Jonathan Chait comments today on an interview in the Wall Street Journal with Norman Podhoretz, one of the first and most influential neoconservative intellectuals of the '60s. Podhoretz has gone from being so-so about Donald Trump to being a big fan:
The aspect of Trumpism that Podhoretz sees most clearly is Trump’s refusal to abide by the fair elections he loses, the rule of law, or other democratic niceties. Like many conservatives, Podhoretz sees these qualities as evidence that Trump grasps the existential stakes of domestic political conflict.
“It’s a war, in my view,” Podhoretz says. “Many people are reluctant to see it in those terms. I mean, people say it’s a lot like 1858 and so on, but I don’t see it as a prelude to a civil war and 600,000 Americans dead. That’s not my meaning. But spiritually it’s a war.” Asked if the division within the right is between Republicans who see domestic politics in such stark terms and those who don’t, Podhoretz agrees: “I think Trump was the only guy who understood the situation in those terms, whether by instinct or whatever.”
This is an illustration of what I was talking about the other day. Podhoretz isn't critical of the January 6 insurrection—in fact, he seems to actively approve of it—because he apparently believes the threat to America is so great that virtually anything is justified in the righteous war against liberalism. In this, he is joined by many, many other Republicans.
POSTSCRIPT: It's also worth noting that, at its core, Podhoretz's real beef with the left has always been over patriotism:
This ‘woke’ business—critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, all of it—is just pure anti-American hatred. And I think [its proponents] would admit that. Which is why I keep saying it’s a war. If you don’t understand that, you don’t know what the hell is going on.
Perhaps also worth noting: the examples of anti-Americanism that immediately pop into his head are all race based.
It's always been about race, not patriotism. So when Kevin claims the right is so mad because Liberals won't respect their patriotism, he's dead wrong. Liberals won't respect people or policies that are racist.
Well said.
When conservatives talk about patriotism, they are talking about patriotism to a white "Christian" nation.
You can't say you are a patriotic American when the America that you love is not based upon a law based pluralistic democracy. That's just a blood and soil patriotism.
And it's not a matter of preference. Pledging allegiance to the Constitution means just that. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments are part of the Constitution and actually exist as much as modern conservatives want to write them out of existence.
As Trump demonstrated many, many times, you can say just about anything. An important limitation is on what you can truthfully say, and I agree that a person who rejects democracy cannot truthfully claim to be a patriotic American. They can say it, but that doesn't make it true.
They hate the 16th and 17th, too.
Re: Pledging allegience to the Constitution.
Heh, heh. But they don't. It's the flag they worship -- unless they need to use it as a bludgeon or spear.
It's all about team and tribe with the so-called patriotic right. It's not the real America they love, the full complete complex multi racial America of big liberal cities, farms and suburbs, immigrants, christians, muslims, homosexuals, straight folks and you name it. When these guys talk about loving America they really mean the America of people who are like them and agree with them. To them America is white, Christian, and conservative (with a few token black and Christian conservatives thrown in). Anyone outside of that group is not America to them.
Should have said "with a few black and Hispanic Christian conservatives . . ."
Has Glemm Greemwald offered Herschel Walker's son a film deal yet?
I think for some, the idea that they would have to be nice to gay and trans people is also a dealbreaker.
And somehow they go from black people saying, "We'd like the police to not always be trying to kill us" to "They hate America" This is the effect of propaganda. It has to do with race, of course, but it's also propaganda. it's every night showing the same footage of some convenience store burning for a week. It's not a lie but it hugely distorts any sense of what is happening.
And so, they want to throw out the thing that is most important about America to save it?
TBH, you don't have to be nice to someone to respect their rights and not commit hate crimes against them.
This is a big thing people need to keep in mind. You are not required to like transgender people, or Jews etc. I do think the left forgets this sometimes.
You simply have to not discriminate and not harass them. Apparently this is too high a bar, because most conservatives have to tell people they are bad like the moral scolds they are.
"Pure anti-American hatred?"
Well, that might well be how Podhoretz sees it. That would make sense if Podhoretz has enjoyed a life of white privilege, without ever paying any dues for it.
