right.. and bush = hitler. lol

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I really hate the term 'neoconservative'. The people who use it the most tend to generally be the most ignorant of what the term really means and where it orginated.

Before I start, just for the record, when I use the terms 'conservative' and 'liberal' here, I'm using them in the American sense of the terms, not the classical sense.

Moving on, what neoconservatism is exactly is a tricky question. Neoconservativsm has never existed as any sort of truly coherent movement, not in the first generation, and even less so in the second. There's no piece of philosophy that they consider a template, like communists do with the Manifesto, or even a work that they tend to consider a sort of guiding inspiration the way libertarians do with Road to Serfdom. I tend to agree with the contention that in the present-day, it's basically a meaningless term, but I'll get to that. Further muddying the waters is the fact that most individuals who could be considered neocons don't use the term to describe themselves, and the term is more likely to be used by critics of the so-called 'neocons', who really have no idea about the origins of the term, and use it as a catch-all perjorative for anyone who they view as being influential in the Bush admin's foreign policy. It brings to mind George Orwell's joke about people using the term fascism to describe anything they find vaguely unpleasant. This is done by both the left and the paleo-right (you can usually tell which camp the speaker's a member of by whether they mention Strauss or Trotsky as the neocons patron saint).

Anyway, back to the point. The first generation of neocons were New Deal liberals and social democrats who sprung from the New York Intellectuals who came out of CCNY in the 1930s. These were the guys like Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipsett, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Sydney Hook and Irving Howe. All of them shared a common background, being secular Jews from socialist backgrounds growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression. They began to break with the mainstream left in the 1960s over a belief that American liberalism had abandoned its anti-totalitarian roots, and many of them wound up slowly moving into the conservative movement. This was about the closest thing that neoconservatism ever came to being a coherent movement, but even here, there was never anything totally unified about it. These individuals didn't really change very much, most thought of themselves as liberals who stuck to their principles while the rest of the left abandoned them. The term 'neoconservative' was actually invented by the editorial staff of Dissent in the 1970s to describe their wayward comrades who'd wound up fraternizing with the conservative movement. The only one of the first generation who ever refered to himself as a neocon was Irving Kristol, who did it in a way that was meant to be self-evidently ironic.

So, to summarize where we are up to this point, the first generation neocons were members of the anti-totalitarian left who broke with the left due to a belief that it had become too radical. A few (Kristol being the most notable) came to believe in a somewhat more conservative economic philosophy, but even he always had much more of a tolerance for the welfare state than your garden variety anti-state conservative, most of the others stayed more or less true to their roots on economic issues (maybe becoming a bit less socialist and a bit more Keynesian), and at least Howe and Lipsett never stopped considering themselves to be social democrats.

Now, the second generation of neocons were largely the kids or students of the first, and this is where use of the term becomes more or less meaningless. A few of these individuals use neocon as a term of self-description (Max Boot and Joshua Muravchik come to mind) but most don't, and simply refer to themselves as conservative with no prefix. The term neocon is much more likely to be used by their critics then by themselves. Their main difference with the rest of the conservative movement is that they generally tend to be intellectuals and policy wonks; more cosmopolitan and less religious than the social conservatives, and somewhat more tolerant of the welfare state than the anti-state conservatives, but again, that's a generality, not a law of nature. So, like I said, I think that neoconservative is a meaningless term today. It made enough sense to describe individuals who began on the left and ended up joining the conservative movement (even if said individuals generally never accepted the label, which was invented by the left), but to describe their intellectual heirs with the same term(which very few of them use to describe themselves) really doesn't even make sense as it's not even referring to individuals who have a common ideological background anymore, let alone a coherent movement.

