By chance, I heard Monica Perez talking about Billy Kristol’s father’s book:
snip-”Whenever I ask myself, “What were the Republicans thinking?” I find the answer in the immortal collection of essays by Irving Kristol, Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. In that book, Kristol lays out his grand plan for how the Republicans can truly achieve immense power in the United States, but that to do so will mean abandoning principles of fiscal conservatism and balanced budgets and embracing the “conservative welfare state.”
Kristol further instructs that in matters of economics and foreign policy, the people aren’t to be listened to (as democratically elected politicians sometimes mistakenly believe), rather they are to be led because they are ignorant of these matters and they know it. In addition, Kristol and his associates guided the New Right to create a budget crisis by implementing socialist policies to compete with those of the left and to use this crisis to force the public to choose between traditional socialism and market-based social engineering.
Well, the people have chosen: If you’re going to have a welfare state, let the left run it–after all, you can’t beat a guy at his own game.”
http://themonicaperezshow.com/2012/11/07/hoisted-by-their-own-petards/
Something people always forget about neoconservatism, if it is an actual movement, is that it started when the New Left shifted the Democratic party away from the Truman-Kennedy-Johnson National Security State cold war foreign policy. Democrats never really abandoned the military-industrial complex not even under Carter, as evidenced by their actions whenever in power in the White House or Congress. But neocons did manage to wrest control of the Republican party and nudge it into the slightly more imperialistic party.
What must be remembered, and the point of my post, is they didn’t change anything about themselves. No, they suddenly became conservative in relation to the newly radical hippies. Unlike the South, which didn’t drag segregation into the Republican tent after the civil rights movement, neocons brought everything along like good little post-New Dealers.
By now, of course, they might be considered paleocons compared to the McCain/Graham clan (perhaps the title to the worst Western ever). Such is the way of Washington. We hold the line where leftists last dropped it. However, there’s something else to consider. Conservatism isn’t only about the particulars of what you defend. It’s not about Pershing middles or welfare reform or supporting Israel. It’s about a philosophy and a mindset, a way of looking at the world. That never seeped into their psyches.