I grew up in a middle-class white family. I had the great good fortune to have two New York Jewish parents who taught me how lucky I was, and that we who are lucky have an obligation to "pay it forward" to those who aren't so lucky. So when I was in high school in Baltimore, I tutored kids from the inner city who didn't have parents who could teach them math and science and Shakespeare. And when I was out of college, it happened to be the time of the Voting Rights Act, so I went to Alabama to help register voters who had never before had the privilege of voting. And when I helped start a software company, my partner and I made sure that we bent over backwards to make sure that equal opportunity was never sold short for expediency.
So I would interpret Podhoretz's impression of "pure anti-American hatred" a little differently. I think it's "pure anti-Podhoretz-like-thinking hatred." Since he supposes that his thinking is "American thinking" then I suppose he can't make the distinction.
Wow, you were very enlightened at a young age and did a lot of good. I'm not being sarcastic. I mean it. Thank you.
I truly think the most succinct way to understand the "conservative" mind these days is to read Rod Dreher, the extremely angry Christian guy.
His explanation of Trump's positives matches Podhoretz's pretty well, I think. Trump is a fighter, and since the left is so rude and aggressive, Trump's personality is a plus, basically.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/post-christian-culture-war-maginot-line/
But El Jefe isn't a fighter.
He's the "hold me back" scene from the Untouchables.
I wonder if the left would criticize you for it today
Sure, the America that the South thought was the real one was the one that had slavery. This was very common rhetoric at the time of the Civil War. Likewise the America that the Republican party claims to be fighting for is the White Christian one in which non-whites have lower status. Again, Trump pays some lip service to nationalism in certain cases, notably Iran, but overall his policies are isolationist. Is Trump committed to expanding NATO against the wishes of Putin? What issue could be more of a litmus test for a neocon like Podhoretz? Podhoretz has to cite issues involving racism because he can't cite many issues on which Trump really takes a stand on patriotism that doesn't involve racism. If Podhoretz did actually stray into international issues he would have to find some way of defending Trump's attitude toward Russia on neocon grounds and he can't do it.
No Kevin, it's not patriotism, its racism that Repubicans have been using for over 50 years to win elections. The issues that won Trump the nomination in 2016 were birtherism and racial xenophobia, not America's standing in the world.
" he apparently believes the threat to America is so great that virtually anything is justified in the righteous war against liberalism"
It's getting trite to keep saying this, but seriously, Kevin, why the F(&^ do you give any credence to the justifications these liars use to explain why they support the fascistic destruction of our democracy.
Well, look at all the discussion it spawns!
tbh, i'd rather be discussing the latest in lead/crime research. or education policy with some nice charts.
"Know your enemy" is good advice.
In Constitutional law the, this issue often manifests itself into how you should measure so-called "original intent". In fact, Justice Thomas asked this precise question in the recent New York gun case. If we are considering the Second Amendment, ratified at the founding, and whether it applies to states to the 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, which era's understanding do we use. Mind you I'm not personally adopting that we should be bound by original intent was, but for better or worse, that's how we have to look at things these days.
Postwar amendments completely reordered federal/state relations, but it doesn't seem to matter to the High Court.
Ok, enlighten me here. Is Kevin being sarcastic in his post-script?
"Podhoretz's real beef with the left has always been over patriotism: This ‘woke’ business—critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, all of it—is just pure anti-American hatred."
Is he tongue-in-cheek? Or is he serious? Did he write patriotism so we giggle and replace with racism? Or did he earnestly write patriotism, meaning patriotism.
Maybe you didn't read completely to the end?
Perhaps also worth noting: the examples of anti-Americanism that immediately pop into his head are all race based.
now i'm legitimately confused as to whether kevin's post was lserious or sarcastic. i missed that line, which makes it seem sarcastic. but kevin also doesn't usually do "tongue-in-cheek" posts and has been regularly downplaying racism as a driver of the right wing / GOP.
What you've missed is that the part starting with "This woke business..." is a quote from Podhoretz.
Somewhere in the future I think it's likely historians will treat Podhoretz-ism and Trumpism in exactly the opposite way as the WSJ article does.
In other words, for now we are interested in how various "conservatives" have responded to Trumpism. Are they okay with it? Or not?
But I suspect the really interesting point is much different: how much did neo-conservatism, as exemplified by Podhoretz in the 80s, along with a bunch of others, prepare the ground in the Republican party for Trumpism?
