Dez anos de Weekly Standard

Ou o início do nacionalismo-internacionalista ao centro.

"(...) Less than six years after it ran a piece by Kristol and Robert Kagan titled “Saddam Must Go,” the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew its Ba’athist regime. Allies of the Project for the New American Century, the Kristol-led pressure group that also began looking for a fight with Saddam in the ’90s, occupy senior positions in the current administration. (...)

The Weekly Standard wanted a more ambitious conservatism than this libertarian-sounding formulation. As an alternative, senior editor David Brooks, now a New York Times columnist, proposed “national greatness.” Citing Tocqueville, Brooks warned in a 1997 cover story that “nihilistic mediocrity” might ensue if “citizens are not inspired by some larger national goal.” Writing in The Wall Street Journal the same year, Brooks and Kristol were even starker: “What’s missing from today’s American conservatism is America.” Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were retroactively deputized as national greatness conservatives, and both trust busters and infrastructure builders were mentioned with approval.

It was never clear how a “limited but energetic” federal government was supposed to achieve national greatness. “It almost doesn’t matter what great task government sets for itself,” Brooks explained, “as long as it does some tangible thing with energy and effectiveness.” The only specifics were an explicit call for a more “active foreign policy” and an implicit preference for a government bigger than most conservatives were then willing to accept.

The national greatness meme initially won few converts. But the resulting debate helped set The Weekly Standard apart from National Review and other competitors. It also foreshadowed a change in tone on the right: an intellectual shift away from skepticism about government and toward the more nationalistic conservatism now in full bloom. Yet the articles that sparked this discussion are strangely excluded from The Weekly Standard: A Reader.

(...) Throughout the collection, the contributors write as though there is no limit to the good in the world that can be achieved by government, especially when it’s run by Republicans. There isn’t a single piece advocating limited government (though Republican activist Jeffrey Bell does put in a good word for Reagan’s tax cuts), and contributing editor Irwin Stelzer even shows up to defend the estate tax. Irving Kristol argues that accepting the swollen state is part of “The Neoconservative Persuasion.” “People have always preferred strong government to weak government,” the elder Kristol shrugs, “although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.” Reason: Thunder on the Center-Right The Weekly Standard turns 10.