The following excerpt is from Bill Kristol’s New York Times editorial today. It’s actually almost an aside in an essay that is about John McCain, but it struck me when I read it. Is this how you view the conservative movement?
The American conservative movement has been remarkably successful. We shouldn’t take that success for granted. It’s not easy being a conservative movement in a modern liberal democracy. It’s not easy to rally a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power. It’s not easy to defend excellence in an egalitarian age. It’s not easy to encourage self-reliance in the era of the welfare state. It’s not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.
I think his statement about ‘rally[ing] a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power’ is the closest thing I’ve seen to a confession from the neo-conservatives. It reads like a confession to a crime. And I think that is exactly what it is. If you unpeel the onion, that little sentence justifies every bit of disinformation that the Iraq Study Group, Fox News, William Safire, Joe Lieberman, and the rest of the warmongers have perpetrated on the American people.