First, thanks for naming some "original neocons" whom you have in mind. I believe this really helps to advance the discussion and you are to be praised for that. So, your earlier assertion becomes this: Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, among other original "neocons", became conservative on foreign policy but nothing else.
Here's the problem. I don't think that's actually true. Is it?
These ORIGINAL neocons became "conservative" over a foreign policy issue, namely standing against the Soviet Union.
I could add here that standing against the Soviet Union wasn't necessarily a "conservative" position, and not all "neocons" may have thought of it as such. They may have thought of it in terms of standing up for liberty (in the sense that "liberals" historically stood up for liberty) against totalitarianism. But that's a minor point. In general we are on the same page: the original (real) "neocons", by my understanding, are/were mostly ex-leftists who came to their conservatism by way of anti-communism.
(That's fine, but now I gotta figure out just how exactly Newt Gingrich ended up making your list.)
it was only the ORIGINAL neocons that fit the definition that apparently is unacceptable to you, to wit: leftists who stood alongside of conservatives on the issue of anti-communism
Why do you think that definition is "unacceptable" to me? Heck, that's the definition I already knew about.
The definition I don't understand is the one which includes Newt Gingrich for some reason.
I have seen nothing else in the writings of those ORIGINAL neo-cons that indicates that they are conservative on any other issue.
Well, me neither. But that's mostly because I've never really read anything by either Irving Kristol or Norman Podhoretz. (I didn't know until very, very recently - i.e. when these "neocon" articles started appearing on FR - that I. Kristol and Podhoretz were the two most important political figures of the 20th century and that it was absolutely necessary to analyze and label their views.)
Fortunately, perhaps Google can help. Here is a page of selected quotes from Irving Kristol's writing. There's a lot there which is mushy and vague, and lots more which perhaps you and I would both disagree with. However, there's also this (1975 - from "The Question of Liberty in America"):
[California's 1978 Proposition 13 which limits tax increases without public approval] It was a new kind of class war -- the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.
This writing of his, doesn't seem to be about the USSR, anti-communism, or even foreign policy at all. He is discussing the California property-tax revolt of the 1970's. Also, he seems to be taking what I assume you'll agree is the conservative position (lower taxes), at least if one can assume that his sympathy lies with "citizens" rather than "politicians and their clients in the public sector" (as I think one can). Elsewhere in the essay he has similarly harsh words for these bureaucrat types:
you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs.
What a damn liberal! /sarcasm
So whaddya know, I went and found a writing of I. Kristol in which he takes the conservative position on something other than standing up to USSR. That would seem to completely disprove your assertion that the "original neocons" (i.e. all of them) became conservative on foreign policy and nothing else. We see now, that that is incorrect.
What about Norman Podhoretz, you ask? Click here for an article entitled "America the Beautiful". (Yup, he's "only conservative on foreign policy", huh?) Go down near the end where he starts discussing affirmative action:
we need to recognize when, how, and why we have lost faith in those principles and institutions, and therefore departed from them. .... the policy of preferential treatment for minority groups. Even many opponents of this policy often fail to realize that it violates the single most revolutionary idea of the American Revolution and the one that more than any other enabled it to achieve its objectives .... The idea to which I refer is that individuals are to be treated as individuals, in accordance with their own merits, without regard--in the old formula so many of us were reared on--to race, creed, color, or country of national origin. .... In other words, we have discarded an American tradition that has resulted mainly in wonders and imported an alien practice that has resulted mainly in murder. Here we have a striking case of the damage that is done by departing from our tested traditional way of conducting our affairs.
And people call him a conservative! he's still a damn leftist! once a leftist always a leftist! he's brought his leftist worldviews with him! /sarcasm
Get real. By anyone's reading, Podhoretz is not only against affirmative action, but strongly so, on highly conservative grounds. He even calls it "preferential treatment for minority groups" and links his opposition to it explicitly to the ideals of the Revolution, talking about how it is the "tested traditional way of conducting our affairs"! How on earth could he POSSIBLY sound more conservative than that? So there you go, evidence in Podhoretz's writing that he too, like Kristol, is conservative on issues besides anti-communism.
Thus neither Kristol nor Podhoretz are "conservative only on anti-communism". I have proven it to you beyond a shadow of a doubt. Do you have any other points to make besides that one (which has now been proven wrong)? If not, then perhaps we are done here.
And just to be clear: my point here is not that I love either I. Kristol or Podhoretz or agree with them about everything. Like I said, I had never really read much by either one. My point here is just this: the way you are using the term "neoconservative" in most of the sentences you are typing, makes no sense. It makes no sense because it is ill-defined, you use it inconsistently, you give examples (Newt Gingrich) which don't seem to fit, and you make sweeping generalized statements ("conservative only on foreign policy") which upon inspection turn out to be false using your own terms, definitions, and examples.
Tom Daschle is pro-life but that doesn't make him a conservative.
Indeed. To be a conservative, he's gotta do lots more than oppose abortion. (I didn't know that he did.) I don't recall claiming Daschle was a conservative to begin with though. What are you referring to here?
Perhaps you're responding to my statement that Bill Clinton meets your every condition (as far as I could tell) for being a "neocon". Well, he does. I'm just the messenger. If you don't think Bill Clinton is a "neocon", then you should be able to explain why not. If you can't, perhaps that should be a sign that something is wrong with your definition of "neocon", and assumptions behind it, to begin with.
