All Right Already (That's funny, you don't look neoconservative.)

A man is standing on the platform of the Darien, Conn., train station, reading a newspaper. An elderly woman joins him. She glances at him appraisingly, and then approaches to ask a question. “Excuse me mister, I am sorry to intrude, but I have to ask — Are you Jewish?

“Oh,” says the woman in a crestfallen tone. A pause. “Are You quite sure you’re not Jewish?”

“Madam,” says the man with growing irritation. “I assure you: I have the greatest admiration and respect for the Jewish people. If I were Jewish I would certainly acknowledge it. It just so happens that I’m Presbyterian.”

Driven beyond endurance, the man shouts, “All right, all right, have it your way: Yes. I am Jewish. Now will you let me read my paper?”

I think of this old joke whenever I pick up one of these super-heated screeds you see from anti-war conservatives about the sinister influence of the dreaded “neocons” on the Bush administration. Sometimes the when the screeds really get going, they will add my name to the list after their top hate figures: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, and or course, NR’s Jonah Goldberg. For a long time, I would register a little inward protest — “I have the greatest admiration and respect for the neoconservatives. If I were a neoconservative I would certainly acknowledge it. But it just so happens that I’m … well, a plain-vanilla conservative.

The term “neoconservative” was coined back in the 1970s by people on the left as a term of abuse for those fellow leftists who are showing signs of backsliding from the lunatic orthodoxies of 1960s liberalism. In those mad days, it did not take much to earn the “neo” label. You could be a socialist like Penn Kemble or a yellow-dog Democrat like Daniel Patrick Moynihan — all you had to do was express some doubts that society was to blame whenever a black youth knocked down an old lady to steal her purse.

Quickly, however, the term “neoconservativism” assumed a more precise meaning. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, friends and foes of the neoconservatives came to accept something like the following definition: A neoconservative was a former liberal or leftist, typically from a poor background, typically Catholic or Jewish, who had been driven rightward by the intellectual and moral implosion of liberalism in the 1960s. They were often the children of immigrants. They had witnessed and in many cases suffered terrible oppression and persecution in Europe. As they saw it, the difference between America and Europe was the difference between life and death. They began as Democrats, but ass the Democrats turned against American exceptionalism, so they turned against the Democrats. Still, they retained some of their youthful statism on economic issues and, often , some ancestral affection for Democrats of the past: FDR, Truman, and sometimes Kennedy and Johnson.

(Hint: If you could get really angry about the depredations of the Federal Trade Commission, you were almost certainly not a neoconservative. I figured I didn’t fir the profile, if only because I did get really angry about the depredations of the Federal Trade Commission.)

As the years wore on, the old line between neoconservatives and traditional Republicans began to blur: One Ex-leftist-turned-rightist told me this story. She had attended the New York high school known as the Little Red Schoolhouse in the early 1950s. At her 40th reunion, one of her classmates reproached her for her political migration: “I hear you’ve become a neoconservative.” The ex-leftist answered defiantly, “Yes — in fact, I’ve just re-registered as a Republican.” “Oh please,” her classmate replied. “Don’t exaggerate.”

If you remember your chemistry, though, you’ll recall that when you mix two chemicals together into a solution, you sometimes release a third chemical which can no longer bind with either. In chemistry, this third chemical is called a “precipitate.” In the conservative world, it began to call itself “paleoconservatism,” and it specialized in increasingly strident denunciations of neoconservatives, sometimes with a pronounced anti-Semitic tinge.

Through the 1990s, paleoconservatism exerted remarkably little influence on events. But after 9/11, the paleos at last discovered a role — and an audience. Their idea that America had brought 9/11 on itself because of its support of Israel — and that the whole war on terror was a sinister Jewish plot — was eagerly heeded everywhere from the Saudi-funded think tanks of Washington to the left-wing newspapers of Europe. While the paleos personally failed to make much of a comeback (people who cannot restrain themselves from comparing Abraham Lincoln to Adolph Hitler will have trouble finding a welcome in polite society), their conspiratorial worldview and their sly labeling have helped to frame the discourse of the world.

Today, two years after 9/11, the term “neocon” gets applied to pretty much anyone who believes in the fundamental goodness of America and the rightness of the war. If you refuse to hear excuses for Islamic terrorism; if you want to hunt down America’s enemies wherever they lurk: if you care more about American security than you do about the Security Council — well then, the BBC and Pat Buchanan and Bill Moyers all have the same epithet for you. Or, as the man on the Darien platform might say, “All right, all right, have it your way: I am a neocon. Now can we wage our war?”

Are We All Neocons Now?

In the most recent Commentary, Josh Muravchik writes of "The Neoconservative Cabal" which those opposed to Bush administration's security and defense policy have suddenly discovered are directing things. Its evil geniuses are supposed to be, of all people, Leo Strauss and Leon Trotsky, and it is often hinted with more or less subtlety that its leaders are predominantly Jewish. Muravchik draws a parallel with the kinds of things that the Nazis were saying about Jewish Communists in the 1930s, which perhaps makes the idea of Trotsky as intellectual godfather just a little bit less absurd.

It would probably be going too far to call Maureen Dowd anti-Semitic, but it's pretty clear how easily her congenital anti-Bushism has been seduced by the sinister-sounding notion of the neocon. "Let others fight over whether the war in Iraq was a neocon vigilante action disrupting diplomacy," she writes with feigned insouciance. "The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy." By this she means that "the audacious ones" are about to give Colin Powell the push from the State Department, even though George W. Bush may not know it yet, since "the president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme." And "when the neocons want something done, they'll get it done, no matter what Mr. Bush thinks."

