Postmodernists and Neoconservatives

Postmodernism challenges the idea of "truth"--truth is politically and socially constructed, which means there are many truths and all are equally "truthful". So, you then pick up whichever truth fits you and, well, to heck with the rest.

The strangest thing is that while postmodernists tend to be way left of center, such an approach to competing to truths in the public sphere is practically the same one preached by conservatives of many colors--the neoconservatives and those who challenge natural selection and evolution.

Irving Kristol, who died a couple of days ago, and considered to be the father of the neoconservative movement, said (HT)

"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work,"

Postmodernists will be very happy with such an explanation of how there exist multiple truths, and that there is no single meta-narrative that will fit one and all.

I suppose it is not that difficult to imagine Kristol being a postmodernist; after all, he was a Trotskyist, who later underwent a conservative conversion while holding on to many of his original notions. As one commentator noted back in 2004,

Irving Kristol began his political life at the City University of New York in the 1930s as a follower of Trotsky, whose own critique of the USSR allowed Kristol to abandon an early flirtation with Marxism.

From Trotsky, Kristol drew one important lesson: the idea of "permanent revolution" and the "export of Communism" without any concession made to other political ideologies, such as nationalism (or "socialism in one country"). If Trotsky wrote of "exporting Communism", Kristol's junior Joshua Muravchik wrote, in 1991, of "exporting democracy", where "democracy in one country" is insufficient, since it has to be exported around the world if it is to be sustained.

So, when there are competing truths, and the permanent revolution seeks to export democracy, well, it is no wonder we then came across a bizarre "postmodernist" statement by a senior adviser to President Bush:

''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."