Now, when Reagan was president it became cool to be conservative, whether paleo, neo, fiscal or social or whatever.
It was? I don't remember that. Perhaps we move in different circles.
That was where the power was and that was where a lot of the "new" conservatives come in. They could use the label neo-con because it had political cachet.
Who's "they"? You've lapsed back into vague shadow-speak again. Are you resuming your narrative about "the neocons" and your psychological theories about "them"? (how it "makes sense" that "they" would be mostly Jews, etc?)
I still don't know who's the "they" you are talking about. Examples?
Except that the single issue which differentiated the neo-cons from other leftists ended with the fall of the Berlin wall.
Not at all. See above. Podhoretz was writing against affirmative action just a couple of years ago, and Kristol had sympathy for the Prop 13 movement. You're all wet.
Anti-communism was a legitimate conservative position. Foreign intervention and foreign aid are not. Why would you think otherwise?
I never said otherwise. You seemed to ("neocons became conservative on foreign policy" + "neocon foreign policy is interventionist" = you think interventionist foreign policy is conservative). I was just trying to use logic to understand all of your statements as a whole. My mistake..?
You want lists of names but for what?
So that I may understand who it is you are talking about.
I could ask what is a Republican?
You most certainly could. Here are some examples: George Bush, Dick Cheney, Trent Lott, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Orrin Hatch, Jack Kemp, Rick Santorum, Dennis Hastert. That's nine. Let me know if you need more.
But the real problem is that you don't seem to understand the reason I need examples. The reason is that you've spent a great deal of time on this thread telling little stories about "the neocons". You say things like "the neocons resemble JFK politically", "the neocons used the label neocon because it had the cachet of Reagan", "the neocons became conservative on foreign policy and nothing else", "with their one conservative plank [anti-communism] gone, all that was left was their liberalism", etc.
Then, I read these statements. Quite naturally I wonder whether they are true, or false. But I can't figure that out unless I know who (i.e. WHICH PEOPLE) you mean by the phrase "the neocons". That's why I alternately ask you to identify one or some such people whom you have in mind by "the neocons", or define the term with enough precision that I can figure it out for myself. (It is a perfectly fair request.)
I hasten to add that you'd most certainly ask the same of me if in light of a recent comment by Orrin Hatch, I were to say something like, "The Republicans want to destroy your computer." (I'm sure there are leftists saying this as we speak.) If you read this, you'd think "wait a second, that doesn't sound right. I don't think that Ron Paul, Republican from Texas, wants to destroy my computer. I can think of lots of other Republicans who would probably leave my computer alone, as well. It's not as if destroying-computers is part of the definition of 'Republican'. So, who the hell is he talking about?" You would then ask me to specify which "Republicans" I have in mind by the statement. (Wouldn't you?)
Well, I'm just doing the same thing. It's not as if liking FDR, liking JFK, being conservative on anti-USSR and nothing else, "interventionist" foreign policy, etc, etc are part of the (dictionary) definition of "neocon". So that's why you need to answer either (a) who, in particular, are you talking about when you insist that "the neocons" are these things? Or, (b) what (non-dictionary) definition are you using?
[Republican] What's the definition?
Asked and answered, in an earlier post.
And then I could attack your definition because this or that Republican does not belive X, Y, and Z.
And maybe that would be legitimate. For example, if I gave - as my definition of Republican - "someone who wants to institute communism in America", and then listed a lot of people I think are "Republicans", and most or all of the people on that list (George Bush, Condi Rice, Tom Delay..) don't seek communism in America, you could point out that I have contradicted my own definition.
That's all I'm doing to you. Your definition of "neocon" seems to include this "conservative only regarding anti-USSR" notion. But then as "neocons" you list people like Gingrich and Krauthammer, who are NOT conservative only regarding anti-USSR. Or, as "original neocons" you list people like Irving Kristol and Podhoretz, who (as I've shown) are NOT conservative only regarding anti-USSR. So you see, there is a problem with either (a) the way you are classifying people as "neocons" or (b) the way you are defining the term "neocon" in the first place. (You tell me.)
The dictionary definition is essentially true, but NOT exhaustively true.
Is it the OPPOSITE of true? Because Newt Gingrich doesn't qualify at all (according to the dictionary), not even by a large stretch of the imagination, yet you still call him "neocon".
And of course EVEN IF you stuck with the dictionary definition then I would have to ask what a liberal is? What's the definition? WHO is a liberal? And the same for conservative?
No, you wouldn't have to ask for those definitions. Remember, you already did, and I already gave them to you (from the same dictionary). (Of course, there is a more basic problem involved in defining words with other words, in the sense that ultimately everything becomes circular, but that can't be what you mean here ;-)
As far as the definition "people I don't like" which is YOUR definition, not mine; I never said anything about disliking any of those guys.
Oh. Ok then, what is your definition of "neocon"? I am still at a loss to figure out why you think Newt Gingrich is a "neocon".
Are you truly unable to explain? This must be about the fifteenth time I've asked. Admit it, this whole phony exercise is about the Iraq war, isn't it? You've latched onto the "neocon" thing to explain why the Iraq war happened, cuz you opposed it, and the "neocon" explanation allows you to blame it (and, in retrospect, other stuff you disagree with) on a "cabal" which has "taken over" conservatism, rather than actually confront and refute the ideas you dislike.
I'd really be able to respect someone who had the guts to just come out and admit that that's what he's doing with this "neocon" stuff.