Oliver Kamm writes of the trend among British journalists to use the term "neoconservative" as a "pretentious synonym" for conservative. He's right, as so often, and the article he cites as an illustration of this is indeed an illustration of it. (It's from Elsbeth Lindner of the Evening Standard, and features a photo of Ann Coulter captioned "leading neo-con author".)
I suppose the British journalists who write this way intend, by adding "neo," to denote the "latest" right-ward tack in the political culture, and merely to refer to the current crop of conservatives. (When they don't mean simply "Jews" which is a can of worms I'll refrain from re-opening at the moment.)
Many of them seem genuinely unaware that "neoconservatism" refers to something more or less specific (though argued about), and that using it as a blanket term for Today's Right Wing Bastards is inapt and confusing, and reflects an ignorance that would surely be quite embarrassing to them if their politically mono-chromatic daily lives ever brought them in contact with any person or writer who knew enough, cared enough, or found it irritating enough, to point it out. Kamm hints that this ignorance may be willful, and I think that may well be the case.
Of course, it would be quite easy for any of these star journalists to educate themselves by taking a few minutes to type "neoconservatism" into a google box. Let us imagine the world of possibilities, yet refrain from wild, utopian speculation: these are journalists, after all. (Lindner went so far as to read an issue of Vanity Fair in researching her article, which is a start. However, breezing through Tanenhaus's cursory crash course in Neoconservatism for Dummies failed to deter the references to Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh as "leading" neo-con intellectuals.)
That's all by the way, really. My main reason for bringing this up is to call attention to yet another classic Kamm-ism. Kamm mentions Robert Kagan's justly celebrated Paradise and Power and adds:
This sober and thoughtful analysis has proved influential under its British as well as American publishing imprint. Or as Elsbeth Lindner prefers to put it:Heh, heh... Posted by Dr. Frank at July 9, 2003 04:51 PM | TrackBackNeo-con publishing may already have peaked. None of its key works has appeared in Britain or in translation.
Well, the Standard will just have to keep on wishing.
Lately, I've noticed that a lot of left-of-center folks seem to have adopted this tactic as well. They use the term "neo-con" to refer derogatively to right-wingers they dislike.
Posted by: Greg at July 9, 2003 06:52 PMThis is the same sort of sloppiness that has surrounded the epithet "fascist" for years. It is one thing to use the term (accurately) when talking about Mussolini's brown shirts, it is probably forgivable to use it (rather less accurately) when discussing National Socialism under Hitler. Unfortunately, "fascist" has now been used so often to mean "anyone I don't like who doesn't share my personal, probably socialist-based, worldview, or maybe agrees with anything John Ashcroft has ever said" that it has become essentially meaningless. The real meaning "neo con" is slipping away before our eyes.
Posted by: G. Wallace at July 9, 2003 07:30 PMI don't claim to have a good understanding of what neoconservativism is about, but I wonder if the excitement of conservative opposition to use the term might come from (possibly subconscious) semantic connections to the term "neo-Nazi".
Posted by: Dave Bug at July 10, 2003 02:20 PMThe term "neo-con" referred to members who left the Democratic party in the cold war. These people believed in a strong national defense and perceived a weakness on national defense in the Democratic party. Most supported Reagan.
Some "notable" neo-cons - Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney (but only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays), Irving and Bill Kristal, Bill Bennett, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle. Not all neo-cons left the Democratic party, Pat Moynihan is one example, the editors of "The New Republic" are another.
Rush Limbaugh is not a neo-con, nor is Coulter. Pat Buchanan is more properly described as a "paleo-con". Sean Hannity is more properly described as an "idiot".
Some of these "neo-cons" were jewish, some not (Bill Bennett is not, Bill Kristal is).
Posted by: TAS at July 10, 2003 04:08 PMTerms slosh around on the left, too.
There's the term "neo-liberal" which in the 80's meant Gary Hart and Bill Bradley, but today seems to be the European term for "neo-conservative"
As for "liberal," when Democratic candidates ran away from the term, people further to the left with few prospects of electoral success began to claim it.
Neo-con = big government Republicans.
They aren't interested in the traditional conservative themes of limited government and keeping spending under control. (Don't believe me? Look how the Fed Govt has bloated under Bush. Makes Clinton look like a fiscal conservative). I think perhaps Nixon was the first Neo-con.
Posted by: dude at July 11, 2003 05:00 PMDude, you are quite wrong. Bush can be accurately described as a big government Republican, and is certainly in no way a fiscal conservative. But that's not what "neo-conservatism" (by any definition) refers to. Read Midge Decter, Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, or the New Republic to get an idea of different flavors of what it does refer to: the relative size and cost of the public sector (except with regard to defense, perhaps) isn't anything like a defining issue and is neither here nor there really.
There was nothing remotely "neo-con" about Nixon. Kissinger's foreign policy ideas amounted to something like the polar opposite of the fundaments of neo-conservatism, in fact. Bush occasionally talks the neo-con talk (in sporadic pro-Democracy speeches) and occasionally walks the neo-con walk, as in Iraq. There are neo-cons in his administration, but he's not one.
Posted by: Dr. Frank at July 11, 2003 05:30 PM