"hyper-tolerant of all points of view except those with which they disagree."

Wonderfully said...

I guess I'm just a "dumbed down, "bourgoies," "middle brow," "hyper-loyal to the Republican Party," jingoistic, patriotism-baiting, townie.

And y'all wonder why most conservatives aren't buying.

Wonderful timing, Jeffrey! Especially after watching historian, Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyers last night talking about his book, "The Limits of Power".
True conservatism is against this current wave of remaking the world through use of the American military. McCain is a continuation of the Bush Doctrine and Obama is intent on pulling a Lyndon Johnson in Afghanistan! So there is little hope this militarism will end anytime soon but, rest assured, it will not end well for the Amercan nation.
I am hopeful anti war conservatives can find their voice over the next few years, no matter who occupies the White House. This book sounds like a big help!

"'hyper-tolerant of all points of view except those with which they disagree.'

Wonderfully said..."

Indeed, it seems to be a failing of most of the human race, given the shenanigans in Bush Justice.

More to the point, I have known some conservatives, one who was (and I presume still is) a pacifist. Back in '91, he kept his prized Nativity scene on display in his house as a prayer for peace.

Speaking as a pacifist and as someone who often finds the Democrats too conservative for my taste, I'm not surprised that "peace-loving" and "conservative" may not be an example of literary disconnect.

This is the most nonsensical article I have ever read.

Thanks, Jeffrey. Your review of the book certainly makes me want to read it.

I think one of the problems is that "conservative" has been used as a label in many different, contradictory ways. Truly I do think one can be conservative in the classical sense and for peace; indeed, one excellent example of this is the Orthodox Peace Fellowship ( http://incommunion.org/ ).

But, like many others before me, I think the term "conservative" and "liberal" have long worn out their usefullness, and the time has come to stop using them. They really become labels used to over-ride discussion, because they either are used to indicate a source of authority (if you want that label applied to you) or a reason to dismiss someone else (if you don't like what you impute the label to mean). And in this way, the labels are used to divide people, people who could otherwise come to agreement if they didn't look at each other's labels. It's better to try to find a way to work with each other in communio than it is to divide each other in an either/or mentality.

Most conservatives I know love peace - no, they ALL love peace. Including me and my family. To suggest that what the US is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is "only seeking to destroy" is so completely off-the-charts wrong it is hard to know where to begin.

I am conservative in my views (not ashamed to say it), and would like nothing more than the world to be at peace. The reality is that there are forces of evil out there. The US, with all its faults, is still the best hope for peace throughout the world.

This book, and your review seems very naive to me....

Dan

Yes, the Conservatives were once isolationists - at least that's the term used in those days. They made cogent arguments against the entry into World War I and World War II.

Their cause got compromised with the rise of the Soviet Union, when too many who once said that it was folly to war against Hitler became cheerleaders for the war against Godless Communism. That inconsistency destroyed much of the credibility of the conservative pacifist movement, and soon it was forgotten by conservatives, while the isolationists could be painted and Nazi sympathizers, driven by antisemitism (because if it was principle that moved them, they would not be so vociferous about "stopping communism").

John Lukacs has a good analysis on that.

The problem with all doctrinaires is that some wars are correct, others aren't. To go through the gringo list of major wars:

i. "The French and Indian War" (the Seven Years War in North America: incorrect, just a mercantilist war. If Cleveland, Detroit, New Orleons, and st. Louis today were like Montreal and Quebec City, we'd be better off.

ii. The War for American Independence. correct. Too bad Hamilton destroyed its achievement.

iii. The war of 1812: incorrect and stupid

iv. the war for Texas independence. I'm a Borderer ("Scots-Irish") myself, and this was a war of Borderers vs. Mexicans. Still, it was incorrect.

iv. The Mexican War. as #iii, incorrect and based on false pretenses; and now the Mexicans are taking back what was once theirs.

v. Lincoln's War. A war for tariffs designed to plunder the South. This war was very incorrect.

vi. The Spanish American War. A war of imperial, nationist, and Mahanist ideology. Very incorrect.

vii. American Intervention in World War I: extremely incorrect, the worst American Foreign Policy mistake, and the dubious heritage of a racialist and anti-Catholic Wilson the Worst. A victory for the Central Powers would have been peachy, with no Adolf or Benito, Lenin or Uncle Joe.

viii. World War II in the European Theater, the war against Fascism and Naziism
(Ultra-Nationalism): very correct. Had we listened to the "conservatives" at the time, today we'd be dealing with the bright young dynamic leader not in the Kremlin but in the Reichstag. Let's promote the beatification of Dom Luigi Sturzo.

ix. World War II in the Pacific: a different war, and about who was going to control the western Pacific: incorrect: what were gringos doing having a silly colony, the Philippines?

x. the Cold War: correct, and Adriana is correct to point out "Old Right" and "Paleoconservative" inconsistency on this.

So counting on all my fingers, that makes for 2 correct and 8 incorrect. So that puts me more in Jeffrey Tucker's camp and out of it.

