The Auron MacIntyre Show - Russell Kirk's Attack on Neoconservatism

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00:00:29.900 Hey everybody, how's it going? Thanks for joining me this afternoon. I am Oren McIntyre.

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00:01:25.420 All right, guys. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about neoconservatives and Russell Kirk.

00:01:31.480 Russell Kirk, of course, famously wrote The Conservative Mind.

00:01:35.080 He's one of the most important conservative intellectuals of easily the last 50, 70 some odd years,

00:01:40.960 and he is a critical touchstone for many people of the last few generations who got into political theory

00:01:47.900 or wanted to have a deeper understanding of conservatism. However, he also was somebody who

00:01:54.460 ended up breaking from the mainstream conservative movement. He actually became a paleoconservative,

00:02:01.460 helped Pat Buchanan in his run against George H. Bush. And so this is somebody who,

00:02:09.840 while he was central to the original conservative movement, was his own man and said some things that

00:02:16.120 eventually pushed him out of the good graces of the conservative movement. One of the key things

00:02:21.660 that he did to kind of lose favor with a lot of mainstream conservatives was to give this speech

00:02:27.940 at the Heritage Foundation talking about neoconservatism. He was not a fan of neoconservatism.

00:02:34.360 He thought it was a stain on the conservative movement, and he wrote an entire speech about this

00:02:40.140 and delivered it at the Heritage Foundation. Now, this was obviously not a very popular move in 1988

00:02:46.620 when neoconservatism was most assuredly in full swing. So I wanted to read this today because I just think

00:02:53.900 it's a very good speech, and I think it doesn't get enough attention. Obviously, in addition to just being

00:03:01.000 a brilliant guy, Kirk goes hard on the neoconservative movement and shortcomings, and he does not pull

00:03:07.140 punches. The sky was canceled on the right for all the reasons you expect. So I want to dive into the

00:03:13.660 substance of the speech. And normally when we do these readings, I'm giving a lot of commentary along

00:03:19.700 with the reading itself. But honestly, in this one, I won't do as much because A, the speech is long,

00:03:24.920 and I want to get through all of it. And B, Kirk is just very good at laying out exactly what he means.

00:03:30.860 So I'll do some commentary, some decoding here. But really, I think this is just worth going through

00:03:35.620 together. Now, you can't find, as far as I'm aware, a video of him delivering the speech.

00:03:42.020 And the archived document, as you can see, it says at the top here, has errors the way even it's just

00:03:47.660 formatted. Obviously, this is not something that I guess they want everyone having out there, I don't

00:03:53.180 know, or they just couldn't be bothered to kind of put it in better formatting because it's not

00:03:59.200 something that maybe they want to be pushing. But bear with me, we will get through the whole thing,

00:04:04.300 even though there are a few errors in it here or there.

00:04:09.760 All right, so let's get started with the speech here. Of course, this is Russell Kirk.

00:04:14.300 He's delivering this in 1988. So let's begin.

00:04:20.100 There stands before you, ladies and gentlemen, one of the few survivors of the original

00:04:24.440 intrepid band of neoconservatives. Very early in the 1950s, some of us who declared our belief in the

00:04:31.620 permanent things were so denominated by our adversaries. But we did not clasp the epithet

00:04:38.280 to our bosoms as a badge of honor, unlike the people who, a quarter of a century later,

00:04:44.200 pleaded guilty as charged and gloried in their shame. To put the matter another way, the term

00:04:49.320 neoconservative or new conservative and neoconservative began to appear in certain journals nearly 40 years

00:04:56.800 ago. They were applied to such writers and then he named Robert Nisbet and other other people

00:05:01.560 and your servant. When commentators and critics of that remote epoch entertained sentiments kindly

00:05:08.940 in some degree towards such literate obscurance, they use the term new conservative, implying that

00:05:16.040 misguided, implying that misguided through such relatively youthful reactionaries might be.

00:05:22.820 Still, they probably meant well and occasionally displayed glimmerings of sense. Nay, that now and

00:05:30.400 again, such conservatives even made suggestions worth discussing, though perhaps accidents. As you

00:05:37.520 can see, the text here has lots of strange translation errors, so bear with me if I hesitate on some of the

00:05:44.360 words as I try to figure out part of them there. Such were the opinions of our friendly critics.

00:05:50.000 But journalists and professors who thought less well of us pinned upon us the dreaded label of

00:05:59.080 neoconservative, knowing us for symptoms of the recurrence, probably saying that wrong,

00:06:06.940 of a loathsome plague called, or probably they just typed it wrong, of a loathsome plague called

00:06:12.520 reaction. Enemies of all progress, oppressors of the poor, either tools of the bloated capitalists

00:06:18.840 or toadies of the feudal barons, simpletons enamored of the superstitions of the childhood of the race.

00:06:24.580 The worst fears of these evangels of secular progress came to be realized. They were true

00:06:34.120 prophets, for indeed revived conservative doctrines were disseminated throughout the land by our malicious

00:06:41.920 typewriters, and the American people were arrested for their march towards an early Zion.

00:06:47.660 Fresh horde of dissenters, yet we scribbled conservatives at the beginning of the 1950s,

00:06:55.980 or at least most of us, did not eagerly accept the appellation new conservative, nor yet that of

00:07:03.980 neoconservative. Most of us were merely styled ourselves conservatives, being well aware that

00:07:09.740 conservatism is nothing new. Others of our kind prefer to bear no dog tag. Presently, it came to

00:07:19.340 pass that during the reign of King Lyndon, the dealer, that the immediate of opinion began to

00:07:29.540 recognize the existence of a loose league of other persons whom we can call the new conservatives,

00:07:34.920 so to speak. This fresh horde of dissenters from the holy liberalism were men and women of Manhattan,

00:07:41.420 and for the most part, of Jewish stock. Russell Kirk, and then this is just, yeah, like I said,

00:07:46.320 they just like drop his biography in the middle of this for no reason. It's confusing the way the

00:07:53.520 document is laid out. But he said, chiefly they recruited from, so he's saying they're mainly from

00:08:00.340 Jewish stock, although they also recruited from Protestant and Catholic auxiliaries. At one time

00:08:05.480 or another, nearly all of them had professed to be radicals or ritualistic liberals, that a long time

00:08:12.360 ago in the case of some of their leaders. These are the neoconservatives so much praised or drubbed

00:08:18.020 today. Mr. Irving Kristol and his associates accepted without much protest the neoconservative tag

00:08:24.100 pinned upon them by their adversaries, such as Whigs and Tories during the 17th century had come to

00:08:29.940 wear the badges, uh, to wear as badges of honor the derisive epithets thrust upon them by their

00:08:35.720 enemies. Vials of scorn. Although, although I paid, uh, paid, uh, sorry, the way it's typed here is

00:08:43.300 strange. Although I paid, uh, very close attention to the emerging of these late recruits to the

00:08:48.980 conservative movement, I did welcome their appearance, perceiving that not a few among them were people of

00:08:55.160 talent and energy active in serious journalism and in certain universities and giving promise,

00:09:00.860 uh, give and giving promise of the rise of, uh, conservative or quasi conservative opinion

00:09:06.820 among the Jewish into intelligentsia of New York, in particular, a class previously given over to

00:09:13.300 radicalism or disintegrated liberalism. Uh, perhaps I expected too much of these Manhattan allies.

