Free Republic

... "Irving Kristol was an intellectual giant who played a major role in developing the anti-communist arguments that led to the defeat of the Soviet Union," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times. ... ... Known as the godfather of neoconservatism, Mr. Kristol was a youthful radical who went from embracing communism in his 20s to attacking it publicly in his 30s. In subsequent years, he became an equally forceful advocate of free-market economics, including the supply-side tax cuts enacted during the Reagan administration and dismantling much of the so-called welfare state. Neoconservatism was a label originally bestowed...

Irving Kristol, 89, a forceful essayist, editor and university professor who became the leading architect of neoconservatism, which he called a political and intellectual movement for disaffected ex-liberals like himself who had been "mugged by reality," died Friday at the Capital Hospice in Arlington. He spent much of his career in New York but had for the last two decades lived at the Watergate apartments in the District. He died of complications from lung cancer, said his son, William Kristol, the founder and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has planned a flurry of appearances in the Washington area this weekend, an indicator of the kind of hectic schedule he's been keeping as he looks ahead to a possible presidential bid in 2012. His D.C. itinerary will be dominated by fundraisers, but Romney has planned a pair of high-profile speeches to conservative groups that are sure to draw attention: On Saturday he is slated to address the Values Voters Summit, and on Monday he'll deliver remarks to a luncheon at the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank founded by William...

"We're All Realists Now." No. Pragmatists maybe, but not "realists." Barack Obama's election as U.S. president delighted many people, especially the self-described foreign-policy "realists" who accused his predecessor, George W. Bush, of denying reality in favor of dangerous idealism. Obama has praised the realpolitik of Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. And a White House official recently told the Wall Street Journal, "[Obama] has really kind of clicked with that old-school, end-of-the-Cold-War wise-men generation." The elder Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, called Obama's election a rejection of the younger Bush "in favor of realism." Of course foreign policy should be...

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The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin Village. Whatever happens from this point on, the news of Rupert Murdoch’s repudiation of his ugliest stepchild is as refreshing a pick-me-up as the morning’s second Bloody Mary I am enjoying, anchored off Spetzai on the Bushido with Chronicles’ incomparably hospitable columnist, Taki. The only thing needed to make my happiness complete would be for the boys of National Review to take the hint and sell out for oh, maybe $2 million. Allegedly, Murdoch sold the magazine for...

FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they'd found the magazine's address A senior Standard staffer confirmed the visit but declined to discuss it in detail. An FBI spokeswoman, Katherine Schweit , also declined to comment on the investigation. Two other sources said two FBI agents arrived shortly after 5:00 p.m. Thursday at the 17th Street offices of the magazine. They told staffers that they had found the address of the magazine on a piece of paper associated with the shooter, James von Brunn,...

Retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in once again on the air after a year's absence----and has restarted her Internet radio program "American Forum." Kwiatkowski is a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties in the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's " American Forum" radio program includes discussions about libertarianism and the state of the economy. Lt Col Kwiatkowski's PhD in World Politics was taken at Catholic University of America. Her doctoral thesis centered on overt and covert war in Angola. She has also published two books about US policy towards...

We knew it on Friday, when Bill Kristol praised President Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, but the degree to which neoconservatives are happy with the plan is striking. “He’s definitely saying no to pulling back,” said Fred Kagan, at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative conference today in Washington. “It was a gutsy and correct decision.” Kagan worried/predicted that Obama’s base would bristle at the plan, so “he will be counting on some significant amount of support from his political opponents.”

I asked the boss for a reaction to the Afghan speech. He said he would have framed a few things differently, but his basic response was: "All hail Obama!"

EXCERPT Though neocons formed a kind of Praetorian Guard around John McCain during his campaign, their truculent approach to foreign affairs sabotaged rather than strengthened McCain’s appeal. The best that Sarah Palin, a foreign-policy neocon on training wheels, could do was to offer platitudes about standing by Israel. It seems safe to say, then, that the neocon credo is ready to be put out to pasture. Or is it? One problem with this line of argument is that it’s been heard before—sometimes from the neoconservatives themselves. In 1988, after George H.W. Bush replaced Ronald Reagan, neocon lioness Midge Decter fretted,...

