I was reading this thread:
http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...t=ST&f=1&t=2563

and I was struck by the differences between poeple that call themselves converatives in that discussion, to the point that one was inferring the other was a communist for simply suggesting that there was a possible role for goverment outside national defense LOL

I notice the new conservatives (which I define as neo-conservative) are as extremist and IMO- very odd like the extreme left types from prior to the 80s. Is there no common sense middle ground for any of these folks?

I would really like to hear from the poeple that define themselves as "conservative" define themselves and seperate or embrace the "neo-conservative" definitions.

I think a divide between the conservatives and neo-conservatives are in relation to the Contract with America that was proposed back in 1994. The Contract became more of a reactionary stimulus once there was a Democratic majority established in legislation. A quick overview of the contract can be found here:
http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html
I would recommend every Republican to occasionally read this contract because it really does illustrate a sudden shift to the right with simplistic propositions with out evaluating problematic consequences. But given the time some Republicans were trying to figure out what their party was doing wrong. So by motivating a strong stance to the right they would coerce their more moderate members into complying with this new wave of conservativism or else be lambasted as an illegitimate party member who had been weakened by a Democrat regime. Given that this bill was unsuccessful it did campaign a greater step to the right that we are consummated with today.

Everybody needs to welcome CR, he is a liberal escapee from another forum that has a political section. He has some conservative leanings, so he can't be all bad.

I have taken to calling myself a moderate Republican to differentiate my stance from what the conservative Republican has become.
Moderate is probably what I was all along, tho, as I have actually voted for a Democrat a time or 2.
My main objection with the neo-cons is exactly what has already been stated, that they are the far right equivalent of the far left among liberals, or Democrats.
I like to think that those on the extreme fringes are not close enough to the central portion of a party to have much power, but this appears to be an error on my part.
There are enough gullible voters who can be easily swayed by the far-outers such that the extreme positions have become a presence to contend with.
My view, conservatives still have some heart left. Neo-cons have eaten theirs.

The Contract with America was an attempt by the Republican Party to nationalize the debate in Congressional elections, and it was highly successful. Far from the failure claimed above, the terms of the Contract as stated were fulfilled.

I don't know quite how this fits into the definition of a so-called 'neo-conservative', I don't know what that means, other than it sounds like some sort of a label that people are attempting to attach to those with whom they disagree. If one wishes to attach the term to the Contract with America, then I suppose the main architect of that Contract, Newt Gringrich, would be the founder of this new poltical idea. I would hardly consider Gingrich to be a 'neo'- conservative, he was always a conservative. Perhaps the difference between Gingrich and the conservatives that preceeded him is that Gingrich knew how to win elections around this country and the others before him didn't. That no doubt would cause some problems for him with the liberals...er....excuse me, progressives. Perhaps enough that they need to make up a name for him.

That begs the question, a related question. Who came up with the term? And do the neo-cons accept the label?

It seems to me that before one "accepts" the label, one needs to know what it means. If it means someone who supported the Contract with America, or someone who supports the current administration, then I suppose I would be considered to be a 'neo-con'. That's pretty strange considering I've been a conservative Republican since I could vote, and I'm darn near as old as you are. There's hardly anything 'neo' about me, sadly to say.

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/ar...rticle1081.html

That still doesn't answer the question.

This short essay does:

http://intellectualconservative.com/page1055.html



Neo-cons came from the social democrat or Trotskyist wings of the Left movement, but shifted to the Right.





In other words, Paleocons want small government and a isolationist foreign policy, neo-cons want big government and military intervention throughout the world.

Does their Trotskyist roots have a impact on the neo-con mentality and agenda?



Trotsky argued for Perpetual War, similarly the neo-cons want a perpetual war against "Islamofascism". Both beleive in the exportation of their idealogy (Trotsky Communism, neo-cons Western style democracy).

Hey, hey, hey. As a neo-con that offends me. Neo-Cons just want people to A: work for what they get, B: Ensure American economical success and C: Police the world to make it a better place, how heartless

CP

Neo-cons scare me the most because of thier similarity to facism and the radical islamic movements both.


I fear the religious zealotry of the right of the neo-cons, and thier willingness to allow the rights to be taken away from others while giving lip service to other rights, very similar to the far left IMO

For instance, they so often claim to not want gov't interference in poeples private lives, but they have no problem with denying the rights of gays to marry or serve in the military, tell a woman what to do with thier body, search and seizure laws regarding the "drug war", the drug war itself, the patriot act etc etc. Those are all the most profound of human personal decisions, who you sleep with and choose to mate with, what you choose to ingest, and what information you choose to read/peruse. Yet neo-cons I have heard speak so far, have no problem with THIS huge type of goverment intrusion, but a Waco or Ruby Ridge, they are out-raged. It also has a racial edge to it. I tend to seperate out immigration into legal vs illegal. Legal is fine by me, tends to help our country rather than harm it IMO, illegal is breaking the law and should be dealt with as such. Neo-cons want to close our borders, but go outside and police the world while enforcing the american culture.

