Well, they finally got one. At long last, the notoriously useless Met has mustered the willpower to put down the biscuit tin and arrest someone worthwhile.
Too bad he got a measly fine, though.
Bacari Ogarro, also known as Mizzy, is a now infamous “Content Creator” (translation: obnoxiously unemployed) courtesy of his TikToks.
Ogarro’s most well-known ‘work’ includes stealing an elderly woman’s pet dog, threatening to kill random people, harassing women at night and in public places, trespassing into people’s homes and cars, and destroying books in local libraries.
Light-hearted stuff, for sure.
In a serious country, a viral Twitter thread and an online campaign wouldn’t be necessary to get the police to do its job; the modus operandi of any police force should be to keep anti-social types like Ogarro away from civilised society.
Unfortunately, as we all know, Modern Britain is not a serious country. Theft, harrassment, and trespassing are defacto legal, hence why Ogarro was able to post himself engaging in all three without consequence until a few days ago.
Many have remarked that Ogarro’s actions, especially waltzing into someone’s private property, wouldn’t end so well in the United States.
There’s some truth to this. Although any successful attempt at protecting one’s livelihood, even in the United States, carries the non-zero risk of media-assisted backlash – blubbering processions of apologists, resentfully insisting that a serial criminal was actually a sweet baby boy, and other pathetic delusions, potentially interspersed with some Peaceful Protests.
That said, those telling Ogarro to count his blessings overlook the fact he’s self aware:
“I’m a Black male doing these things and that’s why there’s such an uproar on the internet.”
“I always know outrage is going to happen. I know exactly what I’m doing and the consequences of my actions.”
Ogarro is likely aware that someone of his profile is disproportionately involved (or, perhaps to his ethnonarcissistic mind, racistly perceived to be involved) in gang violence in London, and understands how destructive it can be for people to behave as if this is the case, especially when threatened with violence!
Consequently, he’s unafraid to creep on random women in the early hours or threaten to kill men in broad daylight in pursuit of viral content.
Of course, all of this flies in this face of creating a high-trust society.
I’d like to imagine that any civilised society would respond to snatching an elderly woman’s canine companion – possibly her only companion – especially for the sake of clout, with a swift and painful execution.
Seeing that little dog, distressed and helpless, beholden to the self-aborbed malice of a TikTok prankster, makes it impossible to oppose death squads patrolling the streets, violently exploding the head of any pet-snatcher that crosses their peripheral vision.
After all, those that are cruel to animals will almost certainly be cruel to humans.
As Schopenhauer says, compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
It demonstrates an unrepentant lack of mercy or perspective.
Indeed, Ogarro’s more recent comments, made in an interview with Piers Morgan, show a total lack of perspective.
“This whole public uproar just makes me laugh because people are getting hurt over something that didn’t happen to them and that’s how I see it as.”
“But I wasn’t threatened with physical violence. But I didn’t have my dog stolen. But I did have breakfast this morning.”
Of course, and again, unfortunately, Modern Britain is too scared, incompetent, and unimaginative to pursue the purity of justice.
Instead, it prefers to oppress those who try to resist wanton mistreatment.
The backlash against Just Stop Oil’s recent protest is a contemporaneous example.
Already under economic strain, compounded by the unwillingness of the political class to build energy infrastructure, commuters didn’t take kindly to being met with a road blockade of eco-activists.
The commuters attempted to clear them out, but were swiftly mandhandled, and eventually arrested, by police officers – all of whom were happy to let the activists to create an obstruction, despite their insistence that they were “dealing with it”.
Given this, it’s unsurprising that MPs are using Ogarro’s rise to prominence as an excuse to hurry through the Online Safety Bill.
Putting aside the excessive and anarcho-tyrannic censorship contained within, the perverse implication is that TikTok’s “platforming” of Ogarro’s behaviour is more egregious than the behaviour itself.
“I’m cool with theft, intimidation, and trespassing, just do it in private” is as lolbert as it is psychologically revealing.
If the public doesn’t know about a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist. No wonder Hancock was so prepared to cheat on his wife!
In this case, politicians can’t be bothered (or don’t know how) to tackle crime, so they opt (or are forced) to pursue the pretence of tackling crime.
If Ogarro can point out the basic fact that our laws are superficial and weak, why can’t any of our politicians?
