Glenn Greenwald has apparently reached the end of his tether with the neo-con apologists for the Bush Administration, as evidenced by this post in which he says, at the end that the neo-cons hold "twisted and bloodthirsty tenets" which "are not rooted in some rotted, coherent geopolitical doctrine as much as they are rooted in rotted personality disorder." I found myself commenting that such psychological reductionism is wrong because it dismisses the history of the movement, and dismisses as well the commitment to its ideals and principles those who hold them continue to have. I was taken to task by another commenter who insisted that, in fact, the neo-cons do not have political commitments, because it has cost them nothing to hold them. I find such dismissal peurile, and even dangerous; we underestimate those with whom we disagree politically at our peril, because the neo-conservatives have both a history and a wealth of intellectual and political resources at their disposal - not the least of them being access to a variety of media - with which to press home their views.
Gary Dorrien, a professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, has written two books, The Neo-Conservative Mind and Imperial Designs, that trace the history of the movement, the process and change and development of its major strains of thought, through an analysis of its major figures, both first and second generation. In taking the movement, its ideas, and its personalities seriously, Dorrien presents a movement that emerged initially from the disputes within the New York Marxist community and its literary and intellectual outgrowths. There was, and still is, a depth of thought to the neo-cons, and a commitment to America as the world's only superpower that drives them forward. It is precisely because their views are rooted both in a certain Stalinist/Marxist absolutism, only dedicated to American supremacy, that they come across as authoritarian and arbitrary - we are witnessing what happens when Marxists lose their faith; like Augustine after Platonism, they merely transfer their way of thinking to America as capitalist hegemon, rather than the Soviet Union as communist hegemon.
By reducing the politics of the neo-conservatives to facile psychological categories and equating the politics of George W. Bush with neo-conservatism, Greenwald makes two errors. First, he dismisses the seriousness of political opponents in such a way as to make himself a less-serious interlocutor. It is one thing to focus on the nepotism of the neo-cons - I asked in my comment what Bill Kristol or John Podhoretz have done that we should take them seriously - and another to take this a step further and speculate on the psychology behind this nepotism. The other error is that, while George W. Bush does have neo-con support, he is not himself a neo-conservative. Indeed, i find it hard to believe that George Bush has any coherent political beliefs at all, other than the expansion of Presidential power beyond constitutional boundaries, judging by his record as President. By throwing around a term loosely, whether, as I discussed earlier it is "left", "right", "center", "victory", and "defeat" or as in this case "neo-conservatism" - a term which in face has both a very precise meaning, a coherent core of beliefs, and very definable boundaries (William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan are not neo-cons, and both loathe the idea that these Johnny-come-latelies have achieved the kind of political access they have been denied), Greenwald robs the word of meaning, and cheatgs us of a deeper understanding, understanding which we could use in opposition to them.
If we say, with Greenwald, that they're all just a bunch of authoritarian, anti-democrats stuck in pre-adolescent parent-worship because of stunted psychological development, why should we be taken any more seriously than those we quite rightly criticize for their own peurile analysis of liberals and progressives? What is good for the liberal goose is not always good for the conservative gander. It behooves us to take the neo-conservatives as seriously as we progressives wish to be taken seriously, not dismiss them out of hand with shallow psychologizing that might just miss some important facts and realities. Even though we might find their beliefs, and the practical results of those beliefs, reprehensible, we owe it to ourselves and to the country for which we are fighting and arguing, to accept that those beliefs are sincerely held, have an intellectual and (I would argue) even a moral core. We would be much better spending our time discussing the ideas and teachings and results of neo-conservatism than about the neo-cons themselves. We would also be much better making sure we are clear who is in fact a neo-conservative and who is not. It is important, indeed it is vitally necessary, to know one's opponent, and to know about differences within the opposition in order to exploit whatever weaknesses might exist within them. Shallow psychological analysis does not serve us well, and I do not accept Greenwald's argument that we are fully justified in so arguing.
