Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/25/24 James Carden: The National Conservatives are Just Neocons by Another Name

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

Scott interviews James Carden on the National Conservative Conference that he recently attended. Carden and Scott talk about what the conference was like, who was funding it, why antiwar types ought to be concerned about this movement and more. Discussed on the show: “The Future of NATO” (Quincy Institute) “Neoconservatism by Another Name” (The American Conservative) James Carden is a columnist and senior advisor to the American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA) and a former adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, The Los Angeles Times, and American Affairs. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey you guys online i've got james cardin he's always writing such great stuff for the american conservative and for quincy and of course acura that's his group um the american committee on east west accord which of course is great on Russia issues, especially, and I wonder, how are you, James?

Doing all right. How about yourself? I'm okay, man. I appreciate you joining me today. I want to talk with you about conferences, which sounds kind of boring, but not really in this case, because one of them is the NATO conference, and the other is the National Conservative Conference. Grumble, grumble, Fred Flintstone, under my breath cursing. noises um but so uh first of all let's talk about uh nato because uh as you note they've had a giant conference about how important they are and how much we need them and how much more power they should have and more expanding they should do and um so i wonder did anybody laugh or everybody just kept a straight face while they just pretended everything is going fine just as they'd

planned or what's the deal well it's what they seem to specialize in There's no looking back. There's no kind of, they don't interrogate their own record or their motives or anything like that. So they had a very big summit meeting in Washington to mark the 75th anniversary of the alliance. In Washington, recently it shut down half the city. And basically what came out of it was that the alliance said that Ukraine, they would provide. Ukraine a quote-unquote bridge to NATO. So basically they're doubling down on their insistence that Ukraine joined the alliance. And this has been a project in the works for some time,

beginning in 2008 at the Bucharest NATO summit where the alliance pledged that both Ukraine and Georgia shall become members of the alliance. So they have not really taken the hint provided by the Russians that this is a very bad idea and their their full steam ahead which is unfortunate because the terms that Putin recently laid out to end the war you know he said that as soon as Ukrainian neutrality is put on the table they'll enact a ceasefire and begin negotiations. So this is NATO's message to the Russians that they're not interested. And so the war, unfortunately, will continue.

You know, they always call it calculus. Oh, well, we're talking about our calculus. It's just basic arithmetic. If they're determined to bring what's left of Ukraine into NATO, then all they're telling Putin is you better not stop the war. you're going to have to take over the whole country and then we'll see you at the romanian and polish border yeah it seems like um or they envision they or they're operating under the illusion that they can when they can expel the russians from the territory uh that they've gained

uh or they will accept uh they will accept ukraine um as a rumpstack state in the alliance. Ukraine and NATO in any form is going to be unacceptable to the Russians. So I, you know, so the war is going to continue until either, you know, Ukraine and the West expel the Russians from Ukraine, which is probably not going to happen. or until we finally get the message and accept Ukrainian neutrality

But here's a thing, no. But Biden himself, who, you know, he's not just a figurehead and whatever. Like this has been his policy since the 1990s. This is his favorite kind of pet project. He's basically, you know, him and John McCain are kind of the evil twins of all this stuff in the Senate.

And he has said repeatedly we're not bringing Ukraine into NATO we can't first of all there ain't no way in the war we're going to fight a nuclear war over Ukraine now the rest of NATO sure but Ukraine hell no

if we were we give them a war guarantee right now we bring them into NATO right now we can't do that which is all the proof that we need right there we got no intention of doing so even Joe Biden has no intention if he stayed the president another 12 years he has no intention of doing so and then

as he puts it well You know, they could have major reforms on corruption and on democracy. In other words, they'd have to entirely remake their political and economic system from total kleptocracy and oligarchy to something like a democratic republic with a capitalist economy, which they do not have and cannot do and will not do. And then he, for good measure, says, and of course, you'd also have to have unanimous agreement inside NATO, which is also never going to happen. So, anyway, we're just fighting this war for the principle that you can't tell us we're not bringing them in. But we're not bringing them in. And he said that over and over, and I actually believe him on that.

