I always enjoy “American conservative” outrage. So in my second heresies post below, I explain how an American Puritan would find something, if maybe not much, to admire in “Wilsonianism.” For one thing, I wasn’t giving my own opinion, but an heretical one… Nonetheless, Daniel Larison must spend most of his life searching for “interventionists” to smite. For him, it’s heretical to think that any intervention is ever not misguided. I wasn’t sharing MY opinion about the Iraq thing.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 10:33 PM
May 30th, 2012 | 1:26 am
Some people may have difficulty getting your message. You are certainly less obvious to read (and less obviously non progressive/liberal) in your current writings than when you wrote “Francis Fukuyama as Teacher of Evil”.
May 30th, 2012 | 7:37 am
Larison’s desire to ‘smite’ interventionists might result in some interesting foreign policy discourse.
And, what interventionism is good interventionism?
May 30th, 2012 | 10:32 am
I certainly agree, Bob, that the discourse is interesting. Interventionism anyone could believe in: the defeat of Hitler, the Marshall Plan, the defeat of the Soviet Union Afghanistan. Aggressive foreign policy anyone could believe in: the Reagan military build-up and ideological confrontationalism.
May 30th, 2012 | 10:55 am
“Interventionism anyone could believe in: the defeat of Hitler, the Marshall Plan, the defeat of the Soviet Union Afghanistan. Aggressive foreign policy anyone could believe in: the Reagan military build-up and ideological confrontationalism.”
Palaeo historiography tends to be retrospectively hostile to American participation in the 2d World War (and to the suppression of the Southern Rebellion).
May 30th, 2012 | 10:58 am
Actually Peter, I was thinking along the lines you’ve mentioned above re: ‘good’ interventionism. I also added Renaldo Magnus’s constitutionally questionable presidential actions, vis-a-vis the funneling of monies to thwart those nasty Sandinista fellows.
Did Reagan get caught up in a little stew of the ‘ends justify the means?’ However, just consider how many lives were saved by his suppression of the various Democrat supported communist regimes and revolutionary cadres.
Being a natural friend to Larison’s proclaimed paleoism I am blushing in my approbation of your ‘interventionism anyone can believe in.’
Perhaps, Mr. Larison, a favorite OpEd writer, could correct my support of your position and show me where I’ve grown wobbly as an acolyte of Randolph’s minimalist federalism?
May 30th, 2012 | 11:52 am
Mr. AD (and Bob), I read P. Buchanan’s book on the 2ndWW. Without descending into criticism, I will still add that anyone sensible knows that Hitler was a lot worse and more crazy than Pat wants to think and that anyone has to be thrilled he and his party were eradicated. I didn’t say anything about the CW, War between the States. It does remain legitimately a bit controversial as interventionism. Even we Lincolnians admit that things would look different without some Northern luck. And we add that was one hell of a bloody war. Also note that I acknowledge that our intervention in WWI is legitimately controversial. Bob, it’s human to blush, and after all the aid to the Contras did work big-time.
May 30th, 2012 | 12:03 pm
Nonsense? Wilsonianism is a product of the Scottish Enlightment, and Presbyterianism, filtered by Princetown and a keen grasp of american realities. One is more New Jersey, i.e. Princetown, the other is more Mass, i.e. Harvard and Yale. Supposedly the religious origin means something…
Of course in a broad brush there is probably a lot that Unites the Ivy League schools, and a lot that Unites Presbyterians and Puritans. Would the Puritans have approved of Wilson? (by helping Princetown with the president count, did he not undermine Harvard and Yale?)
Who knows? But I would think there is a lot that unites the neo-cons to Wilsonianism.
In fact what is the difference (in broad brush?)
Wilson of course is the founder of the Military Industrial Complex, while it wasn’t actually nefarious at the time. (but the Nye Commitee was actually the “first” serious criticism of the Military Industrial Complex). He did this by creating the War Industries Board, he also seized railroads and began to think geographically as a great logistician. His labor reforms were just or at least expedient and great invention was made procedurally in arbitration and mediation.
