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Today's
Stories
April 10 / 12, 2004
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The Non-Confessions
of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The Anti-Empire
Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend
Edition
April 9/10, 2004
When God is Pro War
& Other Delicacies
Pseudoconservatism
Revisited
By WERTHER*
"Pseudoconservativism is among other
things a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by
an inability to find other modes for human relationship than
those of more or less complete domination or submission. . .
. The pseudo-conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding
traditional American values and institutions and defending them
against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously
aims at their abolition. . . . [He] sees his own country as being
so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion;
and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure
it may experience in getting its way in the world . . . cannot
possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to
its having been betrayed."
Richard Hofstadter, The
Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, 1965.
Conservatism: From
Fringe to Mainstream
When Professor Hofstadter diagnosed pseudoconservatism
from the dominant tradition of cold war liberalism, he was describing
a fringe element, which is why he appended the "pseudo"
prefix: Birchers, Minutemen, and McCarthyite remnants of the
ideological wars of the 1950s. The only "conservatism"
he was apparently comfortable with was the Eisenhower/Rockefeller
variant of the New Deal consensus.
Writing 40 years ago, Hofstadter did
not seem to grasp that a new political consensus based on conservative
ideas would become the ascendant political expression in the
United States. Beginning with Goldwater's candidacy and culminating
in Republican control of Congress in 1994, conservatism became
as dominant in American politics as liberalism was in Hofstadter's
day.
Sincere or not, President Clinton's statement
that "the era of big government is over" was the definitive
acknowledgment that conservative ideas had rhetorically triumphed.
The statement would have been inconceivable coming from Roosevelt
or Johnson - or even Eisenhower or Nixon or Ford.
Like any other political movement, for
conservatism to make headway, it needed serious intellectual
manifestos. As the liberal paradigm stagnated and ossified throughout
the 1970s and 80s, hitherto little-known writers like George
Gilder and Charles Murray changed the framework of political
debate. Whatever one thinks of the political tenor of their books,
these writers, and arguably others like Allan Bloom and Marvin
Olasky, wrote serious works which attempted to grapple with public
policy issues in a serious way. Their work built on a pre-existing
intellectual foundation of conservative thinkers as varied as
Hayek, Mises, Kirk, and Nisbet.
The Infantilization
Process
With his ponderous heaving and groaning
about thesis and antithesis, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel did
no more than express a commonplace observation in the maximum
number of words: just when a movement - be it political, intellectual,
artistic, or religious - is at the stage of its greatest worldly
success, the seeds of decay are already germinating. The decay
springs from having no serious opposition, which in turn leads
to complacency, stagnation, and a streak of self-righteousness.
When opposition is heretical by definition, there is no need
for rigorous intellectual justification of one's own viewpoint.
Liberalism demonstrated this tendency
in the 1960s and 70s. As an (apparently) unchallengeable consensus,
liberals degenerated into arrogant defenders of the status quo;
opponents were dismissed (or demonized) as ignorant racist rednecks.
As intellectual stagnation ensued, mainstream liberalism gradually
splintered into political dead-ends: identity politics, the cult
of victimization, and cultural nihilism. As the Richard Hofstadters,
Arthur Schlesingers, and Daniel Bells receded from defining liberalism,
their place was taken by a bizarre coterie of crackpot feminists,
cultural deconstructionists, guilt-mongers, and liberation theologists.
By merely by asserting confidence and upholding the "normal,"
Ronald Reagan was able to topple the liberal consensus.
From Friedrich von
Hayek to Ann Coulter
At some point during the mid to late
1990s, dominant conservatism began to replicate the signs of
intellectual decay that liberalism showed 30 years earlier. It
probably started with movement conservatives' growing obsession
with the Clinton family: not as political opponents to be defeated
in a war of ideas, but as demonic incarnations of evil who had
to be destroyed by any means necessary. As movement conservatives
rolled and snuffled in sexual scandal like felines in catnip,
there was a corresponding decline in intellectual argumentation.
Instead of Wealth and Poverty, bookstore shelves bent under the
weight of scandal-mongering exposes of Clinton's sexual dalliances.
As of this writing, more than three years
after Clinton's departure from office and two and a half years
after the most devastating attack on American soil in history,
the magazine Human Events has seen fit to e-mail me a special
offer: the "blockbuster" book by R. Emmitt Tyrrell
on - Osama bin Laden? A conservative policy analysis of Iraq?
