Trotskycons? (Neo-Con Scholar Confesses Neo-Conservatism Was Founded By Trotskyite Communists)

National Review ^ | June 11, 2003 | Steven Schwartz

[ComtedeMaistre]

Trotskycons?

Pasts and present.

By Stephen Schwartz

EXCERPTS

".....This path had been pioneered much earlier by two Trotskyists: James Burnham, who became a founder of National Review, and Irving Kristol, who worked on Encounter magazine. Burnham was joined at NR by Suzanne LaFollette, who, piquantly enough, retained some copyrights to Trotskyist material until her death. But they were not the only people on the right who remained, in some degree, sentimental about their left-wing past. Willmoore Kendall, for example, was, as I recall, a lifelong contributor to relief for Spanish radical leftist refugees living in France. Above all, Burnham and Kristol, in a certain sense, did not renounce their pasts. They acknowledged that they had evolved quite dramatically away from their earlier enthusiasms. But they did not apologize, did not grovel, did not crawl and beg forgiveness for having, at one time, been stirred by the figure of Trotsky......"

"......That is, of course, insufficient for some people. There remain those for whom any taint of leftism is a permanent stain, and who cannot abide an individual who, having in the past been a Trotskyist, does not now caper and grimace in self-loathing over the historical truth, which is that, yes, Trotsky commanded the Red Army, and yes, Trotsky wielded a sword, and yes, Trotsky, a man of moral consistency if nothing else, took responsibility for the crimes of the early Bolshevik regime. But of that, more anon......"

"......Well, I consider Beichman's intent more sinister: to exclude Hitchens and myself from consideration as reliable allies in the struggle against Islamist extremism, because we have yet to apologize for something I, for one, will never consider worthy of apology. There is clearly a group of heresy-hunters among the original neoconservatives who resent having to give way to certain newer faces, with our own history and culture. These older neoconservatives cannot take yes for an answer, and they especially loathe Hitchens. But nobody ever asked Norman Podhoretz to apologize for having once written poetry praising the Soviet army. Nobody ever asked the art critic Meyer Schapiro, who was also a Trotskyist, to flog himself for assisting illegal foreign revolutionaries at a time when it was considered unpatriotic, to say the least. Nobody ever asked Shachtman or Burnham, or, for that matter, Sidney Hook, or Edmund Wilson, or a hundred others, to grovel and beg mercy for inciting war on capitalism in the depths of the Great Depression........"

".....One might also add that nobody ever asked Jay Lovestone and Bertram Wolfe, ex-Communists whose company Beichman doubtless would prefer, to apologize for having defended the Soviet purge trials and the Stalinist state, long after so many of the brave band that carried a banner with the strange device of the Fourth International were murdered for their defiance of Stalinism. And I have yet to read an apology by Beichman for his own involvement with the Communist network......"

"......To my last breath I will defend the Trotsky who alone, and pursued from country to country, and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot little house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling of Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state, as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists, and Stalinists in their second childhood, make of it what they will......."

[ComtedeMaistre]

In a discussion thread I started last week, I tried to show why Ronald Reagan was never a neo-conservative, at any time in his entire political career, begining with when he ran for governor of California in 1966: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/926037/posts

My purpose was to challenge those who claim that, because Reagan shared the same views on foreign policy as neo-cons, he was one of their own. Any Freeper who voted for Reagan in the 1976 Presidential primary against Gerald Ford (as I did), at a time when neo-cons supported Scoop Jackson in the Democrat Primary, can tell you with certainty that Reagan was never a neo-con.

Another point I made in that discussion thread that was hotly disputed, is the fact that Leon Trotsky, the communist founder of the Red Army, is the intellectual godfather of many of the older neo-conservatives. Most younger neo-cons dispute this fact, because they are ignorant of the historical heritage of the neo-conservative movement. In fact, younger neo-cons are not well read, and simply assume neo-con is the ideological middle-ground between a liberal and a conservative. And because they themselves were never communists (unlike the older neo-cons) they deny that neo-conservatism had its origins in Trotskyite communism.

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky. He is one of the few neo-cons around today, who dares to admit that he admires Trotsky.

[dighton]

Trotskycons?

[dennisw]

You make a mountain from a molehill. Lame. Do I rate Trotsky ahead of Lenin, Stalin, Mao? You better believe it.

