``...why was it so easy for the Hitchens/Bermans et. al. of the (real or imagined) left to not only sign on for the Bush crusade, but accept without question...
When you read the works of the cruise missile liberals, you can almost hear that sigh of relief the burden of broad thought has been removed - "now, at last" they seem to say, "we can get back to the proper work of praising ourselves and distrusting all others."..'' .d.
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I sure don't know, but of course I have the potential makings of a theory.
Thomas Mann wrote a series of essays during WWI, translated as Notes from a Non-Political Man. This book was not translated into English until the 1980s. I assum it was suppressed by Mann and his publishers and editors in the US until long after he was dead. An academic finally did a translation of this long forgotten work. It blew my mind when I read it.
These writings were nasty anti-French, anti-democracy, pro-German nationalist hogwash justifying WWI. Some of these essays were later used by the very early nazis propagandists in the Twenties, exactly for their justification of German nationalism. Subsequently, Mann turned himself around and changed his mind in the other direction---embracing and defending Weimar, especially after the Rathenau assassination. He wasn't quite a socialist, but a liberal with elite trappings and wasn't anti-Semitic.
So this turn or political reversal in Mann has fascinated me---as a potential insight into the US rightwing, and especially the better educated neoconservatives who should know better than to embrace reactionary, national identity laden bullshit---that absolutely smacks of a proto-fascism.
I hate to bring up Strauss, but the whole purpose of reading and studying him is to answer this question. How do you make these turns? The only potential answer is still extremely vague in my mind, but it revolves around a collective sense of national identity.
I know that the whole idea of a clash of civilizations has been strongly poo-pooed here, but I still think there is plenty of insight to be had from taking something like that view of current events---especially as concerns the Muslim world in general. The Muslim world is undergoing its own identity crisis and the resurgence of fundamentalism is a marker for that process.
As for the cruise missile liberals, I really don't know, since I never paid any attention to them or Hitchens. That's not to say, I shouldn't have...
Gotta go to work...
CG