The looming fiscal crisis of Social Security and Medicare? Not
a chance. Tyrrell's magnificent opus is titled Madame Hillary.
The offer promises that I "won't be able to put this book
down" as it exposes Mrs. Clinton's diabolical machinations
to enslave the guileless American people. And if I subscribe
to Human Events for 70 weeks, I will receive this bonus: the
"52 most dangerous liberals in America playing card set."
Tom Daschle, the American incarnation of Josef Stalin. One is
already thinking about rustling up a fourth for whist. Whether
the demon du jour is the Clintons or not, conservative books,
conservative talk radio, and conservative web sites show a uniform
intellectual deterioration.
The presumably ghost-written rehashes
by the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and O'Reillys do not attempt sustained
intellectual argumentation at all; they merely strike an attitude:
belligerent, faux-populist, self-righteous. These would-be successors
of Milton Friedman or Russell Kirk specialize in ad hominem outbursts,
straw-man arguments, and circular reasoning. The tendency reaches
its nadir in the hebephrenic Ann Coulter, who avers that liberals
"have a preternatural tendency to commit treason."
The Likudnik Zionist Jonathan Pollard and the right-wing Catholic
Opus Dei admirer Robert Hansen are no doubt chuckling from their
maximum security cells.
The Triumph of Pseudoconservatism
In nominal control of the presidency,
both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court, so-called conservatism
is as dominant at present as liberalism was in 1964. Yet the
intellectual deterioration in the movement is so evident that
it may be appropriate to consider the proposition that as a political
platform, the so-called conservative movement is no longer conservative
in any principled or systematic sense.
Ironically, Hofstadter's term for the
fringe element of conservatism in the 1960s, pseudoconservatism,
may properly describe the dominant ideological strain among movement
conservatives, (pseudo-) intellectuals of the David Frum category,
and mainstream political satraps of the Republican Party. For
a quarter century, this writer has had frequent contact with
self-described conservative operatives in government and the
private sector. The change in attitude and tenor among these
adherents to so-called conservatism amounts to a major albeit
unnoticed shift in the American political landscape.
I will now attempt to describe the most
salient characteristics of the modern pseudoconservative landscape.
It is important to keep in mind that these characteristics are
not present in all pseudoconservatives all the time; a "pure"
specimen who showed all eight traits all the time would be suitable
for a museum, or a lunatic asylum.
But it bears noting just how distant
the traits of the pseudoconservative are from the principles
of limited government, constitutionalism, and traditional foreign
policy.
Pseudoconservatism:
a Psychopathology
1. Leader worship: let's put Ronald Reagan
on Mount Rushmore! A good friend and long-time Republican put
it this way: "Your average enthusiastic movement conservative
is basically so adolescent and emotionally fragile that he does
not see political activity as a contest of principles. He needs
a white knight who comes riding in on a horse in order to redeem
America."
The truth of his observation is illustrated
by the fact that precisely when many of Ronald Reagan's principles
are being abandoned, his deification is reaching its zenith.
It is a matter of record that an Indiana
Congressman has seriously stated as a justification for putting
Reagan's image on the dime the fact that the bullet extracted
from the former president in the 1981 assassination attempt was
the size and shape of a dime!
Likewise, Republican huckster Grover
Norquist is spearheading a movement not only to carve Ronald
Reagan's image on Mount Rushmore, but to have a Reagan monument
in every county of every state in the union. Apparently, a $500
billion deficit, a "war that will not end in our lifetimes"
(so says the Vice President), and an immigration crisis are not
sufficient to engage the attention of GOP cognoscenti like Norquist.
This leader worship extends to the current claimant of the imperial
purple. The American Conservative Union may yammer perpetually
about out-of-control spending, but the critique is curiously
disconnected from the president himself - the person who is supposed
to be in charge of that spending. Perhaps career bureaucrats
are holding the president hostage. Let Bush be Bush! All these
arguments, of course, are merely a variation on the shopworn
theme: "if only ze Fuhrer knew!"
