Heh, sometime ago in the Stanford library stacks after spending a day at the
Hoover Institute, I found bound volumes of New America, the Social
Democrats, USA newspaper. From 1972, there was an event addressed by one of
their members, Richard Perle, the aide at the time to Scoop Jackson. Perle
nickname during Reagan admin. was "Prince of Darkness."
Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 7:38 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:10894] Re: Re: Great Plains Depopulation
> Michael Pugliese wrote:
>
> >http://www.linguafranca.com/print/0101/cover_cons.html
> >Cover story on Luttwak and John Gray.
>
> I had the author of the piece, Corey Robin, and Luttwak on the radio
> when the issue came out, and Luttwak was emphatic that he was never a
> "conservative." He sees himself as an entirely consistent right
> social democrat - anti-communist, nationalistic, but pro-welfare
> state.
>
> The end of the piece is quite amazing:
>
> >One might think the triumph of the free market would thrill
> >right-wing intellectuals. But even the most revered conservative
> >patriarchs worry that the market alone cannot sustain the flagging
> >energies of the movement. After all, Reagan and Thatcher summoned
> >conservatives to a political crusade, but the free-market ideology
> >they unleashed is suspicious of all political faiths. The market's
> >logic glorifies private initiative, individual action, the
> >brilliance of the unplanned and random. Against that backdrop, it is
> >difficult to think about politics at all-much less political
> >transformation. William F. Buckley Jr. says, "The trouble with the
> >emphasis in conservatism on the market is that it becomes rather
> >boring. You hear it once, you master the idea. The notion of
> >devoting your life to it is horrifying if only because it's so
> >repetitious. It's like sex." Kristol adds, "American conservatism
> >lacks for political imagination. It's so influenced by business
> >culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any
> >political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a
> >property of the left." He goes on, "If you read Marx, you'd learn
> >what a political imagination could do."
> >
> >But if conservatives are struggling to find a vision, can the
> >ex-conservatives do much better? Unlike Kristol, who fled the left
> >and launched the neoconservative movement, Luttwak and Gray have not
> >formulated coherent alternatives, philosophical or political, to
> >their former creeds. As Luttwak puts it: "Instead of proposing a
> >whole counter-ideology, what I simply propose is society consciously
> >saying that certain things should be protected from the market and
> >kept out of the market." This, despite the fact that Luttwak remains
> >temperamentally enamored, in his way, of the revolutionary impulse.
> >"I prefer 'The Marseillaise' to the Mass," he says, "Mayakovski to
> >the cross of St. George." He adds, "Revolutions are wonderful.
> >People enjoying themselves. I was in Paris in 1968.... There was a
> >wonderful feeling of possibility." But though Luttwak may long for a
> >transformative politics, it remains beyond his reach, an object of
> >nostalgia not just for him but for most intellectuals.
> >
> >Except, it turns out, for William F. Buckley Jr., the original bad
> >boy of the American right. At the end of our interview, I ask
> >Buckley to imagine a younger version of himself, an aspiring
> >political enfant terrible graduating from college in 2000, bringing
> >to today's political world the same insurgent spirit that Buckley
> >brought to his. What kind of politics would this youthful Buckley
> >embrace? "I'd be a socialist," he replies. "A Mike Harrington
> >socialist." He pauses. "I'd even say a communist."
> >
> >Can he really imagine a young communist Bill Buckley? He concedes
> >that it's difficult. The original Bill Buckley had the benefit of
> >the Soviet Union as an enemy; without its equivalent, his
> >doppelgänger would confront a more complicated task. "This new
> >Buckley would have to point to other things," he says. Buckley runs
> >down a laundry list of left causes-global poverty, death from AIDS.
> >But even he seems suddenly overwhelmed by the project of (in typical
> >Buckleyese) "conjoining all of that into an arresting afflatus."
> >Daunted by the challenge of thinking outside the free market,
> >Buckley pauses, then finally says, "I'll leave that to you."
>
