'Neocon' Becomes a Confusing Code Word

The Tallahassee Democrat ^ | May 2, 2003 | Suzanne Fields

[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-

[Austin Willard Wright]

SunStar doesn't care about such distinctions. His motto is smear anyone who disagrees with him by any means necessary.

[Ohioan]

Wouldn't you agree with me that there is something really pathetic about those who want to fight verbal wars over newspeak type labels, rather than actually discuss the philosophical issues that underlie political and social actions in our political society?

I am as sick as you are about this endless prattle that questions motives, rather than address serious differences of opinion. Some people seem to be devolving into characters out of a surrealist nightmare, totally unable to even perceive that there are real intellectual issues, that ought to be addressed.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[SunStar]

Ron Paul doesn't belong in that group. Ron Paul would never be opposed to free trade for instance.

I agree that he is the nicer of the bunch.

[wardaddy]

Mega Bump.

[T'wit]

There wouldn't have been a Reagan or a Limbaugh without Buckley, Goldwater, Chambers, Meyer, Kirk, Bozell, Rusher and hundreds of other scholars and activists. Reagan and Limbaugh are the first to acknowledge their debt, even as Kirk once acknowledged the collective debt of us all, writing, "We stand on the shoulders of giants" such as Edmund Burke. Indeed, I was present when Limbaugh thanked Buckley and the editors of National Review for the intellectual inspiration of his career (aboard the Princess, not the Cyrano).

Better advice has been given here: we should save our ammunition for the Left and not pick fights with other conservatives.

[BunnySlippers]

•

[ex-snook]

By his standards, Hitler and Stalin were neo-cons because they wanted to take over the world.

[SunStar]

SunStar doesn't care about such distinctions. His motto is smear anyone who disagrees with him by any means necessary.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

[wardaddy]

I would like your argument better if you did not equivocate.

[Austin Willard Wright]

No....I am referring to the party which controls them which is the "same" party which ruled Poland under an iron heal for decades and the *same* party which is currently a member of the Socialist International. By the logic of your "guilt by association" response, I guess we can assume you admire these surrender monkey, opportunist unrepentant socialists.

[SunStar]

Better advice has been given here: we should save our ammunition for the Left and not pick fights with other conservatives.

Well, then maybe the paleocons should start supporting our highly effective Republican president, rather than bashing him while agreeing with the Left. Just watch "Buchanan and Press" for an example of this behavior.

[SunStar]

No, I admire President Bush and his doctrines. You probably prefer Buchanan's worldview.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Pot calling a kettle black? I do not believe that Rumsfeld, Dubya, etc. are advocates of socialism or admire surrender monkeys. I believe that they are sincere men of principle, though I disagree with them on foreing policy. I was merely pointing out that this is the logic of your sleazy argumentative approach. Some of us prefer fact-based argument rather the smears. You apparently can not believe that anyone who disagrees with you is even a human being!

[Mr. Mojo]

So you think that anyone who supports military action outside of our own borders is a "one-world chickenhawk"? I got news for you -- that's about 99% of the U.S. population (if one counts the DemoRats who would've supported the Iraqi war had a Rat been infesting the WH at the time).

[wardaddy]

Cultural paleos like me reacted just the same as any neocon.

Anyone who became conservative because of 9-11 is more than welcome but we will have issues if they bring their social liberalism with them....and many do.

[Austin Willard Wright]

We agree on that....and I plead guilty at times. Perhaps if we had to all sign our names we would be more polite.

[jlogajan]

"Ron Paul doesn't belong in that group. Ron Paul would never be opposed to free trade for instance."

I agree that he is the nicer of the bunch.

Philosophically distinct. Though they might all be international isolationists, Paul is socially libertarian. He wouldn't oppose free trade or immigration. There is nothing that could be construed as "racist" about Paul (unless you take the socialist concept that anyone who isn't for massive welfare is a crypto racist.)

[Ohioan]

Forget the silly labels. Reagan was a Conservative. He understood that big Government was not the solution, it was the problem. That is the same concept, which led to the American Revolution, when in the period after the French & Indian War, Britain for the first time began to exercise real Governmental control over colonial life.

Some of those, whose antics you seem to be trying to justify under newspeak, do not have a clue of any of that. They are quite happy with big Government. But that is not the American tradition, and hence not Conservative. Can the word games and look at questions of the allocation & use of power. That is what the political debate comes down to.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Kenny Bunk]

Well yes, I agree.

Yabut, sometimes I do get the distinct impression that these entirely praiseworthy founding fathers of the Conservative Movement are astounded at their own movement's popular success at the hands of the communicators like Rush and Reagan.

Ain't nobody complaining.

[Chipata]

"Damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's almost like what Emporer Hadrian said about the Jews, "it doesn't matter what they do I still hate them.""

From the Jerusalem Post last week:

"It has frequently been noted that Jews have been accused by anti-Semites, in the same times and places, of totally contradictory behavior: of prodigality and avariciousness, of overintellectualism and crass materialism, of excluding others and wanting to be on everyone's guest list. Whatever an anti-Semite's particular obsession, there's always a Jew to bear it out"