Listening to neocon mastermind Richard Perle, there's a sense of falling down the rabbit hole. Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at a forum of foreign policy intellectuals, hosted by National Interest magazine, he created a fantastic world in which: 1. Perle is not a neoconservative. 2. Neoconservatives do not exist. 3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years. "There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering. So what about the...

A Bad Year for the Neocons Who is more Catholic than the Pope? Brian Mershon REMNANT COLUMNIST, North Carolina By all accounts, 2009 has been a challenging year for Neocon Catholics. Lamenting the spread of the Traditional Latin Mass to their own diocesan parishes since the Pope issued Summorum Pontificum July 7, 2007, the recent revelations concerning the founder of the Legion of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel, the death of Father Richard John Neuhaus, and now the dissolving of the excommunications of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), the Neocon Catholic worldview is clearly being undermined George Weigel’s recent...

Rudy Giuliani analyzes the reason the Republican party is losing in recent years and what it can do to enlarge it's base. Stressing the importance of big tent politics and under-emphasizing social issues. In any case, the economy is the main reason McCain lost, but other social issues have also created a bad stereotype of Republicans in general.

CLICK TO ENLARGEAny man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." Winston Churchill Since Obama left the Rev. Wright and his cultic influence, I believe he has had several "come to Jesus meetings," as well as a couple of come to Bush meetings. According to Wikpedia:"Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States. Its key distinction is in international affairs, where it espouses an interventionist approach that seeks to defend what neo-conservatives deem as national interests. In...

Neoconservatives are elated with Obama's appointments, recognizing that the new guard is very much like the old.  Some traditional conservatives were hoping that with Bush leaving office and Obama coming in, the neocons would be put out of power, but sadly, they're not going away that easily. Contrary to the public's perception of President-elect Obama as the peace candidate, he has been extremely hawkish in his appointments. The selection of Joe Biden as a running mate was a sign that the globalist and hawkish wing of the Democratic Party (where the neocons originally hailed from) was going to be strongly...

Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs looks back at the rise and fall of the neocons, who encouraged George Bush to invade Iraq.With the Bush Administration about to recede into history, a widely asked question is whether the neoconservative philosophy that underpinned its major foreign policy decisions will likewise vanish from the scene. The answer seems likely to be Yes. But the epitaph of neoconservatism has been written before - prematurely, as it turned out, in the 1980s. Having been apparently headed for extinction at the end of the Reagan Administration a...

President Bush will leave office with an approval rating of under 30 percent, and the Republican Party is not faring much better. In the past two elections, it has shed more than 50 House seats and more than a dozen Senate seats. The conservative label, though, does not appear to have taken much of a beating. On Election Day 2008, exit polls showed that more voters still identify themselves as conservatives than as liberals. Conservatives can thus spare themselves the kind of re-branding liberals felt compelled to attempt earlier in the decade when they dubbed themselves “progressives.” Precisely what is...

The rise of the neoconservatives within the GOP has not only discredited the Grand Old Party but tarnished the image of conservatism. The Republican party suffered an overwhelming electoral defeat this past November. The establishment media were all too quick to proclaim that conservatism is dead and we're now at the dawn of a liberal age. Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), wrote in Time magazine that we are facing the dawn of a "new liberal order." In making this proclamation, Beinart overlooks the fact that the public was not voting...

I have Been seeing so much Post Mortem on the Decline of the Republican Party. Our POST ELECTION First Task was to Identify the ROOT PROBLEM...we agree that it was the RINO Philosophy. Next Since we will have to go out and replace these RINOS with people of true Conservative Principles . Now It is time to identify those RINO's who are Elected to Office be it Federal, State, County and City elected Officials. Appointed, Judicial, The RINO's in Media,Radio Talkers TV, Cable, Print, and Blogs... We need to Identify the RINO talking heads who POP up everywhere when a...

The Death of Neoconservatism by David Donadio November 20, 2008 American presidential elections are often best read as verdicts on the administrations that precede them, and in that light, Barack Obama’s victory on November 5 marks the long-overdue death of neoconservatism. I doubt the Democrats are going to build an everlasting majority with disaffected conservative realists, or even hang on to those realists forever – let’s wait a few months until the showroom shine fades from Obama’s administration, or just a few minutes if it turns out the Clintons really are going to enjoy a third term over at the...

