Neo-Conservatives

I think being called liberal is sort of like being told you throw like a girl. Being a girl isn't a bad thing (and I think a lot of us prefer it, honestly) but it's used as an insult by those who are jealous.

Neoconservative seems a little funnier though - in every incarnation of it, it seems to be a bad word, never a good one, to anybody.

The really awful thing about writing something stupid is you either have to edit it or admit it:



I asked you to prove it.

You haven't.

You can't.

Stop being stupid.

rufio
One a2k member openly wears the neocon lable, though not wearing it on the sleeve.

See Timber above. Neo-conservative seems to be a label intended to insult, and is pretty ill-defined. My son, the Crumbly-donut, has asked if I'm a neo-con politically. I don't know. I don't know what a neo-con is. I regard myself as a Federalist and tend to politically favor those policies that were favored by Washington, Adams and Hamilton among others. I dislike the policies favored by the followers of Jefferson who I mostly regard as Jacobins. I certainly dislike True Believers of whatever stripe, and am suspicious of those who would like the real world to conform to some idealized utopian dream. Idealists can be very dangerous, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.

I believe in America, and believe that this country is the world's best hope for peace, security and a world of tolerance. I believe that the humanistic values of Western civilization are worth fighting, and dying for. The liberal-democratic ideal is a star toward which we steer, and I believe the course run by the United States government has been true for at least the past century. There have been errors in political judgement by every administration and political party, but the totality of the American effort has been unsullied. Some men have betrayed their trust as men are wont to do, but the system has not been subverted.

I have faith in America, in its values, people, institutions and leadership. I support the Republican Party and the sitting President, and believe that they have performed appropriately given the challenges thrust upon them. We are far from perfect, but we are the best and almost the only hope of a world where individual values are not totally subservient to the ideals of society. If the Democratic candidates should win the election this year, I believe that they will continue the programs and policies already embarked upon. I believe that a Democratic administration will be just as patriotic and devoted to the security of this nation as the sitting President. I personally prefer staying the course until the dangers to the Republic are less than they are today. I believe we are better off today than we were on 9/11.

We are now engaged in what will be a long and difficult war against fanatical idealists whose purpose is the destruction of Western civilization. Our enemy wishes to intimidate us, to make us afraid, to retreat from the bloody contest that they have initiated. Our enemy wishes to divide Western civilization and America, to sap our Will. They must not succeed, for the victory of those fanatics would mean the end of humanistic values, the very liberal values that so many of my fellow countrymen so highly prize.

America must be militarily strong, and willing to use that strength wherever and whenever challenged by those who would see our nation humbled, and defeated. What is the alternative? Would we prefer that our values be guarded by North Korea? Iran? Saudi Arabia? France? Russia? Italy? Spain? Japan? The United Nations, an organization that couldn't even bring Saddam to heel?

Sadly, the electorate hasn't realized yet that a liberal is what the country needs. A candidate who labels himself thusly risks a loss simply because conservatives have effectively given the term bad connotations. One has to safely be in office before showing the nation what liberal really means, then the public will see that the right has been exaggerating all along. Do you think Bush would have gotten in if he told the truth and said he wanted to be a war president? Okay, bad example, he'd have been selected anyway.

I was just going through the memberlist, sorted by number-of-posts, and it does appear to me members with a history of consistently posting from a right/conservative point of view are distinctly in the minority, even when the essentially apolitical members are not considered. Any who care can check for themselves. That's not the reason for this post though. I noticed blatham had one more post than did I ... and that's simply intolerable. This post ties us once again.

And with this post, I'm one up on blatham.


There, I feel so much better. I'll sleep better tonight, I'm sure.

Timber,

We might also note that the Roundtable, a sort of reservation for conservatives, was "temporarily" taken down and never replaced. Many conservative, or even open-minded, folks avoid the political threads like poison. The tone of the leftish among us is embarrassing and shameful.

I knew you wouldn't be able to maintain a civil tone for long...

Unlike the members of the Right, who come here to question the courage, the love of country, the regard for members of the armed services, the sexual proclivities, the very core morality of those whom they sneer at as liberals? Name your poison, Ash, it's to be found everywhere, from both sides.

How is my post not civil? The Roundtable is gone, though it was only supposed to be temporary. Do you deny that most conservative A2K members avoid the political threads? Why do you think that is? If you go back and review some of the really outrageous things said about us as individuals, or as a group, you may change your mind.

In the posting just above, I can say with sincerity that election of a Democratic President will not mean the downfall of the Republic. I expect that most conservatives would support Kerry, especially in this time of enemy threat. Can most of the "liberals" say the same about a Republican administration? I don't know of any Republicans who characterize Kerry as Hitler, or even as Chamberlain. I remember a person on another thread, a political thread, who openly wished for the Iraq war to go against the U.S. and who said that deaths spent to overthrow the President of the United States would be better than if they were lost in freeing the world of Saddam!

Civility is a two way street.

Saddam was already brought to heel a few years before the shameful war of aggression instigated by the present Bush administration.

