Conservatives Without Conscience

Authoritarian conservatism begins with basic conservative beliefs—order, distrust of change, belief in traditional values—and branches in the direction of favoring state power to protect these beliefs. Libertarianism has an entirely different set of core beliefs which are based upon nineteenth-century liberalism. Those beliefs subordinate the order of a community to the desire for individuality and stress personal rights over personal responsibilities. Libertarians move away from state power to secure maximum liberty for the individual. Authoritarian conservatives are like traditional conservatives in their belief in established values, while libertarians are like traditional conservatives in their desire for limited government. Traditional conservatives and libertarians, however, differ in the degree of their belief in limited government. Libertarians are extreme in their opposition to state power while traditional conservatives are more moderate in their opposition. Traditional conservatives are much more likely to accept some state power than are libertarians.[8]

Two factions of conservatism currently embrace a contemporary adaptation of authoritarian conservatism: neoconservatives and social conservatives.[*] Neoconservatives are a relatively small group of social-dominance authoritarians, with significant, if not disproportionate, influence. Social conservatives, whose core members are Christian conservatives, comprise the largest and most cohesive faction of conservatism. They are, by and large, typical right-wing authoritarian followers. Both neoconservatives and social conservatives include countless conservatives without conscience within their ranks.

Authoritarian Policies of Neoconservatism

Neoconservatism first surfaced in the public during the Reagan administration. More recently its interest in, and influence on, American foreign policy has drawn a great deal of attention. One of the more colorful (and accurate) descriptions of the typical neoconservative comes from Philip Gold, who justifiably described himself as having “impeccable conservative credentials and long experience in the national-security field,” as well as being “a grumpy old Marine (a former intelligence officer), who has grown infuriated with and appalled by the conservative embrace of disaster” served up by neoconservatives. Gold, a former Georgetown University professor, described neoconservative foreign policy wonks as “a new aristocracy of aggression that combines 19th-century Prussian pigheadedness with a most un-Prussian inability to read a man or a ledger book, and a near total lack of military—let alone combat—experience. Ask these people to show you their wounds and they’ll probably wave a Washington Post editorial at you.”[*]

The Christian Science Monitor describes neoconservatives as mostly liberal Jewish intellectuals who became disenchanted with the left in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s they had become Republicans, having found a home for their aggressive policies in the Reagan administration. According to the Monitor, what distinguishes neoconservatives from other conservatives is their desire for militarily imposed nation building. They believe the United States should “use its unrivaled power—forcefully if necessary—to promote its values around the world.” Neoconservatives do not trust multilateral institutions to keep world peace; rather they believe the United States must do it.[9] An American empire is a perfectly plausible scenario for neoconservatives; containment is a policy they believe is outmoded. Neoconservatives view Israel as “a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots.” They want to transform the Middle East with democracy, starting with Iraq. Today the foreign policies of neoconservatives and of the Bush administration are fundamentally synonymous.