u201d\u00a0 But the identity of any political orientation really comes into focus once we look beyond the substance of the policy prescriptions to the formal philosophical suppositions that inform them.<\/p>\n Epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy are three branches of philosophy.\u00a0 The first is the study of knowledge.\u00a0 Those who specialize in epistemology concern themselves with such questions as: What is <\/em>knowledge? Is it attainable and, if so, how <\/em>do we attain it?\u00a0 Ethics is the study of morality.\u00a0 Ethicists analyze such basic moral concepts as obligation, right, good, evil, virtue, and a host of other topics constitutive of the moral life.\u00a0 Political philosophy, as the name suggests, is the exploration of politics.\u00a0 Characteristic political philosophical questions are: What kind of entity is the state?\u00a0 What is or should be the relationship between the government and the citizen?<\/p>\n Upon analyzing neoconservatism, what we discover is that epistemologically, ethically, and political philosophically, it is much more akin to what is commonly called \u201cliberalism\u201d than it is the classical conservatism of which Edmund Burke is said to be the \u201cpatron saint.\u201d<\/p>\n Epistemology<\/strong><\/p>\n From the neoconservative\u2019s conception of America as a \u201cpropositional\u201d or \u201ccreedal\u201d nation\u2014a nation erected upon an idea\u2014we can derive his conception of reason.\u00a0 For the neoconservative, Reason stands over and above culture and tradition.\u00a0 It is owes nothing to contingency.\u00a0 There is one and the same Intellect for all rational beings, regardless of time and place. This, of course, doesn\u2019t mean that all people possess equal intellectual facility; what it means is that if there was <\/em>such equality, then all rational minds would converge seamlessly upon the same ideas.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The neoconservative is, in other words, a Rationalist.\u00a0 <\/em>As such, he is of a piece with leftist Rationalists of various sorts who for the last couple centuries or so have insisted upon the competence of unaided Reason to supply \u201csolutions\u201d to all of life\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n However, this Rationalism of which neoconservatism is the most recent expression is exactly that intellectual fashion against which classical conservatism originally emerged as the distinctive tradition that it is.\u00a0 It was the Rationalist\u2019s substitution of an omniscient, omnipotent Reason for an omniscient, omnipotent God that inspired Burke and the like to formulate what has since been known as conservatism. \u00a0<\/p>\n Ethics<\/strong><\/p>\n The neoconservative\u2019s idea of Reason is inseparable from his ethics and his political philosophy.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at the former first.<\/p>\n The abstract, universal, omnipotent Reason at the center of the neoconservative\u2019s epistemological scheme provides access to moral principles <\/em>that are equally abstract and universal.\u00a0 That is, morality, for the neoconservative, is comprised first and foremost of principles, whether they are called \u201cHuman Rights,\u201d \u201cLiberty,\u201d \u201cEquality,\u201d \u201cFreedom,\u201d or whatever. These are principles that, because they are held to be accessible to all rational beings, are self-evident.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Now, principles are indispensable to any morality; there is nothing distinctive, much less controversial, about a moral vision allotting room for principles.\u00a0 But the rationalist morality of the neoconservative both assigns principles a central position as well as <\/em>regards them as timeless. <\/em>\u00a0Since that which is timeless by definition transcends time, what this implies is that the moral principles of the neoconservative transcend tradition, habit, and custom.\u00a0<\/p>\n In short, these moral principles owe nothing to just those things that classical conservatives have regarded as the sources of moral inspiration and character formation.\u00a0 Principles, as I said, are important.\u00a0 Yet to concede this much is most certainly not <\/em>endorse the neoconservative\u2019s understanding of principles.\u00a0 Rather, for the classical conservative, far from subsisting in advance of tradition, moral principles are abstracted from it.\u00a0 That is, moral principles stand in relation to traditions of conduct the way that grammatical principles stand in relation to living languages: before there are principles there must first be a tradition to give them life.<\/p>\n Political Philosophy<\/strong><\/p>\n The neoconservative views the state\u2014or what is more customarily referred to as \u201cthe nation-state\u201d\u2014as a certain kind of association, what the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott called an \u201centerprise association.\u201d\u00a0 An association of this kind is determined by its end <\/em>or goal, <\/em>a substantive state of affairs toward the realization of which all of the associates are expected to contribute.\u00a0 In the case of the state, this goal has been variously defined: Equality, Freedom, Security, Piety, Prosperity, and Virtue are just some of the candidates that have been submitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n When the neoconservative erroneously speaks of it in terms of a system of \u201cfree enterprise,<\/em>\u201d he reveals his bias in favor of this reading of the state.\u00a0 If this is what the state is, then its end is Prosperity or Affluence.\u00a0 More telling, however, is the neoconservative\u2019s penchant for conceiving the state, or at least the American state, as a Democracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n In one sense, of course, the United States is <\/em>a democracy.\u00a0 The neoconservative\u2019s assertion to the contrary notwithstanding, \u201cdemocracy\u201d refers to nothing more or less than the terms in which authority <\/em>is constituted; it does not <\/em>refer to the engagements <\/em>that a state will or should pursue.\u00a0 \u201cDemocracy,\u201d in other words, is a certain kind of procedure.\u00a0 <\/em>It has nothing to do with the results <\/em>that a government will seek to produce.\u00a0 Democracy could <\/em>give us Ron Paul or Barack Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas.\u00a0 So, those who think that only a faux democratic system could catapult a terrorist into office are sorely mistaken as to what democracy is.<\/p>\n An enterprise association is incompatible with the freedom and liberty that our Constitution was designed to supply and secure, for the members of an enterprise association are not free <\/em>to pursue their own ends but, rather, are required to part with some of their resources in order to pursue the end of the collective enterprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n The classical conservative knows this.\u00a0 This is why he sees in the Constitution, at least as it was originally conceived, the terms, not of an enterprise association, but of a civil <\/em>association.\u00a0<\/p>\n Neoconservatism is a distinctive way of attending to politics, but it is eons apart from classical conservatism. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although it had been in circulation for decades, it was only during the tenure of our last president that the term \u201cneoconservatism\u201d really gained traction.\u00a0 It is a funny thing, this word, for while it was a Jewish intellectual, Irving Kristol, who first coined it, those to whom it was ascribed would alternately embrace it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n