The "New Left" so over it did it with their love of Communism in Viet Nam and then in Cambodia and their disgusting hate filled screeds about American Servicemen that they made "militersim" a "conservative" position. Thus- somehow- it is "conservative" to blindly support the military and the President. It is "conservative" to never question our foreign policy and only "left wingers" do that anyway.
Neoconservatism is not conservative in any sense. It is perpetual war or "creative destruction" as Michael Leeden likes to say in his fevered screeds.
That younger college type Republicans think being "conservative" is wearing a Bush T-shirt depresses me.
Good point. Kristol's de facto acceptance of some sort of welfare state is shared by almost everyone in politics today. But his slighting of older conservative traditions of reverence and loyalty is disturbing. It's hard to trust the neo-conservatives. They make use of conservative or traditionalist or populist or democratic ideas and rhetoric when it suits their purposes and drop such things when it doesn't. Judging from how Kristol treats some of those he's been allied with, getting too closely involved with neoconservatives looks like a risky proposition. There may be something more to neoconservatism than the naked pursuit of imperial power, but sometimes it's hard to think that there is.
Good point. Kristol's de facto acceptance of some sort of welfare state is shared by almost everyone in politics today. But his slighting of older conservative traditions of reverence and loyalty is disturbing. It's hard to trust the neo-conservatives. They make use of conservative or traditionalist or populist or democratic ideas and rhetoric when it suits their purposes and drop such things when it doesn't. Judging from how Kristol treats some of those he's been allied with, getting too closely involved with neoconservatives looks like a risky proposition. There may be something more to neoconservatism than the naked pursuit of imperial power, but sometimes it's hard to think that there is.