The only real connecting thread between individuals who are generally referred to as neocons is an adherence to a school of foreign policy thought generally referred to as democratic imperialism by political scientists. This school of thought is focused around the idea that the US should, from both a strategic and moral standpoint, make the export of liberal democracy its primary foreign policy goal, including humanitarian interventions and protracted nation building abroad in that sense, it's not overly different from the liberal internationalist view of foreign policy. The difference between the two is that the democratic imperialists tend to be more suspicious of multilateral forums such as the UN or NATO, and more willing to use military force to actively remove regimes, but again, there's certainly overlap between the two. The democratic imperialist view is sometimes just referred to as the neoconservative view of foreign policy, but that's not particularly accurate. Many who support at least some aspects of democratic imperialism are liberals or social democrats (Martin Peretz, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Christopher Hitchens). It's not a coincidence that there was a sizeable minority who supported the Iraq war among social democratic intellectuals.

You mean Democrat politicians? That's not how it's Usually used.


As somebody who's been called a Neo-Con on more than one occassion, I'm pretty sure the standard working definition is "Anybody who disagrees with a rabid leftist."

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

that sounds like me.. im a neo con. fear me. fear me now.

haha

good a sensible description

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Excellent description.

Have you seen the Power of Nightmares? BBC doc....

Anyway in that film they connect William Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, two students of Strauss, to the 'neo-conservatism' of the Bush admin. I.e., Strauss beleived in societal myths, noble lies, grand narratives for society...

I sometimes wonder if that all would have worked if not for the sheer amount of information speeding around the globe at all times. The 'noble lies' and 'myth making' could not work in todays world.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

there is a famous story... i wish i could remmeber the details but i think it was in athens.. ancient greece.. president ( whatever he was called) was trying to convince the people that they needed to pay more taxes so he could build a large navy to defend against what he saw was a growing persian threat... they did not believe him no matter how much he tried to convince them..

so he made up an elaborate story about how a niegbooring power was attacking athenian fishing vessels and was threatning to attack... the people gave the money and were swayed by his powerfull speeches.. so he built the navy.. and when the persians finally did come around he was prepared and defeated them.

they would have been conquered if not for the lie.

what do you think of such a story?

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I think if the ancient greeks had internet, radio, and television they would have caught the lie.

Im wondering if you think there is a moder day 'persia' that is going to attack?

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

That was Themistocles, building a fleet to stop the persians from attacking the spartan/thespian army at the rear at Thermopylae, you know where 1,000 greeks held back the persians for a couple of days. It wasn't really about taxes, it was found silver deposits nearby which was supposed to be shared equally to every citizen. So the money weren't theirs to begin with.

What I think of it? Well, I'd do the same thing, but only if neccesary and only if doing it the "right way" didn't work. The PATRIOT act and such certainly aren't neccesary to fight terrorism, neither was Iraq. Those are blatant lies.

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

patriot act aint that bad.. you should see what the brits do..

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www.myspace.com/crusade7

sine you know so much about the patriot act, can you provide a list of everyone who has been arrested under its power?

(you might be right about iraq)

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Anyone with a vision needs to see an eye doctor. -Helmut Schmidt.

"Mrs. Palin, which specific journals and news sources do you read? (after being asked once)"

"Oh, All of them!"

so far, the only thoughtful definition has been provided by strider

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Anyone with a vision needs to see an eye doctor. -Helmut Schmidt.

"Mrs. Palin, which specific journals and news sources do you read? (after being asked once)"

"Oh, All of them!"

You don't have to look at the Wikipedia article as if it is fact. You can read it, check its validity against its sources, do some of the "further reading," and debate neo-conservativism with the article's other contributors.

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No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

Agreed. Definitely an insightful post.

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No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

First of all, I don't have to release a list of everyone arrested under it, as wheter they are arrested or not is irrelevant for the discussion. If you do want to know a number, Bush has said around 400 people have been arrested using it.

The bad thing about the Patriot act is that it makes the police have the power to do things only Hitler and Soviet Russia ever did in Europe. I, as a norwegian, still have my rights intact. You americans are loosing more and more and that's a shame.

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

what rights have i lost?

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www.myspace.com/crusade7