It's the image without the substance; it's a conservatism without the Christian God.

The Social Pathologist.

a Scoop Jackson Democrat who is now a member of the GOP.

"Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." Ob

The Project for a New American Century is decidedly not "neo con"

The Project for a New American Century is decidedly not nothing, any more. You doubt me? Check this out:

www.newamericancentury.org/

Nothing resembles virtue more than a great crime. Saint-Just

You fools!

Can't you see the difference?

(I kid, I kid)

I blame it all on the Internet

I've always thought that neo-conservatism was a bellicose welding of the idiocy that is national greatness conservatism with the lunacy that is liberal "democracy" building mixed with a healthy dose of foreign adventurism and war profiteering.

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I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.

"neo-isolationists" are "paleo-cons"?

I had discovered a great secret. That everyone loves themselves more than they love anybody else. And if I wanted them to love me, I better be like THEM!... Ken Nordine

I appreciate the effort, Mac, but I don't think I'm a whole lot clearer than I was on the definition of "neocon". Podhoretz and the Kristols always seemed to me like old-school national-greatness conservatives, with a slightly bigger dash of democratic boosterism. Is there really that much of a gap between Podhoretz and, say, Kissinger? Or W.R. Hearst, for that matter?

The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.

as neo con does, with emphasis on the con.

GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.

between neocon philosophy and neocon membership. Take PNAC. Granted, not all of the signatories are "neocons" in any precise sense of the term. But the governing philosophy has (updated) Irving Kristol written all over it.

PNAC has all the hallmarks of neoconservatism narrowly understood: the cult of "export democracy," militant idealism with the US playing globocop, enthusiasm for nationbuilding and social engineering combined (bizarrely) with hostility to liberal entitlements, hostility to multilateralist organizations, all topped off with a weirdly Marxian spin on historical dialectic. Call it "Global Manifest Destiny." The signatories and supporters may well be from all but one branch of modern conservatism, but they all signed on to a neoconservative program.

So did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. in regards to Iraq. They may not be neocons by affiliation, but their post 9/11 foreign policy has been almost entirely directed by neocon principles.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH

It once referred to a school of New York liberals who became hawks, but the term has been broadened to include people who share their outlook. In that time, the center has shifted from the City University of New York to University of Chicago. Leo Strauss became their intellectual forebear, and nearly every neocon is either his student, or a student of one of his students.

More Wagster!

If Rummy + Cheney are neoconservatives, then the word loses its interest and you might as well speak of 'conservative hawk', or whatever term you used in the diary.

So your preferred usage is to pick out the Scoop Jackson Ds who later worked for Reagan. That's fine. I didn't get why you were calling others 'ignorant' tho.

Terms migrate in their use, and Bill Kristol is often called a 'neo-conservative' even tho he wasn't himself a leftist. It's hardly a big stretch to say he shares the same ideology as his father.

By that token, you might call all converts to the worldview of Feith, Pearle, Wolfowitz, Abrams, etc. 'neoconservatives' even if they've never been leftists.

Just sayin' there's other principled uses out there and there's really no such thing as the true keepers of the meaning of words. In future i would just lay out your reasons for using a term as you see fit vs. treating different uses as 'ignorant'.

book discussion at the old Tacitus.org. Especially with respect to Kirk's chapters on Edmund Burke being dubious about English efforts to Anglo-form India.

I am not saying I agree with Kirk and Burke however their position is also not entirely without merit. Disagreements over the extent to which human nature is malleable very much comes into play here.

A project to "build a 19th century Republic in Iraq" immediately comes to mind as something an academic addled by reading too much Plato might dream up, or bringing civilization to the Tigris and Euphrates valley thereby busting countless irony meters.

PNAC (again IMHO) vastly overestimated American power and vastly underestimated the idea that other peoples also have nationalistic sentiments and also are attached to their own culture.

"Liberals" are often accused of letting theory trump pragmatism and yet our guy in Georgia (Saakashvili) is himself an academic propeller head type who took a team of "best and brightest" Georgian academic types (edumacated in America) on a romantic quest to re-shape Georgia and show up Russia. At least until reality intervened.

= = =

As for nationalist conservatism, nationalism itself is a doomed enterprise with global capitalism being its most unrelenting enemy. I make note of an amusing anecdote from Tom Freidman (who is often a source of humor, both intentional and otherwise):

Friedman writes about watching a Belgian delegate to an anti-globalization conference kicking an ATM in a Brazilian airport because it wouldn't accept her European credit card.

In addition, the premise of the American regime is to uphold and secure inalienable rights that are given universally to all humanity. Therefore American nationalist sentiment shall always create legitimate cognitive dissonance.

We Americans are a unique people BECAUSE we understand all peoples ultimately seek the same things and deserve the same rights. Therefore, to indulge American nationalist sentiment negates the premise of American exceptionalism.

Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.

And you're right. Neo-con --- which already got me into trouble elsewhere -- has become a hot button pejorative used to describe a wider set of individuals than the actual definition outlines.

Bill Kristol is not a neo con. He is a douche bag.

To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard