This comes from a recent review in The American Conservative of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the Tea Party (by Geoffrey Kabaservice). The author of the review is Jeff Taylor, who teaches political science at Dort College.
Counterintuitive though it may be, the past three decades have actually brought about the triumph of liberalism in the United States, liberalism of the big-government, policing-of-the-world, secular-values variety. The vision of Nelson Rockefeller, not Ronald Reagan, has attained supremacy within the GOP. Rockefeller and his Democratic counterpart, Hubert Humphrey, symbolized a bipartisan consensus in the 1960s and 1970s for monopoly capitalism tempered by a welfare state at home and a well-armed empire abroad. In the 2000s, the George W. Bush administration solidified a coalition between pragmatic heirs of Rockefeller such as Dick Cheney and neoconservative successors of Humphrey such as Paul Wolfowitz. Rhetorical crumbs notwithstanding, traditional conservatives and libertarians lack a seat at the table. Their support is desired—and needed—by party leaders, but they are excluded from power.
The standard of ideological measurement within the GOP has changed dramatically during the past half-century. By the criteria of the 1960s, the national leaders of the Republican Party today are all liberals. A generation of wolves (liberals) did not give birth to a generation of sheep (conservatives). Instead, partly out of personal convenience and partly for historical reasons, the Republican establishment donned fleece in the 1980s. Liberals in conservative clothing. Kabaservice doesn’t recognize a friend when he sees one. He continues to mourn the loss of moderates and progressives in the party, though they continue to thrive under a different guise.
If this is a Christian W-W, I’m in.
Old Life 
But war for American “civil religion” is always in season.
The Nationalist Heresy and the Iraq War, by Daniel Larison, American Conservative, April 18th, 2012
Michael Gerson had some objections to Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: Gerson also complained that Douthat unfairly accused President George W. Bush of a “divisive public piety,” while also labeling the Iraq War as “messianic nationalism,” which Gerson called “nonsense.” That war was a “prudential calculation” about removing a mass murderer, Gerson countered.
Whatever else was behind the decision to invade Iraq, the war was most certainly sold to the public using explicitly religious and nationalist language. Whether he actually believed it or not, Bush presented the coming war in terms of America’s divinely-appointed liberalizing mission. If that isn’t “messianic nationalism,” it is something very similar.
Bush was certainly guilty of preaching some form of American nationalist heresy during his time in office. Gerson ought to remember this, since he was helping to craft Bush’s public statements during much of that time.
This is how Bush concluded his State of the Union address two months before the invasion of Iraq:
‘And we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country. Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers. Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.
Bush was pretty clearly claiming that the U.S. would be doing God’s will by unnecessarily and illegally invading Iraq. (Earlier sections of the address are even worse when Bush incredibly claims that the coming war was going to be “forced” on the U.S.) The invasion would have been an outrageous crime and the Iraq war would have been unjust in any case, but we shouldn’t forget the warped religious rhetoric that was used to justify it.
mcmark: Gerson and Bush will be held accountable. We do not have to be “Christ conquers and transform the culture” folks to believe that. Perhaps some 2k folks would suggest the propriety of believing it but not saying it out loud. Or saying it out loud but not as a Christian but as somebody who continues to dislike both the smirk on the face of Bush and the words Gerson put in his mouth.
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Taylor’s analysis resonates with this libertarian leaning conservative, while Ron Paul seems to be laying the foundation for a stronger representation amongst libertarian-Republican’s among my generation, the model of a true paleo-conservative is almost totally lacking amongst today’s Republicans.
The neo-con narrative of imperialism, corporatism, and “compassionate-conservatism” which is nothing but the advance of the welfare state has gutted America from the inside out. I do not know how transformationalists, who are often so concerned with the goings on within our borders, even over concerning issues such as abortion, seem to tacitly embrace the very candidates that have supported the iron fist of Pax Americana. America’s recent militarism has so little to do with defense, and it is arguable that destabilizing certain pockets of the world in the name of America’s (or corporate America’s) interests have actually created blowback that has made the world less safe for American’s. We are so insulated from the hundred’s of thousands, if not more, casualties of our wars of choice that we do not consider how much this has tarnished America in the eyes of the world. Whatever becomes of the current political scene, it is not sustainable, and decline seems more and more of an inevitability.
BTW, McMark – good thoughts.
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Christian Education? I am a Christian Educator— years ago as a young Orthodox Presbyterian pastor in California, then some years as a math teacher in a Christian Reformed School. Most recently, before retirement, I spent 16 years as mathprof, University System of Georgia. Have I been a Christian OR an involved American citizen all these years? YES! BOTH!– Primararily Christian; Secondarily, a Declaration of Independence-Constitutional American. Conservative? Republican? I guess so, most of the time. I never could understand the truncated views of Either/Or Christians— I have some great Christian relatives and friends among these. Some of these seem to have a “high wall of separation” which challenges that of the ACLU! Seems to me that Matthew 22:37-39 calls for BOTH/AND Christians. Example: Surely, “loving our (unborn) neighbors as ourselves” cries out for our no-nonsense involvement in anti-Roe v. Wade politics as well as purely spiritual activities. Our interests in our 25 grandchildren, gifts from God, involve more that helping all of us get to heaven and helping others get there! (Secondarily, of course). Much more to say. Too many sleepy, underinformed, uninvolved Christians, seems to me! Love, RKM
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“Bible-believing Liberals” perhaps? See Todd Wilken’s essay:
http://www.confessionallutherans.org/papers/ToddW.htm
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er, make that Dordt College, please, Professor Hardt.
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I distinctly remember some guy named Gingrich who became House Speaker in 1994 and shut down the government on at least two occasions. That seemed to me like a conservative maneuver. How did that turn out?
People that try to act like reducing the size of government is important (size equal number of employees and dollars spent) are going to need some help from their constituents. And it wouldn’t hurt them to have a multi-million dollar spin machine on the payroll.
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History never seems to tire of repeating itself? Is it a perpetual battle of the theology of the cross vs. the theology of glory? I ask this because your post reminds me of these words from Hermann Sasse:
“… understand the wisdom of the cross, the comfort of the theologia crucis: occidendo vivificat. The Kingdom of God is in this world always tectum cruce, hidden under the cross. If we look through all those great statements and proclamations of the Christian churches and the ecumenical conferences regarding war and peace, church and state, disarmaments and rearmaments, League of Nations and United Nations, we shall understand why Christian theology today needs a rebirth of the theologia crucis. How many secular illusions have entered our thinking about the church and the World! Among all the illusions which have taken the place of religion in the souls of modern men, there is also the theologia gloriae of the last decades. It is not only Nationalism and Pacifism, Liberalism and Socialism, Fascism and Communism, Militarism and Antimilitarism which today are deprived of the glory which they used to have in the eyes of their adherents. It is also the Christianity, which in all denominations prevailed in the last centuries, Christianity dreaming of a Christian nation or a Christian world, a Christian faith which had been secularized by the theologiagloriae. Now the time has come for the theology of the cross. When the Church of today asks: “What shall I preach?” the only answer can be: Unum praedica, sapientiam crucis!”
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Jed,
As a former neo-con, former military, with two boys in the military (one in Afghanistan), it has taken awhile to kick the neo-con kool-aid habit. But, through a subscription to TAC and some reading on the net and a boy in the action, I think I have finally done it. I get a little worked up when I hear the party line, “They are fighting for our freedom!” Our brave troops are fighting for something but I don’t think it’s our freedom. I really hate to sound like a liberal, but the only American interest may be a corporate/strategic one. (aka oil, etc.) Did I just type that? Ughh.
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