Do tell! As usual, it is pointless to ask how she knows this since, like everything else she writes about the administration, it is the creation of her own endless mythologizing of what she calls "the Bushies" and not any special knowledge unavailable to anyone who reads the papers. The dull-witted frat-boy who is a mere tool of clever, scheming "neocons" fits perfectly with that mythology, which is reason enough for her to believe it. With such toxic speculation in the background, it is hard to read her subsequent description of "the neocon blueprint for world domination" as being entirely ironic.

Are the otherwise unnamed neocons the same as the "Iraq hawks" — Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Newt Gingrich — who, she says, are ready to move up if the neocon plot to dump Powell is successful? The whole thing would be baffling but for number six in the list of eight parallels she points to between the dump Powell campaign and "the neocons' pre-emptive strike on Iraq," which is: "Make sure it's good for Ariel Sharon." Maybe it wouldn't be going too far to call Miss Dowd an anti-Semite after all. Certainly Pat Buchanan was branded as one for criticizing what he called Israel's "amen corner" in the Pentagon and the State Department, and it's hard to see how he can be anti-Semitic while she isn't.

In ridiculing the neocon conspiracy theorists, Muravchik doesn't mention the right-wing counterparts to lefties like Michael Lind and Elizabeth Drew. For among "paleo-conservatives" such as the Buchananites of The American Conservative or the Chronicles crowd in Rockford, Illinois, the word "neocon" is pronounced with every bit as much of a sneer as it is by Maureen Dowd or others on the left. As is often the case when politicians or political tendencies are being vehemently attacked from both sides simultaneously, one's first instinct is to assume that they must be doing something right.

At any rate, the so-called "godfather" of the neocons, Irving Kristol, has taken the opportunity to come forward and proudly claim the title so often used as an insulting epithet. In doing so, he found it necessary to acknowledge that he himself was wrong when he wrote some years ago that the prefix "neo" no longer added anything to "conservative." It turns out that it still does. Writing in the Weekly Standard, he provocatively claims that "neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters."

In fact, "Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the 'American grain.' It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic." He identifies as neoconservative policies a priority given to economic growth, but more of a concern with the vulgarization of the culture than would be congenial to libertarians. They share traditional conservatives' concern for national sovereignty and defense, and their suspicion of international institutions, but do not share their fear of the enlarged welfare state. Above all, they are to be recognized by their commitment to an expansive view of the national interest.

"A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests.… Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary." Even Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson can be gathered into the neoconservative fold on this definition.

Are we all neocons now? I take it that the chief result of Mr. Kristol's manifesto will be to put the backs up of the formerly designated paleocons. They are right to be cross. His point is really that conservatives tout court are faced with a choice between marching under the neocon banner or joining the increasingly marginalized rag-tag band who look to Pat Buchanan or Thomas Fleming or Lew Rockwell for leadership, or who want to re-fight the Civil War. Such are now beyond the paleo, and the only place that respectable conservatives, wishing to avoid the taint of racism or anti-Semitism or nativism or protectionism, have to go is to the neocons. If he's wrong, it's now up to the respectable paleos, if there are any, to say how.

James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, media essayist for the New Criterion, and The American Spectator's movie critic.

(James Bowman in The American Prowler, September 2, 2003)
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A neoconservative was a former liberal or leftist,

That would be me,

typically from a poor background,

oh yeah,

typically Catholic or Jewish,

well, no, but,

who had been driven rightward by the intellectual and moral implosion of liberalism in the 1960s.

Or by the universities of the 1990s,

They were often the children of immigrants.

Grandma's folks were English, does that count?

As they saw it, the difference between America and Europe was the difference between life and death.

Damn straight.

They began as Democrats, but as the Democrats turned against American exceptionalism, so they turned against the Democrats.

Yeah!

Today, two years after 9/11, the term “neocon” gets applied to pretty much anyone who believes in the fundamental goodness of America and the rightness of the war.

That would be me.

If you refuse to hear excuses for Islamic terrorism;

Me...

if you want to hunt down America’s enemies wherever they lurk:

...me...

if you care more about American security than you do about the Security Council

Me!

— well then, the BBC and Pat Buchanan and Bill Moyers all have the same epithet for you.

So be it! I am neocon, hear me roar!

"His point is really that conservatives tout court are faced with a choice between marching under the neocon banner or joining the increasingly marginalized rag-tag band who look to Pat Buchanan or Thomas Fleming or Lew Rockwell for leadership, or who want to re-fight the Civil War."

I don't think this is Kristol-the-elder's point at all; it may have been what he believed back when he said that 'neo' no longer adds anything to 'conservative'. His more recent arguments state the opposite; that neoconservatism is distinct and different from traditional conservatism. The primary differences can be found in this passage:

"In fact, "Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the 'American grain.' It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic." He identifies as neoconservative policies a priority given to economic growth, but more of a concern with the vulgarization of the culture than would be congenial to libertarians. They share traditional conservatives' concern for national sovereignty and defense, and their suspicion of international institutions, but do not share their fear of the enlarged welfare state. Above all, they are to be recognized by their commitment to an expansive view of the national interest."

The enlarged welfare state is still a major concern of traditional conservatives. Also, traditional conservatives understand that, in a globalized world, the national interest must be expanded but differ from the true neoconservatives over exactly how much it must be expanded. Because these differences exist, it is not correct to say that traditional conservatives face a choice between marching under the neoconservative banner or joining with the paleoconservatives. Traditional conservatives can exist, and are existing, under their own banner. The choice between joining those who believe in an expansive welfare state and joining those who favor isolationism is a false choice, and rejecting the former does not imply an acceptance of the latter, nor does it enjoin the taint of antisemitism or racism.

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