Condescending advertisements – “Mates Don’t Let Mates Be Perverts” – doesn’t prevent women from being harassed by sociopaths on the train, especially when bystanders know they’ll get into trouble if they intervene.
Politics is bloated with Very Important Very Nuanced Terribly Complicated Conversations; Conversations upon Conservations! Conversations we’re Having and Conversations we Should Be Having.
Ogarro? Very problematic. Very problematic, indeed. That’s why it’s important to ensure that he’s part of this conservation No Longer.
That’s right. You’re nicked, sunshine! Yeah. I BANISH YOU from The App for your overt and continuously criminal behaviour which you do literally In Real Life.
Ah, another tinkering twist of the ol’ managerial-therapeutic apparatus never fails! GOD. We are a Sensible country.
No! For the love of God, no! Enough of the limp-wristed half-measures and cowardly indirectness, enough of the mate-mate-mateing and the PR voodoo.
Clear the smoke, smash the mirrors, and unleash the cops; restore the foundational principle of governance: Just Stop Crime!
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Why Insects on an Island cannot Fly
When British biologist Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) researched the birds and insects living on tropical islands in the 19th century, he observed that many species had gradually abandoned their wings. Insects were equipped with small legs and feet, but no flying apparatus.
The reason they were without wings was because their innate survival instinct would kill them. If the tiny, feather-light insect were to take off and – through a tandem of ocean winds and its curiosity – land on the sea, in all probability it was never to return home again. Nature has preserved these bugs from the dangers of this instinctive trait, of their deceptive curiosity. She has deprived these little critters of the weapons to accidentally, and in all their enthusiasm, kill themselves. But why didn’t nature do the same to us? Why did we get wings, with all the resulting consequences? More than a comparison, this is a metaphor. A metaphor that bespeaks the hubris and curiosity of human beings. It is also a metaphor about censorship and ill-considered decisions, but we’ll come to that at the end. Luckily this analogy simultaneously offers an antidote. An antidote that comes in the shape of conservatism, and some apolitical common sense.
Curiosity
Anyone who studies human behavior and its history notices that people have a fundamental fear of standing still, both physically, culturally and intellectually. As humans we – ab initio – have a reflex to think linearly, in past, present and future. This typical forward-thinking stems from the fundamental curiosity that characterises human beings. With necessity and inevitability, we search for a human nature and the principles that can construct our being. We do not only ask questions, but we also live the questions – after the spirit of Rilke. There is a constant desire to seek them out, study them, weigh them and above all conclude them. We have been doing this since the Homo sapiens developed self-awareness – years and years ago. This curiosity makes it difficult and almost unnatural for man to resign himself to his position, stand still and appreciate what he already holds.
From this curiosity, then, stems the illusion that as we progress more and more, we will eventually be able to grasp something better. Or in other words, we fly off to the perfect island where everything will be better than on the dreary island we were born on. An island-insect, if endowed with thoughts and desires similar to ours, would want to fly to another island, and might even try to do so instinctively even without these thoughts and desires. We, unlike these insects, are not held back by any natural limitations. We have managed through reason, tools and technology to make our way to any other island on the globe. This curiosity and ingenuity, however, holds significant challenges and perils for a society. The few people who seem to notice these risks are the conservatives, and they are the only ones who – often at the expense of their own image – can offer some counterweight to these innate sentiments.
Conservation
Conservatism is – as the late Sir Roger Scruton (1944 – 2020) so beautifully observed – the philosophy of conservation. It is the philosophy of preservation, to protect what is good, to be grateful for what we have and to be critical of the delusion of the day. In other words, it is a philosophy born of love and appreciation. Love for a shared culture, land, language and country and appreciation for the work and sacrifices of the people who created such a place. Perhaps Austro-Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler’s comment encapsulates this very idea most succinctly, and deserves its mention: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
As a philosophy she seems – prima facie – rather stately and dusty, but not particularly bellicose or harmful. Yet today the majority of the so-called intellectuals seem to think of conservatism as some dubious ideology, something for old white men or a thing from a different time.
I stop writing for a moment, sip at my coffee and and wipe the ashes off my trousers. I think to myself: is this really what being conservative means? I am 24, well of this age, and do not – yet – feel like an “old white man”, however that should feel. But why do the people around me, my friends, fellow students, politicians, journalists, teachers, writers and philosophers seem so numb to these sentiments? Why the bad connotation of conserving something that is good?