IMO, the neo cons have already won this administration, and there is no moderating force of the "normal" old style conservatives from the 70s.

I'm still not getting a good answer as to what a so-called 'neo-conservative' is, so perhaps I can ask it in a different way. Perhaps if someone would name some people who are in this classification, and why they are classified as "neo" it would help out. It might also help a little bit if some names of "plain ole conservatives" were listed as well, or as CR calls them, "normal old style" conservatives from the 70's.

This is a new term to me, seems to have been coined since President Bush was elected and to be quite honest, I'm really wondering if this is just more liberal hate speech designed to invoke the old liberal....er "progressive" trick of tying conservatives to the nazis. Neo-conservative = neo-Nazi? Could it be that?

Actually, in general terms, Thomas came closest to hitting the mark. The movement as a power really began with the christian coalition and Ron Reagan, though of course there were roots prior to that. My dad would be a very typical paleo conservative and I think I have BillAZ55 pegged pretty close to paleo conservative. Wants as small as goverment as possible and still be able to do business. Doesn't think we should fight wars or intervene in civil wars in countries that don't haven't attacked us first or attacked our interests or allies as an extension. Goverment doesn't have any business telling a guy how to run his life as long as he doesn't harm anothers rights for the same.

the neo cons are pretty much , so far, along the lines that Thomas has said. Neo-cons are still being defined I think, because they are not a fifty year old movement and only have just now started to enjoy the riegns of power. I think much of them will be defined further in the next 10 years.

I provided the Contract with America as an example of a recent dividing factor between two ideas of conservativism. I did not intend it to be a defining manuscript for neo-conservatives. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused. I could probably muster examples of neo-conservativism from 17th century Britain being that it was a time of new ideas being practiced. There is no new idea under the Sun. How successful or unsuccessful the contract was is entirely a different debate. There are many propositions to the contract, some of which were not followed to the letter because it was a bill written for debate. What I remember of this contract was the driving attitude behind it trying to consolidate Republicans to follow it. I remember Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh rolling up their sleaves to any Republican that didn't support this contract 100 percent. Like Aquilla said, this Contract was designed to nationalize the Republican Party debate. The way I said it was the Republican Party was trying to do some house cleaning. Thus there was a duality in the Republican Party between two conservative thoughts, those who are the moderates and those who are the extreme right wing. I don't know, perhaps neo-conservative is not an appropriate label to define right wing fascism.

Hold up. Neo-Cons aren't fascists, they want the world to be a better place and understand that if we are to protect the US we need to sacrifise some rights, that is not fascism by a long shot.

CP

Okay, tell you what: You conservatives don't call us liberals socialist, and we liberals won't call you fascist.

Flashpoint words derail threads.

I think that Neo-Conservatives are comprised of a number of big interest groups which include what is left of Falwell's and Pat Robertson's gang. They look to be more interested in pushing agendas than following the simple conservative dictum of less government and lower taxes.

Whoa there. I have not called a non-socialist a socialist here, I may call some gov't programs socialist, and I'm right a good portion of the time, but never have I called a regular liberal a socialist.

Thomas: Neo-Cons aren't large gov't, they just want more gov't intervention in foreign affairs, I'm a neo-con, but I'm still a conservative, I want for the most part a smaller gov't just more intervention in foreign policy.

CP

I don't mean you particularly, Conservpat. Actually I had others in mind. But the terms "socialist" and "fascist" do get bandied about a lot in these threads, and what it does is detract from the conversation. Better to describe behavior than to label it in order to get minds not to close, on all sides.

(edited for syntax)

I would argue that neo-cons are certainly for much larger goverment. The proof is the expansion of goverment powers and scope during the first neo-con administration, this one right now! They also are not fiscally conservative, and in fact have a new philosophy worse than the liberal "tax and spend"- which is "borrow and spend"- leading to the largest deficit in US history!

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The only gov't growth that undergoes in a neo-con gov't is more spending for defense. Neo-cons are fiscally conservative, except when it comes to defense.

