This is my piece from the past issue of The GW Patriot. It was written as a counter-point to a piece by the president of GW’s YAF (Young America’s Foundation) chapter. That issue can be found here. I’ll post my piece here as well. Enjoy:

Conservative political theorist and literary critic Russell Kirk, writing the introduction to his 1953 classic “The Conservative Mind,” described the state of conservatism then as follows: “By and large, radical thinkers have won the day. For a century and a half, conservatives have yielded ground in a manner which, except for occasionally successful rear-guard actions, must be described as a rout.” Kirk’s work, described by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. as the primary source of modern conservatism, without which “a dominant conservative movement in America” was inconceivable, tied conservatism to the work of Edmund Burke in Europe and John Adams in the United States. Kirk valued “voluntary community” over “involuntary collectivism,” and cited “the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions” as central to a conservative government. Kirk, who privately suggested that George Bush Sr. be hanged on the front lawn of the White House for America’s first oil war would feel quite out of place in the new (read: neo) conservative movement.

Conservatism has become so distorted that its intellectual fathers would no longer recognize it. Conservatives that claim to adhere to the US Constitution have little to say about the numerous undeclared wars undertaken since World War II. Conservatives that claim to respect our ancestral statesmen bow to globalism and ignore George Washington’s advice to stay out of “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” Conservatives that believe American world hegemony is essential for world stability–or those that even believe that world stability should be an aim of the American Republic–ignore the words of John Quincy Adams warning America against going “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Abraham Lincoln described conservatism as “adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried,” but those words ring hollow against neoconservatism’s gross expansion of government and its complacency in corporate America’s destruction of small-town America.

Since “The Conservative Mind” was published, the decline of conservatism has accelerated, with the relatively short-lived and overrated Reagan years as the primary exception. Liberalism’s ascent continued through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, and eventually infiltrated intellectual conservatism itself with the rise of neoconservatism. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were two neoconservative thinkers that abandoned the Left due to its moral relativism and insufficiently interventionist foreign policy and found a new home on the Right.

Despite hundreds of years of American foreign policy tradition, from Eisenhower internationalism to Revolution-era isolationism, men such as Kristol and Podhoretz effectively hijacked the Bush White House in the aftermath of 9/11 and replaced those traditions with go-it-alone militarism. Under this new doctrine, the only way America can ensure its safety is by preemptively destroying or isolating any perceived enemy. It requires the maintenance and continued expansion of a vast imperium of military bases stretching the globe, occupying hundreds of countries and expending billions of dollars. Fiscal conservatism be-damned, the New Right looks to continually hike the military budget and build new bases while attacking bills written by politicians such as Jim Webb of Virginia that propose increases in veterans benefits. How is this conservative?

Still left unaddressed is the three trillion dollar War in Iraq, an effective case study in the faults of modern conservatism. Blood shed for material self-interest, billions of dollars unaccounted for, corruption, and plans to build more bases in Iraq for, as the presumptive “conservative” candidate has stated, “fifty to a hundred years,” are all symptoms of the neoconservative rot on the conservative movement. All this, waged by a “compassionate conservative” president that in 2000 promised a “humble foreign policy.”

What about those conservatives that support a rolling back of the American Empire, the shrinking of the American State, adherence to the American tradition of self-accountability—for both individuals and corporations? They are labeled as selfish, small-minded, ignorant, appeasers of Islamofascism. Indeed the term “islamofascism” itself is indicative of the anti-intellectual nature of the movement. Are Americans really supposed to believe that Palestinian nationalists, Sunni Islamist terrorists, Shi’ite radicals, Ba’athist insurgents, and the government of Iran are all homogenous in the threat they pose to the United States? Yet my friends at the Young Americans Foundation hold their “Islamofascism Awareness Week” every year, meant only to stir the hornets nest of progressive activists on campus.

The GW Patriot is different. At the Patriot one finds an intellectually diverse group of students, from anarcho-libertarians to backwards-traditionalists to Republican party hacks to Forever War supporters. We argue and debate amongst ourselves, but are (almost) always congenial and intellectual. And we hope to offer a forum for non-leftists of any stripe to voice their opinions, no matter how uncouth or taboo they may be. We also hope to offer a unique perspective on campus events. From the SA presidential race to inner-CR politics to race-baiting on campus, the Patriot serves to open minds and stir controversy. The Patriot has done this for almost seven years, and will continue to do so for as long as we are allowed to.

So I returned last night from my road trip to Charleston, South Carolina. It is spring break at GW, and a couple friends and I wanted to experience life in a free state for a few days and, since one of us has family in SC, it was a trip that made sense. I will most likely comment on it more later, but all I’ll say is that the dizzying life of living in a big city is easily cured by off-roading over a hundred acres of swampy farmland, firing guns at a small town gun club, and having cigars and mint juleps in a Charleston cigar bar.

I also met up with Jack Hunter and Dylan Hales for lunch while in Charleston, and although I was about an hour late (sorry guys), I had an excellent time talking to them about the budding alternate Right. I also saw Jack’s cover band, Dante’s Camaro, perform on St. Patrick’s day, and my friends and I had a fantastic time. I will be returning to beautiful Charleston as soon as I can.

A piece on Alan Moore’s rabid anti-state views is coming soon.

Take care.

-PJF-

I just realized two things. One, for some odd reason, my “About” section was riddled with grammar errors. Inexcusable! And two, it was very dated. Here is the new one, in case you didn’t know anything about me:

Patrick is a 4th year student at The George Washington University, studying political science and philosophy. He has worked for The GW Patriot for the past 3 years, and he has been editor-in-chief since June, 2007. He interned at The American Conservative magazine, where he edited, blogged, and worked on a research piece. He is also Deputy Editor of Young American Revolution, the publication of Young Americans for Liberty.

Though Patrick’s political views are hard to pigeon-hole, he considers himself an anarcho-traditionalist, a localist libertarian, and an anti-statist with a strong distaste for libertinism and an increasingly vulgar American culture.

Patrick was born in Philadelphia, PA, and grew up in the Northeast. Side interests include Philadelphia sports (especially the Phillies), the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, New-Urbanism, small-scale hardcore punk music, and living as free of technology as possible.

The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have in their turns proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! ~ Edmund Burke, 1756

Edmund Burke as a political theorist has been discovered, adopted, stolen, distorted, readopted, exiled, recovered, and rediscovered time and again by men of all political stripes. But a universally ignored piece authored by Burke suggests that Burke was at heart a radical anti-statist.

Having read and discarded many of these interpretations over time, I scoffed when a friend sent me the great anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard’s interpretation of the young Edmund Burke’s political theory. Suffice it to say (I am indeed writing about it, aren’t I?), I found it significantly more fascinating and convincing than those other half-baked interpretations of the brilliant Irishman’s philosophy. Rothbard sets his sights on Burke’s oft-ignored debut, Vindication of Natural Society:

Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke’s other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.

The hyphenated text that began this post is taken directly from Vindication, and the text speaks for itself:

All Empires have been cemented in Blood; and in those early Periods when the Race of Mankind began first to form themselves into Parties and Combinations, the first Effect of the Combination, and indeed the End for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, is their mutual Destruction. All ancient History is dark and uncertain. One thing however is clear. There were Conquerors, and Conquests, in those Days; and consequently, all that Devastation, by which they are formed, and all that Oppression by which they are maintained.

Here is Burke, a man decried by libertarians as a statist, declaring that the history of all States and their relationship with one another is a history of horrible war and oppression. He says that, although there are historical examples of benevolent relations between nation-states, it “does not afford Matter enough to fill ten Pages.” Instead, we are left with the declaration that “[w]ar is the Matter which fills all History, and consequently the only, or almost the only View in which we can see the External of political Society, is in a hostile Shape; and the only Actions, to which we have always seen, and still see all of them intent, are such, as tend to the Destruction of one another.” These are radical words for a man always cited for his prudence.

The common explanation for Burke’s uncharacteristic radicalism is that he wrote it as political satire. He said so himself when it became clear that he was the author (he published it anonymously). But Rothbard questions Burke’s explanation due to its suspicious circumstances and its all too convenient timing:

His own belated explanation was that the Vindication was a satire on the views of rationalist Deists like Lord Bolingbroke, demonstrating that a devotion to reason and an attack on revealed religion can logically eventuate in a subversive attack on the principle of government itself. Burke’s host of biographers and followers have tended to adopt his explanation uncritically. Yet they hurry on and rarely mention his Vindication in their discussions of Burke, and with good reason. For the work is a most embarrassing one. Careful reading reveals hardly a trace of irony or satire. In fact, it is a very sober and earnest treatise, written in his characteristic style. Indeed, Burke’s biographers have commented on the failure of the work as irony, without raising the fundamental question whether it was really meant to be irony at all.

