Habermas

Civil Disobedience and Modernity, 1978–1987 143

in the U.S. and the Federal Republic.”^32 Writing after Genscher’s
resignation but before the dissolution of the Social-Liberal coalition,
Habermas claimed that the ideological shape of the coming coali-
tion was already visible. He quoted from a parliamentary speech
Helmut Kohl had given the previous month in which he had spoken
of a “spiritual-moral crisis” in West Germany.^33
Neoconservatism was, Habermas believed, a symptom of a deep-
rooted weakness of liberalism in Germany dating back to Bismarck.
The National Liberals had had their “back” broken by Bismarck;
today, Habermas declared, “That the National-Liberal wing of the
FDP caused the domestic turn to neoconservatism is no histori-
cal accident.”^34 Habermas surveyed both the domestic and foreign
policy dimensions of neoconservatism. On the domestic side, tech-
nocratic leadership still threatened democracy:

[Other neoconservatives]... assume, in the frame of the technocratic

thesis, that the intervention of the state should primarily be

restricted to the role of a referee, simply to supervise the distribu-

tion of relevant competencies so that the legality of the functionally

specific subdomains “independent of the general political decision-

making process” can be applied.^35

The force of the Euromissile debate seems particularly clear in his
references to Carl Schmitt: Habermas argued that the neoconser-
vatives used threats to internal and external security to legitimate
their opposition to university reforms and curtailment of civil liber-
ties (for example, restrictions on the right of demonstration).^36

[Following]... Hobbes and Schmitt, [the neoconservatives]... pro-
ceed from the claim that the state must legitimize itself by defend-
ing itself against foreign and domestic enemies. This perspective
explains the priority of the problem of inner security, above all the
stylization of a competition between Rechtsstaat and democracy.^37
What accounts for the dire tone of this portrayal? Perhaps the
arms race and its domestic implications had rattled Habermas. He

(^32) Habermas, “Die Kulturkritik der Neokonservativen in den USA und in der
Bundesrepublik,” in DNU, 30–58.
(^33) Ibid., 45.
(^34) Habermas,“Neokonservativen,” 54.
(^35) Ibid., 51.
(^36) Ibid., 65.
(^37) Habermas, “Neokonservativen,” 50.