While Democrat struggles for presidential
nomination can occasionally be dog fights, Republican nominations,
by definition, have become coronations. Following the hierarchical
nature of pseudoconservative thinking, the capo di tutti capi
must be an establishment figure who ascends the throne by virtue
of family pedigree and service to the business oligarchy, rather
than possessing a set of intelligible ideas, coherently expressed.
As the dyspeptic Bob Dole, sounding like a Jacobite claimant,
famously said, "it's my turn now!" Psychologically
connected with leader worship is a love of ritual and regalia.
Hence the obsession with flag display, enamel lapel pins, and
similar stigmata of the authoritarian personality. Or, perhaps,
the adolescent love of gang colors. Many of the direct mail solicitations
of the Republican National Committee read like a 1930s Ovaltine
commercial: match your own personal number to see if you are
a charter member of Ed Gillespie's Junior Woodchucks!
Likewise the strong consumer demand for
a George Bush action figure, complete with naval aviator flight
suit. One has only to consider the unlikelihood of a Gerhard
Schroder action figure in Germany or a Silvio Berlusconi doll
in Italy, to reflect that when pseudoconservatives bray about
American exceptionalism, they may have a point.
2. Rugged individualism - except when
submission is called for Submission goes with leader worship
like mustard on a ballpark hot dog, spicing up Hofstadter's point
that pseudoconservatism is a "disorder in relation to authority."
The pseudoconservative is simply mass
man (1), subject to all the conformist shibboleths and bugaboos
that his type has prostrated himself before since paleolithic
times. Whether it is the PATRIOT Act, the Defense of Marriage
Act, flag-burning amendments, or the current presidential proposal
for Federally-funded marriage counseling, the pseudoconservative
does not trust individuals to get it right absent the caring
hand of the Nanny State. In principle, Bill Bennett might be
the most egregious caricature of an officious liberal; only the
objects of his obsession are different.
The traits of submissiveness and mass
conformity are clearly conducive to a disciplined party, but
fail the test of creating an informed citizenry.
In theory the citizens of a constitutional
republic ought to soberly inform themselves, e.g., whether Iraq
really did have weapons of mass destruction; what is Al Qaeda
and where did it come from; how did the most the most massive
intelligence failure in the Nation's history take place, followed
barely a year later by yet another significant intelligence failure?
That driving curiosity, worthy of Inspector Javert, which impelled
pseudoconservatives to construct elaborate theories about the
death of Vince Foster or precisely what President Clinton did
with a cigar, is strangely absent when the stakes are higher.
This incuriosity extends not merely to the average reader of
National Review, but to pseudoconservative elected officials
with the power to compel answers.
3. Chickenhawk militarism: "the
military is not a part of government" Other than Quakers
or the Amish, it is hard to find a group with less direct military
experience than pseudoconservatives, particularly the neoconservative
wing thereof. This phenomenon has been too widely noticed to
require belaboring here, other than to note that an apparent
guilt at not having served in Vietnam, combined with a need to
compensate vicariously for the softness and security of the life
of a white color apparatchik, has created a romanticized image
of militarism unseen in advanced Western societies since the
Wehrmacht folded its tent.
But the pseudoconservatives' veneration
of the military and "our men and women in uniform"
can be deceiving. Should even a high-ranking soldier like Anthony
Zinni stray from the party line, the pseudoconservative propaganda
mill will unleash its attack dogs. (2)
Also characteristic of the pseudoconservative's
schizophrenic relation to government is his theoretical hatred
of the state and state authority, always excepting, of course,
the military; Federal law enforcement (when it is safely out
of Janet Reno's clutches); and the Department of Homeland Security,
a newly-minted authority symbol suitable for secular worship.
4. Crackpot pseudoreligion: Elmer Gantry meets Armageddon Rather
than draw up a bill of indictment on so inflammatory a subject,
it is more instructive to let the evidence speak for itself.
Herewith an opus by the Rev. Jerry Falwell with the fascinating
title: "God
is Pro-War". Foreign policy messianism a/k/a revolutionary
conservatism In the post-Enlightenment era, the number of persons
who have sought comprehensively to reorder the global political
structure is a restricted one: Napoleon, Wilson, Lenin, Hitler,
perhaps a few other less renowned lunatics. One would hesitate
a long time before pronouncing any of them a Burkean conservative.
