The The New York Times has an article up which claims that there might be a war going on between pragmatists and neoconservatives in the McCain camp. They don’t have whole lot of facts to back their case up, nor do they have a good basis to argue that McCain is attracted to the neoconservative point of view all of a sudden. Kevin Sullivan responds: ‘The obvious assumption made throughout the article is that there are two camps in conservative circles; those who mistrust the world, and those who wish to blow it up.  I expect such silly distinctions from the far, far Left, but it would be nice if the Paper of Record could do as Mario Cuomo once advised, and write in fine-quill pens rather than broad strokes that insult their readership.’

As discussed here and here, the Republican Party consists of three wings.

First, there’s the Money! wing, whose guiding principal is: “Money. More.” Then the Bombs! wing, whose guiding principal is, “Grrrr! Rrrowf! Rrrowf!.” And finally the Jesus! wing which believes God made gays on the seventh day at a wild post-creation party. (During which God did several things even He can’t remember. And woe unto he who remindeth Him.)

We are down to three Republican candidates, and each is not only a representative of one wing of the party, but the mathematically precise representative of that wing. Each of the three is the perfect embodiment, the distilled essence, of his wing of the GOP. Quite frankly, it’s eerie.
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In what will probably cause quite a controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that neoconservative Bill Kristol will have a weekly Times column in 08.

The Anonymous Liberal explains why the NYT decided to ask Kristol to become a columnist for them: “The key to reaching the pinnacle of your profession is, apparently, to be 1) catastrophically wrong about everything, 2) utterly unwilling to acknowledge error, 3) willing to repeatedly lie and mislead your readers, and 4) completely batshit crazy,” he writes. (more…)

Over the weekend I read Norman Podhoretz’ World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism and it was a riveting read, despite the fact that it did not really provide any guidance as to the actual struggle itself. Podhoretz provides an inventory of what has happened in the US since 9/11 by focusing on how the Bush Doctrine has fared and by comparing it to foreign policy strategies that guided US foreign policy during previous global conflicts.

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John Podhoretz wrote a column for the New York Post, called “Self-Rule? Try Mob Rule.” John writes:

ISRAEL’S disengagement from Gaza, completed 22 months ago, has succeeded.

It was a demonstration project of a sort - an experiment in Palestinian self-rule. If the management of Gaza had gone well, there would have been a Palestinian state within three years, tops.

OK, now speak these three words to yourself: a Palestinian state.

Finished? Good. So are the words. They won’t be coming out of anybody’s mouth again for a very, very long time - at least not in any meaningful way.

I disagree quite strongly with that. I already read some people blame Israel for what is currently happening in Palestine (and I am not just referring to Hamas): if only Israel would withdraw from every inch of Palestine and if only the West would help the Palestinians develop a strong(er) economy, then everything would be perfect in Gaza, these people argue.

Of course Podhoretz is right in so far that the Palestinians have proven that they cannot rule over themselves. The two terrorist gangs in charge of Palestine are happy fighting each other, and when they do not fight each other, they are firing rockets at Israel, Hamas is smuggling weapons into Palestine, al-Aqsa TV is teaching children to become martyrs, etc.

As Podhoretz puts it:

The Palestinians spent decades professing their detestation of Israeli occupation and demanding self-rule . . . so Israel gave them their heart’s desire.

Gaza is Judenrein - emptied of all Jews, just as Hitler dreamed Germany would be. No Jews live in Gaza. No Jews patrol Gaza. It’s Jew-Free-by-the-Sea, with a charming Mediterranean coast worth billions of dollars in tourism and trade.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the Jews weren’t the problem.

The problem is that the Palestinians are the problem: They are drenched in an ideology of blood and murder and suicide.

This is Palestine’s main problem: it has a culture of death. It has a culture that worships death (through terrorism). It is not a culture that celebrates life, it is not a culture that is focused on improving itself.

