LOL... "it totally ignored the points" Now how many vacant liberal minded lefty loons act exactly the same way.
Speaking of neocon by any other name.... LOL.....
ADVANCE COPY
In the new issue of The Weekly Standard:
-Irving Kristol on neoconservatives:
WHAT EXACTLY IS NEOCONSERVATISM? Journalists, and now even presidential candidates, speak
with an enviable confidence on who or what is "neoconservative," and seem to assume the meaning is fully
revealed in the name. Those of us who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or dismissive,
depending on the context. It is reasonable to wonder: Is there any "there" there?
Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment.
A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its
early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. I was wrong,
and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the
1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only
intermittently. It is not a "movement," as the conspiratorial critics would have it. Neoconservatism is what the
late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a "persuasion," one that manifests itself over
time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpse only in retrospect.
Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would
seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their
respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That
this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neoconservatism
in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy. The fact that
conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective,
surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism. But Europeans, who think it absurd to
look to the United States for lessons in political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility.
Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the "American
grain." It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or
dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and
conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are
politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest,
segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not
care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative
policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of
political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice
that it is the neoconservative public polic
One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady
economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that
interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual
history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option
among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the
"have-nots" and the "haves" engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the
prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave
modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.
The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less
risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large
budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy--because it seems to be in the nature of human
nature--that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must
shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic
assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a
property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and
demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning. . . . |