Setanta,

I've been as careful as I can to be fair and civil. I don't think anyone can cite anything, especially in recent times (since I and other were pretty much "driven" from the political threads), that could/should offend those who regularily vilify supporters of the President of the United States.

BTW, I don't think that I've ever used the term "liberal" in a prejoritive sense.

No Saddam was not brought to heel. He was in continual violation of the conditions under which the First Gulf War was ended. He continued as a threat to the peace of the region, and provided public support and financing for terrorist bombers. Even the Clinton administration recognized Saddam as a threat, and believed that he was either in possession of terror weapons, or was developing them. Saddam was a continuing threat that had to be ended if we should have any hope of bringing stability to the region. Saddam "instigated" the war, and could have prevented it in a heartbeat by complying with the promises he had made to the international community years earlier.

Jacobin

Pronunciation: 'ja-k&-b&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin Jacobinus, from Late Latin Jacobus (Saint James); from the location of the first Dominican convent in the street of Saint James, Paris
1 : DOMINICAN
2 [French, from Jacobin Dominican; from the group's founding in the Dominican convent in Paris] : a member of an extremist or radical political group; especially : a member of such a group advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in terrorist activities during the French Revolution of 1789

We've had this conversation before.

You callin' somebody a terrorist again.

This time it's "Thomas Jefferson's followers".

You must feel right at home over on FreeRepublic.com.

Why don't you take your civility with you and stay there?

Both the leftwingnuts and the rightwingnuts here have proven themselves capable, even fond of, outrageous behavior, occaisionally even winning thenselves one-way tickets outta here. Without reading through and citing literally thousands of posts, a buncha which are no longer publically accessible anyway, and I have no inclination to expend the energy, I dunno how to chart the preponderance of idiocy and assign it to one or the other ideology. I have my suspicions. Perhaps, as my point of view is not from The Left, I take particular note of transgressions from that side, though I doubt it.

I'm sure if anyone wants to, a considerable list could be drawn up in such manner as to favor either side. Only an exhaustive list would have any validity, and assembling such a list truly would be a daunting task ... keep somebody busy for days, I imagine.

Your take/my take. I contend he was already under thumb. Our planes were able to fly at will over every speck of the country before the war. If they had seen activity related to weapons of mass destruction they could have taken it out in any number of ways up to and including war. That they had to manufacture their "evidence" after such microscopic surveilance speaks more than I intend to say here.

I vilify the President and his administration. I vilify them for what i see as their callous theft and lying--they have stolen the prosperity of the working class, and severly wounded that of the middle class to fund a war of aggression upon the flimsiest of pretexts, which pretexts were questioned widely and loudly before the cowards of the Senate got sufficient gumption to acknowledge what was well known around the world long before last week. I vilify that worm in the White House for his big grinning pleasure after September 11th at getting to look presidential and still push through the agenda of the PNAC, war with Iraq for middle eastern bases and hegomonic influence, despite and not because of the threat of international fundamentalist terrorism. You are viewing the slander which is regularly slung as those on the left in these threads in the same selective manner in which members of the Right ignore the collapse of the house of cards casus belli of the adminstration while openly stating that people on the left wish to see the failure of the war. There are fanatics at both ends--for everyone you can find a citation for at these fora calling for the military failure of our forces in Iraq i'll find you one in which conservative posters allege that people on the left delight in seeing GI's killed, and openly support, as is the title of a thread started today: " . . . the bad guys of the world."

Civility certainly is a two way street, and liberals here are just as tired of being called liars, of being called traitors, of being charged with wishing failure of the Army's mission in Iraq, of coddling and even cheering on terrorists as conservatives can claim to be for any laundry list of accusations you are willing to come up with.

In my original post here on this topic, i pointed the questioner to the Project for a New American Century. It is a simple matter to trace the origin of the term neo-conservative to the agenda of this organization and those who hope to further it. To have so many conservatives come in here and claim that no such things exists, that this is a willful attempt at slander by the left, especially while the most invidious and scurrilous charges against liberals are the daily meat and bread of the political threads is nothing short of incredible.

It is a falsification of the historical record to deny that there is a discrete political term neo-conservative which refers in particular to those who espouse the agendae of the American Enterprise Institute and specifically of the Project for a New American Century. I related as much with due civility, and advised the questioner to beware of the political bias of the long article which i had linked--i linked it because it is so rich in links, which as you well know, the careful reader can use to glean names, dates and places for further research while maintaining a healthy scepticism about the provenance of the material. I specifically did not comment on my opinion of PNAC and the neo-conservatives, and i gave appropriate caveats.

That is civility. The conservative members who have arrived here since have displayed an exercise in willfully disingenuous denial about the term and its origins, and have quickly turned the discussion into one in which they attempt to delineate themselves on moral high ground, afraid to descend amongst the hoi-poloi for fear of soiling their skirts. Excuse me for not buying such a load of manure . . .

I have no notion of what the history of, nor the source of its reputed demise of the Roundtable to have been, having never so much as peeked at it . . .

Now, just as a fer instance, PDiddidie's latest strikes me as a tad incivil ... or is that just me?

It's just you.