I don't think they can bring Ukraine in for all those reasons and more. But especially the one about we're not going to fight Russia over freaking Kiev. They pretend to care about the fate of Ukraine. But when it comes to demonstrating their commitment, look at what's actually happening. they're not doing jack shit for them right so it seems given all that even more pointless and so it's just more pointless death and destruction and the ukrainian people are the ones ultimately who are suffering uh and um it doesn't seem like there will be a real change of policy if harris becomes uh president and i think trump is something over

of a wild card in that regard as well yeah agree there i mean the only silver lining with trump is he's so bad on china he just wants to shift the focus away him and his whole crew of cooks there which we're going to talk more about the cooks in a second but um and harris i mean we all heard the famous clip of her explanation of what's going on over there that well russia and ukraine are these countries over there and won't attack the other one and I remember when I first saw that clip or heard that clip I thought well she must have been talking to some little kids and they just took it out of context you know and it's like no she's on the morning show on the radio in Chicago okay and then it's pretty clear when you listen to it carefully or i forget if there's

video of it essentially this was the briefing that she got and she's just repeating it Russia is a big country and it attacked a little country and this is a person so i don't know i don't think she has a prayer anyway unless trump has a heart attack or something or something you know at the yeah i think that the last two days three days have been very uh kind to her um i don't expect that i don't expect this honeymoon to continue i think that the democrats are um kind of whistling past the graveyard. I don't think that she is the solution to their, to their problem. No, definitely not. I mean, that was the joke all along. Was this guy's way too old to do it? Anyone can tell you that. You don't have to know about politics at all. You could just be anybody's

little old antsy and go, man, this guy is too old to be the president. But then their bench is like the Libertarian Party's bench. There's nobody on it. What are they going to do? They're screwed. They got Kamala Harris. They got old, you know, fentanyl crisis out there from California. They got Gretchen Whitmer, you know, the nurse ratchet of the lockdowns, you know? I mean, there's just no way. They've got nothing. And, you know, I tried to watch her thing yesterday.

I'm like, and they're like, okay, watch Kamala Harris's 17-minute speech. And I'm like, all right, I bet. You know what? This is history. She's running. I got to know something about this. I got to watch so like, all right, I'll do it. I'll watch it on speed and a half and I'll, no.

I watched like, I just skipped around, watched like, I don't know, two and a half, three minutes of it or something. That was all I needed. I mean, what can you say, dude? She's just such a phony. Her voice is terrible. Her cadence is terrible. Her smile is fake and she's just not believable at all. And I guess I shouldn't project my own impression onto like what everybody else must think.

but they also all must think that too and she ain't no Barack Obama man you know as far as like something for people to believe in what is there to believe in nothing I mean not even close and she has this strange you know it's kind of unfair I guess people can't help it I certainly don't like the sound of my own voice but the she has this way of this accent which is sort of mysterious It's like when Hillary Clinton tries to speak southern, you know, she has that sort of, it's very odd and it's very off-putting. And I don't think the fact that, you know, just because Biden stepped down, this makes her a different political animal. So, and I don't think that the VP ultimately matters anyway. And the people who seem to be in the running for the position.

don't inspire a lot of confidence. I mean, she can't possibly pick Josh Shapiro because, you know, with his close ties to the Israel lobby, the progressives are going to sit home. Mark Kelly seems to be the only one with any sort of possible appeal. Yeah, they keep talking about him because he was an astronaut. He was his name.

