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.
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.