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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at tallahassee.com ...
It is really annoying. Some right wingers used to complain that Jews are too liberal (basically true), but when there are right-wing Jews they're excoriated too.
Damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's almost like what Emporer Hadrian said about the Jews, "it doesn't matter what they do I still hate them."
Yes, the Paleocons are the Buchanan types who sound more like raving Leftists, KKK members, and Muslim extremists at this point. Like most all of the former-Freepers like Arator who after being banned from FR, went off to form Bush-bashing sites like Liberty Forum and Liberty Post. Sick, twisted conspiracy types who love to talk about "golems" and like to label our goverment as "ZOG".
You are correct. Before Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh, all the true conservatives in the country could have gathered for cocktails on the poop deck of William F. Buckley's yacht, Cyrano.
In fact, they often did! Now, condemned as "Paleo-Conservatives," it is quite understandable that their silken knickers occasionally get in a bit of a twist. I mean after all, "Who the Hell are all these new people in the club!"
Oh yeah, IMHO, they are also quite uncomfortable with actually winning elections.
Take a jaunt over to LibertyPost.com and LibertyForum.com where the self-identified Paleo's hang out and tell me I'm wrong.
No, it's a label the liberals and paleo-cons use to describe Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other conservatives who have supported the War on Terror but who didn't fight in Vietnam.
I disagree insofar as Raimando, along with Pat Buchanan and others, write for "The American Conservative", which labels itself a paleo-conservative publication, and all other conservatives as neocons who have "hijacked" the conservative movement. Well, that may indeed be a compliment.
Now...if you can find evidence that paleocons actually consider Duke to be a compatriot. Right now, you have nothing but sleaze
The guy who thinks we should have competing governments and supports the PLO and the former Soviet Union?
There are sickos in every bunch. And according to David Blum he's not the father of the ["Jews took our jobs"] Paleos.
Ron Paul doesn't belong in that group. Ron Paul would never be opposed to free trade for instance.
Pegging Reagan as a paleocon is highly dubious. Yeah, he left the Democratic party before the main exodus of neocons began, but he did so for the same reasons, indicative of the fact that California Democrats veered left earlier than their East coast counterparts. It's also hard to reconcile with Reagan's strong belief in free trade, or with the enthusiasm with which neocons flocked to his banner and the importance they played in his administration.
Oh, I guess you are referring to our formerly-communist Polish allies, who supplied special forces troops in Iraq?
Does this mean you supported the France/Russia/Germany view, as did other paleocons like Pat Buchanan? If so, do you support his attacks on neocons? Isn't that a "McCarthyite" attack?
Now...if you can find evidence that paleocons actually consider Duke to be a compatriot. Right now, you have nothing but sleaze
The paleocon worldview has a compatriot in Duke. There is not a need for them to openly consider him as such. Buchanan and "The American Conservative" (the self-proclaimed home of Paleoconservatism) rallies against anything that remotely helps the Jews. Their articles have included dismissive arguments against the Holocaust, and criticized the War on Terror as an Israeli proxy war. They have also aluded to the often debunked theory that Israel was behind 9/11. Since David Duke spouts the same nonsensical arguments and supports the Arabs over the Jews... you fill in the blank.
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