Burke’s own explanation, in fact, is not a very plausible one. He was not given to satire, and rarely attempted such writing in later years. The Vindication was published anonymously when Burke was 27 years old. Nine years later, after his authorship had been discovered, Burke found himself about to embark on his famous Parliamentary career. To admit that he had seriously held such views in earlier years would have been politically disastrous.

Rothbard is spot on. A careful reading of Vindication reveals little use of irony, or the intent to use it. Burke is renowned as a brilliant writer and thinker, yet we are to believe that he wrote a piece of satire where almost no satire is found in the text? Isn’t it possible that he did indeed intend this to be a radical look at the state, and later found it a significant obstacle to holding office in said state? It is possible, but I can only buy this argument on one condition. I, unlike Rothbard, have an appreciation for Burke’s later works. I refuse to believe that Burke could so passionately and convincingly attack the state and later rid himself of those inclinations completely. So it becomes a question of whether Burke the anarchist can be found inside his later, anti-revolutionary writings.

An analysis of Burke’s writings and speeches show that he had an affinity for liberty his entire life and almost always saw the State as the enemy of freedom and of traditional order. In 1775, for instance, Burke appears surprised (some would say he feigns surprise) when studying the existence of a peaceful and orderly anarchy in Massachusetts in his Conciliation with the Colonies speech:

“We were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect, of anarchy [in Massachusetts] would instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges, without executive magistrates. . . “

Indeed Burke admired the Massachusetts colony. Although it was devoid of government interference, morality was governed by custom and tradition. The citizens took care of one another through apparatuses such as volunteer fire department and a local militia, yet there was very little crime. For someone like Burke, citing his love of order and tradition does not act as a counterargument to his apparent disdain for government. On the contrary, he saw it as destructive to custom and culture. Morality is a high priority for any society, but it cannot be pushed by government. “It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, leaving much to free will…” said Burke, “than to attempt to make men machines and instruments of political benevolence.”

Burke was no populist, but throughout his life he extolled the virtues of liberty and free enterprise. “Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do,” said Burke. And he asserted that “true danger” comes when “liberty is nibbled away” by government. These are not the words of a right-wing statist. They are the words of what could not be considered a libertarian traditionalist, a man who saw the state as almost always evil yet would never accept libertinism in society or culture. Political society is always a battle between the individual and the state, said Burke, and he made his opinions known in the following manner:

“I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.”

I previously mentioned Burke’s appreciation for the free market. Burke felt that “The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted,” and “to provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government.” “Property was not made by government, but government by and for it,” said Burke, and “one is primary and self-existent; the other is secondary and derivative.” This is not simply a discriminant selection of Burke quotes. Throughout his writing on order and tradition there is a deep vein of appreciation for ordered liberty and freedom. Remember, anarchy does not mean the absence of order, but the absence of governors. Very rarely do you find Burke extolling virtue in government action.

This is not just another rethinking of Burke’s thought. He was very clearly a libertarian traditionalist; an Anarcho-Conservative.

After a long sick period and a hectic schedule around CPAC, I am back and will be writing full-time again. I know I have said as much a couple times before, but I’m serious this time!

In the works:
* A piece on CPAC for the Young American Revolution
* Pieces for NA in the works:

- The Danger of FOX’s “24″
- Burke the Anarcho-Conservative
- Libertarianism’s Rise at CPAC, Welcomes this Traditionalist
- Alan Moore: Enemy of the State

I’m sure you all just can’t contain your excitement. Start commenting again so I know you’re still out there.

A great anti-war song from my favorite songwriter of the underground.

Hello, everyone. I have some pretty cool things to explain my lack of posting of late.

First…

Yes! I had the opportunity to sit down with Ron Paul for about a half-hour on behalf of the great group Young Americans for Liberty. We discussed several things, such as his future plans, advice for liberty-minded college students, and rumors that he is writing a new book(!!). He was gracious and unintimidating, and I was made to feel pretty comfortable, especially considering I knew I was interviewing an American hero.

Second, I recently had an editorial published in GW’s “newspaper of record”, the GW Hatchet. You can find the editorial here.

Third, I was invited to blog for YAL, and intend on dedicating some of my posts to that. I of course will not abandon the NA and am increasingly humbled by the surprisingly nice things that have been said about my writing here.