November 21, 2008, 1:00 a.m. What Went Wrong?Well, it wasn’t conservatism. By Victor Davis Hanson Conservatives have already in the three weeks after the election come up with three competing explanations — and remedies — for their congressional defeats and the victory of the relatively unknown Barack Obama. Post-election voting patterns and statistical data can be interpreted in various ways to support any of the following three exegeses, which I understand as being roughly the following: It was a sort of fluke. Party faithful will shrug that almost everything conspired this year against the conservative brand: two wars; the...

I am writing to you from abroad. I have decided to blog for the Americans, because I see now an imminent danger hanging over America - and the rest of the world as well, because the United States is now by far the strongest Power in the world. In 1933 a man called Adolf Hitler had seized power in Germany. He had promised “The Change”. He lived up to his promise - very easily in fact even thou the German bureaucracy, formed in the Era of the Empire, was unwilling to cooperate. He managed to do this because he jumped...

Conservatism Can Be Revived: Unmasking Neocons Just a Beginning By Joseph Baldacchino Despite the apparent momentum of the Republican Party in the presidential race, it is clear that the party is tottering on the edge of intellectual and moral bankruptcy. Americans by overwhelming margins have had their fill of the George W. Bush Administration, and they have little faith in the GOP's nominee to succeed Bush. It is only because the Democrats have put forth a candidate who raises even more serious doubts that the Republicans may be able to avert electoral disaster. Americans are tired of the Administration’s policy...

The neocons' Palin project Patrick J. Buchanan, Creators Syndicate, Inc. Monday, September 15, 2008 Will the neocons who tutored President Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin? Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party. In St. Paul, Palin was told to cancel a meeting with Phyllis Schlafly and pro-life conservatives. McCain's operatives said Palin had to rest for her Wednesday convention speech. Yet, on Tuesday, Palin was...

Neoconservatives whose influence had been waning in Washington have hitched their colours to rising star Sarah Palin in a bid to shape US foreign policy for another decade. Comments by the governor of Alaska in her first television interview, in which she said Nato may have to go to war with Russia and took a tough line on Iran's nuclear programme, were the result of two weeks of briefings by neoconservatives. Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007....

Naming Palin's pro-Israel views and twisting her comments on a "war" with Russia, MSNBC's Chris Matthews accuses the McCain campaign of "indoctrinating" her into a neoconservative. Matthews makes his claims while interviewing Former Alaska Gov. and Palin opponent Tony Knowles. "Do you think she's being submitted to [an] indoctrination program, she talked last night with Charlie Gibson like a real full-blown neoconservative." "Where do you think she is getting this from? Is she getting this from Randy Scheunemann, the neoconservative lobbyist or former lobbyist for the government of Georgia." "Is she willing to simply repeat, recite, parrot if you will...

-- snip -- Watching The Big Lebowski in 2008, it becomes clear that appreciating Walter is essential to understanding what the Coen brothers are up to in this movie, which is slyer, more political, and more prescient than many of its fans have recognized. Perhaps that's because Walter, with his bellowing, Old Testament righteousness and his deeply entrenched militarism, is an American type that barely registered on the pop-culture landscape 10 years ago. He's a neocon -- snip -- Is this eerie foreshadowing of the second Iraq war coincidental? Not entirely. The Coen brothers created a character with traits...

A must-read debate about our foreign-policy future. Does realism offer the best solutions to today’s threats? Or will neoconservatism be responsible for our policy triumphs? The choice is clear after eight years of failed Bush policies, says Walt, but Muravchik thinks the House of Kristol may well be vindicated. The Future is Neocon Joshua Muravchik TO COMPARE the records of realism and neoconservatism we must first define our terms. Realism consists of two mutually contradictory propositions. One holds that states are bound to behave according to their innate interests. Thus, Hans Morgenthau argued that politics is “governed by objective laws”...

Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic writer is worried about Iran and Israel. His worry is not the usual one. Although Goldberg is an American Jew so committed to Israel that he served in the IDF, he is worried about what an Israeli attack on Iran would mean for America, specifically for American Jews. "The problem is simple: Muslim extremists often conflate Israel and the Diaspora. They do this for two reasons: One, they are anti-Semites, and so tend to see all Jews, and not merely 'Zionists,' as their enemies; the second is a practical one - it is easy to strike...

