An intellectual and political movement in favor of political, economic, and social conservatism that arose in opposition to the perceived liberalism of the 1960s: “The neo-conservatism of the 1980s is a replay of the New Conservatism of the 1950s, which was itself a replay of the New Era philosophy of the 1920s” (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.).
neoconservative ne'o·con·ser'va·tive adj. & n.
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Neoconservatism was primarily an intellectual movement of Cold War liberal Democrats and democratic socialists who moved rightward during the 1970s and 1980s. The term was apparently coined in 1976 by an opponent, the socialist Michael Harrington. By and large, neoconservatives either repudiated the label or accepted it grudgingly. Nonetheless, the term usefully describes an ideological tendency represented by a close-knit group of influential political intellectuals. In the early 1980s, the short-hand designation "neocon" was a standard part of the American political vocabulary.
Most of the leading neoconservatives were in their forties or early fifties when they began their ideological transition. Many were Jewish and several prided themselves on being "New York intellectuals" no matter where they lived at the moment. All of the leading neocons engaged in cultural politics by writing books or articles, but they came from varied professional backgrounds. Foremost among them were the sociologists Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Peter Berger, and Seymour Martin Lipset; the Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz and his wife, the writer Midge Decter; the political activists Ben Wattenberg, Penn Kemble, and Carl Gershman; the foreign policy specialists Walter Laqueur, Edward Luttwak, and Robert Tucker; the traditionalist Catholic academics Michael Novak and William Bennett; and the art critic Hilton Kramer. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick straddled the realms of scholarship and politics. No one was more important to the movement's rise to prominence than the intellectual entrepreneur Irving Kristol, who sometimes joked that he was the only self-confessed neoconservative.
Many of the older neoconservatives had briefly been radical socialists in their youth. By the 1950s, they affirmed centrist liberalism in philosophy and practice. The sociologists Bell, Glazer, and Lipset formulated an influential interpretation of American politics in which a pragmatic, pluralist center was besieged by parallel threats from "extremist" ideologues: Communists and "anti-Communists" on the left and a "radical right" represented most visibly by Senators Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater. This position did not preclude nudging the center slightly leftward. In the early 1960s, for example, Podhoretz at Commentary published articles holding the United States partly responsible for the start of the Cold War.
The future neocons began to reevaluate liberalism, which was itself in flux, in response to the domestic turmoil and international crises of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Great Society antipoverty programs seemed utopian in conception or flawed in implementation. "Affirmative action" especially violated their belief, often reinforced by their own experiences, that success should come through merit. New Left demonstrators not only disdained the civility they cherished, but also disrupted their classrooms. Feminist and gay activists challenged the bourgeois values they considered essential underpinnings of a democratic order. Although few future neoconservatives supported the Vietnam War, many believed that the United States lost more than it gained from detente with the Soviet Union. Jewish neoconservatives were especially upset by the growing anti-Semitism within the black community and the increasing criticism of Israel by the left. All of these trends, they contended, were at least tolerated by the "new politics" wing of the Democratic Party that won the presidential nomination for Senator George McGovern in 1972.
These disaffected liberals moved rightward with varying speed. As early as 1965, Kristol and Bell founded Public Interest magazine to critically examine the flaws in Great Society programs. Appointed ambassador to the United Nations by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975, Moynihan defended both American foreign policy and Israel's legitimacy. Bell and Glazer endorsed McGovern in 1972. The next year, however, both joined Lipset, Podhoretz, Decter, Kirkpatrick, Novak, and Wattenberg in creating the Coalition for a Democratic Majority in order to save their party from the "new politics." The future neoconservatives overwhelmingly favored Senator Henry Jackson, a staunch cold warrior, friend of Israel, and supporter of the welfare state, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.
