Neoconservatism: Why We Need It by Douglas Murray

Neoconservatism: Why We Need It Reviews

• 
  Chad

  British pundit Douglas Murray first caught my eye as someone with a very bright future when the international debate over the impact and fate of political Islam and secularism was gaining steam. I remember in particular a debate posted on YouTube over the question, ‘Is Islam a religion of peace?’ I think it was in 2010. Arguing in the affirmative were two liberal Muslims, while Murray had on his side the famous Somali émigré Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
  
  The discussion was mismatched from the beginning, although the man arguing in the affirmative – British commentator Maajid Nawaz – has since developed as an audible, civilized voice for a tolerant and pluralistic vision of Islam. But there is a majestic moment in the debate, right around the 1:14:30 mark, where Murray suddenly makes the audience aware that their opponents have made their (Murray and Hirsi Ali's) point for them. By saying a small minority of fanatics were holding the vast majority of Muslim believers hostages to fear in Pakistan, they (Nawaz and partner) themselves were condemning Islam as something non-peaceful. If a small minority of the Islamic community could keep the vast majority cowed in fear, then the religion as a whole could not be described as one of ‘peace.’ You can sort of feel the change in the audience’s disposition en masse at that moment, and from then until the end it is clear who has won.
  
  The performance prompted me to keep at least one eye on Murray as he appeared on TV and published various articles. I rarely found anything to disagree with in what he said or wrote. Eventually, last week, I decided to shell out for a Kindle copy of his 2006 book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, figuring at least I wouldn’t be disappointed with the quality of the prose. I was in for a shock.
  
  In his 1978 presentation to the American Enterprise Institute entitled ‘The Spiritual Roots of Capitalism and Socialism,’ the late American author and commentator Irving Kristol (often dubbed colloquially the ‘Godfather of Neoconservatism'), said the following:
  

  What would happen if a president of the United States said to us tomorrow: “I understand that previous presidents have told you that one of the aims of our foreign policy is to create a world without war. Well, let’s face it, there will never be a world without war. Human beings have fought ever since the beginning of time, and human beings as we know them will not cease fighting. I will give you a world in which we will try to avoid war; if we get into war, we will try to limit the war; and if we get deeply into war, we will try to win the war. But I can not promise you a world without war.”

  Can you imagine a president of the United States saying such a thing on television? Yet, everything that is said in that imaginary speech is true. Not only is it true, it is the only truth to be said about war in this world. The very notion of a world without war is fantastic. The lion shall lie down with the lamb, but not until the Second Coming.

  
  
  Compared to Murray’s Neoconservatism, the above-quoted passage is wishy-washy pacifism. Kristol’s hypothetical president declares an intention to ‘try to avoid war’; there is no such desire in Murray’s vision for Britain, which, in its foreign policy, is called upon to embrace constant armed conflict as the natural state of affairs until the enemy – principally fundamentalist Islamist terror (to his eternal credit, Murray avoids the popular misnomer ‘radical’) – is completely destroyed worldwide.
  
  Unsurprisingly, Irving Kristol is cited often in Neoconservatism’s pages. Murray’s idea is that the neoconservatism that gained serious political traction in America decades ago under Ronald Reagan and reached its zenith during the Iraq War of 2003 should be imported and established in the United Kingdom to save the country from certain destruction at the hands of its moral and cultural enemies. On the domestic front, ‘relativism’ must be rooted out and eradicated (Murray refers to morality fairly often, though he leaves ‘moral’ out of his use of ‘relativism’). For the sake of consistency, he sets ‘conservatives’ and ‘socialists’ – not ‘liberals’ – at odds with each other, because to pit ‘conservatives’ against ‘liberals’ would result in a glaring inconsistency: neoconservatives are champions of ‘liberal democracy,’ and if the ideas of ‘liberalism’ are to be zealously propagated and enforced, then simply depicting the ideological struggle as being between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ would confuse. Better to simply chalk all Britain’s problems up to ‘the left’ (socialists) and get on with the fight. And Murray definitely wants a fight.
  