Yet the modern pseudoconservative seeks national redemption in
good works delivered through the barrel of a gun. This contradiction
of the small government principle of conservatism is so glaring
that one would imagine it would be evident to a child. Yet it
is a cornerstone of the pseudoconservative delusion. While many
in the Republican base are viscerally opposed to foreign aid
if not somewhat isolationistic, they apparently embrace a foreign
policy that guarantees extensive foreign entanglement and expensive
foreign aid (in many cases, the implicit commitments will have
a far greater long-term cost than the explicit amount of aid
in this year's appropriation bill).
Several panjandrums of the neoconservative
wing of pseudoconservatism have openly called for an American
empire. Quite apart from their glaring betrayal of the principles
of a constitutional republic, these Borscht Belt Bismarcks appeal
to a strain in the populace that is at once inclined to seek
empire and disinclined to run it rationally.
Those most ardently receptive to the
idea of American empire are boorish, militaristic (as long as
it is someone else being shot at; refer back to point 3), and
provincial. Hardly the cosmopolitan outlook that, say, the British
Colonial Office would have cultivated, and hardly the worldly
wisdom required to administer the Punjab.
Likewise, empire could only succeed if
the United States were to maintain tolerably good relations with
third countries. But the pseudoconservative cannot forgo his
compulsion to bait foreigners so as to enhance his credentials
as a "man of the people" among the electorate. This
technique is a favorite in political stump speeches and on talk
radio. 6. Big government: for my purposes A half-trillion dollar
deficit: an implicit lien against future taxpayers. This speaks
for itself. 7. America first! - except for [insert your favorite
country here] George Washington said that "the Nation, which
indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness,
is in some degree a slave [emphasis added]. It is a slave to
its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient
to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."
While it has historically been the case
that persons of the Left are tempted to transfer their patriotic
loyalties to some fake utopia abroad (crackpot Jeffersonians
to Jacobin France; the Old Left to the Soviet Union; the New
Left to Cuba or North Vietnam), there has often been a minority
strain within American conservatism which has manifested, if
not a complete transfer of loyalty to some foreign power, a kind
of exaggerated sympathy for it.
This tendency may have started at the
end of the nineteenth century, as Gilded Age plumbing fixture
magnates and breakfast cereal tycoons began marrying their daughters
to the impecunious heirs of the British aristocracy. This entanglement
of the plutocracies of the two English-speaking powers has had
baneful results in American foreign policy during the twentieth
century, as a glance at the casualty lists of the Meuse-Argonne
offensive reveals. It is one strand in the skein of influences
that has pushed American conservatism in the direction of pseudo-conservatism,
even though it has minimal resonance among the great mass of
human Chevrolets who listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
It has been, indeed, largely an upper class phenomenon: from
the Vanderbilts down to the present Bush dynasty (whose current
patriarch, Bush 41, once referred to England as "the mother
country"). Perhaps its most enduring cultural legacy is
the Cult of Churchill.
While the Old Right conservative tradition
of Robert Taft resisted the siren call of Perfidious Albion (and
Eisenhower told Anthony Eden to take a hike during the Suez crisis),
pseudoconservative publications like National Review (reputedly
founded with CIA money by agency alumnus William Buckley for
the purpose of weaning mainstream conservatives of that time
away from foreign policy realism and towards global messianism)
contributed their bit for Blighty. NR is worth an extended exposition
as an example of the evolution of pseudoconservatism.
There is hardly a corrupt despot or Third
World caudillo NR hasn't bathed in rhetorical adoration during
its 50 years of existence. What a crew! Francisco Franco! Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek! President for Life Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko!
Emperor of the Peacock Throne and Light of the Aryans Reza Shah
Pahlavi! Ferdinand and the sartorially splendid Imelda Marcos!
Saddam Hussein (when he was invading Iran rather than Kuwait)!
