“To see Kristol colluding with the Times to rewrite that history to make liberals heroes and Republicans villains tells us more about him than about the era.” — Pat Buchanan

How true. The neocons, having captured the Republican Party from the traditional conservative/Christian wing that threatened to dominate it in the ‘80’s, are now about the business of consolidating their gains and purging their party of any remaining conservative elements (not that Lott himself is particularly conservative; but what he said about Thurmond is certainly being construed that way).

But it’s important to see what’s going on here. As I said in a previous post, there are two primary principles which are at issue in modern American politics and which, in various combinations with their two contraries, serve to define the warring parties: the issue of states’ rights vs. federal rights, and the issue of natural rights vs. positive, or granted, rights. These provide the subtext for everything that is decided in American politics at the national level.

The issue of states’ rights vs. federal rights involves the question of where the sovereignty in our federal system should be lodged. The federal rights crowd favors a consolidated government, with little or no authority left to the states, while the states’ rights crowd favors the Tenth Amendment and the original intention of the Constitution, which was to have the states delegate a few, specific tasks to the federal government, retaining the rest to themselves (along with the authority and autonomy to rule according to the wishes of the inhabitants of that state—which, I note in passing, were far, far smaller in population than the states of today).

The issue of natural rights vs. granted rights involves the question of the source of our rights and the authority of government to impinge upon them. The natural rights crowd sees the rights to life, liberty, and property (primarily, although other, secondary, rights may be necessary to secure these) as deriving from God Himself, the Author of Nature. Coming from God, they are inviolable, even by a king. The granted rights crowd, on the other hand, acknowledges no authority higher than the king, and therefore views all rights as something dispensed to the people by him and recalled at his pleasure. This difference in first principles is why, for instance, Planned Parenthood is completely tone-deaf to any talk about a child’s “right to life.” They quite literally don’t understand by the phrase what conservatives mean by it, since all rights, in their view, are consequent upon, and subject to, the judgment of a ruler: a child only has a right to life if the ruler decides it should have one.

So where am I going with this? To get back to the subject of Bill Kristol, in order to see his allegiances in their proper light one needs to take stock of his position vis a vis these two principles. Kristol’s position—which is the position of neocons generally—is that a) all significant authority should be vested in the central government (anti-state’s rights), and that b) all authority comes from God (pro-natural rights). This is, at least, the neocons’ *public* position. They still *claim*, I believe, to champion a child’s right to life, for example, over a mother’s right to abort it. The adoption of these two principles puts Kristol and the neocons, at least publicly, halfway between traditional conservatives (pro-states’ rights, pro-natural rights) and modern liberals (anti-states’ rights, anti-natural rights); they share a principle with either side.

So why do the Bill Kristol neocons then, who I’ve just said are smack in the middle between leftist liberals and rightist conservatives, seem to be leaning leftward, rather than rightward? It’s because, as many conservatives are now beginning to gather, in their heart of hearts, the neocons don’t really believe in natural rights after all. In the first place, they are already declared lovers of Big Power and highly consolidated government, which of itself should serve as a huge, flashing, warning sign to anyone with brains enough to breathe. Those who have historically sought power and authority over huge numbers of people have never been known to do so for pure or noble ends. Indeed, where that kind of power is lustily sought after, all thought of God soon dies, if it ever existed at all.

This, I believe, is what is happening. If Kristol and the neocons like him ever actually embraced the idea of God’s sovereignty over the affairs of man, they are rapidly abandoning it now in the heady rush of their worldly success. Having climbed to the top on the backs of conservatives, they are now ripping off their masks to expose their true liberal faces. Let us no longer call them neoconservatives, then, for they no longer hold to the principles of neoconservatism. They have instead become indistinguishable in their beliefs from liberals, which is only another way of saying that they *are* liberals…and their party, the Republican Party, is day by day looking and sounding more like the Democratic Party because of it.

Sorry for the length.

I can’t begin to count the times I have heard liberals say, “The Republicans win by appealing to racism.” Or, “They appeal to the worst instincts of the American people. This has gone on since 1968.

Well, now the neocons are saying it themselves. We have a situation were the “intellectual leaders” of the conservative party denounce the past successes of the party. They will soon not even pretend to represent those who vote for them. For example, Mr. Bush intends to go full speed for illegal alien amnesty. What will be the result of the disconnect between the party leaders and the voters?

David nicely captures the incredible nature of the Lott business, with the neocons not only charging (with no more evidence than the Democrats have shown) that the modern Republican party is racist, but with the neocons actually boasting of the fact that they are doing this. This affair signals a new stage of the country’s journey into an ever-hardening political correctness.