I am in favor of a two state solution, but I am now afraid that this will not be possible to achieve for decades to come. Change in Palestine can only come slowly. Perhaps the international community should accept that the Palestinians will not have their own state for a long time to come. Instead, the focus should be on improving every day life for Palestinians, and changing their culture. Obviously, this means that people like Abbas have to come to terms with reality as well: it means that they too have to acknowledge that their people cannot handle democracy and freedom yet, that the culture has to change first.

I stumbled upon this article this morning: Russel Kirk on neoconservatives.

Provides for a very interesting read.

Okay, I’ve had it: Bush the Neoliberal by Richard Cohen.

Years ago, someone coined the term “neoliberal.” I was never sure what it meant, and it has since fallen into disuse, but whatever the case, I’d like to revive (and mangle) the term and apply it — brace yourself — to George W. Bush. He’s more liberal than you might think…

But consider this: An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government. Nowhere is this truer than in education. For instance, there was a time when no group of Republicans could convene without passing a resolution calling for the abolition of the Education Department and turning the building — I am extrapolating here — into a museum of creationism.

Now, though, not only are such calls no longer heard, but Bush has extended the department’s reach in a manner that Democrats could not have envisaged. I am referring, of course, to the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind. I will spare you the act’s details, but it pretty much tells the states to shape up or face a loss of federal funds. It is precisely the sort of law that conservatives predicted Washington would someday seek — and it did.

Similarly, let’s take a look at the much-mocked notion of diversity. Bill Clinton was widely berated for his effort to have an administration that looked like America — women, African Americans, Hispanics, you name it. Whether by design or not, Bush has also managed that feat. A female education secretary is one thing, but a national security adviser — the uber-macho post — is something else, and that went first to Condi Rice. And over at Justice, Bush chose Alberto Gonzales, the son of Hispanic migrant workers and, incidentally, a lawyer with the singular gift of forgetting meetings he attended. (In private practice, did he forget to bill?)

I am not suggesting that any of these appointees — including Bush’s former White House counsel, Harriet Miers — are what is pejoratively known as affirmative action hires. I am suggesting, though, that Bush has not only diversified his Cabinet and staff but obviously got enormous satisfaction in doing so. You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration — another liberal sentiment — or his frequent mention of the “soft bigotry of low expectations” to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a “mushy-headed liberal.”

For those wondering what neoliberalism exactly is, I suggest reading this. The Wikipedia entry in Dutch, rightfully identifies Thatcher and Reagan, among others, as neoliberals.

One could also, however, call Bush a neoconservative. I wrote an essay about this very subject: is George W. Bush America’s first neoconservative president or not? In the essay I argue that he is. He shows all the signs, so to speak. He invested in education, he came up with the Bush doctrine, he talks about moral values a lot, he fully supports Israel: yes, he’s a neocon.

To put an end to the confusion, I suggest calling George W. Bush a neolibercon.

I am currently in the process of writing the final version of an essay about Bush, conservatism and neoconservatism. In my research, I stumbled upon this article at the Opinion Journal from 2005, written by Charles Krauthammer. It is a fascinating article in more than one regard: it provides us the opportunity to analyze the ideology of neoconservatives, but it also gives us a great opportunity to look back and see how confident neoconservatives were, only two years ago.

Krauthammer wrote:

In place of realism or liberal internationalism, the past 4 1/2 years have seen an unashamed assertion and deployment of American power, a resort to unilateralism when necessary, and a willingness to pre-empt threats before they emerge. Most importantly, the second Bush administration has explicitly declared the spread of freedom to be the central principle of American foreign policy. George W. Bush’s second inaugural address in January was the most dramatic and expansive expression of this principle. A few weeks later, at the National Defense University, the president offered its most succinct formulation: “The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom.”

