Pajamas Media

Why They Hate the Neocons

You think neocons are under attack now? Just wait. Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon - who at one point in his life considered himself fully aligned with the New Left - now routinely called a neocon - predicts the worst is yet to come.

October 9, 2007 - by Roger L Simon

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A few years ago, when I was first publicly called a neoconservative, I had only a vague notion of what it was. Yes, I had heard they were former lefties, some Trotskyites or Trotskyists (another distinction that continues to confuse me), who had switched over to the conservative side and that they favored the promotion of democracy by militant means, when necessary. But that was about it.

At that point I tried reading a bit of the supposed founding father of the neocons, Leo Strauss, but found him heavy going. Maybe you had to have been there. (University of Chicago circa 1952). In any case, I was not excited to be identified with them. If there was one thing I loathed being called, it was “conservative,” neo, paleo or any other kind. This was not my self-image from the time I bought my first copy of Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool” somewhere around its release in February 1957. I was thirteen then and eager to try my first marijuana cigarette. You get the picture - being “conservative” was not my thing.

Still, I had been categorized. But it wasn’t until quite recently when I read Joshua Muravchik’s fine essay “The Past, Present and Future of Neoconservatism” that - despite actually knowing several people regarded as leaders of the movement - I got a simple, clear picture of what neoconservatism was. According to Muravchik, it was divided into two schools: one, via Irving Kristol, centering on a reexamination of the welfare state and the other, led by Norman Podhoretz, focusing on winning the Cold War and now the War on Terror through that democracy promotion.

My chief interest has always been in the latter and I find it ironic the same high school me who was gobbling up “Birth of the Cool” was a devoted reader of Commentary, the magazine Podhoretz then edited and where Muravchik’s essay now appears. Commentary was to me in those times just another part of my adolescent self-definition, like wearing a beret and turtleneck, listening to Mulligan and Monk and going to beatnik poetry readings in the Village. I didn’t know I was in the hands of the neocons. They just sounded smart and wrote well.

Those “Cool-School” days were a half decade before many things changed in our society with the advent of the civil rights movement (by far the left’s finest hour) and the anti-Vietnam war movement, both of which I participated in heavily. (I never questioned the latter for many years and even now hold much ambivalence about it.)

So I am a typical product of my generation. I apologize for taking so long to get to my point about “Why They Hate the Neocons,” but this is a Just So Story of a sort, as in “How the Neocons Got Their Trunk”, so please be patient because this is where it begins to intersect.

As is well known, by the end of the Vietnam War, many of us came to the conclusion there was something seriously wrong with America, largely ignoring the obvious that there will be something wrong with all societies since they are composed of fallible humans. We were the big guys and we were therefore at the greatest fault. And one of the clearest areas of our villainy was that we supported or tolerated right wing dictators like Pinochet, Somoza, the Arab potentates, etc.

Although I didn’t fully realize it then - I considered myself at that point aligned with the New Left - the neocons agreed with that position. They pointed out, however, that in addition, opposition to leftist dictators in China, the Soviet Union and Cuba was justified. Their position against totalitarianism was consistent. Mine, and my friends, was not. We gave a pass to Fidel and company.

Perhaps it was that I got to visit the People’s Republic of China quite early (1979) and later Cuba and the Soviet Union (twice) on cultural exchanges that I began to see those countries as gigantic jails. Still, I lived in a curious twilight zone where many in my generation found themselves, sympathizing, in principle, with the egalitarian socialist ideal while encouraging, even helping, writers and other dissidents to escape those societies. Hello, cognitive dissonance. It was all part of who we were - the way we were, if you will. My trips behind the Iron Curtain were considered “groovy” in Hollywood, where I worked. They gave me panache. We were light years beyond the Blacklist.

And then something happened. Eastern Europe started breaking away from the communist world and the Soviet Union fell. Never mind that the reviled Reagan may have had some responsibility, everyone - or at least most everyone - rejoiced. And it wasn’t just a totalitarian system that was dissolving, socialism as an economic system lay in tatters. To call it “scientific” was laughable.

The Left was left with little to do, little to organize around. (Bill Clinton, recognizing this, essentially deserted his own side by walking back on welfare issues). Of course, there were gay rights to be resolved, but the rapidity with which most of those rights were achieved is astonishing. It has been less than forty years since the Stonewall Riots to the general societal equality of gays on nearly everything but the marriage issue. The Left was the victim of its own deserved success in the social justice area when…

9/11 happened.

The US suddenly had a common Islamofascist enemy. Something had to be done. But there were no philosophical underpinnings for the confrontation, no groundwork. This was a whole new world. Only one group had been consistently warning of this situation all along - the neoconservatives. And they had a solution - democracy promotion - the elimination of Middle Eastern despots. They would be our gurus.

Soon enough, it appeared the neocons had taken over the government and Bush and Cheney were acting in their behest. As Muravchik points out, since neocon policies were then the clearest common sense response, it’s unlikely B & C needed this prompting, but nevertheless the popular media view is that they were in the neocons’ grip.

So in those slow motion moments when the 767s crashed into the World Trade Center everything switched around. The cool guys in school were no longer the cool guys. One clique - the leftie, hippie into yuppie, liberal media and showbiz alliance - moved out. Some semi-stodgy ex-Scoop Jackson policy wonks moved in.

Idealism had been stolen from the Left. (In truth, as I indicated, they didn’t have much remaining, but that probably made it all the worse.)

This constituted an insult (in the medical and other senses) to a lot of people’s self-images. The neocons were to be hated because they had stolen that idealism. In a sense, they had stolen those same people’s youths. For a very short period, Abbie Hoffman had morphed into Paul Wolfowitz. The neocons were to be envied then. And no doubt they were.