[Dr. Frank fan]

People who write about this "neo-cons as Trotskyists" meme never seem to actually describe just exactly (a) what the hell is "Trotskyism" (I honestly don't know, it's never come up, and I've never given a damn to be honest, all Reds look the same to me, so sue me.. ;-) which was supposed to have distinguished it from other socialisms/communisms, and (b) which supposedly "Trotskyist" views the "neo-cons" have, in any detail.

The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:

Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)

This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.

[Dr. Frank fan]

People who write about this "neo-cons as Trotskyists" meme never seem to actually describe just exactly (a) what the hell is "Trotskyism" (I honestly don't know, it's never come up, and I've never given a damn to be honest, all Reds look the same to me, so sue me.. ;-) which was supposed to have distinguished it from other socialisms/communisms, and (b) which supposedly "Trotskyist" views the "neo-cons" have, in any detail.

The closest that whole NRO discussion of last week came to "linking" Trotsky to "neo-cons", besides name-dropping and anecdotal cases of personal conversions, was to say this:

Neo-cons aren't pacifists, just like Trotsky. (You don't say?)

This is a laughable pillar on which to base any kind of "linkage", of course. Apparently all non-pacifists after the 1930s are closet Trotskyists? If there's something more, er, substantial about this supposed linkage, I'd love to hear it.

[Restorer]

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky.

Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.

BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.

[Restorer]

Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky.

Some Trotskyists rejected Communism (and Trotsky) to become conservatives. That does not constitute intellectual linkage unless you can drag Trotskyite concepts out of new-conservatism. Which I think you would find pretty hard to do.

BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves.

[Captain Kirk]

Trotsky was a true believer commie when compared to Lenin. He supported the concept of conscripted industrial armies (which Lenin rejected) and slamed Lenin's more free market New Economic Policy as a "capitalist sell-out." Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.

[dennisw]

I would say you're wrong since Trotsky didn't have it in him to be a stone killer like Lenin and Stalin. A ruthless despot. Yes, he had some theories but he was a wimp compared to them.

[Maximilian]

Trotsky didn't have it in him to be a stone killer like Lenin and Stalin

Read the whole article by Schwartz. He is offered the opportunity -- but declines -- to denounce Trotsky as "the man who "mercilessly wiped out rebellious anti-Bolshevik soldiers and sailors at Kronstadt." In his view, Trotsky couldn't make an omelette (Communist revolution) without breaking a few eggs (slaughter of innocents).

[Maximilian]

Trotsky was a true believer commie when compared to Lenin.

You are correct that Trotsky was possibly the most dangerous of the group, even when compared with world-class murderers like Lenin and Stalin. Trotsky is the one who was determined to spread the revolution all around the world. He wasn't satisfied with merely Russia, he wanted "international socialism" to be truly international.

Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.

Russia had its own Pol Pot, and then some. The danger was that he could have been Pol Pot to the world, not just to Russia.

[dennisw]

Same applies to Stalin/Mao/Lenin/Kaganovich but multiplied by 1000. Trotsky was pussycat compared to them. As Marx said "Quantity changes quality"

[dennisw]

Russia had its own Pol Pot, and then some. The danger was that he could have been Pol Pot to the world, not just to Russia.

That's all speculation since Trotsky didn't make the cut. He wasn't ruthless enough to preserve his Soviet power in Russia and was exiled. He wasn't ruthless enough, cunning enough to remain while Stalin ruled. But many others were. He was too much the "theoretician" (intellectual) and not enough the wielder of ruthless power.

Trotsky was second only to Lenin in the Politburo, and Lenin viewed him as exceptionally able. He backed Lenin's major policy innovations, but had his own plans for industrializing Russia. When a stroke removed Lenin from active politics in May 1922, Trotsky was not in a position to take over. Never particularly adept at party politics, he failed to outmaneuver the troika of Grigory Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev, and Stalin that took power. Although he put himself at the head of a loosely knit left opposition, Trotsky's polemic salvos were no match for Stalin's bureaucratic party machine. In 1925 his adversaries removed him from the Commissariat of War; in 1926 they expelled him from the Politburo; and in 1928 Stalin exiled him to Central Asia and in 1929 expelled him from the USSR.
Trotsky spent the rest of his life seeking a safe place to compose his savage critiques of Stalinist Russia. In Turkey, France, Norway, and finally Mexico he produced a flood of publications, including an autobiography, My Life (1930; trans. 1930); an unmatched History of the Russian Revolution (3 vol., 1931-33; trans. 1932-33); an insightful The Revolution Betrayed (1937); and searing articles on the major issues of his day (Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, the Spanish civil war). A Stalinist agent fatally wounded Trotsky on August 20, 1940, in Coyoacán, Mexico. He died the following day.

