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jpsb: I don't qualify as a "neocon" in that:

1. I was not a student at City College of New York in the 1930s as were most of them (Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, etc.);

2. I happen to be Roman Catholic (see tagline) as most of them were not;

3. I have never been a socialist as most of them had been before communists like George McGovern took permanent control of the Demonratic Party in 1972, causing them to abandon socialism to join with the GOP in defense of Western Civilization;

4. Other actual neocons included Walt Whitman Rostow, Eugene Rostow, Sidney Hook, Daniel Patrick Moynihan on his best days, Daniel Bell, and Alexander Bickel. Brilliant people if not always perfectly wise. They make the paleos obvious as intellectual pipsqueaks which is the highest paleo calling;

5. I don't buy into ANY "nation building" whatsoever. Never have bought into it and never will. Our military and foreign budgets should be almost exclusively devoted to killing our enemies and wrecking their property. "Nation building" is a waste of our resources. If an enemy has been smashed by US military power, that enemy should bear the expense of rebuilding right after reimbursing the US for each and every nickel spent on the effort. When that becomes our inflexible policy, you will be amazed at how seldom we will have to use military force. Our enemies may not love us but they WILL fear us and act accordingly or they will die.

Machiavelli was right and he was no "neocon." Your use of that term is interesting in that the term was invented by the left to attack the actual "neocons" described above because they defected to become substantially conservative particularly retaining and building upon manhood in foreign policy and the use of the military for purposes of Western Civilization. As the actual "neocons" died off, the term was revived by the eccentric platoon of "paleocons" at a Mont Pelerin Society meeting in the mid-1980s when, in utter frustration, they realized that they were regarded by the Reagan Administration as the "funny uncles and aunties" of the self-imagined right and would, mostly, NEVER be credentialed by Ronaldus Maximus and his administration. Normal conservatives wanted nothing to do with them because they were isolationist obsessives with a real weakness for "blood and soil" ideas reminiscent of Central Europe in the early to mid-20th century. History has rendered such truly embarassing heresies and errors as beyond the pale of repectable society. AND, of course, the paleos developed a mythology that cowardly isolationism was somehow related to conservatism in some mythical past. They like to juxtapose "non-interventionism" (indifferentist cowardice in common parlance) against what they call "globalism" or "internationalism" whose hero was supposed to be and may have been Woodrow Wilson. Real conservatives had no use for Wilson or his League of Nations or FDR or his United Nations and still do not. The actual dichotomy is between INTERVENTIONISM (when, where and on whatever terms we choose as a nation) and paleo-ostrichism or "noninterventionism" which prefers to hide its head in the sand until the baaaaaad men go away after which they will be eager to sell the bad guys the rope (trade and profit uber alles as it were) with which we shall all be hanged if Ron Paul's paleoism were to prevail.

Once the term "neocon" was revived by the paleos in their pathetic attempt to pose as conservatives without giving up their eccentric and decidedly anticonservative notions and "principles," the Nation and the New Republic and their leftist ilk generally were eager to join the paleos in an attempt at political identity theft by the paleos and bleat the term "neocon" in every writing attacking conservatives. They desperately need to help create a new type of RINO to divide the right (as they imagine). The problem with their theory is that the paleos are not legitimately of the right. They are more like the Mugwumps of the 1870s and 1880s with their mugs (economic conservatism of a sort and libertoonianism) on one side of the fence and their wumps (foreign policy of George McGovern type cowards and support for Congressional ad POTUS federal "nonintervention" with the SCOTUS policies in favor of abortion and sexual perversion) on the other side. They are neither fish nor fowl.

One need not at all favor "nation building" to believe in the crisp and efficient use of military force as regularly as desired.

The money squandered on the Marshall Plan would have been far more wisely "invested" in using Patton and MacArthur and the remnants of the German and Japanese militaries (as the spearhead) to wage a two-front war against Stalin as soon as Hitler and Tojo were defeated. There would have been no more Soviet Union, no Red China, no North Korea and no North Vietnam. Stalin, Mao, Chou en Lai, the North Korean pipsqueaks and Uncle Ho: all incinerated and little warfare necessary. Peace through strength! When the paleopipsqueak gets his paleopatoot kicked into the next galaxy by primary voters as it was in 2008, how will that work for you?