What's In A Name? The Curious Case Of "Neoconservative"

How can something exist and not exist both at the same time? The answer: by being neoconservative.

Since last winter, neoconservative columnists David Frum, Jonah Goldberg, Max Boot, and John Podhoretz have been insisting that the word "neoconservative" is either a tautologous term for a right-winger or an anti-Semitic slur aimed at pro-Israeli conservative Jews.

On April 22, Republican booster and talk show host Rush Limbaugh entered the fray. He denounced

"these media people speaking in their own code language. A case in point is their use of the term 'neoconservative.' Whether they choose to hyphenate the label or not, it's a pejorative code word for 'Jews.' That's right. They use it as a way to say guys like Bill Kristol, Irving Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, John Podhoretz and others are just trying to support Israel at the USA's expense

Rush's website commentary links to a lead essay "I Confess" written by John Podhoretz for the New York Post (April 22), which might help clarify Rush's gripe.

Both Podhoretz and Limbaugh assert that neoconservatives are the genuine conservatives, whom anti-Semites are slandering by attaching the derogatory prefix "neo." Limbaugh mumbles about "these media people"?as if the Establishment mediacrats that the neocons socialize and share their goodies with were the problem. ["A friend of mine suggests it [neocon] means the kind of right-winger a liberal wouldn't be embarrassed to have over for cocktails. - What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'? By Max Boot, Opinionjournal.com, December 30, 2002]

Podhoretz understands that this snickering is coming from the Old Right, which is emphatically non-Establishment. But snickering can be contagious?hence the neocon efforts to anathematize their detractors.

There are, it seems to me, two reasons that neoconservatives are starting to shed their label.

Firstly, the term "neoconservative" is now too closely identified with the personal and ethnic concerns of its Jewish celebrities. Despite their frequent attempts to find kept gentiles, the game of speaking through proxies may be showing diminishing results. Everyone with minimal intelligence knows that Bill Bennett, Frank Gaffney, Ed Feulner, Michael Novak, George Weigel, James Nuechterlein, and Cal Thomas front for the neocons. It is increasingly useless to depend on out-group surrogates to repackage a movement so clearly rooted in a particular ethnicity?and even subethnicity (Eastern European Jews). Better to seek cover by changing a culturally-specific label into something more generic.

And neocons, given their iron control of today's "movement conservatives," can call themselves whatever they want. It is doubtful they would meet much opposition if tomorrow they order movement conservatives to call them Martians.

Secondly, the recent attacks on "neoconservatives" that have appeared here and in Europe depicting them as global revolutionary radicals have created other terminological problems for those who wish to be associated, however fictitiously, with the Right. While posing as a friend of order, one does not want to be burdened with a moniker that connotes "creative destruction," as Michael Ledeen was unwisely boasting recently. Thus it seems a good idea for neocons in some circumstances to abandon the label associated with the worship of revolution?for example, when playing to Midwestern small-town Republicans or to corporate executives.

Neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol pioneered this practice in his Reflections of a Neoconservative (1983)?yes, he used the term?when he ingeniously argued: "A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society."

The same year George Will, by then a wannabe neocon, was explaining in Statecraft as Soulcraft that Aristotle and Burke were the true fathers of the American welfare state. Only radicals, like Taft Republicans, says Will, stood athwart this essentially conservative institution. Moreover, "two conservatives [Bismarck and Disraeli] pioneered the welfare state and did so for impeccably conservative reasons: to reconcile the masses to the vicissitudes and hazards of a dynamic industrial economy."

Thus, although the neoconservatives are now the party of global "creative destruction," in 1983 they were still reaching for Tory-Democratic window-dressing to present themselves and Big Government as "conservative" forces.

Abandoning the label "neoconservative" is a project of astonishing ambition and daring, comparable in a small way to the project of persuading the Americans to conquer and colonize the Middle East. "Neoconservative" has been a conventional descriptive term since the seventies when Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Daniel Bell themselves began applying that term to their thinking. By the 1980s, when John B. Judis of the New Republic noticed that "conservative wars" had erupted (New Republic, 11 August, 1986), neocons were proudly flaunting their identity, in order to distinguish themselves from the traditional American Right.

Unlike that rejected traditional Right, neocons saw themselves as friends of a large federal welfare state. They despised Taft Republicans and followers of the late Senator Joe McCarthy as rightwing extremists. Bill Kristol's enthusiastic endorsement (during an interview in 1997 with Washington Post's E.J. Dionne) of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the tone of which is faithfully reproduced by Sam Francis in his essay Chronicles (May 2003), reflects this line of thought. Neoconservatives, as opposed to constitutional conservatives, do not disguise their adoration of the contemporary managerial state.

And young militant Max Boot, writing in the Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2002) did not shy away from the N word, when he told us that "support for Israel [is ]a key tenet of neoconservatism." Zionism inheres specifically in neoconservatism, which also, as Boot reminded us, is in favor of the welfare state. (I write this as a supporter of Israel. I am less enthusiastic about the welfare state). [Open borders may be another "key tenet". Click here for Scott McConnell's account of the hostile neoconservative reaction to the reopening of the immigration debate ? from sixth paragraph.]