This was indeed a short period because such a deep insult cannot easily be tolerated. The depth of the hatred it evinced is evidenced in the unimaginative lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Neo Con“: You call yourself a Christian/I think that you’re a hypocrite/You say you are a patriot/I think that you’re a crock of shit. Forget that Mick and Keith chose to overlook (or were even unaware) that neocons are normally assumed to be Jewish, their principle point seems to be that all this democracy idealism is bogus. The war is really about corporate greed and we know it. The song contains the usual casual references to Halliburton and Brown & Root, as if it were written on the john while skimming Newsweek and swigging a bottle of Guinness.

But reducing the Iraq War to mere profiteering is unfair reductionism and I wonder if, at other moments, the Stones really believe what they wrote, unless the “Street Fighting Men” have suddenly turned into pacifists in which all wars, including World War II, are not worth fighting, since all wars have profiteers. And whether the particular companies they enumerate are indeed profiteering is open to question. Some say they are having financial difficulties from participating. Moreover, you don’t need to read Victor Davis Hanson’s recent report from Iraq to know that most of our soldiers and even many of our leaders were and are engaged in what is to them an idealistic enterprise. Whether it was the right idealistic enterprise is subject to debate, but the basic impulse of these people - our soldiers and those leaders - should not be. It is the converse of calling someone a traitor for criticizing policy.

So why the anger? Why the willed distortion? Jagger and Richards were of course far from the only ones. You could find this kind of hostile schoolboy name-calling in a Frank Rich column in the New York Times and a Keith Olbermann screed on MSNBC, to name just two of thousands. The attacks began even before the war in Afghanistan, but by the time we were in Iraq, it was a cacophony.

Somebody’s ox had been gored. Idealism is the good guy’s province. When your idealism has been stolen, you are no longer the good guy. You are the bad member of the family. No one wants to be that - a loss of love is involved. But what do you do?

One thing you do is to try desperately to retrieve the moral high ground. Two approaches to this have been employed: running down your competition (in this case saying his project has failed and trying to ensure that it does) and building up your own alternative. This, in part, accounts for the rise of the Global Warming issue as religion. A societal consensus had long been reached on environmental and energy concerns. Conservation and alternative energy promotion were considered to be good things, but now allegiance to them crosses the bounds of science into the devotional sphere. You are on one team or you are on the other team. You are either with us or against us… whoever us is.

From all this we are in a terrible pass and I think many of us feel it. I know I do. We have come to a point where, because the psychological-emotional-personal stakes are so elevated, we routinely deny the other. On both sides of the ideological divide where idealism is so deeply fought over, we refuse to acknowledge our opponents’ humanity - that they, no matter which side they are on, can come from a place of wanting the best for people.

I know I have suffered from that and, I am ashamed to say, have responded in kind on occasion, sometimes also unfairly. Where we go from here in this battle I don’t know. But have some sympathy for the neocons. They may be under attack currently, but if we do actually win in Iraq, as now seems a possibility, for them there will be Hell to pay.

Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger.

57 Comments

Michael J. Totten:

These longer essays of yours are excellent.

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:49 am DoktorNo:

Hey! The neo-con attitude towards totalitarianism looks like tha mainstream of right-wingers in Poland (and propably at the rest of Central Europe)! Apparently the experience of both nazism and communism is responsible for this…

Oct 9, 2007 - 6:20 am william jonas:

I simply must say ( without animosity) that this sounds like something a screen writer would write . The identifiable symbols , the act and scene scenarios, the well known events. The final unresolved struggle which seems to define us, yet elude us.
Well done . It has been the history of our times and the consequences that we leave for our childrens generation.
Shall we be a free people ? Or will we allow ourselves to be herded and managed by an exclusive elite that literally wants to enslave everyone to their vision? If this sounds familiar it should be because these are precisely the conditions our founding forefathers fought against.
The scenery may have changed and the characters look a bit different but as the camera slowly pulls back and the scene widens we can began to view the eternal struggle between good and evil.

Oct 9, 2007 - 7:02 am dougf:

They may be under attack currently, but if we do actually win in Iraq, as now seems a possibility, for them there will be Hell to pay.

Well if the US actually does ‘win’ in Iraq, why should anyone give a rat’s ass what something like Olberman says ? Winning IS Everything .

If one is defined by one’s selection of enemies, and one is opposed by the likes of Frank Rich, Keith Olberman, and the intellectual nuance of Mick Jagger, well then, what can one say but —– Bring it On.

Water off a duck’s back. The whole sorry lot of them.

Oct 9, 2007 - 8:27 am David Thomson:

“Those “Cool-School” days were a half decade before many things changed in our society with the advent of the civil rights movement (by far the left’s finest hour)”

No, it was not. I’m sorry, but I am compelled to rain on your parade and sentimental memories. The Martin Luther King phenomenon was possibly the greatest scam operation pulled on the American public by the leftist establishment. The harm of the so-called civil rights movement is far greater than the good accomplished. It is time to reevaluate the legacy and person of Martin Luther King. This man did enormous damage during his lifetime. He was a radical socialist who held the United States in utter contempt. King even described our attempt to save the people of Vietnam from the Communists as act of racist and imperialist aggression. He did much to encourage the phenomenon of self-hating Americanism. Should you take my word for anything? Thankfully, you don’t have to. I encourage everyone to read MLK’s own words! Please obtain a copy of “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King” edited by Clayborne Carson. It will blow your mind to find out how crazy he was. Dennis Praeger remarks that the Leftists turn everything to crap after they get involved. The same holds true for the allegedly glory years of the civil rights movement.

Oct 9, 2007 - 8:34 am Roger L. Simon:

David Thompson, I am not going to argue with you. Evidently our values are quite different. I am less interested in whether Martin King was or was not a socialist or a communist than that he helped overthrow segregation in this country, a horrible blight on our society. It is curious to me, however, that you jumped at the King Connection when I did not even mention his name in my article. I referred to the Civil Rights Movement that had many supporters of many ideologies - even basic humanism.

