the origins of neoconservatism

[ButterflyBlood]

it says in my political science book that neoconservatism started in the 70's by a bunch of ex-leftists who were pissed off at failure of certain social programs and the whole hippie attitude and thus turned into ultra-right wingers. however it basically was more of being anti-left wing rather than right wing. is that pretty much what happened? that would explain the hatemongering of Coulter and Whoreowitz. If that's also the case what would you call Arianna Huffington and David Brock?

[FlashHarry]

1. The name Leo Strauss keeps coming up

Try Googling him.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

4. Yes! Leo Strauss!

The political theorist that came here from Nazi Germany in the '30s and was a philosophical 180 from the Frankfurt School.

I need to read more about him...

[toddzilla]

2. one guy

is responsible for much of this type of thinking.. although his name eludes me at the moment. then everyone jumped on the bandwagon and here we are today with the wonderful results of an uninformed public and a compliant media..

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. That's part of it

But not all. Neo-conservatism has its roots in the neo-confederate movement also and early groups like the John Birch Society. Joe Conason's 'Big Lies' and David Brock's 'Blinded by the Right' give some great background history on the conservative movement.

[ElkHunter]

5. It's true

Some neocons were even former socialists and Trotskyists. Their real issue was foreign policy and Vietnam. In '72 many left the Democratic Party because of the nomination of McGovern and formed an organization called Democrats for Nixon. Others came out of the Socialist Party and formed an organization called Social Democrats USA. The final break with the Democrats came with election of Reagan in '80. The neocons then left what remained of their liberal baggage and joined the Republican party. When you hear some Republicans make the (idiotic) claim that the GOP today is what the Democratic party used to be, this is what they're talking about.

[AndyTiedye]

9. That's What They Want You To Think

The reality is more like "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers".

[ButterflyBlood]

12. why would socialists and Trotskyists support the Vietnam War?

n/t

[ima_sinnic]

6. Prof. Francis Boyle wrote this piece about Leo Strauss:

very good (but maddening/saddening) read about the bunch of thugs that came out of the University of Chicago under Prof. Leo Strauss: My Alma Mater is a Moral Cesspool: Neo-Cons, Fundies, Feddies and the University of Chicago

Professor Boyle has been trying to garner support for a campaign to impeach Bush from almost the day Bush was Selected.
http://www.impeach-bush-now.org/

[Stephanie]

7. Many articles here

Neo-cons, PNAC, Strauss

PNAC Links Archive

[trumad]

8. Here's a good link...

http://shockingelk.com/text/neoconservative/

[Hippo_Tron]

10. Reagan used to be a liberal

Then he in essence became the head of the "neocon" movement. While I think Reagan did some good things as president, he produced followers with thick skulls *cough Newt Gingrich *cough who walked around preaching about this new aged conservatism bullshit. I know most of you won't agree with me but I think that if Reagan still had proper brain function I think he'd be somewhat disgusted or at least disapointed with the job chimpy and all of the "neocons" are doing today.

[Q]

11. Reagan followed the money...

...not much more complicated than that. He's as much of an 'intellectual' as GWB*.

[soupkitchen]

13. A neocon is a liberal who found out there is more money to be made

praising the kingmakers than criticizing them.

[Clete]

14. My view is that neo-conservatism is a hard sell

among the unwashed masses, because in it's pure form it reeks of elitism, which it is of course. So in order to get enough numbers to join you have to appeal to certain things the less affluent want like guns and tax cuts. You convince them that people without jobs are lazy. (Remember Reagan at a news conference shaking a copy of the Sunday classifieds of some newspaper saying it was full of jobs. He also coined the phrase "welfare queens".) You convince them that their hard earned wages are going to support "those" kind of people, when in fact they are being used to make fat cats fatter.

Most people voted for Bush because they were convinced that Bush was giving them an honest tax cut. They were convinced their tax money was paying for lazy people. Well, they were right, except that the lazy people they were paying for were the ones they voted for. How many days does Bush actually spend in the White House? From the looks of his schedule on his own website, it appears he has reinvented the four day work week for himself and his cronies while other people are working 60 to 80 hours a week for less money that ever.

[SnohoDem]

15. I'd call Arianna Huffington and David Brock

...recovering.

I'd call Arianna Huffington, but my wife would kick my ass!

[ButterflyBlood]

16. kick

:kick:

[HazMat]

17. Neocon 101 - The Empire Builders

The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world.


more

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html

[MrPrax]

18. Kick

Good to see meating eating among the candy floss



Wake me when we get to cerise alert

[HazMat]

19. Thorough explanation of Neoconservatism - origins, key players, etc.

Neoconservatism (United States)

Neoconservatism is a conservative movement with origins in the Old Left that has been very influential in formulating hawkish foreign policy stances by the United States.

Old Left origins

The intellectual founders of neoconservatism, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, and most prominently Irving Kristol, were all alumni of City College of New York, known then as the "Harvard of the proletariat" due to its highly selective admissions criteria and free education. They emerged from the (largely Trotskyite) Old Left and retained these origins in the factional New York intellectual debates of the 1930s. The Great Depression radicalized the student body, mostly children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants sometimes on the edge of poverty, who were introduced to the new and revolutionary ideas of socialism and communism.

Opposition to the New Left and Détente with the Soviet Union

Later to emerge as the first important group of social policy critics from the working class, the original neoconservatives, though not yet using this term, were generally liberals or socialists who strongly supported the Second World War. Multiple strands contributed to their ideas, including the Depression-era ideas of former Trotskyites, New Dealers, and trade unionists. The influence of the Trotskyites perhaps left them with strong anti-Soviet tendencies, especially considering the Great Purges targeting alleged Trotskyites in Soviet Russia.

The original "neoconservative" theorists, such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were often associated with the magazine Commentary and their intellectual evolution is quite evident in that magazine over the course of these years. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the early neoconservatives were anti-Stalinist socialists strongly supportive of the civil rights movement, integration, and Martin Luther King. They followed the Marxist view of society as a product of class conflict, and often eagerly embraced the idea of a coming American revolution that would topple the existing social order.

As the years went on, however many of these young leftists began to grow disillusioned with the tactics of their contemporaries...

much more http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative

[Rich Hunt]

20. Trotskyists

A lot of them were Trotskyists, not hippies.

It's not so surprising, since Trotskyists are pretty hawkish.

Here's a pretty in-depth review of a book that describes the transformation:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19950701fareviewessay5058/john-b-judis/trotskyism-to-anachronism-the-neoconservative-revolution.html

The neoconservatives who went through the Trotskyist and socialist movements came to see foreign policy as a crusade, the goal of which was first global socialism, then social democracy, and finally democratic capitalism. They never saw foreign policy in terms of national interest or balance of power. Neoconservatism was a kind of inverted Trotskyism, which sought to "export democracy," in Muravchik's words, in the same way that Trotsky originally envisaged exporting socialism. It saw its adversaries on the left as members or representatives of a public sector--based new class.

Judis is exactly right - what these guys went through was an "inversion".

[ArkDem]

21. >what would you call Arianna Huffington and David Brock<

opportunists

[Max Kelly]

22. seems odd.

why would you totally abandon your political beliefs just because you don't like the a certain group in your party? I'll have to check these links to learn more. VERY interesting.
-Max
http://www.youvebeenleft.coim