What makes a liberal become a neocon?

[Skidmore]

I was just reading the Ed Koch thread, and have been thinking about the number of neocons who were former Dems or idenfied as liberals. Since the thinking of the neocons appears to be diametrically opposite that of most Dems or liberals I know, I don't quite understand how one gets from here to there. Would welcome any and all suppositions/comments.

[leftofthedial]

1. these pod things from outer space

they are among us

[teach1st]

2. Lack of fiber n/t

Sorry, just had to say it.

[amber dog democrat]

3. mental instability

and huge ammounts of insecurity and fear may be part of it.
Also I would submit that anyone who converted from Democrat to Neocon is either lying or never had very deep committments in the first place.

Just another political weathervane - seeking out the next bandwagon.
No one you'd count on as an ally.

[reachout]

4. Theory

The neocons were always authoritarians, they just made the journey from one form to another. If you look back, they were largely Old Left Trotskyites and never got along well with the New Left (you know, those kooky nuts who think one of the foundations of the social revolution should be self-determination). They went from intellectuals who thought they knew what was best for everyone via a state-by-state communist revolution, to intellectuals who thought they knew what was best for everyone via American neo-imperialism. In the course of this, they largely maintained their "liberal" stances in regard to social issues.

[DinahMoeHum]

5. I agree with your theory, but you've forgotten one important thing. . .

$$$$$$$$$

Someone has to be either stupid enough or unscrupluous enough to buy these people and give them a platform.

:kick:

[leesa]

8. Exactly what 'liberal stances in regard to social issues' are you talking

about. This is the Republican way of blaming the neocons on the liberals, although the neocons much more closely resemble conservatives in their intolerance and greed.

[reachout]

12. A number of things

Neocons differ from paleocons in their more liberal attitudes toward a number of social issues. For example neoconservatives generally support the welfare state as providing an essential safety net, though neocons such as Irving Kristol and Michael Novak want to restructure welfare programs in order to "limit bureaucracy, maximize personal autonomy and discourage a cycle of dependency." This is essentially the same position taken by many Democrats including both President and Senator Clinton.

By-and-large neocons aren't interested in banning abortion, forcing prayer into schools or creating a Constitutional Amendement banning gay marriage. Those are really moralizing paleocon issues.

The reason I think a lot of people get confused by the two is that the current incarnation of the Republican Party has managed to bring both groups in under its banner. Look at players in the current administration like Wolfowitz and Ashcroft. They actually have less in common politically than I think a lot of people realize, but they each represent Republican constituencies. Now, some paleocons remain so firmly isolationist that they defect (like Pat Buchanan), but most are willing to embrace the Neocon vision of empire as long as the party continues to cater to their arch-conservative social ideals. Neocons on the other hand see themselves as reshaping the world in the image of America and are not significantly concerned with things like late-term abortions or gay marriage to the point that they are going to go to battle with other Repbulicans over it.

[flaminbats]

18. hmmm..so the way to avoid this is to simply stop thinking?

"They went from intellectuals who thought they knew what was best for everyone via a state-by-state communist revolution, to intellectuals who thought they knew what was best for everyone via American neo-imperialism."

Liberalism is centered on protecting our liberity, Communism was started to protect the community from the winds of capitalism, and Stalinism was started to kill off the local whiners.

IMHO politicians like Koch will say anything they have to be elected. He ran as a liberal Democrat because he felt this was the most effective way to win in New York. Had he lived in Utah, he would of run as a neo-con repuke. Only now that he has left office he can finally risk stating what his true philosophy is, ME FIRST ie. Kochism!

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. a lot of money, usually

[Holly]

7. my guess, a severe head injury

seriously though, they couldn't have been true liberals. Many people will align themselves with the party or ideology du jour, for personal gain or popularity. After 9/11 many closet conservatives and moderate liberals (not only in the USA...ie Tony Blair) jumped on the neo/Bush * bandwagon. They were influenced and coerced by the "with us or against us" mentality. No public figure who was seeking popular opinion wanted to be perceived to be ...against. It takes real courage to stand up for what you believe against a powerful and vindictive opponent.

[fla nocount]

9. A secure knowledge of the source of their beef.

No fear of anthrax in their mail and the ability to flit about the country in small planes without a care.

Seriously, they are the type of men easily intimidated by thugs. They're not men at all, they never were. There's a certain nobility in purpose that should accompany leadership.....these punks never had it.

[cosmicdot]

10. their stock portfolios are full of weapon-defense manufacturers?

(same/similar to $$$$$ above)

and, over time, they've become the Boards of all of our Corporate Directors, with inter-locking directorates to banking/financial institutions

and, the desire to keep sales up by keeping world (dis)order under their control/profiting ... and away from 'peace'??

were they really liberals other than in name or 'game' only?

[Bobby Digital]

11. A lot of the far socialist left

From the 60's went conservative. David Horowitz is a good example. If you can stomach it (I realize he is hated around these parts), his autobiography "Radical Son" probably will give you some insight into the answer to your question.

[Terwilliger]

15. he was never liberal

he just claimed it

[Bobby Digital]

24. no, he was far left, socialist

He was involved in a lot of radical stuff, including a socialist publication and the Black Panthers.

