|
Why the neocons didn’t fight Grutter
It just occurred to me why the neoconservatives never protested the disastrous Grutter decision, which placed racial group rights in the Constitution and undermined the individual rights philosophy that the neocons had always touted as the keystone of America. The neoconservatives’ main interest in “democracy” today does not have to do with democracy in America but in exporting democracy to other countries; as I argued in my article on Irving Kristol and the real meaning of neoconservatism, the expansion of American power abroad engages the neocons’ passions far more than any concern for the permanent well-being of the American nation. Now, since those other countries to which the neocons want to export democracy—Iraq is an example—are highly ethnically diverse and would in many cases demand or require some forms of ethnic preferences in their political or educational systems, the traditional American democracy based on strict individual rights would not be of much value as an export. An American “democracy” founded on racial group rights is more suitable to the neocons’ globalist crusade. Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 16, 2004 12:38 PM | Send Comments
My inclination is to think that Mr. Auster is overinterpreting the neocons feeble response to Grutter. My own impression is that they did not in fact like it, but are merely more worked up, nowadays, over other things; i.e. the foreign policy issues mentioned by Mr. Auster. Posted by: Alan Levine on April 16, 2004 3:03 PMI agree that Mr. Auster is probably overanalyzing the situation. The neocons tepid response in my opinion was simply because they (at least at the time) were blind Bush partisans and Bush supported the decision out of his stupid minority outreach, and they did not want to say anything that would contradict Bush. Foreign policy is slightly tied to the issue in that if one wants to promote American style democracy across the globe, it is much more difficult to criticize the state of American democracy in America. Posted by: Marcus Epstein on April 19, 2004 1:18 AMIt is very hard to interpret the neocons. As Mr. Auster pointed out long ago, a large part of what they “believe” is actually an attempt to position themselves on the political spectrum in such a place as to be successful and influential. Thus the constant triangulation against the paleocons, etc., in order to prove themselves respectable. At one time, the neocons spoke out against group rights and balkanization. Perhaps their current silence is related to foreign policy, or perhaps it is the old habit of reading which way the wind is blowing and noticing that raising a ruckus against Bush’s position on Grutter is not a good way to be influential with the current administration. It could be a combination of the two. As Mr. Auster pointed out once, it is hard to try to understand what someone is thinking if they are insincere. Posted by: Clark Coleman on April 19, 2004 3:33 AM |