Posted on 05/03/2003 8:44:59 AM PDT by quidnunc
Politics is all about polarities. Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, right vs. left, hard thinking vs. soft thinking. The labels are pervasive, but the ground frequently shifts, requiring a new prefix to freshen up the label.
The word neocon, for example (short for neoconservative), was born of such a shifting of the ground. Coined in the 1970s, the label stuck to Democrats who had watched the Scoop Jackson anti-Communist wing of the Democratic party evaporate before their very eyes. They saw the War on Poverty become a losing battle. On the domestic front, they observed the death of morality as it had been defined for thousands of years in the Judeo-Christian tradition. These Democrats finally concluded that liberalism, as they had known it, was dead.
Irving Kristol, father of the neocons, defined his band of brothers and sisters as "liberals mugged by reality." That reality was the "evil empire" as defined by Ronald Reagan, the leader they championed. The reality extended to a concern for crime and education and what came to be called "family values." A subdivision of the neocons, the "cultural conservatives," were wryly defined as liberals with daughters in junior high.
Jews were prominently identified with the neocons, largely because Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, made the magazine a sounding board for neocon criticism. But Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a Baptist, and William Bennett, a Roman Catholic, were prominent neocon voices from the beginning. So were other Christians. "What are we," they might ask, "chopped liver?"
The Jewish neocons understood what the majority of Jews who vote Democratic didn't — that Jews and Evangelical Christians held many things in common, among them an admiration and affection for Israel.
Such definitions and ideological attitudes are amply documented in the political history of the second half of the 20th century, but the neocon label resurfaces today as many journalists and pundits identify the neocons as a new generation driving the foreign policy of George W. Bush.
It's a label that doesn't quite fit, since those credited with influence are hardly "neo" anything. For the most part, the label is attributed to second-generation conservatives. Some are sons of the Scoop Jackson Democrats whose fathers have the last name of Podhoretz and Kristol, but the label as accurately understood has a much more inclusive intellectual base, including, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney; his wife, Lynne; Condoleezza Rice; Don Rumsfeld; and Paul Wolfowitz, the hugely influential deputy defense secretary.
The term, however, is disingenuously bandied about at dinner tables and policy meetings in London and Paris and elsewhere, where it is colorfully coded to suggest a Jewish conspiracy working on the White House.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at tallahassee.com ...
Here's the problem: what ideology would that be?
Since the term was historically coined by/for a small group of people, it is personality-centered. Norman Podhoretz was a self-described "neo-conservative", but does that mean that every single thing he believed was part of "neo-conservative ideology"? He believed 2+2=4, so do I, does that mean I'm "subscribing to neo-conservative ideology" or something else?
If people can't talk about so-called "neo-conservatism" without making up their own little lists of sinister figures, we're really not even getting off the ground when it comes to trying to describe an ideology. I have perceived no coherent ideology being described by the people who bandy "neo-con" about.
all they're really saying is, "these are conservatives who supported Iraq war and I didn't". "Being a conservative and supporting the Iraq war" is not an ideology.
I understand what you're saying, and in fact I agreed with you earlier when you said that "neocon" shouldn't just be used to mean anything the speaker feels like having it mean. That is why I've made a point of providing a rational basis for what the term has been generally understood to mean.
I think you misread the article if you've come to the conclusion that neoconservative simply means someone who was formerly socialist. It's scarcely worth coming up with a word to describe someone purely on the basis of what he used to believe. It's more accurate to say that their former beliefs have impacted rather significantly on their current ones, and as such have created a new synthesis - as I said, a new school of thought. Once that's been identified, then the term can be legitimately applied to anyone who subscribes to that particular ideology, regardless of what he used to believe in the past.
Oh for cripes sake!
Go to the Chronicles Web site, they bill themself as the flagship magazine of paleo-conservatism.
as I understand the Podhoretzian history, it was a socialist who became conservative/hawkish by way of anti-communism.
But to tell you the truth, I don't really care about the term, I find it pretty uninteresting. I'm just sick of people tossing it around because they find it a convenient boogie man
as I said, a new school of thought. Once that's been identified, then the term can be legitimately applied to anyone who subscribes to that particular ideology, regardless of what he used to believe in the past.
Fair enough but I don't think that has happened. "I'm a conservative and I supported Iraq war" is not a School Of Thought, it doesn't make me a "neo-conservative", so where does that leave you? When people make up their lists of sinister neo-cons and they include - well let's see - George Will and Ann Coulter and Jay Nordlinger and Rush Limbaugh and on and on and on, this is a dead giveaway that if there is such a thing as a coherent "neo-con ideology", most people don't know what it is.
The only common denominator among folks who get called "neo-cons", or are in danger of being called "neo-cons", is that they are (1) conservatives and (2) supported Iraq war.
That's not a good basis on which to claim to have identified some kind of New School Of Thought. Frankly it amounts to little more than facile slander of people whom anti-war folks disagree with, by way of lazy hijacking of a term they don't even really understand.
No, there's much more than that, as I described in my post. The common denominator is a passionate belief in Making the World Safe for Democracy. It fits all of the people I mentioned (to a lesser extent, as I indicated, with George Will). This is the specific contribution to the political debate made by the original neocons.
Right. Not everyone seems to understand this though which is why articles like the one above are sorely needed.
I would not call George Bush a neo-conservative
Some do, by the way.
and I think he'll prove that as he rejects the rest of the neo-con geopolitical agenda
What "agenda" is that exactly?
A conservative who supported the Iraq War- that's not the definition of a neo-con
It's the working, functional definition for many people, though.
though the neo-cons to a man did support the war
I'll have to take your word for it seeing as how I'm still unclear about just who exactly are examples of this "neo-conservative" thing, aside from someone named Podhoretz and Bill Kristol's father. Probably David Horowitz qualifies too.
As far as I know they're the only 3 "neo-conservatives" on earth, and perhaps yes, they all "to a man" supported Iraq war (all 3 of them). Of course, there may indeed be other "neo-conservatives", probably numerous, in general society. Why I should care about them or pay special attention to them or whether they supported Iraq war "to a man" (which I doubt, somehow) is beyond me, however.
there are certain signifigant differences between the neos and traditional conservatives which are generally obvious.
Not to me, and not to 99% of the people who bandy about the "neocon" term.
If the difference between "neo" and "traditional" conservatives were so obvious we wouldn't see so many people calling Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush etc. "neo-conservative" now would we? Obviously there is much confusion here.
And hey!, that's what the article is about.
George Will??
Again, I'm talking about how the term is used in practice. Any conservative who supported Iraq war can, at some point, be called a "neo-con" by someone, if only some ignorant French journalist or something.
Anyway, as it now stands you're trying to define this School Of Thought largely by a motive you think you have perceived in all of these people. If you are so sure that Ann Coulter, Jay Nordlinger, "Wolfowitz" et al have a "passionate belief" in Making the World Safe For Democracy, you're a better mind-reader than I.
But Reading Strangers' Minds and identifying (or, claiming/pretending to identify) some passion of theirs is not the same thing as identifying some kind of coherent School Of Thought.
Was Woodrow Wilson a "neo-conservative"? He had by his own words this passionate belief you think you've perceived in others.
Let's try this thought experiment: if I agree with some representative "neo-con" about all specific foreign policy proposals X, Y, Z... which he names, but I don't internally emotionally or even subconsciously have a "passionate belief in making the world safe for democracy", am I still a "neocon"?
If yes, then what's the "passionate belief" got to do w/anything?
If not, then how is "neocon" a political ideology, rather than, say, an emotional temperament?
You are right on the money, by the way. Leftists are laughing and giving each other high-fives while usefully foolish anti-"neo-conservative" conservatives nobly bravely rush to the defense of this ridiculous propaganda term.
Now you're just engaging in petty sarcasm. But for the sake of maintain any kind of coherent discussion, an ideology involves a thing called a belief. And beliefs have a tendency to come through when one is writing about a particular subject. No, I don't have a list of quotes ready from the people I've mentioned, but those who've read them can attest that such beliefs have been exhibited - some have done so openly, others somewhat more coyly. But the common thread is there.
What it sounds like to me isn't so much that you don't believe any of this to be true, but that you don't want it to be true. You hate the term neoconservative, so you're doing whatever you can to dissuade people from using it, regardless of how useful it might be in identifying a very real and very influential ideology. All I can tell you is that whether you want it or not, there are some very serious differences in beliefs among conservatives, and those beliefs are inevitably going to fall under one label or another. Neoconservative is very handy, because it describes a new (relatively speaking) turn in conservative thought, and it was brought about by those who called themselves such.
And I wouldn't worry about what leftist are high-fiving each other about. I can pretty much guarantee you that the man in the street has probably never heard the word neoconservative, nor is he likely to in the near future.
You guys want to wave a magic wand, make believe that the courts are something other than THE major-law breaking institution in our society (ever since SCOTUS Chief Justice John Marshall invented the power to declare legislation unconstitutional during the first decade of the 1800s in a case occasioned by his own nonfeasance) and that the animals will be playing with the children just as soon as the US smacks its collective forehead after reading thge Constitution and says: Why didn't I think of that?.
In any event, you are not addressing the issue. Paleo-knuckleheads are not opposed to Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb and many others who have rallied to the conservative cause on account of their insufficient ideological obsession with eliminating such constitutional horrors as the Federal Tea-tasting Commission or federal wool inspection activities or OSHA. See if you can guess what they have in common which Neville Chamberlain's American successors cannot abide?
Heck, I'm not against all wars. I fully supported the Afghan war on this thread. Believe it or not, not even Al Gore is against all wars! He was cheerleader for the Kosovo and Haiti intervention and voted for the Gulf War I. Hence, my point about the misuse of the word "antiwar."
Only a minority of antiwar folks on Gulf War II (left or right) are against all war, hence you are attacking a straw man as seems to be your wont. On the other hand, if you have any proof that a majority of folks who opposed Gulf War II were consistent pacists and agains "all wars" please provide it. I'm all ears.
CONSERVATIVES: are people who are identified with the same political movement as Bill Buckley. They include former communists (Frank and Elsie Meyer, Whittaker Chambers), former Trotskyites (James Burnham, John Chamberlain, Max Eastman, Willmoore Kendall), former college radicals (Philip Abbott Luce, David Horowitz), former Black Panthers (the late Eldridge Cleaver), tweedy but brilliant college professors (Russell Kirk), people passionately committed to a society of opportunity and optimism (Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, George "Dubya" Bush), people who despise communism for all of the good reasons (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Michael Novak, Pope John Paul II), people who have made brilliant contributions to the theory of human freedom (Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, Robert Nozick, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams), people who have courageously defended Western Civilization as jurists (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, Robert Bork), people who understand that the purpose of the military is to kill the bad guys and break their things (Generals George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur, Creighton Abrams, Dan Graham, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), people who have understood the evils of public indoctrination or government schooling (every homeschooling parent in America and many who send their kids to the right sort of private or religious schools or actually create such schools), people who have waged war against racial hucksters and scam artists (Ward Connerly); people who understand the importance of religion in American public life (Fr. Richard Neuhaus, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, Rev. Mr. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Mr. Pat Robertson); social traditionalists and counter-revolutionaries (Phyllis Schlafly, Connie Marshner, Senator Rick Santorum), those rare cultural leaders who make films in defense of the West and its values (John Milius, Mel Gibson), brilliant young commentators (Dinesh D'Souza), brilliant and lovely young commentators (Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham), brilliant and lovely and chronologically maturing commentators (Peggy Noonan), Brilliant commentators who have made history rather than merely discussing it (Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Bill Kristol), old left novelists who eventually saw the light (George Orwell, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos); elected leaders of spine and ideology (Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Don Nickles, George Allen, Melissa Hart, Judd Gregg, Charles Grassley, Jeff Sessions, Jim Bunning, Fred Thompson, and many others), Gary Bauer, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, the entire Right to Life movement, etc.
NOT CONSERVATIVE: Pacifists, people who resist a war effort when troops are fighting in the theater of war, people devoted to the notion that there is a raciual component to conservatism (blood and soil) and that it therefore is not a universal movement, self-described "paleo-conservatives" (who are neither)(the Rockford Institute, the John Randolph Society, Chronicles, Justine Raimondo, antiwar.com, Thomas Fleming, assorted Serbian foreign policy obsessives of murky ideology associated with the Rockford Institute, UpChuck Percy, former Rep. Paul Findlay, former Rep. Pete McCloskey, Joseph Sobran, Samuel Francis, and the scant handful of their associates). Also: the "Conservative" Citizens' Councils which used to be known as the White Citizens' Councils (or blow-dried Klan), the Libertarian Party types who reduce all of political theory to a few cliches out of John Stuart Mill or Ayn Rand, moral equivalency mavens, etc. We know them when we see them. That's why we used to throw their books off the school bus, one by one, every few blocks. They have yet to get over it.
Fleming, Chronicles, Samuel Francis, Raimondo, and Sobran call themselves paleo-cons in a pathetic attempt to make believe that the tail can wag the dog. They are the rump caucus of formerly conservative malcontents whose views, habits and associations were too exotic, eccentric and flat out wrong to make them or their ilk good candidates for employment in the Reagan administration. Therefore, in 1986, as Frum's article outlined, they labored to bring forward at a Philadelphia Society annual meeting the misbegotten bastard child of the crank wing of conservatism known as "paleo-conservatism" as an expression not of reality but of their grave disappointment that they were socially and ideologically unacceptable to the greatest conservative president in generations. Rule or feebly and futilely attempt to ruin, don't ya know?
He not only considers himself "paleo-conservative" but calls his silly magazine, Chronicles, the "flagship magazine of paleo-conservatism." Just because they have substantial collections of rejection slips from conservative publications does not make his writers conservatives of any stripe.
Do not for a moment indulge the fantasy that ANYONE involved in the Rockford Institute is describable as libertarian. Several of them pine for the good old days when Slobodan Milosevic was communist boss of Serbia and not a "puppet" of American interests like more recent Serbian governments. Fleming actually wants to move to Serbia or Montenegro upon retirement. Good move for him. Good move for America. Serbia's loss would be America's gain.
The quote that quidnunc included at #159 is quite representative of the reflexive anti-Americanism which permeates the Rockford Institute whose personnel are old enough to remember the anti-American and antiwar Americong of the 1960s and 1970s. Nonetheless, they are willing to lie down with anti-war dogs in time of war.
Though the institute is NEITHER conservative NOR libertarian, one must also say of libertarians that those whose worldview is based upon secular ideology, who often cheerlead for the American holocaust of 45 million innocents slaughtered in the womb by surgical means alone since 1973, who root for the love that once dared not speak its name but will not now shut up, who think that all of political philosophy can be reduced to a few cliches out of Mill or Rand about non-initiation of force or fraud, are not conservative either. Conservatives may agree with libertarians on taxes and on limiting government regulations of business, but libertarians make poor partners on the major issues such as abortion and family and civilization.
Such as the Rockford Institute crowd make poor allies as well since they think that wallowing in novels and poetry is preferable to asserting military force in pursuance of the legitimate objectives of American foreign policy, even in the aftermath of 9/11. Also, in their passionate devotion to yakking about everything while acting about nothing, the Institute in the person of Fleming published a Chronicles editorial just a few months ago deriding pro-life champion Joe Scheidler's efforts as violative of the property rights of abortionists as though those rights should be asserted in defense of their grisly profession and confidently predicted that SCOTUS would uphold a racketeering verdict against Scheidler, about a week before SCOTUS decided by more than a mere majority in his favor and finished off RICO jurisdiction over pro-lifers.
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