  One of the great mysteries in the neoconservatives' advocacy of ‘liberal democracy’ is why they bother to use the term ‘liberal’ at all. Why not, alternatively, ‘conservative democracy’? What notions does the phrase ‘conservative democracy’ conjure in the minds of the neocons that is so objectionable, and why could that concept not be the ideological core and motivator of their militancy?
  
  Further, if we are going to blame ‘socialists’ for everything wrong in the West today (and perhaps we should), we’ll have to drag out poor old George Orwell (a socialist) for a thorough deconstruction to figure out how his ideas were/are dangerous to the freedoms Murray holds so close to heart.
  
  Finally, as Murray argues for an ‘axis’ of ‘liberal democracies’ to include the US, UK, Canada and Israel, how does he feel about the thoroughly British institution of the monarchy in this ideal arrangement? It is strange, after all, that someone who presumably considers himself a form of ‘conservative’ and a staunch defender of Britain would see fit to deny the Crown a single mention in his ideological treatise for a country that has (apart from briefly in the mid-17th century) always been headed by a monarch.
  
  As someone who opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq and even wrote hot-headed screeds about it, I’ve since come around to the view that reasonable minds could disagree on the wisdom of the intervention. The ghastly regime of Saddam Hussein was destabilizing the Middle East, and the tyrant had provided sanctuary to people like Abu Nidal and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who infamously made videotaped beheadings of innocent hostages popular among the Islamist haters of the West. (The beheadings were not by axe or guillotine in a split second, but rather by large knife or machete, in slow, sawing motions, making Donald Trump’s exasperated comment that ‘they’re choppin’ people’s heads off over there’ seem strangely inappropriate.) Iraq’s Ba’athist regime performed no useful function, and even its status as bulwark against Iranian expansion had long since expired. Toppling it seemed an obvious solution to many, and clearly Murray was among them.
  
  There has been a lot of fatuous nonsense about how the situation today is in every way worse than before. Yes, many Ba'ath Party functionaries simply traded in their Ba'ath republican uniforms for ISIS garb and became medieval-style head-loppers, and yes, gruesome beheadings have continued. At the same time, nothing of the scale of 9-11 has occurred, whether or not toppling Saddam Hussein can be credited. But contrary to Murray’s assertions, not every opponent of the Iraq invasion was either an anti-Semitic Islamist-terrorist sympathizer or a hard-left Stalinist-communist, and those are the only two possibilities Murray allows for among those who objected to war.
  
  I remember sitting in the International Relations Committee room of the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill when hearings were taking place to decide whether to approve the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002 and experiencing severe anxiety about what the intervention (which was sure to drag out over several years) would do to American society. That is, I quite liked my country’s society for its respect for fundamental liberties, the rule of law, civilized commerce and industry, reliance on contracts and covenants in business, taking pride in property, and so forth. I imagined (admittedly, only imagined) that by putting the country on an indefinite war footing against a non-state enemy (there would be no formal, congressional declaration of war against other nation-states, as in World War II), America’s collective ‘social psyche’ (for want of a better term) would be torn asunder, as domestic peace became a casualty of foreign war. This genuinely alarmed me, as I thought it was all moving far too quickly. I got very angry about it.
  
  It was a hunch, albeit inescapable, that America would rapidly become an unpleasant place as a result of the new war policy, designed to commit the country to indefinite conflict (precisely because we would never be able to prove that the non-state enemy – al-Qaeda – had been destroyed). Obviously I can’t prove US society would be any better today if the US hadn't launched the invasion, and there's no point living in the past. In 2003, the opponents of war lost, Murray won. Everyone loves a winner. My own reasoning for branding this particular war as morally unjustified was rooted in an absence of evidence that Iraq – however much a blight on humanity's face – represented a ‘clear and present’ (i.e. imminent) danger to the United States, and also in the idea that, if it were possible, we should instead defend our homeland and borders, look after our own domestic psychological and social well-being, and actively reject at home the kind of religious supremacist hatred that manifested itself in the ideology behind the terror attacks of 9-11. Again, I lost; Murray won. The rest is history.
  
