If you ignore some of the gobbledey-gook that looks like Latin in the beginning of this link, you'll find an intriguing article about how the current neoconservative foreign policy is not in the tradition of Reagan. While some on the left think Reagan's foreign policy was a radical departure from the past, it was more in line with the traditional internationalist trajectory exhibited from Truman to Clinton than it is with the go-it-alone style of the Bushies.
It's important that two conservative writers show that the current foreign policy is a disaster and is a break from the past. In fact, it really is not very conservative, since true conservatives would see institutions and traditions such as long-standing alliance with Europe as important and not toss them aside in some delusion that we are strong on our own.
Posted by Dennis at May 10, 2004 12:25 AMDennis,
In line with this topic, I'd like to refer everyone to Reagan's speech on February 6, 1977, to the 4th annual CPAC Convention. One site that has the full text is, http://reagan2020.com/speeches/The_New_Republican_Party.asp
A few highlights:
"I have always been puzzled by the inability of some political and media types to understand exactly what is meant by adherence to political principle. All too often in the press and the television evening news it is treated as a call for "ideological purity." Whatever ideology may mean -- and it seems to mean a variety of things, depending upon who is using it -- it always conjures up in my mind a picture of a rigid, irrational clinging to abstract theory in the face of reality. We have to recognize that in this country "ideology" is a scare word. And for good reason. Marxist-Leninism is, to give but one example, an ideology. All the facts of the real world have to be fitted to the Procrustean bed of Marx and Lenin. If the facts don't happen to fit the ideology, the facts are chopped off and discarded.
I consider this to be the complete opposite to principled conservatism. If there is any political viewpoint in this world which is free from slavish adherence to abstraction, it is American conservatism."
"Let us lay to rest, once and for all, the myth of a small group of ideological purists trying to capture a majority. Replace it with the reality of a majority trying to assert its rights against the tyranny of powerful academics, fashionable left-revolutionaries, some economic illiterates who happen to hold elective office and the social engineers who dominate the dialogue and set the format in political and social affairs. If there is any ideological fanaticism in American political life, it is to be found among the enemies of freedom on the left or right -- those who would sacrifice principle to theory, those who worship only the god of political, social and economic abstractions, ignoring the realities of everyday life. They are not conservatives."
"And just to set the record straight, let me say this about our friends who are now Republicans but who do not identify themselves as conservatives: I want the record to show that I do not view the new revitalized Republican Party as one based on a principle of exclusion. After all, you do not get to be a majority party by searching for groups you won’t associate or work with. If we truly believe in our principles, we should sit down and talk. Talk with anyone, anywhere, at any time if it means talking about the principles for the Republican Party. Conservatism is not a narrow ideology, nor is it the exclusive property of conservative activists."
"Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society."
Posted by: Mark Kittel at May 10, 2004 08:51 AM