Neoconservatism, Islam and Ideology:

[HawkerHurricane]

Neoconservatism, Islam and Ideology:
The Real Culture War

an article by David Brin, Ph.D.

Traditional American conservatives must come to grips with what has happened to their movement. While old-style libertarians like William F. Buckley and Gingrich-era combatants such as Pat Buchanan and John McCain blink in astonishment, even dismay, the very definition of "conservative" has been shattered and the word taken over by a new brand of neoconservatism that has proved fundamentally different, though fantastically effective (so far) at seizing power in the world's greatest democracy.

Demonstrating that history is too weird ever to have been made up, the new 21st Century Neoconservatism has forged a bizarre alliance among several major groups with very little discernable ideological common ground, other than a shared hatred of "liberals." That is, there appears to be very little common ground, until you probe more deeply.

What could possibly unite this coalition whose chief components are:

A sub-set of aristocrats seeking (with great success) to use government as a free source of new wealth.

A sub-set of messianic "Left Behind" Christianity that actively hungers for a final confrontation between Good and Evil, culminating in a stage-drama end of the world predicted in Revelations.

A movement of doctrine-focused intellectuals -- many of whom are neither Christians nor aristocrats -- pushing a particularly aggressive version of nationalism with a theoretical, neo-platonic basis and its own fervid sense of non-religious but messianic mission.

http://www.davidbrin.com/neoromantics.html

[Nothing Without Hope]

1. Re delusion, insanity, and the 2nd Coming - I also recommend Bill Moyers'

recent piece, which is linked to and discussed in this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3053395

Very, very scary stuff. Thanks for posting this!

[nashville_brook]

2. OMG! what a great article! i love this passage:

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell portrayed a future world divided into hostile zones, each dominated by dogmatic oligarchies that were free of accountability, keeping their nations in perpetual, futile war so that the prols would stay distracted from the real enemy, which was dogmatic oligarchy itself. (See "The Self-Preventing Prophecy," below.) The only beneficiaries of such artificial hostility were the oligarchs themselves. That is exactly what the neocons would do with their "cultural war" against liberalism and against the Muslim World.

We must learn to recognize this trick -- one of the most basic used by tyrants, ever since Gilgamesh. We can recognize it and then turn to our own arsenal. Calm. Patience. Accountability. Passionate eagerness to keep trying new ways to save the world, while flexibly abandoning methods that fail. Turning away from nostalgia and worship of the past, in favor of improving tomorrow, step-by-step.

it's what i'm after in lots of the stuff i'm writing lately. here's the most recent:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1571558

the basic idea is "open your eyes." i haven't used the language of the enlightenment in so long, i didn't even see that that's what i was after -- but that's the crux. ACCOUNTABILITY works when OUR EYES can be trusted which can only happen when people rebel agasint DOGMA. i see that even the LEFT is adhereing to the administration's DOGMA. open your eyes, re-frame -- their lies are not NOBLE/ there is not virtue in their class. as the stakes are too high to turn away.