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Some interesting, if oddly interpreted, background at HNN on Fritz Kraemer, the influential hardliner and  intellectual mentor of Henry Kissinger and Al Haig, and Kraemer’s influence in American foreign policy:

Luke A. Nichter: Who Was Fritz Kraemer? And Why We Should Care.

Whether Vietnam, Iraq, or now Afghanistan, wars come and go, but the real battle is a philosophic one between two sects of conservatives. In The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons from Nixon to Obama, authors Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman challenge readers to examine the role of a little-known Pentagon figure named Fritz G.A. Kraemer. Colodny and Shachtman argue that Kraemer was the leading intellectual behind what became known as the neo-conservative movement, witnessed by the fact that Kraemer influenced so many high-ranking conservative figures over the course of  six decades.….This meeting was probably the only one to have occurred during the Nixon presidency in which Nixon and Kissinger permitted a rigorous debate, in the Oval Office no less, over the merits of not just Vietnam policy, but Nixon foreign policy more generally. Kraemer knew the issues well enough that both Nixon and Kissinger were forced to defend themselves to someone who represented an increasingly disenchanted sect of conservatives. Kraemer believed, as other conservatives did, that the conduct of Nixon foreign policy had became tainted by short-term political considerations, and that politicians had acted as a restraining influence on military leaders who believed they were capable of achieving a military victory.. 

The Nixon Quartet

….At the heart of the dance was a fundamental philosophic difference between Kraemer’s ideologically purist, militarist, anti-diplomacy stance, and Nixon’s quintessential pragmatic stance.  Kissinger and Haig were caught between these antipodal poles.  Kraemer had “discovered” Kissinger in 1944 at Camp Claiborne, had superseded his goal of becoming an accountant and readied him intellectually for Harvard.  As Kissinger would later acknowledge, “Kraemer shaped my reading and thinking, influenced my choice of college, awakened my interest in political philosophy and history, inspired both my undergraduate and graduate theses and became an integral and indispensable part of my life.”  In the Pentagon in 1961, Kraemer had similarly discovered Haig, and recommended him for greater responsibilities in the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  At the moment of entering the White House in 1969, both Kissinger and Haig subscribed largely to Kraemer’s tenets.…..There’s much more to the story of this quartet, including Haig’s efforts to push Nixon up the plank toward resignation, and how those who detested Nixon’s foreign policies became the neocons in the Ford and Carter years, when they continued and magnified their efforts to undermine those presidents’ Nixonian foreign policies.

The two articles have a lot of interesting snippets of information but I am finding the ideological spin to be strange. The neoconservatives moved from the Left to the Right, starting roughly in this period, but they would not be identifiably so until the mid to late 1970’s. Nor are most of the conservative figures like Alexander Haig in the neoconservative group. When Haig was Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, his relationship with the administration’s actual neoconservatives like Jeanne Kirkpatrick was very poor ( they were also poor with the administration’s moderates). The authors, in my view, are also overestimating Kraemer’s influence on Richard Nixon, who entered office with a firm vision of his foreign policy objectives.

Nevertheless, of serious interest to the Nixon scholar.

Jessica Margolin, who blogs at Solvation on topics that I would broadly call “political economy” and emergent trends within the moderately liberal, techno-VC–silicon valley – futurist-“social capital”, business culture, writes in to me:

“Hi. As an educated and articulate libertarian person, could you PLEASE point me to conservative points of view that aren’t espoused by retarded ranting weirdos? I know there must be some. Help”

This cri de coeur caused me to ponder. 

Compared to my more leftwing blogfriends at ProgressiveHistorians or NewsHoggers, Margolin does not seem to me to be more than mildly liberal liberal/progressive but, she lives, if I recall, in an area not noted for a high proportion of conservative residents. If all I saw of conservatism were the bombthrowing personalities in 30 second MSM clips, I’d think the Right was composed of wingnuts too.

It isn’t, of course, any more than the Left is exclusively populated by Hugo Chavez worshipping, Cindy Sheehan clones. I think the problem in the mutual perception of respective Left-Right wingnuttery comes down to three factors:

1. Partisanship

2. Ideology

3. The Infotainment Media Business Model

Number three is the most significant factor. Bombastic clowns draw an audience. Reasoned discourse puts viewers to sleep. The media is a business, not a charity organization or even a totally one-sided political machine. Basically liberal broadcast networks will air a few conservatives who bring in ad revenue. Period. This model is a driver to propagating corrosive, demonizing, political rhetoric in the public discourse and it garners attention far beyond the actual numbers of people who genuinely support such positions

The most aggravating figures in political life are really more partisan than ideological. Something about the intrinsic one-sidedness of partisan rhetoric, I suspect.  Richard Nixon and George W. Bush were not very conservative in their policies but they were aggressive partisans. Bill and Hillary Clinton are partisan Democrats as was Jimmy Carter (the much maligned Carter enraged stalwart liberals among the House Democrats). By contrast, LBJ, Obama and Reagan are/were more ideological than partisan presidents. Eisenhower, JFK and Ford were neither sharply partisan nor ideological but epitomized pragmatic consensus politics.

