Posted on 04/12/2005 9:37:05 PM PDT by quidnunc
The Neocon Reader
Edited by Irwin Stelzer
(Grove Press, 328 pages, $15)
Margaret Thatcher. Tony Blair. George Will. These are also three people one doesn't normally think of as neoconservatives. Yet they all appear in Irwin Stelzer's provocative new compilation, The Neocon Reader, which provides as many views of this benighted stream of political thought (nee "movement") as there are essays in the collection.
Or more, recalling the old wag about five rabbis, six opinions. Which is an unfortunate if inevitable analogy, given that, as David Brooks points out, to altogether too many critics, the "neo" stands for "Jewish."
In any event, the inclusion of Lady Thatcher, along with the most successful Labour prime minister ever — who in both Britain and America seems to have more support among conservatives than liberals — and the dean of old- (not to be confused with paleo-) con opinion writing, only enriches this very readable Reader. And the book itself is a useful update of the multifarious surveys of neoconservatism, starting with godfather Irving Kristol's Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, running through Mark Gerson's decade-old The Essential Neoconservative Reader, and continuing into such works as Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke's America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order.
Neocon agoniste Stelzer, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Economic Policy and contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, sets the proper tone in his meaty introduction. Stelzer knows that anyone who picks up his book will likely be doing so somewhat warily — out of a grudging desire to keep "current" on the Big Ideas in Washington while feeling slightly burnt out by all the talk about "neocon" conspiracies — and to answer two main questions: 1.) What exactly is a neocon? and 2.) What light can this new collection shed on contemporary policy debates?
-snip-
I've been trying to join the movement for years but no one will teach me the secret handshake...
But call a Liberal a "Liberal" and they are offended and cry "foul" everytime
No secret handshake--but it helps having been a leftist in one's youth.
(Its been too long since I've gotten to use my favorite sneer--"I outgrew Marxism along with acne". I liked the left better when they were more openly Marxist instead of this creepy romantic proto-fascist mishmosh they've become--they were more intellectually satisfying opponents.)
Yeah, well p!$$ on the Robert Bartley. He seems to forget the connection between Lyndon Johnson's guns and butter policy of the 60s and the inflation/recession scenario of the mid-to-late 70s.
Handing out welfare checks to deadbeats and malingerers in the Great Society while funding the war in Vietnam on borrowed money had its consequences then, just as similar policies today will have their consequences in the future.
Either way, there's no free lunch.
It's Baroness Thatcher!
Tony Blair is a liberal! Can I say that again? Tony Blair is England's LIBERAL. He is not a conservative.
It's a battle to keep those who say "woa- I'm all for this idea, but these people are NUTS!" from disengaging, or worse, deserting to the other side.
Bush is excellent at keeping those people. Unfortunately, the natural price is to alienate the "true" members of your party (the ideologues). The universal solution, then, is to run someone who appears moderate, but will govern radically.
Whether Bush fits that pattern is basically a matter of opinion. I like to think he has cards up his sleave, and every "liberal" thing he does is actually calculated to infuriate everyone from FReepers to moderates, which lights a candle under our @sses and motivates our political activities to fight harder for conservative causes.
Very true :-)
The left always changes the meanings of words. Just read Goebbels. He'll tell ya.
Ummm. . .he's actually a Labourite, not a Liberal.
But, Blair is the one who said "We're all Thatcherites now."
Labour's post-Thatcher ascendancy corresponded to Labour taking over her ideas while her own party 'went wobbly'.
Would that the American left had the same transformation into Reaganites, though I certainly don't wish for the Republicans to go wobbly (though Rush seems to think those in Congress have)!
Nice things to say about Thatcher and Blair. If you keep up posts like this you will undo your image as a Brit basher. Where is the UK contingent when you want them?
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