O Insurgente

Joseph Sobran’s Conservative Foreign Policy

Learning of Sobran’s passing last week at the age of 64, I began to recall so many of his conservative reminders, particularly his Jeffersonian views on foreign policy and how valuable they are today. One of the beautiful things about the Tea Party is it n ow encourages conservatives to remember and reexamine what they stand for–Sobran’s specialty–a reflection that was even less in evidence under George W. Bush than it was under Clinton. Sobran had to leave his 18-year job as editor of National Review in 1993 due in part to his traditionally conservative views clashing with the neoconservatives’ agenda for the Middle East, or as he wrote in his final column before his death:

“I saw thirty years ago that we were headed for needless war with the Arabs, and I had two boys in their teens. By 1991 I hated Bush with a murderous fury. He was willing to get young men like my son Mike killed for no clear reason. I didn’t want them dying in the Middle East, where we always seem to be defending democracy and freedom these days… Nobody else at National Review seemed to have this worry.”

Today, the neoconservatives that so worried Sobran are worried themselves about a Tea Party movement hellbent on cutting spending, particularly if grassroots conservatives begin critiquing the monstrously big government program of American empire. Last week, columnists representing the American Enterprise Institute–Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly–warned in the Washington Post that Tea Partiers should stay away from the likes of Ron or Rand Paul, Sen. Tom Coburn, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and any other Republican who would dare question our current foreign policy. Neoconservatives Pletka and Donnelly seem to believe that America’s superpower status is what makes it great, forever spreading “freedom” and “democracy” around the world through perpetual war. Needless to say, the conservative Sobran took a more traditional view:

“[M]any Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be ‘the greatest country on earth’ in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, ‘a 3rd-rate power,’ it would be virtually worthless… . This is nationalism, not patriotism… . When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can’t be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular–the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies… . But the nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it’s precisely America’s mission to spread those abstractions around the world–to impose them by force, if necessary. In his mind, those abstractions are universal ideals, and they can never be truly ‘safe’ until they exist, unchallenged, everywhere; the world must be made ‘safe for democracy’ by ‘a war to end all wars…’ For the nationalist, war is a welcome opportunity to change the world. This is a recipe for endless war.”

Joseph Sobran, R.I.P. Por Scott P. Richert.

Joe’s status as the preeminent literary defender of life in the latter half of the 20th century did not arise simply from what Joe had to say, or the number of words he wrote, but how he said it. For Joe, the most beautiful prose flowed from his fingers with incredible ease. McFadden was not exaggerating when he wrote that Sobran’s name “on anything whatever–article, review, commentary–was the guarantee of fine writing, sharp wit, and a most distinctive style which . . . made one think of nobody else so much as G.K. Chesterton.

Joseph Sobran: God’s Satirical Soldier. Por Jack Kenny.

Like most conservatives, Joseph Sobran, enjoyed being a contrarian, flatly contradicting the conventional wisdom, which he liked to describe as “what everybody thinks everybody else thinks.” Joe Sobran wasn’t “everybody” and he was only too happy to challenge, in his own special way, many of the things that “everybody knows.”

Curiosamente – ou talvez não – o Washington Post é bastante mais violento do que o New York Times na abordagem que faz à vida e obra de Joseph Sobran.

No New York Times: Joseph Sobran, Writer Whom Buckley Mentored, Dies at 64

Mr. Sobran (pronounced SO-brun), one of the conservative whiz kids whom William F. Buckley draft-picked for National Review straight out of college, made his mark with witty, thoughtful essays on moral and social questions. He was an unapologetic paleoconservative, opposed to military intervention abroad, big government at home and moral permissiveness everywhere.

No Washington Post: Hard-line commentator

Motivated by a strong Catholic faith, Mr. Sobran (pronounced SOH-brun) hardened his social views and cultivated a growing belief in U.S. isolationism in international affairs. He began to clash with Buckley on foreign policy matters during the Reagan administration and developed a deep antipathy toward Israel and Jewish lobbying interests in the United States.

Mr. Sobran later objected to what he considered executive overreaching by the administration of George H.W. Bush, writing that Bush was “the sort of politician our Founding Fathers were tying to prevent.” Mr. Sobran was among the few conservatives opposed to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

By late 1991, Buckley had had enough of his fractious protege and published a series of articles about right-wing anti-Semitism. Without overtly calling Mr. Sobran an anti-Semite, Buckley left that clear impression. Other leading thinkers on the right, including neoconservative author and editor Norman Podhoretz, didn’t mince words in condemning Mr. Sobran’s views.

After Mr. Sobran retaliated with essays critical of Buckley in 1993, he was fired from National Review in 1993.