1. in the pre-internet era, it was easier for the neocons to seize control of institutions with angry letters and coordinated action, whereas in the internet era, anti-neocons are much less cancellable, and
2. the fault lines between neocons and the right are basically always "civic nationalist vs. race realist" ("racism, antisemitism, immigration").
Examples:
* 1980: Paleocon Mel Bradford cancelled as NEH chairman in favor of neocon William Bennett
* 1988: Russell Kirk cancelled for writing "Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States"
* 1989: Richard John Neuhaus double-crosses Chronicles magazine for insufficient enthusiasm for mass immigration, leaving to found First Things
* 1992: country-club GOP establishment angry at Pat Buchanan for failing to surrender completely to liberalism in his GOP convention speech
* 1994: William Cash cancelled for writing "The Kings of the Deal" in The Spectator about Jews in Hollywood
* late 1990s: WF Buckley & Rich Lowry cancel Peter Brimelow & John O'Sullivan from National Review for insufficient enthusiasm for mass immigration
Not sure how much the internet matters. My hunch is the trajectory of the right would have been similar regardless, but who knows.
2 is complicated by people like Sailer, who is both of those things, as were most of the neocons, including more liberal neocons like Moynihan. David Frum too, notably, was a staunch immigration hawk before he got TDS.
I really think the main fault line is the cliche one, foreign policy and specifically what the US should do vis a vis Israel and the Middle East.
Yes, the turmoil of the Sixties did produce strange bedfellows and all kinds of weird combinations.
For example, who remembers the 1969 NYC campaign of the ticket of Norman Mailer (for mayor) and running mate Jimmy Breslin (for city council president)?
Great article. Helps fill in the backstory to the political scene into which I emerged: southern Evangelical neocon-curious. Dad subscribed to the Weekly Standard but Pat Buchanan’s books were also lying around. Anxious for part II
There's a whole unexplored aspect to this--which I mention in passing--of how the "new right" fits into this model, which it sounds like is the milieu you're coming from. Some combination of the Southern Agrarians plus what would become the evangelical right. If you really want to dive into it, there's a book called "The New Right Papers" that summarizes its different features: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Right_Papers.html?id=8PYfMgEACAAJ
Quote: 'The neocons would have to answer whether they believed the United States should be viewed as a distinct nation composed of a distinct people with distinct interests, or as an ideological vanguard in a permanent global struggle for liberal democracy."
If you believe, as I do, that the source of much of America's influence in the world has always lain in the example it can set in the field of human possibility, there is no inherent contradiction between these to views. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
I present these ideas as the apotheosis not only of capitalism itself (which turns out to be a new form of socialism in all but name only) but of the entire Judeo-Christian project out of which capitalism emerged.
Clearly, Jonathan, I am either a crackpot or a genius. You decide.
Quote: "the underlying Trotskyist impulse toward moral universalism and the need for a vanguard to initiate global ideological struggle stayed more or less intact."
You put your finger on it there. Ersatz Christianity.
Looking back, it seems to me that
1. in the pre-internet era, it was easier for the neocons to seize control of institutions with angry letters and coordinated action, whereas in the internet era, anti-neocons are much less cancellable, and
2. the fault lines between neocons and the right are basically always "civic nationalist vs. race realist" ("racism, antisemitism, immigration").
Examples:
* 1980: Paleocon Mel Bradford cancelled as NEH chairman in favor of neocon William Bennett
* 1988: Russell Kirk cancelled for writing "Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States"
* 1989: Richard John Neuhaus double-crosses Chronicles magazine for insufficient enthusiasm for mass immigration, leaving to found First Things
* 1992: country-club GOP establishment angry at Pat Buchanan for failing to surrender completely to liberalism in his GOP convention speech
* 1994: William Cash cancelled for writing "The Kings of the Deal" in The Spectator about Jews in Hollywood
* late 1990s: WF Buckley & Rich Lowry cancel Peter Brimelow & John O'Sullivan from National Review for insufficient enthusiasm for mass immigration
https://books.google.com/books?id=QQAhDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&source=bl&ots=y1IVSh1SgO&sig=z2SBWsXuElcQGTuf0UV1dWG22-U&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjdxYeKqKbaAhUpjK0KHbJYAMkQ6AEIhgEwCQ#v=onepage&f=false
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/editorials/first-things-first-2/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dont-call-it-the-culture-war-speech/
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/us/politics/from-the-fringe-in-1992-patrick-j-buchanans-words-now-seem-mainstream.html
Not sure how much the internet matters. My hunch is the trajectory of the right would have been similar regardless, but who knows.
2 is complicated by people like Sailer, who is both of those things, as were most of the neocons, including more liberal neocons like Moynihan. David Frum too, notably, was a staunch immigration hawk before he got TDS.
I really think the main fault line is the cliche one, foreign policy and specifically what the US should do vis a vis Israel and the Middle East.
Yes, the turmoil of the Sixties did produce strange bedfellows and all kinds of weird combinations.
For example, who remembers the 1969 NYC campaign of the ticket of Norman Mailer (for mayor) and running mate Jimmy Breslin (for city council president)?
And how did they characterize themselves?
They were “left conservatives.”
Great article. Helps fill in the backstory to the political scene into which I emerged: southern Evangelical neocon-curious. Dad subscribed to the Weekly Standard but Pat Buchanan’s books were also lying around. Anxious for part II
There's a whole unexplored aspect to this--which I mention in passing--of how the "new right" fits into this model, which it sounds like is the milieu you're coming from. Some combination of the Southern Agrarians plus what would become the evangelical right. If you really want to dive into it, there's a book called "The New Right Papers" that summarizes its different features: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Right_Papers.html?id=8PYfMgEACAAJ
Excellent piece, thank you
Quote: 'The neocons would have to answer whether they believed the United States should be viewed as a distinct nation composed of a distinct people with distinct interests, or as an ideological vanguard in a permanent global struggle for liberal democracy."
If you believe, as I do, that the source of much of America's influence in the world has always lain in the example it can set in the field of human possibility, there is no inherent contradiction between these to views. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
I present these ideas as the apotheosis not only of capitalism itself (which turns out to be a new form of socialism in all but name only) but of the entire Judeo-Christian project out of which capitalism emerged.
Clearly, Jonathan, I am either a crackpot or a genius. You decide.
Quote: "the underlying Trotskyist impulse toward moral universalism and the need for a vanguard to initiate global ideological struggle stayed more or less intact."
You put your finger on it there. Ersatz Christianity.