The Neocons' Unabashed Reversal (some history of the term also)

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57779-2005Apr15.html

The Neocons' Unabashed Reversal

By Michael Kinsley

Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page B07

The term "neoconservative" started out as an insult and is still used that way. When people say that the selection of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank marks the triumph of neocons in Bush administration foreign policy, they are generally not indicating pleasure. Cynics say they are indicating anti-Semitism: A neocon is a Jewish intellectual you disagree with. That's way too harsh. But what does neoconservative mean?

Writing in the current issue of the National Interest, Rich Lowry, a conservative of the non-neo variety, defines a neocon as someone with a "messianic vision" of using American power to spread democracy, an indifference to the crucial distinction between what would be nice and what is essential to national security, and excessive optimism that we can arrange things according to our own values in strange and faraway lands. Wow. It was not always thus.

When the word first surfaced in the 1970s, its sting was in calling people conservatives five or 10 minutes before they were prepared to admit it. The core group had famously been Trotskyists at City College in the 1930s. In the 1950s and 1960s they were anti-communist liberals and supporters of the Vietnam War. The antiwar movement and the '60s counterculture alienated them. Affirmative action was another sore point. Finally Irving Kristol, dubbed the neocon godfather, decided to take it as a compliment. He defined a neoconservative as "a liberal mugged by reality." That phrase also summarizes the plot of the Great Neocon Novel, "Mr. Sammler's Planet," by Saul Bellow. Bellow's last novel, "Ravelstein," actually has a character modeled after Wolfowitz.

The great neocon theme was tough-minded pragmatism in the face of liberal naivete. Liberals were sentimental. They believed that people were basically good or could easily be made so. Domestically, liberal social programs were no match for the intractable underclass or even made the situation worse. In the world, liberals were too hung up on democracy and human rights, refusing to recognize that the only important question about other countries is: Friend or foe?

[KlatooBNikto]

1. One need look no further than their Guru, Leo Strauss for what

inspires them. This evil creature, escaped from the clutches of the Nazis, but maintained a healthy admiration for his tormentor, Hitler.As soon as he landed at the University of Chicago, the snakepit that bred most of the neocons, he lost no time in coming up with his vision of how political structures hsould be organized.The Elite, of which he, of course, was one, were the pitilessly realistic Supermen of the Nietzsche variety .They were entitled to rule the masses and allowed to lie at will to the masses.He simply detested American style Democracy because it gave an equal seat at the table to people of the wrong race, color and religion.One might say old Leo simply wanted to reproduce Hitler's Mein Kampf in the U.S.