The End of the Neocons? At Least Get Rid of the Term
Nov. 14, 2006 — -- Does the departure of Don Rumsfeld mean the end of "neocon" influence in Washington?
Maybe not, but one can only hope that this development contributes to the long-overdue disappearance of the term "neocon" itself -- a dumb, destructive designation that, from the earliest days of the Bush administration, has been meaningless, misleading, insulting and irretrievably tinged with ethnic prejudice.
How many of the current policymakers or politicians identified as "neocons" or "neoconservatives" have ever embraced the title?
In the last six years, it's been employed as a form of insult and dismissal -- the same way that descriptions like "fundamentalist" or, in a previous era, "fellow traveler" or "communist sympathizer" might be cited to indicate affiliation with a suspect, cultlike fringe group.
To decry the current misuse of the term "neocon" isn't to deny the impact and influence of real neoconservatives about 30 years ago.
Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz (and their colleagues at their prestigious magazines, The Public Interest and Commentary) represented an important element in the Reagan revolution and the reinvigoration of right-wing ideas in the intellectual community.
These powerful thinkers traveled from left to right, rejecting the Trotskyite enthusiasms of their youth, embracing the muscular anti-Communism of Democrats like Sen. Henry Jackson, and, eventually, migrating into the mainstream of the Republican Party.
Irving Kristol famously described his political persuasion by explaining: "A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."
Once the neocons joined the Republican coalition, however, (by 1984 in all cases) they felt no need to constitute a distinctive, self-conscious faction with the party or in the conservative movement in general.
As a result, at no point prior to the second Bush administration did the mainstream media point to a "neocon" movement as a notable influence on Republican politics or governance.
In fact, Bill Kristol, son of founding neoconservative Irving Kristol, served as the chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle without any voices in the media pointing to neocon "infiltration" or "impact" on the Bush 41 administration.
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