“Strauss rejected capitalism and individualism, which as he saw them rested on a low view of man. Instead of philosophical wisdom, confined to an elite, as the highest end of the regime, happiness and wealth for the masses became the order of the day.”
C. Bradley Thompson argues that neoconservatism stands in fundamental opposition to individual rights and a free economy.
To most of us, neoconservatism is inevitably associated with the Iraq War. A group of neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan and David Frum, played with consummate folly a major role in urging the Bush administration toward initiating that conflict. The movement, on that ground alone, has little to recommend it; but can one nevertheless make a case on its behalf?
After all, neoconservatism was not always associated with reckless foreign-policy initiatives. To the contrary, in its early days in the 1960s, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Daniel Moynihan offered in the neoconservative journal The Public Interest cogent criticisms of many aspects of the welfare state. If Kristol could only muster Two Cheers for Capitalism, is this not better than most fashionable intellectuals can do? Perhaps the good elements in neoconservatism can be detached from the recent foreign-policy madness. C. Bradley Thompson emphatically disagrees. He argues that neoconservatism stands in fundamental opposition to individual rights and a free economy.
Although neoconservatives have indeed challenged certain aspects of the welfare state, they have no quarrel with it in principle.
In what may be Irving Kristol’s most shocking statement in defense of collectivist redistribution and statism, he has suggested that “the idea of a welfare state is in itself perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy — as Bismarck knew, a hundred years ago.” (p. 29)
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