Informed Speculation

I’m currently reading a 1988 Christopher Hitchens collection (in other words, pre-9/11 and his famous break with The Nation, in his unabashedly socialist mode) called Prepared For The Worst, and I wanted to share the following bit with you, as it’s quite interesting considering the subsequent history of both Christopher Hitchens and the neoconservatives.

Yes, ‘neocons’ was a buzz phrase even 23 years ago, when the particular essay reprinted in the collection first appeared in The Nation (called Doing Good: The Neoliberals, but apparently unavailable online anywhere). Hitchens compared the neoconservatives with the ‘neoliberals’ as typified by the Washington Monthly, and found, his socialist tendencies notwithstanding, that even then they carried rather more conviction than their opposites accross the aisle.

First, the following excerpt, as Hitchens makes the comparison explicit in his own ruthless, yet erudite, manner:

Here is the essence of the neoliberal style. First comes the smarmy evenhandedness…Then the vague but seductive idea that “cultural differences” can substitute for a definition of conflict…Neoliberals are like that. They have a sort of pious earnestness. They hold opinions rather than convictions…They practice risk-free iconoclasm…Some of them actually want Ernest Hollings to be President. To spend a weekend with them was like living through, rather than sitting through, The Big Chill.

That’s rather hilariously on-target, dated cultural references notwithstanding. Hitchens continues:

Cynics have compared the neoliberal tendency to the neoconservative one. I think that comparison must be counted as unfair. For one thing, neoconservatives are much more rigorous. For another, they are much more interesting. Neoconservatives believe in original sin, while neoliberals believe in the enervating effect of public spending programs.

If Hitchens had never wrote another line of prose, that last one would earn him Hall-Of-Fame status. More:

Neoconservatives are keenly interested in foreign policy, with its emphasis on tough choices, while neoliberals are oddly diffident about it…Neoconservatism could occur in any country. Neoliberalism could, really, only occur in a country like America, which combines abundance with angst and has a vast population of overqualified graduate students, some of whom wish they had, after all, served in Vietnam.

Quintessential Hitchens…

One last excerpt from this brilliant piece will suffice; when reading this excerpt, I ask you to think of bloggers, a word that was still at least 18 years from coinage when Hitchens wrote, but a group captured perfectly here (and if you want to include me…well, I AM a blogger, and the shoe may fit, though I hope not well):

The neoliberal style is a smartass one, and not without its effectiveness. The core of it is a species of gutless irony. You think public spending helps the poor? Check out Mike’s coruscating piece in ____. You still think aid to the Third World has a point? Get a load of Nick in ____. Disarmament would be less risky than the arms race? Where have you been? Read Jim in _______. Neoliberals like to puncture illusions, and one wishes them luck in that enterprise. But they never take aim at the huge, gaseous balloon that supports their own basket.

As I read that passage for the third time, I can only marvel that it was not explicitly written as a critique of blogging. 1983…wow!

23 years on, and I can only marvel at the man they call the Hitch…