Concerning " ‘Sound’ Liberalism"

“Sound” liberalism is a kind of riot and revolution insurance, don’t you think?

Indeed, indeed. And who shall tell thee of Sound Liberalism™ if not the Commentariat, whose parents broke with unsound--no shudder-quotes, please, the neocomrades really believe it!--liberalism amidst the R&R, "riot and revolution," of 1968 and have been gradually degeneratin’ and denaturin’ themselves ever since?

" What went wrong? ", O neocomrades, what the [exp. del.] went wrong? If perchance your esteemed daddies once saved the holy Homeland from H. Horatio Hornblower and from the fiendish George McGovern, what does that avail now, now when ye have delivered us unto President Summers and Mr. Obáma?

Not at the moment to R&R, admittedly, but that will come when the weather gets a bit warmer. "Gonna be a long hot quadrennium, baby, . . . ."

Would the pioneer neocomrades of Richard XXXVII’s reign have been better advised to call themselves "Sound Liberals" instead of ‘neoconservatives’? To object that such a label would have been invidious about the soundness of others is not a neocomradely sort of objection, considering that the Venerable Framers of Kristolianity were far from bein’ such sweet puppies of the Right as one encounters nowadays, always moanin’ and self-sorrowin’ about "tip-toeing from the MSM this soon after the inauguration" or whatever.

For schimpflexikalisch purposes like this keyboard’s present, ‘neo-conservatives’ is almost infinitely superior to "Sound Liberals," one can liberate the prefix and use it to toxify anythin’ that seems to require a touch of, well, neotoxification. [1] If so small a consideration matters at all, I suppose it suggests the neocomrades should have chosen differently. There is not much for Demosthenes Jr. to do with "Sound Liberals" after she has pointed out how it amounts to shameless self-esteemin’ on stilts. But perhaps it is unfair to make such a comparison where one expression has had forty years head start? Even casually off-hand, this keyboard notices that "Sound-and-Fury Liberals" might be kinda fun . . . .

One digresses. One was going to point out that Neocomrade #12 has sagely keyboarded of "a KIND of riot and revolution insurance." What kind is that, exactly? The serious student of AEIdeology and the like must ever aspire to get at the quiddity of things. Also of neothings.

The e-Commentariat are left to read between the lines with their Leo-Strauss-Brand® Magic Decoder Rings that unqualified "riot and revolution insurance" would suggest something decidedly retro- and palæo-. [2] And so it would. Part of the self-degeneratin’ process already complained of above consists in emptyin’ all significance out of the neocomrades’ blessèd and mysterious prefix. You coulda bought "riot and revolution insurance" from the late Palæocomrade R. Kirk , [3] for Pete’s sake! Or mail-order the same product from Eddie Burke direct.

Back in the primitive age of the Kristolian dispensation, "The Public Interest’s golden days / When neocons no harm meant," did "riot and revolution insurance" figure on the Brave New Agenda at all? Well, maybe it did. The present keyboard was not in the holy Homeland during the annus horribilis, so perhaps some of ’em really were cowerin’ under their beds in dread of universal Watts from sea to shinin’ sea. However, working backwards on 1968 from 1970-2009, I have obtained a distinct impression that they were more worried about certain unseemly events in Harvard Yard than in Neocomrade E. Banfield’s "Rioting for fun and profit." It would be laughable to suppose that the neoterics have been a popular or mass phenomenon at any point in their factionette’s career, and even my own well-developed Schimpftreib hesitates to claim they were deliberately makin’ America fit for Archie Bunker to live in.

Still, unless I misremember, there was a distinct panem et circenses element present in Public Interest neoconnery that had already evaporated well before Weekly Standard neoconnery started takin’ money from Citizen Murdoch. The Venerable Framers were ‘neo-’ under Richard XXXVII at least partly because they had learned to live with what Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and Hooverville would nowadays call ‘entitlements’. Though naturally the less degenerate neocomrades will have rarely or never put it as I do, yet was there not a certain Danegeld aspect to the implicit neotransaction, graciously lettin’ the lower orders retain their New Deal goodies in return for the lower orders not having TOO much fun rioting and revolting?

Nowadays it is clearly "No more Mr. Nice Guy" on that front. Neocomrade #12 evidently feels himself in need of ‘insurance’ of a sort that Neocomrades I. Kristol and D. Bell were never in the market for. Indeed, E. Banfield himself was certainly not scared of the lower orders, bein’ rather a cultivated despiser of them than an alarmist about them. "Change and decay in all around I see ...."

’Tis always a mistake to let the dog detect that you are afraid of, it seems to me. Mais que sçay-je?

Neotericity in general is always around to be dumped on, so perhaps one should focus here on the Washington Post before it becomes mere conventional wisdom that the neocomradely crew have boarded and taken that vessel over.

Neocomrade #0’s little ‘translation’ shtyk gives the impression that she supposes Neocomrade F. Hiatt to be still an outsider to Commentariat and Weekly Standardiser circles. Is that mere Dubya-like misstatement or is it positive dezinformatsya? And there is a third possibility as well, for it may be self-protection, in the sense that once the Post is generally recognized as being what it has sunk to ideologically, it will be, by a vast margin, the most august and resplendent neopublication goin’. Naturally the mom-and-pop outlets of neo- resent a Wal-Mart movin’ into their neighborhood!

F. Hiatt is not yet a name to conjure with, and the biographical information in [3] casts no light on the individual specimen’s Geistesbildung. If one conjectures, for the sake of argument, that it has recently perverted to neotericity, another aspect of ‘neo-’ can be highlighted. Even at very beginnin’ with I. Kristol and D. Bell and E. Banfield, the present keyboard found the standard nomenclature vaguely ludicrous, thinking to myself "Begorrah, and ’tis as if St. Augustine had found it unacceptable to admit that he was just doing what Mommy had been nagging him to do for years and had insisted on calling his final religious preference ecclesia neocatholica! [4]

BGKB.

Happy days.

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[1] ’Tis almost, but not quite, as good as neoconjugatin’ the militant extremist GOP verb with an apostrophe in honour of Neocomrade Governess S. Heath-Paling of AK and all her pseudopoppy ilk. Absolutely ideal is that ploy! It allows adverse judgment to be pronounced without adding even a single byte to one’s bandwidth abuse.


[2] Unless ‘insurance’ be very strictly construed to signify that the Sound Liberal® steps in to pick up the smashed Powellian crockery afterwards and has nothing to do with tryin’ to keep bulls and bullshit out of the shop in advance.


[3] Rhymes with ‘jerk’. At URL cit., notice that faint, far-off whiff of the neotoxic in "Cultural Revival." R. Kirk himself struck one as assumin’ (1) that all reaction is a mystic organic whole, from which it would be improper to disjoin Kultur in particular, and (2) that omnireaction is a philosophia perennis that no more needs (or admits of) ‘revival’ than peccatum originale does. But God knows best.


[4] One could maintain with a straight face that Gloomy Gus did indeed subsequently invent or discover ‘Neocatholicity’, but that is entirely a different story.