Ideology is the bedrock of political conviction. Certain people though prefer purism to policy “wins” and are willing to go down with flags flying rather than compromise their principles. We can even find this praiseworthy, in retrospect; men like Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey appear far more admirable in the eyes of history than the opponents who beat them for the presidency. By contrast, others appear to be a little cracked, impractical and unreasonable tilters at windmills and political ass-clowns who only injure their own party with buffoonish antics.

Returning to Jessica’s question, conservatism is a coalition and not a movement, like liberalism. There are real and important philosophical differences between factions on the Right – neocons, paleocons, libertarians, moderates and the religious right – that do not have counterparts on the Left. The Right tends to stick together based more upon what they are against than what they are for.

Here are some voices in the different conservative factions that I find to be “reasonable”, most of the time. It is an imperfect and admittedly arbitrary list composed of pundits, media personalities, philosophers, bloggers and historical figures. I do not claim to have read every word each person has ever written or that I endorse all of their views. I am using these labels very broadly ( Ayn Rand rejected the term “libertarian”, John Adams was also a radical because he was a republican revolutionary, etc.) and my familiarity with religious right figures is very weak. I did not include a category for “moderate conservatives” – something that probably describes most GOP general election voters who often do not bother to vote in the primaries.

All I am saying is that these individuals are among the better representatives of different kinds of conservatism in the Anglo-American sense of the term, the a couple of figures are probably borderline, depending where you stand.

Paleoconservatives:

Arnaud de Borchgrave, W. Pat Lang, Bernard Finel, George Will, Fabius Maximus, Milt Rosenberg, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, George Kennan, Robert Taft, Whittaker Chambers, Edmund Burke, John Adams

Libertarians:

Amity Shlaes, Virginia Postrel, Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, Stephen Chapman,  Ayn Rand,  Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek,  Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Barry Goldwater,  Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine

Neoconservatives:

Max Boot, Fred Kagan, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Richard Pipes, Donald Kagan, David Horowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Irving Kristol, Constantine Menges, William J. Bennett, William Kristol

The Religious Right:

Cal Thomas,  Richard John Neuhaus, Dinesh D’Souza, Reinhold Niebuhr

Comments, criticism, complaints, suggestions. Open fire in the comments…..

ADDENDUM:

By acclamation from the learned gents in the comments section, 20th century American political theorist James Burnham and 19th century French philosopher Frederic Bastiat, are officially added to the list.

I have not read either, though I’ve seen Bastiat frequently quoted by libertarian writers. Joseph Fouche of The Committe of Public Safety blog did an excellent series on Burnham which you can access here.

 Creeping Chavezismo in the MSM in regard to President Obama. From Drudge:

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm! Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

Imagine if ABC news delivered a report on religion from the Vatican and excluded non-Catholics. What message would that send? This is an amazing level of sycophancy toward a president by a major media outlet, even a Democratic president.Let us hear no more whining about bias on FOX or talk radio, this stunt by ABC amounts to unpaid advertisng and a de facto government TV program. Why is this happening? Simple Obama-worship at ABC? Unlikely.

 John Podesta, is the lead strategist of the effort to coordinate the media with Liberal-Left  Democratic political needs, published his think tank’s strategy in regard to censoring talk radio.  We can only imagine what advice Podesta gives to Obama administration officials in private, but the report was a strong signal to all broadcasters to toe the political line or face increasingly onerous FCC regulation, escalating fees, fines and denial of licenses over the next four years.

Republicans and conservatives need to wake up that the Obama administration is not playing the traditional “issues” game beloved of partisan interest groups bent on fighting over microscopic technical changes in abortion laws or .5 % of the capital gains tax rate. They could care less about that minutia for now, seeing it as distracting crap; the aim of the Obama administration is creating long-term, strategic advantages for Democrats and progressive leftists by changing the rules of the game for the long haul. So the Obamaites are focusing on controlling the media discourse, turning the Census Bureau into a political tool of the Democratic Party, redrawing the congressional map and raising the barriers to entry to participate in the political process for independent or conservative demographic groups.

Either the GOP gets it together in the next two election cycles or it is finished for a generation.