CP

Now, CR, be fair. Certainly extraordinary times calls for extraordinary funding.
And you know that the money will be well spent if you feel safer as a result of it.
You do feel safer, don't you?
I am still wondering if the shift in the Republican party was by the majority of us Republicans, and I was left sitting alone, or if it was just engineered by a small but vocal portion of it, and I am sitting with a lot of other confused conservatives?
And I believe you referred to me as "paleo". I am only 57, not yet 60, so hold off on those kinds of terms, as I can be a bit sensitive, you know.

I feel safer. Hey, considering not one terrorist act has occured in the US or in US embassies since Sept. 11, we are safer, what more do you want, neo-cons are making America safer.

CP

And I have an anti-aligator device in my house, and have never been attacked by an aligotor, course living in alaska, there are no aligators, but hey, now I am safe from probable aligator attacks! LOL

Neo-cons have not reaped the whirlwind yet, but I can feel it coming.

If that is the case, thank you, neo-cons, whatever you really are. But I will be more thankful later, if and when the part of the world that is generating most of our terrorists is "converted" to a less violent way of dealing with their unhappiness, or we have done whatever it takes so that we no longer have to deal with them, and them with us.
I will feel more secure when our cons/neo-cons/libs etc. in Congress can work together to eliminate, not reduce, our dependence on that part of the world. Then perhaps we can stay home and be peaceful ourselves.

I'm a conservative. I'm a lot less of a Republican these days as they seem to be on a downward spiral dead-ending at the middle.

I think most of the conservative values can be summed up by a leaflet published in 1916 by Reverend William John Henry Boetcker. The leaflet, entitled Ten Cannots, is often and incorrectly attributed to Abraham Lincoln.



The 'neo-cons' are willing to compromise these, true conservatives are not. Particulary, number 10. I think Boetcker saved the best for last.

Mike

Mike: I am a true conservative. The only thing that makes me neo-conservative is that I disagree with #'s 8 and to some extent 10. I think to call neo-cons not real conservatives would be like calling DemSocialists not real liberals.

CP

I never see the light in deficit spending, never will. My fear of the "neo-con" is the foreign policy, regardless of anything else this world is shrinking and the demand for resource is growing. America has competition, not only that but i feel america is a strong hand in shaping its own competition. I feel that the "neo-con" belongs in the group of we can win a nuke fight mentality, not to mention what the insanity of living in a bomb shelter for 5000 years would be like, but its insane overall. The war on terror is not going to be won by taking out a country, trying to get the oil that feeds what it feels is a threat. These are normal people that feel compelled to do what they do. A 2000 pound bomb is only going to fuel it. The temporary loss of power and or security and the feeling of mortality coupled with the general ignorance to the world of the modern american is being used to fuel a neo con agenda, one that is ultimately cut throat in design, and one that makes me fear for the worst. I believe in the balance of the two major political bodies in america, i feel that these fanatics are a danger to everyone. This is PNAC i am talking about.

Whoa there. Where in the Neo-con "agenda" does it say nuke everything and everyone that we don't like? Neo-Cons are not fanatics, they believe in policing the world, striving for democracy. Is that so horrible?

CP

I was listening to some Jean Paul Sartre on tape yesterday and realized that the underlying philosophy of neo-cons is existentialism.

First off, existence preceeds essence. We create our own realities, and our essence is mutable in time, culture, position, age, sex, and so on.

Second off, we have free will (freedom), and this is not a comfortable thing. It is a burden.

Third, we all have responsibility with, to, and among all humankind to make as many folks free (responsible) as possible.

So that's where you get the policing of the world to turn it into a bunch of democracies. Existentialists and neo-cons have a drive to free people, to make them take on their responsibilities. As a result, Sartre became a real pain in the rump to his friends and displayed a lot of swinging about on politics.

Trouble is, the rest of the world is largely not existential, including a good portion of the US population. It's obvious that neo-cons haven't taken this into consideration, judging by backlashes from other philosophical stances (deism for one--responsibility goes to some god).

Anyway, the similarities struck me. This philosophy-on-tape thing was narrated by Charlton Heston, just FYI.

I like a lot of Sartre and subscribe to most of the notions. But it seems to ignore how interrelated we all are, as if connected together in a network or grand organism. In other words, the existential stance strikes me as too simplistic, given a lot of phenomena that it doesn't explain.

And so I see both the conservative and neo-conservative political stances as being over-simplified. A common reaction from people who live in a tidy, neat little world of existential idealism is denial of the complex. So you get GWB saying some infuriating things, like bring 'em on! Right. All you have to do in your neo-con world is give orders and people will just fall into line.

