Paul Weyrich Examines Parents Right to Know Act of 2003

Newsmax.com ^ | 06-21-03 | Weyrich, Paul

[William McKinley]

The person who brought up neoconservatism is you, not me. And you said it was new, I pointed out that it is not.

Everything else is just you being argumentative.

[JohnGalt]

It is new to the mantle of 'conservatism.'

Where are we disconnecting?

[William McKinley]

And by the way, was Teddy Roosevelt a conservative? In some ways yes, in other ways, no. Quite frankly, in some ways he was extremely conservative.

But that is a whole other discussion, and one that I am not inclined to enjoin here and now, for many reasons, including the fact that you seem inclined to mistakenly take any such statements by me as indicating approval of his policies.

[JohnGalt]

All that really matters is he did not govern as a conservative when he was President and he did not campaign as a 'conservative' in 1912.

He supported every progressive contemporary issue of the day, and was a large reason not only Wilson, but the nineteen-teen governments unleashed the destructive power of the central government.

[William McKinley]

The disconnect started with you calling 'neoconservatism' a new intellectual branch. Perhaps you meant 'within conservatism' but that was not what you stated.

This is all muddled further by the fact that what is called neoconservatism today is not the same as what neoconservatism was described by the original neoconservatives (such as Irving Kristol), and muddled even further still the fact that you undoubtably don't see anything conservative in Teddy Roosevelt, who was in some ways very conservative.

But as I said, that is a completely irrelevant discussion to this thread, and not a discussion I am inclined to enjoin here and now. Particularly because I disagree with Teddy Roosevelt on most matters.

[William McKinley]

he did not govern as a conservative when he was President

In some ways yes, in others no.

and he did not campaign as a 'conservative' in 1912

Conservatives can run populist campaigns. Buchanan just did.

[JohnGalt]

Buchanan ran on historically conservative issues, where as Roosevelt most certainly did not. Every issue he ran on in 1912 came from the liberal if not socialist plarforms.