[No Truce With Kings]

"Yet another take on the "neocon" question. I have to admit that I'm confused as hell."

The term neocon was coined in the late '70s/early '80s to describe the Scoop Jackson Democrats that were moving into the Republican party -- strong on defense, socially conservative, yet still (at that time) pro-Union, and blue-collar. They were new (neo) conservatives (cons). A lot of them (like Wolfewitz) -- albeit not most -- were Jewish. Over the last five years the term has been twisted, particularly by paleocons, but also recently by the neocommunist wing of the Democrat's Party to mean a Jewish conservative.

Since both groups tend to be anti-Semitic (if you don't like that term, then Judenhasser or Jew haters) this was a convenient way to denigrate the strand of conservatism that favors international activism.

Of Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfield and Powell the only one that could be considered a true neocon is Powell. The rest have always been conservatives, while Powell started as a Democrat and moved to the Republican column primarily because of the Democrat's total abdication of responsibility in defense and foreign relations. Like most *true* neocons, Powell tends towards a more liberal position on a lot of domestic issues.

Just goes to show how liberals (and Paleocons, for that matter) can always screw up a legitimate political term (liberal for example) when they need to obfusticate matters.

[Chi-townChief]

So that would make President Reagan Neo-Com Extraordinaire! My family (myself included at the time) were Kennedy Democrats aka "Cold War Liberals." But I suppose if JFK was still around now making the same speeches that he made as prez, he would be called a dangerous right-wing extremist.