What neo-conservative is - and what it isn't

[quidnunc]

Question: Can you give me a basic summary of the history and central tenets of neo-conservative ideology? Being a knowledgeable pundit on foreign policy, can you present a view of neo-conservatism that isn't so distorted with half-truths and conspiracy theories? Are there alternatives to neo-conservativism that don't border appeasement?

Hanson: The neo-conservative movement that grew up around William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, and other New York disenchanted liberals in the 1960s and 1970s (who often wrote in Commentary and the National Interest), was initially prominent for domestic critiques: realization that the Great Society and the following 60's generation values were not merely failures, but pathological with long-term damage to American society.

In terms of foreign policy, these former Democrats (their connection with Leo Strauss is tenuous and largely a creation of the conspiracists) felt that the McGovern peace candidacy was dangerous, and, post-Watergate, that Jimmy Carter was a disaster in his naiveté about communism. Yet they also showed their earlier FDR and Scoop Jackson idealism in believing that Nixonian-Kissingerian realism wrongly accepted the status quo of global communism: hence their support for Reagan's rollback policies.

Generally, neoconservatives ("new conservatives") argue for idealism (= democracy) in guiding foreign policy, while they navigate a middle ground between liberals and paleo-conservatives ("old conservatives") on social issues. Thus they tend to be less interested in such social controversies as illegal immigration, abortion, gay marriage, etc. that reflect their original Democratic and liberal roots. I tend to favor their foreign policy, but am suspicious about some neo-conservative stances on open borders among others.

-snip-

(Victor Davis Hanson ['Response to Readership'] in VDH Private Papers, June 13, 2005)
http://victorhanson.com/articles/Privat ... e2005.html

[Jason Kauppinen]

Could this be stickyfied?

[Concerned Canuck]

July 22, 2004
Today, The Present Danger Is Neoconservatism

By Paul Craig Roberts

President Bush’s neoconservatives have announced that they are relaunching the Committee on the Present Danger.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/present_danger.htm

September 18, 2003
Thinking About Neoconservatism

By Dr Kevin MacDonald

Over the last year, there’s been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some vexing issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so?

http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm

August 21, 2003
Kristol Confesses: Neoconservatism Is Not Conservative

By Dr Sam Francis

It tells us a great deal about what is known as "neoconservatism" that more than 30 years after the term became fashionable, those who adhere to it still need to explain it. The latest explanation appears in the Aug. 25 Weekly Standard in an article entitled "The Neoconservative Persuasion: What it was and what it is" by neoconservative elder Irving Kristol.

[_Patrick_]

You might find this interesting.

Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neocons, and Iraq
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/ar ... 7-1542.jsp

[brianwalsh]

I agree that neo-conservatives are not really conservatives.

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy and seemingly liberals on most other policies.

They are a step in the right direction but they are not a SOLUTION to our problems.

[_Patrick_]

I agree that neo-conservatives are not really conservatives.

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy and seemingly liberals on most other policies.

They are a step in the right direction but they are not a SOLUTION to our problems.

Sentence 1 & 2 are fine with me, I agree.

Here's a fair question. What do you mean by "SOLUTION"?

[brianwalsh]

I agree that neo-conservatives are not really conservatives.

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy and seemingly liberals on most other policies.

They are a step in the right direction but they are not a SOLUTION to our problems.

Sentence 1 & 2 are fine with me, I agree.

Here's a fair question. What do you mean by "SOLUTION"?

A solution is a response to creeping socialism that offers a valid and equally weighty balance such that neither side dominates the public agenda on an absolute basis.

[Concerned Canuck]

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy

Mr Walsh,

Half of the thesis regarding neo-cons is that they aren't traditionally conservative vis a vis foreign policy (if you follow Dr. Francis and Dr. Macdonald's theses).



Men like Pat Buchanan use the word neo-con.
http://www.theamericancause.org/



http://www.drudgereport.com/mattpjb.htm

[brianwalsh]

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy

Mr Walsh,

Half of the thesis regarding neo-cons is that they aren't traditionally conservative vis a vis foreign policy. If you're interested in learning more, please read Dr. Macdonald's paper.

