"Democrats Beware The Neocons!"

 Ron Paul publicly names neoconservatives

This is a speech given by Ron Paul on the House floor in which he names the neocons and the views they adhere to. The speech in its entirety can be viewed also...just search "Ron Paul Neo-conned." It's about 51 mins and goes much more in depth.

Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of social liberalism and the New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, representing a realignment in American politics, and the defection of some liberals to the right side of the political spectrum; hence the term, which refers to being 'new' conservatives. Neoconservatism emphasizes foreign policy as the paramount responsibility of government, maintaining that America's role as the world's sole superpower is indispensable to establishing and maintaining global order.

The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right". Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy. According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about."

The first major neoconservative to embrace the term was Irving Kristol, in his 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'" Kristol's ideas had been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy".

Prominent neoconservative periodicals are Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Neoconservatives are associated with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Heritage Foundation, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

"New" conservatives initially approached this view from the political left. The forerunners of neoconservatism were often liberals or socialists who strongly supported the Allied cause in World War II, and who were influenced by the Great Depression-era ideas of the New Deal, trade unionism, and Trotskyism, particularly those who followed the political ideas of Max Shachtman. A number of future neoconservatives, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, were Shachtmanites in their youth; some were later involved with Social Democrats USA.

Some of the mid-20th century New York Intellectuals were forebears of neoconservatism. The most notable was literary critic Lionel Trilling, who wrote, "In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." It was this liberal vital center, a term coined by the historian and liberal theorist Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., that the neoconservatives would see as threatened by New Left extremism. But the majority of vital center liberals remained affiliated with the Democratic Party, retained left-of-center viewpoints, and opposed Republican politicians such as Richard Nixon who first attracted neoconservative support.

Initially, the neoconservatives were less concerned with foreign policy than with domestic policy. Irving Kristol's journal, The Public Interest, focused on ways that government planning in the liberal state had produced unintended harmful consequences. Norman Podhoretz's magazine Commentary, formerly a journal of the liberal left, had more of a cultural focus, criticizing excesses in the movements for black equality and women's rights, and in the academic left. Through the 1950s and early 1960s the future neoconservatives had been socialists or liberals strongly supportive of the American Civil Rights Movement, integration, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The neoconservatives, arising from the anti-Stalinist left of the 1950s, opposed the anti-capitalism of the New Left of the 1960s. They broke from the liberal consensus of the early post-World War II years in foreign policy, and opposed Détente with the Soviet Union in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Neoconservatism... originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry ('Scoop') Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves 'paleoliberals.' [After the end of the Cold War]... many 'paleoliberals' drifted back to the Democratic center... Today's neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.

For the neoconservatives, religion is an instrument of promoting morality. Religion becomes what Plato called a noble lie. It is a myth which is told to the majority of the society by the philosophical elite in order to ensure social order... In being a kind of secretive elitist approach, Straussianism does resemble Marxism. These ex-Marxists, or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians, could see themselves as a kind of Leninist group, you know, who have this covert vision which they want to use to effect change in history, while concealing parts of it from people incapable of understanding it.

During the 1970s political scientist Jeane Kirkpatrick criticized the Democratic Party, to which she belonged. She opposed the nomination of the antiwar George McGovern in 1972, and accused the Jimmy Carter administration (1977-1981) of applying a double standard in human rights, by tolerating abuses in communist states, while withdrawing support of anti-communist autocrats. She joined Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign for president as his foreign policy adviser. She was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985.

During this period, the United States increased its support for anti-communist governments, even going so far as to support some that engaged in human rights abuses, as part of its general hard line against communism

Within a few years of the Gulf War in Iraq, many neoconservatives were pushing to oust Saddam Hussein. On February 19, 1998, an open letter to President Clinton appeared, signed by dozens of pundits, many identified with neoconservatism and, later, related groups such as the PNAC, urging decisive action to remove Saddam from power.

Neoconservatives were also members of the blue team, which argued for a confrontational policy toward the People's Republic of China and strong military and diplomatic support for Taiwan.

In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this - along with support for religion generally - may have been a case of a noble lie, intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters.

It took, improbably, the arrival of George Bush in the White House and September 11, 2001, to catapult [neoconservatism] into the public consciousness. When Mr Bush cited its most simplified tenet — that the US should seek to promote liberal democracy around the world — as a key case for invading Iraq, neoconservatism was suddenly everywhere. It was, to its many critics, a unified ideology that justified military adventurism, sanctioned torture and promoted aggressive Zionism.

Bush laid out his vision of the future in his State of the Union speech in January 2002, following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The speech, written by neoconservative David Frum, named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that "constitute an axis of evil" and "pose a grave and growing danger." Bush suggested the possibility of preemptive war: "I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war was explicitly stated in the National Security Council text "National Security Strategy of the United States", published September 20, 2002. "We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed... even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack... The United States will, if necessary, act preemptively." Policy analysts noted that the Bush Doctrine as stated in the 2002 NSC document bore a strong resemblance to recommendations originally presented in a controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft written in 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz under the first Bush administration.

The Bush Doctrine was greeted with accolades by many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, Max Boot said he did, and that "I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can't sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman... But I also argue that we ought to go further." Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer William Kristol claimed: "The world is a mess. And, I think, it's very much to Bush's credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it... The danger is not that we're going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little."

In November 2008, the United States will hold a presidential election. The Republican candidate is expected to be John McCain. He supports continuing the Iraq War, "the issue that is most clearly identified with the neoconservatives", but the New York Times reports that his foreign policy views combine elements of neoconservatism and the main competing view in conservative circles, pragmatism, also called realism: Among [McCain's advisors] are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan... Max Boot... John R. Bolton... [and] Randy Scheunemann.

       Understanding neoconservatism or "neocons" is vitally important for American citizens today. Though neocons use the word "conservative" they are historically militaristic, socialistic and elitist far left liberals who use the cover of religious conservatism to control the masses. During the "Cold War" neocons used Communism as the excuse  to dominate and control the world. Since the fall of Communism and the 9/11 attacks, the neocons now use the fight against Radical Islam and "Terrorism" as the excuse to dominate and control the world. (In my opinion, there is also a strong tie between neocons and radical Jewish Zionists) Though for the present time neocons call themselves Republicans, they will just as easily vote for, endorse and support Democrats. In my opinion, many of the high ranking so called Republicans who are voting for Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton are neocons perceiving that the Republican party may lose power in '08, due the the low approval ratings for the Bush Administration. Democrats beware the neocons! Without changing their agenda for American and Jewish world domination, they will take up the "change" mantra, and the call for "universal health care" because in reality neo-cons are radical socialists. The neo-cons don't mind Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton withdrawing from Iraq, as long as the withdrawn troops are sent to Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. (Something Barack Obama has especially emphasized in his foreign policy) Senator John McCain has already been co-opted by the neo-cons and they are more than capable of co-opting Barack Obama in his attempts to be the "great uniter". It is ironic that nearly all totalitarian governments arise from socialism, communism or fascism (which are all liberal ideologies) i.e. Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro,  Hugo Chavez, etc. If neocons are left unchecked America will become a totalitarian government, in my opinion. America beware the neocons!

tags: neocons  neoconservatism  2008  politics  us  president  obama  clinton  mccain  power  takebackamerica  

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