Posted on 05/03/2003 8:44:59 AM PDT by quidnunc
Politics is all about polarities. Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, right vs. left, hard thinking vs. soft thinking. The labels are pervasive, but the ground frequently shifts, requiring a new prefix to freshen up the label.
The word neocon, for example (short for neoconservative), was born of such a shifting of the ground. Coined in the 1970s, the label stuck to Democrats who had watched the Scoop Jackson anti-Communist wing of the Democratic party evaporate before their very eyes. They saw the War on Poverty become a losing battle. On the domestic front, they observed the death of morality as it had been defined for thousands of years in the Judeo-Christian tradition. These Democrats finally concluded that liberalism, as they had known it, was dead.
Irving Kristol, father of the neocons, defined his band of brothers and sisters as "liberals mugged by reality." That reality was the "evil empire" as defined by Ronald Reagan, the leader they championed. The reality extended to a concern for crime and education and what came to be called "family values." A subdivision of the neocons, the "cultural conservatives," were wryly defined as liberals with daughters in junior high.
Jews were prominently identified with the neocons, largely because Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, made the magazine a sounding board for neocon criticism. But Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a Baptist, and William Bennett, a Roman Catholic, were prominent neocon voices from the beginning. So were other Christians. "What are we," they might ask, "chopped liver?"
The Jewish neocons understood what the majority of Jews who vote Democratic didn't — that Jews and Evangelical Christians held many things in common, among them an admiration and affection for Israel.
Such definitions and ideological attitudes are amply documented in the political history of the second half of the 20th century, but the neocon label resurfaces today as many journalists and pundits identify the neocons as a new generation driving the foreign policy of George W. Bush.
It's a label that doesn't quite fit, since those credited with influence are hardly "neo" anything. For the most part, the label is attributed to second-generation conservatives. Some are sons of the Scoop Jackson Democrats whose fathers have the last name of Podhoretz and Kristol, but the label as accurately understood has a much more inclusive intellectual base, including, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney; his wife, Lynne; Condoleezza Rice; Don Rumsfeld; and Paul Wolfowitz, the hugely influential deputy defense secretary.
The term, however, is disingenuously bandied about at dinner tables and policy meetings in London and Paris and elsewhere, where it is colorfully coded to suggest a Jewish conspiracy working on the White House.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at tallahassee.com ...
Um, the author explained that the term is being used INCORRECTLY, and in what way.
If the people who use the term INCORRECTLY do so in a disproportionate way towards Jews, that's their own damn fault.
P.S. author's a female
Who says it is? many paleocons get defensive at being called as such, but that's their own fault
His Son's
A Jew.
I thought
You knew.
--Anonymous
You do a nice job of attacking the author's "polarities" sentence, I suppose, but not the rest of it.
The remainder of the article is a coherent explanation of: what "neocons" actually are and what they are not, who is being called "neocon" nowadays, and why this is wrong. If you don't think such an account is necessary (because it's just "terminology") then presumably you haven't become as annoyed as I have by seeing about a million different people use about a billion different definitions of "neocon" in the past year or so. Good for you! The rest of us, meanwhile, enjoy it whenever a little sanity is injected back into the paranoid labels and conspiracy-mongering.
Where's MHking's graphic when you really need it?
Uh, see, that's why you need to read the article. There may be lotsa people who put their party before country, and it's fair for you to be angry at them, but this has nothing to do with the term "neo-conservative". Why you would attach the sequence of letters "neocon" to "someone that puts their little political party before country" is something only you can explain, I think.
What's happened here is that a lot of people have received the following message: "neocons are the Bad People That We Hate". After getting this message, people like you have apparently thought to yourself "well gee, who are the bad people that I hate?" You came up with an answer - "someone who puts party before country" - and then thought to yourself "aha! I guess such people are neocons".
But, no. That's why you need to read the article.
That is my definition of a neocon
That's cute, but words typically do not have personal, unique definitions from person to person. If you want to communicate with others you can just make up your own word definitions. Words mean things.
It's completely appropriate to have an identity crisis if/when there are honest fundamental disagreements.
I'm not sure that's the case here. Seems to me what's happened is that the antiwar lobby misconstrued the meaning of "neo-conservative", decided they could use it to slander pro-war people because it sounds sinister, and following this a lot of anti-war conservatives bought into it.
Now we get the spectacle of seeing each and every anti-war conservative spout off about what "their" personal definition of "neocon" is. It's embarrassing, but I'm not sure it's a big fundamental split here. Articles like the above may be able to make some headway in clearing up the mis-labelling that has taken place. I can hope...
So you are a principled person fighting evil, just like Hitler and Stalin?
F the article. What do you think? There is some exact definition for neocon? One that should be accepted by all? F that. That's what I believe, you don't like like it? To efing bad Frank.
I think the term is something less than what I would call terminology. It is first, of all, a coined word--a bit of newspeak or popspeak, if you will--which has several different meanings to contemporary Americans. There is first of all, the obvious one of a someone newly conservative. That is a somewhat useful one. Beyond that, it has become a term of identification for people who identify themselves with one or another particular sets of beliefs, some of which are conservative and some of which definitely are not. In this latter case--and it is from these latter usages that all this silly rant emerges--it is no more useful to understanding than a term such as the "log cabin republicans" or "yellow dog democrats." The terms have meanings, to be sure, to those that use them. But those usages are purely subjective. They certainly do not involve any precision of language.
As for the implied notion that "neo-cons" are some sort of misunderstood minority within the American political spectrum, that seems pretty paranoid to me. Most of us, who simply call ourselves Conservatives, certainly welcome the support and cooperation of others, regardless of labels. On the other hand, we will oppose others, regardless of labels, when we disagree with them. The labels really do not add anything at all to the debate on any particular issue. And the article in question, does not add any sanity to any issue.
I jumped on the silly first paragraph to make a point. There is really nothing in the article that suggested any profundity or clarity. And that was the point I sought to make.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
As far as those being labeled "paleo-con," I think it's really dumb to make enemies of all of them. Some are an embarrassment, but not all. I'd like to take some from each group and form a new group myself, one that doesn't mind war debate.
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but yeah. "Neo-conservative" is a little thing called a "word". A "word" is a basic unit of "language", which is how you and I are "communicating". "Words" have little things called "definitions".
You can't just make up this "definition". That's not how it works!
Now, it's all very well and fine and good if you want to find a word that encompasses and describes The People You Hate. But "neo-conservative" isn't necessarily such a word. You must go and consult its "definition" to see if it fits. It might not!
Now, you might be right to question the exactness of the definition. Nothing is ever completely exact, there's wiggle room. On the other hand, it's almost certainly not the case that the "definition" of "neo-conservative" is "anyone who Joe Hadenuf hates".
You can't just MAKE UP definitions of words! I hope you understand that, someday.
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