Neo-neocon versus The new neo
Commenter “Jamie” has an interesting observation:
I am reminded that this blog used to be called NeoNeocon, and I used to read it as eagerly then as I do now – and I believed to my bones something approximately the opposite of the paragraph above: I believed that if the troublemaker nations in the Middle East just experienced a taste of Western life and freedom, they’d love it, want it, and change their ways to get it. I was not all that young, but certainly foolish.
The lesson I take from all this is that the effects – even fairly short-term, such as the “12 years to climate disaster” claims – of large and complex problems are more or less impossible to predict with any confidence. And therefore, when considering solutions, we MUST be conservative, like rock-ribbed conservative, or risk bringing about new horrible problems in our attempts to solve the one we see as most important at the time.
When I changed the name of this blog to “the new neo” it was because my use of the “neocon” moniker had been misunderstood from the start. My original reason for calling the blog “neo-neocon” was that I was newly conservative – really really newly conservative. Of course, I was no longer newly conservative after a few years.
But as far as my neoconnish foreign policy beliefs went, I had always felt that spreading liberty and democracy by military conquest would be difficult and to have any chance at success it would require an occupation of that country as well as a lengthy time commitment. Fairly quickly it became apparent that the US was unwilling to do either and certainly not both. Plus, democracy without something like the Bill of Rights – and a population educated in why this was important to defend – was often just another road to tyranny.
The larger question was and is: do people really want liberty? Some certainly do, but whether it’s a majority I can’t say for sure and rather doubt – and have come to doubt even more. That’s why I’ve quoted Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” passage so many times on this blog, even long ago when it was “neo-neocon.” Let’s have another go-round with that quote.
In this passage the Grand Inquisitor is addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Although the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is freedom. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.
I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said:
Command that these stones be made bread – and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone – was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee …
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee – a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel …
… It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread? … In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them – so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!
The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).
I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.
A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important. Nevertheless, in the US and Western Europe, hunger is not what drives people towards the left. What does? The left has been labeled as virtue, and people wish to feel good about themselves. Being on the left also gives people the sense that they can control others and make a better world, and many people love the idea of the power to dictate to others. They may want freedom for themselves, but not for others.
And maybe it’s time to repeat another favorite passage of mine, this time from Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
… [H]uman beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.
I find I tend to believe most people like “socialism” – under whatever name – because it’s “somebody else’s fault” and “somebody else will take care of me”; call it a return to an ideal childhood. Liberty tells one “it’s my fault” and “nobody’s coming to rescue me”.
In America today, there are very few people who don’t have enough “bread”…but the desire to sacrifice freedom for Something Else is very strong among a significant number of people.
Sometimes, the Something Else is the feeling of unity with other people…circle dancing..and sometimes, it’s a search for a missing sense of meaning. There’s an interesting SF story by George RR Martin which, like Dostoyevski’s story features an inquisitor…not a Grand inquisitor, just an orginary workaday inquisitor. The whole thing is online here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-way-of-cross-and-dragon/
People, like business & most orgs & including kids, want Freedom.
A) freedom to act, including acts which hurt others or cause problems, and
B) freedom from responsibilities, or suffering in any way for the bad outcomes that resulted from their actions.
(B2-freedom from pain, even freedom from want)
Civilization requires norms that restrict the freedom to act that people want. The law enforces only some of the norms, and normal behavior might include regular breaking of the law, like speeding, to some small extent.
Democracy fails without a well functioning market economy. S Korea, after their ‘52 war, had a pro-capitalism general as President/ dictator, as did Chile 20 years later with Pinochet, both of whom help create a functioning, prosperity creating market economy. Then some democracy.
Some amount of bread is necessary, but even plenty is not sufficient.
Bread is also similar to that always value contrary to Freedom—Security. The more other people have freedom, especially freedom from responsibility, the less security there is.