Oct 9, 2007 - 10:04 am holdfast:

While much of what Thomson says about King is undoubtedly true, I guess I can forgive it (or at least most of it) because of where King came from and what he did that was good. The same logic basically applies to Mandela - sure he was a commie, but he lived under a regime that labeled anything that opposed it as “communist”. The former regime in South Africa really was a lot like the left’s paranoid fantasies about the Bush Administration.

What I cannot forgive is the rich, white, educated folks that should have known better, but instead corrupted the laudable civil rights movement with the “War on Poverty” and the other Johnson-era progams that helped to create runaway out of wedlock childbirth and the destruction of the black family and black self-reliance.

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:23 am Paul A' Barge:

we refuse to acknowledge our opponents’ humanity

It is not a refusal to acknowledge the humanity of Liberals, it is in fact an acknowledgment of the failure side of humanity to point out just how co opted by evil virtually all current Liberals are.

Evil is part of humanity. You struggle with it, or you pray for help in overcoming it, or you submerge yourself in it.

Those who would leave the Iraqi people and their fellow countrymen vulnerable at the hands of Saddam Hussein, no matter how erudite they are in their arguments, are on the dark side.

Know your enemy. Never forget that they are human and that they fight dirty.

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:36 am David Thomson:

“Evidently our values are quite different. I am less interested in whether Martin King was or was not a socialist or a communist than that he helped overthrow segregation in this country…”

Hard core socialists and communists inherently turn people into victims. They poison everything they touch. When everything is said and done, the resulting harm vastly outweighs the good. The O.J. Simpson fiasco, for instance, is a direct result of the legacy of Martin Luther King. Also, he worsened the slums of our major cities. MLK opened up the doors to the culture of minority victimization. One must make a sharp distinction between the pre-India visit of Dr. King and his return home to the United States. His meetings with the disciples of Mahatma Gandhi turned him a hater of his own country. MLK’s involvement in the Rosa Parks incident, most assuredly, is to be commended. This is a bright spot in his overall disastrous record.

Martin Luther King also felt kindly towards affirmative action programs. On page 133 of the previously mentioned autobiography we find the following:

“Moreover, the prime minister said, if two applicants compete for entrance into college or university, one of the applicants being an untouchable and the other of high caste, the school is required to accept the untouchable.

Professor Lawrence Reddick, who was with me during the interview, asked: “But isn’t that discrimination?”

“Well, it may be,” the prime minister answered. “But this is our way of atoning for the centuries of injustices we have inflicted upon these people.”

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:41 am peter jackson:

Self-identity is obviously key. The question I’m most interested in is how do people like you, Roger, manage to escape a lifetime of denial and ear-ringing cognitive dissonance while so many others do not.

yours/
peter.

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:45 am RKV:

No one with half a brain needed more evidence than the publication of the Gulag Archipelago in 1973 to realize that Communism was evil.

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:47 am Linda Frank:

As a woman in her seventies (gasp!), I was certainly around during the Civil Rights Movement. Only someone who never sat in the back of the bus could criticize Dr. King for whatever political views he had. He had an extraordinary courage and was a man of deep faith. He is not to be blamed if people who followed after him took things to ridiculous extremes. holdfast is quite correct.

Oct 9, 2007 - 11:48 am Nobody Important:

“So in those slow motion moments when the 747s crashed into the World Trade Center everything switched around.”

The planes that hit the World Trade Center were 767s, not 747s.

Oct 9, 2007 - 12:25 pm bluea:

The planes were two 767’s and two 757’s, not 747’s as indicated in the article’s text.

There’s one other aspect that seems to be a piece of the anger in those who didn’t undergo the transition you made.

The 2000 elections. The “Cool School” of idealists was looking at 1992-2000 as the start of a New Golden Age. There really _wasn’t_ very much left preventing the slow but sure march of every single liberal ideal.

When the recount debacle was mostly over, it was time to point the blame - and that inevitably led some people to a visceral hatred of Bush et al. Essentially as the only possible suspects for the question “Who derailed the Utopia Express?”

Oct 9, 2007 - 12:25 pm Roger L. Simon:

Nobody Important and bluea, thanks for the correction. Fixed.

Oct 9, 2007 - 12:45 pm deathtosocialism:

An entertaining perspective. I am 42 years old and my first vote cast was for Reagan in 1984. Without realizing it I brushed aside the haze of socialist-liberalism with one push on the chad next to the Great One’s name.
I grew up with vague notions of Vietnam, Watergate, the killing fields, and Iran. In every case America was deemed bad, evil, and immoral. This led me to understsand one simple thing — there was a entire side of our culture that absolutely hated this country. It hated it so deeply that it seemed to want us defeated, wanted us humbled.
Then Reagan appeared, and like a light from above, spoke what so needed to be said. He lit the fire of a generation that knew America, capitalism, and freedom were right, and that despots of all stripes must be called out and defeated. If standing for these values was being a “neocon” then stamp my forehead with it.
Today the war of ideas is bitter and brutal. But it must be fought by those of us capable of forming a coherent argument against the forces who want us to bend at the knee to Godless socialism or Allah-ruled fascism. Wake up America, the fight has just begun.

Oct 9, 2007 - 12:47 pm Sgt. Ahn (USMC OIF 2005-2006):

An excellent article, Sir.

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:22 pm Dr. Ellen:

Yesterday was Columbus day. He’s about as reviled as you can get, nowadays - blame him for anything bad that ever happened to North and South America.

But if it’s fair game to do that to Columbus, why isn’t it fair game to do it to Martin Luther King?

All arguments have at least two sides. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be arguments. But I Have A Dream: one day the ideologues will admit it’s fair when their opponents do unto them as was done in the opposite direction. Until then, remember the human condition. There is nothing more unforgivable than being proven right.

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:26 pm Jweaver:

Thank you for this essay, it truly struck me deeply.

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:34 pm Thomas:

DoktorNo :

“Hey! The neo-con attitude towards totalitarianism looks like tha mainstream of right-wingers in Poland (and propably at the rest of Central Europe)! Apparently the experience of both nazism and communism is responsible for this…”

Calling anyone not left wing, right wing, is one of my pet peeves (that’s old Stalinist propaganda… you can see right in the communist manifesto there was more than the left and right… and who did the most to destroy the right…).