WARSAW -- Polish analysts and a part of the political scene are linking the South Ossetia crisis to that in Kosovo, Beta says. The current armed conflict in the breakaway Georgian region is seen as the Russian answer to the western recognition of Kosovo Albanians' unilateral declaration of independence, the Polish media are saying. "This is the Russian answer to the recognition of Kosovo. That recognition was in fact a gift to Russia," Polish People's Party European MP Janusz Wojciechowski told TVN24. Wojciechowski, whose party is a partner in Donald Tusk's cabinet, warned that the case of Kosovo, where a...

WARSAW -- Polish analysts and a part of the political scene are linking the South Ossetia crisis to that in Kosovo, Beta says. The current armed conflict in the breakaway Georgian region is seen as the Russian answer to the western recognition of Kosovo Albanians' unilateral declaration of independence, the Polish media are saying. "This is the Russian answer to the recognition of Kosovo. That recognition was in fact a gift to Russia," Polish People's Party European MP Janusz Wojciechowski told TVN24. Wojciechowski, whose party is a partner in Donald Tusk's cabinet, warned that the case of Kosovo, where a...

Along with military aggression, the Russian Federation is blocking Georgian internet portals. On request of the President of Georgia, President of the Republic of Poland has provided the website of the President of Poland for dissemination of information. If you like to see the latest news and statements published by the Presidenty of Georgia, or Georgian MFA - click http://www.president.pl/x.node?id=479(on the right side of the web-site)

I watched Ron Paul on Glenn Beck today and as usual I was amazed that he is just about the only politician in Washington talking about the real issues. Neither McCain nor Obama will talk about monetary policy. They are scared to, because they know the system we have is unconstitutional and that the only way to fix things is to go back to constitutional money. But that would hurt, so it wouldn't be prudent to bring it up...

The dangers inherent in the foreign policy advocated by the neo-conservatives are well known. While many Americans have become increasingly aware of those dangers, far less attention has been focused on the dangers of neo-conservative economic policies. This issue is of critical importance right now, because many are mistakenly pointing their fingers at the free market as the culprit behind our current economic plight. There are only a few in elected office who have any real loyalty to free markets and limited government. The agenda of neo-conservatives in the economy calls for a very active central government. Indeed, while there...

While some might be undecided on who to vote for this coming Election Day, for others it’s a no-brainer. Although the news media would like us to believe otherwise, there is still an enormous political gap between the Left and the Right.

Obama campaign site’s outrage du jour: “Jewish neoconservatives” using “U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel” Contrary to the disclaimer “Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign,” Barack Obama’s campaign can and does exercise editorial control over MyBO by removing content that it deems “objectionable” or “disrespectful.” The following outrage du jour pretty much speaks for itself. http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/theodoreziolkowski/gG55NG Off His Axis. (Comments by Ted-Zee-Man) Opinion Watch Joe Klein blogs for Time: “The notion that we could just waltz...

A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed-- conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term "Obamacons" to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama. Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled "Some Influential Conservatives Spurn GOP and Endorse Obama." In it they quote various conservatives on...

IN THE EVENT you haven’t noticed it’s a presidential election year. You can tell by the ever growing flurry of conspiracy theories—not just delicious new ones like Barack Obama’s being some kind of Manchurian Candidate for Jihad, Inc., but ones that, even if they’ve grown old and wormy by now, can be pulled off the shelf and re-issued as a brand-new congressional report. Like the 170-page piece of work just out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The precarious burden of this report is that the evil crew in the White House systematically exaggerated the threat that Saddam Hussein’s regime posed...

Do you know the difference between a conservative and a neoconservative, or neocon? This is not just a question of semantics. It’s far more important than that. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the future of our country depends on understanding the crucial differences between the two philosophies – and rejecting the latter. All of this was brought home to me most forcefully when a longtime friend sent me a copy of the speech he delivered at the Constitution Party’s annual convention in Missouri last week. I’ll tell you more about John F. McManus and the organization...