  Not long before the Iraq war started, I had read Pat Buchanan's 1999 book, A Republic, Not an Empire, an exposition of anti-interventionism and the means of reinforcing American national identity. Needless to say, Buchanan also opposed the war. Buchanan, a talented writer, was (and is) unapologetically a supporter of ‘America First,’ the movement personified by the Committee to Defend America First, led from 1940 onward by the pilot Charles Lindbergh and set up to lobby against American involvement in WWII. Lindbergh did not view the Third Reich as a global threat (and thus a threat to the United States) and in fact had stated that if forced to choose between Communism and Nazism taking over Europe, he would opt for Nazism. He was awarded a very prestigious medal in the name of Adolf Hitler on visiting Nazi Germany to marvel at its industry.
  
  Though no longer an 'America Firster,' I still see plenty of merit in Buchanan’s political philosophy: a conservative foreign policy that views war as a last resort, and which favors defending US borders and looking after our own people before tending to nation-building and social engineering abroad. It is as difficult to argue with Buchanan about US foreign policy as it would be to take on Douglas Murray in a televised debate about the social effects of Islamism. Additionally, one can still argue that the Axis Powers of WWII needed to be confronted and defeated militarily without believing that the 'Axis of Evil' declared by President George W. Bush before Congress in late 2001 was really analogous. One country (Germany) posed a greater threat to the world in 1938 than all three 'Axis of Evil' countries combined in 2001. One commentator, the late Christopher Hitchens, speaking in terms of a militant Islamist-terrorist threat, was rumored to have remarked privately that the real 'Axis of Evil' should have been Iraq, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Has he been proven wrong?
  
  And it has to be said that, at least as a writer, Buchanan is at the moment better than Murray, whose treatise is jarring and disturbing in tone, so much that one has to take a break from reading - often. In fact, the only reason I ultimately parted ways with the talented Buchanan was that I came to realize, latently, that America First’s expressed distrust of Britain (and its overt contempt for Winston Churchill) ran against my deepest convictions: if the US had an organic connection to any other major country, it was Britain. What is bad for Britain is – I believe – almost always bad for the US, and I think Murray and I probably intersect on that score. As such, I ‘graduated’ (probably some time in my thirties’) from the ‘America First’ view of all other foreign states as moral equivalents to one in which Britain occupies a vital, privileged place in any benign American worldview.
  
  So it is ironic that my own views would diverge so sharply from Murray’s on a key issue. He is an unabashed defender of former UK Premier Tony Blair in foreign policy, and hails the ‘New Labour’ leader for his advocacy of constant humanitarian intervention. But it seems to me that Blair’s tenure as head of the UK government was more than any other responsible for the country’s descent into 'relativist' domestic social hell (Blair was also an extreme Europhile who favored Britain's entry into the eurozone and seemed to want the Union Jack replaced with the flag of the EU). So Murray cherry-picks from Blairism, melding Tony’s foreign policy views to a very sensible domestic agenda of zero-tolerance for the kind of ‘relativism’ that – for example – sees all faiths as equal (whether Islam or Christianity) and exalts British democracy's enemies out of misplaced historical guilt or existential complacency. If only such a domestic policy could be combined with Blairist interventionism, thinks Murray, Britain would be truly golden. I doubt that very much indeed.
  
  There is no question Murray is sound on domestic social issues. He exhibits no illusions or inconsistencies in his view of the way things would be if only Britain would stop feeling ashamed of itself and educating a generation of people to hate their own country. Britain is not only a great country but also a great civilization to which America owes its existence. The only question is: does Britain need to adopt a super-interventionist and aggressive foreign policy to protect the best of its own culture and identity, or is there a better way? While I don’t have the answer, I suspect it may not ultimately lie in a future of total war and intervention.
  
  Perhaps what is most interesting to ponder is the fate of the neoconservative ‘community’ at home and abroad since the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency, something heavily supported by Pat Buchanan (whom I saw described somewhere as the premier ideologue of the Trump era). Trump has split the neoconservative movement, and such famous talking heads as Bill Kristol (Irving’s son) of The Weekly Standard and The Atlantic's editor David Frum (author of the ‘Axis of Evil’ slogan) loathe him. Yet neocon elder Norman Podhoretz, former editor of Commentary, has come on board, as have other neocons of note. Murray himself has tempered some of the harsher criticism of Trump in his writings, and recently came out to challenge critics of Trump’s executive order halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. But Trump so far seems to represent a new anti-interventionism, and British Prime Minister Theresa May made a point during her recent visit to the US that both her country and America had an incentive to resist being dragged into costly foreign wars. How does Murray feel about that in light of his book? Maybe he will develop his own strand of neoconservatism in the Trump era, as he diverges from the likes of Kristol and Frum.
  