Jimmy Carter, who won the nomination and the election, soon disappointed the neoconservatives. Despite their concerted efforts, none received a high-level appointment in his administration. Moreover, Carter enthusiastically practiced affirmative action, remained committed to detente, and sympathized with Third World nationalism. Jewish neoconservatives complained that he pressed Israel harder than Egypt while negotiating peace between the two countries in 1978 through 1979. Such behavior was only part of a foreign policy that looked like weakness or a "new isolationism" at best, "appeasement" at worst. Writing in Commentary in 1979, Kirkpatrick claimed that Carter not only overlooked human rights abuses by the Soviet Union, but also drove from power "friendly authoritarians" like the Shah of Iran, who were then succeeded by full-fledged "totalitarian" regimes.
By 1980, the increasingly visible neoconservative network had formulated a comprehensive critique of American politics, culture, and foreign policy. Essentially they updated the pluralist theory of the 1950s to account for recent social changes and to justify their own turn rightward. According to this interpretation, the Democratic Party—and much of American culture—had been captured by "ideologues" whose ranks now included social radicals, black nationalists, self-indulgent feminists, and proponents of gay rights. These extremists scorned the values cherished by most Americans, that is, faith in capitalism, hard work, sexual propriety, masculine toughness, the nuclear family, and democracy. Indeed, disdain for democracy explained both their snobbish rejection of middle-class life at home and their sympathy for communist or Third World tyranny abroad. Such views had wide currency not because they appealed to ordinary Americans, but because they were disseminated by a powerful "new class" of academics, journalists, and others in the cultural elite.
Although a caricature in many respects, this interpretation of American life and recent politics attracted the attention of Republicans seeking to build a majority coalition. Ronald Reagan courted the neoconservatives during the 1980 presidential campaign and subsequently recruited many of them into his administration. Kirkpatrick was appointed ambassador to the United Nations, Novak served as lower level diplomat there, and Gershman headed the newly created National Endowment for Democracy. Second-generation neocons from the political rather than the intellectual world held important midlevel positions. Richard Perle, a former aide to Henry Jackson, became assistant secretary of defense. Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, Podhoretz's son-in-law, helped to formulate policy toward Central America and played a major role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Other neocons served on government advisory boards dealing with education and foreign policy. Outside of the Reagan administration, neo-conservatism thrived in the more conservative climate of the 1980s. In 1981, Decter organized the Committee for the Free World, an international collection of writers, artists, and labor leaders dedicated to mounting a cultural defense against the "rising tide of totalitarianism." The next year, Kramer founded New Criterion magazine to defend high culture and aesthetic modernism against leftist detractors. Kristol began publishing National Interest in 1985 to analyze foreign policy from a "realist" perspective. The centrist New Republic and many mainstream newspapers welcomed articles by neoconservatives.
Success brought division and controversy. Moynihan, elected senator from New York in 1976, drifted back into the ranks of liberal Democrats. Kristol thought the Reagan administration was too harsh on the welfare state. Leading the most avid cold warriors, Podhoretz denied that the Soviet Union was becoming more democratic in the late 1980s and chided Reagan for pursuing detente in fact if not in name. The most bitter debates arrayed neoconservatives against traditionalist conservatives (who sometimes called themselves paleocons). These two intellectual factions within the Reagan coalition were separated by background, worldview, and questions of patronage. The neoconservatives were disproportionately Jewish, accepted much of the welfare state, and enthusiastically endorsed efforts to defeat international communism. The paleocons were devoutly Christians, opposed activist government in principle, and expressed reservations about both internationalist foreign policy and the cultural impact of capitalism. Tensions became apparent in 1981 when Reagan chose neocon William Bennett instead of a traditionalist to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities.
By 1986, traditionalists were accusing neoconservatives of excessive devotion to Israel. Neocons countered with some warrant that paleoconservatives harbored anti-Semites in their ranks. These factional disputes obscured the fact that neoconservatives fitted better into a coalition led by Ronald Reagan, a former liberal Democrat, who still celebrated the New Deal and wanted above all to win the Cold War.