Is it Mark Kelly? yeah i think so i mean that's the whole thing is they're up against the most famous man in world history so like that's pretty tough yeah you know what are you gonna do still think he's close and you know he is you know a villainous anti-hero to a lot of people but that's good enough for a lot of people i don't know if you ever read that thing taibi wrote i think it was in hate ink where he has this whole thing about pro wrestling and donald trump playing the heel and the thing is though is the bad guy can be the dominant figure in wrestling for a while against the good guys if it's played right you know and as long as there's no like truly sympathetic good guy that he's beating up on

he's basically beating up on all a bunch of wimps who deserve it people cheer for that and i think that's the dynamic here again big time you know it might well be yeah um anyway what's funny though is the way with a blink of an eye and I don't know if the Republicans really had thought this through

or what but they just completely gave away the age issue to the other side now who's old and somewhat senile and confuses Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi

and these kinds of errors you know what I mean and and they keep demanding that Biden stepped down like really and make her the president for the next few people? months before you run against her? Are you crazy? But they are crazy. They're Republicans. They're

completely stupid. Which is actually, brings us to our next subject. The National Conservative Conference. This is the intellectual brainpower behind the Trumpian movement. As I'll paraphrase it politely, Arthur Bloom wrote that Trump is just the Israel lobby in Buchanan face. And this National Conservatism conference is an Israeli plot. It has nothing to do with American

patriotism or nationalism at all. It's a bunch of goddamn lacude settlers telling the American conservatives what they're supposed to think and believe. Oh, we've made a real break from the George W. Bush years when everybody was believing Abram Shulski's lies from the

Office of Special Plans. Now we're going to do it Trump's way. which is also the Office of Special Plans, also whatever Lekud wants. It's completely crazy. It's like the Tom Woods law. No matter who you vote for, you always get John McCain. Yeah, it's interesting. This movement, which has a lot of money and a lot of names behind it.

And it just kind of sprung up out of nowhere over the past couple of years. years. I believe that it's a lot of Peter Thiel money and stuff like that. It's a lot of different kind of Twitter personalities. They're trying to, I think, wander neoconservative ideas through a different sort of grand. And not all of it is, in my way of thinking, all that objectionable, it seems like they're kind of post-liberals in a way. And so post-liberalism is another kind of recent political movement that is against kind of neoliberal economics at home and neo-conservative foreign policy. abroad, but when they, when that cons begin to speak about foreign policy, there's the unmistakable ring of Paul Wolfowitz in that crowd. And I think what makes them dangerous is that they've been

pretty successful in rebranding these neo-conservative ideas. And they have a lot of support within the Trump camp. So if Trump, you know, ends up winning, you're going to see a lot of these, a lot of these people in office. And there's quite a bit of overlap with their ideas and the ideas of Robert O'Brien. And O'Brien was Trump's national security visor. And now he seems poised to be taking on a big role. a big job should Trump become president and he laid out his ideas in a very much discussed foreign affairs essay not too long ago the gist of it is basically where they differ with the traditional

neo-hans it's like they will kind of talk a good game with regard to the auto expansion and kind of indicate that caution might be a good policy in terms of, you know, antagonizing the Russians, but everywhere else, it's very much a neo-conservative program with regard to Israel-Palestine, with regard to Iran, and then, of course, with regard to China, who they want to elevate China into the next, you know, Soviet Union and wage a Cold War-era-style campaign against China so this seems to me

to be you know a really bad idea and basically it's not at all different from the foreign policy on offer by the Democrats

so you know what's the point and as you say as you know just said you know this is really an Israeli

American project not at all, you know, different in its policies from, you know, neoconservatism. Hey, y'all, let me tell you about Roberts & Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Nobody trusts the U.S. dollar anymore. Foreign governments are stocking up on gold instead of $100 bills. One, they know they need to, and two, that means you need to too. Interest rates are up, but for some reason not much for savings accounts.

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soon, you and your kids will be reading all about the libertarian antics of cartoon me, along with all my new pals. That's tuttwins.com slash 10 years. Yeah, and you can't believe them about Russia at all. That's just a sop to the right that doesn't believe in Biden's Russia policy right now. But there's no reason to think that they would really be any better on it. I mean, possibly they'd seek a compromise on an end of the war. But they're certainly not going to, for example, really lead a reintegration of Russia with Europe and the West and try to fix things. New Cold War is on and stay in through whatever Trump years, unless somehow he and Putin can just hit off some grand deal or something.

