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[James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>]

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