The anti-intellectual France-Bashing by neoconservatives is emblematic of the broader problems with the conservative intellectual movement. Slogans, ideological thinking, and an immunity to the facts are fast becoming replacements for an honest appraisal of reality. Conservatives used to know that conservatism was a disposition connected to a particular, historical culture and way of life. Our defense of the United States and Western Civilization stemmed from our own familiarity with it, coupled with a recognition for its unique advantages. This love of a “way of life” included all of the contradictions and folk-ways which made us a complex and organic society.
Neoconservatives (like liberals and libertarians) err by replacing love for this granular reality with a disposition to define America as a series of propositions, which supposedly reflect all that is important about our society. That is, we are about free markets, open borders, democracy, diversity, etc. The fact that we’re largely a European, English-speaking, Christian, and somewhat wealthy nation escapes this world-view as so much insignificant detail. The propositions are key, and if America’s particular good must be sacrificed to advance the summum bonum of the propositions, then so be it. Hence, this ideological and propositional disposition has no particular regard for the U.S.; helping democracy in Iraq or Ukraine is of equal value, even if it hurts our particular interests and alliances. These must be sacrificed if need be. Second, this viewpoint is blinded to the problems associated with the ethnic (and economic) reengineering which our open borders and free trade policies have entailed. The march of “democratic capitalism” cannot be slowed down by such inconvenient facts. Neoconservatives are, above all, militant.
France represents a different ideal, of course, but it remains part of the broader European tradition, of which America is a part.
France has a propositional quality akin to America’s, but with a continental emphasis on modernity, secularism, and equality. Americans always have kept this France–the France of the encyclopedaeists, the metric system, and the Napoleonic Code–at arm’s length. (French conservatives always did as well). But Americans, who fought for the independence of France and other European nations in two world wars, never lost sight of the deep and fundamental connections between our country and Western Europe, including France.
Traditional conservatives have long recognized France as a fountain of great literature and art. Traditional conservatives also respected France’s efforts to preserve its particular identity by resisting the tide of American-led mass consumerism. This skepticism of American mass culture is something that European and traditionalist American conservatives always shared. They also both shared an ambivalence about France and continental Europe’s romance with the more militant and egalitarian corners of the “englightenment.”
In light of this eery similarity of the hawkish French left and the American neoconservatives, it’s all the more hypocritical that the neoconservatives, who want America to be a crusader for universalist “democarcy,” to rage about French conservatives’ skepticism about invading Iraq, while also ranging about the French left’s commitment to spreading universal human rights around the globe with the aid of French prestige and military power. (Contrary to the unending stream of jokes about the French military, they are probably second only to the United States in their power-projection capabilities, with commitments ranging from Guyana to the Ivory Coast to Djibouti and Haiti).
Chilton Williamson explores these issues in a review of John Miller’s juvenile polemic suggesting that France and the US are eternal enemies:
Neocons are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. But do they really know what they are saying most of the time? In respect of the Iraq War, John Miller and Mark Moleskyâââ‰â¬Ânot the much-maligned Jacques Chiracâââ‰â¬Âhave identified themselves as ideological heirs of the Girondins.
But at least the Girondins were French patriots. In urging on an imperial war, while simultaneously supporting nation-dissolving immigration at home, M&M raise real questions as to where their own loyalties lie.
Clarification: I should say that I don’t blame Bush or Iraq solely for the recent friction with France. France has overplayed its hand. But to me it is not evil or an enemy or, worse, our “oldest enemy.” It’s a largely irrelevant former empire on the international scene trying to preserve its relevance in the age of a single superpower. There’s a pathos to it. But it’s so pathetic, it can hardly inspire great anger. More important, we have many common interests and values, I’d hate to see a realpolitik spat spread any further than necessary. The strong anti-French hysteria of the neoconservatives does not help matters very much, and undoubtedly has causes that go beyond the Iraq war or American foreign policy.
