Partying Like It's 1983

Reading the re-release of Charles Peter's "A Neoliberal's Manifesto" is like celebrating Christmas as early as March.

Save for his call to reinstate the draft (something I always considered more of an idealistic throwback to the 40s than anything else), it reads fairly well today.

Paul Glastris posts the goods while also relating an email from a fellow Washington Monthly contributing editor:

The journalistic approach is the heart and soul of the Monthly because it is more than a journalistic approach. It is a mandate for continual self-examination and ruthless intellectual honesty. Face up to the strongest arguments against your own position, not just the weakest ones. Be willing to look contrary evidence squarely in the eye and not hide under your desk a la Dick Cheney or the WSJ editorial page. This is the gospel within the gospel -- and yes it does have roots in the more traditional meaning of that term.

The basic text here is "Get the beam out of your own eye so that you can see clearly to get the mote out of your brother's eye." (Or maybe it's mote and beam; I always forget.) These words are posted beside the front door of every honest journalist and thinker. It is a part that somehow got left out of the text consulted by brothers Dobson, Bush, Reed et al.

This inner gospel requires ongoing revision of the outer one. Times change. We get new facts. The excesses of conventional liberalism pale today against those of the messianic Right. (I do NOT say "conservative" because it is NOT conservative.) Thus the founding thrust of the Monthly in 1969 -- inspector general for the liberal establishment -- did require a change in direction.

The inner gospel not only has room for that; it requires it. Just as it will require another one when the conventional wisdom finally turns against the market worship of the last six years and beyond. This is why, I think, the Monthly attracted, and weaned, so many great journalists; and why it holds a key for those in the future.

It was when the inner gospel hardened into an outer one -- a doctrine -- that the trouble started. Thus it always has been.

It's that final sentiment that brings me to the one point I'll make about David Brook's recent column on neoliberalism. The problem isn't that we no longer exist (a point I doubt Brooks would shed a tear over if he were transplanted back to 1983). The problem - if it must be called that - is that we've won.