I would say neo-conservatism is awfully similar to Trumpism, with the key difference being that Trump was the right guy to sell it to the working class, as opposed to the early neo-cons, who were all bespectacled Ivy League types of the sort the MAGAs say they hate. Podhoretz was never going to chant "Build the Wall!" much as he might have been seconding that emotion.
In retrospect, I think we can see the neo-cons (who started as "liberals" in the 50s, as Podhoretz notes) who turned away from the Democratic Party over Vietnam (the neo-cons thought we should fight communism to the death wherever we found it, and at whatever cost) and civil rights (the neo-cons thought we shouldn't "give everything away to the Blacks", basically). That's a big chunk of Trumpism right there.
In sum, Podhoretz leads to Trump; so of course he likes him. He just -- like most "conservatives" -- took a while to get used to the garish cheesy Trump style.
Sorry, this overlong sentence was missing a final clause... it should have been:
In retrospect, I think we can see the neo-cons (who started as "liberals" in the 50s, as Podhoretz notes) who turned away from the Democratic Party over Vietnam (the neo-cons thought we should fight communism to the death wherever we found it, and at whatever cost) and civil rights (the neo-cons thought we shouldn't "give everything away to the Blacks", basically), clearly made Trumpism intellectually respectable before Trump came along.
I mean they started lying to themselves in 1932 and have never stopped
Wasn't neoconservativism of 20-30 years ago much more open to people like Francis Fukuyama? The neo-cons of the 20th century seemed much more connected to a love of liberal democracy, and being willing to spread it by force if necessary. That's the opposite of a populist like Trump, who couldn't care less about liberal democracy, and who sees foreign military intervention solely through the lens of glory and profit.
Funny, despite his history and claims otherwise Podhoretz has always seemed to me like a person who has had a very narrow experience of the world. I get the feeling his basic attitudes toward blacks were formed when he was getting bullied in Brooklyn as a kid and that this never really changed despite plenty of opportunities for different encounters and experiences later in life. In the WSJ article there's a reference to his claim that his best friends in the army were backwoods rednecks which also rings hollow, as if that first realization as a NY city boy in the army that a redneck from Georgia was also a fellow human being
now gave him a deep understanding of all rural southerners. This is a guy who said to Gore Vidal "To me, the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the War of the Roses". Not sure he really understood those rednecks very well. And his view of the left seems to have been formed by his association with a very parochial group of New York lefties of a specific generation, a view to this day he seems to have not modified one whit. In short for a man who has all the credentials of a smart person he comes off as kind of stupid.
Podhoretz is a senile old goat who should have retired to Boca Raton years ago.
this is just more evidence to support my belief that all culture war battles are actually just skirmishes in the larger struggle for racial equality
No... they hate you viscerally no matter if you are white or black or whatever. If you are not with them you are the enemy. Giving this a racial motivation is not, I think, appropriate because they hate white guys like me as much as they hate the Niggers.
Right. To them you and I are not real Americans.
Well what the heck... I'm OK with civil war. What's the point of further coexistence with these freaks? It's time to kill baby hitler.
You shouldn't want it because the left always loses. The left is too disorganized and pacifist to win.
Let me get this straight...
Humping the flag--real patriotism.
Trying to leave up to our ideals--anti-American.
Just like families values.
Multiple marriages. Multiple mistresses.
why do I trust my hands to type what I'm thinking...
live up to, not leave up to...though maybe Canada is not so bad (just need to fine me some money...)
Wait till Podhoretz finds out what his new allies really think about people with names like Podhoretz
Yes, but it's very "patriotically" expressed anti-Semitism. (sarcasm)
Billy Graham discourses on Jews in the Oval Office with Nixon scene.
Podhoretz is like 91 years old, and a scan through his superficial wikipedia shows that he, like many 90 year olds, get less and less analytical and have less and less empathy the older they get.
I mean, how else can you explain Guiliani?
The only good think about Trump has nothing to do with Trump.
You can now tell exactly what the Republican base thinks.
The anti immigration people don't want any more non-white immigrants.
The racists, and the misogynists, and the anti LGTBQ crowd don't want to be either told they are racists, treated like racists, or pay any price for what they feel are their person rights to discriminate.
The anti abortion people believe life begins at conception.
The "taxation is theft" crowd, are, to be sure, morons, but there is no level of taxation as to which they would be happy, so there.