The list is inexhaustible, but from this human menagerie three
main tendencies emerge:
i. Anglophilia. As William Buckley's
stuttering imitation of a drunken member of the House of Lords
makes evident, Anglophilia has frequently been a dominant note
in the publication. It has always had a stable of English contributors
who have struck just the right Pukka Sahib note. The rag started
out wistful about the collapse of the British Empire and is now,
in different editorial hands, touting the British Empire as a
model for U.S. foreign policy. There was a point in the 1980s
when NR's sycophancy towards Margaret Thatcher would have made
the Gracchi blush. Perhaps Mobutu, Papa Doc, and other guardians
of Western Civilization were considered suitable stand-ins for
the native viziers of British Empire.
ii. Corporate State Catholicism. As followers
of the Holy Church Militant, Buckley and his College of Cardinals
sought to imbue American foreign policy with the crusading zeal
of the Conquistadores. This impulse led Buckley early on to regard
Franco as a Christian gentlemen and Ortega y Gasset and Jose
Antonio Primo de Rivera as philosophers of the caliber of Locke
and Montesquieu.
The exigencies of the cold war not only
required overlooking El Caudillo's spotty adherence to the American
constitutional tradition, but also to embrace the cause of Eastern
and Southeastern European Austro-fascists whose work during World
War II was of interest to the Nuremberg Tribunal. NR's zeal of
the steadfast soul reached an epiphany of sorts when it published
an article in the 1970s claiming that the bombing of Guernica
never really happened - not in the sight of God, at any rate.
This mystical sense of rightness is also responsible for pseudoconservatism's
having elevated matters of private religious belief into urgent
public policy questions.
iii. Jerusalem, my happy home. Despite
the unmistakable Father Coughlin note during much of NR's existence,
it is unlikely these modern-day Conquistadores would have consciously
betrayed American national interests to Madrid. But something
happened in the 1980s both to change the location of NR's foreign
utopia and intensify the fanaticism of its editorial devotion.
While several of its writers - Joseph Sobran and Patrick Buchanan,
most notably - were political Catholics of the more-or-less militant
type (one recalls reading in Buchanan's autobiography that Franco
was a household icon when Pat was growing up), around the time
of Iran-Contra and the Jonathan Pollard affair, NR's Falangist
faction fell rapidly out of favor.
By the end of the decade, they had been
purged by Buckley himself, a man whose ultramontanism is exceeded
only by his cynical opportunism. In a meandering NR pronunciamento
that was breathtaking in its betrayal, Buckley not only convicted
the two of the gravest political crime in modern American jurisprudence
- they were roundly disliked by Jewish neoconservatives - but
managed to indict his own dead father of the same crime! So the
old deities - Generalissimo Franco, Cardinal Mindszenty, Ezra
Pound, Pious XII - were pulled down from Mount Olympus, to be
replaced by new objects of worship: Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel
Sharon. The Alcazar was out, the Third Temple was in.
Not only was the shift in the party line
abrupt, with the purged heretics declared unpersons (so like
Communist Party feuds familiar to NR's numerous "former"
Trotskyite writers), the rhetorical amperage was increased several
notches. Whereas NR's former defenses of Austro-fascism were
labored apologias, like G.K. Chesterton writing a Life of St.
Francis, the new NR read more like Communist Party propaganda
during the Popular Front period. The dissipated Buckley now seems
to have lost all interest in NR, leaving it to a dreary cabal
of Zionist lunatics.
Americans have seen this phenomenon before.
From the Bolshevik Revolution till the end of the cold war, members
of the CPUSA stood in much the same relation to a foreign power
that the Zionistas at NR (and Weekly Standard and other pseudoconservative
organs) do. It is worth noting that William Z. Foster, head of
the CPUSA in the 1930s, stated that "Communism is twentieth
century Americanism." Doubtless the commissars at NR would
say something analogous about Zionism in the twenty-first century.
8. Crony capitalism: none dare call it the corporate state Pseudoconservatives'
theoretical devotion to free market economics is exceeded only
by their practical adherence to crony capitalism. Most of the
panjandrums of the pseudoconservative network, beginning with
Henry Kissinger, have almost zero connection with true entrepreneurial
activity. Instead, their government positions prepared them for
lucrative employment in archetypal crony capitalist enterprises:
defense corporations, financial services, CIA-influenced "security"
firms, K Street influence pedlars, and oil companies (the latter
commodity is noteworthy in being exempt from free-market dogma:
it is the only known substance demand for which does not automatically
create a market; on the contrary, supplies have to be militarily
conquered periodically.