Subscribe To This Feed
Where does Williamson get this bizarre notion that Miller is in favor of “nation-dissolving immigration”?
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment121801.shtml
Or http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nrprint111501.html :
“Conservatives in Congress now should encourage the administration to take additional steps. The first is to replace the name “Bureau of Immigration Services” with the name “Bureau of Americanization.” Its employees should be reminded every day that it is not their job merely to process as many forms as possible, but to ensure that the fundamental purpose of immigration and naturalization policy is to strengthen the United States. It is possible to disagree about how many immigrants the country should admit, but not that our common purpose in admitting them is to make the United States stronger â which is possible only if immigrants assimilate. Without a newfound appreciation for Americanization, immigration services simply become a DMV for the foreign-born. Citizenship is not a “service,” and naturalization papers are not driver licenses. The federal government should recognize this when it picks names for agencies.”
Or “State of the Unions: Why labor should oppose immigrant amnesty” at http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr112901.shtml
And who said that “neocons are supposed to be smarter than the rest of us?” Williamson himself? Looks like Williamson let his argument get ahead of his facts.
Opposing Bush’s great amnesty proposal doesn’t make one solid on immigration. All but the most extreme ideologues oppose this measure.
Miller was apparently hated by the paleos for a long time for his extreme pro-immigration nonsense, viz. http://www.vdare.com/williamson/miller_watch.htm
Too, we must differ on the question of what is worthy of conservation: French conservatives currently believe in the consolidation and perpetuation of a vicious nanny-state that, through its constant meddling in affairs not of concern to the government, has managed to almost totally destroy the Church and Burke’s “little platoons” which make the continuity so important to conservatism possible. These French “conservatives” — whose center-right Gaullist party currently holds power — opposed the Iraq war not out of some noble dedication to the perpetuation of French culture or conservative resistance to radical change; they opposed it because it was in France’s pecuniary interests to do so.
I haven’t read Miller and Molesky’s book. But France has no loyalty to the “Western tradition” that American or British conservatives seek to uphold. The French Church is a mere agent of the state; liberty is granted by the state, not a prerogative of the rights of men everywhere or the rights of Englishmen; and France was so unconcerned with the destiny of freedom and free peoples of the West that it pulled its troops from NATO and made preliminary overtures to the Soviet Union about balancing American “hegemony,” sliding into an Indian-style “non-alignment” for a nonce before realizing that Sovietization would spell the end of La Glorie de La France.
Recognize French art, literature, or culture, sure; recognize, perhaps, even the contributions of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and others to philosophy and human study. But let’s not kid ourselves that the soft Marxist entity residing across the Channel from England is some kind of noble jewel to which American conservatives should pay obsequiance.
Judging by a brief perusal, Williamson’s criticisms of Miller seem to have more to do with Williamson’s dismissal from NR than they do with any substantive critiques. Miller has consistently argued that immigration is not workable without an intensive program of Americanization, and that we need such a program instanter. That is a defensible conservative proposition that Williamson, an immigration restrictionist of the most doctrinaire sort, simply dismisses with a sleight of hand that Miller probably really doesn’t mean it.
Anyway. That is all secondary to your arguments about France, which I attempted to address already.
I didn’t realize opposition to the welfare state was the raison d’etre of western civilization. And, in a country where the state supports Catholic schools–unlike the US–I don’t think the damage to the private realm, the France of its different regions, and hundereds of cheeses, and small villages has been in any measure complete. France has a dualism about it. It has the Jacobins and the Napoleonic reaction all rolled into one.
As for France’s flirtation with the Soviet Union don’t forget we more than flirted with them during WWII. France’s flirtation must surely have been very brief, as we gave them massive military aid from 1945-1954 when they left Indochina. Their quest for national independence and sovereignty–surely their goal–is hardly an unconservative one, to boot.
