Posted on 02/11/2008 12:13:41 PM PST by forkinsocket
As the Bush administration winds down, neoconservatism has become the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. The neoconservatives have become the subject of numerous myths, mostly spread by their numerous detractors. They're seen as dangerous heretics by livid liberals as well as by traditional conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Patrick Buchanan.
So "neocon" has become a handy term of condemnation, routinely deployed to try to silence liberal hawks such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut or right-wing interventionists such as former deputy secretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and the former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle, who's been nicknamed the "Prince of Darkness." That moniker aside, the neocons insist that there's nothing sinister about them; they simply believed that after 9/11, the United States should use its power to spread democracy throughout the Arab world, just as it had done in Eastern Europe and Central America during the Cold War. Their critics aren't so sure -- and the misconceptions grow.
1 The neocons are chastened liberals who turned right.
This is the self-mythologizing version that the neocons themselves like to spread. Don't believe a word of it. They weren't ever really liberals.
The one thing the movement's founders carried away from the sectarian ideological wars of the 1930s in New York was a prophetic temperament. Back then, Irving Kristol and a host of other future neocons were Trotskyist intellectuals who loathed their rivals, the vulgar Stalinists. Kristol and his comrades believed in creating a worker's paradise that would reject the totalitarianism of Stalin's Soviet Union in favor of a true Marxist utopia.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Neocon” is one of those mindless names you get called by the left when you’ve beaten them in a debate.
Great post.
Neocons are awesome and history will prove them the ultimate Victors.
pat buchanan is not a conservative...pat buchanan is a moron
This just goes to show you how little help labels are in advancing meaningful debate about complex matters.
Unless of course you are a "real" conservative. ;-)
Hey, the “neolibs”... the ones that call democracy spreading conservatives (that used to be liberals? makes no sense anyway) like Bush?... are “global warming” alarmists that have to have everything politically correct, would “sell their soul for a jelly roll” if they knew they had one.
*
neomoron perhaps?
Whatever a neo-con is, it is not conservative.
[...] Irving Kristol and a host of other future neocons were Trotskyist intellectuals who loathed their rivals, the vulgar Stalinists. Kristol and his comrades believed in creating a worker's paradise that would reject the totalitarianism of Stalin's Soviet Union in favor of a true Marxist utopia. [...] Kristol and his fellow travelers briefly embraced liberalism in the late 1940s.
Yep...they'renot "chastened" liberals, but they're flat-out lefties. It's no wonder they are big nanny-statists, believing they know better than anyone else (including you) how to run your life.
Authoritarianism with new clothes. Too bad we don't all crave living in a Marxist utopia!
“This just goes to show you how little help labels are in advancing meaningful debate about complex matters.”
Good point. One interesting thing about the current debate over McCain’s candidacy is that the so-called “neo-cons” seem to be teaming up with some of the establishment types that so opposed them on the Iraq war, while the so-called “movement conservatives,” who supported the neo-cons on Iraq are now disgusted with them.
So true.
Neo-Khan is a better term, I think. Or neo-con-artist.
There is no such thing as a “neocon”. That’s a word made up by liberals to insult Conservatives, and perpetuated by liberal leaning “conservatives” as a way to make themselves appear normal.
And even in these issues, they aren't providing true "Defense"...as they weaken the country via fiscal irresponsibility.
Just wanting to fight the WoT makes a liberal a neocon, but it doesn't make him a conservative.
Buchanan was ron target when he called them "Right-wing Trotskyites". They have the naive, wide-eyed, fantasy-based optimism of the left without the solid grounding in historical reality of the traditional right.
“Neocons are flawed conservatives.
No real fidelity to fiscal or social conservatism, they don’t even come close to Blue-Dog Democrats.
They are only useful to the conservative cause on Defense, National Security, and WOT issues. Otherwise they are a major waste of time.”
You forget that Bill Kristol was one of the primary forces behind the defeat of Hillary Care in the early Clinton years. He has also has been strong on life issues, from abortion to stem cells to cloning.
If we don't listen to them and do what they tell us to, then we will be worse off.
Please read all the back issues of Commentary so you all know how to think properly about foreign and domestic policy.
That's only the most obvious hallmark of their leftist pedigrees.
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