Wall Street Journal - January 13, 2003
COMMENTARY AMERICAN CONSERVATISM A View From the Left
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
When viewed from any objective standpoint to its immediate Left, the American conservative movement manifests one distinct symptom of well-being. It is fairly conspicuously schismatic, and it possesses the confidence to rehearse its differences in public. (One can see the corollary of this point by examining the state of the liberal Left, which is over-anxious to present a facade of spurious "unity," and meager in its reluctance to concede anything which might redound to the credit of the president.)
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If we take only the most pressingly topical issues of war and peace and intervention, we can select from at least three, and perhaps four, well-articulated conservative positions. The now soi-disant neoconservatives favor a high-risk, morally self-confident strategy of what I privately call revolution from above in the Middle East. The Tory realpolitik faction -- from Brent Scowcroft to Larry Eagleburger -- can still find a counsel of prudence, derived from a Saudi-dominated status quo that they don't entirely dislike. The rhetorically colorful Buchanan tendency is intoxicated by its recently discovered anti-imperialism (perhaps we can hope for historically revisionist anti-fascism to follow?), but caters to a nativist isolationism that is under-represented in the media. Still a fourth group, in some ways plus neocon que le roi, believes that the hinge nation in the celebrated "axis" is actually Iran, where we may even be seeing a revolution from below. By contrast, the tenuous positions of the "peace" movement seem either too insipid or too apologetic or too -- well -- conservative.
Since American liberalism shows no sign of abandoning its comfortable role as an essentially status quo force, at home and abroad, the Right may hope to continue passing Hegel's test of political vitality -- the readiness for a split. I have to say that I was impressed, during the Trent Lott business, by the way that his conservative critics conducted themselves. They wrote and spoke as if this was a matter of principle, not of damage-control, and they were suitably ruthless and unsentimental when it came to phoney appeals about "loyalty" and "unity." They made their opponents look like Clintonoids. I hope I needn't overdo the contrast.
I also hope that I won't seem impertinent if I propose some additional ways in which this kind of conservative rigor and courage could be further demonstrated:
* Secularism: The U.S. can be the guarantor of confessional liberty, even within its own borders, only if it sticks to its Constitutional resolve to be the representative of no faith. The main objection to the slogan "No King But Jesus" -- popularized by the attorney general -- is that it is at least two words too long. This is not just a matter of respecting the feelings of non-Christians and non-believers. Christians themselves should be the first to repudiate any connection between their faith and the patronage of the state, whether at home or abroad. By custom, a president is allowed one nominee who reflects the politics of his grass roots and repays a political debt. A better custom would be to exempt the Department of Justice from this tradition. Mr. Ashcroft would have made -- might still make -- a fine secretary of agriculture.
* Civil Liberties: If anybody within the jurisdiction of the U.S. is held on suspicion of terrorism, I want to know who he is. I consider it my right, in other words, as well as an aspect of my own security. That it is his right to be informed of the charges ought to go without saying. Even as law-abiding travelers are subjected to a farcical collective punishment at American airports, designed perhaps to give the illusion that possession of an ID confers extra safety, police time is wasted on the punishment of those immigrants law-abiding enough to report to the authorities. And some hundreds of people have, for now, disappeared into a secret imprisonment. Such reports as we have of the process are not encouraging. And there are even credible rumors of torture and coercion: history's most tried-and-tested weapons of failure and disgrace. Some Republicans like Congressman Barr of Georgia were in the forefront of opposition to blanket measures like this. One could have hoped, though, that the other skeptics of "big government" would have been more eloquent.
* Palestine: One people lives, without its consent, under the rule of another. This unjust and unwanted rule is guaranteed, militarily and economically, by a Pax Americana. And this was the case long before bin-Ladenism became the latest excuse for it. A Pax Americana cannot long endure half-slave and half-free. Perhaps uncomfortable with the obvious negation, some conservatives now argue that an emancipated Palestine will attend upon an emancipated Iraq. This profession of faith had better be sincere: at all events it can be made more so by immediate measures to demonstrate a minimum of even-handedness, and to ensure a cessation of opportunistic and Messianic colonialism. American taxpayers' money should not be used even indirectly to support an "establishment of religion" by clerical fanatics on the West Bank. At present, a self-determined Palestine is supported by a greater proportion of Israelis than of American conservatives (or, to be fair, of American Democrats). This is a matter of principle that doesn't admit of any evasion.
* Inequality: The ethos of capitalism, or perhaps better said of free enterprise, supposedly rewards the thrifty, the industrious and the self-reliant. There might conceivably be an elegant theoretical Federalist case for relieving Microsoft of the fetters of antitrust law, but there can be no excuse for the featherbedding of mediocre and greedy managements whose remuneration is a gilded secret for much of the time, and this would hold true even if it did not contrast with the laying off of workers who have kept their part of the bargain.
* Respect for History: The U.S. is not specially exempt from the moral law that enjoins societies to face their past with honesty. In recent weeks, Americans got a fleeting glimpse of Henry Kissinger's unattractive preference for secrecy over the national interest. Many other countries have been aware of this for some time, and several magistrates in countries as widely-separated as France and Chile are seeking his testimony in serious investigations of enormous past wrongs. Conservatives who hymn the rule of law should be denouncing the way in which a man who deceived Congress and placed unlawful wiretaps in his own country is officially shielded from such legal proceedings. One might also have expected more complaint from conservatives about the re-employment of technicality-and-pardon-beneficiaries (such as John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams) to senior and sensitive posts. Apart from anything else, are conservatives content with the idea that there wasn't enough new talent available to fill such jobs?
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As I began by saying, American conservatives have won some deserved respect for their willingness to attack the status quo and for their ability to know a historical turning-point when they see one, as well as for their readiness to clash internally. If these are indeed to be the standards, then the scope for additional progress and enlightenment will be enough to keep this observer permanently on his toes.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and, this spring, the I.F. Stone Fellow at Berkeley. His most recent book is "Why Orwell Matters" (Basic Books, 2002).