To: Peter Dierks who wrote (22751 ) 9/15/2007 8:14:46 PM From: Geoff Altman Read Replies (2) | Respond to As I was saying, I was thinking about what Republicans might develop into given the current political and social climate. It represented a realignment in American politics and the defection of "an important and highly articulate group of liberals to the other side." [3] Because the neoconservatives were familiar with liberalism, they were able to criticize it more effectively than previous generations of conservatives, and one of their accomplishments was "to make criticism from the right acceptable in the intellectual, artistic, and journalistic circles where conservatives had long been regarded with suspicion."[3] The term neoconservative was first used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to make clear that a group, many of whom called themselves liberal, was actually a group of newly conservative ex-liberals. The name eventually stuck, both because it was reasonably accurate, and because neoconservatives came to accept that they were, in fact, conservative.[4] The idea that liberalism "no longer knew what it was talking about" became one of the central themes of neoconservatism,[5] and by the 1980s, being considered a conservative was far from an insult. [4]
