NEOCONSERVATISM
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condition itself, from the state of our mores and beliefs. Neoconserva–
tives hardly varied at all in their analysis of this cultural crisis. One
favorite category in their analysis was Lionel Trilling's idea of the
adversary culture, an oppositionist mentality critical of all authority
and institutions, which had once been in the possession of the avant–
garde minority, but, through mass higher education, had recently
spread to great numbers of individuals in what was termed the "new
class, " a group reportedly having a great impact on the media and on
social policy. In neoconservative eyes, the interaction of this "new
class" with a vaguely defined group called the "underclass" produced
social demands, in the name of the underclass and under the banner of
egalitarianism, that the government was simply unable to meet. The
result was what neoconservatives called overload, namely the inability
of government
to
meet these claims, with a consequent undermining of
legitimate government authority. Similar themes of adversarial men–
tality, egalitarianism, and a loss of confident authority were voiced in
the area of foreign policy, which I'm not going to expand upon now.
These are the themes which inspired the neoconservatives' interpreta–
tions of facts determined, for example, by their tendency to examine
bureaucratic faili,ngs in the government sector far more than in the
private sector. In short, neoconservatism is not a simple movement
from facts to knowledge, instead a preexisting viewpoint that inter–
prets reality.
Now I found a number of virtues in neoconservatism, at least
enough for one neoconservative reviewer to suggest that I was actually
a closet neoconservative. But the virtues of neoconservatism are going
to be well represented this evening, so I would like to stress criticism.
There are two familiar reactions to neoconservatism One claims
that neoconservatism is irrelevant: a bunch of eastern academics
carrying on their o ld quarrels in a new form, divorced from real
politics and the rest of the country. On the right Kevin Phillips is an
articulate spokesman for this point of view, and there are others who
say much the same on the left. Their position is ,reinforced by the
striking fact that here we have what both neoconservatives and non–
neoconservatives recognize as one of the most influential movements of
intellectual opinion, and yet you cannot clearly identify a single
neoconservative policy on the major issues facing the country. There is
no neoconservative energy policy; there is no neoconservative unem–
ployment policy; there is no neoconservative inflation policy.
On the other hand, you can find a set of cues which neoconserva–
tives use to establish which participants in the discussions of major