Anyway, the US is a liberal democracy and US conservatives have always supported that… they are the enemies of traditional Euro right… they are the founders of the ideology, that Marx talked about, that swept it away…

The reason we have nonsensical terms like neocon is to act as a fudge factor to hide or compensate for these past errors. As the left has rebranded classical liberalism ‘conservative’ and ‘right wing’ (the left picked those labels more so than those who now use them)… and as it has a mental image of ‘conservatism’… of well.. being conservative (fill in your own blanks of stereotypes)…. ergo, conservatives who don’t act that way (many… or most of you look) must be something new… like a neocon…. lame…

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:38 pm JohnG:

Interesting, but I think there’s more to this evolution of positions. You skip over huge changes in political power and the methods of discussion that have happened over the last 20 years. I think the left’s 9/11 happened in November of ‘94. They are 13 years into their quagmire. Limbaugh is their Bin Laden. Pelosi and Reid are the generals behind their surge.

Oct 9, 2007 - 1:59 pm DoktorNo:

Thomas: as someone with Batchelor Degree in political science (who is working on master thesis) I can surely tell you, that “conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive” or “left” are changing their meaning during the time. For example, conservatists in 19th century Europe were monarchists, and they were against republican ideas of French Revolution. Today’s conservatives, like French president Sarkozy have strong affinity towards “republican values”.

To confuse you more, in the history of my country there were a movemet of “independence left”, people who believed in socialism, but in the framework of independent state, that would emerge after the self-determination struggle. By today’s standards they would be called “nationalists”, but ironically they were conflict with nationalistic “national democrats”…

During the communist period the governing coministic establishment were using the nationalistic rethoric and subtextes in propaganda to gain support from population.

In short: political thought evolves, and furthermore it is not so simple, as it seems…

Oct 9, 2007 - 3:11 pm Tom M.:

I would contend that despite whatever socialist tendencies MLK may have had, his message of dignity and peaceful protest was the exact right message at exactly the right time. It was his assassination that opened the door to the charlatans who tried to replace him and his message with a constant state of victimhood and welfare that threw the civil rights movement off the rails.

It is ridiculous to compare MLK with Columbus, who was acting as a representitive of the Spanish Inquisition and contributed nothing to the history of our country.

Oct 9, 2007 - 3:40 pm Eric Jablow:

Oddly, the Rolling Stones’ song on the first Iraq war, Highwire, includes the line,

Another Munich we can’t afford.
We’re gonna send in the Eighty-second Airborne!

I wonder what changed.

Oct 9, 2007 - 3:51 pm David Thomson:

“It was his assassination that opened the door to the charlatans who tried to replace him and his message with a constant state of victimhood and welfare that threw the civil rights movement off the rails.”

I’m sorry—but you are simply wrong. Martin Luther King personally pushed the sense of minority victimhood and entitlement. He was a big fan of the welfare state. Once again, you need not listen to a word that I’m saying. Please go ahead and obtain a copy of “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King” edited by Clayborne Carson. You should read MLK’s own words.

Oct 9, 2007 - 4:09 pm Wheeling:

It should be obvious that King was a creature of his time, as we all are. To attack him now for supporting welfare provisions then seems mean-spirited and petty. That was the period when “colored” people drank from separate water fountains. King helped lead us out of that. You have to be a pretty rigid person (or worse) to fault him for that.

Oct 9, 2007 - 4:24 pm Tom M.:

I have read MLK’s words. And I also observed his actions, and what those actions contributed to the civil rights movement. The man was not a saint; he was a flawed human being who nevertheless accomplished a great deal of good. Without his message of dignity and peaceful protest, the civil rights movement would not have achieved what it did in his lifetime. This is the legacy he left. You are referring to his thoughts, I am referring to his contribution to American society. Ghandi was not without his faults, either.

If you can’t appreciate the monumental importance of ending segregation and MLK’s contribution, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Oct 9, 2007 - 4:38 pm Brian H:

Roger;
You might be interested in the analysis of liberal-conservative moral/idealism differences found at YourMorals.org . It’s a research project run by Heidl, and in general terms concludes that the liberal has one standard: is someone being hurt or offended? while the conservative is prepared to give equal weight to patriotism and legitimate authority, etc. This dilution of pure harm-reductionism seems to make them evil to be opposed by any and all means to the tempermentally liberal, it seems.

Oct 9, 2007 - 5:16 pm Demosophist:

bluea:

When the recount debacle was mostly over, it was time to point the blame - and that inevitably led some people to a visceral hatred of Bush et al. Essentially as the only possible suspects for the question “Who derailed the Utopia Express?”

I absolutely despised the Bush folks for what I figured they’d done to take that election, but since I’m a statistician I also knew that it was basically a tie, so any sort of contest (including a quick game of stud poker) would’ve been a fair way to get to a winner. And having a political joust was about as good as anything.

Gawd, I really despised James Baker though. (He looked and acted too much like my Dad, for one thing.)

My second impulse after 9/11 was to just oppose anything George Bush did, because I was convinced that he was a second-rate leader. But what really shocked me into sanity was the way most of my friends on the left immediately blamed the US. I mean, I was quite willing to brand Bush a dufus… but I did want him to put all of our resources together and kick some Islamofascist butt. And I also saw the rising “tidal wave” in the Middle East pretty clearly.

The reaction of my leftist friends created what William Burroughs once called a “naked lunch” for me. I just couldn’t be in that club any more. The image in the mirror was disgusting.

And I still think the gentlemanly thing to do in Florida would have been a game of poker while sharing a bottle of aged Kentucky. The margin of victory was less than the margin of uncertainty about the actual vote count… so that’s a tie in my book.

Oct 9, 2007 - 5:19 pm Jay:

Just a quick break in the comment stream to thank RLS and the commenters for an interesting and civil thread. You got some kind of nitwit/obnoxiousness filter, Roger?

