How James Q. Wilson and the neocons have returned to their former liberalism

Even as I was posting an article yesterday about the ideology-driven effort by James Q. Wilson and other neoconservatives to erase all differences between the West and Islam, a column appeared in the New York Times casting new light on that subject. David Brooks informs us that the Public Interest, the distinguished public policy journal founded in 1965 by Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer, with James Q. Wilson as one of its leading contributors, is now shutting down publication. Brooks points out how the Public Interest began as a liberal journal, but then, as the Great Society programs began to fail, underwent a startling about-face:

It occurred to several of the editors that they had accepted a simplistic view of human nature. They had thought of humans as economically motivated rational actors, who would respond in relatively straightforward ways to incentives. In fact, what really matters, they decided, is culture, ethos, character and morality.

So, in 1965 Wilson was part of a group of liberal social scientists who thought of human beings as identical blank slates, rational actors who will respond in the same way to the same rational and economic incentives. Then they woke up from the liberal dream of infinite human malleability and saw that human beings are formed and differentiated by substantive factors such as family, culture, religion, and morality. Out of that realization grew the neoconservative movement. But now, irony of ironies, Wilson and his fellow neocons have reverted to the liberal Enlightenment view that they abandoned over 30 years ago. They now believe that humans are identical, rational, and infinitely malleable actors; that regardless of cultural and religious differences all humans want the same things; that if you offer people, including Moslems, the “lure” of freedom they will instantly take it; that Moslems, being identical to all other human beings including us, are capable of maintaining free government once they have been given it; and that, finally, anyone who expresses any doubts about these propositions is being irrational at best and racist at worst.

The catalog of defining neoconservative beliefs that the neocons have cast aside in recent years just keeps getting longer and longer.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 06, 2005 01:12 PM | Send