Finally, while it’s possible for all in America to have as much material stuff, houses, cars, tvs, electronics as the current median, there will always be half the folk having less than the median at that time. Worse, status, which is another desired value, is zero sum so to get more, others have to get less. (As I’ve spent more time on substack with A Kling & links, I have less time here with the many fine folk & commenters). Attention & status are zero sum, and become more important as bread & food becomes more taken for granted, more secure.
CYA, a prime goal of most experienced bureaucrats, is the very desired freedom from responsibility.
And now after the ‘peaceful protests’ of 2019, they revamped the chilean constitution tp allow more ‘positive liberty’ and a former marxist? President boric not much is spoken of him
https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-gabriel-boric-enters-last-211423626.html
Maybe people are getting wise in a number of countries like colombia there seems to be some awareness time will tell
Lawfare or its korean cognate seems to have led to the new president largely from people who dont seem to acknowledge the circumstances of the nation to the north
Btw they just shot the opposition candidate in colombia
https://x.com/CollinRugg
The son of a slain journalist and grandson of a previous one
“True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience…”
Distrust of others is in the nature of those who seek to force obedience. Unlike compliance, enthusiastic collaboration, i.e. real teamwork… rests upon trust and respect. Trust itself is an anathema to those who in seeking to control and dominate are willing to do harm.
Perhaps the foremost historical example of this lack of trust was Hitler’s refusal to allow important strategic decisions to be made by his generals. Nor could German field commanders take unauthorized actions. So great was this distrust that when reports arrived at the German High Command that the D-Day invasion at Normandy was actually happening, his aides refused to awaken him, obviously out of fear. So too with his panzer tank commanders nearby in Normandy, who had to know how vital was there immediately taking action. But without orders, initiative was verboten.
Evil by its very nature sows the seeds of its own defeat. That’s as true of the Grand Inquisitor’s as it was of Hitler.
This trip down memory lane seems like a good occasion to express my appreciation for all your work through the years. What a wonderful blog, Your pursuit of excellence shines through, and it is a special thing to be a part of.
Yet billions of people did accept the spiritual teachings of Moses, Jesus and the Buddha and transformed the world for the better.
Not perfectly, of course.
As much as they want liberty, most people want security, ease, peace of mind, order, meaning, and control over others. Liberty can be inimical to all of those.
To see human nature in action just buy a home where there is a Home Owners Association. (HOA) Those who are power hungry and desire to control others become apparent pretty quick. Similarly, those who want to m be taken care of become obvious. An individualist that wants the HOA to do the minimum necessary to maintain property values is looked at with great disdain by the controllers and the followers. The controllers want to tell everyone how to live and the followers want to be taken care of. It generally becomes almost unbearable for anyone who is the least bit independent. Rules increase, inspections increase, HOA dues incrassate, and people wonder why they feel like they are living in a dictatorship. It’s a lot like what has happened in our federal government. Juston a smaller scale.
In a society with less wealth and no tradition of free enterprise, food and shelter are top of most people’s minds. They have no knowledge or tradition of making the economic pie bigger. So, they never understand how economic growth happens when people are allowed to own property backed by courts.
In Kenya we stopped at a small place where the workers were handcrafting beautiful hardwood furniture. The prices were so low I was stunned. I told them they should try to export their work to Europe or even the U.S. Their answer was that they didn’t want to get too successful because the government would take their business. They just wanted to keep a low profile and keep their business. It struck me then that property protected by the courts is very important. And why so many countries remain less productive than they might be.
I was never able to get through Karamazov. However, I have wrestled with the Grand Inquisitor.
I would note that at the end Jesus says nothing, but kisses the Inquisitor. Then Alyosha kisses his brother Ivan who has told him the parable of the Grand Inquisitor.
If one believes in the power of love, the Inquisitor’s arguments are beside the point. Dostoevsky leaves it up to the reader to decide.
BTW Ivan responds to his brother’s kiss with a wonderful joke: “That’s plagiarism… Thank you, though.”
