Taking the Fight to the Enemy: Neoconservatism and the Age of IdeologyNeoconservatism is more of a disposition than a single political theory, but it is an attitude that has had a profound impact on the broader conservative effort in the United States since the Fifties. It is a unique blend of skepticism and fortitude about a host of wide-ranging issues, spanning culture, economics, and national defense. This book looks at six “neoconservative” intellectuals—Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer—and the intellectual influences on their thinking about the defects of communism, fascism, progressivism, the dominant American culture, and even capitalism itself. This book looks at the gestation of political criticism within the pages of the neoconservatives’ own writings, as well as the books they read and the thinkers they either learned from or came to fear. The book looks at the ways in which the neoconservatives adapted Lenin’s formula for success to conservative efforts in the United States, arguing that neoconservatism is an “anti-ideology ideology,” in that it considers a “New Class” of professional, ideologically motivated reformers to be the greatest problem facing the United States because of their increased efforts to technocratize ordinary life, their moral relativism, their efforts to usurp human nature and supplant it with their own utopian visions, their anti-Americanism, and their unwillingness to face imminent dangers threatening the American way of life. The book argues that the neoconservative political strategy is to “take the fight to the enemy.” |
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
Chapter 02 God and Man at the City College of New York | 51 |
Chapter 03 After the Apocalypse | 71 |
Chapter 04 The Gulf Beyond Radicalism | 103 |
Chapter 05 High Low and Modern | 125 |
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Taking the Fight to the Enemy: Neoconservatism and the Age of Ideology Adam L. Fuller Limited preview - 2012 |
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adversary culture American argued Aron became become believed bourgeois Buckley Bush Doctrine capitalism capitalist century civil class Commentary communism communist conflict conservatism conservative considered counterculture critics Daniel Bell defense democracy democratic economic education Elliot Cohen enemy essay fact fascism foreign policy freedom Gertrude Himmelfarb God That Failed government history human ideas ideology influence intellectual Iraq Irving Kristol Islamic Israel issue Jaffa Jewish Jews Journal Judaism justice Kristol wrote Laskell Left Leo Strauss liberal Lionel Trilling magazine Marx Marxist Midge Decter modern moral Morgenthau movement Nathan Glazer National Interest National Review natural right neocons neoconservatives never Norman Podhoretz number paleo-conservatives Partisan Review party philosophy point political power president Press principles problem Public Interest radical Reagan realists reason Reflections reform regarded religion religious Republican revolution science seek Sidney Hook sixties skeptical social socialist society Soviet Stalin students theory thought threat tion tradition Trilling’s Trotsky Trotskyist University Victorian welfare world writes York