The "anti-socialists" are also, to be sure, morons, but they would rather die, literally, than have government health care, so there.
If that's not enough, even for someone not in any of the above-mentioned groups, if you want to pwon the libs, well, maybe that makes you the biggest moron (since you don't actually gain anythingd by pwoning a lib or several million), but for sure Trump is your guy.
The combination of those groups is depressingly large -- that's the lesson of Trump's appeal. Other than the low taxes he didn't care about any of that crap, but he sure knew how to identify a mark to be conned when he sees one.
Low taxes for himself. The rest he doesn't care so much about.
At this point I suspect that Guiliani was always a stooge for the mob and has always essentially been an organized crime figure. He's also always been an obnoxious a$$hole.
Trump has plenty of empathy. He intuitively understands how the yokels feel and how to stir them up.
Reading your blog I can't help but notice that you're categorically dismissive of the perspectives of the woke left but willing to uncritically take the perspectives of the insurrectionist right at face value.
Whatever specific point you're trying to make here is lost in baggage of that starting premise.
He's just telling you what one old right wing idiot thinks. He's not expressing agreement with the guy.
Are we sure about that?
Kevin Drum seems to be going Friedersdorf since even before he left MoJo.
Yes. Kevin has expressed that he thinks the beginning of being able to counter this type of national conservatism is to find out what they think/believe. The fact that it's wrong doesn't mean they don't believe it. And the only way to counter that belief is to know what it actually is. You can't just look at what people like Podhoretz write and dismiss it as garbage because they believe it. You have to meet people where they're at or you're never going to be able to change their minds.
Now, I don't know that it is possible to change their minds. I'm pretty sure that we're going to either have a real insurgency/war or we're going to lose our democracy completely within the next 20ish years.
Yes but Kevin has been moving right for maybe 5 years
Better a war of all against all -- and that is what it would be. The militaries of the various states are far too weak to do much against a large citizen uprising -- than an incompetent tin-pot Dick-tater like Trump.
"...but I don’t see it as a prelude to a civil war and 600,000 Americans dead."
Trmp's disastrous COVID response has already surpassed that Civil War dead number.
Biden 400k dead
Trump 400k dead
It's amusing and sad that Podhoretz justifies trumpism to himself as a great patriotic understanding that they need to destroy the constitution and laws to save this great white nation.
The simpler explanation is that the former guy is simply in it for himself, like he's been his entire life since childhood; that he's a lifelong con man (real estate, anyone?); that his only desires are amassing money, power, and attention and escaping punishment. And he will tear down the system, absolute scorched earth, in order to achieve these goals.
trumpism isn't a principaled revolt. It isn't for wimpy New York dude Podhoretz, nor for the great unwashed deplorables who power it. It's all for trump.
"It's also worth noting that, at its core, Podhoretz's real beef with the left has always been over patriotism."
Lack of jingoism and chauvinism perhaps, not patriotism. There is a difference.
I would also say that Kevin is correct in his trial balloon that the current Repub base believes we are in some sort of "battle for America."
Kevin is correct in the following sense. For a good 150 years, the only thing that made "America" was that it was a refuge for white Europeans looking for a big ass country smack in the middle of the Guns, Germs and Steel latitudes, protected by two oceans, bordering two countries who were not smack in the middle of any
Guns Germs and Steel latitudes - Mexico far too tropical and Canada too cold.
With the actual native Americans wiped out, it was free land for the taking.
Much of Europe got rid of their Monarchies about on the same timeline as the US, so really, its not as if the US had some sort of unique governmental structure.
Or, to put it another way, it wasn't our governmental structure which made us "great."
America was always built on immigration, but fast forward to today and there is an actual risk that the US will be truly multi-cultural.
Certainly, the only first world power that is so, unless you count the EU, which is a new experiment.
Are people simply too hard wired to hate "the other?" If so, red America is ripe for propaganda that Liberals, Gays, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and whomever else is "the other" and everyone ought to just get down to the biz of assimilating white WASP culture expanded to include Catholics and Evangelicals.
I believe, and I say to the very limit of boredom, that the Trump/Repub base know that they are losing what they feel is cultural America.
That is correct, they are losing. And they obviously don't like it. Maybe they have already lost.
Here's a question, I believe if you floated a ballot proposition in California to simply let the former Confederacy go it would pass.