After all, we conserve all sorts of things. In museums and archives, experts work every day to preserve ancient artifacts, statues, rugs, coins, drawings or paintings, to prevent them from being lost or broken, from being consumed by microscopic bugs, moisture or adverse temperatures. We value these objects. They are worth our resources, time and energy and deserve to be passed on to the next generation who will – hopefully – develop the same love for them. Conservatives who delicately, scrupulously and meticulously handle the fragile ideals on which our culture was built, are somewhat comparable to them.
However, what can be argued is that this is a skewed comparison because the conserved object is fundamentally distinct in both situations. Many people would argue that, unlike museum objects, the conservative is not trying to protect something that is worth protecting. Indeed, the opposite is often claimed, the conservative wants to conserve something that is inherently bad. Conservatism wants to perpetuate old patterns of power, inequality, hatred and oppression, preserving something that should have been destroyed and forgotten long ago. Let us not fall into this trap and assume that there are – still – a plethora of things worth preserving and cherishing.
The Open Sea
To ‘island-insects’, flying was a useful – and presumably quite ‘fun’ – quality that was being eliminated to ensure their survival. Thus, the creatures also parted with certain opportunities that existence offered them. They no longer enjoyed the freedom enjoyed by their ancestors, with the wind in their tails and their heads in the clouds, but it made something else possible, namely their survival.
The survival of a culture is less visible than the survival of an individual, a football coach in difficult waters or an Iberian bull-fighting for its life in a Madrid arena. It does not always perish in revolutions or iconoclasts, but in a quietly growing disinclination to conservation and stagnation. One only has to look at publishing house Puffin – censoring dozens of words in Roald Dahl stories last year – to see the pitfalls of such beliefs. Collectively we say: let’s make tabula rasa and finally move forward as a society”. In that same capacity however, we might leave behind something that may be more fragile and valuable than we hold it to be.
An old Russian adage can probably convey my message more adequately than my own pen can: you are born where you are needed, and that is on your own island. Let us not get lost in the endless opportunities that existence offers us, but celebrate its inherent beauty. Let us not fly too close to the sun or too far from our island, but take care of what we have been given, lest evolution eventually take away our wings too. For if we rush out to sea, we may realise that this island was not so bad after all, and will come to the painful conclusion that, so deep in the open ocean, this place may lie forever behind us.
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On the majesty of Britain’s unwritten constitution
In light of Boris Johnson’s recent attempts to cling onto his own personal power, many within the media commentariat have proposed the idea of a written and entrenched constitution. Such a solution is historically ignorant: as will be developed in the succeeding paragraphs, the miracle of Britain’s constitution is that its conventions have weathered all storms and continue to stand strong today. Whether it be the unequivocal adherence to Erskine May or the continued existence of Habeas Corpus, Britain’s conventions are to be proud of and cherished. For utopians, too blindly obsessed with rationalism and rigorous state planning, Johnson’s escapades provide the perfect alibi for constitutional reform. But they are as wrong as they have always been, even in the interesting times in which we live.
Many of these misguided pundits have suggested that the answer to Britain’s political woes is that it should look to the various nations across Europe and the West that decided long ago to adopt a codified and entrenched constitution, but what does such a constitution actually look like? For one, all the key constitutional provisions would be drawn up in a single document which would then be protected by a court of law. This would inevitably go far further than the current Supreme Court which only considers the principles laid down in the Human Rights Act (1998) which are, of course, in line with the European Convention of Human Rights. All future laws would be required to stand in compatibility with this document. Any executive which desired the alteration of this document would be naturally required to achieve a super-majority within parliament.
For a considerable amount of time, such an idea has stood at the forefront of many constitutionalists’ minds. Given the fact that the British public tend to spend more time worrying about the accessibility of public services, rather than constitutional issues, the idea of a written constitution has not quite permeated through to the masses. Brexit for many may have been about the sovereignty of the United Kingdom but the constituent vote that tipped the scale in favour of withdrawing from the European Union saw the threat of mass migration on public services. Why is it that the growth of the Eurosceptic movement peaked only a few years following a financial crash? It is unwise to use worn out clichés, but Bill Clinton was correct in asserting that “It’s the economy, stupid.”