NOT true, these are confused people.

The bastion of conservatism was Victorian England, a monarchy that was a world power and VERY CONSERVATIVE.

The difference between that country, Great Britain and the US today for example is that the US is more or less socially liberal and fiscally liberal but exerts power abroad as Victorian England did.

But there is one big difference, Victorian England's thrust of power was primarily for its own good and not greatly influenced by foreign nations. This is not the case in the US today.

Those that say the US should not exercise its military might outside the US are not conservatives but they would more typically be called libertarian or even anarchists.

[_Patrick_]

Those that say the US should not exercise its military might outside the US are not conservatives but they would more typically be called libertarian or even anarchists.

You are so correct. I am impressed. Maybe have a re-look. Start with Lindbergh; you won't go wrong.

Vive la Anarchy.

[Concerned Canuck]

They are conservatives primarily on foreign policy

Mr Walsh,

Half of the thesis regarding neo-cons is that they aren't traditionally conservative vis a vis foreign policy. If you're interested in learning more, please read Dr. Macdonald's paper.

NOT true, these are confused people.

The bastion of conservatism was Victorian England, a monarchy that was a world power and VERY CONSERVATIVE.

That only happened after WWII. Millions of their fellow Anglo-Saxon brethren from their Victorian homeland were being slaughtered by a German war machine ... and they did nothing until attacked directly by a foreign nation. As far as I'm concerned, the neo-con movement started shortly after WWII, pronouned itself with the US Immigration Act in 1965.

But there is one big difference, Victorian England's thrust of power was primarily for its own good and not greatly influenced by foreign nations. This is not the case in the US today.

That is Dr Macdonald, Dr Francis, and Pat Buchanan's theses, more or less.

Those that say the US should not exercise its military might outside the US are not conservatives but they would more typically be called libertarian or even anarchists.

You're right out to lunch on that one...I thought we were on the same page Brian. They would be called isolationists or America First Patriots interested on securing American borders, illiminating illegal immigration, preserving American nationhood by controlling immigration, promoting American fertility etc.

[brianwalsh]

You're right out to lunch on that one...I thought we were on the same page Brian. They would be called isolationists or America First Patriots interested on securing American borders, illiminating illegal immigration, preserving American nationhood by controlling immigration, promoting American fertility etc.

Sorry CC:

but you gotta respect the commies for one thing... they knew that if you did not grow then you collapsed.

Look at all great empires in the world, there has never been an exception.

The socialists think that if they control the entire world then they will end this cycle but what would happen is that the entire world would fall into a malaise from which most of humanity would never escape.

The only people to turn things around would be underground rebels like the Christians in Rome for example.

[quidnunc]

Further comments by Victor Davis Hanson re neo-conservatives:

<BLOCKQUOTE><I>Neoconservatives? Let us be frank. This appellation is no longer a descriptive term of so-called "new conservatives," those members of the eastern intelligentsia who were rather liberal on some domestic hot-button issues (tolerant of open borders, quiet about abortion, indifferent to gay marriage, etc.), but promoted a proactive neo-Wilsonian idealism in foreign policy (whether in the Balkans in taking out Milosevic or in trying to replace Saddam Hussein with democracy rather than a Shah-like proconsul).

Instead, face the ugly fact: "Neocon" is now a slur for "Jew." General Zinni (who once boasted that 600 to 2,000 Iraqis were eliminated from the air in his Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign) is now ubiquitous on television hawking his new book, criticizing the war (on Memorial Day, no less), and being praised in the Arab news as he talks about "Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith" and all those who purportedly got us into Iraq.

"Cabal" and "Nazi-like" are also used by others and with increasing frequency to promote the old idea of crafty, sneaky people pulling the wool over honest naifs (no doubt aw-shucks, unsophisticated folks such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice). A shameful Senator Hollings has no apologies for claiming that our policy was misdirected for Israel's sake. Even a saucer-eyed Al Gore got into the spirit of things. Recently he screamed out the names of those who must walk his plank, and went into an exorcist-like trance when his vein-bulging, spinning-head got to spitting out the name "Woolfwoootizzzzz."