00:09:20.700 So he's saying, okay, at first we had like a new breed of conservatives in the fifties, uh, and they

00:09:27.280 were, uh, people who were, uh, they tried to give this, uh, attach this new conservative or neoconservative

00:09:33.360 label, but we kind of backed away from that. We didn't like it. Uh, however, there was another crop

00:09:38.180 of conservatives that came after, and they tend to be, uh, disaffected liberals. See, let me know if

00:09:43.780 you've heard this one before. They tend to be disaffected liberals, many of a, uh, Jewish origin, uh,

00:09:49.800 who are part of the Manhattan elite. And these people came in and they took up the mantle of

00:09:55.140 neoconservatives, guys like Irvin Crystal and others. They didn't push it away. They embraced

00:09:59.560 it. Uh, and they, and, and he says here at first, you know, Russell Kirk is saying at first, I thought

00:10:04.600 that these people could be good allies, right? Like, okay, yes, they used to be passionate leftists,

00:10:10.320 uh, in many cases, uh, you know, very radical leftists at the very least, uh, stalwart liberals,

00:10:15.100 but they were very intelligent. They had connections in journalism. Uh, they seemed like

00:10:20.120 people who would be able to move the ball forward, but maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I thought that this

00:10:25.440 alliance could work when it really couldn't. And he's going to dive into that more in a second,

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00:11:39.980 report. That's bankonyourself.com slash Oren. Bankonyourself.com slash Oren. All right, so back to

00:11:50.620 our speech from Russell Kirk here. He says, when the late Michael Harrington smote them hip and thigh,

00:11:55.700 I was not taken aback. Such an assault was to be expected from a syndicalist. When Mr. Peter Steinfels,

00:12:03.760 editor of Commonwealth, then poured the vials of scorn upon their devoted heads in a book entitled

00:12:10.020 The Neoconservatives, I was puzzled that Joe Sobrin in the pages of National Review found some

00:12:15.800 substance in Steinfels' acerbic criticism. I encouraged Dr. Frank Anutza to write for my

00:12:23.860 quarterly university, Bulan, a defense of these neoconservatives against Steinfels. So he's saying,

00:12:31.100 I was shocked to find, you know, he said, I expect some people to attack the neoconservatives,

00:12:35.800 but I did not expect conservatives to do this. The guys like Joe Sobrin, who's a paleoconservative,

00:12:41.520 I did not, you know, I was confused at first as to why they were leveling criticism. So I, you know,

00:12:46.340 I wanted to ultimately defend these new allies. Insufficiently capitalistic, although one may

00:12:53.160 trace the beginning of neoconservatism of the Manhattan sort back to the year of 1965, the ladies and

00:13:00.280 gentlemen of the political sect did not loom large for me until the early years of the Reagan

00:13:04.900 administration. I was mildly startled then in the 1980s when Mr. George Gilder addressing the

00:13:11.400 Heritage Foundation declared emphatically that he was no neoconservatism. He found them

00:13:17.200 insufficiently capitalistic and morally inferior to Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly. In short, I was prejudiced in

00:13:25.460 favor of these prodigal sons. Come home to a conservative patrimony that many had, who have

00:13:31.900 been denominated the neoconservatives. How earnestly they founded magazine upon magazine. How skillfully

00:13:40.240 they insinuated themselves into the council of Nixon and Reagan administrations. How very audaciously

00:13:45.660 some of them a decade ago proclaimed their ability to alter the whole tone of the New York Times.

00:13:51.180 There was a consummation devoutly to be wished, but it turned out that they're out to be a mere

00:14:00.260 delusion, a delusionary hope of the neoconservatives. And then there's like a seven there for something

00:14:08.600 remains of ungenerated. Yet their hubris in that instance, notwithstanding, the neoconservatives

00:14:16.220 certainly displayed enterprising talents in their early years. So he says, look, you know, I felt like

00:14:21.460 I needed to defend these guys. There were people who were telling me, I don't think they're

00:14:25.520 conservative enough. I think they have another agenda. I don't think we should welcome them.

00:14:30.380 But he's like, well, I felt like these people are coming back. They're, you know, they're coming back

00:14:35.300 to the fold. They should they should be conservatives. And, you know, they're so good at writing these

00:14:39.800 different publications and involving themselves in the administration. They must be allies. I mean,

00:14:44.820 look at the energy they have in working their way into every aspect of the conservative movement.

00:14:49.580 They must be on our side. For some persons who are called or who call themselves neoconservatives,

00:14:56.300 my approbation is undiminished. Who would not welcome an alliance with such champions of truth

00:15:01.820 as Pastor Nuhaz or more prudent sociologists as the as the doctors as the doctors burger? Such

00:15:11.300 undoubtable educators such as Diane Ravitch, such sound scholars as Nathan Glazer. Often such opponents

00:15:21.300 of nihilism and fanatic ideology contend in the academic in the academy against bitter enemies

00:15:27.720 who outnumber the neoconservative professors many times over. Let us sustain them. Yet in general,

00:15:33.880 the neoconservative group may not have made many friends nor influenced many people despite talents

00:15:39.960 for self-publicizing. As Mr. Ben Hart, tongue somewhat in cheek, observed to me about the

00:15:47.300 neoconservatives while we were arranging this lecture, there are there are only there are only

00:15:53.160 about three of them. They have no true political constituency, not even in Manhattan or perhaps

00:15:58.660 especially not in Manhattan. They have shown no great literary skill. I fear that not one book by a

00:16:04.540 neoconservative will be read in the year 2000. Neoconservatives have tended regrettably to become

00:16:10.640 a little sect, distrusted and reproached by what we may call mainline conservatives, who now and again

00:16:17.720 declare that many of the conservatives are seeking chiefly place and are seeking chiefly place and

00:16:24.480 preferment. Incidentally, doubtless many of you present today, ladies and gentlemen, have observed that

00:16:31.980 the address of certain eminent neoconservatives has been rejected by the people around Vice President

00:16:38.160 Bush. And it appears to me that for good or ill, President Bush will not be eager to obtain the

00:16:44.260 services of this little sacred band, which has made itself exclusive and now finds itself excluded.

00:16:51.640 You'll see that he is telling consistently. I think he's kind of directing towards, you know,

00:16:57.460 George Bush at the time. You know, don't basically don't trust these neoconservatives. I don't know

00:17:02.940 if he he thought if he genuinely thought that George Bush would not embrace the neoconservatives or

00:17:08.700 if he's just kind of trying to give him a hint like, of course, you don't want to deal with these

00:17:12.060 people, right, George? Right. You wouldn't want to do that. And obviously he will end up opposing

00:17:16.820 George Bush later on. He will back Pat Buchanan in his run against George Bush. So we'll see that

00:17:23.580 ultimately, you know, he did not appreciate, I guess, the way that George Bush handled the

00:17:28.300 neoconservatives even after his speech here.

00:17:35.260 Selfish and uninstructed, I offer you two specimens and the rejection of the neoconservatives that I

00:17:41.260 encountered nowadays in many quarters. My first extract is from a letter recently received from

00:17:46.780 a very distinguished historian in Pennsylvania. I have burned my bridges with most, not all,

00:17:52.860 of the conservatives and especially with the neoconservatives who are selfish and

00:17:57.840 uninterested, uninstructed, maybe unconstructed was or maybe it is just uninstructed radicals

00:18:04.860 and progressives wishing to pour cement all over the country and make the world safe for democracy

00:18:10.620 well beyond the dreams of Wilson. He writes a feeling for the land and for its conservation and

00:18:16.700 for the strong, uh, modesty of a traditional patriotism, uh, as distinct from nationalism,

00:18:22.680 none of them has. So he's saying, look, these people, they're just basically, they're still

00:18:27.260 progressives. They're still radicals. Uh, they have the same views. Yes. They're, they're against

00:18:32.000 communism. Now they want to put worldwide democracy, but they still just want to basically,

00:18:37.340 you know, uh, uh, normalize the entire world or cement over the whole country. That's a great phrase.

00:18:43.720 I really liked that, you know, just kind of level it all and make it all just democracy everywhere.

00:18:48.640 Uh, they're just as bad as Woodrow Wilson. Uh, they don't care about, uh, conservation of the land.

00:18:53.960 They don't care. They're not true patriots. They just have this, I have like idea of overbearing

00:18:58.440 nationalism. So even then the critiques of neoconservatism and the recognition that it

00:19:03.860 was going to destroy a lot of what conservatism had traditionally been was already a criticism that was

00:19:09.360 being leveled at the neoconservative group. My second instance of the spreading distaste for

00:19:14.540 neoconservatives comes from a well-known literary scholar. I would not be at all surprised to see

00:19:20.080 the neocons jump ship. If Dukakis is elected, they would be perfectly capable of making an

00:19:25.200 accommodation with the socialist wing of the democratic party. He tells me it's, uh, it is

00:19:30.080 significant that when the neocons wish to damn any conservative who has appeal, uh, appealed for a

00:19:35.200 grant to a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of that foundation, the conservative is

00:19:39.740 fascist. I believe that the chief enemy of American conservatism has not been Marxists or even socialist

00:19:46.120 liberals in the democratic party, but the neoconservatives who have sabotaged the movement

00:19:50.840 from within and exploited it from their own, for their own selfish purposes. Remember this is in 1988

00:19:56.480 guys. Okay. This is 1988 and he's already complaining. Look, these people will switch parties

00:20:02.820 the minute they think that they can get their agenda done with the other party. We've already

00:20:06.300 seen this now, uh, after Donald Trump, right? All the neoconservatives jumped to the democratic party

00:20:12.220 or most of them jumped to the democratic party. He says the neocons cancel any actual conservatives by

00:20:17.880 just calling, uh, those conservatives fascists. If that sounds familiar, uh, you know, he says,

00:20:23.480 and ultimately the biggest threat to the conservative movement, it's not these Marxists. It's not the

00:20:27.380 Democrats. It's not the socialists. It's the neocons. They're destroying the party from within.

00:20:32.040 They are already destroying everything the conservatives believe in from the inside.

00:20:38.900 Simple old label. Now the strictures, uh, strictures of the gentlemen I have quoted cannot

00:20:44.820 well apply to some of the better known people called neoconservatives for there are among that

00:20:50.900 group, high-minded men and women of principle. Our difficulty here is very like that. I encounter

00:20:55.620 when I lectured a few months ago on the libertarians, the Appalachian neoconservative,

00:21:00.800 like the Appalachian libertarian is so widely employed and so, uh, variously as to seem, uh,

00:21:08.940 as, as to seem to include people of radically opposing views. So Russell Kirk had exactly my

00:21:14.640 problem with the phrase, uh, libertarian. It's the same problem I still have. I'm still telling

00:21:20.240 libertarians now the same thing that Russell Kirk was telling him in, in 1988. Uh, and they still

00:21:26.240 won't listen. What is a neoconservative really? He is a Harrington and, uh, he, he is as Harrington

00:21:32.840 and Stifles saw him a liberal who is opportunistically, uh, has turned his coat. Is he primarily a weak,

00:21:40.200 a seeker after power and the main chance, or is he a man who has new ideas about the defense of the

00:21:47.720 permanent things? For my part, I wish that certain so-called neoconservatives whose views, uh, and

00:21:54.480 lives I, I approve like certain libertarians for whom I have a fellow feeling, uh, would contempt

00:22:00.880 themselves as I do to simply call, uh, with the simple old label conservative. So he's saying, look,

00:22:06.960 conservatives are a very specific or are a very different thing from neoconservative. So please

00:22:12.000 be careful about using neoconservative. In fact, you know, libertarians, if you could just call

00:22:16.400 yourselves conservatives too, that would be great. If, are you in for a defense of the permanent

00:22:20.380 things, then just call yourself a conservative because these neoconservatives, they are more

00:22:25.000 opportunistic. They are just liberals who have found a moment to take control of the Republican

00:22:30.580 party and the conservative movement. They are turncoats who are only interested in power. You

00:22:35.280 know, this again, Russell Kirk, 1988, be that as it may, I predict that within a few years, we will hear

00:22:42.440 no more of the neoconservatives. Well, he got that one wrong. Some will have fallen away and others

00:22:47.780 will have been merged with the main current of American conservative movement. And yet others,

00:22:52.940 uh, others, uh, expert, uh, you know, I'm not sure how all that works with the, uh, mistyping there

00:22:58.380 will have, uh, been silenced by the tomb. After all, the leading neoconservatives are not new people.

00:23:05.060 They have become old people already as have myself. There, there was, uh, there was published

00:23:10.960 in a recent number of, uh, number of commentary, a charmingly naive essay in which it was argued

00:23:17.580 that the children and grandchildren of the extant neoconservatives would come to form a sacred bond,

00:23:23.500 calling themselves neoconservatives lifelong and ruling the American loose roost. This dream ignores

00:23:29.720 the fact that things initially new do not long remain new. Everything ages and yesteryear's

00:23:36.360 novelty ceases to charm. So he's saying, yes, they're new, but not that new. Actually, they're,

00:23:41.680 they're becoming quite old. They're becoming part of the establishment. Some of them will just change

00:23:45.640 their stripes, call themselves by a different name and meld into the neoconservative, uh, you know,

00:23:50.840 just kind of make the party itself neoconservative. Others will maintain this title, but he says, I think

00:23:55.860 ultimately the title neoconservative will basically lose its luster, which is definitely, uh, uh, true

00:24:01.860 for sure. Ignoring experience, self-proclaimed political elites do not long endure this democratic

00:24:12.020 republic. Uh, but the neoconservatives prefer to ignore experience, a hard master. Benjamin Franklin

00:24:19.060 says those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. As, uh, Santayana reminds us deficient in

00:24:25.540 historical understanding as in familiarity with human letters. Most of the neoconservatives lack

00:24:31.260 these long views and the apprehension of the human condition, which forms a basis for successful

00:24:37.000 statecraft often clever. These neoconservatives are seldom wise. So he says, yeah, these guys, uh,

00:24:43.580 you know, they think they're very smart. They, uh, but they don't have a lot of understanding of

00:24:47.420 history. They don't pay attention to, uh, the, the deeper things, the more important things. They just

00:24:52.680 have the surface level intelligence. They think they're very clever. They, they might be very

00:24:57.680 clever, but they're not very wise. They're usually not making wise decisions. Having dread, uh, the

00:25:03.880 weird, uh, the weird of the faction called the neoconservatives, I proceed to praise them for

00:25:08.680 despite the, uh, seeming harshness of the just judgments I have uttered a few minutes ago. I have

00:25:15.120 many sympathy, sympathies with the neoconservatives and admiration for some of them permit me then to touch

00:25:21.280 upon some of their achievements. The art of the possible first in a time when righteous, uh, students

00:25:27.860 and urban mobs did very much as they pleased in an era when the, uh, academy and the learn and the

00:25:34.100 learned societies were dominated by radical doctrinaires when the blunders of domestic and, uh, and

00:25:40.360 foreign of the Johnson administration enfeebled the nation, uh, uh, nationwide at that juncture,

00:25:46.920 the neoconservatives came forward proclaiming the, uh, that politics is the art of the possible

00:25:52.280 and did their best in the case of, uh, of sound sense. They drubbed sentimental liberalism and

00:25:57.820 scorned radical fanatic fanaticism. In that hour, they maintained statly the rule of law and political

00:26:04.380 prejudice, uh, prudence. So he says, look, okay, that's not all bad. There were some, some critical

00:26:08.740 things, uh, when we were losing influence in the wider culture, when there was a lot of violence from,

00:26:14.680 uh, roaming mobs and from the universities. Again, does any of this sound familiar? They were able to

00:26:20.000 step into the breach and get some of this done. They were very practical in some of their, uh, aims at

00:26:25.300 the time. Second, he says, we are in debt to the neoconservatives for their founding of several

00:26:32.540 intelligent and serious journals, somewhat narrow in their scope and their readership in their circles

00:26:37.520 of contributors, perhaps, but containing many valuable articles on public policy, education,

00:26:42.920 and other major subjects of the day. These publications have helped to, uh, demonstrate

00:26:48.200 that after all conservatives are not as, not so stupid as John Stuart Mill fancied them to be.

