Conservatism, War, and Domestic Government
Several weeks ago I had a rather engaging conversation with a self-ascribed neoconservative. This person believed it was advantageous for the United States–and beneficial for those less fortunate populations–to intervene in the domestic affairs of other nations. By spreading our goodness we could make the world a better place, while simultaneously eradicating hatred, fear, and oppression, making America safe, and the world prosperous. What astounded me was the obvious contradiction between his pro-interventionist foreign policy, and his distaste for a large, intrusive (dare I say philanthropic) domestic government. Here is a person whom in one breath argues the economic, historical, and political ramifications of a philanthropic domestic government, but–for reasons beyond my own comprehension–in the next breath, argues in support of philanthropic government abroad. In one instance he acknowledges the inability of government to provide various social-economic benefits domestically, while in the next instance defends the former institutions ability to provide social-economic welfare abroad.
It is ironic that a conservative who detests domestic progressivism would adhere to the Wilsonian–Progressive creed of the early 20th Century,
“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.”
(President Woodrow Wilson’s Address to Congress, 2 April 1917)
What many neoconservatives fail to recognize–beyond the obvious contradictions in their ideology–is that early 20th century progressives embraced a policy of foreign intervention, because they understood that wartime conditions provided an opportunity to erode the attachment Americans had to private property and free enterprise, and instead push their ambitions of a managed, centralized economy on the American system (Woods Digital). In other words, it was essential for the progressive plan to expand militarily abroad, in order to expand government domestically. As Frank Sinatra put it, “You can’t have one without the other.” The great essayist Vicesimus Knox describes the process in The Spirit of Despotism,
“Let us suppose a nation entering most eagerly, and without listening one moment to terms of accommodation, into a most dangerous war, professedly to exterminate the bad principles and morals of a neighboring people, and to defend law, order and religion. It is impossible to imagine but that a nation acting in this manner, and with this profession, must regulate all its own public conduct, especially in a war of this kind, according to the strictest law, order, and religion.
Will that nation oppose an armed neutrality, instituted to prevent the interruption of neutral commerce? Will she maintain her reputation for justice, if she should be first and most violent in destroying this neutrality? Will she break the law of nations by insulting ambassadors? . . . Will she endeavor to starve a whole nation with whom she is at war, not only the rulers and warriors, but infants, women, and old people, by preventing the importation of corn?”
A conduct like this appears to be not only inconsistent with the pretended defense of law, order, and religion, but at once proceeding from the spirit of despotism, and promotive of it.” (72-73)
Knox concludes,
“When it is considered how little the most boasted governments have been able or inclined to prevent the greatest calamity of the world, the frequent recurrence of war, it is natural to conclude, that there has been some radical defect or error in all government, hitherto instituted on the face of the earth. Violence may be used where there is no government. Governments pretend to direct human affairs by reason; but war is a dereliction of reason, a renunciation of all that refines and improves human nature, and an appeal to brute force. Man descends from the heights to which philosophers and legislators had raised him in society; takes the sword, and surpasses the beasts of the forest in ferocity. Yet, so far from thinking himself culpable, he deems his destructive employment the most honorable of all human occupations, because governments have politically contrived to throw a glossy mantle, covered with tinsel and spangles, over the horrors of bloodshed and devastation. If governments, with all their riches and power, all their vaunted arts and sciences, all the mysterious policy of cabinets, all the wisdom and eloquence of deliberating senates, are unable to preserve the blessing of peace, uninterrupted, during the short space of twenty years together, they must be dreadfully faulty either in their constitution or their administration. In what consists the fault? I think in the selfish spirit of despotism, pursuing the sordid or vain-glorious purposes of the governors, with little regard to the real, substantial happiness of the governed. Despotism, in some mode or degree, has transformed the shepherds of the flock into wolves; has appropriated the fleeces, shed the blood of the innoxious animals, tore down the fenes of the sheepfold, and laid waste the pasture.” (90)
If conservatives are really serious about conserving the traditions of the United States and “scaling back government,” it must be recognized that the process in which our republic was transformed (warfare to welfare) must be undone in the precise order in which it was originally corrupted. That is to say, in order to undo the domestic insanity that is the welfare state, the warfare state must first be eliminated.
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