This, however, may not remain the case. Class dealignment and the absence of any real proletariat movement has shifted many people’s interests away from economic issues and towards constitutional and political issues instead. With the insistent obsession amongst media apparatchiks, the Prime Minister’s drawn out occupation of No.10 Downing Street has really lit a touch stone amongst the British public. Johnson has rightfully been described as someone who throws caution into the wind when bending the rules to further the interests of himself or, in some cases, the British public. To list a few of his more provocative actions over the last three years, he prorogued parliament, watered down the ministerial code and restricted certain forms of protest. The point of this article is not that his actions were wrong, but rather that they have inspired a rejuvenation amongst radicals to further pursue constitutional reform. It is perfectly reasonable to desire high levels of robust executive scrutiny and accountability but codifying the law is not the way that one should go doing about it.
Even in an age in which nation-states increasingly subscribe to the same hegemonic notion of what a liberal democracy should look like, Britain remains nearly alone in that the roots of certain constitutional elements can be found centuries ago. Exemplifying this perfectly is the fact that the bicameral nature of parliament grew eventually out of the 8th century practice of Witan-based council rule. Even if one takes a strictly anti-anachronistic view of history, the first official parliament was called in 1236, a few years subsequent to the signing of the Magna Carta. The unique majesty of Britain’s constitution is that its legitimacy is found in virtue of its longevity. Such a system, when working effectively, is both natural and superior to any other constitutional format. A system built upon the trust of politicians to uphold constitutional conventions is both perennially fragile yet also preferable to anything else.
Yet, such an argument for the maintenance of our constitution has to be framed with the recent Westminster scandals in mind. As is already becoming apparent, the ongoing Conservative Party leadership election will have a great focus upon propriety and ethics within politics. Candidates, whose prior lives fell short of the squeaky-clean standards expected of them, will be faced with a considerable uphill battle. Media pundits love to jump on the bandwagon of criticising Sir Keir Starmer for being too boring but the reality is that, after the last few years of political chaos, much of the British public will want a prime minister who is serious and trustworthy, even if that means being a bit on the dull side. Ordinary people do not want to go about their lives worrying about politicians; they have far bigger concerns. As a result, I suspect that the next few prime ministers will bend over backwards to ensure individual decency and political stability.
On a different point, it is worth refuting the conservative argument which can be made for a written and entrenched constitution. Such a constitution would prevent radicals from unwisely or unthinkingly bringing a sledgehammer to the political system. One has only to look at the toxic legacy of New Labour. Admittedly, even David Cameron, a Conservative prime minister, attempted to abolish the House of Lords with a simple majority within the House of the Commons. It is perfectly true to argue that the preservation of a particular constitutional setup would remain existent for a long time if codified and entrenched behind a naturally conservative law court. However, if moderation is a fundamental conservative principle, then to alter the constitution in such a dramatic and radical way, even in an old-fashioned or nostalgic manner, would be, by definition, an unconservative thing to do. Purely in a hypothetical conservative utopia, a written constitution would be naturally the constitution of choice. We don’t live in a utopia though; we live in reality.
In contrast to the unwritten and uncodified dignity of Britain’s ancient constitution, the American constitution is constantly the source of unnecessarily bitter political debate and congressional blockage. If one were to take the second amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, there is still a decades-old, unresolved debate around whether or not to alter it. Discussions around laws that may appear to violate such amendments centre around whether or not the law is constitutional, rather than whether the law would actually be effective in practice. Debating the constitutionality of federal states banning the right to an abortion is an entire debate in itself and not one that an Englishman should necessarily engage with, however the recent decision to overturn Roe vs Wade does raise an interesting point. Following British tradition, it is far better that law-based decisions are determined by elected politicians, not by unaccountable judges. This point was rightfully raised at the despatch box by Dominic Raab while deputising for Johnson. To be a 21st century conservative, one must commit to upholding the democratic will of the people. Despite the influence of pro-Atlanticist conservatives, it is wrong to look to the USA as a political model.
Despite the temptations of a written constitution, politicians and activists must remain ever vigilant in their defence of Britain’s unwritten constitution. In order for our political system to develop naturally, prominent conservatives must put aside any admiration they may have for the American system and stand strong against historically-ignorant reformers. Preserving the way in which things are done is one of the core building blocks of being a conservative. This principle cannot be undermined by constitutional reformers, even if they are paradoxically trying to prevent radical reform. The checks and balances within the British political system have survived far worse than Johnson.