Fourth and final, a new issue of the GW Patriot is (finally) coming out. I know this blog is read more by folks I know outside of school, but I have an article about the Old Right at GW and my Conservative Case for Nader is going to be added to the Patriot’s web content. Of course, you can read it here right now!

Thanks for staying with me, everyone! I’ll be in touch.

I’m working on a few pieces for different publications (mostly small and local) but just thought I would go on the record and say that I have never been so appalled by the security state as I am this weekend. I need to carry a copy of my lease if I walk a few blocks down the street to guarantee I will be able to return home. I am also subject to pat-downs upon re-entrance.

“What would Patrick Henry say? Give me liberty, or give me the HBO cable package.” -Bill Kauffman

For a glimpse into exactly what is wrong with the modern Right, all one has to do is make a quick visit to The Weekly Standard and take a brief sampling of the major stories for the week. We have support for a major stimulus plan involving an increase in federal spending (on national defense, of course), two gushing pieces on our favorite sneering snake and a piece mourning the return to a constitutional role for the Vice President that may come with Biden, and a piece outlining the shocking revelation that Russia may use energy policy to influence other countries (“We’ll use our influence to protect the homeland”).

But the piece by which the rest pale in comparison is bespectacled Barnes’ recent revisionist defense of the Bush presidency (a sequel to “Rebel in Chief“?). In it he lists the ten major things President Bush “got right” and one can tell this is going to be the chorus on the Right amongst Bush apologists. Half of them refer in some way to Bush’s global terrorism crusade, four of them praise major expansions in the federal government. Let’s examine them (with my comments in bold):

1. Bush had ten great achievements (and maybe more) in his eight years in the White House, starting with his decision in 2001 to jettison the Kyoto global warming treaty so loved by Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans. The treaty was a disaster, with India and China exempted and economic decline the certain result. Everyone knew it. But only Bush said so and acted accordingly. In this case Barnes is right. Of course, he couldn’t make an intelligent point without referring to “Al Gore, the environmental lobby, elite opinion, and Europeans.” Bush’s bucking of international pressure to support a damaging environmental policy that allowed opt-outs for other major powers was admirable.

2. Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know. But, as Charles Krauthammer said recently, “Those are precisely the elements which kept us safe and which have prevented a second attack.” It didn’t take long for Barnes to get to one of Bush’s most frontally dangerous policy legacies. In support of this policy Barnes cites the one case it may have actually worked (Crucial intelligence was obtained from captured al Qaeda leaders, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with the help of waterboarding). He also suggests that whether it is torture or not is irrelevant, because it is necessary. Yikes. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. More power to the central state to “protect us” from boogie-men. This is conservative?

3. Bush’s third achievement was the rebuilding of presidential authority, badly degraded in the era of Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton. He didn’t hesitate to conduct wireless surveillance of terrorists without getting a federal judge’s okay. He decided on his own how to treat terrorists and where they should be imprisoned. Those were legitimate decisions for which the president, as commander in chief, should feel no need to apologize. “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it,” James Madison cautioned. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.” Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that, even in times of hostility, a president’s decision to act militarily beyond what Congress had authorized was “unlawful.” The Bush Doctrine hopes to overturn this American tradition.

4. Achievement number four was Bush’s unswerving support for Israel. Reagan was once deemed Israel’s best friend in the White House. Now Bush can claim the title. He ostracized Yasser Arafat as an impediment to peace in the Middle East. This infuriated the anti-Israel forces in Europe, the Third World, and the United Nations, and was criticized by champions of the “peace process” here at home. Bush was right. He was clever in his support. Bush announced that Ariel Sharon should withdraw the tanks he’d sent into the West Bank in 2002, then exerted zero pressure on Sharon to do so. And he backed the wall along Israel’s eastern border without endorsing it as an official boundary, while knowing full well that it might eventually become exactly that. He was a loyal friend. No comment.

5. His fifth success was No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education reform bill cosponsored by America’s most prominent liberal Democratic senator Edward Kennedy. The teachers’ unions, school boards, the education establishment, conservatives adamant about local control of schools–they all loathed the measure and still do. It requires two things they ardently oppose, mandatory testing and accountability. Is Barnes so indifferent towards small-government conservatives that he believes they ardently oppose NCLB because of “mandatory testing and accountability”? I think conservatives are a bit more concerned with the gross expansion of executive power and the erosion of American federalism.