By the early 1990s at the latest, a coherent neoconservative movement no longer existed, even though many erstwhile neocons remained active. As the Cold War ended and memories of the volatile 1960s faded, the serious scholars among them returned to scholarship. Bell, Glazer, and Lipset in particular wrote thoughtful analyses of American society. Moynihan served in the Senate until 2001. The most polemical neocons, notably Podhoretz and Kramer, persisted in attacking feminism, gay activism, and the alleged triumph of "political correctness" in higher education. Yet, after years of ideological cross-fertilization, such polemics were virtually indistinguishable from those of traditionalists. Second-generation neocons increasingly emphasized foreign policy, rarely defended the welfare state, and thus fit easily into the Republican coalitions that elected Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Irving Kristol's son William, who served as chief-of-staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and then edited the conservative magazine Weekly Standard, joked that any neoconservative who drifted back to the Democrats was a "pseudo-neocon." Although neoconservatism as a distinctive intellectual enterprise congealed and dispersed in less than two decades, the neocons provided a serious intellectual rationale for the Reagan administration's policies and helped to reorient the broader conservative movement that remained influential into the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
Bloom, Alexander. Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Dorrien, Gary J. The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
Ehrman, John, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs 1945–1994. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
Gottfried, Paul, and Thomas Fleming. The Conservative Movement. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
Kristol, Irving. Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea. New York: Free Press, 1995.
Lora, Ron, and William Henry Longton, eds. The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Peele, Gillian. Revival and Reaction: The Right in Contemporary America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Steinfels, Peter. The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
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Neoconservatism is the political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of liberalism and the New Left counter-culture of the 1960s. It was formulated in the 1950s, achieved its first victory in Barry Goldwater's nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964,[1][2], and coalesced in the 1970s.
It influenced the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and the George W. Bush presidential administrations, representing the re-alignment in American politics, and the defection of "an important and highly articulate group of liberals to the other side."[3] One accomplishment was "to make criticism from the Right acceptable in the intellectual, artistic, and journalistic circles where conservatives had long been regarded with suspicion."[3]
As a term, neoconservative first was used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to identify a group of people (who thought they were liberals) as newly simulated conservative ex-liberals. The term stuck because neoconservatives were confused with true conservative.[4]
The idea that Liberalism "no longer knew what it was talking about" is Neoconservatism's central theme.[5] By the 1980s, being considered a conservative was no longer a cultural insult.[4]
The etymology of this conservatism is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, co-founder of Encounter magazine, and of its editor (1953–58),[6] Norman Podhoretz,[7] and others who described themselves as "neoconservatives" during the Cold War.
Prominent neoconservatives are associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
Neoconservative journalists, policy analysts, and politicians, are often dubbed "neocons" by supporters and critics alike; however, in general, the movement's critics use the term more often than their supporters.[8][9]
History and origins
Great Depression and World War II
"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the political left, especially in response to key developments in modern American history.[citation needed]
The forerunners of neoconservatism were often liberals or
Some of the mid-20th Century New York Intellectuals were forebears of neoconservatism. The most notable was literary critic Lionel Trilling, who wrote, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." It was this liberal "vital center," a term coined by the historian and liberal theorist Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., that the neoconservatives would see as threatened by New Left extremism. But the majority of "vital center" liberals remained affiliated with the Democratic Party, retained left-of-center viewpoints, and opposed Republican politicians such as Richard Nixon who first attracted neoconservative support.[citation needed]
Initially, the neoconservatives were less concerned with foreign policy than with domestic policy. Irving Kristol's journal, The Public Interest, focused on ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended and harmful consequences. Norman Podhoretz's magazine Commentary, formerly a journal of the liberal left, had more of a cultural focus, criticizing excesses of the movements for black equality and women's rights and the academic left. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the early neoconservatives had been socialists or liberals strongly supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement, integration, and Martin Luther King.[10][7]
Opposition to Détente with the Soviet Union and the views of the anti-Soviet and anti-capitalist New Left, which emerged in response to the Soviet Union's break with Stalinism in the 1950s, was one factor that would cause the Neoconservatives to split with the "liberal consensus" of the early postwar years.
