Comments on: Overlearning Lessons

By: Moral Clarity in Foreign Policy | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Moral Clarity in Foreign Policy | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:03:10 +0000

[...] the closet and dust them off to have another look. When last we ruminated on this topic, E.D. had expressed perfectly reasonable concern over basing foreign policy on something as mercurial as moral clarity and said that he would be [...]

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:38:00 +0000

I’d say neocons are generally of two varieties – Big Government Social Cons, and Big Government Secular Cons – who share a hawkish vision of foreign policy.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:30:07 +0000

By the way, love that word – nihilism – really jumped out at me!

It’s a commonplace traits amongst back-patting, high-fiving nihilists in denial….ist. :)

Seriously though, I kind of find the whole moral clarity thing amusing since neoconservatives are, at heart, big government social conservatives and they have the same typically woeful views on allowing democratic majorities to run roughshod simply on the basis of the majority rule. Not like libertarians have any moral clarity on what liberty means or anything like that.

;)

By: Scott H. Payne

Scott H. Payne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:20:41 +0000

E.D., agreed, this is a long haul effort, something to be worked on over years and I've really only just started. But I did want to calrify one thing, as per this post, I'm not looking to replace realism with idealism, but rather find a useful blanace between the two in our analysis with regards to foreign policy, and in other areas.

By: Mark Thompson

Mark Thompson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:49:10 +0000

But how do we know “they” even exist? How do we know existence exists?

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:29:02 +0000

Heh. Careful what you say….they may be listening….

I’m not paranoid or anything….

By: Mark Thompson

Mark Thompson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:23:05 +0000

E.D. – that’s good to know. I assure you, I just chose it randomly; actually, that’s how I choose just about all of my words – randomly….after all, I don’t believe in anything so I really don’t have a point in any of my writing. I just type random words and letters and hope that they result in a coherent thought.

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:15:21 +0000

In a sad way, the popular incarnation of neo-conservatism became the very nihilism and moral relativism that it claimed to oppose

By the way, love that word – nihilism – really jumped out at me! :)

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:14:05 +0000

Well, I’m certainly curious as to where you’ll go with this, Scott. The task of importing morality or idealism into foreign policy in place of cold, hard realism is Herculean, to be sure. I think the trick is not overstepping, but that is almost inevitable given the nature of power – sort of the tragic flaw of the neoconservative movement. “Power corrupts” and all that…

In any case, these posts deserve greater thought and a longer response….

By: Scott H. Payne

Scott H. Payne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:09:53 +0000

E.D., is it not perhaps the case that notions of moral clarity seem “mercurial” precisely because we are increasingly slipping into an orientation of relativity. Part of my suggestion in defending neoconservatism was that we need to work at developing a more tangile sense of moral clarity that would better guide our foreign policy compass.

Part of my condemnation for neoncons came from the fact that they identified this as an important project, but never seemed to really grapple with the difficulty of truly developing such clarity in the context of a complicated and dynamic world and allowed their notion of clarity to be co-opted by a strict adherence to nationalism/national interest. At least so it would seem insofar as they came to power and had to translate critique into policy, as Mark suggests.

So in aligning my condemnation with my defense, I’m suggesting that we pull this element of neoconservative out of its wreckage and do a better job of it than has been done to date.