Oct 9, 2007 - 5:21 pm Hucbald:

Dear Mr. Simon,

Beautifully written article. I am not Jewish (Lutheran, actually), and I am not a conservative (Small “l” libertarian a la the best of Jeffersonian intent), but things did change for me on 09/11/2001. I happened to have a spectacular view of the Pentagon burning out of my office window that morning. I was working for an agency of the federal government at the time (Day job. Honest!).

I kinda lost my zeal for the leftist utopian dreamland at that particular moment. My culture - OUR culture - “The West” has produced the greatest advances in science, literature, and the arts. I’m now - at long last - ready to defend it.

Yeah, my friends gave me a lot of grief at first - I’m a musician, after all - but once I summoned the backbone to defend myself and what I beleived, they left me alone… or, alternately, they just left. Conversion has winnowed out the fair weather friends for me: A silver lining to every cloud.

Oct 9, 2007 - 5:31 pm michaelJ:

Roger,

You are one hell of a writer.

As a polemicist, not so much.

Your devotion and expertise in the cinematic genre makes it quite difficult to make the leap into the unsymbolically-inclined, non-semiotic realm of street politics…
i.e. American democracy lite, with brass knuckles.

The theoretical problem for you, as a screenwriter, is the lack and total impossibility of a “fourth reel” to resolve the political.

It cannot exist, you won’t find it, unless you abandon the cinematic paradigm.

No closure.

No willing suspension of disbelief.

Just the tyranny of the editors…

Oct 9, 2007 - 5:41 pm venividivici:

There’s one other aspect that seems to be a piece of the anger in those who didn’t undergo the transition you made.

There wasn’t much left in OUR culture. In the rest of the world, the Muslims were left.

If liberals were even half as intelligent as they think they are, they’d reason thus:

A. If our ideas are so superior that any deviation from them are mere interludes in a larger series of events

B. Without 9/11, the interlude would have only lasted 4 years of the first Bush term

C. The best way to guarantee no more 9/11s or worse is to so thoroughly discredit or defeat radical Islam that it poses no more of a threat than radical Shintoism

D. Partner with President Bush to defeat radical Islam.

E. Resume historical evolution toward New Golden Age.

Liberals aren’t going to convince people that fear of Islamic terrorism is ungrounded. They’re just not. As someone with an advanced degree in history, I would challenge them to name one single society in history that would not, if transported to the present day, either fear Islamic terrorism or try to kill it off entirely. There isn’t one because societies with those kinds of reactions are contrary to human nature and don’t exist in the real world, however easy they are to conjure up rhetorically. Now, among individuals or even large groups with no real responsibilities (I would argue, from the liberals I’ve known through my life, they aren’t really that weighed down with the responsibilities of life, preferring to be dilettantes of all sorts), the “grin and bear it” reaction to terrorism can be discussed as a real option, but that is just rhetoric. They are going to have to work within the Bush-ist framework of “you’re with us or against us” to make any headway.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that even if Democrats won every level political office from dogcatcher to President for the next 100 years, Muslims would still hate us if we didn’t live under Sharia law. You have to be some kind of brain dead to not understand that, there is so much empirical evidence to support it.

Oct 9, 2007 - 6:30 pm Thomas Collins:

I wonder if there is a different (or perhaps complementary) reason for the rise of the religion of Global Warming. My candidate would be the necessity of every society having a religion (which I would define as a transcendental world view that can’t be verified or refuted by science) embedded in it’s political and social structure (even in those societies that claim they have separated church and state). It seems to me that many in Western society, including neocons, paleocons, progressives, et al, have lost their faith in the Judaeo-Christian world view. The religion of Global Warming is a suitable replacement because in part it has the veneer of science, which can allow people to fool themselves that they are really not following an unscientific faith. Nietzsche’s God is not dead, He/She/It has simply has transmigrated to Al Gore!

Oct 9, 2007 - 6:36 pm DBL:

Roger,

I am about the same age as you and went through a somewhat similar political trajectory. I grew up in a Democratic household, flirted with radical politics until I realized (as far back as 1970) that the radicals all hated Israel and the Jews, but couldn’t make a complete break with the Democrats until 1984 when I voted for President Reagan (in 1980 I voted for Anderson because even though I knew that Carter was a POS, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for a Republican.)

I think your analysis of the anger that the left feels at being revealed as cynical, power-hungry failures is apt. “Progressive” politics, indeed. Whatever we thought as children, we know now that the left stands for empty moral posturing and nothing more.

Oct 9, 2007 - 6:42 pm Patrick Brown:

As an alternative account of the same data, it is possible that the louder voices in our public debates reflect recognition of the changed stakes since 9/11. That is, the strength of Western civilization is founded on our willingness to let all voices be heard. This is what makes science so productive: you find out if your ideas are any good by making them public and joining the debate. It works, too, in the marketplace of ideas about how to respond to the assault on our society from islamofascism. But in the latter case, the strong emotions convey an appropriate sense of the gravity of the choices we face.

In other words, my claim is (a) testing your ideas in the crucible of energetic debate is the key to our success; (b) it is more important since 9/11 to get things right, to have our ideas winnowed and selected in trial-by-fire; thus (c) loud voices is exactly what you should expect, and want, as evidence of deep engagement with the issues.

Since 9/11, both the islamofascists and Western civilization have done more of what they do best. _They_ have murdered innocents in bestial sneak attacks with much greater frequency and ferocity. _We_ have hashed out important differences on what to do with our enormous power in response to the current threat. (It is easy to overlook just how enormous our power is, and just how important it is that we calibrate our response on a solid basis. But given such power, the debate matters terribly and the emotional tone of the debate is implicit recognition of that importance.)