[Maximilian]

I apologize if this article is off-topic compared to my usual Catholic ping list, but this article is so important, and the debate is so interesting, that I hope everyone finds it informative.

The first article described the links between Trotsky's "Fourth International" and the usual gang of neo-conservatives.
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=EC4AD553-8A1D-4324-8D37-A99B2DFF9F85

Then Beichman in National Review Online denounced the article as slander for linking neo-cons to Trotsky.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-beichman060903.asp

Then Schwartz, a leading neo-con, attacks Beichman for being an ex-Stalinist who is attacking the noble Trotsky for his own left-wing idealogical purposes, and defends the original article in the National Post.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-schwartz061103.asp

People would claim this was preposterous if you had written it as fiction.

[Maximilian]

I apologize if this article is off-topic compared to my usual Catholic ping list, but this article is so important, and the debate is so interesting, that I hope everyone finds it informative.

The first article described the links between Trotsky's "Fourth International" and the usual gang of neo-conservatives.
http://www.nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=EC4AD553-8A1D-4324-8D37-A99B2DFF9F85

Then Beichman in National Review Online denounced the article as slander for linking neo-cons to Trotsky.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-beichman060903.asp

Then Schwartz, a leading neo-con, attacks Beichman for being an ex-Stalinist who is attacking the noble Trotsky for his own left-wing idealogical purposes, and defends the original article in the National Post.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-schwartz061103.asp

People would claim this was preposterous if you had written it as fiction.

[Maximilian]

Sorry about the duplicate post.

[Maximilian]

That's all speculation since Trotsky didn't make the cut.

Just because Trotsky lost the internal struggle with Stalin is no proof that he wouldn't have been just as ruthless or worse if he had gained ultimate power. In the meantime, Schwartz defiantly states that Trotskyites like him do not admire the intellectual Trotsky, but rather "Trotsky, the Father of the Red Army."

[11th Earl of Mar]

KEYWORDS: COMMUNISTS; LEFTISTS; NEOCOMMIES; NEOCONSERVATIVES; TROTSKY; Click to Add Keyword

Add another key word:

JEWS!!!!

[Archimedes2000]

>>>>>>Steven Schwartz is a neo-con scholar, who provides proof of the intellectual linkage between neo-conservatism and Leon Trotsky. He is one of the few neo-cons around today, who dares to admit that he admires Trotsky.<<<<

But nothing that Steven Schwartz stated in the article you linked provides any such linkage, nor is there an admission that Schwartz "admires Trotsky." Instead, Schwartz points out that Trotsky was man enough to admit he was wrong, that Trotsky condemned the enabling alliance between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's communism, and that Trotsky was murdered for such opposition.

So what? I state that to the extent that Rudolph Hess opposed Hitler, and tried to make peace with Britain, he is to be admired. Does this make me a "Nazi"?

[Reactionary]

"One thing must be observed here: We are almost alone among younger neoconservatives in boasting such credentials. I recently received a hilarious e-mail from a Trotskyist who asked me if it were true Paul D. Wolfowitz and Richard Perle had been Shachtmanites. That is absurd. By the time they emerged, the Shachtmanites were all quite long in the tooth. Nor did Bill Kristol ever follow in his father's path. Indeed, most of the original Shachtmanites who became neoconservatives have retired from the scene."

There it is. The entire thing is another fabrication on the part of a Leftist writer who's attempting to link a handful of ex-Trotskyites who because neo-conservatives to the neo-conservative movement as a whole.

In other words, it's bit like saying that since David Horowitz is an ex-communist and now a popular right-wing author, the ghost of Stalin haunts the right-wing publishing industry. Patently idiotic, of course, but standard fair for the guilt-by-association crowd.

[Reactionary]

Because=became

[Maximilian]

The entire thing is another fabrication on the part of a Leftist writer who's attempting to link a handful of ex-Trotskyites who because neo-conservatives to the neo-conservative movement as a whole.

If the whole thing is a fabrication by Jeet Heer, then why is Schwartz, an un-apologetic Trotskyite, attacking Beichman while defending Jeet Heer?

[Maximilian]

In other words, it's bit like saying that since David Horowitz is an ex-communist and now a popular right-wing author, the ghost of Stalin haunts the right-wing publishing industry. Patently idiotic, of course, but standard fair for the guilt-by-association crowd.