  Murray wrote recently that there was ‘nothing very clever’ about opposing warmer US-Russian relations (something the Trump administration appears poised to pursue), which goes against the view of many neoconservatives that Russia should continue to be isolated for its actions in Ukraine and Syria. This was something I took slightly personally, as I’ve never thought my own view that sanctions against Russia should be maintained (indeed, intensified) was particularly ‘clever,’ only that it was right. It's not as if an issue of that nature should be the subject of some 'intellectual competition,' and I would if anything describe Murray’s leniency toward Moscow as a manifestation of the ‘relativism’ he so abhors. If he is falling into the Trumpian trap that Russia is 'Christian' and therefore a natural ally in the war against fundamentalist Islam, then as someone who has spent much time in Russia and the ex-USSR, I believe he is making a serious moral error.
  
  Finally, Murray was very sensible about Brexit, and was in fact one of the leading lights on the Leave side. Many who could be described as neoconservatives were clearly opposed to Britain leaving the EU, and I can remember watching Murray on a talk show making Christiane Amanpour’s American husband Jamie Rubin (definitely not an isolationist) look foolish and uncomfortable for endorsing Remain. I suppose that, just as Murray has seen fit to cherry-pick from Blairism and conservatism in forming his own brand of neoconservatism, I and other conservatives should feel at liberty to cherry-pick from neoconservatism in deciding on the right course for America, Britain and other countries we hold in high regard. In any case, it will be very telling to see how Murray’s views develop over a decade after publishing this book, and if indeed neoconservatism as a movement survives the Trump era in any recognizable form. I'm rather hoping it doesn't, and Murray's book hasn't convinced me to change my mind.
• 
  A Man Called Ove

  3.5/5 I am a die-hard fan of Ayn Rand's individualism and Orwell's critique of collectivism. Heard Murray's firm plain-speak for freedom of speech and against d dreadful multiculturalism in a few Intelligence squared debates and loved it.
  As per d title and description, this book describes origin of neoconservativism and its relevance and need in today's world. On the way the author rips apart into 'liberals' wrt the Iraq War, Israel/anti-Semitism, welfarism and multiculturalism.
  For an Indian like me, it was difficult to understand the context despite having a decent knowledge of world affairs. And that also reminds me- the allegations of racism on Murray & co r stupid and malicious. Freedom-of-speech, blasphemy, secularism r deeply embedded in India since ancient times (in most of Indians today too) and r universal values not Western ones. All values r not equal; they r merely equally proposable, debatable and rejectable.
• 
  Jonathan Hockey

  Quite an uneven book I felt, I imagine his ideas have become much sharper since this in his more recent book on Europe. It has some good sentiments in it, but also some slightly optimistic archaic sentiments. It provides a good criticism of the wishy washy multiculturalism and how this is such a dangerous thing for the stability of our cultural and national identity, and he exposes well the process through which this has been allowed to come about, despite the will of the people always being against such mass immigration, when this immigration is not being brought into line with British values.
  
  Some of the defence of neo conservatism raises eyebrows for me in relation to policies in Iraq, etc I am not sure you could much of a case for defending these policies given things have not got better but only much worse and less stable in the middle east in recent times. But I agree with his insistence on the UK needing to separate from the EU that has become outdated, unaccountable and unable to deal with the social and political realities we now face.
• 
  Richard

  This is the first book by Douglas Murray I have read although I always enjoy his appearances on TV and his uncompromising views on the great issues of the day. I found the first couple of chapters, which describe how neo-conservatism emerged in the US, a bit dry. Things picked up in the later chapters when Murray analyses 9/11, the Iraq war and the continuing threat posed to the West by Islamist extremism. Not so sure I agree with everything he says, but a good read nonetheless.
• 
  Ietrio