Where we have taken action, we have done so following ample opportunity to consider alternative actions, and to consider possible consequences. We also have lots of discussion of actual consequences, that will make us better at what ever we do next time. So, IMHO, the passion in the debate is not a bad thing. The debate is good in the nature of things. The passion is there in response to the terrible events of 9/11 and the prospect of more such days, in response to the threat that looms before us. That passion is appropriate and not something to regret.

Oct 9, 2007 - 7:29 pm Ben:

Patrick,

I disagree. I don’t know how you can describe what we have had over the last few years as a “debate.” The President has made decisions and taken action. It is likely that some of his decisions were right and some were wrong, and sometimes he may have done the only thing that could be done. At the same time, the “loyal opposition” has been having an extended temper tantrum. They have not suggested any actual alternatives to the President’s policies; they have simply been critical for the sake of being critical–and have been gravely irresponsible in the process by denying us the benefits of testing ideas by submitting them to criticism.

I generally support President Bush; however, I know that he has made mistakes. In some cases I have not been happy with the way he has done things, but THE DEMOCRATS HAVE NEVER PROPOSED ANY ALTERNATIVES. At this point, I am absolutely enraged at the Democratic party, and you would almost have to put a gun to my head to get me to vote for them. WE CAN’T WE HAVE A SUBSTANTIVE DEBATE BECAUSE ONE SIDE WANTS TO SPEND ALL OF ITS TIME ON POLITICAL B.S.

Oct 9, 2007 - 8:54 pm peter jackson:

And I still think the gentlemanly thing to do in Florida would have been a game of poker while sharing a bottle of aged Kentucky. The margin of victory was less than the margin of uncertainty about the actual vote count… so that’s a tie in my book.

For what it’s worth, it was also a tie nationally with the popular vote. The PV margin Gore had over Bush amounted to 15% of the margin of error.

The cards and whisky, however, should have been unnecessary in 2000. Florida had a decent set of election laws, and following them would have brought the same result about a lot quicker, and without threatening our democracy itself. Elections are games. They are contests, and like all contests, depend on rules for their viability.

Everyone always talks about the US Supreme Court “deciding” the 2000 election, but no one seems to remember that if it weren’t for the Florida Supreme Court, the USSC would never have been involved. It was the state supreme court that first simply set aside the election laws passed by the Florida legislature (as per article 1, section 4 of the USC), and then with a second ruling created a situation where their “remedy” couldn’t be followed without contradicting Federal election law.

There are some states where certain circumstances do call for elections to be decided with a cut of the cards or a hand of stud. But Florida wasn’t one of them. The Florida Supreme Court, with both of their berserk election decisions, overturned every prior court ruling for both of those cases, ironically all made by Democratic judges. If the FSC had simply upheld Florida’s lower courts (as was expected by the legal establishment at the time) the election would have been decided weeks earlier by the rules in place prior to the election, and the outcome would have been much less controversial and polarizing.

Ultimately, we should be proud of the fact that for the election of 2000, the rules ultimately survived. Even Molly Ivins (RIP) admitted that “the election was a tie, but George Bush won on the rules.”

yours/
peter.

Oct 9, 2007 - 10:51 pm J. Peden:

Patrick, it is the Scientific Method which “makes science so productive” - and not at all the result of a vote following a debate.

Oct 10, 2007 - 12:13 am jo:

The neocon idea is an interesting approach. I wonder whether we will feel it is such a great concept when China applies it to us in 100 years time to take over some prime US real estate.

And that is the biggest failing of neocons- their apporach is tactical rather than strategic. theyh ave no concept of the strategic implications i.e. neocons created more terrorists (iraq is the biggestal queada recruitment tool out there); and created more anti american feeling (which impacts on all our trade, cultural etc dealings with the world)- than any other modern american movement.

But thank fully they do see this now, and most have backed away from neo-con ism….

Oct 10, 2007 - 1:33 am Peg C.:

Roger, extremely succinct and inspiring.

I consider myself proud to be a neocon the way I’m proud to be infidel. I was a true lefty for so many years and the utter failure of that ideology in practice finally came to me in 1998. I realized it was not only fake, it had been perverted.

They can use the 2000 election as the excuse if they want to, but you nailed it:

“Idealism had been stolen from the Left. (In truth, as I indicated, they didn’t have much remaining, but that probably made it all the worse.)

This constituted an insult (in the medical and other senses) to a lot of people’s self-images. The neocons were to be hated because they had stolen that idealism.”

9/11 was the true failure and denunciation of all that the left holds dear. My husband and I were on the streets of NYC that morning and I saw this as though a lightning bolt had struck me. This was truly the pomo-transi-multiculti chickens coming home to roost and nothing would ever be the same again. The world was about to go topsy-turvy.

The left of course will deny it, but our president wants what is best for America and has sworn an oath to defend her against all enemies. (I won’t even go into the “enemies domestic” part but it’s always at the forefront of my consciousness.) If one accepts that basic premise, which I do, all else flows naturally: that our military is on the right side; that most of our country wants us to succeed; that certain institutions - media, academia, Hollywood - because of their utter loss of moral authority and their deranged hatred of Bush and the neocons find themselves on the wrong side, aligned with our enemies. Heads of mideast terrorist organizations have now endorsed Hillary, completing the transformation.

The insanity we are witnessing mostly on the left (insanity on the right is embodied by the loon in the debate last night, among others) is, in my opinion, due virtually solely to the fact that by aligning themselves against Bush, they have aligned themselves with enemies who have sworn to destroy us. They cannot escape this conundrum and thus must work their smears, destruction, and obfuscation (destruction being attacks on the military, and obfuscation being their new AGW religion — talk about fiddling while Rome burns!). There is nothing more fearful than a rabid dog; there is nothing more vengeful than a discredited, dishonored lefty. They do hate America and they’re proud of it because they have painted themselves into a corner and have no recourse. All options are unacceptable. I would call it a death spiral except that they are still far too seductive to the stupid, the ignorant and the mentally ill.

Unfortunately, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop before we can put this sick and damaging ideology behind us. I absolutely believe their antics will bring about the next and much worse attacks.

