What in the World is a 'Neo-con'?

Carl Regenstein posted this bit of troll-bait on another thread:

This term 'neo-con' is something that I see being used more and more. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue what it means.

What are neo-conservatives? What is it that makes them 'neo'? How are they distinguished from paleo-conservatives?

I once saw an account somewhere that described "neo-conservatives" as baby-boom generation former leftists, mostly Jewish and mostly in the New York opinion industry, who have moved to the right in middle age.

But that doesn't seem to be how the term is being used these days. It apparently means something a lot broader and less specific than that.

(The term 'neo-con' is almost as incomprehensible to me as 'post-modern', another omnipresent contemporary buzzword.)

So... what's up with these cryptic 'neo-cons'?

 

A neo-con is anybody to the Right of me!

 

Well, conservatives these days don't exactly cling to the traditional conservative values. Fiscal conservation is the most obvious. So neo-conservative is the "new values" conservative.
By the way, labels s*ck.

 

"Troll-bait" my ass.....

Try "thought provoking discussion fodder" instead.

By the way, YOU are the very definition of "neo-con", since you don't know what it means, lending credence to the accusations of lack of critical thought that was presented in the post that you took it from.....

 

Hey, what happened to the new civil Carl?

Not so sure about neo-conservative thing myself, but I read Bill Dayson to be more of an independent than any kind of conservative.

 

I suspect that's how Carl was using it.

But it seems to me that 'neo-con' is also a term of abuse used by the right to label alleged heretics. You sometimes see the talking-heads on Fox News Channel dismissing this or that Bush administration figure as a 'neo-con'.

It's peculiar that one place where the hard-left and the hard-right are often in agreement is in blaming all of the country's problems on these 'neo-cons'.

I can see all kinds of disseparate tendencies in American conservatism, from individualistic libertarianism to the theocentric religious right, from isolationists to nationalistic players of the 'great game', and from prep-school patricians to rural Georgia NASCAR fans.

But none of that really seems to correspond to this neo-paleo split, whatever that is.

 

Like my landsman on this board, the good uncle, I am exceedingly civil, unless provoked. Then I respond with both barrels, thank you very much....

 

Hi gang:

Bill, you are quite correct on the origin of the term neo-conservative. It was coined, possibly by Irving Kristol or Norman Podhoretz, as a term for Jewish ex-leftists who had become somewhat conservative. At that time (1970's) National Review was very stridently Roman Catholic. Even though William Buckley has been at great pains to denounce anti-Semitism among, uh, paleo-conservatives (one thinks of Westbrook Pegler, Joseph Sobran, and Pat Buchanan--against whom Buckley wrote a denunciatory book), the Commentary magazine people did not feel that they were part of the club.

The term neoconservative--although used by many people who are by no means anti-Semitic--still carries with it a notion of being too Jewish or too pro-Israel. It only became genericized after the rise to some prominence of Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, inter alios. One thinks of Archduke Otto von Habsburg's vicious and evil excoriation of the Pentagon as a "Jewish institution." (My grandfather went AWOL from his grandfather's army in order to come here, so there is bad blood between Archduke Otto and myself. Full disclosure.) While I doubt that there are very many conservatives left (can I say left?) who would not wish Jews to join the country club, there are certainly anti-Semitic leftists who cordially employ the term "neocon" as a coded label, akin to Stalin's "rootless cosmopolitans" or (different target group) Nixon's "law and order."

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

One thinks of the coded language used by various New York musical critics in the late 1950's, writing at the behest of the then closeted Leonard Bernstein and (ugh) Aaron Copland, to denounce the great Dimitri Mitropoulos for being homosexual in order to advance Bernstein's mereticious and musically repellent career. (But I digress.)

Please note that I am emphatically *not* saying that posters here are anti-Semitic for using the term neocon. Its function as a coded label might call for some other term to be used, but its use is not invariably--now--a deliberate use of a coded label.

If anyone construes this as a personal attack they are simply mistaken. It is a rumination on the origins and use of a word.

Now play nice.

Janko Preotul

 

Thanks Unk for the reminder to "play nice"....

I'll come up with a new term now.... maybe something like "BDRYIC" (Brain Dead Reagan Youth Inspired Conservatives)?

LOL
- Carl

 

In general...

Neo-con as it has currently come to be used means someone who believes in the primacy of the United States and its interests. Neo-cons tend to be more unilateral in foreign policy matters and are less willing to sacrifice what the see as being in the best interests of the United States in order to compromise with others countries. Many (such as Chirac) like to label the current US government as very Neoconservative when they themselves have always had very unilateral features to their foreign policy. France is one of the most unilateral acting countries in the world but then like to point fingers....

 

Erratum: meretricious, not mereticious

 

he, he, he!

He, he, he!!!

Abner

 

My experience suggests that “neocon” has two meanings. #1 It is a pejorative code term for politically conservative Jews (e.g., Paul Wolfowitz, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Krystal, William Safire, Mona Charen, and David Horowitz).

#2, As defined by the CSM:

Neoconservatives…
• Want the US to be the world's unchallenged superpower
• Share unwavering support for Israel
• Support American unilateral action
• Support preemptive strikes to remove perceived threats to US security
• Promote the development of an American empire
• Equate American power with the potential for world peace
• Seek to democratize the Arab world
• Push regime change in states deemed threats to the US or its allies
http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/neoConQuiz.pl

 

Maybe this will help. It is a short 10 question quiz that helps determine if you are a neocon, isolationist, realist, liberal, etc.

I, in case anyone cares, was classified as a neocon -- most likely not a big surprise

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/quiz/neoconQuiz.html

 

Now there's a name I haven't heard in more than 20 years or so!

Good post on what "neo-conservatives" are.

Unfortunately, many today use it as a term of derision for anyone who loves America and freedom.

We need to avoid all labels because no one fits 100% into any of them. I will attempt to do better myself as I use them more than I need to.

We should just be Americans who have different views on foreign and social policy, plain and simple.

 

The realistic Reginstein

I took the quiz, and it says I'm a "realist"..... puts me in some good company (Eisenhower and Colin Powell)

 

I ended up being a "realist."

 

Good company? Nein!

OK - the good company theory is all kaput..... Now I'm in league with Jimmy!

(Just kidding brother..... LOL)

 

Uncle,

I agree that Bernstein's best work was a Broadway show and I never cared for his Beethoven interpretations, but what do you have against Aaron Copeland?

You really don't LIKE "Appalachian Spring"?

I defend Copeland mostly out of personal taste but also for a more objective reason. He was a twentieth century composer with something to SAY. So often I am left with the idea that a composer wants to be original to the exclusion of producing music anyone really wants to HEAR. Copeland wasn't like that. His stuff didn't "debut into obscurity".

 

Realist. Interesting quiz.