[Torie]

In short, if Europe is waiting for a new administration or a new set of policy professionals to rise to positions of influence, the Continent may be in for a very long wait. The style in which affairs are conducted may change, and the blunt take-it-or-leave-it pronouncements of the current administration might be softened, but the substance of American foreign policy will remain roughly the same. The current direction of U.S. foreign policy--reshaping the Middle East, pre-emptive confrontations with potentially threatening adversaries, and an ambivalent attitude toward international organizations that constrain the use of American power to achieve those ends--is unlikely to change substantially with any new administration that could conceivably come to the White House in the near future.

Yep. Kerry won't change much I suspect if he gets in, beyond the cosmetics, when it comes to foreign policy. The imperatives are simply too compelling. That at least is my hope, although even the change in cosmetics will raise my blood pressure.

[SkyPilot]

I have lived in Europe for years---let me tell you what they fear most:

Anyone who unmasks them as less moral than they desperately want to appear to be.

At the top of the list are devout Jews and Christians (the worst offenders).

[Rose in RoseBear]

Pingpingping!

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

Some turn to a more arcane definition of "the neoconservatives" as the students of the University of Chicago political philosophy professor Leo Strauss. Others note the Jewish surnames of many of the president's foreign affairs and defense advisors and hint darkly that the U.S. government is being manipulated for the benefit of Israel. Once again, these definitions fail to satisfy. Strauss may have been an influence on some, but it is difficult to believe that a relatively obscure philosophy professor dead for 30 years could now suddenly wield such influence over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. By the same token, many of President Bush's advisors may indeed have Jewish roots, but many do not; it is, moreover, truly bizarre to believe that individuals can work their way to the top of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus by advocating the interests of another state to the detriment of the United States.

Official universal symbol of the increasingly pop-eyed Beware-the-Evil-Spooky-Bad-Neocon-JOOOOOOOS brigade:

[Alberta's Child]

Chief among them is the idea that individual liberty is a moral absolute and that a system of governance that enshrines individual liberty is morally and practically superior to all others. This is a very fundamental belief, deeply embedded in American political thought and public opinion. It is a principle, however, that does not necessarily have the same level of importance in modern European political systems, whose constitutions tend to place a greater emphasis on social harmony than on individual liberty.

Baloney. The fundamental belief described here is hardly "deeply embedded in American political thought and public opinion." I'd love to see where in America the author finds such a thing.

This is why what is commonly called the "neo-conservative" political philosophy is really just a transparent fraud -- much of what is espoused by its modern proponents isn't very conservative at all.

A "big government conservative" is still a liberal, for all intents and purposes.

[VaBthang4]

Amen.
Goes for the LP bitter Loserdopians as well.