Dec 17, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 14
• By WILLIAM KRISTOL
As the world unravels on Barack Obama’s watch, conservatives might
want to take some solace in saying—We told you so! But they shouldn’t.
First of all, it’s not as if the Romney campaign or the GOP
congressional leadership or most conservative organizations really spent
much time bothering to warn of the consequences of Obama’s foreign
policy. And in any case, there’s not much solace to be had, as the world
coming apart threatens the well-being of America, not just the success
of Barack Obama’s second term.
So
what can conservatives do? They can explain that decline has been a
choice, and that weakness has consequences. They can explain that
Obama’s inaction in Syria now is of a piece with his inaction in Iran in
2009, that the abandonment of Iraq in 2011 prefigured the prospective
abandonment of Afghanistan over the next couple of years, and that
defense cuts at home go hand in hand with an oh-so-light footprint
abroad. The Obama administration has chosen a course of American
retrenchment and retreat. Conservatives can urge the president to
reverse course. They can try to minimize the damage he can cause over
the next four years. And, as important, they can prepare to be ready to
repair the damage from the Obama years.
Barack Obama, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We’ve recovered before. In the late 1940s, a war-weary nation looked
the other way as the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe and China went
Communist. It was only after the North Korean invasion of the South
that the United States, first under Harry Truman and then Dwight
Eisenhower, faced up to its responsibilities—but at considerable cost
in lives and treasure over the next decades as we fought wars that
perhaps could have been avoided and endured a Cold War that needn’t have
been as threatening as it was. In the late 1970s, a war-weary nation
watched as Khomeini took over Iran and the Sandinistas Nicaragua. This
time, the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
served as the wake-up call, answered first (to a degree) by Jimmy
Carter, then resoundingly by Ronald Reagan.
So perhaps every 30 years America has to go through a moment of retreat and renewal. But a happy outcome isn’t assured. Barack Obama is no Harry Truman. The Republican party has no obvious Reagan—or Ike, for that matter, waiting in the wings.
And the conservative movement—a bulwark of American strength for the last several decades—is in deep disarray. Reading about some conservative organizations and Republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” It may be that major parts of American conservatism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary. A reinvigoration of the Republican party also seems desirable, based on a new generation of leaders, perhaps coming—as did Ike and Reagan—from outside the normal channels.
The good news is that these new leaders do not have to create something de novo. They have an American tradition to appeal to. That tradition would suggest a “light footprint” isn’t the best America can do. It would suggest that it’s not really America’s destiny to tiptoe through the world, hoping not to do too much to disturb dictators and jihadists.
All this talk of footprints would have rung a bell with earlier generations of Americans. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow isn’t in much favor today, as his didactic seriousness isn’t in accord with modern taste. But earlier generations of Americans—perhaps even a young Dwight D. Eisenhower and a young Ronald Reagan—would have been familiar with his “Psalm of Life,” with its famous second stanza:
Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/footprints-sand-time_665188.html
So perhaps every 30 years America has to go through a moment of retreat and renewal. But a happy outcome isn’t assured. Barack Obama is no Harry Truman. The Republican party has no obvious Reagan—or Ike, for that matter, waiting in the wings.
And the conservative movement—a bulwark of American strength for the last several decades—is in deep disarray. Reading about some conservative organizations and Republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” It may be that major parts of American conservatism have become such a racket that a kind of refounding of the movement as a cause is necessary. A reinvigoration of the Republican party also seems desirable, based on a new generation of leaders, perhaps coming—as did Ike and Reagan—from outside the normal channels.
The good news is that these new leaders do not have to create something de novo. They have an American tradition to appeal to. That tradition would suggest a “light footprint” isn’t the best America can do. It would suggest that it’s not really America’s destiny to tiptoe through the world, hoping not to do too much to disturb dictators and jihadists.
All this talk of footprints would have rung a bell with earlier generations of Americans. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow isn’t in much favor today, as his didactic seriousness isn’t in accord with modern taste. But earlier generations of Americans—perhaps even a young Dwight D. Eisenhower and a young Ronald Reagan—would have been familiar with his “Psalm of Life,” with its famous second stanza:
Life is real! Life is earnest!And the almost equally famous later stanzas:
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Lives of great men all remind usContemporary liberalism is committed to leading from behind, with a light footprint. Isn’t it the historic task of American conservatism to shape an America that will lead again from the front, with a stride worthy of a great nation? Isn’t it the task of conservatism to restore American leadership so that friends of freedom around the world, Seeing, shall take heart again, in an America that seeks to leave behind us / Footprints on the sand of time?
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/footprints-sand-time_665188.html
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