So Now We're Getting Moral?

In the new First Things, Joseph Bottum has a provocative article titled, "The New Fusionism" in which he addresses the fact that:

Those who believe the murderousness of abortion to be the fundamental moral issue of our times and those who see the forceful defeat of global, anti-Western Islamicism as the most pressing political concern we face . . . seem to be increasingly voting together, meeting together, and thinking together. If you want to advance the pro-life cause, you will quickly find yourself seated beside those who support an activist, interventionist, and moralist foreign policy for the United States. And, conversely, if you are serious about the war on terror, you will soon discover that you are mingling with those fighting against abortion.

This makes sense, in Bottum's view, because both issues "require reversing the failure of nerve that has lingered in America since at least the 1970s, and success in one may well feed success in the other." Traditional conservative issues have been sidelined for the moment because:

however important, they do not bear hard on the immediate question of social defeatism—on the deep changes that might reawaken and remoralize the nation. The one thing both the social conservatives and the neoconservatives know is that this project comes first.

The angry isolationist paleoconservatives are probably right—this isn’t conservatism, in several older senses of the word. But so what? Call it the new moralism, if you like. Call it a masked liberalism or a kind of radicalism that has bizarrely seized the American scene. Mutter darkly, if you want, about the shotgun marriage of ex-socialists and modern puritans, the cynical political joining of imperial adventurers with reactionary Catholics and backwoods Evangelicals. These facts still remain: The sense of national purpose regained by forceful response to the attacks of September 11 could help summon the will to halt the slaughter of a million unborn children a year. And the energy of the pro-life fight—the fundamental moral cause of our time—may revitalize belief in the great American experiment.

An interesting thesis, but it's hard for me to see the post-9/11 climate in this country as indicative of our national "remoralization." In many instances, it seems more about a self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing concern for our own physical well-being. Whatever their merits, why are the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq more of a signal of the country's upward moral trajectory than, for example, President Clinton's failed (and largely mocked) effort to secure universal health care?

Rob

UPDATE: Matthew Festa takes issue with my characterization of the post-9/11 environment:

if you look at the 2000 election, no candidate stressed international issues and problems (especially President Bush, minus SDI). The entire election revolved around "who can best spread the goods." Those who did focus on international problems, engaged in empty moralism. Sure, we helped out in the Balkans, but that's an exception to the rule (and we didn't even use ground troops)

After 9/11, America woke up from this slumber and took action. You may not like the action, but the action itself is not reducible to "self-absorption." America has gone out of its way to promote democracy (at great cost to itself) in both Afghanistan and (especially) Iraq. In addition, it has promoted democracy in the Ukraine, Lebanon, Egypt, and other countries where it didn't exist before. If you are going to make the claim that these actions are "concern for our own physical well-being," then you are going to have to explain how the sacrifices made fit into your thesis.

I did not mean to suggest that there are not noble elements of self-sacrifice on display in our current foreign policy.  But as I've argued earlier, there is an unmistakable pursuit of self-interest regardless of cost to others, typified both by Bush's stated justification of the war on his unwillingness "to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein," and on his assertion that the chaos in Iraq has a positive aspect because it allows us to battle the terrorists over there instead of here.

Festa also asserts that Clinton's health care plan deserves to be mocked.  That might be.  I'm not defending its terms, but simply pointing out that it represented just as morally driven and bold of a change in course for American policy as an increasingly interventionist democratization project does.  The fact that discussions of universal health care have largely fallen off the radar screen represents a huge void in our country's "remoralization," regardless of our military actions overseas.  Can and should the "war on terror" be a morally laden exercise?  Certainly, but we shouldn't pretend that the moral compass of the country is defined by the electoral power of the pro-invasion / anti-abortion overlap.

Rob