I had a brief look at a friend’s copy of the Perle/Frum manifesto a few days back. Strange piece of work. The title itself is odd enough… do they really think that an end to terrorism would be an end to evil? Given the relative death tolls, one would think that, for example, tribal conflict is at least as great an evil as terrorism: the death toll of intertribal violence in Central Africa in the last decade dwarfs that of Islamic terrorism. Of course those dead people are black, and the whole mess hasn’t affected Americans, so it isn’t really evil.
These are the guys who are supposed to be opposed to moral relativism. Yeah, right.
After browsing the book, I looked at some reviews. A funny comment from Lawrence Kaplan:
This is not conservatism. It is liberalism, with very sharp teeth.
Another, less funny but well worth considering, from The Economist:
This makes the reader wonder whether the boldness of the neo-conservative agenda is rooted—as they see it—in clear thinking, plain talking and moral courage, or whether it arises from a reckless disregard for complexity, shades of grey or the possibility of unintended consequences.
The impression I got, admittedly from browsing excerpts, is that the whole thing was the product of a 3-day amphetamine binge in the AEI basement. I know they don’t have speed sessions in the AEI basement (I hope not, at least), but the book has that precise tone of ultraconfident absolutism that you get when you chemically accelerate a group of highly educated people with essentially similar views.
What interests me here is the similarity between the psychotropic effects of power and those of amphetamines. Somebody really ought to do some formal research on that. In the meantime, I hope we can keep these boys locked up in their nice cozy think tank. They could do real damage if they ever got out. |
