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PARTISAN REVIEW
traditional conservatives, on questions such as supply-side eco–
nomics, or a hard line on foreign policy.*
Perhaps such simplifications and cross-overs become inevitable
when tender-minded discussions of philosophy and principles give
way to the tough-hearted play of politics and polemics . Yet much of
this becomes disturbing when it begins to affect the tone and temper
of political discourse . Four illustrations:
One, although now growing in influence, the neoconserva–
tives sound and talk often like a hunted band of men and women
huddled together against the "cultural hegemony" of the liberals and
the Left . It is true that the cultural mood of the intellectual commu–
nity has been primarily "liberal"- a heritage of the rejection of small–
town provincialism and the embrace of modernity; a politics in–
fluenced by the New Deal and progressivism; a sociology concerned
with class and inequality; a disposition to romanticize the Third
World combined with a fear of American military power. But to
assume that this is a unified force when much of it is in disarray
(with the neoliberals questioning government social programs and
championing the rebuilding of American military strength) indicates
a parochialism which has stopped time and is skewed by partisan
politics .
* *
Two, there is the dyspeptic unwillingness of some conservatives
to make relevant distinctions between social democracy and com-
•The ironic fact is that eight or so years ago, not only did the New Right question
the commitment of the neoconservatives but, given its conspiratorial bent, feared
that this was a move, abetted by the Eastern establishment-oriented national news
media, to sabotage or take over the conservative movement and to abort the grow–
ing right-wing populism movement, out of the fear that such populism might
become the basis of a new anti-Semitism. And on the issue of foreign policy, Pat
Buchanan, a former Nixon speech writer and syndicated columnist, declared: "This
Commentary
crowd . .. didn't come around to our way of thinking until the Soviet
threat to Israel became apparent." (See Jonathan Martin Kokey,
The New Right,
University Press of America,
1983,
pp.
338-339.)
The further irony, of course, is
that today vocal anti-Semitism has emerged not out of the rednecks of the South, but
from some black leaders in the ghetto. It is not only that politics makes for rumpled
bedfellows, but that a drive for power and the use of demagogy override principles.
.• • Who would have thought, in
1972,
that the main domestic political issue in
1984
would be whether Mr. Reagan or Mr. Mondale could more quickly balance the
budget and reduce the deficit? Or that the Democratic candidates would embrace
"family values" in such a wholehearted way? Or that'Gary Hart would be repudiated
I
(