00:26:54.400 Third, in the realm of domestic politics, at least the neoconservatives began discussions of practical

00:26:59.520 alternatives to mere social drifting. They, or at least some of them, knowing that the national clock

00:27:04.600 could not be turned back to the year 1928. Endeavoring to frame public policies that would meet

00:27:10.160 realistically the necessities of the concluding three decades of the 20th century. Fourth,

00:27:17.020 in foreign policy, the neoconservatives have opposed, uh, manfully, or in the case of Ambassador

00:27:22.080 Jean Kirkpatrick, womanfully, the design of and the menace of the Soviet Union. They have been well

00:27:28.540 aware of that America is not merely opposed to a national rival, but, uh, grave or peril, combating an,

00:27:35.080 uh, an armed doctrine. As Burke said of the British resistance to the Jacobins two centuries ago,

00:27:40.940 sometimes true. They have been rash in their schemes of action, pursuing a fanciful democratic

00:27:46.420 globalism rather than the national interest of the United States. On such occasions, I have tended to

00:27:52.680 side with those moderate libertarians who set their faces against foreign entanglement. And not seldom,

00:27:58.260 it has seemed as, uh, some eminent neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United

00:28:04.500 States, a position they have, uh, difficulty maintaining as a, uh, as matters drift in the

00:28:10.120 Levant. Again, you can kind of see, uh, why Russell Kirk got canceled after this speech. Uh, uh, yet by and

00:28:17.920 large, I think they have helped to redeem America's foreign policy from the confusion into which it fell

00:28:22.800 during and after the wars in Southeastern Asia. In this, they were to redress the balance in the

00:28:28.180 conduct of foreign affairs. In a little while, nevertheless, I shall utter some misgivings

00:28:33.080 about the possible long-term consequences of their understanding of the America's international

00:28:37.520 undertakings. So he says, look, ultimately, uh, we, the thing the neoconservatives understood that

00:28:43.460 was correct is they hated the Soviet union. They wanted to destroy, uh, the communists and they

00:28:48.640 understood that the empire that the communists were building was ideological. It wasn't just, uh,

00:28:53.800 it wasn't just one of military might or geopolitical strength. And so he says, you know, that's what

00:28:59.560 they did well. Unfortunately, uh, their foreign policy is not just about stopping that ideology.

00:29:05.160 It was about building a democratic globalism. So they were also looking to globalize. Remember,

00:29:10.120 most of these guys were Trotskyites. They were former Trotskyites. Their ideology was

00:29:13.820 global socialism. And then their ideology just became global democracy, um, which is the same

00:29:20.200 thing. Uh, and so, uh, you know, they, they understood, uh, you know, and he's pointing

00:29:25.160 out that like, you know, yes, they understood the menace of communism, but they were kind of making

00:29:29.140 their own very dangerous version of it. And they were wanting us to involve ourselves in all these

00:29:33.340 wars. He specifically points out that, you know, Israel is a place that they seem very obsessed with

00:29:38.640 and often are putting those interests in front of the interests of the United States. And so while I

00:29:44.020 think they were good on the Soviet union and the foreign policy involved there, I don't think they were

00:29:48.700 great for foreign policy at the end of the day. And he says, and remember, this is the big break

00:29:52.740 between the paleo conservatives and the neoconservatives was, you know, at one point,

00:29:58.180 this alliance kind of existed because you needed to defeat the Soviet union. But when the Soviet union

00:30:02.520 was done, uh, you know, the, the idea was, okay, we don't need this anymore so we can move on.

00:30:08.560 Right. We don't need to have this global empire. We don't need to have this idea of this global,

00:30:12.920 uh, democratic globalism, this ideological approach. We don't have to start wars, uh, you know,

00:30:18.640 in other places, just because it, you know, we, we don't like the way their government runs.

00:30:24.120 This was the break, right. And he's saying here, I, you know, ultimately I've been siding with the

00:30:28.160 libertarians more than I've been siding with the neoconservatives because they understand

00:30:31.640 that this continued intervention is not good for the country.

00:30:35.540 A matter of judicious speculation. In short, the neoconservatives has exercised, exercised

00:30:40.960 considerable intelligence and intellectual influence, though not conspicuously in the academy

00:30:46.380 and have taken a vigorous hand in the decisions of the national government during an era when the

00:30:51.660 conservative movement in this country needed, uh, reinforcements. Uh, whether they can achieve

00:30:57.220 much of the value in the future is a matter of judicious speculation to which I will now proceed.

00:31:03.180 A little while ago, I remarked that the neoconservatives are often clever, but seldom wise.

00:31:08.120 T.S. Eliot's lines from 77 Rock, I'm sure that's mistyped there, may be applied to them.

00:31:14.160 There is wisdom we have lost in, uh, where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

00:31:19.580 Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

00:31:22.420 In their publications, the neoconservatives thrust upon us a great deal of useful information

00:31:27.740 and obviously are, uh, possessed of considerable knowledge of the world around us.

00:31:32.240 But in the understanding of human, the human condition and the apprehension of the accumulated

00:31:38.060 wisdom of the civilization, they are painfully, uh, uh, they are painfully deficient. Uh, so he's

00:31:46.300 saying, look, okay, these guys are smart. They understand, uh, some of the realities of the world

00:31:50.620 around us and, uh, they do provide valuable contributions, but they don't understand the

00:31:55.900 human condition. There's something about our tradition and civilization that they do not grasp.

00:32:01.760 Infatuated with ideology. An instance of this lack of wisdom, uh, in the neoconservatives infatuation

00:32:10.100 with ideology. Some of you ladies and gentlemen presently here may have heard some years ago,

00:32:15.200 my exchange on this very platform with Mr. Irving Kristol concerning ideology. He and our,

00:32:21.180 he and various of his colleagues wish to persuade us to adopt an ideology of our own to set against

00:32:28.000 Marxists and other totalitarian or totalist ideologies. Ideology, I venture to remind you,

00:32:34.480 is political fanaticism. At best, it is the substance of slogans for real political thought.

00:32:40.500 Ideologies, uh, animates in George Orwell's phrase, the stream, the streamlined men who think

00:32:47.020 in slogans and talk in bullets. So he's saying, look, they, they believe that we need an ideology

00:32:52.100 to combat the Marxist ideology, that we need our own, uh, ideology. But he says,

00:32:57.460 I don't like ideology. I think ideology has a, uh, deleterious effect on the country, about,

00:33:02.860 uh, on our politics, on our way of thinking. Ultimately, this is not a good way for us to

00:33:07.980 pursue our aims. Over the years, I have written a good deal about the curse of ideology, ideological

00:33:13.880 infatuation. So I do not propose today to digress at length on that grim subject. I refer you rather

00:33:21.440 to the recently published collection of Dr. Gerhardt, uh, Neumeyer's, uh, essays entitled

00:33:27.620 After, uh, Aftersight and Foresight. And in his essay, Ideas Have Roots, Professor Neumeyer,

00:33:34.840 uh, reproves, uh, Mr. Crystal for his unfortunate advocacy of a Republican ideology and goes on to

00:33:42.480 describe the unhappy infiltration of ideological illusions in American politics. So again, same thing

00:33:48.860 I've been saying for a long time. I didn't get it out of nowhere that we have a serious problem

00:33:53.500 with ideology and that ideological possession has gripped our nation and has distorted our view of

00:33:59.600 politics, our view of what the nation is, of what a people should be, of how our country should run.