Drift away from New Left and Great Society
While initially the views of the New Left became very popular among the children of hard-line Communists, often Jewish immigrant families on the edge of poverty and including those of some of today's most famous neoconservative thinkers, some neoconservatives also came to despise the counterculture of the 1960s and what they felt was a growing anti-Americanism among many baby boomers, exemplified in the emerging New Left by the movement against the Vietnam War.
As the radicalization of the New Left pushed these intellectuals farther to the right, they moved toward a more aggressive militarism, while also becoming disillusioned with the Johnson Administration's Great Society.
Academics in these circles, many of whom were still Democrats, rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on
defense issues in the 1970s, especially after the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. Many of their concerns were voiced in the
influential 1970 bestseller The Real Majority by
future television commentator and neo-conservative Ben
Wattenberg. Many clustered around Sen.
Michael Lind, a self-described former neoconservative, wrote that neoconservatism
"originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and
In his semi-autobiographical book, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Irving Kristol cites a number of influences on his own thought, including not only Max Shachtman and Leo Strauss but also the skeptical liberal literary critic Lionel Trilling. The influence of Leo Strauss and his disciples on some neoconservatives has generated some controversy.
Far Left-wing past of some neoconservatives
The neoconservative desire to spread democracy abroad has been likened to the Trotskyist theory of
Critics of Lind contend that there is no theoretical connection between Trotsky's "permanent revolution," and that the idea of a "global democratic revolution" instead has Wilsonian roots.[13] While both Wilsonianism and the theory of permanent revolution have been proposed as strategies for underdeveloped parts of the world, Wilson proposed capitalist solutions, while Trotsky advocated socialist solutions.
Lind argues furthermore that "The organization as well as the ideology of the neoconservative movement has left-liberal origins." He draws a line from the center-left anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom to the Committee on the Present Danger to the Project for the New American Century and adds that "European social-democratic models inspired the quintessential neocon institution, the National Endowment for Democracy."
1980s
During the 1970s political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick increasingly criticized the Democratic Party, of which she had been a member since the nomination of the antiwar George McGovern. She accused the Jimmy Carter administration of using a double standard by tolerating human rights abuses in Communist states, while withdrawing support of anti-communist autocrats on the basis of human rights. She joined Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign as his foreign policy advisor and later became the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a position she held for four years.
During this period, the United States increased its support for anti-communist governments engaged in human rights abuses as part of its general hard line against communism. As the 1980s wore on, younger second-generation neoconservatives, such as Elliott Abrams, pushed for a clear policy of supporting democracy against both left and right wing dictators. This debate led to a policy shift in 1986, when the Reagan administration urged Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos to step down amid turmoil over a rigged election. Abrams also supported the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that resulted in the restoration of democratic rule and Pinochet's eventual removal from office. Through the National Endowment for Democracy, led by another neoconservative, Carl Gershman, funds were directed to the anti-Pinochet opposition in order to ensure a fair election.
1990s
During the 1990s, neoconservatives were once again in the opposition side of the foreign policy establishment, both under the Republican Administration of President George H. W. Bush and that of his Democratic successor, President Bill Clinton. Many critics charged that the neoconservatives lost their raison d'être and influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.[citation needed] Others argue that they lost their status due to their association with the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration.
