NEOCONSERVATISM
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Secondly, the public is concerned about family, religion, commu–
nity, and decency. The public has become quite tolerant of things that
seem to threaten those values, but never mistake their great instinctive
loyalty to them and the importance of these institutions and values in
shaping their lives. To most people, most of the time, the government
is far less important. Neoconservatives share these concerns, though we
phrase them differently. We speak of traditional values; of mediating
institutions; of taking crime seriously (and not regarding it as a code
word for racism as so many liberals did in the 1960s).
And finally, the popular mood is pragmatic; it wants to know
what works. It judges what works in its own daily environment, and it
is dismayed that governmental things often don't work. But as Peter
Steinfels rightly pointed out, they want the government to keep trying
because they do want clean air, safe food, pure water, decent schools,
and safe streets, and they hope that smart people are trying not only
harder but more intelligently.
Neoconservatives seek to provide an intellectual statement of this
concern and try, as Nathan Glazer says, to get the facts, comprehen–
sively and systematically. But note how the tensions which are implicit
in popular opinion become explicit in intellectual opinion. There is a
great tension between libertarianism and self-interest on the one hand,
and the concern for traditional values, family, mediating structures,
continuity, and history on the other hand. There is a great tension
between the desire to see your own circumstances improved dramati–
cally, and a realization that the government programs often do not
work well. As a result, there is no such thing as a neoconservative
manifesto, credo, religion, flag, anthem, or secret handshake. As a
tendency, it is shot through with inner tensions. The magazines to
which I contribute are edited and written by people who in most cases
are aware of these tensions, and usually find easy answers hard to come
by. This often leads to the statement that neoconservatives never favor
anything. That's untrue. But they are rarely in favor of things that can
be stated simply. Neoconservatism is a mood, not an ideology, and a
mood that has not only intellectual sources, but popular ones as well.
To me, and I suppose to most neoconservatives, Alexis de Tocque–
ville is one of the most important authors. So is Aristotle. But I think
what I find in de Tocqueville, in the Federalist Papers, and in Aris–
totle, is a combination of theory and practice, a desire to test ideas by
the sober second thought of a decent citizen-to ask whether institu–
tions can be made to display the best qualities of people without im–
posing upon people the worst qualities of the institutions.
