Books Expressing Con/NeoCon Beliefs S/D

I had some conservative professors in college - I didn't mind them, as long as they were good-natured about it.

Kerry- Well, the funniest thing was that he had like three or four TA's - I called them his "handlers". You just knew they had to be these totally sycophantic "Committee on Social Thought" students (that was the name of the degree program for Straussians - like the friggin' John Birch Society). They would come in and prepare the lecturn for him, pull out his chair for him we he went to sit down, stuff like that. Also, he chain smoked during the lecture (a practice certainly disallowed now).

Libs and cons alike give mad props to Michael Oakshott but I've never read anything by him.

I wish I could be in a position where I'd have the option of condescending to a prof. As it stands, I usually have to take their crap for a living.

the best conservative books that i can think of are law books, detailing conservative jurisprudence. loathsome creature though he is, Justice Antonin Scalia's a matter of interpretation is a pretty good explanation of his brand of jurisprudence and method of interpreting statutes ("textualism") and the constitution. robert bork's the tempting of america is also surprisingly good (at least the portions where he's not grinding an axe against them evil libruls in the Senate who shitcanned his nomination to the Supreme Court). just about anything by Richard Posner and Richard Epstein (both U. Chicago professors) are pretty good and non-hysterical (even if the legal viewpoints they espouse are either reptilian or icky). Posner (who's also a Federal judge in the Seventh Circuit) might be one of the few conservatives I respect, FWIW.

The thing is, I couldnt care less about the attitudes of authors. The book forced me think a lot harder about certain ideas i had taken for granted, which is all I could have expected.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/2/113736/219/245/646569

"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

huh.

you didn't know neocons were liberals "mugged by reality"?

Oh yes, I'd just never made the explicit Kristol:Leninist connection before. It makes sense.

lol @ kristol being something other than a print troll

bill kristol is nude spock

The End of History and the Last Man is a fascinating book, but I believe it is given too much credit for clarifying neoconservatism. Hell, its easier to think of people who would see it as pivotal to their liberalism than conservatism. That said, the following is not a new point (and one he has spoke to of the course of the current administration):

The End of History, in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

Back to the thread’s main topic. One author immediately come to mind: Philip Bobbitt. Both Shield of Achilles and Terror and Consent were pivotal to my world view. However, similar to Fukuyama, Bobbitt is in many ways a standard liberal, however his work is widely supported by conservatives.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/robert-kagan-why-the-u-s-wants-to-avoid-conflict-1409942201

robert kagan writes an update of his dreadful book of a decade or so ago about 'hobbesian' america and 'kantian' europe

now, everyone is a kantian

no meaningful reference to the iraq war he cheerled for

President George H.W. Bush and his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, sent half a million American troops to fight thousands of miles away for no other reason than to thwart aggression and restore a desert kingdom that had been invaded by its tyrant neighbor. Kuwait enjoyed no security guarantee with the U.S.; the oil wells on its lands would have been equally available to the West if operated by Iraq; and the 30-year-old emirate ruled by the al-Sabah family had less claim to sovereign nationhood than Ukraine has today. Nevertheless, as Mr. Bush later recalled, "I wanted no appeasement."

A little more than a decade later, however, the U.S. is a changed country.

for him it is still 2002 apparently, and it will never stop being 2002

First it was the Europeans who sought an escape from the tragic realities of power that had bloodied their 20th century. At the end of the Cold War, they began to disarm themselves in the hopeful belief that arms and traditional measures of power no longer mattered. A new international system of laws and institutions would replace the old system of power; the world would model itself on the European Union—and if not, the U.S. would still be there to provide security the old-fashioned way.

http://i.imgur.com/uGIvqIy.jpg

taking the three main powers, european military expenditure declined less than the usa's did in the post cold war years

current eu military expenditure is slightly less than that of russia and china combined

i think kagan is right about a couple things -

a. that western liberal countries often misunderstand the ethos + ideologies of non-western countries bc of an inappropriate universalization of their own beliefs
b. that appeasement can lead to more violence than the initial conflict it sought to avoid

but i don't think this is particularly relevant to America in 2014, or Obama. i don't think Obama's policies towards Iraq or Ukraine are appeasement. he is bombing IS and sanctioning Russia. if he goes to a meeting w/ Putin and comes back saying that Crimea is now Russian and we have peace in our lifetimes - we can start getting worried. but an aversion to using the most obvious/explicit/overwhelming direct force is not the same thing as not being willing to use force at all. america has definitely become gun-shy about starting new wars (maybe not enough, actually!) but it's in no way begun a strategy of appeasement. or even withdrawal. it is just using levers of subversive power, bombing/drone campaigns, and economic/diplomatic levers instead of raw boots-on-the-ground military might. we've just become more risk-adverse.

the world would model itself on the European Union—and if not, the U.S. would still be there to provide security the old-fashioned way.

So, only now we begin to realize that European colonialism was merely a defense project, designed to provide them with security against a harsh and aggressive world full of bloodthirsty South Americans, Africans and Asians?

O tempore, o mores! O, the tragic realities of power!

he's probably more referring to german + japanese aggression i'd imagine

Except the Germans are members of the EU. Maybe those bloodthirsty Russians. But, really, the tragic realities of power? That line is such nonsense. That's tatamount to claiming that George W. Bush is a tragic figure for invading Iraq, which is a line I think Kagan would peddle if he thought anyone would listen.

GWB is def a tragic figure

first as tragedy, then as dubya imo

GWB is def a tragic figure

Not every disaster is a tragedy.