[Southern Federalist]

The only reason to call David Frum a "neo-con" is that he is a conservative Jew.

Frum is not a former liberal (one meaning of neo-con) but has always been conservative.

Another meaning of neo-con is a conservative who accepts the permanence of the welfare state. Frum doesn't. He is a libertarian in economics whose first book, Dead Right, argued that Reagan-era conservatism had essentially failed domestically because it hadn't succeeded in dismantling the welfare state.

Neo-cons are also sometimes contrasted with social conservatives. This is odd, because a lot of the ex-liberals who got that name in the 80's were pushed over the line from liberalism in large measure by abortion and the decline of the family. But it is a perception some people have. But Frum is a social conservative and always has been.

He's only a "neo" in foreign policy if the old "America Firsters" define American conservatism. But the conservative movement that was born after WWII was never isolationist. If Frum is a neo-con in foreign policy then so was Ronald Reagan.

This review is the same kind of whining that the Left used to do about Reagan putting missiles in Europe, working for missile defence, taking out or undermining the Communists in Grenada, Nicaragua etc. Just sending out ultimatums all over the place, how rude, how dangerous!

Frum and Perle want us actually to end global terrorism, not find a way to live with it, just as Reagan (and Perle) wanted to end Soviet Communism. By contrast, the whine-Left wants us to hide behind the UN and send out US Marshalls with warrants to arrest the naughty litterbugs so we can get them social workers; the whine-Right wants us to hide behind walls and fences and slowly curdle into bitter mediocrity.

I don't say I agree with every proposal Frum and Perle make, but they're the sort we ought to be taking seriously and making substantive arguments with -- if we don't want our grandchildren's lives to be lived within limits imposed from Tehran or Damascus or the Pakistani hills.

[ex-snook]

Perle and Frum see a bogeyman in every Arab country. Let's be realistic. There isn't a world class Army, Navy, Airforce in the whole lot combined for the foreseeable future. All other major countries had WND in huge supplies before Arabs had. They have a backward society and economy. Their effort against this country was done by pilots trained here using our own planes and boxcutters. These are hardly the prerequisites for world conquest. Perle and Frum are alarmists.

[St.Chuck]

the whine-Right wants us to hide behind walls and fences and slowly curdle into bitter mediocrity.

and the neo-con's( I do not mean conservative Jews ) prescription to avoid bitter mediocrity is what? To engage in unending military conflict, a constant nation-destroying, building program? Perpetual aggression and coersion aimed everywhere. All for national security and national greatness? The neocon's recipe will result in exactly the opposite of what they hope to achieve.