But I just don't think that's going to happen at all. I don't think he's going to have any support in his own government for it because he doesn't know where to find good America First conservatives to work for him. All he can do is just go to the Likud. So it's just going to be the same damn thing again. Well, he really has publicly separated himself from that heritage project, which is project 2025. And he's publicly disassociated himself from that, which I thought it was kind of a good thing since they seemed to be very much on the NADCON level in terms of foreign policy.

I hadn't really been paying too close attention to the NAC cons until recently. And I went through the program of that conference, and I was really alarmed by what I saw. Has it been on your radar for a while? Well, you know, I got a great excuse. which is I got my nose in this history book. I'm writing about the new Cold War. That same one I asked you to endorse two years ago that I haven't finished yet.

But thanks, though. I'll probably send it to you again and see if you want to stand by that endorsement now that it's different. So, no, I'm behind on everything, man. That's why I'm interviewing you because you're doing such a great job on this, keeping up with it.

But, I mean, I wanted to ask you because, you know, I said, it's a big Israeli project, but it's not just because Peter Thiel is running it, although I'm going to interview Kelly later today about what a kooky is and his ties to Israel

and his recent ridiculous statements on that issue. But it's this guy that you wrote about Yoram Hazoni. Who the hell is Yoram Hazoni?

James? Well, he's basically a Israeli-American academic along the lines of, think of, you know, Patrick Deneen, if he was in Israeli, something like that. I believe he and Deneen actually went to graduate school together, if I'm not mistaken. Hazzoni was raised in the occupied territories, and he came to the United States as a teenager. His parents, I believe, were academics. He was educated here, and then he moved back to the occupied territories and raised his family there and became active in far right

wing Israeli politics and worked as a speech writer for the Israeli supreme leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. And so, you know, his politics are that sort of thing. but he wrote a book about nationalism a number of years ago that really won over a lot of American converts. The book in thumbnail form, and I would urge people to go to the Cato Institute website has some really interesting stuff on this book that he wrote about nationalism. And basically, He says that the nation's state is mandated by the Old Testament. So, you know, that's sort of alarming for a number of reasons, not least because Israel is in its current predicament because they insist on viewing the Old Testament like we view Zillow or rent.com. It's not really a real estate directory.

It's supposed to be a, you know, a religious tract. And even I know that in the book of Samuel, God says, man, you don't want that. What are you talking about? A king, you know, he's going to do, he's going to conscript your son and take all your farm produce and all the thing. You know, I forgot what he, violate your daughter. And they go, no, we're sure, God, we know what we're doing. so it's this really you know it's this real israeli kind of project and he set up this think tank called the edmund burke foundation oh how cute i don't know what edmund burke has to do with

the old testament um but it just sounds better than the ariel charone foundation you know well exactly it's their masters at laundering their neoconservative you know ideology And then this Edmund Burke Foundation watched this series of conferences, these NatCon conferences. And so they just had one in Washington recently. And actually, as it happens, not surprisingly, Kelly of Lejos at Quincy, you know, wrote a superb report from it outlining, you know, their ideas with regard to Middle East and China policy. So, you know, I just thought it was time to sort of, my co-author, the great Colonel Douglas McGrear, and I thought it was time to kind of blow the whistle on this thing. And I hope people aren't fooled by it, but it seems like there are many people in this town who really think that this is really something new, but it really isn't at all. Yeah. It's the same. It's the same old stuff. And given, you know, let's face it, the criminal behavior of the Israeli regime over the, you know, past, well, it would be nine months or so. I mean, it's incredibly alarming to me that.

Yeah. Well, and it's the ignorance of Donald Trump. And I maintain that he is still. a Job-like bet, or practical joke between God and Lucifer that they're playing on the United States. Here, we need a rogue so bad. We need someone who can stop a Bush and a Clinton so badly. But he's the only guy who can do it. And he's a complete boob and he's a complete idiot. And he's never read anything before. He has no idea what America First even means.