And you are right about the punishment if we actually do “win” in Iraq. But Iraq is a battle and we are in a long war, and the left is on the wrong side.

Oct 10, 2007 - 3:37 am Dennis D:

I am one conservative Baby Boomer that actually might enjoy watching the DailyKos Kids pay for Universal Healthcare, Hillarys Baby Bonds and other left wing entitlements. On top of supporting the Social Security System for the largest group of retirees in US History. It will be a repeat of the 70s when 50% of my paycheck went to taxes.

Oct 10, 2007 - 5:20 am Patrick Brown:

J Peden - I didn’t say that the result of a vote following a debate makes science productive. I said debate makes it productive, and that is true. Debate exposes us to other people’s ideas, and puts our own ideas to strong test. That’s why it’s such a central part of the scientist’s life. Scientists learn from the people who disagree with them, because those people make them sharpen their ideas and their exposition, and help them to find the weak points in their arguments. Science without debate would be substantially less productive than science as we know it.

Oct 10, 2007 - 5:43 am Patrick Brown:

Ben - my point was that the anger and strong emotion in the air are understandable, because of what is at stake, what the danger is. The 24/7 nature of the debate gives us the opportunity to go over alternatives in great detail. The elevated emotional tone communicates to us that “this is very important”. So, what we have had is an interaction that combines “debate + emotion”. The emotion contributes something valuable - as the work of Antonio Damasio and his colleagues suggests, we need to be able to experience and recall emotion in order to make good decisions. You can’t make good decisions if you are not in touch with your emotions.

Your response was that I am wrong because the Democrats never propose alternatives, and also that you are “absolutely enraged” at the Democrats, so much so that a gun would have to be put to your head to get you to vote for them. We can draw two messages from your reply - debate: a challenge to Democrats to propose alternative courses of actions; and emotion: emotional words and images signalling that “this is important!”

So, do you really disagree with me?

Oct 10, 2007 - 6:03 am BMoon:

Witnessing the likes of the billionaire, Rolling Stones, who became richer and more degenerate than Caligula through promoting moral and societal decay, trying to sell albums through posing as moralists, is all we need to know about the left’s motives. Their suicidal and farcical opposition to the neocon strategy of protecting our lives and livelihood through promotion of freedom and liberal values, like the cheap, synthetic microskirt of a prostitue, reveals more about their motives than it covers - for them, not for our soldiers and political leaders, it’s all about power and money.

Oct 10, 2007 - 8:11 am heather:

I like your associating the Left’s embrace of environmentalism, as a method of re-capturing the moral high ground. At some level, Leftists know that the ‘neo cons’ - mostly Jewish Intellectuals who escaped the Democratic Reservation - are just as smart, and better educated, then they are.

A lot of the trouble we see with the MSM is that they have their positions because of their family’s wealth. They are time servers, who, like Foer at the New Republic, have never had to be practical a day in their life. By practical, I mean, getting a real job that consists of more than meetings in air conditioned board rooms. Also, they are badly educated. Even - ESPECIALLY - those from the ivy league schools (which, after all, led the way into the idiot morass we see today.)

Something else, coming off the ‘Democratic/FDR/reservation’: people like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are in the same position as are Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol. It is interesting, though, that Lefties were so comfortable in attacking Thomas in a sexual way. In my opinion, this was not only ‘the oversexualized times’… but also basically the down deep racism of so many of the Left. Anti-Zionism is the old canard, Jews have ‘dual loyalties’; and Blacks are fundamentally stupid, driven by ‘base drives.’

Oct 10, 2007 - 9:56 am Lem:

“We have come to a point where, because the psychological-emotional-personal stakes are so elevated, we routinely deny the other. On both sides of the ideological divide where idealism is so deeply fought over, we refuse to acknowledge our opponents’ humanity - that they, no matter which side they are on, can come from a place of wanting the best for people.”

We are so invested in this morass unspoken sacrosanct rules like politics (especially while at war) stopping at the waters edge seem like from a long long time ago.

If we keep this up, defending our selves from attack will be the new political trial balloon, undistinguishable from a tax cut.

Oct 10, 2007 - 10:33 am Lem:

If anyone here thinks Roger is exaggerating (he only mentioned two people by name) I dare you to read Lewis H. Lapham.

Exactly two years ago tomorrow Lewis H. Lapham wrote on Harper’s Magazine “We Now Live in a Fascist State”.

Here is an exerpt

“It does no good to ask the weakling’s pointless question, “Is
America a fascist state?” We must ask instead, in a major rather than a
minor key, “Can we make America the best damned fascist state the world
has ever seen,” an authoritarian paradise deserving the admiration of
the international capital markets, worthy of “a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind”? I wish to be the first to say we can. We’re
Americans; we have the money and the know-how to succeed where Hitler
failed, and history has favored us with advantages not given to the
early pioneers.”

I used to read that magazine, but after 9/11 Lapham lost it.

Oct 10, 2007 - 11:03 am Ben:

Patrick,

Your explanation clarifies matters but raises another question from my perspective. What does this accomplish? From my perspective, it certainly has sparked emotion and highlighted the importance of the issue; however, it has not engendered debate, in the sense of examining possible answers to a question and choosing the best available alternative. Rather, it has just solidified me in my position and made me less interested in hearing what the other side has to say. I realize that it sounds bad to say that I don’t even want to listen to the other side, but, quite frankly, that is because the other side does not seem to have anything useful to say. Life is to short to listen to people complain. I am eager to hear any substantive argument they want to make, but after 6 years of nothing but whining complaints, I am less disposed to give them the opportunity to start being serious.

Oct 10, 2007 - 11:33 am Psychobarb:

DeathtoSocialism:

I am just a bit older than you, 48, so I do remember the Kennedy assassination, through a wee child’s eyes, the agony of Vietnam and the withdrawal, LBJ, Nixon’s resignation and sex and drugs and rock and roll!

