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?
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.