The remarkable fact that the Bush doctrine is, essentially, a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy marks neoconservatism’s own transition from a position of dissidence, which it occupied during the first Bush administration and the Clinton years, to governance. Neoconservative foreign policy, one might say, has reached maturity. That is not only a portentous development, requiring some rethinking of principles and practice, but a rather unexpected one.

It is unexpected because, only a year ago, neoconservative foreign policy was being consigned to the ash heap of history. In the spring and summer of 2004, in the midst of increasing difficulties in Iraq, it was very widely believed that neoconservative policies had been run to the ground, that the administration that had purveyed them would soon be thrown out of office, and that internecine recriminations were about to begin over who lost the war on terror, the war in Iraq and indeed the reins of American foreign policy. One prominent columnist, speaking for the conventional wisdom of the moment, called the Bush project in Iraq “a childish fantasy.” And this, from a friend of neoconservatism.

As for the liberals who had come on board the project of liberating Iraq, they took its perceived foundering as an opportunity to engage in a mass jumping of ship. Some justified their abandonment of the Bush doctrine on the grounds that it was they who had been betrayed–by an administration whose incompetence, mendacity, political opportunism and various other crimes had ruined a policy that would already have been crowned with success if only they had been in charge of postwar Iraq, calibrating brilliantly precise troop levels, calculating to three decimal places the required degree of de-Baathification, and overseeing just about every other operational detail according to the dictates of their own tactical genius.

And goes on about liberals for a while, then:

The remarkable fact that the Bush doctrine is, essentially, a synonym for neoconservative foreign policy marks neoconservatism’s own transition from a position of dissidence, which it occupied during the first Bush administration and the Clinton years, to governance. Neoconservative foreign policy, one might say, has reached maturity. That is not only a portentous development, requiring some rethinking of principles and practice, but a rather unexpected one.

It is unexpected because, only a year ago, neoconservative foreign policy was being consigned to the ash heap of history. In the spring and summer of 2004, in the midst of increasing difficulties in Iraq, it was very widely believed that neoconservative policies had been run to the ground, that the administration that had purveyed them would soon be thrown out of office, and that internecine recriminations were about to begin over who lost the war on terror, the war in Iraq and indeed the reins of American foreign policy. One prominent columnist, speaking for the conventional wisdom of the moment, called the Bush project in Iraq “a childish fantasy.” And this, from a friend of neoconservatism.

As for the liberals who had come on board the project of liberating Iraq, they took its perceived foundering as an opportunity to engage in a mass jumping of ship. Some justified their abandonment of the Bush doctrine on the grounds that it was they who had been betrayed–by an administration whose incompetence, mendacity, political opportunism and various other crimes had ruined a policy that would already have been crowned with success if only they had been in charge of postwar Iraq, calibrating brilliantly precise troop levels, calculating to three decimal places the required degree of de-Baathification, and overseeing just about every other operational detail according to the dictates of their own tactical genius.

Today, there is no euphoria regarding the Iraq project, but sobriety has replaced panic. Things have changed, and what changed them was four elections: two in the West, and two in the Middle East. First came the re-election in Australia of John Howard, a firm ally of the administration. This presaged the re-election of George W. Bush, which reaffirmed to the world America’s staying power, gave popular legitimacy to the Bush doctrine, and established a clear mandate to continue the democratic project. The refusal of the American people last November to turn out a president who, rejecting an “exit strategy,” pledged instead to remain until Iraqi self-governance had been secured, was a seminal moment.

The other two elections took place in the areas of our exertion: first the Afghan elections, scandalously underplayed by the American media, then the Iraqi elections, impossible to underplay even by the American media. The latter were a historical hinge point. After a string of other important steps in Iraq that had been confidently dismissed as impossible and certainly impossible to do on time–the writing of an interim constitution, the transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government–came the greatest impossibility of all: free elections as scheduled. The overwhelming popular turnout, in what was essentially a referendum on the insurgency and on the democratic idea, sent a clear-cut message. Those who had said that the Iraqis, like Arabs in general, had no particular interest in self-government were wrong–as were those who claimed that the insurgency was a nationalist, anti-imperialist and widely popular movement.