You know, David Sanger hung that around his neck, trying to smear him as an anti-Semite back. years ago. It just didn't stick because Americans have never heard of the America First Committee or Charles Lindberg before or whatever. So Sanger's plot failed and it just became a slogan, but it doesn't mean defend America first. It doesn't mean leave the world the hell alone. It just means be George W. Bush only with slightly different branding. And then of course, for the Israelis, they go, oh, Americans don't like compassionate, conservative, center-right W. Bushism. And they prefer this more kind of uh roguish jacksonian take we can work with that i'll tell you what we'll do

we'll create a new foundation and we'll create a new institute and we'll hold a giant nationalism conference and we'll just tell all these trumpians you can be america first as long as you stay israel first and they'll continue to obey because it says in their schofield bible that that's what jesus wants and they're not willing to think critically at all It says right there in Romans 13, when a Republican is in power, you obey and you obey Israel and shut your mouth. And that's what Americans believe. American conservatives, the leader of American conservatism is Benjamin Netanyahu. They are his lowly subjects.

It's pathetic and ridiculous. But it is what it is. They can't think their way out of it, James. They just can't. Well, the other alarming aspect. as if, you know, we needed more examples to point to. It's something that Doug and I picked up on at the conference was that there's also a movement within the NACCON movement to basically gut the Bill of Rights. So, you know, the traditional First Amendment, the estate, the estate,

establishment clause, which, you know, erects a wall between church and state, according to the NACONs, that needs to go. We need to become a Judeo-Christian country officially. And they believe the myth of the founding fathers that they were like, you know, church-going, you know, Bible-banging Christians. They were nothing of the kind. And so that's another part of their project. And even if they were, that's completely bizarre. The panel point anyway. Yeah, they're completely crazy. And their version of Christianity is such heresy.

It's so ridiculous, dude. They would have us follow John Hagee, the blasphemer, who doesn't even believe a single word that he says, who laughs at his congregation of fools and suckers and knaves. Well, I mean, it's, you know, one of the panelists, who's the editor of the pretty religious right. journal first things, you know, was urging the Roberts Court to quote unquote tear down that wall, not the Berlin Wall, the wall between church and state. I mean, these guys are out there saying the stuff, you know, proudly publicly. And it's quite frightening. I'm quite, you know, I'm sorry, but I'm an old-fashioned American. I rather appreciate the Constitution and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I don't think that we should become an Israeli-style theocracy like these

people. I think that this stuff is very, very troubling. Yeah. And when they say Judeo-Christian, what they mean is focus on the Old Testament that says that God says that Israel can do whatever they want and forget the New Testament that says that actually those aren't the rules anymore. Forget your own religion in the name of a foreign power, a secular foreign power of actual men making horrible, sinful decisions. There's no golden rule in their biblical worldview. That gets edited out. It's completely sick, dude.

It's completely stupid and embarrassing and shameful is what it is. You know, a bunch of atheists understand Christianity better than the people who claim to be members of the religion and then let themselves be completely bold over by foreign powers who obviously are just laughing at them and ridiculing them. You know, like Irving Crystal said, hey, it's their theology. It's our Israel. In other words, sucker, you'll believe what you're told, fool.

Well, that's right. I mean, the other problem with it is that, you know, these people who, you know, the NACONs claim to be, you know, American first, all that stuff. But why are they looking to a foreign intellectual, a foreign intellectual tradition? You know, we have quite a robust, you know, foreign policy, realist traditions on which we can draw on. And they ignore things like Washington's farewell address because Washington warned against the influence of foreign interest. Well, they're all about, they're about nothing else but foreign intrigue here. So they ignore the warnings of Washington and the warnings of John Quincy Adams.

They're just astroturf. They're just astroturf is all they are, right? They don't get a damn about the United States. It's traditions at all. This is a foreign import, and we should be very, very wary of it. Ah, man, I wish Justin was here. he'd be having so much fun with this if he wasn't falling for it

in his senile old age but anyway all right thank you James this has been great I really appreciate all your great writing thanks again bud good talking to you the Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on

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