[Terwilliger]

27. no, he was not

that's my point...whatever he thought he was back in the day, he was never the radical that he claimed he was

You don't say the things Horowitz says and claim you were EVER liberal...he wasn't

[spanone]

13. Severe Brain Damage

[Terwilliger]

14. nothing...they were never EVER liberal

[meow2u3]

19. You're d@mn right neocons were never liberal

They simply went from one extreme in their misspent youth (illiberal left-wing authoritarianism) to the other in their ill-spent old age (illiberal right-wing authoritarianism).

Real liberals aren't dictatorial.

[Terwilliger]

22. I don't know that they were ever "left"

they were people who thought of themselves as BEING liberal or, even, leftist in tendency, when they were always deluiding themselves. They're the type of people Phil Ochs was addressing in his song.

[Cocoa]

28. many of them were leftists

My guess is they had a normative way of thinking about what is "left", imo similar to what I read from some leftists I read here at DU. i.e. left=good, and the correct answer to any question can be gotten by asking "what is the leftist answer."

A hypothesis just occurred to me: people who think of "left" in this normative way are the most likely to have a radical change later in life. Maybe some student here can sqeeze a term paper out of that. I'm done with school myself.

[reachout]

23. Right

I think the problem is when people try to place everyone on a simplistic left-right scale (which is really a meaningless construct).

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

16. a nice salary and an expense account

where do I sign up! :evilgrin:

[Cat Atomic]

17. Which ones were liberal?

I keep hearing about neocons being liberals who turned conservative, but I don't know what the basis for that claim is. I can see how someone might've assumed as much when the term was new, saying to themselves, "ah- a new conservative must be one who is new to conservatism". But I don't see how anyone who is truly liberal could ever promote the neoconservative agenda.

If I'm wrong I'd love to know- was Wolfowitz ever a recognized liberal? Perle? Rumsfeld?

[reachout]

21. It is more the founders

Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, and Irving Kristol were the intellectual founders of neoconservative philosophy. They were a group of Trotskyites who went to City College of New York together. They were usually the children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who had frequently lived on the edge of poverty. They became adherents to the ideals of communism. The fact that they were specifically Trotskyites probably helped lead to their anti-Soviet leanings, particularly after the Great Purges of alleged Trotskyites in Soviet Russia.

If you ever get the chance to read articles from the magazine Commentary, you can see the evolution of neoconservativeism through the 50s and 60s. They became increasingly anti-Communist, especially in light of the way the Soviet Union was treating its Jewish population, and were sympathetic to Woodrow Wilson's ideals of spreading American democracy abroad. However, they believed that unilateral action by America, not multilaterism, was the way to go about it. They started to get in-sync with old school conservatives when they adopted the Dulles idea of "rolling-back" communism.

Most of them were Democrats (including Wolfowitz), and rallied around the hawkish Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson. Were they liberals? Well, that depends on your definition. There are people here who tout Lieberman's "liberal" voting record on issues like labor and the environment, but he is essentially in line with neoconservative foreign policy ideology. The founders of the movement would probably once have been considered "liberal" but they underwent a serious shift in their world view. Kristol once describe a neoconservative as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality."

Their final break with the Democratic Party came with the nomination of McGovern in 1972. They couldn't abide the anti-war position of the New Left, and what they saw as "appeasement" of the Soviet Union (they were the ones that started making the Chamberlin comparisons).

[Cat Atomic]

26. Wow- thanks for the information.

Very well said.

[bobbieinok]

31. I read Commentary frequently in the 60s

when I was in grad school.

And I watched it change. They became viciously anti New Left. I think the editor was Norman Podhoretz (sp?) and his wife was Midge Decter. She wrote a lot attacking the New Left as 'kids' and women's liberation as 'whiners.'

It was really weird to observe the shift. I knew - and know - very little about the political circles in NYC (grew up in OK and went to college in TX and grad school in CA). My assumption was that their family and friends were having generational fights and that they were using their national platform to fight personal battles.

It's too bad. Before the change, Commentary was a very interesting and informative magazine.

[RichardRay]

20. Sincere mistakes?

I think it's safe to say that most neo-conservatives believe they are still fighting the good fight. They got frustrated with the time and effort required to create change through democratic means, the ambiguity of give and take diplomacy and the spectre of the success of points of view they consider 'evil'. When they couldn't take it anymore they decided to go the 'philosopher king' route, believing that they're the annointed wisemen.

They're wrong, but I believe they're sincere.

Of course, I also believe most of the right is wrong and sincere, and that some sizeable portion of the center and left are wrong and sincere, all for the same reasons. Sincerity is a highly overrated virute, and sincerity in error doesn't create virtue.

[jpgray]

25. Power shifts (nt)

[KG]

29. underwear too tight?

:shrug:

[w4rma]

30. They learned enough about politics to figure out where to go to get money

for themselves and become very wealthy?

You don't, usually, make much money standing up for folks who have little money to give you. You have to stand up for the little guy because of your ethics, not because you want to make yourself wealthy.