Julian Sanchez: How the neoconservative right adopted the worst errors of the left
[Julian Sanchez is an assistant editor of Reason. He lives in Washington, D.C.]
Last weekend, Johns Hopkins political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared his apostasy from the conservative philosophy he helped to create in a much-discussed New York Times Magazine essay, "After Neoconservatism."
In a concise genealogy of neoconservatism, Fukuyama describes two of the movement's philosophical strains that were in tension from the outset: a deep skepticism about ambitious social engineering and a deep faith in the ability of American power—including military power—to transform the world for the better by accelerating the spread of democracy and human rights. Other strains, notably the ideas of political philosopher Leo Strauss, were added over the course of the 1990s, and neoconservative optimism about the prospects for global social engineering seemed to have triumphed over any doubts that arose from that domestic skepticism.
Dissecting what he calls "the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq," a failure that has equally baffled war supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, Fukuyama concludes that neoconservative hawks "seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred."
What is striking about this characterization is its extraordinary resemblance to the worldview economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell describes in his conservative classic A Conflict of Visions as the "unconstrained vision" of man and politics—a worldview that Sowell, here and in his more polemical follow-up The Vision of the Anointed, typically regards as distinctive of the left.
On the "constrained" or "tragic" vision, Sowell explains, we are all embedded in phenomenally complex social systems that embody the evolved, inexpressible experience of many generations. Human nature is largely resistant to change and frequently troublesome. Broad and ambitious plans for social improvement—especially when they propose bettering not just human conditions but humanity itself—are to be regarded warily, because the knowledge explicitly available to even the wisest individual or group is dwarfed by the implicit wisdom of our evolved traditions. As Sowell puts it, "the particular cultural expressions of human needs peculiar to specific societies are not seen as being readily and beneficially changeable by forcible intervention." In the "unconstrained" vision as exemplified by William Godwin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by contrast, human nature is fundamentally benign and cooperative, spoiled rather than tamed by society. Rational reform, spearheaded by an enlightened class, is the remedy for the psychic corruption wrought by superstition and blind adherence to custom.
The problems Fukuyama diagnoses with the planning of the Iraq War and its aftermath are typical of the unconstrained vision as Sowell describes it. The administration apparently hoped initially to have drawn down the American presence in Iraq to some 25,000 troops by the summer after the invasion, a symptom of a profound Rousseauian confidence that with the fetters of an oppressive regime broken, something approximating liberal democracy would blossom almost automatically.
But the unconstrained vision has not remained cabined away in neoconservative foreign policy—it has also begun to institute a regime change in conservative domestic thought. While in many ways Leo Strauss, a potent influence on many neocon thinkers, is an archetypal proponent of the constrained vision—he stressed the importance of religion and tradition in tempering the antisocial impulses of the great mass of men—he borrowed from the unconstrained vision the belief in the importance of an anointed few who were capable of facing hard realities and steering society for its own benefit. It is this belief, says Sowell, that makes adherents of the unconstrained vision impatient with elaborate systems of checks and balances or tight restraints on government. ...
Read entire article at Reason.com
Last weekend, Johns Hopkins political scientist Francis Fukuyama declared his apostasy from the conservative philosophy he helped to create in a much-discussed New York Times Magazine essay, "After Neoconservatism."
In a concise genealogy of neoconservatism, Fukuyama describes two of the movement's philosophical strains that were in tension from the outset: a deep skepticism about ambitious social engineering and a deep faith in the ability of American power—including military power—to transform the world for the better by accelerating the spread of democracy and human rights. Other strains, notably the ideas of political philosopher Leo Strauss, were added over the course of the 1990s, and neoconservative optimism about the prospects for global social engineering seemed to have triumphed over any doubts that arose from that domestic skepticism.
Dissecting what he calls "the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq," a failure that has equally baffled war supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, Fukuyama concludes that neoconservative hawks "seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred."
What is striking about this characterization is its extraordinary resemblance to the worldview economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell describes in his conservative classic A Conflict of Visions as the "unconstrained vision" of man and politics—a worldview that Sowell, here and in his more polemical follow-up The Vision of the Anointed, typically regards as distinctive of the left.
On the "constrained" or "tragic" vision, Sowell explains, we are all embedded in phenomenally complex social systems that embody the evolved, inexpressible experience of many generations. Human nature is largely resistant to change and frequently troublesome. Broad and ambitious plans for social improvement—especially when they propose bettering not just human conditions but humanity itself—are to be regarded warily, because the knowledge explicitly available to even the wisest individual or group is dwarfed by the implicit wisdom of our evolved traditions. As Sowell puts it, "the particular cultural expressions of human needs peculiar to specific societies are not seen as being readily and beneficially changeable by forcible intervention." In the "unconstrained" vision as exemplified by William Godwin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by contrast, human nature is fundamentally benign and cooperative, spoiled rather than tamed by society. Rational reform, spearheaded by an enlightened class, is the remedy for the psychic corruption wrought by superstition and blind adherence to custom.
The problems Fukuyama diagnoses with the planning of the Iraq War and its aftermath are typical of the unconstrained vision as Sowell describes it. The administration apparently hoped initially to have drawn down the American presence in Iraq to some 25,000 troops by the summer after the invasion, a symptom of a profound Rousseauian confidence that with the fetters of an oppressive regime broken, something approximating liberal democracy would blossom almost automatically.
But the unconstrained vision has not remained cabined away in neoconservative foreign policy—it has also begun to institute a regime change in conservative domestic thought. While in many ways Leo Strauss, a potent influence on many neocon thinkers, is an archetypal proponent of the constrained vision—he stressed the importance of religion and tradition in tempering the antisocial impulses of the great mass of men—he borrowed from the unconstrained vision the belief in the importance of an anointed few who were capable of facing hard realities and steering society for its own benefit. It is this belief, says Sowell, that makes adherents of the unconstrained vision impatient with elaborate systems of checks and balances or tight restraints on government. ...