I don't find it idiotic at all. Even Horowitz himself would be unable to know how deeply he has been influenced by his Stalinist past, and how much of it continues to perdure in his intellectual approach to issues.

And it's not "guilt-by-association" when the featured Trotskyite is proud of his past, and more than happy to proclaim it to the world.

[DPB101]

Had Trotsky ever gained power, there is every reason to believe he would have governed as the Russian version of Pol Pot.

Trotsky did pretty good when he ran War Communism. Churches dynamited and looted. Millions murdered. The entire Bolshevik movement was a criminal organization from the start. Marxism was the cover for theft and murder. They were after power and money, not social justice. Trotsky was a clever and articulate criminal. Nothing more. U.S. Attorney General A Mitchell Palmer made the case in 1920:

Robbery . . .is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated in Russia, Germany, and in America. . . . Because a disreputable alien . . .Trotzky . . . can inaugurate a reign of terror from his throne room in the Kremlin, because this lowest of all types known to New York can sleep in the Czar's bed, while hundreds of thousands in Russia are without food or shelter, should Americans be swayed by such doctrines?

. . .communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotzky. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants. . . .

The whole purpose of communism (is) a mass formation of the criminals of the world to overthrow the decencies of private life, to usurp property that they have not earned, to disrupt the present order of life regardless of health, sex or religious rights. By a literature that promises the wildest dreams of such low aspirations, that can occur to only the criminal minds, communism distorts our social law....

This stuff about neocons and Trotsky is bunk. There is no one of importance on the American national political scene who has any relationship to Trotskyism whatsoever (well, maybe Bill and Hillary...nah...not even them).

[Captain Kirk]

Hmm? Jews? Are you an anti-semite?

[Reactionary]

"Even Horowitz himself would be unable to know how deeply he has been influenced by his Stalinist past, and how much of it continues to perdure in his intellectual approach to issues."

Why is that? Why is it that in order to be a critic one must assume that one knows the author better than he knows himself?

Frankly, I find the whole business of deconstructing motives to be a hinderance to the formation of any intellect at all.

[dennisw]

Trotsky did pretty good when he ran War Communism. Churches dynamited and looted. Millions murdered.

So you are pinning the murder of millions on Trotsky? That's absurd and the first time I've ever seen him put up in the ranks of the Stalin Mao and Lenin. I cannot remember ever seeing Hitler accused of "murdering" the millions of combatants that were killed in WW2 by the Germans

[TradicalRC]

Just because Mr. Horowitz engages in slapping around lefties that does not make him a right-winger. It merely means that he is a disillusioned leftist.

[ComtedeMaistre]

>>>>He wasn't ruthless enough to preserve his Soviet power in Russia and was exiled. He wasn't ruthless enough, cunning enough to remain while Stalin ruled. But many others were. He was too much the "theoretician" (intellectual) and not enough the wielder of ruthless power.<<<<<

I suppose one could say that Pol Pot was not "ruthless enough" to stay in power for even 5 years.

For crying out loud, Trotsky founded the Red Army, the most murderous organization of the 20th century. He bears responsibility for some of the worst acts of butchery in Soviet history, including the murder of the czar and his family.

As far as most victims of communism are concerned, there is no difference between Stalin, Trotsky or Pol Pot. They are all mass murderers.

[ComtedeMaistre]

>>>>Trotsky was pussycat compared to them.<<<<

A pussy cat that founded the Soviet army?

[ComtedeMaistre]

>>>>BTW, neocon is a term very few of these people have consistently applied to themselves<<<<

Didn't ex-Troskyite, Irving Kristol, write a book on neo-conservatism?

[dennisw]

As far as most victims of communism are concerned, there is no difference between Stalin, Trotsky or Pol Pot. They are all mass murderers.

Don't be silly with sloppy reasoning. To repeat Marx once again, "Quantity changes quality". No way did Trotsky kill millions. This is never written about because it never happened. He was not the mass murdering psycho that other communists were. Such as a Mao or a Stalin. Pol Pot. Hitler.

[DPB101]

The numbers are estimates. Nobody knows. 100,000 to half a million executed by Dzerzhinskii. Concentration camps erected. Slave labor instituted (more kindly referred to as a "draft"). 3 to 10 million killed in a manmade famine. All between 1918 and 1922. Trotsky was as much responsible as Lenin and the rest of the top Bolsheviks. So was John Reed who received over a million dollars from the Bolsheviks in 1920 to write propaganda for them. The Black Book of Communist details much of it. Some good quotes from Richard Pipes and others are here( Prof. Bryan Caplan. George Mason U.)