UPDATE:

ABC refuses to accept paid advertising critical of Obama’s health plan

My friend Bruce Kesler no longer is a “regular” blogger but he has recently found the time for an occasional guest-post at Maggie’s Farm. It’s good to see Bruce back in the game even on a sometime basis and I’m pleased to point your attention to his following post:

Appearances and Mood

What McCain did right and conservatives wrong

 By Bruce Kesler

Over the past four years, conservatives have debated whether the Republican Party is serving them and the country.  This discussion was stirred by several  proposals by the Bush administration — particularly not vetoing some budget-busters, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and the immigration reforms that didn’t prioritize border controls – and the failure to fire back at the gross distortions and language by opponents.

Bush earned respect for his stalwart stance in Iraq, but even there lost points for his failure to act earlier to change a troubled strategy and command.  Seeming backpeddling and soft-shoeing on the threats from Iran and North Korea, though following closer to the liberals’ playbook, didn’t earn him support from liberals or conservatives.

The debate among conservatives and libertarians after this election is likely to grow much more heated, whether McCain wins or loses.

Although conservatives have stood most strongly behind McCain, conservatives do not expect much thanks or loyalty from McCain if he wins, and do expect McCain to continue his practice of alliance with many liberal proposals, as he has in the past.  That alone will add heat the pot.  On the other hand, conservatives will welcome his Trumanesque temper and bluntness replying to the likely continuation of intemperate Democrats in the Congress.

If McCain loses, conservatives will likely place most of the blame on him and his campaign for failing to take more advantage of Obama’s coterie of radical mentors, to alert more voters of their dangers.

At the same time, in defense of McCain’s campaign approach, those most likely to hold these associations as important are aware of them.  Meanwhile, in a campaign during which the overwhelming portion of the major media have utterly failed to research or expose Obama’s lack of record and record of shady allies, McCain would likely not have gotten much further in educating the wider public.

So, McCain has concentrated on trying to woo marginal voters.  Those non-partisans react more to appearances and mood.

McCain earned none of the points he should have for trying to tackle the credit-economic meltdown, even by comparison to Obama’s passivity.  Neither did McCain draw attention to the Congress’ tainted hands in creating it, but there are many Republican members who sat by and prospered from the false sense of well-being that preceded the deluge.  McCain did not throw the Congressional Republicans under the bus, as Obama repeatedly did every time a mentor was exposed.  And, McCain did exhibit a bully optimism in reacting to the meltdown and focused on quick actions.

It is that indefatigable optimism and sense of fair play that has been highlighted and redounded to his credit.  This is in line with his military and political record of bravely meeting challenges.  Despite every odd, McCain has fought the election to a near thing.

Conservatives must recognize that, for any of McCain or his campaign’s failings, it is among conservatives that reform must come.  Much of our NY-DC commentariat are corrupted by overlong proximity to comfortable power and cocktail circuits, exhibiting callowness, lethargy or outright capitulation.  Their lack of principle and intestinal fortitude must be replaced.  Much of our bloggers have been consumed by editorializing and not organizing.  The think-tanks we built and many major donors have been cringing or avoiding confrontation.  Rank and file conservatives mostly looked to this inadequate leadership instead of to ourselves to step forward and fight.

It will take a major overhaul to revive the conservative movement.  As in 1964, it will not come from the establishment, but must depend on openness to new participants and leaders.  Of course, that does not mean fringe elements or ideas.  The crucial role that National Review played post-1964 in guarding against that will require a new central forum of conservative sanity and principle.

No one can predict where they will come from.  But they must be encouraged, welcomed and supported when they appear.  Indeed, each of us must see in ourselves the willingness and determination to be those participants and leaders

Wise words.

American conservatism needs a substantial overhaul – perhaps even a 12 Step program – to recover it’s essence as an optimistic philosophy that profoundly empowers individuals and trusts them to make their own choices. Then, in my opinion, conservatives need to harness that spirit to a thorough comprehension of how globalization changed the world to operate in terms of metasystems and networks, so as to balance economic dynamism with resiliency (and learn how to get that point across in normal English). Then go on message and do not deviate.

The other side, if Senator Obama wins Tuesday, will be so consumed with jerry-rigging top-down, hierarchical, statist, solutions out of a fantasist version of the New Deal that they will inevitably overreach and create an opening for a new brand conservatism four years from now.

Or perhaps just two years. Time to get busy.

This clip has a classic statement from Senator Barry Goldwater at the 1960 Republican Convention, which I think may be food for thought for all the conservatives of a general libertarian-pragmatic  bent who may be unhappy with the drift of the Republican Party.

And check out this post at Security and Liberty.