Why Neo-Conservatives Are not Real Conservatives

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.

There are reasons for disliking neo-conservatives. They seem to be very opportunistic and careerist and given to nepotism. The seem to back any cause that gives them more power. If you want to give that a slightly more positive spin, they've come in from the left and taken over or displaced conservative institutions. They've been successful, but have forced conflicting ideas off the political stage. And they seem to love war and the increase in power it brings to government.

But I'm not so sure about deeper philosophical differences. The initial neo-conservative support for many of Johnson's Great Society programs certainly does mark a difference -- though it's not so clear, since neo-conservatives have also been among the most effective critics of such programs.

But more seriously, do most conservatives really want to abolish all of what remains of the New Deal? Do we really think this possible? When we seriously consider the question, do we think getting rid of Social Security or collective bargaining or Nixon's EPA or TR's FDA will make America better or stronger? We all have differences with how such agencies operate, but has anyone shown that the country would be better off with out them?

I'd have to say, when we look at contemporary politics that the neo-conservatives are wrong, but the further back paleos go in history -- to the point of prefering the Confederacy over the Union or the Articles of Confederation over the Union -- the more wrong they are.

There are two ways of thinking. One which asks, "What do we do now? Where do we go from here?" The other asks "When did it all go wrong?" Both ways of thinking have their uses, but the second way of thinking doesn't always provide valuable answers to the questions the first way of thinking asks.

When you use the word "change," you fall into the same conceptually imprecise error as those who embrace the greatly over-worked term "progress."

I love your "rat riding trash in a thunder storm" reference, I plan to steal it and use it elsewhere.

Of course, my reference to change is perhaps not the same as yours.

In a world in which the tectonic plates are shifting under our feet, in which old alliances are disappearing before our eyes, in which technologies are changing faster than we can learn them, it takes a certain kind of person to adapt and thrive in that kind of environment.

The leftists do not do well. They are generally the most conformist in their thinking, and they do not understand the forces causing the changes. Consequently, they are almost always wrong in their predictions, and wrong in their proposed solutions. The future always blind-sides them, and a seemingly uncontrolled future scares them.

Conservatives have a clearer understanding of what is real and what is not, what matters and what does not. Furthermore, when you are in the middle of a storm, you can only navegate if your guiding principles are clear, and conservatives are more clear in their guiding principles.

The left's project is trying to force the world into a mold it doesn't fit. Conservatives navegate the world as it is, and use it as raw material to build the world they want.

So, you can take it as ironic, but conservatives adapt to change better than do socialists, who forever try to freeze frame the world into a pattern they can control.

On the issue of Congress having to announce the emumerated power under the Constitution for every law.

Sorry, hate to burst bubble, but that is already ostensibly done. Anything they do that is not under the enumerated powers is unconstitutional.

The real problem, is that over the last 60-70 years, the courts have basically completely re-interpreted the Constitutional to the point where almost anything the federal government chooses to do is considered within the enumerated powers. So the problem isn't really with Congress, but the Judicial Branch.

The Courts have done this by bastardizing the meaning of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

In the Constitution the Federal Government is given the power to regulate interstate commerce. The purpose of this, of course, is to prevent states from erecting trade barriers within the United States.

However, the SCOTUS has over the last 60 years reinterpreted that clause to mean that anything has even remotely interstate commerce can be regulated by the government. Under this free for all intepretation. Murder can be regulated by the federal government because in aggregate, if too many murders takes place in the U.S., it would affect the amount of trade that takes place in between states. But think about that, under that logic, the federal government can do anything, because almost any type of action by the people can in aggregrate affect the amount of interstate trade that takes place. This is why, 95% of all actions by the federal government is justified under the commerce clause, it has literally become a blank check.

Ask yourself this question, how come in the early part of the 20th century, when they wanted to prohibit alcohol, they had to pass a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT to do it? How come nowadays they can prohibit any substance, without needing a consitutional amendment? Because back then, when the Courts correctly understood the commerce clause, the Federal Govt had no power to ban alcohol until it got that power through an Amendement. But under today's free for all, they don't need it, they just cite the commerce clause.

Irving Kristol, the father of Bill Kristol is considered the "Father", or "Godfather" of neoconservatism in America.

Memory instructs that Irving Kristol's late-1970s collection of essays, Two Cheers For Capitalism, received its paperback edition (the book was a somewhat surprising best-seller of the time) with this bullet on the front cover: "The Heart of What The Neo-Conservative Debate Is Really About". The formal "movement" known then as neoconservatism had Kristol as its unofficial godfather, as you point out, but also included significantly enough the like of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (his sociologic studies even then flew in the face of the liberal toot and tootle, as did his service in the United Nations and the scathing enough recollection of that service, A Dangerous Place), Norman Podhoretz (editor of Commentary), Jeane Kirkpatrick (especially when her essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," was published), Midge Decter, Diana Trilling (whose We Must March, My Darlings got her no end of grief among the liberal storm troops)and (for a time, anyway) Seymour Martin Lipset. By anyone's definition, there were some big bats in that lineup, whatever you did or didn't think of their individual writings and thinkings...

Kristol in due course published a second collection of essays in 1982-83, Reflections of a Neo-conservative: Looking Ahead, Looking Back; at about the same time, Russell Kirk, editing and assembling his Viking Press anthology The Conservative Reader, included one of Kristol's essays in this volume and made a point of saying, for whatever it was worth, that contrary to the often-familiar image of the original neoconservatives as "liberals mugged by reality" Kristol was never really a liberal at all.

I suppose an awful lot of it is left to the translation of the reader. Though in Irving Kristol's case, considering the opprobrium heaped often enough on his son, there may also be a kind of syndrome of visiting not upon the father the sins of the son...

Ummm, I think this whoe post is BOGUS! Probably put up by a Goreite. Pretty good, however, I must admit. But the dead giveaway was the distinction between true cons & neo-cons: Barry Goldwater? Hello? For a lot of people under the age of what, forty, he was an addled old man who we grew up seeing on the news (prodded by his nth wife/buxom blonde nurse) repudiating everything he ever stood for and calling for taxpayer funded abortion on demand.Goldwater? Maybe for three years in the sixties this guy was a conservative, but he (&his blonde bimbo wife) spent most of the nineties undoing it. Get outta town.

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.

Emphasis mine.

Only if the activity is Conservative approved. Otherwise, Conservatives tend to like having government force compliance upon others whose habits and vices don't meet Conservative approval.

Conservatives seem to be supporting every Big Government expansion this Moderate President makes. Go figure.

My point is that several neo-cons were Trotskyites...

Kristol the Elder has written of his Trotskyite days as a Columbia University student (in Reflections of a Neo-conservative); this was never exactly a secret. For that matter, one of the most influential ex-Trotskyites of all time was a founding senior editor of National Review, James Burnham. For that matter, an awful lot of the magazine's editorial staff in its first few years - Burnham, Willi Schlamm, Whittaker Chambers, Frank S. Meyer, to name four - were former Communists of one or another strain, Trotskyite being one such strain. The critical word, of course, is former; each had made his break and begun making fresh bones along the right well enough before William F. Buckley, Jr. began drawing up the plan for National Review.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.