I used to believe Trotsky was the ideologue who was not involved in any atrocities beyond what one would expect in a Revolution and Civil War. The information which has been released in the last decade changed my mind. I'm open to correction.

But, once again, I don't get what Trotsky's ideology has to do with anyone in the GOP (or the Democrat party). This neocon stuff is annoying. Seems to be nothing more than an attempt to split conservatives.

[ComtedeMaistre]

>>>>No way did Trotsky kill millions. This is never written about because it never happened.<<<<<

Unlike Marx, Trotsky's career was not limited to being confined to a library, reading stacks of books on history and philosophy.

Trotsky founded the Red Army. People were murdered under military units he commanded. Even Shwartz does not deny his crimes against anti-Bolshevik forces.

To deny Trotsky's crimes, is similar to those historical revisionists who try to absolve Hitler from the crimes committed in the Nazi death camps, because they say that no written order from Hitler exists ordering the extermination of concentration camp victims.

In fact, I consider Trotsky a worse criminal than Joseph Goebbels of Nazi Germany, because Trotsky actually founded and led murderous military units, while Goebbels job was limited to spreading poisonous (but nonetheless, damaging) propaganda.

[ComtedeMaistre]

>>>>He is offered the opportunity -- but declines -- to denounce Trotsky as "the man who "mercilessly wiped out rebellious anti-Bolshevik soldiers and sailors at Kronstadt."<<<<<

Isn't that incredible? Can you believe that there are still people who defend a monster as vile as Leon Trotsky, but still insist on calling themselves conservatives?

Most people who point out that ugly aspect of neo-conservatism, get shouted down as "nativists", "McCarthyites", "reactionaries", "extremists", "anti-semites", etc.

[dennisw]

Trotsky commanded a military. Who are you claiming he murdered that run into the millions? Who exactly and were they non combatants or opposing military units? War is war and usually not murderer. Americans were killed by Japanese in the Pacific in WW2. No one claims they were murdered. Some were murdered on the Bataan Death March, yes. But combat during war is not defined as murder.



You are running a tendentious game here.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[royalcello]

I like your screenname. Are you a monarchist, by any chance? (I am, and unsurprisingly agree with you about Trotsky.)

[Dr. Frank fan]

If the whole thing is a fabrication by Jeet Heer, then why is Schwartz, an un-apologetic Trotskyite, attacking Beichman while defending Jeet Heer?

I'm sure he has his reasons. But that is a matter for psychological speculation, not political discussion.

[Dr. Frank fan]

Can you believe that there are still people who defend a monster as vile as Leon Trotsky, but still insist on calling themselves conservatives? Most people who point out that ugly aspect of neo-conservatism..

How the hell is than an "aspect of neo-conservatism"?

It's an aspect of this guy Stephen Schwarz, whoever that is. You seem to extrapolate quite a bit.

[Black Agnes]

ping.

[Incorrigible]

Hey Destro,

Looks like this Neo-Cons = Trotskyites meme is catching on.

Previous thread:

Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House: Bolshevik's writings influence on Bush aides

I'm still not buying though.

[Dr. Frank fan]

He was not the mass murdering psycho that other communists were.

I beg to differ.

I will never understand the need some people have to try to find and salvage the reputation of some benighted "good communist" among those murderous terrorist thugs (which is what they were) to whose defense they will tirelessly rally. It used to be Lenin: "Lenin wasn't that bad, Stalin perverted his theories, took them to the extreme", bla bla bla. For you, it's Trotsky, he's a misunderstood pussycat cuz his hands got covered in the blood of thousands rather than millions (or whatever the perverted reasoning is... i see you take refuge in some quote of Marx, "quantity changes quality", as if it were holy writ).

Don't misunderstand, I don't want to argue with you about your little Trotsky. You can have your "intellectual" thug Trotsky. I just wonder why some people seem to need him, or someone like him, so much. For some unknown psychological reasons it's awfully difficult for many people to just open their eyes and see those bastards for what they were.

Just think what a waste of time and electrons it is for you to sit on a bulletin board in 2003 and type words in defense of "Trotsky" or whatever the hell the oh so "intellectual", "theoretician" (why? cuz he wore spectacles??) terrorist's real name was (funny how the cowards all took fake names). Gawd it's pathetic when you think about it.

