Monday, August 29, 2011

What Drives a Neocon?

The neoconservative persuasion [...] was born in the deepest winter of the cold war, when American school-kids were told to “duck and cover” as the shadow of nuclear war hovered over the American Dream.

[...]

Murray Rothbard relates his personal experiences [...] in his book, The Betrayal of the American Right:

It was National Review editor Frank Meyer who once told me: “I have a vision, a great vision of the future: a totally devastated Soviet Union.” I knew that this was the vision that really animated the new Conservatism.

[...]

“Of course the New Rightists of National Review would never quite dare to admit this crazed goal in public, but the objective would always be slyly implied. At right-wing rallies no one cheered a single iota for the free market, if this minor item were ever so much as mentioned; what really stirred up the animals were demagogic appeals by National Review leaders for total victory, total destruction of the Communist world. It was that which brought the right-wing masses out of their seats. It was National Review editor Brent Bozell who trumpeted, at a right-wing rally: “I would favor destroying not only the whole world, but the entire universe out to the furthermost star, rather than suffer Communism to live.”

Justin Raimondo

If I can’t have her, nobody can.

Perhaps Raimondo is right about being raised in the duck and cover era. I certainly remember that. I never quite accepted it, but I remember the fear of it as a child in elementary school. It wasn’t in our texts, but our teacher periodically reminded us that if we were not vigilant, we might wake up one morning and find out we were controlled by evil Communists, who seemingly were the type who would snatch you from your home and eat your parents’ brains for breakfast.

Condi Rice was inordinately obsessed with the Russian threat.

These folks are mentally unbalanced. Do they actually live in fear, or do they just realize that instilling fear makes people malleable? I wonder they don’t threaten us with China. Is it because they have a monster from Russia in Stalin that works better than the threat of actual Communism? Monsters we understand, economics not so much. Mao didn’t scare enough people. In fact, his PR was pretty good amongst share-minded folk. Or are we just not quite there yet? Is the great China threat just around the corner?

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