DT’s first post concisely summarizes most of the other good posts here:
Most people like “socialism” – under whatever name – because it’s “somebody else’s fault” and “somebody else will take care of me”; call it a return to an ideal childhood. Liberty tells one “it’s my fault” and “nobody’s coming to rescue me”.
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I get a lot of non-religious young people asking sneering questions about Judaism, or spouting leftie victimhood politics. At some point in these conversations I usually deliver this line:
Judaism is religion for grown-ups.
This is true of Western democracy as well… you have to mature to the point of seeing others, wanting to be a giver, having personal honor about keeping your word.
Much of the current cultural dissolution can be traced to infantilization of the populace… this is the thread underlying nostalgic talk about “the Greatest Generation” etc.
It will be very difficult to wean people from this attitude – remember the cradle-to-grave dependency of Obama’s “Life of Julia” campaign? It’s no accident that the Dem base is largely AWFLs who are already isolated and atomized by the breakup of family and community.
The European philosopher Eric Voegelin described the socialist impulse as the immanetization of the eschketon. Alas it is a dream that never comes true.
I was coming here to post one of my signature, rambling 400 word comments only to see that the very first comment from DT said basically what I was going to say only much more succinctly…so I’ll just second his comment.
Hear! Hear! DT.
Wendy K
It seems people love a lot of things other than liberty which, I think, means taking an active part in the decisions made by the government. That, by its nature is uncomfortable.
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
A great post!
And great comments!
I related to Jamie’s comment when she posted it, and I appreciate neo turning it into this post and explaining her (neo’s) own perspective. I don’t know that I was ever a “neocon,” (and glad to read that was never the meaning of neo’s moniker) but like Jamie I had some hope the desire for liberty could take root if the U.S. helped eliminate tyrannical rulers keeping revolutionaries in check.
I have a lot I’d like to add, but neo and the commenters have already expounded on the subject here beyond my ability. This post and the tangents raised in the comments should be the basis of a mandatory, one year course for every U.S. citizen Freshman year of High School. Discussing this topic openly, and debating human nature as it relates to this topic, would help build a more thoughtful, realistic citizenry.
Only to add besides someone else’s fault you are owed what you would have had if everything was equal.
“The larger question was and is: do people really want liberty? Some certainly do, but whether it’s a majority I can’t say for sure and rather doubt – and have come to doubt even more.” — Neo
Most people _absolutely_ want liberty. The problem is that liberty has many definitions. Humans are social, tribal creatures, and so our definitions of freedom and liberty necessary involve interactions with others. One person’s definition of freedom can and often does conflict with another’s.
Which is why cultural diversity and personal liberty are generally contrary indicators. Highly culturally homogenous societies can permit large degrees of personal liberty, because they can more or less agree on what is permissible and what is not. As cultural diversity increases, definitions of liberty diverge, and conflict arises inevitably.
“Your right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins.” That’s a popular libertarian line. To which the counter-response could just as easily be “Your nose’s right to be somewhere stops where the line of my punch begins.” If there is no agreed-upon standard, all claims becomes exercises of power.
(Which is why the post-modernist ‘everything is relative’ viewpoint, once a society internalizes it, leads either to breakdown or tyranny or both.)
Other people will react to your exercise of liberty, and that forces you to make exclusive choices. If you convert to another faith, that’s an exercise of your liberty. But if your family refuses to engage with you afterward, and won’t let you talk to their kids for fear you’ll poison their minds, that’s an exercise of _their_ liberty. You must either content yourself with being cut off from your family, or somehow force them (by law or social pressure or whatever) to engage again, which violates their liberty. If your family truly believes you are harming your children by teaching them your new faith (or no faith), they either have to stand back and permit that…or somehow force you to do it their way.
What people craves is both liberty/freedom…and affirmation, or at least acknowledgement/permission, of their choices by their fellows. Which is not always possible.