[Maximilian]

How the hell is than an "aspect of neo-conservatism"? It's an aspect of this guy Stephen Schwarz, whoever that is.

Stephen Schwartz is a prominent neo-conservative. And apparently it's an aspect of Christopher Hitchens and Irving Kristol as well.

[Destro]

Incorrigible, now you done it! You know whenever I see that crypto-convert to Islam, Stephen Schwartz Suleyman Ahmad I go into a rage.

You force me to post a link to my STEPHEN SCHWARTZ'S STENCH

What is a modern Trotskyist, I mean what do they take away from this 20s origin movement? World wide revolution but no longer for communism but for democratic socialism -- sort of like big govt. that does not act like big govt. -- cyrpto-socialist state (I just coined that copyright pending).

I think the Trotskyist's fear nationalism. They hate ideas of borders-an evolution from the slogan "workers of the world unite" to maybe something like "citizens of the world unite." Citizens that are uni-racial, uni-cultural, uni-you name it. In other words it is the elimination of all things that make humans conflict with each other. To do so you need a strong hand to smash people into place when they don't act homogenized. That is why the laughable pronouncements that Iraq, after the war would somehow transform itself to a selfless democracy.

That is the key I think to understanding neocons--their ideal for selfless actions as a policy guide, which itself is of socialist origin. I know it sounds decent and even Christian, but what motivates people is selfish interests. The same selfish interests that guide Adam Smith's invisible hand of capitalism also guides our democracy.

Being selfish in your own self interest seems not to be a good policy taken individually but applied on a mass scale it is the only system that works. Neocon policy is to IGNORE national self-interest, Sure they may dress up policy in patriotic terms-being that they are also Plato-Straussians (lie to the people for their own good and let the elite govern)- but their actions are geared to one thing--the elimination of nations - of borders-and thus conflict. Yes, some are Jews-because a philosophy geared to the elimination of conflict based on ethnic or religious status would appeal to many Jews. The fear of the return of a nationalist fueled monster like Hitler animates the nightmares of the neocons. You see it in how they call all their enemies "Hitlers". Milosevic is Hitler, Saddam is Hitler, Osama is Hitler. Hell all that that Mad-Cow Albright did was talk about Munich's lessons as her justification for her policies in the Balkans against Serbia. Bill Clinton stated that WW2 began in the Balkans on national television-talk about neocon Freudian slips! (Poland by the way is nowhere near the Balkans).

Neocons, also betray their roots in how they attack those against them-calling them traitors, putting them on the defensive, etc. These denounciation tactics are a legacy of the leftists.

[Destro]

Forgot to ask--what are you not buying?

[Cacique]

I can contend that any description of Irving Kristol as a Trotskyite as late as twenty years ago when he was one of my professors in graduate school (he was teaching at NYU at the time)is absurd. I may add that during that time I was in the midst of my transformation from being a Stalinist, and I can assure you a Stalinist can spot a Trotskyite a mile away. Kristol at the time was no Trotskyite. If anything he was a rabid Conservative and Reagan supporter.

What distinguishes Trotskyites is a belief in that absurd concept that Trotsky had of instantaneous proletariat revolution. Trotsky believed that the working class would engage in a spontaneous revolution once it determined it's class interest. A concept directly at odds with that of Lenin and yes Stalin's concept of the necessity of a revolutionary vanguard made up of professionals leading the proletariat who is incapable of knowing it's class interest. The Trotskyite position was closer to that of Bakunin and the anarchists.

That Trotsky must share in the crimes committed by Lenin during the evolutionary phase from 1917 on-wards there is no doubt and it is naive to absolve him from such crimes in which in excess of a million people died.

That someone is an ex something or order does not make one something in the present tense unless he has committed a crime. In which case, a murderer is always a murderer but an ex-democrat or liberal (much like Reagan) remains an ex unless he digresses and falls off the wagon.

[nopardons]

It is common knowledge, or at least I think it is on FR, that Irving Kristol was a Trotskyite. OTOH, so many people have so corrupted the original meaning of what a neo-con is/was, that yes,using their belaboured deffintion, Ronald Reagan WAS/ is a neo-con. So is any FRD loving, now seen the light Conservative.

[nopardons]

Kristol was a Trotskyite in his college days. He's said so himself. He hasn't been one in so long, as to have been one before most, if not all of us on theis forum were born.

Otherwise, your post is 100% acurate.

[nopardons]

That's all it is and some here are useful tools, denouncing anyone they disagree with as " neo-cons ".