But it gets better:

Alliances with dictatorships were justified in the war against fascism and the Cold War, and they are justified now in the successor existential struggle, the war against Arab/Islamic radicalism. This is not just theory. It has practical implications. For nothing is more practical than the question: After Afghanistan, after Iraq, what?

The answer is, first Lebanon, then Syria. Lebanon is next because it is so obviously ready for democracy, having practiced a form of it for 30 years after decolonization. Its sophistication and political culture make it ripe for transformation, as the massive pro-democracy demonstrations have shown.

Then comes Syria, both because of its vulnerability–the Lebanon withdrawal has gravely weakened Assad–and because of its strategic importance. A critical island of recalcitrance in a liberalizing region stretching from the Mediterranean to the Iranian border, Syria has tried to destabilize all of its neighbors: Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and now, most obviously and bloodily, the new Iraq. Serious, prolonged, ruthless pressure on the Assad regime would yield enormous geopolitical advantage in democratizing, and thus pacifying, the entire Levant.

So, where are we at right now?

Bush has ordered a ’surge’ which will, most likely, last up to one year, the American people have stopped supporting him, they want “the troops” to “come home;” Democrats already put pressure on Bush to accept deadlines (although withdrew when Bush threated to veto it); it is considered to be unlikely that there will be many troops in Iraq by 2009, no matter what happens in the meantime; the war in Iraq works to the advantage of Democrats, and will be bad for the Republican nominee, whoever that will be in 08, etc., etc.

The confidence of Krauthammer, who wrote so arrogantly in 05, only two years ago, that Lebanon and Syria were next, was completely misplaced. The war in Iraq has proven to be a colossal failure and Charles and his neocon buddies have lost much of their influence. They were powerful for a couple of years, now it is time for them to go back to where they came from (University of Chicago anyone?).

Of course, there are neoconservatives who say that Bush’s problem is that neoconservatives do not have all that much power: they are mostly in the lower ranks, the real high ranks are not occupied by neoconservatives. Let me counter that by quoting Krauthammer:

Another important sign of the maturing of neoconservative foreign policy is that it is no longer tethered to its own ideological history and paternity. The current practitioners of neoconservative foreign policy are George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. They have no history in the movement, and before 9/11 had little affinity to or affiliation with it.

The fathers of neoconservatism are former liberals or leftists. Today, its chief proponents, to judge by their history, are former realists. Ms. Rice, for example, was a disciple of Brent Scowcroft; Mr. Cheney served as secretary of defense in the first Bush administration. September 11 changed all of that. It changed the world, and changed our understanding of the world. As neoconservatism seemed to offer the most plausible explanation of the new reality and the most compelling and active response to it, many realists were brought to acknowledge the poverty of realism–not just the futility but the danger of a foreign policy centered on the illusion of stability and equilibrium. These realists, newly mugged by reality, have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature.

Sarah Baxter writes for The Sunday Times:

As Tony Blair was bidding farewell to President George W Bush in the Rose Garden on Thursday, the World Bank was preparing to kick out Paul Wolfowitz as president. Allies to the left and right in the Iraq war were falling by the wayside that day.

Was he responsible for Blair’s departure from office, Bush was asked. There had to be a reason why a prime minister who had never lost an election was being dumped. “Could be . . . I don’t know,” the president mused above the distant chant of war protesters outside the White House gates.

And what did he make of Wolfowitz’s likely resignation? “I respect him a lot and I’m sorry it has come to this,” Bush said, leaving the World Bank head to his fate…

Away from the Rose Garden the funeral cortege for the fundamentalist Rev Jerry Falwell was being assembled in the heart of Bush country in Lynchburg, Virginia. The portly 73-year-old televangelist had done his utmost to assemble the coalition of conservative Christians that went on to provide Bush with two presidential victories. Now he is dead and the government sustained by his followers is looking more and more like a corpse.

The writer Christopher Hitchens, a friend of Wolfowitz and foe of Falwell, says: “The main noise in Washington right now is that of collapsing scenery. The Republican party is in total disarray. They’ve been dropping their most intelligent people over the side while the presidential candidates are all outbidding each other to be nice about the revolting carcass of Falwell.”

Wolfowitz, the cerebral neocon, and Falwell, the braying theocon, had nothing in common personally. Indeed, Falwell blamed “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians” for provoking the 9/11 attacks, an explanation uncomfortably close to the views of the Taliban. But the unlikely alliance between their two movements provided the brains and the brawn behind Bush. Now the neocons have been ousted, one by one, from their positions of influence and trust while the Republican party base is desperately thrashing around for a successor to Bush that it can back in 2008.

So, where the neodogs at?

LThomas has an interesting post up over at his own blog about neoconservatism. He explains what neoconservatism is all about, at least, from the perspective of a neocon himself that is - if you’re wondering, be sure to check it out.

Ira Chernus, a professor at the University of Colorado, argues that the deepest root of the neoconservative movement is its fear that the counterculture would undermine the authority of traditional values and moral norms. Because neoconservatives believe that human nature is innately selfish, they believe that a society with no commonly accepted values based on religion or ancient tradition will end up in a war of all against all. They also believe that the most important social value is strength, especially the strength to control natural impulses. The only alternative, they assume, is weakness that will let impulses run riot and lead to social chaos…

When you combine all that makes a Neoconservative you end up with someone who is opposed to counterculture and believes man needs to be controlled to a certain extent. Religion is the best way to control a man and to keep him essentially in Line. One does not even have to believe in God to be a Neoconservative, he only has to be in favor of religion in his politic. Foreign policy drives Neocons as they believe that to be safe one must export democracy abroad because democratic countries are less likely to pose a threat to Americans or the United States. It is this obsession with foreign affairs that tends to allow Neocons the luxury to tolerate more welfare then their conservative brothers and that stronger but not bigger government is necessary to insure that America can project her power while maintaining a government that is not intrusive into lives unduly.

Read the whole thing, it truly is an interesting read. The author also remarks that, although there are liberal and conservative movements, there is no such thing as a neoconservative movements: there are neoconservatives, but they have not organized themselves as such.

I disagree with that: I think that there is a neoconservative movement that has founded / influenced important think tanks, set up magazines and has, under George W. Bush’s presidency, (quite) some political power.

Toby Harnden wrote an article for the Telegraph, about Josh Bolton. Bolton said that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear bomb, even, if necessary, by the use of force and he also said that we’re running out of time (to act).

“It’s been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its nuclear programme. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively increase the pressure.

“If we can’t get enough other countries to come along with us to do that, then we’ve got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups and the like, because that’s the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it’s safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force.

“If the choice is them continuing [towards a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you’re at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point. If you don’t stop it then, the future is in his hands, not in your hands, just as the future decisions on their nuclear programme would be in Iran’s hands, not ours.

“Imagine what it would be like with a nuclear Iran. Imagine the influence Iran could have over the entire region. It’s already pushing its influence in Iraq through the financing of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.”

He did admit though, that military action is risky:

“It’s very risky for the price of oil, risky because you could, let’s say, take out their enrichment capabilities at Natanz, and they may have enrichment capabilities elsewhere you don’t know about.”

In a related matter, he also shared with the world what he learned from Iraq:

“The regime itself was the threat and we dealt with the threat. Now, what we did after that didn’t work out so well. That doesn’t say to me, therefore you don’t take out regimes that are problematic.

“It says, in the case of Iraq, and a lot of this I have to say we’ve learned through the benefit of hindsight, was that we should’ve given responsibility back to Iraqis more quickly.”