00:34:04.540 This is why we get the propositional nation, right? Nation is not a people. It's not a tradition. It's

00:34:09.400 not a way of life. It's not a religion. It's, it's an abstract ideology. It's bullet points that I

00:34:14.540 can put down and recite and yell, uh, whenever I'm at a rally. That's what, you know, that's what I

00:34:20.120 want. That's ideology. And he's, he's railing against that role of Humpty Dumpty. Ideology is

00:34:26.300 not confined to communists and fascists. Uh, Dr. Neumeyer writes, uh, we too have our share of it and

00:34:33.160 it shows in our policies. All modern ideologies have the same irrational root, the, uh, permeation of

00:34:39.460 politics with the millenarian idea of pseudo-religious character. The result is a dream world. Woodrow

00:34:46.120 Wilson dreamed both of a world safe for democracy and of enduring peace, world safe from war. More

00:34:53.240 recently, our national leaders have talked about creating a new society, a great society. And to

00:34:58.540 that end, making the war against poverty, the war against hunger, creating a new man, making the world

00:35:04.820 new as, uh, at the beginning, building a shining city on a hill. All of these presume that men, uh,

00:35:11.720 that man could create himself, implying that he is not a creature dependent on God, but the master of

00:35:17.220 his own, uh, soul and destiny. Civilization activities are given the character of salvation and thus

00:35:24.540 stamped with a label of sacredness. So he says this neoconservative ideology is just as bad as the

00:35:31.300 Marxist ideology or the fascist ideology, because all of these things are progressive ideologies that

00:35:36.320 went to remake man in their own image. They ignore God. They ignore truth. They ignore, uh, you know,

00:35:43.280 the, the roots of civilization. Uh, they think that people are infinitely malleable. And if we just,

00:35:48.040 uh, you know, control everything, then we can make a new man and a new civilization. Just, uh, it's

00:35:54.240 amazing. It's amazing that they're calling this out again, back in 1988. A very recent example of this

00:36:01.160 puerile infatuation of the neoconservatives with new ideology or an American ideology is a very lengthy

00:36:08.000 and highly pretentious article by Mr. Michael Novak in the fall of 1988, a number of the interesting

00:36:15.820 magazine and then more mistyping of the actual magazine names himself behind a formal, uh, formidable

00:36:23.140 array of footnotes. Most of them are citations from his own book. Mr. Novak advocates ideology as an

00:36:30.500 indispensable, but secondary guide to social action. Unlike many neoconservatives, Mr. Novak does pay

00:36:37.620 some respect to religion in his essay, conveniently ignoring the unpleasant fact that all ideologies

00:36:43.460 are anti-religious or inverted religions. Very important line here. All ideologies are either

00:36:51.600 anti-religious or inverted religions.

00:36:58.720 We are living in a world that is full of anti-religious or themselves inverted religious ideologies that rules

00:37:07.520 everything, right? That, that, that is our entire politics and our entire national identity at this point.

00:37:12.720 But the reader may suspect, uncomfortably, that Mr. Novak's sentiments are much like those of the late

00:37:20.000 Robert, uh, Kerr, long senator from, uh, Oklahoma, who was given, uh, to intoning from time to time,

00:37:27.040 God always has his arm around my shoulder. In his role of Humpty Dumpty, Novak presumes to redefine the

00:37:34.040 world's ideology. He instructs us that ideology is a guiding vision of, uh, future social action.

00:37:41.340 Words mean, of course, whatever Humpty Dumpty and Michael Novak wish them to mean. The vision stuff.

00:37:47.740 In the light of this definition, one heartily endorses the offhand remarks of Vice President George

00:37:53.380 Bush that does not, uh, that he does not relish this vision stuff. Visionary politics, as Mr.

00:37:59.200 Neumeyer, uh, emphasizes in the paragraph I quoted a few minutes ago, do not open our way to an earthly

00:38:05.960 paradise. What is this ideology that Crystal and Novak would have us to embrace? Why the ideal,

00:38:11.920 why the ideology of a term Mr. Novak has, uh, popularized democratic capitalism by vigorous advocacy

00:38:20.080 for democratic capitalism by doctrinaire attachment to that ideology, Mr. Crystal and Mr. Novak are saying

00:38:26.860 in effect, Marxism will be undone and the American people will be given a vision of social perfection.

00:38:32.620 What a feeble read they have put into one's head, not caring to break a butterfly on the wheel. I

00:38:39.180 offer you merely a very succinct refutation of the strange notion that, uh, the ideology called

00:38:45.120 democratic capitalism can set our collective American steps. A right. First of all, the phrase

00:38:51.820 is a contradiction in term for capitalism is not democratic, nor should it be, nor can it be.

00:38:57.980 The test of the market is not a matter of counting noses and socially and soliciting votes. And the

00:39:04.100 mark of capitalism is not the fallacy that one man is as good as another, or maybe a little better

00:39:09.460 after large decisions by shrewd entrepreneurs and managers, nor is there any egalitarianism in the

00:39:15.920 distribution of rewards of a market, a market economy. Second capitalism is by a capitalism is

00:39:23.640 a word popularized by Karl Marx. It implies that the self accumulation and enjoyment of capital is the

00:39:29.540 sole purpose of our society soon to be overthrown by the proletariat. Capitalism is represented as a

00:39:36.040 complete system, moral, intellectual, and political and economic and idea, an ideology that has been

00:39:42.040 devised by the greedy capitalists to serve as a false front for the enslaving of the workers of the

00:39:47.840 world, such as the Marxist argument. Uh, the Mrs. uh, uh, Crystal and Novak appear to be, uh, fulfilling

00:39:55.400 Marx's prophecy by cobbling up such an ideology. So he says, look, Marx created this cartoonish idea

00:40:01.520 of what Marxism is like, or what capitalism is. Right. And, uh, you are basically just adopting that

00:40:08.520 cartoonish idea. You believe that capitalism is like a totalizing ideology that can define

00:40:13.760 your morality, that can define your religion, define your politics along with your economics.

00:40:19.680 And he says, that's just not the case. And amazingly, that is exactly what we've done now.

00:40:24.780 Most American conservatives can't separate capitalism from the rest of their understanding.

00:40:29.600 Many libertarians, especially cannot do this. They don't understand capitalism as perhaps the best

00:40:34.640 economic system and the one you should adopt. They understand is this totalizing ideology that

00:40:39.300 should define your social relationships, your family relationships, your religion, your morals,

00:40:44.720 your ethics, everything. He says, you're, you're turning capitalism into the very cartoonish ideology

00:40:49.880 that Karl Marx tried to destroy, that he tried to denigrate when he turned, uh, created the term in the

00:40:56.120 first place, the terrible simplifiers. Now in truth, our society is not a capitalist system at all,

00:41:03.320 but a complex cultural and social arrangement that comprehends religion, morals, and prescriptive,

00:41:09.140 uh, political institutions, literary, uh, literary culture, a competitive economy, private property,

00:41:15.320 and much more besides. It is not a system designed to secure and advance the interests of a great

00:41:21.140 professor, uh, of great professors of capital goods unjustly acquired. Do Crystal and Novak in the role

00:41:27.740 of, uh, I'm not sure how that all gets typed out there. Terrible simplifiers think that they will

00:41:33.080 gain the affection of the peoples of the world by actually declaring Americans and their allies

00:41:38.380 to be the very capitalist, uh, exploiters, uh, the Marxists have been denouncing all these years

00:41:43.840 by promulgating an ideological manifesto that offers nothing better than a utopia of democratic

00:41:50.420 creature comforts. So he says, look, our America system is way more than capitalism saying we're just,

00:41:56.200 oh, we're just spreading capitalism and democracy. That's not enough. That's not America.

00:42:01.320 That's part of America, but that is in no way the, the defining factors of who America Americans are,

00:42:08.420 what America is. You can't just export this ideology somewhere and then turn people into

00:42:12.800 Americans. And by creating this incredibly materialistic utopian, um, uh, ideology,

00:42:19.260 you are doing exactly what Marx warned people about. You are, you are becoming the monster that

00:42:24.860 Karl Marx was trying to falsely create when he was criticizing traditional society.