Your equation of opposition to the welfare state with the “raison d’etre” of the West is a clever straw man, as I suggested nothing of the sort. As we well know, high levels of welfare encourage dependence on the state as opposed to reliance on one’s own talents, one’s family, or one’s community. For all the conservative talk about how capitalism destroys these things, I don’t see how welfare — especially at European levels, such as demanded by France — does better.
We picked up France’s obligations in Indochina because we were the only nation equipped enough to fight a proxy war against Communist expansion, whether through cash infusions or troop infusions. DeGaulle yanked French troops from NATO in 1966, shortly after he recognized the dictatorial Communist entity currently exercising de facto control over the Chinese mainland. Those moves were nothing but a snub of the nose to the rest of the West, not 4 years after the building of the Berlin Wall made the Soviets’ goals completely obvious.
You, of course, know better than to play the USA-USSR-WW2 line. We allied with the Soviets to defeat a common enemy in Nazi Germany. France’s dalliance was to address a common enemy of . . . ?
I have to confess some ignorance of the circumstances surrounding France’s attempt to leave NATO. My understanding was they never left the treaty structure, but they opted out of the common military command. This likely had something to do with deference to their domestic arms industry and the same kinds of sovereignty concerns the US has with having its forces under UN command. I’m sure I’m getting many details wrong, though, so I confess ignorance.
I agree with you that welfare states can do a lot of harm to charity and other “little platoons” in society, but they can also do a lot to help people spend time with their families, keep themselves and their kinfolk fed in times of need, etc. etc. I don’t think on balance this is good–the cost is too high–but I don’t think there is zero benefit from it to traditional values. In some cases it’s likely more positive than the alternative (particularly if, a la Bismarck’s view, it takes the wind out of the sales of communist movements).
Bismarck’s welfare program was (1) more limited than any of the socialist programs going on in Europe today and (2) attempted to defuse the revolutionary threat by making people dependent on his particular government — the threat of overthrowing that government was that the lower-classes would see their checks cancelled. (This is basically the same argument that Democrats have been making about Republicans since the New Deal went into effect.) And I see no general “time of need” in Europe since the close of the 1950s that justifies their punitive tax regimes and lavish social spending schemes.
On the foreign affairs front, I am all for France acting in its own self-interest; that’s what nations ought to do, after all. But France has, for at least the last 50 years, perceived that its self interest is to “counter” the United States, rather than stand beside her and benefit from its association with her. It sees world standing as a zero-sum game in which it can gain only if America — the current leader, I think we can all agree — is made to suffer.
Sorry Roach, when I saw France give Arafat the equivalent of a damn military funeral, that did it for me. That country hasn’t had a spine for over 100 years and now they are increasingly turning into an enemy. I don’t know what ‘type’ of conservative I am, but frankly I think France can go to hell.
None of that alters the fact that French foreign policy is as opposed to ours as is possible without shots being fired. Regardless of how similar our civilizations, that makes them enemies. Would you have average Americans singing the praises of enemies?
Let’s also remember that France armed the Arab states prior and during their 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel. France and the Russians stood in direct opposition to the US. I know a lot of Jews and Israelis who will never go to France for that reason alone. F the French.
But before that we armed the Arabs (right up to ‘67) and the French armed the Israelis–even cooperating with them military in the ‘56 Suez crisis. Only when Russia got in the act with Syria and some other Arab nations did we begin helping Israel in earnest. So I think that point is kind of a wash.
It’s not a wash because what we sold the Arabs was old trash, while what we sold Israel was cutting edge equipment. Plus, France aided the Arabs DURING WARTIME. There’s a distinct difference there, don’t you think?
Regardless of what was going on in the 50s and 60s, I don’t think any sane person can deny that current day French foreign policy is directly (and deliberately) harmful to US interests.
I agree with that Beck.
I guess Beck I think it’s a mixed point; I view their actions like I view Russia’s and China’s: in opposition to us on Iraq and other matters, but not so far as they are in “enemy” territory.