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The Bankruptcy of Neoconservatism
Submitted by Cato the Younger on Sat, 2006-12-30 07:01.
In his new book Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause, Richard Viguerie describes the intellectual bankruptcy of so called "Big Government Conservatism," which is an oxymoronic cliche if there every was one. Neoconservatism was the product of Old Left New Dealers that vacated the Democratic Party because of its perceived social radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Though, they were very much content with the New Deal welfare state and hoped to make it operate more efficiently. They gravitated towards Republican-affiliated think tanks and the halls of political power. Eventually they became the core intellectual intelligentsia of the two successive Bush administrations, with neocons holding key cabinet positions. Neoconservatives laud the statemanship of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Viguerie observes, "As he pursued these policies, President Bush's strongest support came from Big Government Republicans and from so-called 'Big Government conservatives' who, of course, are not conservatives at all." Viguerie continues,
Now, these "Big Government conservatives" — sometimes confusingly called "neoconservatives" — have not been shy about their intentions to hijack (or, from their point of view, "lead") the conservative movement. Irving Kristol, often called the "grandfather of neoconservatism," wrote in The Weekly Standard (August 25, 2003) of "the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism:" "to convert the Republican Party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.
Neoconservative Kristol contends that this brand of so called "conservatism" feels no "alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable." Overlooking the limited government premises underlying the Reagan Revolution, Kristol observed,
[N]eoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the 'American grain,' [and this philsophy has] helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to the a majority of American voters."
Nothing could be further from the truth, as evident by the American voter's rejection of the Republican Party in the 2006 elections. It seems the Grand Old Party in all probability will lose the White House in 2008. While Neoconservatism arose to become the operating philosophy of the Republican Party by the late 1990s, it has proven itself to be a fundamental betrayal of the principled conservatism of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan. The displacement of the longstanding Republican Party majority in Congress from 1994 to 2006 owes to the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the so called "neoconservative movement." Increasingly, principled conservatives in Middle America would rather abstain from voting or back a Third party alternative than continue to rubber-stamp the neoconservative agenda of Big Government Republicans.
Response
Looks like an interesting read.
The Paleoface Conservatist
http://paleoconservatist.blogspot.com/