This is the neoconservative talking point right now: the Rumsfeld strategy. Rumsfeld is one of those people who wanted the US to let the Iraqis rebuild their countries. If it were up to Rumsfeld, the US would have gone in, destroyed everything and would then have withdrawn immediately: no nation building.

Iran: the news that Iran is closer to developing a nuclear bomb than many previously thought, is clearly a signal that we should pay very close attention to whatever it is Iran is doing and that, yes, Iran will not give up its program unless forced to. Tougher sanctions have to be imposed: Iran has to be broken. The Mullahs have to, in the end, be forced to choose between the collapse of the Iranian economy on the one hand, and developing nuclear weapons on the other. That might make them think twice, although, it has to be said, I consider it to be quite possible for the Mullahs to think that once they have a nuclear weapon, the international community will back off.

In fact, that’s exactly what I think will happen as well: once Iran has a nuclear weapon its negotiation position becomes much stronger. It will change the balance in the region completely.

Cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

It seems that Paul Wolfowitz has quite a difficult time at a meeting between himself and his top managers at the World Bank last week. He, first, confessed: “I understand that I’ve lost a lot of trust, and I want to build that trust back up.” After which one of his top deputies - Graeme Wheeler, the bank’s managing director - made clear that “Wolfowitz was wrong to think that the furor over his leadership sprang only from his handling of the pay and promotion for his companion or from unease over his support of the Iraq war while at the Pentagon.”

It goes, Wheeler explained, deeper than that:

He said it arose from a range of issues, including fears that Mr. Wolfowitz and his aides were trying to impose Bush administration ideas on family planning and climate change at the bank and worries over a possible conflict of interest in the bank’s hiring of a Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly, to investigate leaks. A partner at the firm had earlier negotiated Mr. Wolfowitz’s employment contract with the bank.

He also said that ‘the fight over whether Mr. Wolfowitz should stay on at the bank amounted to the “the biggest crisis in its history”,’ and that ‘Wolfowitz’s staying on would cause “fantastic damage” to the bank’s reputation and effectiveness.’

Robert B. Holland III, a Texas businessman, a Wolfowitz support explained that, according to him (and many people like him): “There is no one issue that is motivating people. There is a built-in ideological opposition to Wolfowitz that was there from day one. The opposition has been looking for any opportunity to exploit to get him out of there.”

Which is, I think, true. The more I read about it, the more convinced I am that quite some people who know go after Wolfowitz so aggressively, oppose Wolfowitz on ideological / political grounds, the current controversy is, for these people, simply an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along.

That being said, that does not mean that their case is week. The fact of the matter is that Wolfowitz screwed up bigtime (he should never have given them this ammo), that he damaged the image of the World Bank, that Europeans are calling for his resignation, that many Americans are calling for his resignation, and that his own organization has lost all trust in him / his abilities.

David Corn writes:

From the grave, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the godmother of the neoconservative movement, speaks: the Iraq war was something of a mistake.

Kirkpatrick, best known as the combative UN ambassador during the Reagan administration who argued that the United States should be kind to authoritarian regimes that were partners in the crusade against communism, died last December. She had just completed a book entitled Making War To Keep Peace, which is being published next month. In the book, she reports–apparently for the first time–that she had “grave reservations” about George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. She notes that at the time, “I was privately critical of the Bush administration’s argument for the use of military force for preemptive self-defense.” She does not say where and to whom she voiced her misgivings–if she did. Most strikingly, she argues that the war–with respect to bringing democracy to Iraqis–did more harm than good.

It’s stunning criticism from a hawk who for over two decades has been a guiding light for the neocons who cheerleaded the nation to war in Iraq. In her book, she contends that the invasion has so far been counterproductive…

Corn’s entire article is a must read.

This is quite a devastating blow for Bush and for the neoconservative movement in general I’d say.

