Norman Podhoretz and Commentary Magazine: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons

376 Pages·2010·2.74 MB·English

by  Nathan Abrams

Norman Podhoretz and
Commentary
Magazine
This page intentionally left blank
Norman Podhoretz and
Commentary
Magazine
The Rise and Fall of the Neocons
Nathan Abrams
Th e Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038
Th e Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
Th e Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © 2010 by Nathan Abrams
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the
publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-1-4411-0968-2
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .viii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Taking Over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Podhoretz: Th e Early Years 9
Arriving 13
Coming Apart 17
Editor-in-Chief 21
An Oedipal Struggle 23
Taking Risks 28
Soft ening the Hardness 30
De-Judaizement 32
“Kosher Baloney” 34
Editorial Freedom 41
Norman the Conqueror 43
2. Th e Revised Standard Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
“Doing . . . Violence to the Truth” 52
Not So Radical 53
America the Beautiful 57
Anti-Liberal Racism 60
Hardening the Soft ness 67
Incipient Conservatism 69
Zionization and the 614th Commandment 71
Liberal Anti-Communism Revisited 75
Blacks and Jews 77
Making It 81
Climax 84
Kulturkampf 86
v
vi CONTENTS
3. War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Podhoretz Returns 93
A Declaration of War 94
On the Off ensive 96
Standing His Ground 102
“La grande peur juive” 106
“Literary Onanism” 109
“Orchestrated ‘Lynchings’” 113
Nixonism vs. McGovernism 116
Political Onanism 119
Neoconservatism 121
Present Tense 124
Casualties 126
4. Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Resurrecting the Cold War 133
Reviving McCarthy 140
Inside the UN 145
Frozen Out 146
Double Standards 149
Ardent Zionism 151
A “Two-Bit Little Homophobic Bigot” 155
Insanity or Maturity? 159
5. Empire. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Get Carter 165
Bliss 169
Th e Norman Invasion 170
“Podhoretz as Dr. Strangelove!” 173
Abusing Human Rights 176
A Shtetl Mentality 178
Tireless Fanaticism 186
Neo-Puritan Traditionalism 187
“A Farewell to Civil Rights” 189
Traditional Intellectuals 193
6. Decline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Betrayal 199
Despair 202
“Neanderthal[s] in Drag” 204
Ideologue of Zionism 207
Contents vii
A False Prophet of Particularism 210
“All the Rest is Commentary” 215
Twisted Th inking 218
Confusion 222
Th e Conservative Crack-Up 228
Gloominess 231
7. Fall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Intellectual Sacrifi ce 240
Th e Gospel of American Conservatism 243
Th e Wrong Side of History 246
Identity Crisis 254
Th e Culture Wars 257
Social Darwinist Laissez-Faire Racism 261
Biblical Morality 262
Entering the Fever Swamps 264
Who’s Afraid of the Religious Right? 268
“Saddam-is-Hitler” 269
“Jimmy Clinton” 275
A Hero at a Safe Distance 276
A “Counterrevolution” of the Right? 280
8. Aft er the Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Th e Death of Neoconservatism 289
Sickness 291
Podhoretz’s Protégé 298
Reviving Reagan 300
Life Aft er Death? 301
Podhoretz Returns 304
Mere Posturing 306
Myth-Making 308
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Acknowledgments
Th is book has been so long in the making that inevitably I will forget and
leave out many people who have assisted me along the way, but several
names stand out deserving of praise: Richard King, Hugh Wilford, Nina
Fishman, Murray Friedman, and Michael Abrams (my long-suff ering
father who’s pretty much read every draft I ever wrote), as well as the
anonymous readers whose comments have helped to improve this book
immeasurably. Between them, they have given me helpful advice and sug-
gestions but needless to say the errors are my own. Wendy Maples furnished
a welcome place to edit over a summer. Th e University of Aberdeen and
Bangor University provided congenial places to work and write, particu-
larly the latter. And students at both universities have helped to contribute
ideas which have ended up in here. I am grateful to all those who con-
sented to be interviewed or responded to my queries by telephone, letter,
and email. I would also like to thank the staff of the various libraries I used
over the years: the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the Uni-
versity of Texas, Austin; the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio;
the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress; and the British
Library. I have received fi nancial support from various sources including
Th e Open University, Th e Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American
Jewish Archives, Th e Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the
University of Texas at Austin, Th e Myer and Rosaline Feinstein Center at
Temple University and Th e Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.
I would like to thank my agent Leslie Gardner for having faith in and
pushing this project when publishers were asking for books on Richard
Perle and didn’t even know who Norman Podhoretz was. I am also grateful
to Marie-Claire Antoine and the team at Continuum.
Finally, recognition must go also to all of my parents, friends and family,
as well as those others who I have met over the years. Th ey have been
pillars of support, advice, and friendship.
viii
Introduction
During the presidency of George W. Bush an idea known as “neoconserva-
tism” was highly infl uential. Certainly, many of the ideas implemented by
the Bush administration had been articulated over the past two-and-a half
decades by neoconservatives. Th e neoconservatives infl uenced the Bush
administration’s decisions on supply-side economics, tax cuts, the erosion
of the wall separating church and state, bioethics, and stem cell research.
Neoconservatives also held many prominent positions in the Bush admin-
istration: fi gures and advisors such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D.
Wolfowitz; the vice president’s chief of staff I. Lewis Libby; National Secu-
rity Council staff er Elliott Abrams; Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Douglas J. Feith; Peter Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense; and others
like Richard Perle, John DiIulio, David Frum, David Horowitz, Murray
Friedman, Leslie Lenkowsky, Leon Kass, James Q. Wilson, Daniel Pipes,
Charles Horner, Samuel Huntington, Stephen Schwartz, Bernard Lewis,
Michael Ledeen, and Robert Kagan.
Th e most signifi cant area of neoconservative infl uence was foreign
policy. While the administration’s initial adoption of a sort of unilateralism
that led it to spurn the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto accords,
and the ABM treaty, among other things, mirrored the neoconservative
position, the neoconservative line undoubtedly shaped the Bush adminis-
tration’s policy in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Suzanne Klingenstein observed the “glaringly obvious” and “astounding
degree to which the neoconservatives had managed to establish their views,
especially on foreign policy, at the expense of those of traditional conserva-
tives in the Republican Party.” Neoconservative ideas found expression
in the Bush Administration’s rhetoric and helped to revive the spirit of
a Wilsonian interventionist, democratic internationalist and unilaterally
globalist foreign policy implacably opposed to totalitarianism. Th e Bush
Doctrine—the right of the United States to wage preemptive war—repre-
sented the ultimate crystallization of neoconservative thinking.1
Th e neoconservative voice was loudest in Bush’s policy in the Gulf
and the Middle East, as it railed against the terrorist threat of Islam.
1