Posted on 09/26/2002 2:36:29 PM PDT by jstone78
I have always tried to figure out how real conservatives differ from neo-conservatives. I have listed a few points, with which you should feel free to agree or disagree with, and if you like, you can mention other ways in which you feel real conservatives and neocons differ.
1. Real conservatives (whether Old Rightists or New Rightists) are motivated by high moral principles and deep conviction, that the role of government in people's lives should be minimized, and people should be allowed to run their own lives. But Neo-conservatives are actually liberals and Marxists who pretend to be conservatives, and are motivated by nothing more than opportunism and hypocrisy, and have no moral principles worthy of mention.
2. Heros of real conservatives include individuals such as Gen. Douglass McArthur, Gen. George S. Patton, former Sen. Robert Taft, Robert E. Lee, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Alan Keyes. Heros of the neo-cons include Harry Truman, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Leon Trotsky, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, and Sen. John McCain.
3. Real conservatives always put the interests of America first, ahead of other nations. They also believe that institutions not elected by American voters, have no right to make decisions affecting the lives of Americans. But neo-conservatives support globalization, mass immigration, the WTO, the United Nations, and most other forms of globalism.
4. Real Conservatives often win elections on fundamental moral and constitutional issues like defending the lives of the unborn, the restoration of school prayer, the right of ordinary citizens in a democracy to defend themselves through protection of Second Ammendment rights, and the rebuilding of the Christian foundation that made America a great nation. Neo-cons win elections on materialistic issues like government entitlements, tax privileges for some, and whining about the dangers of the "religious right" and other "extremists" in an attempt to discredit real conservatives.
5. Real conservatives oppose New Deal policies which resulted in big government. Neo-Conservatives support the New Deal.
6. Real conservatives oppose political correctness and victimology. But neo-conservatives are the greatest promoters of victim politics in America, as a result of finger-pointing habits they developed when they were still marxists and liberals. Neo-cons are fond of slandering their enemies using liberal buzz words such as "sexist", "racist", "anti-semitic", "homophobe", "isolationist", "bigot", "nativist", "xenophobe", etc.
In 1981, neo-conservative attack dogs ganged up and destroyed a prominent Southern conservative, the late M. E. Bradford. Bradford, a highly distinguished scholar, had been nominated by Ronald Reagan to be chair of the NEH, and smears by vicious and hateful neo-conservatives forced Ronald Reagan to withdraw the nomination. Many other real conservative scholars and columnists have had their reputations destroyed by hateful and vindictive neo-conservatives. Ironically, one common smear used by neo-cons, the "anti-semitic" smear, disregards the fact that many defenders of the old right are Jewish. Men like the late Murray Rothbard, Howard Phillips, and Paul Gottfried are strong defenders of old fashioned conservatism.
7. Liberals and Marxists hate old fashioned conservatives, whether in America or Europe, because they see real conservatives as a huge obstacle to the imposition of their socialist one-world agenda. Have you all noticed how European conservatives who oppose the European Union and the EU's liberal immigration policy are treated by the media? On the other hand, Liberals, Socialists, and Marxists, love neo-conservatives, whom they see as allies. Maybe the "ex-liberal" and "ex-Marxist" labels that neo-conservatives are often given, are nothing more than a sham (i.e. the "ex" part).
8. There is broad intellectual diversity among real conservatives, and they express their disagreements without being disagreeable. Some are Old Rightists, while others are New Rightists. Some are paleo-libertarians who are very anti-statist, while others are less hostile to the state. Some support Israel, while others do not. Some support free trade, while others are protectionist. Some want the IRS abolished entirely, while others favor reform of the IRS. But almost all oppose New Deal policies, and are strict constructionists in the various ways they interpret the US Constitution. Neo-cons on the other hand, do not tolerate dissent in their ranks, and all match in lockstep. The dictatorial nature of neo-conservatism can be traced to the authoritarian style of one old neo-con hero, Leon Trotsky.
Great one! I love it!
Conservatives have always been and remain, free-market, free trade and pro-business and moderate to conservative on social issues. Conservatives are not protectionist nor are they isolationists. Conservatives can be roughly split 2 ways, Fiscally conservative but social moderates or both fiscally and socially conservative. The term conservative cannot define the extreme right because the extreme right share many of the same characteristics and goals of the extreme left and neither extreme has any ability to compromise their "principles" to make incremental gains. They brook no breach of political purity and take stances so extreme that only a tiny percentage of people see them as rational.
Pretty funny that Lardner didn't consider post-1920 baseball legitimate, and decided to quit his profession because of it. Imagine someone thinking that Lou Gehrig's numbers weren't "legitimate?" Just imagine what he would've thought of the tiny ballparks and nuclear baseballs of 2002?
Reminds me - not that there's any correlation - of Howard Cosell's disgust over watching Larry Holmes make mincemeat of Randall "Tex" Cobb's face (while Cobb was absorbing the punishement....laughing all the while) and then announcing that he had "finished announcing professional boxing." The guy had watched God knows how many brutal contests prior to that one, and by all accounts had enjoyed the sport immensely, but it took Tex Cobb and his "is that all you got, Larry" attitude to turn him off. I sure miss his repartee with Dandy Don Meredith on MNF though.
You don't think he would be called a neo-conservative today, do you?
Not by folks who really knew him.
This is from Vin Suprynowicz:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
All the extravagance and incompetence of our present Government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." –H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), "Breathing Space", The Baltimore Evening Sun, 1924 Aug 4. Reprinted in A Carnival of Buncombe.
ROTFLMAO
(Coca-Cola and snot on the keyboard delayed my reply.)
POLITICIAN, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When we wriggles he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
Sure, there were always some Birchers helping get conservative candidates elected, but you give the organisation too much credit for doing things its rather puny membership was incapable of.
After Nixon denounced the Evil Axis of the American Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society (he always put emphasis on the last word of their name) during his comeback run at California's governorship in 1962, Welch's folks became persona non grata in the Republican Party. Whatever you may think of Nixon, you have to admit he was master of the smear.
Nixon and William F. Buckley probably did more to demonize those to their right than all the liberal pundits in NewSpeak and Slime combined.
There "influence" was not numbers though prior to Reagan they had a membership of approx. a million. Their influence came from their reputation. They embodied what was then considered the right wing. It wasn't until they turned on Reagan that their membership came down to about eighty thousand and they became known more for conspiracy theories than for political activities. No one remembers the YAF but most of the country has heard of the JBS.
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