Oh, they've definitely already lost. They'll make the rest of us miserable for the next 30 years while they mostly die off, but they've lost. The under 40 crowd is more liberal than even the hippies of the 60's. They've tossed gender out of their collective world view. People just are. They don't care so much about Roe falling because they're sure they can get abortion pills mailed to them if need be. Hell, they'll probably be available on Amazon in 10 years.
I can't say I appreciate the culture of Young America, but they are radically different from us Olds. Conservatives are drawing their last checks from the bank of relevance. Things look bleak right now, we just have to wait a few years.
I agree generally.
But the question is, how "miserable?"
I can easily see distributing or taking a morning after pill as felony murder in Alabama in my lifetime.
If Mississippi has anything to say about it, poor black people will never, ever get any sort of government health care now or ever.
If Texas has anything to say about it, not only will there be oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but Texas will join OPEC.
If Georgia has anything to say about it, attempting to form a union will be a felony.
Great comments, Yikes and Art Eclectic. A big concern right now, even if liberalism is likely to win out in the long run, is that perverting elections, tossing out votes, legislatively nullifying the popular vote, will become routine and something that the left starts to do rather than be submerged forever. Following our democratic norms has really been something that's made the US unusual in the world. It looks so shaky right now.
Not sure how you can conclude this. Here are how whites voted in the 2020 presidential election:
Whites age 18-29: Biden 44%, Trump 53%
Whites age 30-44: Biden 41%, Trump 57%
Whites age 45-59: Biden 38%, Trump 61%
Whites age 60 and older: Biden 42%, Trump 57%
You forget that the 18-29 year old cohort is majority minority, so IF Hispanics "get it" that they can NEVER REALLY BE members of the Country Club, not matter how hard they work and how much money they have, the Doom of the Republican party is sealed unless they straighten up their bigotry.
Now enough Hispanics might be small business owners suckered into the "pro-business" blathering of the R's, so it's not in the bag, but if Democrats stop talking like Sociology professors and deliver market reforms protecting small businesses, they'll do well in the long run.
Of course it would pass, and in Oregon, Washington, New York and New England. The Mid-West is too fond of their Florida vacations, though, and would vote "No".
Maybe he just likes war. Or thinks he will like war. The wars very far away were kind of unsatisfying so why not try one right outside his door!
Fool.
Late to the party as usual.
"Podhoretz's real beef with the left has always been over patriotism:
Only if one defines patriotism with Zionism.
He's never gotten the time he was working in the White House and a staffer referred to him as "John Normansson".
IIRC, back in the late 50s or early 60s, Podhoretz proposed in utter seriousness in the pages of Commentary that the solution to our racial divide was for white people to nobly marry people of color (having black people in mind then).
Race??l please. Trump IS another neoconservative. When are you idiots going to get it. Zionism is Zionism. My "real" version of whiteness would inflict damage on this jew. Woke bloke. He is woke, as is Trump.
Supporting and admiring Trump, a wannabe authoritarian, is about as anti-American and unpatriotic as you can get. So the left wants a bigger welfare state? Oh, so scary, how could we ever survive that? An existential threat - really?
Yes, the extreme "anti-racist" stuff from many on the left is ultra annoying - and yeah a lot of people on the left think the US is a crappy country - but that is no reason to embrace Trump. You beat this brand by giving a more optimistic and positive view of the country to oppose the anti-racist narratives. Instead, the view of Trumpists is bleak: degenerate monsters called Democrats are out to destroy the country, and the Deep State and Lyin' Media are in cahoots with them. Trying to win elections based on dark conspiracy theories is pretty dumb politics in the long run. At least I sure hope so.
"the threat to America is so great that virtually anything is justified"
That's close to the Claremont Institute stance. Wikipedia:
The Claremont Institute has published an essay by a fellow calling for a "counter-revolution" against the "majority of people living in the United States today [who] can no longer be considered fellow citizens
You're right Norman, but you made a Freudian slip. It IS "anti-AmericAN" hatred, not "anti-AmericA" hatred, which is what I think you meant to claim. But Your Little Demon twisted your tongue.
And just to be clear, one example of the "anti-AmericAN[s]" we hate are wanna-be Episcopalian Hymies like you.
And your 1858 allusion was very a propos. GUN UP DEMS; these azzoles mean to kill you.