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Neoconservatism: Mugged by Reality (Part 1)
Well, they finally got Liz Cheney but she sure deserved what was coming to her. After being thwarted by the President Trump backed conservative lawyer Harriet Hageman from her once safe seat as the Republican candidate and Congresswoman for Wyoming’s sole congressional district, Cheney now finds herself in the wilderness amongst an array of anti-Trump Republican candidates who have been falling like flies in recent Republican primary races for Congress.
The overwhelming paleoconservative pro-Trump wing of the Republican party has taken no prisoners and given no apologies for enacting democratic vengeance on those who they perceive to be traitors to the America First agenda. Decrying many, including Cheney herself, as RINO war-hawks who are more interesting in pandering to Democrats and embezzling public funds into the pockets of the corrupt military-industrial complex than standing up for the American people.
The successes of the America First Republicans have been many, but dethroning Cheney from her seat is being lauded as the crowning jewel of their recent achievements. Not just because she was anti-Trump, but because she belonged to and was essentially the heiress to an ideological sect that these AF Republicans have declared as their public enemy No.1 – neoconservatism.
Neoconservatism is not exactly in vogue in political modernity nor do you hear many politicians and pundits wilfully adhering to the label as a badge of honour. If anything ‘neoconservative’ has become a derivative label to signify an ‘establishment’ Republican who is in bed with organisations and people who lie and work against the American people. However, neoconservatism was once the coolest ideological kid on the right-wing block and had a plethora of supporters who carried the mantle unashamedly. More than that, neoconservatives were a powerful force to be reckoned with at the turn of the 21st century, to such an extent that much of the establishment at that time were self-professed neoconservatives.
How can a group that was riding on such a high and essentially controlled everything worth controlling have floundered and failed to such a large degree? (their ideology now being as respectable as a Pagan nudist in a Catholic Mass). To answer this question, it is important to first understand what neoconservatism is.What is Neoconservatism?
Neoconservatism found a home in the American and British right-wings during the early 20000s, although its origins largely date back to the 1960s. Those associated with the term often declared that neoconservatism could not be coherently defined, nor had a unified manifesto or creed. It is worth noting that this has led to neoconservatism becoming a largely misused term; often being reduced to an epithet in which to throw at anyone who supports an interventionist foreign policy. However, the idea that neoconservatism cannot be coherently defined is not entirely accurate. One only has to look at the plethora of books, articles and journals that illustrates the existence of a coherent intellectual underpinning of neoconservatism. And no intellectual is more important to neoconservatism than Irving Kristol.
The often titled ‘Godfather of neoconservatism’ aptly summed the political philosophy up as the position a liberal adopts after he is “mugged by reality”. What Kristol is illustrating by this turn of phrase, is that the origins of neoconservatism fundamentally come out of the liberal (by which I mean American progressive) side of the political spectrum.
During the 60s, some sections of American liberals increasingly saw that the promotion of liberal social values, weak foreign policy and the ‘Great Society’, as envisioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson, were proving ineffective and misguided. The New Left counterculture, hippie peaceniks and the policy platform of the 60s Democrat Party caused a group of American liberals to move away from this new ideological consensus amongst the left and encouraged them to form their own amongst the right – namely neoconservatism. But it is specifically the peaceniks that neoconservatives hate the most. In Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Kristol lays the blame at the feet of New Left intellectuals for creating much of the pacifistic feeling that existed during the 60s and 70s – sneering at them as ‘sermonising clerics’ who spend their time inflaming passions without having any real grasp on foreign policy. Neoconservatives saw themselves as the remedy to this epidemic of pacifism pushed forward by countercultural leftists, New Left intellectuals and pro-détente Democrats.While the 60’s were important in formulating the movements ideological malaise, neoconservatism would not see a rise in interest in it until the end of the Cold War. With the USSR gone and the US reigning as the supreme victor of not just the war against Communism but the 20th century at large, many neoconservatives saw this as their opportunity to solidify the US as the dominant power for the next century. This solidification would come about via the development of a new view on US foreign policy which, by today’s standards, is quite radical.