If there was advice from a "bloc" of so-called neoconservatives, it has not "failed," but is in fact already working even as we caricature it: We've taken out Saddam; we are on the eve of a transition to an autonomous reform government; and we are shooting the enemy 7,000 miles away, rather than being murdered at Ground Zero. And, by any historical standard, we are fighting in both an economical and humane fashion.</I>

-snip-

(Victor Davis Hanson in National Review, June 4, 2004)
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/ha ... 040840.asp</BLOCKQUOTE>

[_Patrick_]

Further comments by Victor Davis Hanson re neo-conservatives:

<BLOCKQUOTE><I>Neoconservatives? Let us be frank. This appellation is no longer a descriptive term of so-called "new conservatives," those members of the eastern intelligentsia who were rather liberal on some domestic hot-button issues (tolerant of open borders, quiet about abortion, indifferent to gay marriage, etc.), but promoted a proactive neo-Wilsonian idealism in foreign policy (whether in the Balkans in taking out Milosevic or in trying to replace Saddam Hussein with democracy rather than a Shah-like proconsul).

Instead, face the ugly fact: "Neocon" is now a slur for "Jew." General Zinni (who once boasted that 600 to 2,000 Iraqis were eliminated from the air in his Operation Desert Fox bombing campaign) is now ubiquitous on television hawking his new book, criticizing the war (on Memorial Day, no less), and being praised in the Arab news as he talks about "Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith" and all those who purportedly got us into Iraq.

"Cabal" and "Nazi-like" are also used by others and with increasing frequency to promote the old idea of crafty, sneaky people pulling the wool over honest naifs (no doubt aw-shucks, unsophisticated folks such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice). A shameful Senator Hollings has no apologies for claiming that our policy was misdirected for Israel's sake. Even a saucer-eyed Al Gore got into the spirit of things. Recently he screamed out the names of those who must walk his plank, and went into an exorcist-like trance when his vein-bulging, spinning-head got to spitting out the name "Woolfwoootizzzzz."

If there was advice from a "bloc" of so-called neoconservatives, it has not "failed," but is in fact already working even as we caricature it: We've taken out Saddam; we are on the eve of a transition to an autonomous reform government; and we are shooting the enemy 7,000 miles away, rather than being murdered at Ground Zero. And, by any historical standard, we are fighting in both an economical and humane fashion.</I>

-snip-

(Victor Davis Hanson in National Review, June 4, 2004)
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/ha ... 040840.asp</BLOCKQUOTE>

f NR

[Concerned Canuck]

You're right out to lunch on that one...I thought we were on the same page Brian. They would be called isolationists or America First Patriots interested on securing American borders, illiminating illegal immigration, preserving American nationhood by controlling immigration, promoting American fertility etc.

Sorry CC:

but you gotta respect the commies for one thing... they knew that if you did not grow then you collapsed.

Look at all great empires in the world, there has never been an exception.

The socialists think that if they control the entire world then they will end this cycle but what would happen is that the entire world would fall into a malaise from which most of humanity would never escape.

The only people to turn things around would be underground rebels like the Christians in Rome for example.

Sure, it's a factor, everything is multifactorial. I think what you're talking about now is spreading democratic ideology; before I thought you were talking about military conquest for financial gain. Both are probably factors. Either way, I think those are points which neo-cons try to bring up to defend their policies, and they're largely invalid. Democracy and capitalism's enemy, communism is dead. The US is the only superpower which exists today. The best way to stop terrorism would be for the US to protect its borders - isolate itself, end multicultural immigration. The best way to stop China as an emerging threat would be to slow globalism, stop jobs from going overseas etc - aka isolationism. The Arabs would still sell us their oil even if we didn't occupy their nations. Etc.