Irving Kristol, of course, titled two of his most widely distributed collections of thoughts Reflections of a Neoconservative (1983) and Neoconservatism: Autobiography of an Idea (1999). In both works, "neoconservativism" is celebrated as a positive quality that Kristol discerns in himself and in his spiritual progeny.

Moreover, in 1995 Mark Gerson, a "twenty-three years old rising neoconservative," (see www.amazon.com) brought out a flattering history of Kristol's movement, The Neoconservative Vision, which was profusely praised in First Things (October 1996, 7-8). In this work Gerson stressed the distinctions between his beloved "neoconservatives" and those who had occupied the Right before. Gerson hoped to make the difference between the two crystal-clear (the pun is deliberate) when he published simultaneously The Essential Neoconservative Reader, which is meant to introduce us to the authors of identifiably "neoconservative" verities.

Many of these authors are featured on an internet fansite http://neoconservatism.com/ An especially exciting feature of this website, which lists neocon affiliate groups in England and France, is the availability of the commentaries of Max Boot, David Frum, John Podhoretz, and Jonah Goldberg and those of such golden oldies as Michael Ledeen, Daniel Pipes, and Frank Gaffney.

Curiously enough, this site has posted its heroes' recent comments denying the very existence of that movement whose sacred shrine we have just entered. These angry denials are juxtaposed with a pervasive affirmation of neoconservative identity.

Perhaps the neocons are imitating the American Communist practice of assuming multiple identities at different organizational levels. Remember the way that J. Edgar Hoover depicted the Communists as "masters of deceit" because of their skill at infiltrating other groups, partly by appearing to be other than Communists, e.g., Ban-the-Bombers or members of the U.S.-Soviet Friendship League.

To the question of whether alleged Communists were really what they were, the ready answer of their defenders was, no, they were not. They were simply misrepresented friends of peace and/or dedicated anti-fascists.

Those who were in the know understood the game. But everyone else?let's say the Rush Limbaughs?tried to believe the disinformation that the Communists spread throughout their support system. The fellow travelers did not look too deeply and put out of their minds unwelcome facts that contradicted what they wished to think.

Once again our global revolutionaries may be taking a leaf from their leftist home base.

That is where they return, like other habitual leftists, for strategic and rhetorical nurture.

they intervened in uprisings

Who might you be referring to? The only interventions I can think of before FDR are as follows: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Phillipines - 1898, McKinley; China - 1900, McKinley; Panama - 1903?, Roosevelt; Vera Cruz - 1914, Wilson; Haiti - 1915, Wilson.

Other than that, there've been deployments of Marines to protect American embassies in various trouble spots throughout the world, but that hardly qualifies as interventionism.

If there were isolated, obscure instances beside that in which our government happened to intervene in the affairs of other countries, I wouldn't call that a major indicator of the political opinion of the era in which they happened. No country lives strictly according to its ideology.

I didn't say, or imply, that each of them did all of them. Why you read it that way is beyond me.

I didn't read it that way. I read it to mean that you were saying there was a strong interventionist component to conservative thought outside of the McKinley era as well as inside. My response was that pre-FDR interventionism was largely limited to the examples I provided.

However, why I am saying is that for decades before, and decades after, McKinley, the conservatives who dominated the Republican party were expansionist and believed in projecting force.

I don't know how "expansionist" they could have been. Our first acquisition outside the mainland was Alaska (purchased from Russia in 1869). Our first outside the continent was Hawaii (annexed in response to its own request in 1893). Before that, probably the most aggressive action on our part was the Mexican War, which was hugely controversial at the time.

As for projection of force, that's not the same as interventionism. One can believe in projection of force (as in: if you attack us, we'll take it to your front door) and non-intervention at the same time.

How one can say it wasn't indicative of a trend when it was followed by expansion into the Panama Canal area, Hawaii, Cuba, the Phillipines, and so forth is beyond me.

It was followed half a century later by these events - well over a generation. The political ethic in this country up to that time was to promote peaceful relations with other countries, and not start problems with them. The fact that there was an instance in the middle of the 19th century in which we didn't live up to that ethic, didn't indicate that the ethic was dead, especially given the fact that there was loud opposition to the war.

And the fact that in both wars, with Mexico and with Spain, provocations were needed to get us to go to war (Mexicans supposedly firing at our troops over the border in 1846; the destruction of the Maine in 1898) shows the extent to which the people weren't ready for war purely for the sake of conquest.