6. Sixth, Bush declared in his second inaugural address in 2005 that American foreign policy (at least his) would henceforth focus on promoting democracy around the world. This put him squarely in the Reagan camp, but he was lambasted as unrealistic, impractical, and a tool of wily neoconservatives. The new policy gave Bush credibility in pressing for democracy in the former Soviet republics and Middle East and in zinging various dictators and kleptocrats. It will do the same for President Obama, if he’s wise enough to hang onto it. The free election and democracy building experiment has been a huge success, says Barnes, without too much evidence to support such an audacious claim (other than Bush’s ability to “zing[?]” dictators). Never mind the victories had by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hezbollah through free elections in the Middle East. We are meant to believe this is all good for America and her interests.

7. The seventh achievement is the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It’s not only wildly popular; it has cost less than expected by triggering competition among drug companies. Conservatives have deep reservations about the program. But they shouldn’t have been surprised. Bush advocated the drug benefit in the 2000 campaign. And if he hadn’t acted, Democrats would have, with a much less attractive result. How about the possibility of Republicans offering a conservative alternative to big-government prescription drug plans? Barnes seems uninterested in this alternative. Instead, a plan sold as costing 400 billion when in reality it cost at least 534 billion is heralded as a success by the “conservative” Barnes. Skepticism of entitlement programs, be damned! This isn’t Reagan we’re talking about.

8. Then there were John Roberts and Sam Alito. In putting them on the Supreme Court and naming Roberts chief justice, Bush achieved what had eluded Richard Nixon, Reagan, and his own father. Roberts and Alito made the Court indisputably more conservative. And the good news is Roberts, 53, and Alito, 58, should be justices for decades to come. While recent decisions regarding treatment of detainees have been disappointing, this is another Bush success in my eyes, though Barnes seems afraid to bring up the life issue. Roberts and Alito are two avowed pro-lifers, and despite Bush’s shaky attempt at cronyism, he deserves credit for his two picks.

9. Bush’s ninth achievement has been widely ignored. He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China. On top of that, he forged strong ties with India. An important factor was their common enemy, Islamic jihadists. After 9/11, Bush made the most of this, and Indian leaders were receptive. His state dinner for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 was a lovefest. This is another claim that is lax on details. What has Bush done to strengthen the relationship other than host a “lovefest”? A common enemy can bring allies together, but how much of the credit belongs to Bush then? How are our relationships with Japan, South kroea, and Australia significantly better than they were under Clinton, and how is Bush responsible?

10. Finally, a no-brainer: the surge. Bush prompted nearly unanimous disapproval in January 2007 when he announced he was sending more troops to Iraq and adopting a new counterinsurgency strategy. His opponents initially included the State Department, the Pentagon, most of Congress, the media, the foreign policy establishment, indeed the whole world. This makes his decision a profile in courage. Best of all, the surge worked. Iraq is now a fragile but functioning democracy. To readers of the Standard, Barnes doesn’t ened to present evidence that the surge has “worked.” But this has been thoroughly repudiated a million times over, least of all by yours truly. Read that for a significant response.

Bush critics on both spectrums should get used ot this type of defense. Like the president it hopes to defend, the defense lacks detail and substance, and is built on rhetoric and misleading half-truths, if not outright lies. But what should concern traditional conservatives is this world we seem to live in, where Bush was an ultra-conservative president, and his defenders just as conservative. This is a world where big is better than small, new is better than old… left is right and up is down. We have resided in this world for years, but with Republicans and neocons intent on forgetting or outright ignoring the mistakes of the past eight years, there is no end in sight.

…according to the Wall Street Journal, in a piece by George E. Bisharat. Bisharat writes with great moral clarity, outlining the precise timeline leading up to the current conflict and putting the toll taken by both sides into proper perspective. A quick excerpt (you should read the whole thing):

Israel has also failed to adequately discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets. Israel’s American-made F-16s and Apache helicopters have destroyed mosques, the education and justice ministries, a university, prisons, courts and police stations. These institutions were part of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. And when nonmilitary institutions are targeted, civilians die. Many killed in the last week were young police recruits with no military roles. Civilian employees in the Hamas-led government deserve the protections of international law like all others. Hamas’s ideology — which employees may or may not share — is abhorrent, but civilized nations do not kill people merely for what they think.