  When I picked up the book I thought "we" meant Murray and his gang. Turning the pages, Murray writes as "we" would be the audience. In the end, it turned out to be the royal "we" in which Murray's tantrums should be obeyed and everything will be peachy "because".
• 
  Justin Michael James Dell

  Conservatism has been a rear-guard reaction since 1789; neoconservatism is an attempt to take the revolutionary dynamism away from the political Left. As Murray explains, many conservatives have tended to uncritically wax nostalgic about the past, longing for a 'return' to the 1950s - or perhaps the 1750s - without properly appreciating the many advantages that have accompanied "progress" since the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, few would really like to return to the era of child labour, mass illiteracy or racial segregation, to name but a few of the social ailments that accompanied the decades conservatives look back upon with wistful gazes. Neoconservatives, with a careful awareness of the problems that have beset the past and have thankfully been overcome, are also eager to retain or recapture the strengths of the years gone by, which they see as imperative for the endurance of progress and the perpetuation of Western Civilization. Liberals, on the other hand, in their unquestioning belief that change is always desirable, inevitable, and results in improvement over what comes before it, risk undoing the progress of Western Civilization as their wonton progressivism threatens to subvert the very institutions that made progress possible in the first place. Among those institutions liberal progressivism threatens to destroy are the European peoples themselves, the family, Christianity and intellectual freedom, not to mention others. Perhaps the biggest threat to liberty and democracy represented by liberalism today is the mental malaise of relativism. Relativistic thinking saps the ability of Western peoples to defend their civilization against the challenges of alternative civilizational theses. Neoconservatism calls on the people of the West to adopt an aggressive, revolutionary conservatism in defence of liberal democracy that, in certain select circumstances, must act illiberally in order to defend that which is worthy of preservation in liberalism.
  
  Murray traces the origin of this thinking to the University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss and certain New Dealers who, in the face of aggressive communist expansionism during the Cold War, and the excesses of the hedonistic and relativistic campus counter-culture during the 1960s, decided to throw in their lot with conservatism, which they saw as the only vehicle that might preserve that which they cherished in Western culture, especially freedom and property. The result of this repudiation of the New Left means that neoconservatives, while sharing conservative suspicion of collectivism, are not opposed to all elements of the welfare state like some conservative hardliners (although they abhor welfarism as a cultural phenomenon) and some are suspicious of laissez-faire economics. Indeed, capitalism can oftentimes enable many of the social defects in mass culture to which neoconservatives are opposed, including excessive materialism, social anomie, the breakdown of the family unit, loss of control over immigration, etc. Suffice it to say that while neoconservatives oppose collectivist state intervention in the economy, favouring supply-side economics, they also believe that capitalism should avoid meddling in the governance of society.
  
  So far, so good. But neoconservatives manifestly take their confidence in Western Civilization to the extreme of seeking to export it, which they see as necessary for its defence. It was from this premise that the neoconservative Bush Administration embarked on its effort to reshape the world in the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Western ideas of liberty and democracy were clearly the target of Al-Qaeda's attack, but their security was thought by neoconservatives to be dependent on their export and promotion in areas of the world in which they had no support and in which their fundamental philosophical assumptions were regarded as anathema (such as in the Islamic world, which does not recognize the idea of human equality, because Islamic theology does not regard man as made in the Image of God, and thus entitled to unalienable rights). This resulted, most notably, in the invasion of Iraq. This is where I believe neocons have gone wrong. They correctly assert that Western values and civilization are superior in the minds of Westerners and should be preserved. But the key to preserving them lay in the domestic sphere, not foreign intervention. Combating relativism at home is not effected by invading unrelativist nations abroad. If any intervention should be initiated, it should be in the defence of allies and states of the same civilization.
  
