The Neoconservatives: Tyranny's Fifth Column

The term "Fifth Column" came into popular use in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and thereafter as socialism and fascism were sweeping into conflict to take over the nations of the West. It means a group of guerrillas, activists, intellectuals, etc. who work to undermine a nation (or some larger organization) from within. Its activities can be out in the open, or they can be secret.

Today in America, the neoconservative political movement represents a "Fifth Column" for the forces of collectivism. Its intellectuals and activists promote themselves as conservatives who oppose the liberals, but their political philosophy has nothing to do with what is known as American conservatism, which has always stood for a limited constitutional government and free enterprise. These values are anathema to today's "neoconservatives" in the nation's political, literary and scholarly circles.

The late Irving Kristol, editor of The Public Interest, and Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, were the founders of the neoconservative movement in the late 1960s. In their youth during the 1930s and 1940s, they were followers of the communist Leon Trotsky. Having bought into the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, they saw socialism as an ideal that needed to be spread to the West. While they and their followers subsequently modified the Marxist roots of their ideology in favor of a more gradualist methodology, they always remained adamant supporters of collectivism for America. Are they outright socialists? No, but their policy proposals have always been in favor of massive government welfarism domestically and an aggressive militaristic foreign policy that seeks what is termed "benevolent global hegemony," in which the U.S. military is to be used preemptively to spread democracy throughout the world.

The paradigm that neoconservatives have given their lives to is built upon a centralized mega-state running American society from Washington and also, as much as possible, the rest of the world.

In Irving Kristol's eyes, the laissez-faire vision of the Founders was a "doctrinaire fantasy." Its ideals "make it inadequate... for a political community," he wrote in 1977. In other words, to adhere today to what Jefferson and Madison advocated is anachronistic foolishness. According to Kristol and his fellow neoconservatives, such a view must be phased out of our collective conscience.¹

Kristol died in 2009, but his worldview dominates all of today's younger neoconservatives. He believed that capitalism and individual rights are dangerous institutions. They must be constantly modified by a powerful state that redistributes wealth whenever necessary to mold market enterprises into an appropriately egalitarian social structure. In the neoconservative mind, freedom, while desirable, is not a primary political value. Machiavelli had the better idea; expediency is the best way to rule. People need to be manipulatively led by statist elites – via open dialogue and democracy if possible, but by deception, coercion and expediency when necessary.²

The neoconservatives, thus, represent tyranny's Fifth Column in America. They are deceiving the people into believing that they are genuine conservatives, but like the socialists who were their mentors, they call themselves what they know the people want to hear. These ersatz conservatives have now grown to dominate Washington's think tanks, Wall Street's brokerages and banks, and many major publications and universities. They are highly influential writers, scholars, pundits, publishers, institute heads, bankers and corporate moguls.

What follows are eight of the more influential neoconservatives in America, past and present. These are not friends of freedom, but enemies. They need to be recognized for who they are, traitors to what America was meant to be. They need to be exposed and attacked as we would attack serpents that are slithering into our back yards to threaten our safety and our families.

Irving Kristol
Considered to be the "godfather of neoconservatism." A powerful liberal writer during the 1950s and 1960s, he had grown disenchanted with the Democratic Party by 1970 and switched to the Republican Party, coining the name "neoconservative" for the band of intellectuals he brought with him. Immensely persuasive in the shaping of the movement.

Norman Podhoretz
One of the major founders with Irving Kristol of neoconservatism in the late 1960s, he served as Editor-in-Chief of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995, pouring out a myriad of articles and books on the need to build America into an all-pervasive "collectivist state," but one that respects traditional values instead of the amoral values of liberalism.

Richard Perle
Called the "Prince of Darkness" because of his extreme hawkish military stands. A member of the Reagan Pentagon, now serves in Washington think tanks such as the Hudson Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Vehemently promoted the invasion of Iraq, and to this day favors extensive intervention in the Middle East to bring about regime changes.

Paul Wolfowitz
The most hawkish advocate in the Bush administration and the architect of the Bush Doctrine. A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, he is a former World Bank chief and Pentagon official who was closely involved in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He has been back and forth between academia and government for the entirety of his career.

William Kristol
Son of Irving Kristol and editor of the prestigious Weekly Standard, he was the cofounder of PNAC (Project for the New American Century) with Robert Kagan. He is a widely recognized pundit and influential Washington political operative. Director at the Foreign Policy Initiative and member of numerous think tanks in Washington as well as a Fox News regular.