The current ‘trans’ hysteria is a classic case-in-point of both theory and practice. The sincere (and tiny) group of people who really wish to be the other sex for non-fetishistic reasons have a problem: it’s mostly already legal for a guy to wear a dress and call himself a girl. It’s legal for a girl to declare herself a guy. But what use is that?
Humans are social/tribal, and what they crave is for _others_ to treat them as the sex they want to be. But that conflicts with other people’s desire to treat them as the sex they are. So, either the “trans” person must have his/her liberty to be the sexy they prefer abridged, or the other person must be compelled to lie to make the trans person happy. To different definitions of liberty, in inherent, irresolvable conflict. But that’s only a particularly clear example, such conflicts arise _whenever_ different cultures and religions and core assumptions are trying to operate within a single society.
So saying ‘everyone wants freedom and liberty’ is true in an absolute sense, but only meaningful in context.
“As much as they want liberty, most people want security, ease, peace of mind, order, meaning, and control over others. Liberty can be inimical to all of those.” — Wendy K Laubach
Liberty can also _require_ those things.
Very few people question why a person with a gun to his head will act against his core beliefs, and do things he would never otherwise do. But the man with the gun can’t _make_ him do that. He can kill him for refusing, but the other guy is still free to refuse to obey…at the price of his life.
Yet very, very few people would condemn the latter for failing to stand by his principles at the cost of his death, because we all know we’d probably do the same. We value our lives more than our principles, most of the time.
Franklin’s famous line: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” is often taken radically out of context in modern debates. Without that context, the quote is idealized nonsense. We trade liberty for security, and security for liberty, day in and day out, forever. _Practical_ politics, and simply living a decent life, is all about managing that tradeoff successfully.
The man who compromises his principles to avoid have his head blown off is making such a tradeoff. The parent who accepts a nasty regime because at least that way their kids are fed is making such a tradeoff.
The person who faces a choice between living under a harsh dictator or in the cross-fire of a civil war between factions, both of whom he detests and who detest him, is making such a tradeoff. Who is right? Depends on the person and the context. The fall of a harsh dictator often brings more freedom and liberty to some groups while bringing fear and restriction to others.
Even the American Revolution reduced the freedom and liberty of many Crown Loyalists (almost a third of the adult population by some estimates). One reason the American Revolution ended well where so many end in tears is that the victors _mostly_ tried to deliberately _not_ grind down the losers (the loyalists) and let them become part of the new state and society.
We trade freedom for security and vice versa, and we trade freedom today for different freedom tomorrow, and so on, all the time.
A more useful quote is from Thomas Sowell: “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.”
Dreamers and idealists look at Principles. Real life is about applications and compromises and tradeoffs.
@neo: The larger question was and is: do people really want liberty? Some certainly do, but whether it’s a majority I can’t say for sure and rather doubt – and have come to doubt even more.
The Grand Inquisitor story forces us into a false binary. People either choose liberty or get bought off with bread or security.
This is an excluded middle fallacy. All western nations are to some extent socialized. We all have experienced times when we required to be looked after. We accept that. Nonetheless we also yearn for liberty and rightly so. It’s not either-or.
It’s trade-offs, as HC68 argues.
The Grand Inquisitor is great literature but not Plato nor Thomas Aquinas.
I could never believe the characters in “The Brothers Karamazov.”
I wasn’t wrong. Dostoevsky intentionally set them up as role-playing the tendencies he noticed in his time and place
Alyosha was the saintly Christian.
Ivan was the bookish atheist/nihilist who sought to undermine Christianity.
It’s good to keep this in mind when confronting the Parable of the Grand Inquisitor. It’s a story which Ivan is telling to his brother Alyosha.
At the end Alyosha, the Christian, kisses his dear atheist brother, Ivan, and Ivan accepts the kiss with humor and delight.
but the desire to sacrifice freedom for Something Else is very strong among a significant number of people.
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I haven’t noticed that. I have noticed a critical mass of people who want others manipulated, abused, and dispossessed and who want their designated pets to be free of sanctions.