Preserving our National Supremacy

David Brooks of the NYT, old neo-con that he is, still loves the 'national-greatness conservatism' once championed some years ago by his old employer, Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard.  It's hero was of course Theodore Roosevelt, that militaristic, imperialistic 'progressive', who preceded Wilson, FDR, and LBJ, in building what became 20th century, warfare/welfare liberalism.  See if you don't think this sounds like Teddy:

It will take a revived patriotism to motivate Americans to do what needs to be done. It will take a revived patriotism to lift people out of their partisan cliques. How can you love your country if you hate the other half of it?

It will take a revived patriotism to get people to look beyond their short-term financial interest to see the long-term national threat. Do you really love your tax deduction more than America’s future greatness? Are you really unwilling to sacrifice your Social Security cost-of-living adjustment at a time when soldiers and Marines are sacrificing their lives for their country in Afghanistan?

Like the civil rights movement, this movement will ask Americans to live up to their best selves. But it will do other things besides.

It will have to restore the social norms that prevailed through much of American history: when narcissism and hyperpartisanship was mitigated by loyalties larger than tribe and self; when competition between the parties was limited and constructive, not total and fratricidal.

This movement will have to build institutions to support the leaders who make the hard bargains. As in the civil rights era, politicians won’t make big changes unless they are impelled and protected by a social upsurge.

Most important, this movement will have to develop a governing philosophy and a policy agenda. Right now, orthodox liberals and conservatives have their idea networks, and everybody else is intellectual roadkill. This coming movement will have to revive the American System: a governing philosophy that believes in targeted federal efforts to arouse growth, social mobility and responsibility.

Like the chairmen’s report, this movement could demand that Congress wipe out tax loopholes and begin anew. It could protect federal aid to the poor while reducing federal subsidies to the upper-middle class.

The coming movement may be a third party or it may support serious people in the existing two. Its goal will be unapologetic: preserving American pre-eminence. It will preserve America’s standing in the world on the grounds that this supremacy is a gift to our children and a blessing for the earth.

See, Brooks just loves the America of the 20th Century, the America that is now slowly dying, or at least being transmogrified before our very eyes as we move into the 21st Century.  What should be our goal?  "Preserving American pre-eminence", its "supremacy"?  Ouch.   Really?  It is our destiny to be supreme and globally pre-eminent forever? 

To be honest, I smell a whiff of old-fashioned fascism here, like a Mussolini dreaming of old Roman glory, or the Nazis dreaming of 'lebensraum'.   Really.