I’ve been reading an extremely thought-provoking book by Thomas Sowell entitled The Vision of the Anointed. In it, Sowell attempts to describe the differences between the liberal/Leftist (“the anointed”) worldview and that of the Right.
The book is far too rich in thought to be summarized easily, and I’ve only just begun reading it. But I’ve read enough to know I recommend it.
Here’s Sowell’s main thesis:
The vision of the anointed may stand out in sharper relief when contrasted with the opposing vision, a vision whose reasoning begins with the tragedy of the human condition…The two visions differ in their respective conceptions of the nature of man, the nature of the world, and the nature of causation, knowledge, power, and justice….All these particular differences between the two visions turn ultimately on differences about human limitations and their corollaries….Clearly, those who assume a larger set of options are unlikely to be satisfied with results deriving from a smaller set of options.
In general, liberals assume that human capability to understand, correct, and therefore eradicate basic problems in society is vast, and that the only real impediment to their solution is will. Conservatives assume that many such problems are inherent in the human condition, and that at any rate our state of knowledge can never be complete enough to “solve” them without conjuring up unforeseen results that often cause more difficulties than the initial problems they set out to solve.
That’s why, for example, liberals focus on equality of outcome, which they believe to be both achievable and desirable, and conservatives focus on equality of process and opportunity, which they believe is the best way to justice. That’s why liberals believe in attempting to tackle vast social problem through governmental actions, and conservatives believe in smaller government and smaller changes.
In foreign policy, however, the lines between the two are far murkier. You would think, if both sides were consistent, that liberals would believe in widescale interventions—including military ones—to change other countries and/or our relationships with them, and that conservatives would be more isolationist. And this has sometimes been the case; liberals such as FDR and Truman, and even JFK, were not averse to such action, whereas the opposition to our participation in several wars of the past came in large measure from isolationist conservatives.
This state of affairs flipped to its reverse after Vietnam, when liberals became far more negative towards military operations that were designed to preserve freedom and oppose Communism, or that furthered American interests. This left the bulk of liberal support for only those actions that were seen as strictly humanitarian.
But this anti-interventionist state of affairs had a long tradition, as well, among those of the liberal persuasion, many of whom believed (and still believe) that humans are rational beings amenable to talks, neutrality, understanding, and reason, and that negotiations and diplomacy, if performed correctly, could eliminate war. In contrast, their tragic view of human nature leads many conservatives to concede that evil exists, that tyranny and power will always rise up in human life, that the irrational will continue to be with us despite our best efforts at the opposite, and that military force is sometimes the best way to fight these dangerous realities. Conservatives also believe that any such military victory and the resultant peace is only temporary, whereas liberals believe it possible to achieve the eradication of war as a permanent solution—that’s where the idea that “war is not the answer” originates.
In their foreign policy recommendations, neocons are a strange mixture of these positions. As such, they don’t sit well with many in either group, liberals or conservatives. I’ve written at great length about neocons and their agenda previously (see why neocons are so disliked by so many people, and the neocon stance towards promoting the spread of democracy). I therefore see no need to repeat that discussion here.
But in light of Sowell’s dichotomy, it occurs to me that neocons are also upsetting to people because—in some cases, at least—they appear to have adopted the liberal idea that it is possible to transform societies in ways that are extremely difficult to accomplish, and that some see as likely to cause more problems than they solve.
That’s one of the most valid criticisms of the war in Iraq and its aftermath. As I’ve written in the posts linked above, societies have been transformed for the better in the past by a war and its aftermath—World War II and the subsequent occupation of Germany and Japan. But the details of that conflict were considerably different, and at any rate those wars were not originally fought with that purpose in mind, nor with the idea of the imposition (or, in the case of Germany, the re-imposition) of democracy through a lengthy postwar occupation, although that’s in fact what did occur.
It is my contention that the war in Iraq was not fought only with that purpose in mind, either; it was multiply-determined. Saddam’s defiance of the UN and the terms of the Gulf War armistice, his flagrant human rights violations, and his history of aggression against neighbors were part of it as well. But another part was most certainly the desire to establish an ally in the region, and to have that country become an example of the fact that democracy and human rights are not incompatible with either Islam or the Arab world.
But nation-building of this sort is exceedingly difficult, just as paleoconservatives would always have told you. And it is also my contention that the present administration insufficiently estimated the extreme difficulty of the endeavor they were undertaking, and as a result they failed to plan adequately for it. In this, I’m joined by many on both sides, of course.
In this post I’m not going to revisit the question of whether the task of nation-building in Iraq can in fact succeed, or whether the impediments it faces are inherently insurmountable (it’s been done ad nauseum before; see this for my most lengthy effort to date). But in light of Sowell’s dichotomy, it occurs to me that those neocons who did in fact underestimate the difficulty of the task were falling prey to their susceptibility to the vision of the anointed about the ease of solution of complex societal problems. And it occurs to me that liberals, in criticizing the naivete of some neocons on this matter, are taking the classic position of the Right.
