Why E.D. Kain is not a neoconservative

This makes a lot of sense to me, and I'm more or less where EDK is.

The thing is, I have problems with the word "neoconservative," because the sentiments and policies and stances that typically get described as "neoconservative" really describe mainstream conservatism. The only conservatives I know who can't be called neocons are people like Larison and the AmConMag gang, who consciously and philosophically dissent from the conservative mainstream. When I hear the word "neocon," and it's not obviously being used as a veiled jab at Jews, I wonder where these non-neocon conservatives are. Neoconservatism is the mainstream expression of American conservatism right now.

Anyway, more good stuff from E.D. Kain. Excerpt:

This is the fundamental flaw in modern economic theory. It touts the creation of cheap goods via cheap labor and resources as the purpose of prosperity in and of itself. Never mind that this requires shipping all our manufacturing jobs overseas. The once well-paid auto workers will be able to buy such inexpensive goods from China that, if they are lucky enough to find them, jobs in fast food restaurants and retail outlets will be enough to subsist - nay, prosper - upon.

What a farce! Such a brilliant hood-winking of the American people! Such a plot can only be accidental, but even so, even such a conspiracy of happenstance has the same effect. The tragedy is that conservatives have bought into this scheme so completely. The only difference between the two Parties now is that one believes in taxing and spending, and the other believes in not taxing and still spending. One pretends to address the moral concerns of poverty and equal rights and the other pretends to address the moral concerns of the Religious Right. In the end, both ignore the moral concerns of a society driven by the express goal of building wealth, by excess and debt over thrift, and above all else, identifying as a society not of workers, builders, or citizens, but of consumers.

The cries of "socialism" leveled at Obama from the Republicans seem odd, given the Republican propensity toward enlarging government, even privatized government. I'm as troubled as the next by this massive spending, but then again, massive spending has been the status quo for years. Only, instead of spending trillions on health care reform, we've spent it on wars in far off lands. Apparently the moral concern of expansionary militarism is less significant than the the expansion of our social safety nets; the sequestering off of our freedoms under the guise of a War on Terror is less worrisome than the building of high speed rail. Perhaps our priorities have been skewed by our isolation from each other.

Individualism leads to the growth of the State because individualism denies the need for community and family; it abandons such antiquated notions as God and tradition and favors reason and wealth over history and modesty. In the end, however, individualism inevitably falls short; reason inevitably contradicts itself. A nation of individuals is inherently chaotic, and will gravitate, sometimes consciously, oftentimes not, toward a bigger and stronger and more all-encompassing State.

Which brings to mind, of course, John Gray, on the Strange Death of Tory England:

An American-style stance of cultural fundamentalism has attractions for many British conservative thinkers, nonetheless, because it enables them to avoid confronting the central contradiction in their thought and policy -- the contradiction between endorsing the permanent revolution of the global market and the preservation of stable forms of family and community life. If, as is manifestly the case, the effect of unfettered global market institutions is to overthrow settled communities everywhere, to undermine the stability of families by imposing on their members the imperative of unceasing mobility and to dissolve traditional practices and institutions in a flood of novelty, neo-liberal conservatives are compelled to ascribed these changes to factors other than unchecked market forces. The explanation is then sought in antinomian or relativistic doctrines supposedly propagated in schools and universities, in the legacy of 1960s libertarianism, in media bias or similarly absurd conjectures. The social -- and for that matter economic -- failures of market fundamentalism are patched up, or at least obscured, by recourse to the atavistic fantasies of cultural fundamentalism. Only by invoking a conspiratorial elite of liberal intellectuals can the conservative intelligentsia explain to itself why -- after seventeen years of neo-liberal hegemony -- the ordinary people it claims to speak for in Britain show every sign of consigning to electoral oblivion the party whose policies they continue to support.

Gray wrote that in 1995, during what would be the final years of Tory rule before the New Labour sweep. I wonder what he would say now that Labour is on the ropes, and a much-changed, de-Thatcherized Conservative Party looks to take power sometime in the next year. Anyway, I think cultural factors have significantly more to do with the wreckage than Gray does, but it's critical for today's American conservatives to face squarely the contradiction between believing in an unfettered free market, and preserving social and cultural stability.