America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire.

• Author: Preble, Christopher A.
• Position: Book Review

America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire. By Claes G. Ryn New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2003. Pp. xiii, 221. $34.95 cloth.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, a democratic tide swept across France, overthrowing the established aristocratic order. The events in France in 1789 thrilled some international observers and shocked many others. Among the leading critics was Edmund Burke. Within a few years, when a band of ideological zealots known as the Jacobins launched the Terror in France, Burke's warnings of the collapse of the social order seemed eerily prescient.

Claes Ryn, a professor of politics at Catholic University, carries on in the Burkean tradition. "In the second half of the twentieth century," he explains in the introduction to his book America the Virtuous, " a distinctively American form of Jacobinism evolved.... rhetorically dedicated to doing good for the world but.... fundamentally motivated by a will to dominate" (p. 3). That development is by now an all too familiar tale. Ryn's contribution to the discussion of the ideological origins of U.S. foreign policy is unique in that he approaches the question from the perspective of an unreconstructed conservative. As an expert on Jacobinism, he is effective--occasionally brilliant--in explaining why the philosophy is dangerous. He fails to account for why so few people understand its dangers.

If Ryn fails in this regard, however, he does so not for lack of trying. In his telling, the rise of neo-Jacobinism is related to the general decline of Western civilization, a decline hastened by democracy's expansion. Reversing the decay of the moral order can be effected only by a turn away from democracy and toward aristocracy. Although Burke would understand and relate to this proposal, few modern readers will.

Ryn strives to delineate the parameters of neo-Jacobinism without naming names. "The new Jacobinism is not a movement with settled boundaries, definite membership or precise, generally agreed-upon ideological definition," he explains (p. 24). Accordingly, it is a slippery concept, and a label easy to reject, even for those who might subscribe to the philosophy. Ryn avoids an analysis of particular writers, arguing instead that his aim is "to identify, illustrate, and analyze a general ideological phenomenon, a powerful tendency of thought" (p. 39, emphasis in original). "To decide precisely who is and who is not a fully-fledged representative...