Neoconservative writers were critical of the post-Cold War foreign policy of both George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which they criticized for reducing military expenditures and lacking a sense of idealism in the promotion of American interests. They accused these Administrations of lacking both "moral clarity" and the conviction to pursue unilaterally America's international strategic interests.[citation needed]
Particularly galvanizing to the movement was the decision of George H. W. Bush and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War in 1991. Some neoconservatives viewed this policy, and the decision not to support indigenous dissident groups such as the Kurds and Shiites in their 1991-1992 resistance to Hussein, as a betrayal of democratic principles.[citation needed]
Ironically, some of those same targets of criticism would later become fierce advocates of neoconservative policies. In 1992, referring to the first Gulf War, then United States Secretary of Defense and future Vice President Dick Cheney, said:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home..."
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many associated with neoconservatism were pushing for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton was signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with both neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.[14]
Neoconservatives were also members of the blue team, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the People's Republic of China and strong military and diplomatic support for Taiwan.
Definition and views
What made neoconservatism distinctive
According to Irving Kristol, the founder and "god-father" of Neoconservatism, there are three basic pillars of Neoconservatism: a low tax, pro-growth and less risk-averse approach to economics; a less libertarian approach to domestic affairs than some other conservatives; and an idealist, expansive foreign policy.[15] Kristol also claims three distinctive aspects of neoconservatism from previous forms of conservatism: a forward-looking approach drawn from their liberal heritage, rather than the reactionary and dour approach of previous conservatives; a meliorative outlook, proposing alternate reforms rather than simply attacking social liberal reforms; taking philosophical or ideological ideas very seriously.[16]
Usage and general views
The original neoconservatives were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift
on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neoconservatives clustered around
The term has been used before, and its meaning has changed over time. Writing in The Contemporary Review (London) in 1883, Henry Dunckley uses the term to describe factions within the Conservative Party; James Bryce again uses it in his Modern Democracies (1921) to describe British political history of the 1880s. The German authoritarians Carl Schmitt who became professor at the University of Berlin in 1933, the same year that he entered the Nazi party (NSDAP) and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck were called "neo-conservatives".[17] In "The Future of Democratic Values" in Partisan Review, July-August 1943, Dwight MacDonald complained of "the neo-conservatives of our time [who] reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress." He cited as an example Jacques Barzun, who was "attempting to combine progressive values and conservative concepts."
In the early 1970s,
Irving Kristol remarked that a neoconservative is a "liberal mugged by reality," one who became more conservative after seeing the results of liberal policies. The term "neoconservative" also refers more often to institutions like the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), Commentary and The Weekly Standard than to the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review or National Review.
Some observers name political philosopher Leo Strauss as a major intellectual antecedent of neoconservativism, mostly because of his influence on Allan Bloom and the influence of Closing of the American Mind.
Overview
Historically, neoconservatives supported a militant anticommunism [18], tolerated more social welfare spending than was sometimes acceptable to libertarians and mainstream conservatives, and sympathized with a non-traditional foreign policy agenda that was less deferential to traditional conceptions of diplomacy and international law and less inclined to compromise principles, even if that meant unilateral action.
The movement began to focus on such foreign issues in the mid-1970s [citation needed]. However, it first crystallized in the late 1960s as an effort to combat the radical cultural changes taking place within the United States. Irving Kristol wrote: "If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counterculture."[19] Norman Podhoretz agreed: "Revulsion against the counterculture accounted for more converts to neoconservatism than any other single factor."[20] Ira Chernus, a professor at the University of Colorado, argues that the deepest root of the neoconservative movement is its fear that the counterculture would undermine the authority of traditional values and moral norms. Because neoconservatives believe that human nature is innately selfish, they believe that a society with no commonly accepted values based on religion or ancient tradition will end up in a war of all against all. They also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos.[21]
According to Peter Steinfels, a historian of the movement, the neoconservatives' "emphasis on foreign affairs emerged after the New Left and the counterculture had dissolved as convincing foils for neoconservatism . . . The essential source of their anxiety is not military or geopolitical or to be found overseas at all; it is domestic and cultural and ideological."[22] Neoconservative foreign policy parallels their domestic policy. They insist that the U.S. military must be strong enough to control the world, or else the world will descend into chaos.
Believing that America should "export democracy," that is, spread its ideals of government, economics, and culture abroad, they grew to reject U.S. reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish these objectives. Compared to other U.S. conservatives, neoconservatives may be characterized by an idealist stance on foreign policy, a lesser social conservatism, and a much weaker dedication to a policy of minimal government, and, in the past, a greater acceptance of the welfare state, though none of these qualities are necessarily requisite.
Aggressive support for democracies and nation building is additionally justified by a belief that, over the long term, it will reduce the extremism that is a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Neoconservatives, along with many other political theorists, have argued that democratic regimes are less likely to instigate a war than a country with an authoritarian form of government. Further, they argue that the lack of freedoms, lack of economic opportunities, and the lack of secular general education in authoritarian regimes promotes radicalism and extremism. Consequently, neoconservatives advocate the spread of democracy to regions of the world where it currently does not prevail, most notably the Arab nations of the Middle East, communist China, North Korea and Iran.
Neoconservatives also have a very strong belief in the ability of the United States to install democracy after a conflict - comparisons with denazification in Germany and installing a democratic government in Japan starting in 1945 are often made - and they have a principled belief in defending democracies against aggression. This belief has guided U.S. policy in Iraq after the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime, where the U.S. insisted on organizing elections as soon as practical [citation needed].
Distinctions from other conservatives
Most people currently described as "neoconservatives" are members of the Republican Party, but while neoconservatives have generally been in electoral alignment with other conservatives, have served in the same Presidential Administrations, and have often ignored intra-conservative ideological differences in alliance against those to their left, there are notable differences between neoconservative and traditional or "paleoconservative" views. In particular, neoconservatives disagree with the nativist, protectionist, and non-interventionist foreign policy rooted in American history and once exemplified by the ex-Republican "paleoconservative" Pat Buchanan. As compared with traditional conservatism and libertarianism, which also sometimes exhibits a non-interventionist strain, neoconservatism is characterized by an increased emphasis on defense capability, a willingness to challenge regimes deemed hostile to the values and interests of the United States, pressing for free-market policies abroad. Neoconservatives are strong believers in democratic peace theory.
The support of neoconservatives for the civil rights movement also marked it off from traditional conservatism.[10][7]
Neoconservatives also differ with the traditional "pragmatic" approach to foreign policy often associated with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, which emphasized pragmatic accommodation with dictators; peace through negotiations, diplomacy, and arms control; détente and containment—rather than rollback—of the Soviet Union; and the initiation of the process that led to ties between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States.
Criticism of the term "neoconservative"
Some of those identified as neoconservatives refuse to embrace the term. Critics argue that it lacks coherent definition, or that it is coherent only in a Cold War context. Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Institute, argues that the neoconservative label is used as a pejorative by anti-Semites: "neo-conservative" is a codeword for Jewish; however, there are neoconservatives who are not Jewish, so while some may use the term, or "neocon", to refer to Jews, a neoconservative is not necessarily Jewish, and the term is not always used negatively. Some claim [citation needed] that just as antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish[citation needed]. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.[23]
Whilst it is argued that the neoconservative label is used as a pejorative by anti-Semites as a codeword for Jewish, others argue that it is also used to describe Zionists, not those of Jewish decent necessarily but those of whom are pro-Israeli or who have a pro-Israel agenda. [citation needed]
Critics of Rubin might argue that because neoconservatives aren't necessarily Jewish, this would be an instance of invoking "New Anti-Semitism" and that it would be anti-Semitic to identify support for Israel with the Jewish people; according to Norman Finkelstein, it would be anti-Semitic "both to identify and not to identify Israel with Jews."[24]
The fact that the use of the term "neoconservative" has rapidly risen since the 2003 Iraq War is cited by conservatives as proof that the term is largely irrelevant in the long term. David Horowitz, a conservative author, offered this critique in a recent interview with an Italian newspaper:
[Neo-conservatism] is a term almost exclusively used by the enemies of America's liberation of Iraq. There is no "neo-conservative" movement in the United States. When there was one, it was made up of former Democrats who embraced the welfare state but supported Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Today "neo-conservatism" identifies those who believe in an aggressive policy against radical Islam and the global terrorists.[citation needed]
Many other supposed neoconservatives, similarly, believe that the term has been adopted by the political left to stereotype supporters of U.S. foreign policy under the George W. Bush administration, or as a conspiracy theory, saying the term is used simply to label Jews in a negative way, or to downcast any support given of Israel or some supposed Jewish tenet often associating Jews with control of the media, the entertainment industry, the government of the United States of America, or the concept of capitalism. Paul Wolfowitz has denounced the term as a meaningless label, saying:
[If] you read the Middle Eastern press, it seems to be a euphemism for some kind of nefarious Zionist conspiracy. But I think that, in my view it's very important to approach [foreign policy] not from a doctrinal point of view. I think almost every case I know is different. Indonesia is different from the Philippines. Iraq is different from Indonesia. I think there are certain principles that I believe are American principles – both realism and idealism. I guess I'd like to call myself a democratic realist. I don't know if that makes me a neo-conservative or not.
Jonah Goldberg and others have rejected the label as trite and over-used, arguing "There's nothing 'neo' about me: I was never anything other than conservative." Other critics have similarly argued the term has been rendered meaningless through excessive and inconsistent use. For example, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are often identified as leading "neoconservatives" despite the fact that both men have ostensibly been life-long conservative Republicans (though Cheney has been vocally supportive of the ideas of Irving Kristol). Such critics thus largely reject the claim that there is a neoconservative movement separate from traditional American conservatism.
Other traditional conservatives are likewise skeptical of the contemporary usage of the term, and may dislike being associated with the stereotypes, or even the supposed agendas of neoconservatism. Conservative columnist David Harsanyi wrote, "These days, it seems that even temperate support for military action against dictators and terrorists qualifies you a neocon."[25]
Pejorative use
The term is frequently used pejoratively by self-described paleoconservatives, Democrats, and by libertarians of both left and right.
Criticism
Critics take issue with neoconservatives' support for aggressive foreign policy; critics from the left especially take issue with what they characterize as unilateralism and lack of concern with international consensus through organizations such as the United Nations.[26][27][28] Neoconservatives respond by describing their shared view as a belief that national security is best attained by promoting freedom and democracy abroad through the support of pro-democracy movements, foreign aid and in certain cases military intervention. This is a departure from the traditional conservative tendency to support friendly regimes in matters of trade and anti-communism even at the expense of undermining existing democratic systems. Author Paul Berman in his book Terror and Liberalism describes it as, "Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for freedom for others." Michael Lind stated in the documentary film The Power of Nightmares that for "the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. Religion becomes what Plato called a 'noble lie.'"[29]
Jacobinism, Bolshevism
The "traditional" conservative Claes G. Ryn has argued that neoconservatives are "a variety of neo-Jacobins." Ryn maintains that true conservatives deny the existence of a universal political and economic philosophy and model that is suitable for all societies and cultures, and believe that a society's institutions should be adjusted to suit its culture, while Neo-Jacobins
are attached in the end to ahistorical, supranational principles that they believe should supplant the traditions of particular societies. The new Jacobins see themselves as on the side of right and fighting evil and are not prone to respecting or looking for common ground with countries that do not share their democratic preferences. (Ryn 2003: 387)
Further examining the relationship between Neoconservatism and moral rhetoric, Ryn argues that
Neo-Jacobinism regards America as founded on universal principles and assigns to the United States the role of supervising the remaking of the world. Its adherents have the intense dogmatic commitment of true believers and are highly prone to moralistic rhetoric. They demand, among other things, "moral clarity" in dealing with regimes that stand in the way of America's universal purpose. They see themselves as champions of "virtue." (p. 384).
Thus, according to Ryn, neoconservatism is analogous to Bolshevism: in the same way that the Bolsheviks wanted to destroy established ways of life throughout the world to replace them with communism, the neoconservatives want to do the same, only imposing free-market capitalism and American-style liberal democracy instead of socialism.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, had the following to say in a December, 2005 interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel: "They are not new conservatives. They're Jacobins. Their predecessor is French Revolution leader Maximilien Robespierre."[30]
Conflict with Libertarian conservatives
There is also conflict between neoconservatives and libertarian conservatives. Libertarian conservatives are ideologically opposed to the expansiveness of federal government programs and regard neoconservative foreign policy ambitions with outspoken distrust. They view the neoconservative promotion of preemptive war as morally unjust, dangerous to the preservation of a free society, and against the principles of the Constitution. Rep Ron Paul, a Republican libertarian who holds a Texas district, and is a 2008 Presidential candidate, has spoken out against the Bush Administration's foreign policy, specifically against the influence of "neocons."[31]
Friction with paleoconservatism
Disputes over Israel and public policy contributed to a sharp conflict with "paleoconservatives," starting in the 1980s. The movement's name ("old conservative") was taken as a rebuke to the "neo" side. The "paleocons" view the neoconservatives as "militarist social democrats" and interlopers who deviate from traditional conservatism agenda on issues as diverse as federalism, immigration, foreign policy, the welfare state, and in some cases abortion, feminism and homosexuality. All of this leads to a debate over what counts as conservatism.[citation needed]
The paleoconservatives argue that neoconservatives are an illegitimate addition to the conservative movement. Pat Buchanan calls neoconservatism "a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology."[32] The open rift is often traced back to a 1981 dispute over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Mel Bradford, a Southerner, to run the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford withdrew after neoconservatives complained that he had criticized Abraham Lincoln; the paleoconservatives supported Bradford.
Besides Buchanan and Bradford, the most prominent paleoconservatives include Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Gottfried, Thomas Fleming, Chilton Williamson, Joseph Sobran,Cline Adams and Clyde N. Wilson. The two leading paleoconservative publications are Chronicles and The American Conservative, which Buchanan helped create. In addition, paleolibertarianism is a parallel movement that stresses free market economics;
Related publications and institutions
Institutions
- American Enterprise Institute
- Bradley Foundation
- Foundation for Defense of Democracies
- Henry Jackson Society
- Hudson Institute
- Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
- Project for the New American Century
- Strategic Studies Group GEES
Publications
Political magazines featuring neoconservative ideas:
Criticism in popular culture
Music
- The Rolling Stones' song "Sweet Neo Con", from the A Bigger Bang album (2005), is critical of American Neoconservatism, with implied references to the Iraq War, Halliburton, George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice.
- The Offspring's 2003 album, Splinter, included the song "Neocon". The song's lyrics, though defiant, are vague. However, it is generally assumed to be referring to George W. Bush, since The Offspring have been critical of him (both vocally and lyrically) in the past.
- Pro-Pain has a song critical of neo-conservatives entitled, "Neo Con".
Parodies
- Andrew Hearst, "Help the Warmongers Help Themselves", Vanity Fair, October 2006.
- Derek Copold, Jonah Goldberg Concludes Quest for First "Pope of All Islam", Texas Mercury, May 01, 2002. Archived 13 June 2006 on the Internet Archive.
See also
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
External links
Notes
- ^ Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001)
- ^ William F. Buckley, Jr., Up From Liberalism (Stein and Day, 1984)
- ^ a b E.J. Dionne, (1991) Why Americans Hate Politics, New York, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc. p. 56. ISBN 0-671-68255-5
- ^ a b E.J. Dionne, (1991) Why Americans Hate Politics, New York, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc. p. 55. ISBN 0-671-68255