… There are a number of differences between conservatives operating in the William F. Buckley Jr./Ronald Reagan tradition and neoconservatives operating in the Irving Kristol/George W. Bush tradition. Here are three, and I’ll use Kristol’s own words to explain it.* Neoconservatives believe the GOP should be converted to embrace a “modern democracy,” aka a welfare state in the mold of FDR and the Great Society. Neoconservatives don’t want to disassemble the federal government in order to rebalance divided powers between federal, state, and local governments; they just think they can pilot Leviathan better than the Democrats.Neoconservatives are largely secular intellectuals...