00:42:31.320 As for the democratic aspect of this neoconservative ideology, the constitution of the United States

00:42:38.760 is not for export as Daniel Borenstein puts it really important there. The constitution of the

00:42:44.820 United States is not for export to expect that all of the world should and must adopt the peculiar

00:42:50.480 political institutions of the United States, which often do not work very well at home is to indulge in

00:42:56.460 the most unrealistic of visions. Yet just that seems to be the hope and the expectation of many

00:43:01.800 neoconservatives. Such naive doctrine led us into the wars in Indochina, the notion that we should,

00:43:07.700 uh, that we could establish or prop up in Vietnam, a democracy that never existed anywhere in Southeast

00:43:14.040 Asia. Such foreign policies are, uh, uh, are such stuff as dreams are made of, and yet they lead to the

00:43:20.320 leaps, uh, the heaps of corpses of men who died in vain. We need to ask ourselves whether the

00:43:25.940 neoconservative architects of international policy were very different from the foreign policy advisors

00:43:31.200 of the surrounding Lyndon B. Johnson. So again, back in 1988, he's warning, warning everybody don't do

00:43:37.900 this. Okay. You can't spread the constitution. It's, it doesn't just apply to everybody. It's very

00:43:43.520 specific to Americans. You can't just go to Vietnam or later Afghanistan and Iraq and just magically

00:43:49.960 turn them into a democratic nation. That's not how it works. In sitting on abstract democracy,

00:43:57.040 let me make myself a little clearer in this matter by repeating here what I wrote some months ago in

00:44:02.360 my review of, uh, Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick's two volumes of speeches and papers. Mrs. Kirkpatrick declares that

00:44:09.200 the United States should pursue a foreign policy of advancing human rights rather than one of

00:44:13.880 international, of, of national interests. She tells us in effect that the only democratic governments

00:44:19.280 are, are legitimate governments. That is the neoconservative ideological dogma. And not only is

00:44:25.160 that the dogma, as soon as human rights became things like trans and gay rights, that's what we

00:44:30.780 started spreading, right? That's what neoconservatives just, uh, pivoted to. They didn't care ultimately

00:44:36.800 about the values attached. It was the ideology that mattered. Yeah. Ambassador Kirkpatrick remarks

00:44:44.080 that we ought to get to reject the alliance or of autocratic or authoritarian states as distinguished

00:44:50.280 from totalist regimes, which share with America, uh, the will to resist communism and the Soviet Union.

00:44:57.900 So ought she not, uh, to base her argument for legitimacy upon the existence of constitutional

00:45:03.620 constitutional or, uh, constitutional government or constitutional order, justice and freedom or

00:45:08.980 representative government or simply tolerable government rather than insisting on an abstract

00:45:13.360 democracy. So he says, look there, you know, if we're willing to ally ourselves with these other,

00:45:18.440 uh, authoritarian states, if they'll fight the Soviet Union, then we probably shouldn't just say that

00:45:24.080 like abstract democracy is our goal. Cause like, we're obviously hypocrites. We clearly don't believe this

00:45:29.380 for the word, uh, for the word democracy has become, has come to resemble an old hat that everyone

00:45:35.480 wears and nobody respects. As she observes herself, some of the most oppressive regimes in our world

00:45:40.720 pretend to be democracies and have not, uh, democracies often been unholy alliances between a

00:45:46.460 successful demagogue and a greedy mob. If that doesn't like, I don't know. I mean, beautiful,

00:45:53.180 beautiful. Is the government of Saudi Arabia distinctly not democratic, less legitimate than the government

00:46:00.020 of a typical Marxist people's Republic is the government of Israel, a garrison state illegitimate

00:46:05.060 because of it, because it excludes from a full civic participation, one fifth of its population on

00:46:10.380 ethnic and religious grounds, scarcely a democratic principle of just government. So again, you can kind

00:46:17.200 of see why he got, uh, he got canceled with this one, right? Not, not hard, not hard to read the tea

00:46:22.500 leaves on, on how he got, uh, canceled with this one. Uh, a quasi, a quasi religion. Most of the

00:46:28.640 world never was satisfactorily democratic in the past. Uh, uh, sorry, I've lost my place there for a

00:46:34.860 moment. Most of the world, uh, never was satisfactorily democratic in the past and distinctly under is

00:46:41.020 distinct, is distinctly undemocratic today and has no prospect of decent democracy in the future.

00:46:47.140 Were the United States to insist upon the attainment of democracy plus capitalism by

00:46:52.220 every nation state, uh, which it was satisfactory, uh, which it has satisfactory relations before long

00:46:58.800 its principled trading partner might be Switzerland. The United States cannot be, uh, cannot be forever

00:47:06.080 unsettled. Sorry. Uh, the United States cannot be, be forever unsettling the governments of client

00:47:12.740 states or small countries or of allies on the ground that they are not because they are not

00:47:18.380 sufficiently democratic in obedience with the doctrines of Rousseau or whatever they discriminate

00:47:23.100 against some, uh, whenever they discriminate against somebody or other, or when they prefer

00:47:27.340 traditional, uh, uh, economies to full-blown abstract capitalism. One, uh, one thinks of the

00:47:33.240 aphorisms of Vietnam's, um, Madam Nu, if you have the United States for a friend, you don't need any

00:47:39.820 enemies. Successful foreign policy like, uh, political success generally is produced through the art of

00:47:45.920 the possible, not through ideological rigidity. It will not go for the state department to repeat

00:47:51.200 like an incantation. Democracy is good. All other governments are bad. So it says, look, lots of

00:47:57.440 people aren't going to be democracies. That's just a fact of life. That's where we are. Okay. So if

00:48:02.700 you're going to have alliances, if you're going to do business, if you're going to do trade, if you're

00:48:06.760 going to be in, you know, in any kind of relation with other, uh, countries and demand that they have to

00:48:12.820 be democratic and they have to be capitalists and they have to adopt all of your gay rights stuff

00:48:16.860 or all of your civil rights stuff or all of your women rights stuff, then you're going to have no

00:48:20.220 allies. You're going to have no friends. You're going to have to basically conquer the world.

00:48:23.300 It does. It doesn't matter if the state department goes around and says, Oh, we, everybody needs to

00:48:27.860 democracy. Only democracy is good. That is not going to change the reality on the ground. You have to

00:48:32.380 stop buying in to this ideology that you have to force democracy and capitalism in exactly the vein

00:48:37.940 you like and all of your human rights requirements and everything else on other countries.

00:48:41.720 In short, I'm saying that a quasi religion of democratic capitalism cannot do a duty for

00:48:48.480 immigration and, uh, cannot do duty for immigration and right reason and prescriptive, uh, wisdom in

00:48:55.880 domestic politics or in foreign relations. An ideology of democratic capitalism might be less maligned

00:49:01.800 than an ideology of communism or national socialism or syndicalism or anarchism, but it would be, uh,

00:49:09.180 but, but it would not be much more intelligent or humane. So I was like, look, this is just an

00:49:14.820 ideology. The thing you're pushing this neoconservative democratic capitalism, this global empire of

00:49:20.000 neoliberal ideology. It, yeah, it might, you might not hate it as much as, you know, communism or national

00:49:25.940 socialism or whatever, but ultimately this is just as inhumane. It's just as ridiculous. You will have

00:49:32.220 gathered ladies and gentlemen, what I am that I am disappointed generally speaking with the

00:49:36.300 neoconservative faction. I had, I had hoped that they would bring, uh, lively, uh, might bring lively

00:49:43.000 imagination into the conservative camp. Instead, they have urged conservatives to engage in ideological

00:49:48.480 sloganizing the death of political imagination, dull standardization. I had expected the neoconservatives

00:49:55.860 to address themselves to the great social difficulties of the United States today, especially

00:50:01.300 in the swelling growth of dismal urban proletariat and the decay of the moral order. Instead, with some

00:50:07.320 exceptions, their concern has been mainly with the gross national product and global wealth. They

00:50:13.340 offer few alternatives to the alleged benefits of the welfare state, shrugging their shoulders. And

00:50:18.380 the creed of most of them is no better than the latter day, uh, uh, utilitarians. So he says, look,

00:50:24.140 these neoconservatives, they don't care about the fact that we are, uh, you know, we're degrading our

00:50:29.520 morals, that we're degrading our civic life, that the, you know, the urban poor are, you know,

00:50:34.320 they're backsliding in their, their quality of life and in their character. All they care about is the

00:50:38.900 GDP, right? They don't care about the condition of the United States. They don't care about the

00:50:42.300 condition of its people. It's just line, go up, line, go up again, 1988 guys, nothing has changed.

