Are conservatism and anti-militarism antithetical positions? To most Americans today, yes they are. However, despite what the inheritance Foundation, National Review, the Republican Party, Fox News, and Talk Radio tell you, conservatism was traditionally very skeptical of militarism, foreign interventionism, and war. Conservatism today stands for tiny more than ever expanding troops budgets and perpetual war; this is largely a betrayal of one of the most basic theory of American conservatism.
Richard Weaver, the influential conservative author, deplored the growing barbarism that modern warfare entailed. Seeing back prior to the French Revolution, Weaver had, similar to the troops historian Michael Howard, written how Europe had 'civilized' warfare. For example, wars had territorial objectives, not ideological ones; wars were not about exterminating people, but rather about outmaneuvering an enemy in the least costly, both in terms of money and men, way possible. This all changed with the French Revolution. In it, conscription, nationalism, and total warfare - a "return to barbarism" - was unleashed upon the West. This mindset of nihilism was seen under normal Sherman's barbaric actions against the Southern Confederacy, World War I enlarged it yet again, and the plan of nihilistic total war was ultimately perfected with World War Ii. The Second World War, according to Weaver, had "reduced the word 'noncombatant' roughly to meaninglessness."
Pearl
Now, let us turn to the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. There is roughly 100% solidarity among conservatives today that the nuclear bombings were necessary, just, and deserved. Not only are the bombings justified, but they are even celebrated today. Criticize the atomic bombings, and you'll be speedily labeled a leftist, anti-American, pinko-communist. But what have foremost conservatives had to say about Nagasaki and Hiroshima that you've never heard Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin quote?
David Lawrence, the foremost conservative publisher (who was awarded a Presidential Medal of leisure by President Nixon), believed that Japan's surrender was distinct and that the nuclear bombings were not valuable to end the War. Days after the bombings, he wrote that any troops justifications would "never erase from our minds the simple truth that we, of all civilized nations... Did not hesitate to employ the most destructive weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children."
Shortly after Japan's surrender, an record was published in the conservative magazine Human Events that stated that Hiroshima might be morally "more shameful" and "more degrading" than Japan's "indefensible and infamous act of aggression" at Pearl Harbor. The Chicago Tribune, at the time an additional one conservative mouthpiece, accused President Truman of "crimes against humanity" for "the utterly unnecessary killing of uncounted Japanese." Henry Luce, an additional one foremost conservative publisher, stated that "[i]f, instead of our doctrine of 'unconditional surrender,' we had all along made our conditions clear, I have tiny doubt that the war with Japan would have ended soon without the bomb explosion which so jarred the Christian conscience."
Richard Weaver wrote of the atomic bombings that they were "inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built," and criticized "the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust... Pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Getting back to the theme of warfare in general, Felix Morley wrote in 1959 that, "Every war in which the United States has engaged since 1815 was waged in the name of democracy. Each has contributed to that centralization of power which tends to destroy that local self-government which is what most Americans have in mind when they acclaim democracy." Conservatives used to understand this. They knew that militarism abroad centralized and aggrandized the State at home. They knew that the biggest threat to liberty, culture, and the family was not a foreign foe, but the State, especially under some pretext of war. Now they claim to be for 'limited-government' while supporting gigantic troops spending and endless bombing campaigns. And then everybody wonders why domestic government grew at the rate it did under President George W. Bush.
It would do well for the conservative movement to recall the traditionalist, libertarian, Christian, and constitutional arguments against American Imperialism. We need to remember our intellectual forebears and what conservatism is truly about (hint: it is not about bombing brown habitancy indefinitely, rooting out every tyrant in the world straight through troops action, or even bringing democracy to foreigners).
Anti-War ConservatismRecommend : The Bests Rings