And then they don't. Gosh darn complexity! Where'd this chaos come from? Who would have known? Wow, a lot of folks don't want freedom!

Not the existential/neo-con stuff anyway.

I think Sartre was trying very hard to bring resolution to basic conflicts in life, many of which aren't in the realm of logic but in emotion. This is what I see as the neo-con hubris, too. Just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean the plan will work.

Hehehe, I suppose the old teach a person to fish and he/she will eat forever thing holds. But first the person needs to WANT to fish! And you need to WANT to teach! And what if this person decides to MAKE you do all the fishing? Or just TAKES all your fish? And so you retaliate by ATTACKING this uncooperative free will?

Ah, mutable essence. Tricky. It might follow existence, but so what? It's what we have to deal with.

Or not, and that is really existential

Disclaimer: I AM NOT A NEO-CON, the PNAC scares me too, I think that you folks are mostly right, I was just playing devils' advocate, and was a little unsure of the meaning.

CP

Neo-conservatives do really exist as a fairly coherent strain of conservative thought. As has been noted, they showed up during the Cold War, many of them former leftists, ranging from Trotskyists, Communists and New Leftists to just plain Democrats. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were a couple of the best known original neocons, and Fred Barnes is a good example of a current one.

They are typically even more anti-communist than standard conservatives, and very free market in their approach to economics, but they lack the visceral distaste for big government characteristic of the American conservative tradition, and are frequently willing to try to use government positively to conservative ends, which of course does not sit well with libertarians and even many traditional conservatives.

Here's the best description of neo-conservatism I've seen in print: The Neoconservative Persuasion by Irving Kristol, Mr. Neocon himself. (Btw, his son, William Kristol, is also a neocon and the editor of The Weekly Standard, which is a must read if you want to keep up with neocon thinking.)

For those of you who don't know me, I'm not any kind of conservative myself, but rather a conservative libertarian (yes, with conservative as an adjective modifying libertarian, not the other way 'round). While there's a lot on which I disagree with the neocons and other conservatives, I do respect them and listen to them, as I do with reasonable people of all persuasions. The unreasonable are of course another matter.

But it goes under the assumption that others want your intervention, and usually, also your occupying whatever region would be in question. The middle east, for example. Who are you making it a better place for? Yourselves. The middle east has a history of being a patriarchy. That's because the dominant religion in the area (Islam) generally advocates this. Some may indeed consider it heartless to say that you, nation A, claim to know how nation B should live, regardless of cultural differences. While we may not like it, we have no more right to force them to have a democracy than they have to force us not to eat cows (in my opinion).

Note: This is related in that I am attempting to illustrrate the coutner-position that upon looking at something through a global view, it's easier to see whether something is (globally) ethically improper (again, just me).

haha thank you

I too am new to the addition of NEO

funny funny

From the Project for the New American Century (1997)

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;


• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;


• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;


• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

Elliott Abrams Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld Vin Weber George Weigel Paul Wolfowitz

This is the neo-con position. You notice some familiar names. I do have a bit of a problem with the term neo. Nothing new about conservatives wanting to increase defense spending and increase US presence in the world. I think a better terminology is interventionists versus isolationists.

Contrast these principles with the excerpt from this speech by Pat Buchanan on March 25, 2000.

Quo Vadis? Where are you going, America?


Because of our sanctions on scores of nations, cruise missile strikes upon others, and intervention in the internal affairs of still others in the wake of the Cold War, a seething resentment of America is brewing all over the world. And the haughty attitude of our foreign policy elite only nurses the hatred.

Hearken, if you will, to the voice of our own Xenia, Madeline Albright, announcing new air strikes on Iraq: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future."


Now I count myself an American patriot. But if this Beltway braggadocio about being the world's "indispensable nation" has begun to grate on me, how must it grate upon the Europeans, Russians, and peoples subject to our sanctions because they have failed, by our lights, to live up to our standards?


And how can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution? Recall: it was in retaliation for the bombing of Libya that Khadafi's agents blew up Pan Am 103. And it is said to have been in retaliation for the Vincennes' accidental shoot-down of that Iranian airliner that Teheran collaborated with terrorists to blow up the Khobar towers. From Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar - have we not suffered enough not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism? Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the asking price of empire?


America today faces a choice of destinies. We can be the peacemaker of the world - or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle. Let us use this transitory moment of American power and preeminence to encourage and assist old friends and allies to stand on their own feet and provide and pay for their own defense (end of quotes)

Sadly when our bi-partisan interventionist policies did lead to, as Pat foresaw, a "atrocity on U.S. soil" our answer was not less intervention, it was more.