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>>>I think we should define "neo-conservative." If memory serves, the first person labeled as a "neo-con" was William F. Buckley.
>>>... but what the heck does the term even mean?

I know there are a few interpretive definitions of what a neoconservative is. By true definition, the word neoconservative means:
"a former liberal espousing political conservatism"

And Bill Buckley is no neocon. Buckley is a traditional conservative. Irving Kristol, the father of Bill Kristol is considered the "Father", or "Godfather" of neoconservatism in America.

Neoconservative.com says the following on their frontpage:

A site dedicated to advancing the political perspective known as neoconservatism, which is committed to cultural traditionalism, democratic capitalism, and a foreign policy promoting freedom and American interests around the world

Neoconservatism is the intellectual current I was influenced by and the great writings I read over the years persuaded me conservatism was a respectable and intellectual defensible philosophy for an aspiring intellectual to adopt. A decision I've never regretted. Today, we're conservatives period and these debates about who is and who isn't a "real" conservative just divide us and distract our attention from the enemy and the real danger: liberals. Before they were opposed to dealing with the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" and now they're opposed to dealing with Iraq as one of constituent members of the Axis of Evil. All conservatives, regardless of who they are, believe in two things: America is a force for good and America is on the right side of history. Tell me any liberal who believes in those two axioms - certainly not Algore this past Tuesday who seemed to spend more time apologizing for us than defending what I firmly believe is the greatest country on Earth.

Irving Kristol, the father of Bill Kristol is considered the "Father", or "Godfather" of neoconservatism in America.

Memory instructs that Irving Kristol's late-1970s collection of essays, Two Cheers For Capitalism, received its paperback edition (the book was a somewhat surprising best-seller of the time) with this bullet on the front cover: "The Heart of What The Neo-Conservative Debate Is Really About". The formal "movement" known then as neoconservatism had Kristol as its unofficial godfather, as you point out, but also included significantly enough the like of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (his sociologic studies even then flew in the face of the liberal toot and tootle, as did his service in the United Nations and the scathing enough recollection of that service, A Dangerous Place), Norman Podhoretz (editor of Commentary), Jeane Kirkpatrick (especially when her essay, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," was published), Midge Decter, Diana Trilling (whose We Must March, My Darlings got her no end of grief among the liberal storm troops)and (for a time, anyway) Seymour Martin Lipset. By anyone's definition, there were some big bats in that lineup, whatever you did or didn't think of their individual writings and thinkings...

Kristol in due course published a second collection of essays in 1982-83, Reflections of a Neo-conservative: Looking Ahead, Looking Back; at about the same time, Russell Kirk, editing and assembling his Viking Press anthology The Conservative Reader, included one of Kristol's essays in this volume and made a point of saying, for whatever it was worth, that contrary to the often-familiar image of the original neoconservatives as "liberals mugged by reality" Kristol was never really a liberal at all.

I suppose an awful lot of it is left to the translation of the reader. Though in Irving Kristol's case, considering the opprobrium heaped often enough on his son, there may also be a kind of syndrome of visiting not upon the father the sins of the son...

I know there are a few interpretive definitions of what a neoconservative is. By true definition, the word neoconservative means: "a former liberal espousing political conservatism"

I always thought that "neo-X" meant "new," or "newly arrived to X." The term neo-Natzi is applied, for instance, to those subsribing to the platform and ideology of the Natzis but after the WWII.

Nowhere does the prefix "neo" imply the initial point of the jorney. A neo-conservative could've been previously a liberal, a person entirely indifferent social issues, etc.