What's The Big Idea?
In response to Blake, the good news is that our recent foreign policy disaster has boiled Jacksonianism down to its core base of supporters. Often when I hear people attribute right-wing views to the American public (except maybe on immigration), I always remind them that it's really a 25-30% minority that holds those views. The majority shares a lot of good progressive instincts, so there is a receptiveness and an opportunity for us. So what are we going to do with it?
Matt's book (have you bought it yet?) deals mainly with major, overarching, consequential, strategic, fundamental questions. This has drawn some skeptical reaction, but I think Matt has a strong case for why it's crucial to talk about things on this level.
Two passages are especially persuasive. Matt argues (p. 172) that the Administration:
have not merely made some mistakes on Iraq, and some other mistakes on Iran, and some other mistakes on North Korea, plus some mistakes on Syria, while mishandling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and by coincidence damaging our relations with formerly close allies. Rather, they are making one big mistake in seeking to transform the United States' role in the world from that of a liberal superpower that uses its national strength to underwrite a liberal world order effectively governed by approximately just rules, to that of an imperial superpower that seeks to use its national strength to dominate the world and needlessly heighten conflicts.
Yeah, what he said. This is a critique that we should be able to make at this point. And if we really want to swing the policy pendulum back in the direction of sanity, we have to. Here's another argument Matt makes about why we should all be making this argument:
It's not that politics don't matter, but rather that on the big issues the most important thing -- even politically -- is to develop answers that will be vindicated over time, rather than to devise talking points that are well-suited to the instinctive prejudices of the hour.
It may sound self-serving for people who think about foreign policy all day to argue that ideas matter. But then again, maybe ideas actually do matter.
Comments (3)
Great point, I think the argument against present-day conservatism has to account for the move from a liberal world order, at least intended to be centered supranationally, to regressive nation-states (ok, mainly just us) making aggressive imperial interventions, not least in order to bolster a weakened state by imagining and embellishing threats from abroad.
April 25, 2008 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
It may sound self-serving for people who think about foreign policy all day to argue that ideas matter. But then again, maybe ideas actually do matter.
Yes, it does. And no, they don't much matter, actually.
April 25, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only problem is that some on the left actually support an imperial role for the United States. As Tony Judt mentioned in the London Review of Books in Sept. of 2006 liberals such as Paul Bermam and Michael Walzer supported the American invasion of Iraq. The right than uses Berman, Walzer, O'Hanlon, and Pollack as evidence that some on the left actually support the neo-conservative role for the United States. To make matters worse is that Hillary Clinton hawkish stance towards Iran is used by the media as a bi-partisan support for warlike actions against Iran. One not only needs to come up with a progressive foreign policy but also have an effective media operation to state that the liberal hawks don't represent the Progressive view of foreign policy.
April 25, 2008 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink