REAL ART RERUN
WHAT THE HELL IS A NEO-CONSERVATIVE, ANYWAY?

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on August 11, 2003.

After my post, "NEO-CONSERVATIVE SPAWNING POOL," a few days ago, it occurred to me that many of Real Art's loyal readers might not know much about the neo-cons--after all, I don't really know that much about them, myself, and, compounding confusion, I have thrown around a similar term, "neo-liberal," quite a bit, as well. Sometimes I wonder if these weird labels are confusing by devious design. However, it really is important to know what these guys are all about. They're running the country now...into the ground.

For starters, "neo-liberal" is a term that refers to an economic point of view. This view is strongly committed to the concept of laissez-faire, or "a doctrine opposing governmental interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights" as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Neo-liberalism, as a modern philosophy, was, by and large, first articulated by economist Milton Friedman during the early 1970s. Even though this is a very conservative point of view, in many ways dating back to Adam Smith's treatise The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, adherents to this philosophy call themselves "neo," meaning "new," and "liberal," meaning "open-minded, desiring change." Why? The strange explanation I was given years ago by my neo-lib economics professor in college is something to the effect that because governmental economic interference is, in reality, a conservative philosophy (the monarchs and nobility of old often interfered with business and trade), keeping government out of the economy has always been the true liberal philosophy.

Whatever. Crap, by any other name, still smells as bad. The neo-liberals are just plain conservatives with a fancy name.

"Neo-conservatives," on the other hand, are somewhat related to neo-liberals, but not quite the same thing. Both points of view seem to be associated with the University of Chicago, as my above mentioned post notes. However, the neo-cons have some very different emphases in their philosophy. From an essay in the Straits Times:

The first neo-cons were intellectuals, mostly Jewish, who began as leftists but migrated rightwards in the 1950s and 1960s, in disgust over the Soviet Union's suppression of Eastern Europe and what they took to be the weakness of the West's response. As Irving Kristol, a founder of the movement, put it once, a neo-conservative is a 'liberal who has been mugged by reality'.

They didn't give up their liberalism in the process, though. If anything, neo-cons might be called muscular neo-liberals, or liberals with boots.

They believe fervently in the supremacy of Western civilisation - in particular its American variation, liberal capitalism plus Jeffersonian democracy - and are possessed by a messianic zeal to spread its virtues throughout the world.

This idealistic strain is most evident in the next generation of neo-cons - the Wolfowitzs, Perles and Kagans. They all cut their teeth fighting a supreme realist, Dr Kissinger, opposing what they believed was his amoral 'balance of power' conception of foreign policy.

Detente was for them appeasement, containment of the Soviet Union a form of defeatism, nuclear arms control the legitimation of an unacceptable status quo, and rapprochement with China a cynical betrayal of Taiwan.

For more of this essay, click here.

Because they used to be liberals, but changed into conservatives, they are “new” or “neo” conservatives now.

Cute, huh? Crap, by any other name…

Given the neo-cons’ blatant use of Machiavellian tactics to gain power, I would assert that they don't really love democracy; they simply say that they do. To me, it sounds like these guys are simply imperialists in the old British sense: they want to spread their view of Americanism (whatever that is) to the rest of the world by force. In short, they're bloodthirsty hawks draped in the stars and stripes--unfortunately, they now seem to have free run of the White House; they are the face of America abroad. Also, as far as I can tell, they support neo-liberal economics, for the most part.

Have I confused you even more?

The point is that they're all conservatives, neo-lib and neo-con alike. They simply have different priorities. Both groups are dangerous to our nation and the world. Both groups now have a great deal of power.

God, I'm creeping myself out, here.

For even more on the twisted history of neo-cons, click here.

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