Bacevich and the traditionalist syllogism.

A stray thought.

I'm finally getting around to Andrew Bacevich's The Limits of Power, only half a year after everybody else read it. I think that Bacevich's biggest virtue might be the degree to which he eschews “metaphysical” speculation in his Niebuhr-inspired realism. His case for self-restraint doesn't rest on a natural law argument. You can take his arguments to be entirely consequentialist if you want. Global power projection isn't going to work because we can't afford it. Massive consumer and government debt isn't going to work because it will ruin us in the future.

Take the traditionalist syllogism from the other day:

• Premise 1: Democratic values displace the older virtues of self-restraint and self-government.
• Premise 2: The older virtues of self-restraint and self-government are necessary to human flourishing.
• Conclusion: Therefore a democratic culture is inimical to human flourishing.

You can find this argument in any number of non-liberal conservatives, but it doesn't have much to do with Bacevich's main point. For Bacevich, it doesn't really matter whether it's democracy, liberalism, or modernity that should bear the blame for our cultural self-indulgence. It seems that Bacevich would love it for the United States to have a democratic/liberal/modern culture that can restrain itself from invading other countries or ramping up trillions in debt in a quixotic quest for invulnerability. The intensity of his rhetoric should, I think, be taken as citizen's democratic exhortation.

What's important is that we take a clear view of the consequences of our actions and decide what kind of freedom is worth the price that we won't be able to escape paying when the creditors come calling.