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  • From: James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers:http"@metalab.unc.edu://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/ <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] The tables of David and Lee
  • Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2004 06:47:45 -0400


On Oct 3, 2004, at 7:01 PM, Evan Zimmerman wrote:

The Neo-cons are retired or dead? Isn't that like saying because
Buckley is retired, Conservatives are retired? Sartre is dead, so
Existentialists are dead?

Not really. Neoconservatives were a particular phenomenon at a particular time. You can be an existentialist, or a conservative, or a Platonist, or Marxist, but neo-cons were "liberals mugged by reality". People who had been on the political left for a long time, who realized that the programs they advocated were not working; that, in fact, their positions had produced the opposite of their intentions.

But yeah: people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James Q. Wilson, Norman Podhoretz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick; some even call Richard John Neuhaus a neo-conservative, which is possible, though I'm only familiar with his work in the last 10 or fifteen years and wouldn't say one way or the other.

Perhaps the founders of the movement are retired or dead, but many who
are widely acknowledged to be Neo-cons are still very much on the job
in the Pentagon and, depending on whom you believe, in the White
House.

"Widely acknowledged" in certain corners, but perhaps "widely accused" or "widely labelled" would be more accurate. Calling someone a neocon sounds good, like calling someone a "paleoliberal" or "fascist". But calling William Kristol or Paul Wolfowitz a neoconservative doesn't make it true.

I would imagine you're just using the term to describe a particular school of thought with which you take issue, and with which you disagree. I would agree that there's a school of thought there, but I don't know what you'd call it, particularly since there's a lot of disagreement even within that school of thought over foreign policy. Most of the leading luminaries within it agreed about Iraq, though for differing reasons. But they're still having their post-Cold War debate, and in some ways Iraq has only exacerbated some of the differences between them.

But that's a discussion for another time.

--
James Dasher
misterdasher dot com
IM misterdasher





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