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February 18, 2005
Neo-conservatives have a different conception of the role of intellectuals to the critical one that we are familar with in modernity. Traditionally, from the Greeks to the present age, intellectuals have been the force to discomfort the comfortable, the gadfly to shock society out of its complacency. Life is to be examined, not simply to be accepted for what it seems to be.
Neo-conservatives think otherwise. For them protest gives way to affirmation:
"Criticism of the bourgeois virtues ultimately undermines society's institutions, meaning that dissent is a threat to society rather than a vehicle for improving it... society is inherently fragile and under constant threat. The neoconservatives thus condemn the New Left intellectuals who challenge the accepted institutions of society.... From American neoconservatives we again see the belief that to contest society is to destabilize it. Instead, neoconservatives pride themselves upon celebrating bourgeois virtues and society's existing institutions. Is this to mean that the intellectual's obligation is to serve merely as a cheerleader for the status quo?"
Not necessarily being a cheerleader. It is to further the conservative project against left liberalism.
If, as some neoconservatives realize, capitalism, an inherently amoral system, then it now undermines the Judeo-Christian ethic.The support neoconservatives offer to capitalism is more for moral than economic reasons (they are concerned to defend the bourgeois virtues), then they come to the defense of the Judeo-Christian ethic virtues in order to combat a nihilistic ethic of self-indulgence and avarice.
Instead of speaking the truth to power they align themselves with power.
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Gary
This series of entries on the neocons has been great. It seems to me that their over riding concern is not so much with nihilism (as it is for Strauss) as it is with stability and social cohesion. Internal conflict, debate, and social unrest seem to terrify these people. My question is why? What is so awful about strong disagreements and vigorous debate? Just because there are real conflicts in a society, this does not mean that it is on the verge of violent revolution. I suspect the neocon obsession with morality and uniformity is more about retaining power and protecting economic elites.