Robert Kagan
Cofounder with Bill Kristol of the Project for the New American Century, Kagan is a policy pundit and historian based at the Brookings Institution. He serves also as a contributing editor at The New Republic and, thus, personifies the collectivist liberalism that infuses neoconservatism. They are statist ideological brothers.

Frank Gaffney
The director of the hawkish neoconservative Center for Security Policy, Gaffney has been a longtime advocate of interventionist U.S. foreign policies, ever-increasing military budgets and aggressive attacks upon the Islamic world. A regular on Fox News.

Charles Krauthammer
A writer for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer is considered to be the most influential neoconservative political columnist in America. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner, Fox News talking head and was a weekly panelist on the PBS show "Inside Washington" from 1990 to 2013.

There are, of course, many other prominent neoconservatives than just these eight. Hundreds of others like Bill Bennett, Elliott Abrams, Joshua Muravchik, James Woolsey, John Bolton, Max Boot, Karl Rove, David Frum and Condoleezza Rice are assiduously working to advance mega-statism throughout America and the world.

By 1910, socialism had become the new wave of the future in European universities. The Fabians were growing to power in Britain and numerous socialist intellectuals were emigrating to America to begin subversion of the citadel of capitalism.

One problem, however, confronted the invading intellectuals coming to our shores. The American people were vehemently resistant to socialism. Fabians and Cultural Marxists soon realized that the socialist revolution would never take hold in America as "socialism." They realized they must redefine their revolution and disguise it. Thus, between 1910 and 1920 they began to refer to themselves as "progressives," which solved their alienation problem. Americans were willing to listen to "progressive" ideas, but not to "socialist" ideas.

This is classic Marxist strategy: Become in name and image whatever will more readily convince potential converts. Retain your fundamental collectivist principles, but change the methods of implementation to fit the situation.

In the years between 1920 and 1940 the original neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, and Sidney Hook were coming of age and developing their worldview. At first openly socialist, they soon adopted the label of "progressive," and eventually began to use the term "liberal" because of it's widespread acceptance in American intellectual circles. Thus socialists became progressives who then became liberals who promoted progressive policies. The intellectual coup d'état was complete. Tyrannical socialism could now be promoted as something liberal, benign and progressive.

All intellectuals of the left were now solidified around promoting socialist ideology under the name of "liberalism." Such a strategy became spectacularly successful up through the late 1960s, moving America insidiously toward the collectivist ideal of an egalitarian society via massive government coercion. The goal was to bring about "equality of results" in life by leveling down productive people as much as possible to the lowest common denominator. The Marxist vision was making great progress by eroding the individualism that had created and built America.

Unfortunately, the mid-1960s came unglued socially because America's youth went bonkers by adopting a New Left radicalism that shook the politics of liberalism to its core. Counterculture rebellion raged among millions of young people who came home from college to kill their donkey parents ideologically. Stability and sanity collapsed into a heap of drugs, nihilism, and contempt for conventional liberalism. It was at this time that Kristol, Podhoretz and numerous of their powerhouse liberal colleagues switched to the Republican Party in face of George McGovern's 1972 takeover of the Democratic Party. They cast off the name "liberal" and adopted the name "neoconservative" so as to break totally from what they perceived as the lunatic fringe of New Left liberalism. Thus the neoconservative revolution was born via yet another name change. Socialists who became progressives who became liberals had now become "neoconservatives."

Of course, the fundamental principles of collectivism and mega-statism were not discarded, only the name of liberalism. Ideologically the neoconservatives were still very much collectivists and statists. But the new name gave them a new life in which they felt they could thrive more successfully. Mega-statism with traditional values had always been their political vision; now it could be openly promoted as neoconservatism. It caught on and attracted droves of big league scholars and pundits to join with it, which grew into today's neoconservative hold over Wall Street, the nation's corporate moguls, the Republican Party and many of Washington's prestigious think tanks.

The serpents had propagated. The Fifth Column had done its job. Thousands in the media became quite comfortable subscribing to "neo" conservatism and discarded the philosophy of "libertarian" conservatism, which had built the country and was the true conservatism, the true opposition to liberalism. The American people (conservative by nature) fell for the hoax and loyally supported the neoconservative movement, assuming it was what would keep the country free when actually it was working to do just the opposite. It was smuggling America into statism.

Thus both liberals and neoconservatives and their respective political parties – the Democrats and Republicans – are relentlessly moving our country into mega-statism today with full support from our professors, our media and our people. "Corrupt the money and the language," said Marx. Freedom and capitalism will then fall. Today's neoconservatives are not conservative; they are rabid collectivists. But you won't hear that from the American people. They have been bamboozled.

