Posted on 12/06/2010 10:24:01 AM PST by Academiadotorg
Because the conservatives most likely to be employed in academia are of the neo variety, students may not get an accurate picture of conservatism or, for that matter, America.
In fairness, because many neoconservatives are reconstructed leftists, they can counter the Campus Left in ways that more mild-mannered conservative Ph.D.’s could or would. “The neocons have waged a matchless intellectual war against the practices of America’s tenured radicals,” C. Bradley Thompson writes in Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. “They have been trenchant critics of the major ideas that have dominated America’s universities since the 1960s, such as nihilism, relativism, historicism, and egalitarianism; they have been on the front lines of the culture war, opposing intellectual trends such as feminism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, postmodernism, deconstructionism and political correctness; and they have challenged the intellectual integrity of politically correct academic programs such as women’s, black, Latino, and queer studies as well as any other kind of ideologically motivated academic programs that now define the American university.”
“The neocons have been particularly good at demonstrating how these ideas have percolated through American culture to affect deleteriously the manners and mores of ordinary Americans.” It’s when their own ideas percolate culturally that neoconservatives inflict nearly irreparable harm.
“Remarkably, at the top of the neocons pantheon of American heroes are three individuals who did as much to destroy American’s individual rights republic as any three figures in American history: Herbert Croly, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” Thompson writes. “The is the same Herbert Croly who bragged that his political philosophy was ‘flagrantly socialistic both in its methods and its objects,’
I keep hearing this “neocon” moniker being thrown around..what IS a neocon? A new conservative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
Most(not all) Neo-Cons are nothing but BAD news and are by-in-large inside-the-beltway elitists and academics.
This article is a pile of BS. It is the libertarian Ron Paul type of conservative who continually use the term neo-conservative in order to promote their anti-American agenda of appeasement for terrorists and defense of dictators.
A neocon has the foreign policy that if you can democracize your enemy, through force if necessary, they will become less hostile and eventually become an ally. It is essentially a justification for nation building. What it fails to take into account is that you will not sustain support for aggression at home unless your people are going to get something out of it. In other words, if we took Iraq’s oil and were paying 70 cents per gallon of gas, the people would be far more supportive than spending 100s of billions of dollars to build a nation when our own is deteriorating.
If you support a strong American defense and are against appeasing terrorists and dictators then you are a neo-con. Oh yeah plus if you consider Israel a strong ally then you are a neo-con.
“Neo-con” is often used as an anti-Semitic pejorative.
Depends on the context. Some people use it to refer to fiscal conservatives who are global interventionists. Others use it to refer to ex-liberals who have become conservatives, especially in the academic field. Still others use it as "code" for "Jewish conservative".
Needless to say, there is a lot of overlap between those three definitions, but differences as well.
Primarily ex-communists who grew disillusioned by the Soviets. They’re the kind of people that don’t want to abolish the Welfare state, just “reform it”. They also think that America’s mission is to spread democracy across the globe by any means necessary. Good examples are Bill and Irving Kristol, David Frum, and David Brooks.
Right so the paleo-conservatives would be happy if we just nuked all of our enemies and then left the area defenseless from the next dictatorship that would easily follow. God forbid if we try to help a nation rebuild after we removed a dictator who was a threat to our nation.
Right if you notice most people who use the term ‘neo-con’ hate our friendship with Israel but always defend the dictatorships of Iran and the terrorists of the world.
You would have a hard time finding either “anti-American agenda of appeasement for terrorists and defense of dictators” on www.academia.org.
"Neoconservative" = libertarian catchall term for any conservative.
Not true. Neoconservativeism is simply a means to justify war. You can support war, defense, or aggression without being a neoconservative. In fact, neoconservativism is actually a liberal justification - nation building. Bush campaigned against this in 2000 and his about face is what pissed a lot of people off.
The original meaning referred to former leftists who had become anti-communist. They might still be left-leaning in various areas of their political or social thinking, but they had broken with the communists and adopted a pro-US view on national security.
It has tended since then to be used to refer to people who might be social liberals, might be “big government Repubs” but favor an aggressive US security posture.
It is sometimes used to refer to jewish Repubs, or pro-Israel Repubs even if they are also social and fiscal conservatives. Repubs who want to engage the jihadists on their own ground are referred to as “neoconservatives” by those who would prefer to pull back from foreign entanglements and try instead to secure the borders and be more aggressive against them on the home front.
I'm not jewish and I'm not a social liberal, but I might be thought of as a "neocon" because I'm pro-Israel and I do favor engaging the jihadists on their own ground. But I'm definitely a constitutionalist, so maybe I'm not a neocon. Depends on how you define it.
TheBigIf is right, however. Nearly every time, when you see someone using the term "Neo-Con," that person is using the term as a codeword for "dirty Jew."
Thanks everyone for your answers. I identify myself as a Reagan/Palin/Bachmann/West conservative. :)
The justification for the war in Iraq was never nation building. Saddam Hussein was a threat to this nation. And If we left and did nothing to provide security and help support a more free government then the same threat would likely arise again. The only justification has always been our national defense. The neo-con argument being made here is pure BS.
Good points.
Bush used a lot of different reasons for war, but the underlying theme was always spreading democracy. Go back and read his speeches.
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