The reader might ask what harm it does
to the national interest if the pseudoconservative oligarchy
does well by doing good. Contrary to current mythology, the Internal
Revenue Code (26 <U.S.C>.) did not grow to 100 chapters
and an appendix so that bureaucratic automata at the IRS could
harass middle class families. In virtually all cases, U.S. tax
law became the most complex in human history because it was written
by the placemen of crony capitalists, i.e. the House Ways and
Means and Senate Finance Committees. And their objective was
to create, in many cases, zero tax liability for their corporate
benefactors.
According to the General Accounting Office,
corporate tax receipts have shrunk significantly as a share of
total federal revenue in recent years. From an average of around
30 percent of all receipts in the first term of the Eisenhower
administration, they had fallen by 2003 to just 7.4 percent.
The basic federal corporate tax rate for large corporations is
35 percent. But GAO found that 94 percent of large U.S. controlled
corporations (those with at least $250 million in assets) had
tax liabilities of less than 5 percent of their total income.
A large number had no tax liability whatsoever. (3) The most
regressive federal taxes are payroll taxes for programs like
Medicare and Social Security. They fall overwhelmingly on middle
and working class Americans. During Eisenhower's first term they
made up a little over 10 percent of all federal receipts; by
2003 they reached 40 percent, nearly matching the amount received
from individual income taxes. (4)
The pseudoconservative propaganda network,
which never fails to strike populist "man of the people"
note about the sorely tried, overtaxed, and overregulated common
man, somehow manages to avoid mentioning the true correlation
of power in the most fundamental aspect of politics: who gets
what. We are supposed to believe the middle class taxpayer is
beset by welfare queens, college professors, foreign aid recipients,
and other straw men from the Limbaugh demonology, rather than
Enron, Halliburton, or MCI/Worldcom Do the promoters of family
values seriously believe the United States will remain a middle
class nation with middle class mores if the income structure
more nearly resembles Regency England?
Conclusion: A Self-Negating
Belief System?
The pseudoconservative dogma is a grab-bag
of popular delusions which seem almost anarchic in their contradictoriness.
Anti-state rhetoric sits adjacent to authoritarian ukase, free
market dogma jostles with corporate state plutocracy, and so
on: religious devotion with militarist fervor, rugged individualism
with leader worship, "family values" with plutocratic
decadence, America first with global messianism.
How did it arise at the particular time
and place as it did, and why has it metastasized after 11 September
2001?
Perhaps the myth of American exceptionalism,
when combined with the semi-permanent military mobilization of
the cold war, provided a particularly fertile seed-bed for the
syndrome. Given the concomitant decay of education and popular
culture (5), it would seem that the only additional ingredient
necessary was a healthy dose of fear. Nine-eleven provided that.
Pseudoconservatism's worship of force
in human affairs is a particularly troubling and dangerous trait
at this time, given that international terrorism has evolved
into a self-organizing network that feeds off violence to gain
more recruits. (6) For all his neurotic love of hierarchy and
authoritarianism, the pseudoconservative has the potential to
unleash the very chaos and anarchy he fears. We can only hope
pseudoconservatism dies of its own contradictions before it consumes
our peace of mind, our wallets, and our sons.
* Werther is the pen name of a
Northern Virginia based defense analyst.
NOTES
(1) "Precisely because mass man
does not recognize any sense of personal responsibility and does
not care to distinguish between the intended and actual consequences
of any action, he acquiesces in the control of all social efforts
on the part of the state. Deceived into thinking that he is the
state, mass man does not see that he will soon be living for
the state (or the government), and not it for him." Nicholas
Capaldi, Ortega on the Crisis of Western Civilization, 1988.
(2) "General Zinni, what a Ninny"
is the tasteful title of a representative piece published on-line
here: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/
(3) Tax Administration Comparison of
the Reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and <U.S.-Controlled>
Corporations, 1996-2000, GAO-04-358.
(4) The phenomenon of upward redistribution
of income by the IRS code is pursued at length in David Cay Johnston,
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to
Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.
(5) Has no one noticed that the Radio
Moscow of pseudoconservatism - Fox - has achieved the difficult
feat of being the most decadent major network in terms of program
content? Why has this escaped the attention of Bill Bennett and
Gary Bauer?
(6) Fourth generation warfare gains its
strength precisely because its tactics invite overreaction by
the state.
----[End Werther Report]-----
Weekend
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Lawrence Davidson
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The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
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Ben Tripp
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Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
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Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry Quandary
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Communists
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Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
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Poets' Basement
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