Jacob Weisberg wrote an interesting column for the Financial Times, proclaiming that neoconservatives are ‘history’. In essence: Iraq is a disaster, Iraq is neoconservative foreign policy actually being implemented, Rice is “returning to her realist roots”, on defense, Rumsfeld has been replaced by Gates and, lastly, Dick Cheney was once one of the most powerful VP’s of the 20th century, but has lost his influence now.

Dennis Sanders responds to Weisberg, saying that “it’s too soon to start writing obituaries.” He writes that, like it or not, there still are (influential) neoconservative think tanks and neoconservative thinkers still have book contracts - in other words: neoconservatives can and will still influence people and “all they need is a politician that is willing to listen and boom, they are back in power.”

So, how to ‘fight’ neoconservatism(’s influence within the Republican party)?

If you want to end a movement, you need to challenge it. Conservative Realists will need to start chugging out papers and studies as to why we need a less agressive foreign policy than the one the neocons have been pushing. In short, we need to present an alternative.

Dennis is, of course, dead on.

There is one thing that he and others who think like him need to remember though: even if conservative realists offer an alternative, that doesn’t change the position the neoconservatives are in: they will still have book contracts and they will still have think tanks, in short… the danger will continue to exist that they will regain their power / influence even when conservative realists offer a clear, comprehensive alternative. One can make it more difficult for them to do so, but one cannot ever declare neoconservatism to be ‘dead’.

In other words: no obituaries will be written at all.

Meanwhile, E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote a highly interesting about Evangelicals. It seems that there’s a debate going on within the ‘Christian Right’ movement between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘reformers’.

Pete Abel (add his blog Central Sanity to you Favorites by the way) explains why he isn’t willing to donate money to the Republican party just yet, and he describes his doubts about the course the GOP took the last couple of years and where this leaves him politically.

If I were American I would most likely be a registered independent or Republican. I’m not sure which one. More conservative people are, normally, best off at the Republican party but, since I’m not a big fan for either the Christian Right or neoconservatism I would have a hard time feeling at home in the Republican party. I’m fiscally but not socially conservative.

Of course I realize that most Republicans aren’t neoconservative or members of ‘Christian Right’ but these two do have a lot of influence right now. These people have changed, devolved, the term ‘conservatism’, at least in the eye of the public. Time for more tolerant conservatives to reclaim it.

Glenn Greenwald has a long, interesting post up about a “literary luncheon” hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush, to honor historian Andrew Roberts.

Roberts wrote a book called History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 in which he argues that British imperialism wasn’t “a Bad Thing”, “that the Versailles Treaty was not harsh enough on Germany, [and] defends the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki…”

Besides Roberts there were some 15 other guests, all “neoconservatives and other Bush followers… including Norman Podhoretz (father-in-law of White House convict Eliot Abrams), Gertrude Himmelfarb (wife of Irving Kristol and mother of Bill), Mona Charen, Kate O’Beirne, Wall St. Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot, etc. etc. The Weekly Standard’s Irwin Stelzer was also invited and wrote about the luncheon in the most glowing terms.”

Glenn uses Stelzer’s article as the basis for the rest of his post which should be read in its entirety.

Neoconservatism is quite a dangerous ideology. It doesn’t care about anything, except for power and some strange concept of ‘good’. I’m a foreign policy hawk, I’m conservative (for Dutch standards), but I want to distance myself from neoconservatism as much as possible.

There is nothing wrong with neoconservatives as long as they’re not actually in a position of power. Once they’re in power or having a major influence on someone who is power things get dangerous. Neoconservatives ignore facts when those facts aren’t in agreement with their worldview / political views.

Neoconservatism is an ideology that considers it to be quite acceptable for the government to lie to its own people. Neoconservatives have no problem with locking people up without any kind of trial, without giving them a chance to defend themselves (in a court of law), etc.

I’m almost inclined to say that neoconservatism is, per definition, extremist.

Also be sure to read this article about Strauss and neoconservatism. It’s a fascinating read.