neoconservatism

neoconservatism, variant of the political ideology of conservatism that combines features of traditional conservatism with political individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets. Neoconservatism arose in the United States in the 1970s among intellectuals who shared a dislike of communism and a disdain for the counterculture of the 1960s, especially its political radicalism and its animus against authority, custom, and tradition.

Intellectual influences

Among their intellectual ancestors neoconservatives count the ancient Greek historian Thucydides for his unblinking realism in military matters and his skepticism toward democracy, as well as Alexis de Tocqueville, the French author of Democracy in America (1835–40), who described and analyzed both the bright and the bad sides of democracy in the United States. More recent influences include the German-born American political philosopher Leo Strauss and several of his students, such as Allan Bloom; Bloom’s student Francis Fukuyama; and a small band of intellectuals who in their youth were anti-Stalinist communists (specifically Trotskyites) before becoming liberals disillusioned with liberalism. The latter include Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Norman Podhoretz, among others.

Culture and religion

In its respect for established institutions and practices, neoconservatism resembles the traditional conservatism of the 18th-century Irish statesman Edmund Burke. Neoconservatives, however, tend to pay more attention than traditional conservatives to cultural matters and the mass media—to music, art, literature, theatre, film, and, more recently, television and the Internet—because they believe that a society defines itself and expresses its values through these means. Western (and particularly American) society, they charge, has become amoral, adrift, and degenerate. As evidence of the moral corruption of Western culture, they cite violent and sexually explicit films, television programs, and video games, and they point to popular music that is rife with obscenities that have lost their capacity to shock and disgust. Actions once regarded as shameful are now accepted as normal. For example, most people in the West now consider it perfectly acceptable for unmarried men and women to live together and even to have children. These phenomena amount to “defining deviancy down,” as the neoconservative sociologist and U.S. senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once charged.

Such degenerate behaviour, say neoconservatives, indicates a broader and deeper cultural crisis afflicting Western civilization. The American political scientist James Q. Wilson, for example, traced the crisis to the 18th-century European Enlightenment, which encouraged people to question established authority, to criticize religion, and to reject traditional beliefs. Other neoconservatives blame the “adversarial” counterculture of the 1960s, which dismissed traditional values and religion as old-fashioned, irrelevant, or even reactionary. Whatever its source, neoconservatives maintain that this degeneration represents a real and present danger to Western civilization.

Neoconservatives agree with religious conservatives that the current crisis is due in part to the declining influence of religion in people’s lives. People without a sense of something larger than themselves, something transcendent and eternal, are apt to turn to mindless entertainment—including drugs and alcohol—and to act selfishly and irresponsibly. Religion at its best is a kind of social cement, holding families, communities, and countries together. At its worst, however, religion can be fanatical, intolerant, and divisive, tearing communities apart instead of uniting them. Most neoconservatives thus believe that the principle of the separation of church and state, as enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is a good idea. They also believe, however, that it has been pursued to extremes by adherents of modern liberalism, who are bent on banishing religion from public life, resulting in a backlash from religious-right conservatives.

Neoconservatives also hold that the modern liberal ideal of cultural diversity, or multiculturalism—the principle of not only tolerating but also respecting different religions and cultures and encouraging them to coexist harmoniously—tends to undermine the traditional culture of any country that tries to put it into practice. It also encourages the excesses of “political correctness”—that is, an overly acute sensitivity to offending people of other backgrounds, outlooks, and cultures. These trends, they believe, are likely to produce a conservative backlash, such as those that took place in Denmark and the Netherlands, where anti-immigrant political parties became increasingly popular in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Economic and social policy

