the neocons, to whom for many years the middle east was not only the issue, but the only issue
Rather than apply labels, care to name names? Neocons have been around for 50 years. Just after WW II, writers such as Robert Nisbet, Peter Viereck, Daniel Boorstin, Clinton Rossiter, and Russell Kirk were called New Conservatives. A new conservative vision was needed after the debacle of the America First Committee, the failed Bricker Amendment, and Robert Taft's failed presidential candidacy.
Later, neoconservatives were given an intellectual shot in the arm when several prominent liberals turned right, thanks to LBJ's blunders and the radical doctrines of the left. Many were Jewish, but not all. Michael Novak isn't Jewish and I doubt Father Richard John Neuhaus is. I worry about the possible drift into Wilsonianism, but to imply they are Israel-firsters is a calumny of the worst sort.
Before you start throwing labels like 'neocon' around, please understand what it means.
The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945-1994
by John Ehrman
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Ehrman, who teaches history at George Washington University, offers a lucid account of the postwar rise of neoconservatives and their eventual migration from liberal Democrats to Republicans, despite little ideological shift. He begins by tracing the progressive-liberal feud that led anti-communist liberals such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Arthur Schlesinger to affirm the "vital center." The country's late-1960s political convulsions led (especially Jewish) liberals to fight the New Left and Third Worldism in journals such as Commentary. The author devotes a substantial chapter to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the first neocon to move from academia to politics and an unabashed defender of liberal democracy. Neocons such as Jeane Kirkpatrick moved right during the Carter presidency; they made certain gains under Reagan, such as establishing the National Endowment for Democracy, but split over aid to the Nicaraguan contras and over Soviet liberalization. Ehrman suggests there is now no consistent neoconservative policy; still, he says, their new tendency toward realism and a narrow sense of U.S. interests jibes well with an American public perennially wary of commitments abroad. For informed readers.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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