The 1992 ‘Defence Planning Guidance’ document, which was written by the then Under Secretary for Defence for Policy Paul Wolfowitz, can be seen to be the quintessential source in order to properly grasp what neoconservative foreign policy is all about. The document states:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
In its purest essence then, neoconservative foreign policy is about eliminating potential threats to American global hegemony. But more importantly, eliminating these threats to ensure that America has no rivals, allowing for it to solidifying itself as the superior and dominant power on the world stage. This desire to eradicate all potential threats to secure the safety and dominance of a nation and its ideology is reminiscent of Trotskyist positions concerning ‘permanent revolution’. A ‘permanent revolution’ is the belief that socialist revolutions need to occur on a worldwide basis to combat global capitalist hegemony and, more importantly, secure the futures of pre-existing socialist states. Mirroring Trotsky, Kristol explained that:
“American democracy is not likely to survive for long in a world that is overwhelmingly hostile to American values, if only because our transactions (economic and diplomatic) with other nations are bound eventually to have a profound impact on our own domestic economic and political system.”
This link between neoconservatism and Trotskyism is not an original formulation. Paleoconservatives such as Paul Gottfried and Pat Buchanan have spent their entire careers evidencing this link between neoconservatism and Trotskyism as well as stressing the fact that various neoconservatives were ex-Trotskyists, including Kristol himself. Due to what paleoconservatives consider to be the Trotskyist and thus revolutionary nature of neoconservatism, they consider neoconservatism to be one of the most dangerous ideological groups in existence, with Gottfried writing:
“What makes neocons most dangerous are not their isolated ghetto hang-ups, like hating Germans and Southern whites and calling everyone and his cousin an anti-Semite, but the leftist revolutionary fury they express.”
Alongside Trotsky, Leo Strauss’s influence on neoconservatism is equally as important and, some would say, equally as controversial. However, unlike the Trotsky association – which neoconservatives unequivocally deny – various neoconservatives state Strauss as being a primary influence on their thinking. Strauss’ belief that liberal civilisation was faltering came from a belief that the West had become increasingly nihilistic – Strauss being heavily influenced by the Nietzschean diagnosis of a post-‘God is Dead’ world. “The crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose,” wrote Strauss, and it was this pessimism that led Strauss to the position that it was only the West’s immense military power that gave it any measure of confidence.
This pessimism bled nicely into neoconservatism and justified their views concerning the need to create a new global hegemony in which America was its lord and master. Furthermore, the obsession with military strength as a means to combat this pessimism is a direct inheritance from Strauss and – as elucidated by the Kristol quote earlier – is a core motivator behind neoconservative views on foreign policy. Neoconservatives are fundamentally pessimists, something that they do have in common with their paleo and more mainstream conservative counterparts.
So, if neoconservatism believes in foreign interventionism as a method in which to establish and maintain American global hegemony and quell the nihilism innate in modern America, the question remains: what does American global hegemony entail? Ultimately, it entails every country adopting the values of the United States i.e. liberal-democratic capitalism. For the early 20th-century historians reading, this may sound similar to President Woodrow Wilson’s position on US foreign policy – you would be correct. Neoconservatives see themselves as being the inheritors of the Wilsonian tradition regarding foreign policy and this fact becomes quite starkly clear when one looks at American involvement in the First World War.
The famous American First World War propaganda poster ‘Make the World Safe for Democracy’ is a great example of the ethos of Wilsonian foreign policy. Enter the war, win it and then use the aftermath to overturn European monarchies so that they can become democracies and thus fall under the sphere of American influence. The austrolibertarian political philosopher Hans Hermann Hoppe elucidates in his book Democracy: The God That Failed the significance of Wilson entering the United States into the First World War:
“World War I began as an old-fashioned territorial dispute. However, with the early involvement and the ultimate official entry into the war by the United States in April 1917, the war took on a new ideological dimension. The United States had been founded as a republic, and the democratic principle, inherent in the idea of a republic, had only recently been carried to victory as the result of the violent defeat and devastation of the secessionist Confederacy by the centralist Union government. At the time of World War I, this triumphant ideology of expansionist democratic republicanism had found its very personification in then U.S. President Wilson. Under Wilson’s administration, the European war became an ideological mission—to make the world safe for democracy and free of dynastic rulers.”
Replace ‘Wilson’ for ‘Bush’, ‘European’ for ‘Middle Eastern’ and ‘dynastic’ for ‘theocratic’ and you have the foreign policy platform of a modern neoconservative. Like Wilson at the end of the First World War, neoconservatives saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity for a new ‘Pax Americana’. A time in which they could universalise the American system of liberal-democratic capitalism and thus eradicate the potential for any ideological opposition. This idea somewhat echoes Francis Fukuyama’s seminal work The End of History and the Last Man, in which he illustrates, via the use of a Hegelian historical framework, that liberal democracy has emerged as the final and universal form of human governance, with the United States as its custodial head. Neoconservatism (a label Fukuyama once associated himself with), via American military involvement abroad, simply wishes to bring about this new American-dominated epoch closer to the present.
Interventionism for the sake of strengthening and maintaining American global hegemony isn’t the only element of neoconservatism that makes it unique from regular American conservatism. In the words of Ben Wattenberg (a key neoconservative intellectual), neoconservatives also believe in a “muscular role for the state” at home. Hence, neoconservatives advocate for sizeable welfare states along with heavy regulation and taxation of the economy to ‘rig’ capitalism in the manner they wish it to operate. To use the language of James Burnham, one can describe neoconservatives as being the rightist torchbearers of the managerial state that began under FDR via their wish to maintain and even expand the post-Second World War welfare-warfare regulatory state. While a jaded right-libertarian like myself finds this abhorrent, neoconservatives do not share the libertarian fear of state power, as Kristol wrote:
“Neoconservatives are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on ‘the road to serfdom.’ We do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, and indeed inevitable.”
Authoritarianism, welfarism, managerialism and, most importantly, a pessimistic belief in military intervention as the tool in which to promote and enforce American ideals abroad and secure American dominance internationally are all core elements of what defines a ‘neoconservative’. But while these ideas were being developed in the 60s and thereafter, it wasn’t until the dawn of the 21st century that neoconservatism would find its hands tightly wrapped around the levers of power.The Ascendancy of Neoconservatism
When George Bush Jr took his oath of office in January 2001, it was not thought that he would become a president known for foreign wars and the growth of the American welfare-warfare state. Bush’s candidacy for president did not chest thump about the might of the American military, nor did it view military intervention as the sole way in which America should conduct itself on the international stage. Nor was Bush particularly authoritarian, at least in comparison to his contemporaries. As Stefan Halper’s book America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order highlights, Bush’s platform on foreign policy was originally in direct contradiction to neoconservatism. Many neoconservatives were so opposed to Bush that some ended up funding and supporting Bush’s primary opponents such as John McCain (a long-time icon of the neoconservative right) and stressed amongst neoconservative allied Republicans that “getting into bed with Bush is a mistake”. However, once it was clear Bush had won the candidacy, and later the presidency many neoconservatives flocked around him and were overjoyed. They now found themselves away from the think tanks and university campuses they resided in and finally within Washington’s halls of power; taking key positions in the Pentagon, the Vice President’s Office, and the National Security Council.
Vice, a film about the life and career of Vice President Dick Cheney, perfectly illustrates the extent to which neoconservatives were now in control. In one memorable scene, Cheney (played by Christian Bale) signals to his Chief of Staff Scooter Libby to explain the “lay of the land” of the Bush administration to his new team. Libby gleefully highlights how, thanks to the incompetency of Bush’s team, Cheney-allied neoconservatives now ruled the roost. Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, David Addington and the Vice President’s Daughter Liz Cheney (remember her?) to name but a few, formed core parts of the new neoconservative regime. From the State Department to the Pentagon to the Oval Office itself, neoconservatives now had unobstructed access to the steering wheels of power that would allow them to drive the American state in the way they saw fit. The neoconservative state had finally arrived.
However, one crucial part of the puzzle was missing – an excuse. The neoconservatives couldn’t swing the American state in the manner they saw fit without a viable reason. After all, their policies and ideas would prove immeasurably unpopular with the general public and indeed other members of the political class. Especially considering the administration was already perceived to be on a knife-edge after only winning the election by 537 votes. So, they simply bided their time until an opportunity presented itself.
Luckily for the neoconservatives now riddled throughout the Bush administration, they did not have to wait for long.
