NEOCONSERVATISM
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ing to provoke the domestic consequences of conscription. So it
seems to me that we get a program unlikely to be put into effect even
if Ronald Reagan were elected.
If
his election were to produce a
decade of unprecedented civil strife and social turbulence in this
country, the neoconservatives would learn that there is, in fact, a
difference between advocating moderation and stability and so on,
and in enforcing it.
Nathan Glazer:
Nobody is enforcing anything on anyone. Norman
Birnbaum really does get carried away, and I don't know what carries
him away. There is no movement. I am not on the road plugging
anything, and I don 't think James Wilson is either, even if I talk to
audiences about things I know about, like affirmative action and a
few other modest topics. I think he feels that we're not rising to his
grand views of the world, all stemming out of the great socialist
tradition in which everything is connected to everything else. I'm not
rising to this grand view, and I'm certainly not engaged in some
monumental power struggle. I find it odd that he insists I am.
Leon Wieseltier:
I'm rather disturbed by James Wilson's particular
defense of neoconservatism. But I would like to make one brief
comment on Norman Birnbaum's defense of liberalism. I think
liberals should be candid about the failings of liberalism. It's
difficult when you're faced with liberals like Ramsey Clark not to go
with people who write in
Commentary
on this issue. But more
generally I am very concerned with the kind of defense James Wilson
makes for neoconservatism. I agree with him and probably with all
the people on the panel that the famous adversary attitude did not
deserve the glamour that it won on the upper west side. And yet I'm
troubled by the idea that one should recommend any particular
position because of the extent to which it is in harmony with what
are the perceived wishes or ideas of large groups of people.
It
confirms my main impression that one of the attractions of neocon–
servatism, certainly in the case of certain Jewish intellectuals, is that
it has finally allowed the middle class and the intellectuals to kiss
and make up. To James Wilson, Rousseau is the enemy, and yet I
find that his defense of neoconservatism relies to a certain extent
upon some notion of a general or common will. I'm not sure where
this will exists.
In
the first place, popular attitudes change. But more
specifically, at any given moment, the political perceptions of
Jordan High School in Long Beach are not the perceptions of
Erasmus High School in Brooklyn. And it seems
to
me that there is a
kind of spurious notion of commonalities you're operating with,