The only solution to this ideological deception and corruption is to revive the vision of "libertarian conservatism" subscribed to by the Founders. This means a free market, not a mega-state. It means the protection of equal rights, not the conveyance of special privileges. It means a mind-our-own-business foreign policy, not the pursuit of world hegemony. If the Founders were alive today they would be heaping the same scorn on the "neoconservatives" that they heaped on the Tories and King George. Tyranny is still tyranny whether it calls itself socialism, fascism, liberalism or neoconservatism.

I detest articles like these.

The founders were neoconservatives.

Lincoln was neoconservative.

Conservatism is neoconservative.

It is Rand Paul neo isolationism that is the fantasy and the delusion

Jefferson did commission the marines to attack the Muslim pirate bases in North Africa. That was not a “neo con conspiracy”

America has never had the luxury of being left alone and it is hardly viable today.

Iran really would like to see us all dead.

North Korea would really like to see us all dead.

Putin really does want to resurrect Russian dominance of global affairs.

The neoisolationist doctrine is bad. We must protect freedom with a robust military force. Mis explaining that force as some sort of neo socialism is infuriating.

Reagan certainly understood this and we have never had clearer hegemony and capacity to influence world affairs so positively as we do today.

"What about the larger point regarding neoconservatism and neoconservatives?"

Well, what I have always understood about neoconservatives is that they favor a more interventionist foreign policy. I don't know how to define that really. It's very vague. I take every situation and ask myself, is it in our national interests. When it comes to the Iraq war, I believe it had plenty to do with our national interests. We could go on a very long time as to why that is. That's not the point of this discussion. I believe other things such as helping out in Libya and Kosovo and Serbia had little to nothing to do with our national interests and I defy someone to explain to me how a war in a miniscule country like Kosovo had anything to do with our National interests. I don't recall leading "neoconservatives" like Richard Pearle advocating taking out Gaddaffi.

The author goes on to vaguely state that for domestic policy they believe in a top down collectivist policy but then goes on to give no examples of how that's been implemented. If he refers to Homeland Security then he's going to have to be more specific. I think there have certainly been abuses and there are laws needing tweaked, but I have no problem with spying on our foreign enemies. Congressman Senssenbrenner (the writer of the law) has gone on record as stating that the intent of the warrantless wiretaps was never to listen in on American's communication. It had to do with foreign enemies talking to other foreign enemies overseas and their calls were being routed through American cell phone companies.

As far as actual economics, I've never heard anything concerning neoconservatives and collectivism so I can't comment.

This article is balderdash. Pacifist weenies posing as conservatives could never win the argument against actual conservatives who favor a robust foreign policy of interventionism when useful and a military far stronger than any other to back it up. So the weenies latched onto the term "neoconservative" to cook up conspiracy theories as to why it was a bad thing that the 1930s socialists had converted to actual conservatism in defense of Western Civilization in the 1970s.

The one point made in this article that made sense was that the conversions were formalized when George McGovern and other communists seized permanent control of the Demonrat Party. The "neoconservatives" knew their old communist enemies well and became Republicans to give the party intellectual heft in its struggle with the Demonrats.

The 1930s are dead and gone forever. We no longer have to trudge through the world dragging the carcass of Herbert Hoover's massive failures and making believe they were successes. Imagine if paleocons had been running WW II. Would you rather teach your children German or Japanese as their everyday language?

National defense and, frequently, interventionism are legitimate constitutional functions of the central government. Many paleocons would ally with the remnants of the anti-war New Left to deny that fact. That alone disqualifies the paleocons from the conservative movement. This is why the now retired Ron Paul was NEVER to be taken seriously. This is why Rand Paul has effectively rejected his father's looney tune notions as to foreign and military policy. Rand may not be a modern day Curtis LeMay but he has made definite progress on those issues.

Another article in the website talks about non church marriages as a way to handle the homo marriage issue. No mention of men having sex with men being a deadly perversion.

Hippie drug taking and the Founding Fathers really do not mix. George Washington opposed sexual perversion. Thomas Jefferson thought men having sex with men should be castrated and if it was a women, then she should have part of her face gouged out. Whatever these Libertarian types advocate, it is not the principles of the Founding Fathers.

The Trayvon Martin Lied

The Official Undezog Website

Most people who oppose "neo-conservatism" simply want to throw Israel to the wolves. All the verbiage about laissez-faire and "American empire" is just window dressing.

