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Neocons view the United States as “a creedal nation” with a “‘civilizing mission’” to promote “American values” throughout the world, to see to it “that other governments respect our conception of individual rights as the foundation of a just regime and a good society.” Kristol is unambiguous in his profession of the American faith: the United States, given its status as a “great power” and its “ideological” nature, does indeed have a responsibility “in those places and at those times where conditions permit” it “to flourish,” to “‘make the world safe for democracy.”

To me, the critical difference between the Left and the Right is their views of culture and human nature. The Left believes that you can socially engineer away all of the supposed "flaws" in human nature (or in ingrained culture/religion) to create a Utopia. Rightwingers are much more realistic - they recognize that leopards don't change their spots and work within those parameters, and therefore oppose naive nation-building and "democratization" abroad for the same reasons they oppose the welfare state at home.

In their universalism and childish belief that western-style institutions can be exported to the Third World, or that Third World immigrants will seemlessly integrate into western societies, Neoconservatives are solidly on the side of the Leftist utopians rather than conservative realism.