Wilson also gave a flag day speech, while suppressing anti-war sentiment. In effect lending to the burning of the american flag some plausible level of political speech. Burning the flag is thus a highly anti-Wilsonian thing to do. Just as the neo-cons stoked anti-muslim feeling, Wilson stocked anti-german feeling. Most neo-cons also support women’s suffrage, a key tennet of Wilsonianism.
It is not altogether implausible to conclude that Wilson invented, stimulated or structured American Exceptionalism. There is nothing to say that you could not have a more Puritan or Presbyterian Wilsonianism.
May 30th, 2012 | 3:08 pm
John Lewis, I never fail to learn something in your ‘comments’ here, and that’s a compliment.
AD and Peter, am I wrong to suggest that there may be three levels of ‘interventionism?’
First, financial aide provided to say, Haiti in order to help in some disaster. Second, aide in the form of monies and war material in the manner of Reagan and the Contras. And, third, direct military support in the form of regiments, artillery, tanks, etc. such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, etc.
Perhaps the differentiation occurs along those lines and perhaps the analysis requires a little more then the usual ‘neo’ or ‘paleo’ tag?
May 30th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
John Lewis,
Thanks for the nice display and gentle mocking of the broad strokes approach. Basically the b.s. I was going for is that the Puritans are Calvinist and Wilson is too. It’s not the Calvinism or even the progressivism that produced Wilson’s racism, but being southern. So he was a mixture of things, as all we all. That almost always means not all bad. And there’s a big difference between Wilsonian progressivism and Marxism and the kinds of historicism that suborinate what’s best for the person to the HISTORICAL FUTURE. Wilson was obviously more a Kantian than an Hegelian. That produced, realists rightly complain, an overemphasis on intentions and a slighting of results. But Kant’s person is obviously, to me, a form of deracinated or de-eroticized secular Christianity.
May 30th, 2012 | 3:52 pm
Small point of order, Peter: Pestritto’s Wilson book shows that it was more likely his Hegelianism than his Southern roots that produced his racism–although as far as I can tell, Hegelian “developmentalism” is not biology-based, and if so is not strictly speaking racism, even if in Wilson’s American context it was just as repellant.
And someone Pestritto-schooled but more subtle on religion needs to write a book about Wilson’s “Calvinism.”
May 30th, 2012 | 4:49 pm
There’s nothing in the actual Hegel that’s racist. So Hegelianism in the service of racism?
May 30th, 2012 | 5:36 pm
@John Lewis
“Most neo-cons also support women’s suffrage, a key tennet of Wilsonianism.”
-I’m not sure about this claim John. At the height of his academic career and at the height of his presidential power, Wilson was a fierce and sometimes thuggish opponent of the women’s suffrage movement. He eventually changed his position late in his presidency and got the 19th amendment passed. So I would argue that there’s pretty complicated relationship between Wilsonianism and Women’s suffrage, and I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a key tennet of Wilsonianism
May 31st, 2012 | 9:51 am
Ah, I think I see. Subjecting the future of humanity — and a Radiant Future it will surely be — to the American empire is *not* a historicist project [in the odd sense of the word employed in these precincts]. It’s all clear now.
It’s only historicism if anyone resists. Got it.
May 31st, 2012 | 12:14 pm
JS, I’m not sure I get your point. These people against Wilsonian “historicism,” and I’m not for Wilson for the most part either. I’ll grant that the crude proposition that any resistance to American natural rights is historicism can be bound in some Straussian writing.
May 31st, 2012 | 4:05 pm
“Ah, I think I see. Subjecting the future of humanity — and a Radiant Future it will surely be — to the American empire ”
The only empire is in your imagination. Ninety percent of the population of overseas dependencies of the United States was to be found in the Philippines, relinquished over 60 years ago. Separatism has never been politically consequential in Puerto Rico.
June 1st, 2012 | 1:41 pm
“I’ll grant that the crude proposition that any resistance to American natural rights is historicism can be bound in some Straussian writing.”
That seems fair enough.
Art Deco: Formal overseas dependencies do not begin to exhaust legitimate historical uses of the word empire.
June 1st, 2012 | 2:52 pm
“Art Deco: Formal overseas dependencies do not begin to exhaust legitimate historical uses of the word empire.”
Oh yes they do, because the notion of ‘informal empire’ is half-baked.
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