  One of the problems I perceive with neoconservatives is that, like liberal multiculturalists, they believe in the interchangeability of people. Whereas the latter believe that just about anybody can be transplanted from the Third World into the West and fashioned into a good little liberal democrat, the former believe that liberal democracy can be taken to the Third World and the people there turned into good little liberal democrats. This worldview ignores the reality that culture, identity and demographic dynamism are so much more potent in transforming lands and peoples than legislation. Policy - if it is to be effective - must be a reflection of the will of the people. Even if the "democratic" regimes installed in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to lumber on despite serious domestic opposition, they in no way resemble Western democratic states. Because their people are not Westerners! They blur the lines between mosque and state, enforce blasphemy laws, punish apostasy from Islam, control what information or texts can be exchanged in society, and a whole host of other Eastern shibboleths that make them anything but a reflection of liberal democratic states as the people of the Occident have come to expect them to be. The sad truth is that mass Third World - and in particular, Islamic - immigration has infinitely more profoundly altered the political and social character of Europe and North America than any Western intervention in the Orient has transformed its societies.
• 
  NET7

  The author does make excellent points on elements of Conservatism, but the book is from 2006 so it needs an update for 2022. The author really missed great opportunities to extol the virtues of Neo-Conservative foreign policy as much as I would have liked, but to me he makes a decent case. He also goes into detail on domestic policy and has a pretty socially Conservative approach and I have strong agreement with his Law-and-Order positions and defense of Judeo-Christian values and culture. Reading this book will Hawk Pill you, and you'll wake up to the realities we face today, in this era of Isolationism and Appeasement to tyrants, terrorists, and criminal organizations.
  
  The first chapter is a VERY dry read. In my opinion, you should skip it and come back to it later. Otherwise, you will find yourself struggle to get through first part of the book, because the author describes in the first chapter everything that Neo-Conservatism isn't, and that's not the way to start a book; start with what Neo-Conservatism is, exhorting all the positive elements of it as you describe the philosophy to draw in the read, and in later chapters challenge the misconceptions. Start with the second chapter, and then you start to see more meat.
• 
  Carlos Olmo

  Very clear and interesting defence of Neoconservative thought. Starting with its origins in the School of Chicago and the philosophy of Leo Strauss, to its evolution from academia to public discourse and then politics, all the way avoiding simplistic and derogatory labels, and delving into social, economic and international issues that are today (nearly 15 years after its publishing) more important than ever. In a society where progressivist ideas are widespread in the media and mainstream culture, bringing attention to the opposite conservative view is crucial for a balanced society: the importance of traditional values and social cohesion, the appreciation of History and the protection of Western liberal democracies and their interests, flawed as they are.
• 
  Fred

  Murray is an able writer with an excellent wit and command of subject matter. Makes the neocon history and movement more intelligible (and palatable) to the traditionally liberal reader.
  Untangles the issues with misrepresentation of Straussian philosophy and the viewpoints of Kristol and Allan Bloom.
  Recommended to intellectual liberals becoming more and more disaffected from the left's ongoing adventures in academia.
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  Sylvester

  Neo Conservatism, we really don't need it. What Neo-Conservatism according to Murray is utilitarian in disguise: we can have individual liberty AS LONG AS it does not harm the "majority". While I can be as sympathetic to the cause, the premise is so evil that I shudder at his logic.
• 
  Kevin Greenhalgh

  The title remains true
  
  The Kindle edition has a number of typos, Ira for Iraq and the number 1 for some odd reason, but beyond that it’s an excellent read; I only wish I’d read it before.
  
  Murray describes the world current state perfectly and I think that is the most horrific truth, it remains the same as it was in 2004 when this book was released; maybe it is even worse!
  
  My only concern is that I can see no neocon politicians in British politics. This book does need a new forward; one the frames the book based on Brexit and increasing Islamic fundamentalism and woke culture.
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  Mr Alister Cryan

  Interesting but lazy
  
  The first three chapters make an interesting argument but the final and longest chapter of the book is disappointing and is more of a tirade than anything worthy of an airing or an audience. This is somewhat surprising from Douglas Murray who is usually more rigorous.
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  Stephen Hoffman

  An eloquent defence of neo-conservatism, but one in the end I could not subscribe to.
• 
  Adrian

  This is a great book for those wanting to learn a little more about Neocon. It explains the foundation of the movement as well as the beginning. Great way to get a perspective on current issues and somethings are they way they are. This is an easy read and should be on everyone's book self.