They also believe that morals come not from an Objectively True G-d but from "culture" and that culture is created by genes and chromosomes. In other words, it's just another G-dless, atheistic worldview that pays lip service to a local, ethnic "gxd."

And isn't it curious how these "palaeos" always seem to omit how many of their own heroes started out on the Left? In fact the "old right" of the 30s was nothing but the "old left" of the 20s. Many WWII-era isolationists were simply 20's radicals who stayed true to their original ideals rather than constantly change the "party line." Burton K. Wheeler, "right winger" of the New Deal era, had been a notorious pro-red radical the previous decade. Oswald Garrison Villard is another example of the same phenomenon.

Remember that the next time some gene-worshiper starts ranting about how "neocons" used to be socialists.

This article is spot on that this group is very collectivist and statist.

So are the white racial collectivists who attack them.

However this group also enjoys kiling Muslims, so its all good on FR

[sarc]Well, obviously we are on "the wrong side" in the Middle East . . . just like we were on "the wrong side" in World War II. And Francis Parker Yockey thought we were on "the wrong side" in the Cold War! After all, the Commies were hanging Jews and supporting the Arabs.

Moslems--the protectors of White Western Womanhood against those e--vil, water-fluoridating JOOOOOOS![/sarc]

"Another article in the website talks about non church marriages as a way to handle the homo marriage issue."

I'm a libertarian on many things and I've always wondered why the state is involved in "marriages" anyways. A marriage is a religious construct. The only thing the state should be involved in is providing a "union" license (or whatever you want to call it) for the purposes of state functions such as filing taxes, legal rights for partnerships etc.. There should be no "ceremony" with a justice of the peace. It should be a legal paper that we fill out and sign and that's it. We as a society have to define what we think is a legal "union" or "partnership". That should be the battle (and I think is) to be fought. Instead, we have the gay activists attempting to force their opinion on society as a whole. That's what this whole thing is about with suiing bakers for not making their wedding cake etc....

When I was a teenager in a labor Democrat family and when it was still possible to be a Democrat and a patriot, I became infatuated with Barry Goldwater's candidacy without knowing of his support for abortion and homosexuality. I saw Ronald Reagan's election eve 1964 speech for Goldwater and I became a Republican forever. Like many others, I spent 16 years laboring for Reagan until he was elected and eight gratifying years of his presidency supporting him as well. I was a state chairman in his 1976 challenge to Feckless GOP-e Gerald Ford. Imagine my surprise when Goldwater backed Ford as he had backed Nixon in 1968 when I worked for Reagan in Miami at the convention.

At no time was it imaginable that conservatism could be confused with pacifist weenieism which was the dead hand of a dead "conservatism" of the 1930s: Lindbergh, Colonel McCormick, "America First" and admiration for the likes of Neville Chamberlain. I would imagine that the "paleos' thought Winston Churchill a dangerous warmonger and imagined that taking on Tojo and Hitler were dangerous misadventures. My only objection to US action in WW II was that we should have let Hitler and Stalin exhaust their militaries fighting each other to the death and that we should then have stepped in and finished off the "winner" instead of allying with Stalin.

Martin Luther King was no conservative but he sometimes said things that, in retrospect, serve conservatism such as wanting his children to be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Would the country be somehow better off if they were judged by the color of their skin? Does that make me a "neocon" for raising the question?

What has happened is that most Americans who used to be mere Republicans have been joined by those Democrats and aware others who do not want a communist dominated Demonrat Party dominating our country and necessarily joined with Republicans. If the GOP had done a better job of convincing Americans of its ideas, it might not have been necessary to welcome the heirs of Hubert Humphrey. Do you remember Hubert running as an old school Democrat for his party's POTUS nomination and being defeated and humiliated by McGovern's "rules" and communist cadres? I do. It was the end of the Democrat Party and the birth of the Demonrat Party which we know today. I thought Jean Kirkpatrick did a very nice job serving Ronald Reagan at the UN.

Actual conservatism is a far more muscular political creed than 1930s isolationism whose spokesfolks usually can be found, like ostriches, with their heads in the sand and their rumps in the air waiting to be kicked.

BMG: "I will fight and I know you will too until our cause has one day inspired the world and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesterdays." Unfortunately Barry did not mean it and always opposed Ronaldus Maximus but those words were penned by Karl Hess for BMG before Hess himself joined with the New Left. No matter, the words are words to live by. The "cause" was not paleowhatever.

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