It is a mistake to say that from the end of the Mexican war through to the war with Spain that Republicans were isolationist outside of economics. As I mentioned before, Arthur is remembered for having taken the crucial first steps in building a modern navy, so that the United States would be better able to project force. His secretary of state, James G. Blaine, a holdover from the Garfield administration, pushed for more direct U.S. involvement in Latin America. Blaine advocated the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, an initiative which would continue over many administrations. Harrison continued the naval buildup, expanded American protectorates to the Samoan Islands, and took us to the brink of war with Chile. He also attempted the annexation of Hawaii, unsuccessfully. That would have to wait for McKinley. Harrison also had standoffs with Italy, Britain, and Canada. He is regarded as having one of the most active foreign agendas of any President prior to the modern era. Taft sent Marines to assist rebels against a reactionary government in Nicaragua, and also was heavily involved in the inner workings of Honduras, trying to ensure a favorable regime staying in power. As I mentioned before, it started to wane with Calvin Coolidge, who kept the economic internationalism of his Republican predecessors, but started moving the party towards the anti-war position that would be prevalent for a few decades (until being shattered by the reality of the Axis), starting with the naive the 1928 Kellog-Briand Pact. Coolidge ran stating he would be isolationist, but even with his withdrawl of forces from Nicaragua, the US still was considered imperialistic in Latin America through the duration of his Presidency.

Isolationism among Republican leaders was the exception, not the norm, for decades stretching from the Civil War through Taft.

As I mentioned before, Arthur is remembered for having taken the crucial first steps in building a modern navy, so that the United States would be better able to project force.

And as I mentioned before, projecting force does not necessarily presuppose interventionism or expansionism.

His secretary of state, James G. Blaine, a holdover from the Garfield administration, pushed for more direct U.S. involvement in Latin America. Blaine advocated the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, an initiative which would continue over many administrations. Harrison continued the naval buildup, expanded American protectorates to the Samoan Islands, and took us to the brink of war with Chile. He also attempted the annexation of Hawaii, unsuccessfully. That would have to wait for McKinley. Harrison also had standoffs with Italy, Britain, and Canada. He is regarded as having one of the most active foreign agendas of any President prior to the modern era.

And how much support did these initiatives have among the public? Why, for example, did Harrison's attempt to annex Hawaii fail? Because the Senate wasn't altogether enthusiastic about it, and because his successor, Mr. Cleveland, withdrew the treaty from their consideration. This lack of public support is why the pro-interventionist politicians of the era had to take half-measures that consistently stopped short of war or invasion. By all indications, this was a top-down movement, not a bottom-up one.

This is what you had said of President McKinley, which started this conversation: "I imagine he would be called a neocon, which begs the question- how 'new' can this conservatism be if it has been around for over 100 years?"

In a strict sense, sure, it's "been around" for a lot longer than that in the minds of some adventurous sorts. I understood "been around" to mean that it was part and parcel of American conservatism for all that time and before. I maintain that it was not. The only way it could be is by regarding 19th-century Republican administrations as the bellwether of American conservatism. But at the time, they were no more conservative than Democrats. Conservatism and liberalism is a dichotomy that really didn't start to take shape in this country until the 20th century. Prior to that, pretty much the whole American public apart from a few socialist radicals was conservative - at least going by the six tenets you posted on that other thread.

I disagree with you. There have been conservatives for as long as this country has been around. Adams was a conservative, for example. So was Harrison, and so was McKinley, and so was Taft, and so was Robert A. Taft, and so was Reagan. There may not have been a so-called conservative movement identified by the name, but the mindset, and the manner of thought which identifies a conservative, has been around the whole time. The only way one comes up with it not being around is by defining conservatism as the narrow bit of political inclination exemplified by extreme isolationism.

There have been conservatives for as long as this country has been around.

That's basically what I said in my post. To wit: "Prior to [the 20th century], pretty much the whole American public [that is, of both political parties] apart from a few socialist radicals was conservative - at least going by the six tenets you posted on that other thread." (You may have misunderstood me when I said the Republicans were no more conservative than Democrats. I wasn't referring to modern Democrats, but to Democrats of that time period.) My point was not that 19th-century Republican administrations weren't conservative; my point was that they weren't the sole indicators of what American conservatism was.

As conservatism was the guiding philosophy of American political life at the time, and as the limited and largely unsuccessful attempts by certain Republican administrations to expand our influence overseas apparently didn't meet with much broad-based support at home, I feel comfortable in concluding that such inclinations on their part did not represent, to any sizable degree, what conservatism was understood to mean.

and the Democrat in that time (Grover Cleveland) agreed with the Republicans on the projection of force.

But did he agree with them on the need for overseas expansion? For that matter, was there any indication that the people supported such a program? Even President Harrison didn't seem to expect public support for an activist foreign policy. In his inaugural address, it's true he did call for making sure we had adequate support overseas for our tradesmen and naval vessels, and urged that we attempt to secure agreements with foreign nations to that end. But he made sure it was understood: "These and other trading privileges we will feel free to obtain only by means that do not in any degree partake of coercion, however feeble the government from which we ask such concessions."

Also from the same address, we have this: "We have happily maintained a policy of avoiding all interference with European affairs. We have been only interested spectators of their contentions in diplomacy and in war, ready to use our friendly offices to promote peace, but never obtruding our advice and never attempting unfairly to coin the distresses of other powers into commercial advantage to ourselves. We have a just right to expect that our European policy will be the American policy of European courts."

However "neoconservative" he may have been while outside of the public spotlight, he didn't dare be one while standing in it.

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