A neo-conservative (abbreviated as neo-con or neocon) is part of a U.S. based political movement rooted in liberal Cold War anticommunism and a backlash to the social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These liberals drifted toward conservatism: thus they are new (neo) conservatives. They favor an aggressive unilateral U.S. foreign policy. They generally believe that elites protect democracy from mob rule. Sometimes the spelling is "neoconservative."...
...Origins of the neo-conservative movement In their book Right-Wing Populism in America, Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons wrote that:
Neoconservatives, including many Jewish and Catholic intellectuals rooted in Cold War liberalism, clustered around publications such as Public Interest and Commentary and organizations such as the Committee on the Present Danger. They emphasized foreign policy, where they advocated aggressive anticommunism, U.S. global dominance, and international alliances. Although they attacked feminism, gay rights, and multiculturalism, "neocons" often placed less emphasis on social policy issues, and many of them opposed school prayer or a ban on abortion. In addition, many neocons supported limited social welfare programs and nonrestrictive immigration policies." [1]
Inter-Press Service journalist Jim Lobe noted that the development of a common understanding on the definition of neoconservative "can help distinguish them from other parts of the ideological coalition behind the administration's neo-imperialist trajectory". Lobe identifies the main strands as "the traditional Republican Machtpolitikers (Might Makes Right), such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the Christian Rightists, such as Attorney General John Ashcroft, Gary Bauer, and Pat Robertson."[2]
Writing in 2002 Lobe and Tom Barry argued that"neoconservatives have a profound belief in America1s moral superiority, which facilitates alliances with the Christian Right and other social conservatives. But unlike either core traditionalists of American conservatism or those with isolationist tendencies, neoconservatives are committed internationalists. As they did in the 1970s, the neoconservatives were instrumental in the late 1990s in helping to fuse diverse elements of the right into a unified force based on a new agenda of U.S. supremacy.."[3]
As others have mentioned, I've seen neo-con used as code for Jewish conservative. There's a quiz at http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoconQuiz.html . At the end it mentions that a historical neocon would be Pres. Theodore Roosevelt and a modern one would be Ronald Reagan.
I have always been fond of Theodore.
Although I have had no illusions about him: I doubt I would have liked him very much were he and I contemporaries.
But over the span of a hundred years, I can smile at his often wrong-headed ideas.
And I can forgive his naivety, as his was a more innocent world than ours.
As for Reagan, well I was never that impressed.