It Isn't Easy to Imperialize the Populace

The following excerpt is from Bill Kristol’s New York Times editorial today. It’s actually almost an aside in an essay that is about John McCain, but it struck me when I read it. Is this how you view the conservative movement?

The American conservative movement has been remarkably successful. We shouldn’t take that success for granted. It’s not easy being a conservative movement in a modern liberal democracy. It’s not easy to rally a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power. It’s not easy to defend excellence in an egalitarian age. It’s not easy to encourage self-reliance in the era of the welfare state. It’s not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.

I think his statement about ‘rally[ing] a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power’ is the closest thing I’ve seen to a confession from the neo-conservatives. It reads like a confession to a crime. And I think that is exactly what it is. If you unpeel the onion, that little sentence justifies every bit of disinformation that the Iraq Study Group, Fox News, William Safire, Joe Lieberman, and the rest of the warmongers have perpetrated on the American people.

8 Comments

mainsailset on February 4, 2008 at 2:25 pm

The trouble with Kristol architecture is that it assumes the mansion can be reverse designed.

BooMan on February 4, 2008 at 2:37 pm

From Walter Lippman’s Public Opinion (1922):

CHAPTER XV

LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE

Because of their transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer may scorn the “star-spangled” ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as much as the king who told himself that Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. “Above all things,” says Bagehot, “our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it.”1 For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break the transference of emotion from the individual mind to the institutional symbol. And the first result of that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol, like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the beginning of a long upheaval.

These great symbols possess by transference all the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that each individual has for the landscape, the furniture, the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a static society, his only reality. That core of images and devotions without which he is unthinkable to himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up these devotions, and can arouse them without calling forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if possible associated with them. The question of a proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and then the People is inserted in the symbol American, so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied in the death of those who sleep in France.

Because of its power to siphon emotion out of distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand.
- anna in philly on February 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm
  
  denounce the government, embrace the flag – wendell berry
- anarchronarchist on February 4, 2008 at 3:35 pm
  
  Big, giant smiley face.
  
  Semiotics = Power
  
  The mighty flag can never release it’s noble stars from their prisoner stripes.
- mainsailset on February 4, 2008 at 4:06 pm
  
  Oh, so while I assumed the conservative mascott was an inbred turkey, Kristol gave it wings and now calls it an eagle?

anna in philly on February 4, 2008 at 3:17 pm

“It’s not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.”

these words could be coming from the mouths of famous liberals/feminists like gloria steinem as they argue against legalizing prostitution and for criminalizing pornography.

or from the mouths of caseyites who declare themselves liberal but work to actively take away the reproductive rights of women.

six of one………..

DaveW on February 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm

I think the entire paragraph constitutes sufficient evidence to put him in a padded cell. Conservatism = Bush, remember? Defend excellence? Please. Honor? Virtue? What planet is he channeling? Conservatism has indeed been remarkably successful — in bringing almost unprecedented mediocrity, dishonor, dishonesty, and treachery to America.

Kristol has confessed that neo-fascism is his ideology. That’s precisely what his longing for duty instead of rights means.

joe in oklahoma on February 4, 2008 at 10:39 pm

ahh yes, the seductions of liberation.
tsk tsk tsk
obviously liberation sucks.
obviously.

mainsailset on February 4, 2008 at 2:25 pm

The trouble with Kristol architecture is that it assumes the mansion can be reverse designed.
- BooMan on February 4, 2008 at 2:37 pm
  
  From Walter Lippman’s Public Opinion (1922):
  
  CHAPTER XV
  
  LEADERS AND THE RANK AND FILE
  
  Because of their transcendent practical importance, no successful leader has ever been too busy to cultivate the symbols which organize his following. What privileges do within the hierarchy, symbols do for the rank and file. They conserve unity. From the totem pole to the national flag, from the wooden idol to God the Invisible King, from the magic word to some diluted version of Adam Smith or Bentham, symbols have been cherished by leaders, many of whom were themselves unbelievers, because they were focal points where differences merged. The detached observer may scorn the “star-spangled” ritual which hedges the symbol, perhaps as much as the king who told himself that Paris was worth a few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. “Above all things,” says Bagehot, “our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it.”1 For poking about with clear definitions and candid statements serves all high purposes known to man, except the easy conservation of a common will. Poking about, as every responsible leader suspects, tends to break the transference of emotion from the individual mind to the institutional symbol. And the first result of that is, as he rightly says, a chaos of individualism and warring sects. The disintegration of a symbol, like Holy Russia, or the Iron Diaz, is always the beginning of a long upheaval.
  
  These great symbols possess by transference all the minute and detailed loyalties of an ancient and stereotyped society. They evoke the feeling that each individual has for the landscape, the furniture, the faces, the memories that are his first, and in a static society, his only reality. That core of images and devotions without which he is unthinkable to himself, is nationality. The great symbols take up these devotions, and can arouse them without calling forth the primitive images. The lesser symbols of public debate, the more casual chatter of politics, are always referred back to these proto-symbols, and if possible associated with them. The question of a proper fare on a municipal subway is symbolized as an issue between the People and the Interests, and then the People is inserted in the symbol American, so that finally in the heat of a campaign, an eight cent fare becomes unAmerican. The Revolutionary fathers died to prevent it. Lincoln suffered that it might not come to pass, resistance to it was implied in the death of those who sleep in France.
  
  Because of its power to siphon emotion out of distinct ideas, the symbol is both a mechanism of solidarity, and a mechanism of exploitation. It enables people to work for a common end, but just because the few who are strategically placed must choose the concrete objectives, the symbol is also an instrument by which a few can fatten on many, deflect criticism, and seduce men into facing agony for objects they do not understand.
  - anna in philly on February 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm
    
    denounce the government, embrace the flag – wendell berry
  - anarchronarchist on February 4, 2008 at 3:35 pm
    
    Big, giant smiley face.
    
    Semiotics = Power
    
    The mighty flag can never release it’s noble stars from their prisoner stripes.
  - mainsailset on February 4, 2008 at 4:06 pm
    
    Oh, so while I assumed the conservative mascott was an inbred turkey, Kristol gave it wings and now calls it an eagle?
anna in philly on February 4, 2008 at 3:17 pm

“It’s not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.”

these words could be coming from the mouths of famous liberals/feminists like gloria steinem as they argue against legalizing prostitution and for criminalizing pornography.

or from the mouths of caseyites who declare themselves liberal but work to actively take away the reproductive rights of women.

six of one………..
DaveW on February 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm

I think the entire paragraph constitutes sufficient evidence to put him in a padded cell. Conservatism = Bush, remember? Defend excellence? Please. Honor? Virtue? What planet is he channeling? Conservatism has indeed been remarkably successful — in bringing almost unprecedented mediocrity, dishonor, dishonesty, and treachery to America.

Kristol has confessed that neo-fascism is his ideology. That’s precisely what his longing for duty instead of rights means.
joe in oklahoma on February 4, 2008 at 10:39 pm

ahh yes, the seductions of liberation.
tsk tsk tsk
obviously liberation sucks.
obviously.

It Isn’t Easy to Imperialize the Populace

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