Replies

As a lawyer, I represented 1100 pro-life folks arrested in truly militant sitins that shut down abortion mills. I think I am a social conservative but I am accused of being a neo-conservative because I do not believe in a defanged United States naked to her enemies and determined to emulate Neville Chamberlain.

If neocons are properly defined as a handful of elderly New York intellectuals like Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Donald Kagan of Yale, the now deceased Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who stayed Democrat), that is one thing, but the "paleos" want to regard lavender queen Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com as their foreign policy oracle and he is certainly no conservative of any kind. They embrace the libertarians who have a bad name and would like to be called conservative of some sort because it is a better name. You should also read Midge Decter's work on the lavenders after they tried to pick up her sons one summer at the beach. She is no libertarian on that sort of thing at least.

What the paleos want to call neocons is the entire conservative movement which had long since marginalized the few of them that existed in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s. Few of them exist now either and they are not going to hijack conservatism.

Most importantly the "paleos" want to "purge" Bill Buckley, National Review, YAF, YRs, CRs, Human Events, and the entire mainstream post-1945 conservative movement and, though they may deny it, Ronald Reagan by inference. No sale now or ever!

It occurs to me that if at Mount Pelerin the paleos decided to ignore the Movement, they were suicidal. Certainly PJB ran a 'populist' campaign, but that does not necessarily place PJB in opposition to the Movement conservatives, except for those few MC's who are closet Libertarians (the philosophy of selfishness dressed up for a night of respectability.) PJB disappoints in his blithe acceptance of Big Gummint, while at the same time he encourages by his understanding of First Things--i.e., he gets the 1st Amendment right, as well as the foundation of civilization. As to his philosophy of intervention (or non-intervention, if you prefer:) he could not be accused of being a shrinking violet, despite those who would wish him to be so, or would interpret his statements in such a fashion. His sole "sin" seemed to be insisting that the interests of the USA are not congruent with those of Israel--a far cry from abdicating mutual defense treaties. As it turns out, GWB's policy towards Israel is perhaps more destructive to that ally than would have been Buchanan's. I think that PJB would have told Israel to do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to defend their own, and would have sold them the necessary hardware. Same-o for Taiwan.

The group that I consider to be neo-cons are the ones who criticized Ann Coulter's book, that strongly support abortion and gay rights and think that religion is a crutch for the weak and resent any link to judgemental religious conservativism. I believe that most of the neo-cons were once Democrat members of the bleeding heart liberal ilk, not socialists.