In the 1950s liberals assumed that conservatism had died with Herbert Hoover, so anybody who defined himself or herself as a conservative was assumed to be a "neoconservative." For some, that meant Buckley, for others it meant people like Russell Kirk, who were bigger on community and tradition than free market capitalism.
In the 1970s, when a new group of liberal New Yorkers became disillusioned with Johnson, Lindsay, and McGovern, the socialist Michael Harrington revived the term to apply to them. And that's the usage which stuck, even though the second-generation "neocons" didn't go through that process of being on the left and moving right.
BTW, while we're on the history, Heilbrunn's a bit off the deep end in denying that the neocons were "liberals" before they went right. A lot of people were leftists or socialists in the 1930s. If they voted for Adlai Stevenson or Lyndon Johnson in the 1950s and 1960s, it's no stretch to call them "liberals."
One can hate the "neocons," but the idea that they were at one point more socialist than most of their opponents on the left is as much a "mythology" as anything they said about themself. It's also debatable whether they really had a greater "penchant for abusive invective and zest for combat" then their bitterest opponents, right or left.
Has anyone read David Horowitz’s current blog on this Heilbrunn character? Seems that he has a proclivity for lying and distortion. Why is everyone taking him so seriously?
Has anyone read David Horowitz’s current blog on this Heilbrunn character? Seems that he has a proclivity for lying and distortion. Why is everyone taking him so seriously?