I consider myself a neo-con. I bet a lot of people on here do.
To answer all of the questions that Max Boot posed about Elizabeth Bumiller and Larry Rohter of the NYT:
Dude...they call themselves “progressives.”
Does that answer your questions?
Neo-con - see also Big Government Republican.
According to the NYT, the leader of the Neocons is Emmanuel Goldstein.
He is supposedly the author of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein is the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It is a book without a title. Liberals refer to it, if at all, simply as The Book.
There are suspicions that Emmanuel Goldstein is just a pen name for Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney or David Horowitz.
Im more of a con-neo
The best definition of neocon is those who sent too few troops to Iraq.
I have been expecting war with Saddam since before most people were aware of him, and I supported Bush Jr. in part because reading between the lines of some of his remarks before the election, I believed he intended to take care of unfinished business there.
When the Towers fell, one of the first things I wrote was to assert that getting Bin Ladin wasn’t enough, we needed to finish Saddam as well.
Nothing has happened in the years since to change my mind about any of this.
If I’m a conservative, neo-conservative, classic liberal, neo-classic liberal, or a paleo-classic liberal doesn’t interest me particularly. In my mind I’m a Lockean Burkean, and I’m convinced Saddam needed to go.
I’m an American.
“Neocon” in current parlance is simpply a synonym for “Hitler” or an older term “Reactionary” or any other word that is perceived to have a connotation of evil. They are all interchangeable words for “I don’t approve.” The left has no facts and believes there is no truth so the left engages in hyperole. There is only emotion and expressing emotion is only effective if it is extreme. So all words are shorn of meaning except for the emotional content. It is the only meaning they know.
I self identify as a neo-conservative.
We support culture over counter-culture, capitalism over socialism, and democracies over tyrannies.
We differ from the paleos on all three counts — 1) the paleos have a high tolerance for dictators and theocrats, 2) the paleos distrust markets and free trade and 3) the paleos are committed to a homogeneous culture while the neos are cosmopolitan.
How is a neo-con different than a libertarian— 1) neos believe active and not just a reactive use of the military is sometimes necessary 2) neos believe the federal govt has a limited role (science research, environmental protection etc) 3) neos have less tolerance for criminality.
As far as neos being for big government, that is dated info — even Kristol was convinced by Jack Kemp and the stagflation of the 70s to abandon the welfare state. However, programs like socialist security and medicare are extremely difficult to get rid of once in place, so our emphasis is on growth.
Neocon is just the communists’ curently favored euphemism for “Jew”.
I always thought it was just another way for the liberal media to fractionate conservatives. Divide and conquer and all that.
I’ve always considered the neocons to be split into two groups. The original neocons like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, Trotskyites who became Republicans because they were for war (4th International/permanent revolution). The modern neocons, which includes alot of 9/12 Republicans, are like others have said big government internationalists who are Republicans moreso because it’s traditionally been the hawkish party. I personally can’t stand them most of the time, but the GOP has always been a party of many different groups. If we had a Democrat party, a Christian Right party, a Libertarian party (this time with real libertarians!), a Bomb-the-Brownies party, a Fiscal party, ect the Dems would win every election. I just wish more people would read Reagan’s “Time for Choosing” speech. That, to me, is what real conservatism has always been about.
Neocons:
“Those who would drag the United States into endless Middle East wars, against America’s long-term interests, while ignoring other threatening areas around the world”
... that about sums it up.
Why, for instance, is John Bolton a neocon and John Lehman a “pragmatist” (as the graphic that accompanies the article has it)? I have no idea–and I bet Bolton doesn’t either, since he has repeatedly said he’s not a neocon.
Yes, let's look at that. Bolton is quoted as saying, "Well, I'm not a neocon, number one, but number two, I don't think the neocon adventure is over." How much of a denial is that? If Bolton had said that he wasn't a Communist, but didn't think that the Communist adventure was over, what would we make of that?
I identify more with the libertarians. Paleos are decent, though.