I have the pleasure of again building on what Adriana has said. The "Old Right" of the 30s and the Paleoconservatives of today remain inconsistent. For them its just peachy for Serbia to occupy largely Albanian Kosovo, and horrific for Georgia to occupy largely Russian Ossetia. (for the record: I'm not taking sides in these conflicts)

Truth be told, our paleoconservatives have now pretty much come out of the closet and are openly supporting Nationalism (the cause of two world wars and the mess in the Balkans, Caucuses, Ireland, and the Near East), ultranationalism, racialism (and thus antisemitism), Judeophobia, Fascism, and Clerical Fascism. Dom Luigi Sturzo knew this bunch well.

I exempt from this judgement the Rockford Institute, which seems (and I stress "seems") to be drifting towards the conservatism of Louis Veuillot.

"Their "patriotism" is summed up by hyper-loyalty to the Republican Party and pledging allegiance to the flag and treating it and other symbols of the nation-state as if they were holy relics. "

I am in complete disagreement with the premise of this entire article. The author and Jeffrey make it an either/or argument. Either you are the preferred 'peace-loving' conservative (read: pacifist) or a radical right-wing pro-war conservative (sort of like those Pennsylvanians that Obama called out for being in love with their guns and religion).

Well, I will tell you something. No one is pro-war. Not even our military. Our military is not out to start wars and as a devout Catholic who yes, happens to be a conservative I believe that the war in Iraq is a just war and not not in vain. As Catholics we can believe this without suffering the pains of hell (unlike pro-abortion people). Anti-war liberals - pacifists (and I guess conservatives too) want us all to believe that JP II and Benedict have condemned this war. That is an oversimplification and a stretch to put it mildly. Our Marines and soldiers are fighting for our freedom and have freeded millions of Iraqis from oppression. I am sick and tired of this anti-war hyperbole.

Pro-war conservative? No. Pro-freedom - yes. Thank God there are people willing to defend our rights with their lives. Yes, I thank God for them all.

What is not mentioned is that isolationism is really dependant on who is in charge. During the Wilson/FDR/Truman years, it was the Republicans who fought against interventionism, while Democrats opposed Iraq. Although both were for our involvement in Vietnam, it was JFK and LBJ who really got us going there. Interestingly, the only president in the last 70 years who really didn't intervene anywhere was the only president who was a military man - Eisenhower. American history has proved time and time again that the more military experience a president has, the less likely we are to go to war.

Laura, I'm with you on this. I work as a civilian employee of the military, and no one of my colleagues in uniform likes going to war. While I'm sure the book is an interesting read about a chapter of American conservatism which has passed into irrelevancy, the either/or tone of the article (good Catholic pacifists/bad Catholic supporters of war) is condescending and insulting plus it is factually wrong. Nowhere in Catholic magisterial teaching from the beginning is there support for absolute pacifism. Darn it, we're not Jain Hindus afraid to even step on a bug by accident! We're Catholics, with fighting blood coursing through our veins! Catholics have fought just wars such as the Spanish Reconquista, the Crusades, and the Albigensian Crusades, to name a few, when Islam or heresy threatened Christendom.

Yes, some wars in American history have fallen short of being just wars (the most notorious in my mind were the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, and the Kosovo war because we fought against Catholic nations in the first two cases and favored Muslim terrorists against an Orthodox nation in the last). Yes, the temptation to engage in Wilsonian nation-building for its own sake should be fought against. But, I argue that the current war against Islamic Fascism is a just war, and that limited nation building (such as we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan) is justified if such nation building helps to put in place the societal organs and institutions which would preclude the rise of state-sponsored Islamic terrorism.

In the spirit of Fouche who said "it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake" I would like to point that the Irak war was an unwise war, same as Vietnam.

That the Vietnam war was unwise was recognized by that well-know Communist dupe, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who when writing to Johnson he explained the situation thus : You do not want China to move into the area, the Russians do not want China to move into the area, the neighboring countries do not want China to move into the aread, and Ho Chih Minh does not want China to move into the area, but if the war keeps on, China will move in.

He adviced Johnson to reach an agreement with Ho Chih Minh as soon as possible, and he characterized Uncle Ho as a patriot and a nationalist, adding "things are as they are, not as we would like them to be".

Years after the war, Vietnam is, according to that other Communist organ "The Economist", enjoying an economic boom and its dissidents are safer than those in democratic country like the Philippines. They also want more ties with the US. Just think we could have had all this years early if we had gotten out of that war earlier.

As for Irak, the consequences are with us:

Our military stretched out - because no one has the guts to say that if you want war, you need highter taxes and a draft.
The pursuit of Osama bin Laden abandoned as he gets stronger in Pakistan - a country with nuclear capability, where there is plenty of nuclear material to be stolen and put to use.
The war in Afghanistan forgotten and in danger of being lost.
Turkey threatening to invade Kurdistan, claiming that it is a terrorist base.
The narrow focus in Irak making us forget about Russia and Georgia, with the US making promises to Georgia it has not the means to deliver. The Georgian President is about to learn what Imre Nagy did in 1956 about US promises of support: with them and a couple of bucks you can get enough rope for a noose.

So, I believe the Irak war to be an extremely unwise one, and I am not in the mood to discuss its morality, as there is nothing moral about being unwise.

This has nothing to do with the admiration I have for the military. It is not theirs to question why, but to do and die.

The destruction of a country and the killing of one million plus innocent people is more than unwise. It is deeply immoral. Why should I have to point that out on Catholic comment box?

The problem with claiming, in these times, that some wars are just and others are not is that it leaves the State to decide which are which.