What neo-conservative is - and what it isn't

[416Centerist]

One last reply, as frankly this is becoming tiresome, and I was atl least interested enough to bother to reply.

We can agree on something

A few specific comments.
1. On supporting the free mobility of persons- Is it not a basic article of free trade that persons must be able to move freely?

Dont know, dont care. I am a pragmatist, not an idealoge.
I value communities and cultures over a fast buck.

Furthermore, is it not the neoconservatives in Washington who are waging the war on Terror and demanding further security checks

Yes. Except on the Mexican border. Paleocons (my closest affiliation) are driving it.

and more reasonable immigration policie

See above.

Perhaps a blanket racist ban on those who happen not to be white would be to your taste?

There we go. BURN THE WITCH! BURN THE WITCH!
Check my post history on that and get back to me.

Certainly not to anyone who respects the dignity of the individual and of our country, a clear conservative priority

.
What about other countries? See point 1.
Free movement negates the soverignety of the culture and the individual in all considerations aside from economic.
People spend money to fence yards for a reason.

2. Again, who are tackling the hard logic of convincing those deceived by the left on matters ranging from the threat that was posed by the Soviet Union to

Regan?

affirmative action

Que? Evidence?

to the need for welfare reform,etc. Oh yes, the neoconservatives.

..

3. On 'subverting the Constitution'? Where? The allegation is not sufficient to prove the case- especially for attacking a point of view for the actions of a particular administration

Nor are the allegations against Pat B sufficent to prove KKK links and Fascist intentions.

Some would consider a Fascist state to be the perfect merging of Government and Business interests.
Who is driving that?

That said, Bush is still better then teletubby Kerry

[Neocon Recovery]

One last comment on the neoconservatism and Pat Buchanan line...

When I argue the case that Pat Buchanan is a fascist, I do not imply that he has any affiliation with the KKK or any other extreme right organization. What I am implying, however, is that the political philosophy that best describes his position is fascism- most akin to Fransisco Franco, Salazar and the Quebec ultra-nationalists of Lionel Groulx. The evidence is clear: Buchanan supports authoritarianism; Buchanan fails consistently to differentiate a concern with sloppy process and security concerns from what seem to be a racist agenda for immigration; he routinely touts nativism before the American public (as distinct from pride in American citizenship); etc. That being said, Buchanan has probably done more good for the United States than a great deal of more savoury individuals. But to say that he is simply and straightforwardly conservative is a bit of a misnomer.

Neoconservatism as a political philosophy gives no distinct position on the Mexican border issue. While I myself agree with the line of National Review (enforcement before any proposal of amnesty), I can see the opposing argument as well. What is necessary is a consistent and unambiguous border and immigration policy that respects those who wish to legally seek residency and citizenship, and that eliminates any possibility of illegals, criminal aliens and security threats from crossing American frontiers.

And for the record: Reagan's key policies have all been classified, for political science reasons, as neoconservative. The first Bush deflated most of the neocon edge of American politics, which only resurfaced with the Gingrich Majority and the Dauphin, George W.

[FriedmanForever]

I disagree that Newt Gingrich is a neo-conservative (though I definitely think George W. Bush is one). While Gingrich was signatory to the Project for a New American Century, his stewardship in the house was characterized by traditional Republican stances.

1. The main focus was not on values, but on smaller government. Deficit reduction and slowed government spending was probably the biggest accomplishment of the Gingrich years. In contrast, Bush and his congress have substantially expanded the role of government. For folks like Strauss fiscal conservatism is only one of many weapons in a larger culture war (indeed, Strauss criticizes modern philosophers like John Locke, who are actually pretty keen on capitalism). For traditional Republicans, capitalism versus socialism IS the war.

2. In foreign policy, Gingrich balked at nation-building exercises. He opposed intervention in the Balkans (which Clinton was comparatively more enthusiastic about). Bush, though in 2000 he campaigned on a fairly isolationist platform, has turned out to be an even bigger hawk than Reagan.

There are a diversity of positions on the American right (Canadian conservatism, which should really be called Toryism, is an organic conservative tradition of an entirely different sort on top of that), that I think some of you folks are missing.

On foreign policy, there is a distinction between both Nixon/Bush Sr.; Reagan/Dubya; and the pre-war isolationists (and present-day paleo-conservatives). Realism (Nixon-Bush-Theodore Roosevelt) is an interventionist foreign policy aimed solely at defending the national interest and enhancing American power, with minimal concern for values. Alexander Hamilton is probably the earliest incarnation of this sort of a position, though it is somewhat alien to the American tradition.

Neo-conservatism is essentially right-wing Wilsonianism: they buy into the traditional foreign policy values of the Democrats (or at least the pre-Vietnam Democrats, who, you will note, brought America into most of the wars it has fought in this century), but with a greater penchant for the use of force. This may actually be unsurprising, since most neo-cons have roots in the Democratic party (even Ronald Reagan). The earliest enunciations of this kind of position on the right was seen after WWII - in a small way in the "rollback" doctrine of Dulles/Eisenhower (they weren't neo-cons, but Dulles certainly employed some of that rhetoric, and many Republican congressmen were exceptionally hawkish). Barry Goldwater is probably the most clear early incarnation of what I would call a neo-conservative (though, like Reagan, there are elements of traditional Republicanism to his platform).

Paleo-conservatism: I think it is largely dead, though it may experience periodic revivals, as occured in 1992 (when Buchanan launched a spirited primary challenge to Bush sr. and Ross Perot was able to capture the isolationist vote) and we could see some of this element arise in 2008. But these guys are against the exercise of American power for much of anything other than defence.

[Meistro]

http://watchthis.zakyoung.com/index.php ... 8&Itemid=3

great speach by dr. ron paul.

"We've been neoconned".

[Narrow Back]

http://watchthis.zakyoung.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3928&Itemid=3

great speach by dr. ron paul.

"We've been neoconned".

I watched that awhile ago. Great speech. "Mr. Magoo" nails it again.

[Narrow Back]

Yes, neo-cons are for 'the free flow of people' to countries, except one.

It begins with 'I' and ends with 'l'.

Jason and the mud throwers, nothwithstanding, I support Israel's right to exist, believe that the holocaust happened, yada, yada, yada.

However, that won't stop me from responding to those wholabel Pat Buchanan a 'fascist'.

Neo-conservatism is a left-wing triangulation strategy conceived by it's intellectual god-fathers, Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol.

I am going through this thread. It's very interesting. Where has Bulldog gone? He is easily one of the brightest posters I have read on FD. Did the Bushbot neo-cons chase him away?


Neo Cons are ex Democrats that migrated to the Republican Party. Their spiritual guide is Leo Strauss. His arrogance permeates their movement. Take the concept of the 'Noble Lie' as Plato described.

Look what he did with it. What an f-ing megalomaniac.

Leo Strauss
Main article: Leo Strauss
Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in uniting and guiding the polis. Are myths needed to give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society? Or can men dedicated to relentlessly examining, in Nietzsche's language, those "deadly truths," flourish freely? Thus, is there a limit to the political, and what can be known absolutely? In The City and Man, Strauss discusses the myths outlined in Plato's Republic that are required for all governments. These include a belief that the state's land belongs to it even though it was likely acquired illegitimately and that citizenship is rooted in something more than the accidents of birth. Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed noble lies: myths used by political leaders seeking to maintain a cohesive society.

Shadia Drury says that Strauss believed that dissembling and deception "is the peculiar justice of the wise", and while Plato believed that his Noble lie was based on a moral good, "Strauss thinks that the superiority of the ruling philosophers is an intellectual superiority and not a moral one (Natural Right and History, p. 151)." and then as she puts it: "Strauss is the only interpreter who gives a sinister reading to Plato, and then celebrates him."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie

[Godwin]

Strauss --- Just the logical conclusion of a Tory wing of conservatism.

[Narrow Back]

Strauss --- Just the logical conclusion of a Tory wing of conservatism.

True. Harper and his mentor Tom Flanigan are neo cons of the highest order. I guess Harper was "noble lying" to us - for our own good mind you. Hell, we should be "grateful" for him, right? Someone like Jason K. seems to think so too and because he is so snarky and arrogant about it, I assume he sees himself as a neo con too. We should all just shut the f up and let these higher types do what they want. What an evil ideology.

The really sad thing is that Iggy is no different, whatever he calls himself. Consider his ideas on foreign policy and torture. As the old Tide commercial asks, "I can't see a difference. Can you see a difference?

[bluecon]

Tommy Douglas and the CCF were modelled after the fascists with the CCF's third way and the Regina Manifesto's call for an end to capitalism.

[Narrow Back]

Neoconservatism dies in Gaza

The recent Israeli offensive has put the final nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's Middle East fantasy.
By Juan Cole

Jan. 08, 2009 |

The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel's north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The neoconservatives first laid out their manifesto in a 1996 paper, "A Clean Break," written for an obscure think tank in Jerusalem and intended for the eyes of far right-wing Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, who had just been elected prime minister. They advised Israel to renounce the Oslo peace process and reject the principle of trading land for peace, instead dealing with the Palestinians with an iron fist. They urged Israel to uphold the right of hot pursuit of Palestinian guerrillas and to find alternatives to Yasser Arafat's Fatah for the Palestinian leadership. They called forth Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria and rejection of negotiations with Damascus. They foresaw strengthened ties between Israel and its two regional friends, Turkey and Jordan.

They advocated "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," in part as a way of "rolling back" Syria. In place of the secular, republican tyrant, they fantasized about the restoration of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, and thought that a Sunni king might help moderate the Shiite Hezbollah in south Lebanon. (Yes.) They barely mentioned Iran, though it appears that their program of expelling Syria from Lebanon and weakening its regime was in part aimed at depriving Iran of its main Arab ally. In a 1999 book called "Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein," David Wurmser argued that it was false to fear that installing the Iraqi Shiites in power in Baghdad would strengthen Iran regionally.

The signatories to this fantasy of using brute military power to reshape all of West Asia included some figures who would go on to fill key positions in the Bush administration. Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense under Reagan, became chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon. Douglas J. Feith became the undersecretary of defense for planning. David Wurmser first served in Feith's propaganda shop, the Office of Special Plans, which manufactured the case for an American war on Iraq, and then went on to serve with "Scooter" Libby in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

The neoconservatives used their well-funded think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, an organ of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Hudson Institute, among others, to promote this agenda of the conquest of Iraq as a solution of all ills.

They had cheerleaders and allies in major newspapers and political journals. Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, took up the neoconservative mantra on Sept. 5, 2002, writing that "The road to Jerusalem more likely leads through Baghdad than the reverse. Once the Palestinians see that the United States will no longer tolerate their hero Saddam Hussein, depressed though they may be, they may also come finally to grasp that Israel is here to stay and that accommodating to this reality is the one thing that can bring them the generous peace they require." (Peretz is a perennial embarrassment to his stable of often excellent journalists in that he occasionally hijacks the magazine for such pronouncements.)

Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post on Feb. 1, 2002, that "Iran is a deadly threat," insofar as it was trying "to establish a terrorist client state by arming and infiltrating Yasser Arafat's Palestine." How would he have us roll it back? "Overthrowing neighboring radical regimes shows the fragility of dictatorship, challenges the mullahs' mandate from heaven and thus encourages disaffected Iranians to rise." What did he mean by neighboring regimes? "First, Afghanistan to the east. Next, Iraq to the west." Leading neoconservative columnist William Kristol delivered himself of a daisy chain of false predictions, inaccurate pronouncements, and political wet dreams about Iraq and the Middle East, as David Corn of the Nation itemizes here. "Look, if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world," Kristol said in 2002.

The brutal Israeli war on the population of Gaza is the nail in the coffin of the neoconservative doctrine. Their policies have hardly strengthened ties between Turkey, Israel and the United States, as they had argued. Turkey had a special place in the thinking of figures such as Perle, who lauded it as a secular example for the Muslim world and a close ally of Israel. But in 2002 the Islamically tinged conservative Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdogan swept to power and has ruled Turkey ever since. In 2003, the AKP dealt a cruel blow to the hopes of Perle and his colleague Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz when its members of parliament voted against allowing the U.S. military to invade Iraq through Turkish territory. Erdogan more recently has been a profound disappointment to the Israeli right because of his willingness to talk with Hamas leaders. Hundreds of thousands of Turks, many of them AKP supporters, have demonstrated in Istanbul against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

continued...
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/20 ... print.html

[styky]

Endless Right-Wing Self-Pity
by Glenn Greenwald

The predominant attribute of the right-wing movement is self-victimizing petulance over the unfair treatment to which they are endlessly and mercilessly subjected. Last week, C-SPAN broadcast a Commentary Magazine event that almost certainly set a record for most tough-guy/warrior nepotism ever stuffed onto a single panel, as it featured William Kristol (son of Irv and Gertrude), John Podhoretz (son of Norm and Midge), and Jonah Goldberg (son of Lucianne). Jihadis around the world are undoubtedly still trembling at the sight of this brigade of Churchillian toughness.

Exemplifying the deeply self-pitying theme of the entire discussion, Jonah continuously insisted that conservative magazines are so very, very important to the political landscape – indispensably so – because conservative voices are frozen out of mainstream media venues by The Liberal Media, so that poor, lonely, stigmatized conservatives can only get right-wing opinion in places like Weekly Standard and National Review. In between Jonah's petulant laments about how conservative opinion cannot be heard in The Mainstream Media, Bill Kristol talked about his New York Times column and his Washington Post column, John Podhoretz told stories about his tenure editing the New York Post Editorial Page and Charles Krauthammer's years of writing a column for Time and the New Republic, and Jonah referenced his Los Angeles Times column. None of them ever recognized the gaping disparity between those facts and their woe-is-us whining about conservative voices like theirs being shut out of The Liberal Media. So important in conservative mythology is self-victimization that they maintain it even as they themselves unwittingly provide the facts which disprove it.

Today, National Review's Andy McCarthy advises readers that – shock of all shocks – the New York Times today, for some indiscernible reason, for once actually allowed his opinion to seep into its rigidly leftist pages.

continued - http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

[StandAlone]

I tend to view the "neo-conservative" as an extremist.

[Narrow Back]

I tend to view the "neo-conservative" as an extremist.

The word extremist is thrown around far too easily and quickly these days but I am more or less in agreement with you. I have never cared for the neo-cons. They are anti-Constitutionalists. They most certainly are not Republicans.

[Narrow Back]

What in the Hell is a Paleo?
By Paul E. Gottfried

Reading an online response by someone described as “National Review’s chief domestic policy analyst,” with the mellifluous, politically correct name of “Reihan Salam,” addressed to Ron Unz of the American Conservative, I was struck by a stray reference to a group that Salam’s employers have not accorded the right of recognition. Salam observes that Unz, who edits a “paleoconservative” publication, has written a “thought-provoking” article on Hispanic immigration. Unz wishes to discourage further Hispanic immigration because it depresses wages in the U.S., but otherwise this publisher raises no substantive objection to the influx of Third World, uneducated population from south of our border.

Unz begins his brief by arguing that Hispanic crime, including in all probability crimes by illegals, is no higher than it is among the Anglo population. (Unfortunately, Ron's thesis has been debunked, but let's not dwell on that.) Furthermore, the Latino immigrants, according to Unz, are generally hard-working and make reasonable efforts to fit in. Unz states that Republican politicians have overreacted by declaring war on illegals and by engaging in supposedly xenophobic policies and rhetoric against the newcomers. His only objection against continued immigration from Latin America is that it’s depressing the wage structure for those already in the work force. Latino immigration has hurt vulnerable American wage-earners, by providing cheap, expendable labor.

According to Salam, Unz has gone outside the box of what he would expect from the right. He has properly condemned the anti-foreign gestures of the GOP, and he never raises those “cultural issues” that one hears, perhaps with a shudder, from “paleoconservatives.” But who, pray tell, is this last group? Although Salam devotes an entire essay to them, I don’t have a clue as to what he’s talking about. The people alluded to have something to do with how the Right used to be...and they tend to follow “the idiosyncratic political economist Murray Rothbard,” my late friend. Many of them have racial reasons for not wanting to flood the country with Hispanic immigrants, but Unz, to whom one could never ascribe the slightest twinge of racial or cultural Angst, is somehow a paradigmatic paleo. Indeed, engaging in discussion with Unz is the litmus test for whether Salam’s neoconservative camp is open to a “good-faith conversation” with a group on the right with which Salam “doesn’t agree very often.” One might note that if he did, he would in all probability have to apply for food stamps.

What Salam neglects to mention is that paleoconservatives (whoever they are) don’t write for NR or for any other mainstream publication of the conservative movement. Also, I’ve never seen them on neocon central, otherwise known on FOX, despite the 24/7 broadcasting schedule of this “news network.” It’s just that every so often the unmentionable gets said. This happens in spite of the fact that the neoconservatives, having swallowed the conservative movement whole in the 1980s, banned and suppressed paleoconservatives, people otherwise known as “crackpots,” “anti-Semites” and “inhabitants of the fever swamps.”

But one wouldn’t want to go too far in bringing up the unmentionable. For example, I wouldn’t expect “National Review’s chief domestic policy analyst” to engage the arguments of Steve Sailer (one of the banned thinkers who has dared to notice sociobiological questions) on the effects of immigration. Nor would I expect Salam to address Edwin Rubenstein’s detailed refutation of Unz’s assertions about the Hispanic crime rate, published in the most recent issue of Social Contract. After all it may not be advisable to deal with powerful arguments from people on the right whom no sensitive American should be noticing.

One further observation may be in order about Salam’s reference to the usually unmentionable. There is no monolithic group on the right called “paleoconservatives.” As the inventor of the term, I know whereof I speak. There are multifarious rightwing critics of the neoconservative-controlled conservative movement, and many of these critics have little in common with each other except for disliking those who have marginalized them. This loosely connected oppositional force consists of non-leftist libertarians, neo-medieval Catholics, race realists, conservative humanists, Southern Agrarians, and if you give me a few more minutes, I’ll come up with a longer list. After so many decades of treating as non-persons or lunatics those whom they managed to displace, together with those who identify with those who were displaced, it may be high time for the neocons and their employees to confront their swarming enemies on the right. There used to be some sort of mildly interesting conversation that took place on that side. For example, the old National Review had room for such ideologically diverse personalities as the raging atheist Max Eastman, the Catholic Carlist Frederick Wilhelmsen, the global democratic missionary Harry Jaffa, and the Southern conservative M.E. Bradford. Although these people may have laced into each other, they usually remained on speaking terms and did not go about declaring their debating opponents to be unfit for civil discourse. Since then the range of differences in National Review and in affiliate neoconservative publications has become almost infinitesimal. What may be even worse, the polemical exchanges found there (to put it mildly) lack the fire they once had. Neocon control does have its drawbacks as well as cash subsidies.

Salam, as a sign of outreach, calls for including paleoconservatives, by which I think he means the non-authorized Right, in the big tent he’d like to see spring up. He fears that his side has “narrowed the public conversation,” and such narrowing may cause them “to wind up with a less reasonable, less-reality-based conversation.” OK, fair enough. Who on our side will his bosses include in their chatter-room beyond Ron Unz, who is a polite, intelligent commentator but hardly, except through some infinite stretching of the term, a “paleoconservative”? Our side can give Salam lots and lots of names if the higher-ups are serious about making their discussion ideologically less prescribed. Somehow I doubt there’ll be any takers.

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/bl ... s-a-paleo/

[Notinmyname]

So based on what I am reading you assert that the neo-conservatives are a US only phenomenon. And not a term that really applies to any Canadian, because we are happy with the terms red and blue.