So there I was, listening to a few of the major "architects" of the war in Iraq -- Paul Wolfowitz, formerly No. 2 man at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld; Douglas J. Feith, formerly No. 3 man at the Pentagon under Rumsfeld; Peter Rodman, another former senior adviser to Rumsfeld; and Dan Senor, former senior adviser to Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). They had assembled at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., for a discussion of Feith's new book, "War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism," but what they were...

Obama's Sunday 2 24 08 speech to ~100 members of the Jewish Community in Cleveland ...It will serve as the BASIS for successful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is at the basis of the 'Neocon Wars for Israel' that BushCheney and the Israel Lobby have been having us fight. Obama has split the Likud/Neocon war criminals from Jews of Conscience everywhere and broken down the walls for ME Peace. Thank you, Barack, and Samantha - YAHOO!!! ...This is it - this is what we need - these are the conceptual underpinnings for the end of the 'war on terror'...

Rick Warren's book The Purpose-Driven Life is more than a major bestseller.  It's also the most prominent manifestation of a "seeker-sensitive" movement that's attempting, for all intents and purposes, to redefine evangelical Christianity. The seeker-sensitive movement is a close analogy to the contemporary conservative movement. In both cases, people who ought to be offering timeless truths that can save individuals and societies are instead using market research to craft a product that appeals to consumers, telling them what they want to hear rather than a truth that is initially painful but ultimately liberating.  Even if you are not a Christian,...

Vid from RidleyReport.com Is it "neoconservative" to spend ourselves into a military collapse? How will we bomb things if we can't buy the bombs? If you cherish our military adventures, take note: We're out of money and Dr. Paul's controlled drawdown may be the only way to prevent a collapse so complete it costs America her ability to project power. http://youtube.com/watch?v=nbFTicFF9eA

At some point in the very near future, the neoconservative moment will cease to exist and conservatism as we know it today will be relegated to the political fringe. The movement's ultimate demise isn't due to its inherent flaws, however (although it has many), but rather from Mother Nature's less poetic spouse, Father Time. The neoconservative moment is going to die of old age within the next quarter century. This is inevitable (and its not like Mr. Rove and Mr. Cheney are in great shape either). So the question now becomes, what takes over as the main rival to American...

In the foreign policy establishment, among progressives of all stripes, and even for significant segments of the conservative movement, "neoconservatism" has come to stand for all that has gone wrong in American foreign policy over the last seven years -- especially in Iraq. Yet much of the criticism misses the mark. For starters, it's worth noting that the president, vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state and the national security adviser all lacked neoconservative roots. And insofar as neoconservative thinkers influenced Iraq policy, the problem was not with neoconservative principles, but the failure to fully appreciate the implications of...

As the Bush administration winds down, neoconservatism has become the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. The neoconservatives have become the subject of numerous myths, mostly spread by their numerous detractors. They're seen as dangerous heretics by livid liberals as well as by traditional conservatives such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Patrick Buchanan. So "neocon" has become a handy term of condemnation, routinely deployed to try to silence liberal hawks such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut or right-wing interventionists such as former deputy secretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and the former Pentagon official Richard...

They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons By Jacob Heilbrunn Doubleday, 320 pages, $26 ...It is about a mindset, one that has been decisively shaped by the Jewish immigrant experience, by the Holocaust, and by the twentieth-century struggle against totalitarianism. . . . [H]owever much they may deny it, neoconservatism is in a decisive respect a Jewish phenomenon, reflecting a subset of Jewish concerns." Some critics have questioned the predominant role played in the movement by Jews, and especially their unstinting support of Israel. Some have even suggested that the neocons' advocacy for war with Iraq was...

One current permathread on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn’t even mentioned in passing by Obama’s fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime. Curious. What’s really happening? Krugman doesn’t have a problem with Obama; Krugman...

The Bush administration is no longer influenced by neocons. Instead, it's governing the way its predecessors have.Maybe 2008 will be the year when we will finally be rid of that vacuous belief that "the neocons" are in control of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East. Habits are hard to break, particularly lazy ones, but if anyone bothered to look more closely, they would see that the United States has not really engaged in what we might call a neoconservative approach to the region since at least 2004, when the situation in Iraq took a sudden...