00:50:48.420 Nothing has changed. Uh, I thought that the neoconservatives might become the champions of the

00:50:53.600 diversity in the world. Instead, they aspire to bring about a world of uniform and dull

00:50:58.680 standardization. Going to read that one again. I thought that the neoconservatives might become

00:51:03.540 the champions of diversity in the world. Instead, they aspire to bring about a world of uniformity

00:51:09.200 and dull standardization. I hadn't even read this before I wrote the total state, but it's all right

00:51:15.720 here. He, he got it. Russell Kirk knew. I didn't get this from him, but he knew.

00:51:21.880 Uh, Americanized, industrialized, democratized, localized, and, uh, boring. They are, uh, they

00:51:30.060 are cultural and economic imperialists. Many of them. I have conjectured that the neoconservatives

00:51:34.820 might be so many new brooms, uh, brooms, sweeping clean that they set new standards of political

00:51:41.700 rectitude and, uh, leaven healthily the lump of the, of the stolid conservative interest.

00:51:47.500 Instead, instead they have, instead they have behaved rather as if they were a cadre of political,

00:51:56.380 uh, of a political machine of a type all too frequently encountered in American political

00:52:01.140 history. Eager, uh, for place and, uh, uh, preferment and power, uh, skillful at, uh, intrigue,

00:52:09.020 ready to exclude from office any person, uh, persons who might not be in, uh, uh, might not be

00:52:15.860 counted upon as faithful to the neoconservative ideology. Often backstairs, uh, they have seemed

00:52:22.320 more eager to frustrate their allies than to confute, uh, than to confute with those, uh,

00:52:27.860 presumptions that adversaries, uh, presumptions, presumptive adversaries. Sorry, I got lost there.

00:52:34.960 Uh, presumptive adversaries, uh, the liberals and radicals, the strategy of Volpone or, uh,

00:52:41.000 Sir Giles overreach. Nonetheless, they prove vain in the long run. So it is coming to pass nowadays

00:52:46.740 with the neoconservatives. So all they care about is power. All they care about is seizing control of

00:52:51.720 the institutions. All they care about is working their way into these different publications and

00:52:56.820 these different positions. They don't care about the people themselves. They, and they are willing

00:53:01.720 to backstab everybody else in the movement to get to where they, they want to be. They'll cancel

00:53:06.220 other people. They'll lie about other people. They'll, they'll do anything they can to undermine

00:53:10.520 other conservatives as long as it means elevating their interests. Clever creatures. Do I, uh, then

00:53:17.140 write Ichabod upon, uh, upon the, upon the lot of them? Nay, not so. Among them, I, uh, as I mentioned

00:53:24.720 earlier, are men and women who have risen to, uh, superior to the foibles and fallacies that have

00:53:30.640 marred the neoconservative clique generally. And it would be a great, uh, be a great pity for the

00:53:36.060 American nation to lose the talents of such people. And whatever blunders the neoconservatives have

00:53:40.680 made from time to time, all the same, they have stirred up some intellectual activity among

00:53:45.220 conservatives. Generally not, uh, not as not an easy thing to do. Uh, in the wall street journal

00:53:51.420 on, uh, August 22nd, 1988, Irving Kristol expressed his concern as to whether George Bush, uh, was the,

00:53:58.960 uh, has the motivation to learn anything and disparaged managerial skills and disparaged managerial

00:54:05.180 skills in government. He urged the appointment of, uh, cabinet posts, uh, of superior academics,

00:54:11.540 presumably of the crystal kidney for the real, uh, political talent. Mr. Kristol wrote in a

00:54:17.040 revealing passage, our quick-witted articulated, uh, articulantness, a clear sense of one's, uh,

00:54:23.220 ideology, ideological agenda, and the devious routes necessary for its enactment. Machiavelli,

00:54:29.780 uh, such have been the talents of the neoconservatives in Washington during the last

00:54:35.720 eight years. Clever creatures, glib, committed to an ideology, and devious at attaining their

00:54:41.560 objective. The seven cardinal virtues go unmentioned, uh, by Mr. Kristol. The virtue of

00:54:47.620 prudence, according to both Plato and Burke, is the virtue most needed in the statesman. Where is the

00:54:53.860 wisdom we have lost in the knowledge of, in the knowledge, neoconservatives? Where is the knowledge

00:54:59.060 we have lost in the information? Playing the comic role, uh, playing the comic role, Mr. Bush, not

00:55:05.080 known, uh, not, uh, Mr. Bush, not grown up in the backbiting ideological jungle of New York City,

00:55:12.740 seems unlikely to accept Mr. Kristol's counsel of deviousness. For Mr. Bush is no ideologue and no

00:55:19.720 intellectual, praise be. Rather, he is, as Kristol writes, a fine gentleman of good breeding, a true

00:55:25.260 patriot, uh, and experienced, reliable, and trustworthy public servant. Later, uh, later on in

00:55:31.080 the article, in the same article, incidentally, uh, Mr. Kristol makes it clear, though, that he is no

00:55:36.400 respecter of fine gentlemen. He commands, uh, or he commends Mrs. Thatcher for having in her cabinet

00:55:42.660 none of the traditional aristocratic, uh, coloration, and rejoices, uh, that the conservative

00:55:48.360 majority in the House of Commons has fewer members who have gone to Eaton or, uh, Harrow, Oxford, or

00:55:55.160 Cambridge. It is a reasonable presumption that Mr. Kristol and certain of his colleagues

00:56:00.940 would prefer to install in the, uh, White House some person, not at all a fine gentleman who might be a

00:56:08.640 devious, who might be deviously manipulated by neoconservative ideology. Mr. Bush has far too much

00:56:16.060 practical experience of federal office to, uh, be so managed by the first class academic brain trust

00:56:22.520 that Mr. Kristol desires to establish in the White House. In politics, the professor always plays the

00:56:28.480 comic role, Nietzsche wrote. It is coming to pass that the neoconservatives of whose guiding vision,

00:56:33.900 the Bush, uh, the Bush people are healthily skeptical. So he's saying, look, you know, the

00:56:38.880 neoconservatives, they don't want aristocrats. They don't want gentlemen. They don't want, uh,

00:56:44.020 you know, statesmen. They want hardcore ideologues. They want people like themselves. They want clever

00:56:49.080 academics, professors. They want, uh, people who are going to be ruthless and Machiavellian.

00:56:53.980 They don't want people who have an established role in society. They don't want any attachment

00:56:58.680 to the old world. They want, you know, uh, very, very brash, uh, very quick-witted, uh, very conniving

00:57:05.780 people. And if, you know, they can't get rid of, uh, George Bush, they'll, they'll, they would prefer

00:57:11.500 someone else would be in there so they can manipulate him instead. Again, I think he's

00:57:15.100 buttering up George Bush here. He wants to be heard by George Bush and, and have his, uh, ideas, uh,

00:57:20.240 stay with George Bush. But, you know, he's saying basically, uh, you know, they would replace you

00:57:24.160 if they could with somebody who is easier, uh, to manipulate. No promise for neoliberalism.

00:57:30.160 Do I think, uh, do I think what with my moderate comments in this series of four lectures on the

00:57:36.820 cultural conservatives, the libertarians, popular conservatism, and the neoconservatives

00:57:41.940 that the conservative movement near the end of the year, 1988 is in the severe, or is in the seer,

00:57:47.960 uh, they must've, uh, unless I just don't know that word and then mistyped that one. Yellow leaf,

00:57:53.200 a more, uh, uh, cognaries of warring factions, uh, doomed to early disillusion as a political force.

