The Emptiness Of “New Fusionism” On Display
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There was a time when I would have treated this sort of post half-seriously, as if it were making arguments that needed to be answered. Frankly, life is too short to waste more than a few minutes on such things. In the post, Donald Douglas makes all the usual moves impugning my patriotism because I do not sign off on illegal and immoral wars and do not indulge in displays of nationalistic self-congratulation, and he offers rehashed “new fusionism” as the true path. Following his guidance, pro-lifers can waste their political energies defending aggressive warfare and the national security state just as they have for the last few years. There is something sad and rather pathetic about a so-called “core values conservatism” that is so completely hollow. There is also something a bit amusing about a self-styled neoconservative rejecting Frum, Brooks and Perle (!) because they are clearly uninterested in going through the social conservative motions that the “new fusionist” scam requires.
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11 Responses to “The Emptiness Of “New Fusionism” On Display”
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Cold fusionism?
Promise in vague generalities to do something about the budget, abortion, etc. but never really deliver while demanding lock-step conformity and strong support on the other issues?
I quite appreciate that you have better things to do with your time. I, however, have a minute so please permit me to mock this guy on the behalf of your readers. I wish we could mock Dan Riehl, since that would be a game more worth our attention.
In gauging the mettle of one’s ideological opponents, i always find it helpful to count the cliche’s. For today’s performance we have:
“When the U.S. sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.”
“a robust, forward-looking foreign policy ”
“Liberty at home depends on security abroad.”
“neoconservatives are former liberals who were mugged by reality”
Whew. If we were to score the post on technical merit alone this would rate a perfect “10 ” in terms of triteness. Moreover, he has helped me pick those gems out by putting most of them in bold type.
But it gets even better when one engages the meaty substance of his commentary. One always has the sinking feeling that he has strolled into the tall weeds when the obligatory appeal to authority takes the form of Old Man Podhoretz and Daniel Moynihan. I reckon Kirk or Chesterton would be a little too airy-fairy for him….too much of that stuff and you end up like David Frum, y’ know.
“Charles Murray’s argument that public-assistance makes poverty worse was validated by the GOP’s 1996 welfare reform legislation. ”
His point here may very well be correct, and I think many of your readers will agree with him. But it seems to me that the legislation he mentions “validated” nothing other than it was a pretty convenient position for the executive and legislative branches to take at the time.
“But folks must keep in mind that erstwhile (neo)conservatives such as David Brooks, David Frum, Richard Perle are soft-and-squishy self-promoters ”
i guess this shows what a commie I am, because I still think these guys are neo-conservative. Maybe he’s objecting because they got “mugged by reality”.
Finally, let’s glance at his final paragraph which – I apologize, everyone – I will quote in full.
“As I noted previously, the way forward for the GOP is to build an alliance between between hard classical-liberals and socially-traditional neoconservatives. If the “neocon” label is essential “toxic” for many on the right, that’s fine. Neoconservatism preceded the Bush doctrine and “compassionate conservatism.” Its clarity of moral purpose will remain, and for building a victory coalition going forward, I’ll simply be advocating a “core values conservatism,” one that combines the primacy of the pro-life movement for total human dignity with moral clarity in international politics – a combination that Barry Goldwater advanced for a strong and successful ideological right in earlier decades.”
I have no idea what any of that means, and I get the vibe that he may not know either. I m also pro-life and I suppose I too would support “total human dignity” if I ever saw it. As i was only three years old when Goldwater ran for President, I may have to take his word on that part, although I would have thought that winning elections would enter into the equation. And waht is a “socially-traditional neo-conservative”? Isn’t that oxymoronic? And wasn’t that the whole point of calling them “neo-conservative” in the first place?
Sorry to bore everyone with that screed but, wow, I feel better. We now return you to your previously scheduled program, already in progress.
Forgive me, but I don’t where he mentions you at all in that post, either directly or by some reasonable inference. Did you link to the right one?
Thank you, jetan, for sparing me the trouble of following that link. That’s quite the doozy of a final paragraph!
Perhaps I’m not being fair, but isn’t “socially-traditional neoconservative” rather internally contradictory? A neocon can be “socially conservative,” but even if we substitute the much more sterile “socially” for “culturally,” can one really be a Wilsonian advocate of “spreading democracy” and, in any meaningful way, “traditional”?
I just now noticed that you ask this very same question at the end of your comment; my mistake. Nonetheless, I feel it certainly bears repeating, with, perhaps, my expanding upon it as I have. Moreover, given that neoconservatives tend to be economically neoliberal, can we at all call them traditionalists?
*sigh*
Koz, he links to this post and calls it evidence that paleoconservatives are unpatriotic. So, yes, he refers to me pretty directly, but not by name. Technically, he is impugning the patriotism of all paleoconservatives, but he refers specifically to something I wrote. This is not the first time he has said something like this (I think I was declared anti-American last week), but I haven’t bothered mentioning it before. I can’t blame you if you didn’t wade through the entire post looking for the reference.
I missed that part, sorry.
Really, I’m not sure why you give him the time of day or the satisfaction of a link. This trash is so intellectually dishonest it’s impossible to read. He tries to muddy up my name every other week or so. It’s just not worth the time of responding. I don’t mind people attacking me but only if they do so with some shred of honesty. This guy is a liar and a fraud.
I do try to ignore him as much as possible, but I think it is occasionally useful to remind people that these denunciations of other people as unpatriotic or something else outrageous is habitual with this crowd. There may be some exceptions, but by and large it is what they do. If I responded to every instance where some Commentary blogger says, “The American Conservative is neither American nor conservative,” (oh, they are clever over there!) I sometimes think I would never get any other work done. This kind of attack is not some one-time thing that happened years ago and has no bearing on the present. It is frequent and deliberate, and once in a while I think it should be pointed out.
“a robust, forward-looking foreign policy â€
It may be a cliche, but one hopes he means it. The retirement of the knee-jerk reflex to consider every occurrence outside our borders a replay of late-’30s Europe would be really welcome.
One might hope, but you have to understand that he uses the words robust and forward-looking to dress up the same militaristic claptrap that we have had in the past. Whenever I see someone talk about a “robust” foreign policy, I usually assume that they mean aggressive and hegemonic unless they give me some reason to think differently. Instead of retiring the reflex you mention, I assume that he means that we should have even more of it.
Yeah, I was afraid of that; I was just being optimistic. “Robust” always means bombing someone, but I hoped “forward-looking” actually meant something besides “onward to glorious hegemony.” Sigh.