In economics, neoconservatives believe that markets are an efficient means of allocating goods and services. They are not, however, wholehearted advocates of free-market capitalism. As Kristol remarked, capitalism deserves two cheers, not three, because its innovative character produces almost-constant social upheavals and disruptions. Moreover, as the neoconservative sociologist Daniel Bell argued, capitalism harbours various “cultural contradictions” that undermine its own social and ethical foundations. Capitalism presupposes a willingness to save, to invest, and to defer gratification; at the same time, through advertising and marketing techniques, it encourages people to indulge themselves, to live on credit, and to pay little heed to the farther future. Unregulated capitalism, moreover, creates great wealth alongside dire poverty; it richly rewards some people while leaving others behind. And since great disparities of wealth make the wealthy contemptuous of the poor and the poor envious of the rich, capitalism can create conditions that cause class conflict, labour unrest, and political instability. To reduce, though certainly not to eliminate, such disparities, neoconservatives support the graduated income tax, the inheritance tax, the modern welfare state, and other means by which a social “safety net” might be placed underneath society’s less-fortunate members.

At the same time, however, neoconservatives warn that well-intentioned government programs can produce unintended and unfortunate consequences for the people they are meant to help. More particularly, neoconservatives argue that social welfare programs can and often do create dependency and undermine individual initiative, ambition, and responsibility. Such programs should therefore aim to provide only temporary or short-term assistance. Nor should the goal of social programs and tax policy be to level the differences between individuals and classes. Neoconservatives claim to favour equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. While favouring the existence of the welfare state, they also believe that it should be scaled back, because it has become, in their view, too large, too bureaucratic and unwieldy, and too generous. In the mid-1990s, neoconservatives approved of “workfare” programs designed to move people off the welfare rolls and into the workforce. In domestic policy theirs has been an insistent and influential voice.

Foreign policy

Neoconservatives have been especially influential in the formulation of foreign and military policy, particularly in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They contend that power—military, economic, or political—that is unused is for all practical purposes wasted. The military might of the United States should be employed around the world to promote American interests. And it is in the interests of the United States, they say, to promote the development of democratic regimes abroad, in as much as democracies (according to the “democratic peace” hypothesis proposed by some political scientists) do not wage war against one another. Neoconservatives wish, in the words of Pres. Woodrow Wilson, to “make the world safe for democracy.” And indeed, neoconservatives often describe their views on foreign policy as “Wilsonian.” They view Wilson as an idealist who came to the Paris Peace Conference (1919) at Versailles with proposals for a just and lasting peace that were denigrated and defeated by cynical European politicians bent on punishing Germany for its role in starting World War I. Back in the United States, Wilson’s proposals for a League of Nations and for the country’s membership in that organization were defeated by isolationist politicians. The all-too-real result of such cynical anti-idealism was another and even bloodier second world war. Thus, idealism, far from being impractical, can produce politically practical and even admirable results.

From the 1980s, neoconservative idealism took the form of an assertive and interventionist foreign policy that targeted anti-American regimes and leftist movements abroad. Sharp increases in U.S. military spending in the 1980s very nearly bankrupted the less affluent Soviet Union and helped to bring about its disintegration in 1991. Meanwhile, communist-led rebel movements in Latin America were crushed with the help of U.S. economic and military aid to regimes regarded as pro-American. In the George W. Bush administration, neoconservative officials in the Pentagon and the Department of State helped to plan and promote the Iraq War (2003).

Criticism

Critics contend that, for all their purported idealism and their talk about democracy, neoconservatives have been all too willing to prop up pro-American but deeply undemocratic regimes throughout the world. Jeane Kirkpatrick’s essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards” (1979), which made the neoconservative case for supporting pro-American dictatorships, was simply and unapologetically cynical, according to this perspective.

Critics also take note of an apparent contradiction between neoconservatives’ views on domestic and foreign policy. With respect to domestic policy, neoconservatives are acutely aware of the possible unintended consequences of well-intended programs. But with respect to foreign policy, such skeptical awareness, according to critics, is almost entirely absent. In the months leading up to the Iraq War, for example, neoconservative planners seemed completely unaware that the invasion and occupation of Iraq might produce horrific consequences, such as large-scale sectarian violence and civil war.

Such criticism has led some neoconservatives, such as Fukuyama and Michael Lind, to renounce neoconservatism and to become ardent and outspoken critics. Such criticisms notwithstanding, neoconservatism remains an influential ideology.