00:58:01.680 Not at all. Already, despite the, uh, complexion of the, of the majority in the Congress, the

00:58:09.720 conservatives are dominant in the country. The Democratic candidates for office now find it

00:58:14.540 necessary nationally to pretend to be conservative. A number of Democratic aspirants to office actually

00:58:21.400 have turned conservative, no longer in their walk, uh, walk of the promise of neoliberalism.

00:58:27.240 On the contrary, during the next four, uh, during the next four years, we will benefit as people,

00:58:32.640 I think, from the prudent conservative administration that has gained confidence and

00:58:36.680 practical abilities from the eight years of Mr. Reagan's success. It, uh, it will not be a

00:58:43.600 neoconservative administration yet. Neither will it be an administration from which honest

00:58:48.660 neoconservatives are excluded, able cultural conservatives and sensible libertarians and plain

00:58:54.780 mainstream conservatives, uh, conservatively minded politicians will have their place in such

00:58:59.640 administration. Let us pray that neoconservative, or let us pray that conservative movement of the

00:59:05.220 1990s will resemble Cicero's optimates, the party of all good men. Some of us once upon a time had fixed,

00:59:12.800 uh, had fixed lifelong in our brains by the standard exercises in typewriting manuals, Cicero's

00:59:19.040 exhortation. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. This day,

00:59:23.960 I do similarly exhort you ladies and gentlemen, yay, even the, uh, publicans sinners and neoconservatives

00:59:31.020 in your myths. So obviously he's trying to say, I don't want you to become a neoconservative

00:59:35.700 administration. Uh, we, you know, we need to have a practical, uh, administration going forward.

00:59:40.520 We need people of all faith from these different sides to come together in something that's actually

00:59:44.560 going to help the country and isn't just going to pursue these abstract ideological, uh, goals of

00:59:50.320 this particular wing inside the conservative party. And obviously he's really buttering up,

00:59:55.080 uh, George Bush cause he wants him to, you know, listen, let's just say this. Donald Trump was not

01:00:00.020 the first guy that people had to appeal to, right? A lot of people will say, oh, well, you know, people

01:00:03.680 just suck up to Trump to get him to listen to what they're doing. Well, it's not the first president

01:00:08.380 that they've had to do that way. That was happening with George Bush as well. So, uh, obviously, um, uh,

01:00:14.060 that's what Russell Kirk is trying to do here at the end of the speech. So, uh, that's,

01:00:18.320 that's a whole speech guys. That's the end of it there. Again, uh, lots of controversial stuff in

01:00:23.120 there. Uh, lots of stuff that will easily get you canceled back then in 1988 and we'll still get

01:00:27.480 you canceled today. Um, and, and ultimately, you know, uh, Russell Kirk did it in a backing Pat

01:00:32.780 Buchanan for this reason, because George Bush did not listen to him. Uh, and he felt like he needed to,

01:00:37.280 to break from, uh, what the conservative, uh, movement and to some degree had become.

01:00:41.620 So just a very interesting piece, a lot of, uh, wisdom in there, a lot of interesting analysis on

01:00:49.480 how power works and what's happening to the movement. And the fact that this is just written

01:00:53.280 so many decades ago and every word, you know, without the references to particular, uh, you know,

01:00:58.480 people of that day would pretty much work for exact current political situation, uh, really says

01:01:03.580 something, right? I think it's a, it's a very interesting and important, uh, thing for us to

01:01:07.460 remember. And that's why I wanted to read it in its entirety. I know it's long. I know, uh, you know,

01:01:11.300 there was mistypes in there cause this is off the heritage foundation's website. I promise I didn't

01:01:14.780 do this. And, uh, I stumbled a few times, but I'm glad you stuck with me. Cause I really do think

01:01:18.800 it's important that we recognize that this has been going on for a long time. These opinions are

01:01:23.880 not new. The issues we're facing in 2025 were just as apparent to Russell Kirk, uh, back then. Uh,

01:01:30.000 and so, uh, and, and, and they, they tried to ruin them for it for, for acknowledging this. So we need to

01:01:34.820 recognize, uh, the same, the same amount of power is going to be dropped on your head, uh, when you

01:01:40.240 try to push back what has happened to the conservative movement here and why neoconservatism

01:01:44.480 is ultimately very bad for, uh, America. All right, guys, let's go to the questions of the people here

01:01:50.240 real quick. Uh, tiny stupid demon says FYI, there is a correctly formatted PDF version of this and a

01:01:58.860 website called policy archive. Just search for the, uh, on the title. Okay, great. Thank you. I was not

01:02:04.100 able to find that. I tried to, you know, there is a PDF function here. Uh, but when you clicked it,

01:02:08.820 it just said the link was broken. At first, I only found this on, uh, the internet archive,

01:02:13.040 uh, initially. And then I was able to track down the original posting, at least on the heritage

01:02:17.440 foundation, but it's good to know that there's a correctly produced version, uh, there. So if

01:02:21.480 people want to get that, uh, you can, you can head to policy archive. It looks like, uh, he also says

01:02:26.480 also, this is fire. Yeah, no, it's, it's an amazing speech. Uh, it's, it's, um, like I said,

01:02:31.220 he pulls no punches. He, uh, points to a lot of problems that we're still dealing with today.

01:02:36.120 Uh, and I think it's, uh, I think it's just as timely now as it was when it was delivered.

01:02:42.040 Uh, Thuggo says human rights are an anti-religion. Yep. That's basically what he's laying out here

01:02:47.000 is like, this just becomes a replacement for a religion. Uh, it's the abstraction of what should

01:02:52.280 be religious principles into something that, uh, becomes this totalizing ideology. And because it's

01:02:56.820 not connected to something true and powerful, uh, and, and eternal like a religion, uh, it becomes

01:03:02.500 very dangerous very quickly. Based Hillbilly says, uh, ironically, the centrist state worshiping,

01:03:10.120 uh, big government expansionist ex-Marxist neocons are very ideologically similar to the actual

01:03:15.840 fascists. Yes. Um, and, uh, there's a, there's a larger discussion to have on this, but you know,

01:03:22.840 there's a reason that all of these, all of these ideologies, whatever they are in name

01:03:28.160 are kind of converging on this like quasi fascist communist hybrid, right? Like there's a reason

01:03:34.420 that States are all arriving at this. There's, you know, the, the China convergence as NS Lyons

01:03:39.220 calls it, uh, is occurring for a reason. Right. And so, yes, uh, in some sense, uh, these guys

01:03:45.440 are ironically aping the fascism they're so worried about, but in a way it actually makes sense

01:03:50.480 because really these guys were Trotskyites who recognized they needed a totalizing ideology

01:03:56.120 either way. Now theirs is not fascist in the sense that they want to globalize it. Uh, fascism,

01:04:00.700 at least in its, it's really theoretical way, a term is a, is a ideology of nations, uh, as where this

01:04:07.740 is a globalizing one, but either way they need the total state, right? That's the, at the end,

01:04:12.560 everyone's arriving at the total state, uh, which I think is, um, very scary, but, uh, but I think also

01:04:19.020 is predictable given the, the geopolitical realities and the realities of power that we're facing in

01:04:24.020 the world today. Scale has driven everyone to the total state and we've all got ideological reasons

01:04:29.060 and excuses to why our version's better and ours is okay. Uh, but we are all arriving at the same

01:04:34.700 destination, just like the neoconservatives were. All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap

01:04:40.460 this up. Want to thank everybody for coming by. As always, if this is your first time on the channel,

01:04:44.980 you need to, uh, click, uh, subscribe on YouTube, the bell notifications, all that stuff. So, you

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The Auron MacIntyre Show - August 15, 2025

Russell Kirk's Attack on Neoconservatism ｜ 8⧸15⧸25

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