And buddy I couldn’t agree with you more. As a tail-end Boomer I have come to the conclusion that most of what my generation has brought has turned to dog doo doo. I tend to think more like a Generation Xer.

If I said this publicy I would be shunned in my family, social milieu and profession.

Oct 10, 2007 - 12:41 pm Cameron:

@David Thomson

Sorry buddy, I gotta call you out on this one.

“The O.J. Simpson fiasco, for instance, is a direct result of the legacy of Martin Luther King.”

REALLY? SERIOUSLY???? I had an open mind to your comments before that, but I mean, jesus, come on man.

Oct 10, 2007 - 1:13 pm Proud Boomer:

It was the left and the boomer generation that woke up the United States, so that it finally could lived up to the justice of our dreams written in the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

Oct 10, 2007 - 3:24 pm Peg C.:

Proud Boomer, I too am a boomer. Our generation has done some great things but we will never, ever be deserving of a moniker such as “the Greatest Generation,” as our parents’ generation earned. We are too full of narcissism, self-satisfaction, and moral decay as a generation for that. We have no idea what true sacrifice and honor are and never developed character as a result. We cannot get over ourselves and our mewling victimologies. Everything is all about us.

No one will mourn the passing of our generation, believe me. The world, especially America, will be much better off. If this sounds like self-loathing, so be it. My reasons are contained in Roger’s post.

Oct 11, 2007 - 7:51 am Mollace:

Mr. Simon, I see little glimpses of light and hope in your words.

What I don’t understand are many of the responses.

I have yet to speak directly to someone who deems themself a conservative who can actually explain what conservatism is, what their values are, what they stand for, or who can tell me why they despise liberals or progressives or Democrats or the like. I am a registered Democrat who takes voting in every election very seriously. I vote my conscience (yes, I have one!), I attend church, I believe in fiscal responsibility and assess candidates for their actions, as well as their words. I have a conservative point of view on some things, a moderate one on others and even a liberal opinion or two. I am not an absolutist about anything. I hate no one. Yet the very idea that I exist, am “of the Left,” if I indeed am, is so repulsive to so many, even in the writings above, that I have very little hope for political resolution in America. I watched the north tower fall on September 11th while walking across the 59th Street Bridge to Manhattan from Queens. No one panicked. No one got hysterical, despite the terrible outcome of that day. We all pulled together and helped each other out. Thousands streamed back into Queens and everyone took people in that needed or asked for help. The exploitation of that day makes me sick every time anyone, from our President on down, uses it to promote fear in our country.

Please conservatives, enlighten me. I hear very little from you that isn’t filled with vitriol for the likes of anyone who disagrees. I don’t understand conservatism anymore. What are the “values” that you all claim to have and insist that I don’t?

Oct 11, 2007 - 12:40 pm Rachel of the left:

The reaction of my leftist friends created what William Burroughs once called a “naked lunch” for me. I just couldn’t be in that club any more. The image in the mirror was disgusting.

you hit the nail on the head, Demosophist. I started looking at center-right and right blogs because
1) they looked at the good and the bad (man W can’t get much love from his side neither)

2) they have a good sense of humor

3) regardless of how they viewed our involvement in Iraq or W, they knew Hussein was a tyrant and want Iraq to be stable… and

4) the lefties whine TOO DAMN EFFIN MUCH !!!

Oct 11, 2007 - 12:46 pm BMoon:

RESPONSE TO MOLACE:

Conservatism simply tries to defend the traditional values of western liberal democracies since the 18th century - human rights, private property, free trade, minimal government power and intrusion, checks and balances (esp.with limiting the non-elected courts,) and vigorously supporting and encouraging the same in the rest of the world. I oppose the left, and despise the Democratic Party of today because it is aggressively contrary to all those values, and is supremely hypocritical, pandering to the worst elements of our nature. See? That’s not hard. The real question is what exactly do you stand for?

Oct 11, 2007 - 4:25 pm Patrick Brown:

Ben: “I realize that it sounds bad to say that I don’t even want to listen to the other side, but, quite frankly, that is because the other side does not seem to have anything useful to say.”

I don’t think it sounds bad - it seems to me to be a very human response. But I think there is an argument going on even though we and they may not want to participate. We do hear each other and even if we reject their views and they reject ours, there may well be some effect of each on the other. As an example, suppose we define a psychological dimension on which people can vary, for example, approval of a plan to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran. Let’s say we can measure this somehow - so we can assign people scores on how strongly they approve of such a plan, on a scale of 1 (totally against it) to 100 (totally for it). A critical point is that these scores vary from one person to another, like IQ scores.

Now, a group of people who are broadly convinced that the IRI is a deadly threat to Israel and the West might be clustered around say, 70. Different members of the group would vary perhaps between 60 and 80. But where would those people be on this scale if lefties had not been arguing strenuously against rumored plans for such an invasion? Even though, if interviewed, we might be able to give reasons for rejecting that lefty view, it’s possible that it has had some effect on us - for the sake of argument, let’s say 5 points worth of effect, so that if we on our side had never heard it, our scores would range from 65 to 85, with an average of 75.

The point is that it may be more useful to think of our various positions as really being “more or less” rather than “yes or no”. Then, we can conceive of other people influencing us without necessarily moving us dramatically from the “Death to Tyrants” column into the “Appease at any cost” column.

On this view, the debate acts as a sort of governor on our movement on that psychological dimension. And that may be a very useful effect. Such influence does not prevent us from reaching the point where we choose to attack the IRI. But if we do reach that point, perhaps it will be on the basis of better evidence and better argument than if the lefties had never spoken up. And if we as a society move in the other direction, perhaps it will be on the basis of better evidence and better argument than if we had never spoken up.

Where should we be on such a scale? That’s the point: I don’t know. No one person knows where the whole body politic should be. But on the basis of history, I’m convinced that democracy works, and that the strong emotion in our public debates is at least compatible with (and perhaps constitutive of) the health of our political system.

Oct 11, 2007 - 4:46 pm