Jeane Kirkpatrick: Not Quite Right

Although i am an admirer of hers, I must take exception to UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s remarks on human rights and foreign policy [“Why Not Abolish Ignorance?,” July 9]. Ambassador Kirkpatrick has few rivals as a pugnacious defender of America, but it was peculiarly distressing to see her comments—in the Independence Day issue of national review—culminate in an appeal to “our concrete rights as Englishmen.” If George Washington were alive to hear this, he would, as Gerald Ford might say, be spinning in his grave.

It is not the Ambassador alone, of course, but neoconservatives in general, and, I’m afraid, a growing number of conservatives, who find it hard to come to terms with the American Revolution, with the fact that America separated itself from Great Britain. Anglophilia—not especially noticeable in Mrs. Kirkpatrick—has something to do with it, but the greater stumbling block is that expression of abstract principle embedded in the heart of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal,” and the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that follow from it. Neoconservatives distrust this venerable doctrine because in our day it seems to have been decisively co-opted by the Left, which is capable of spinning out “rights” by the tens of hundreds from the trinity in the Declaration, manufacturing false gods faster than anyone since the children of Israel saw Moses go up to the mountain.

About the Author

Charles R. Kesler

Charles R. Kesler, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, is the editor of the Claremont Review of Books.

Featured Tags

Declaration of Independence

Although i am an admirer of hers, I must take exception to UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick’s remarks on human rights and foreign policy [“Why Not Abolish Ignorance?,” July 9]. Ambassador Kirkpatrick has few rivals as a pugnacious defender of America, but it was peculiarly distressing to see her comments—in the Independence Day issue of national review—culminate in an appeal to “our concrete rights as Englishmen.” If George Washington were alive to hear this, he would, as Gerald Ford might say, be spinning in his grave.

It is not the Ambassador alone, of course, but neoconservatives in general, and, I’m afraid, a growing number of conservatives, who find it hard to come to terms with the American Revolution, with the fact that America separated itself from Great Britain. Anglophilia—not especially noticeable in Mrs. Kirkpatrick—has something to do with it, but the greater stumbling block is that expression of abstract principle embedded in the heart of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal,” and the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that follow from it. Neoconservatives distrust this venerable doctrine because in our day it seems to have been decisively co-opted by the Left, which is capable of spinning out “rights” by the tens of hundreds from the trinity in the Declaration, manufacturing false gods faster than anyone since the children of Israel saw Moses go up to the mountain.