Uses of "Neo-Conservatism"

Cameron:
Jesse just sent me a link to this interesting Andrew Sullivan post. It's worth thinking about, although in the end I think it can be a little potted - what we associate with "left" and "right" has moved from party to party, effectively switching sides, rather frequently. So while this strain of Toryism is important, it isn't the only strain of Toryism out there; it is just one that resonates today.

I have a shorter, blunter, point, though. It concerns me that at this point it appears that absolutely nobody understands the term "neo-con" (or neocon.) I've always known that in Canada the term was routinely massacred (neocon being "really conservative",) but here the misuse is just as bad (and in the US, no less, where they sometimes get this right.) Andrew Sullivan is an educated and brilliant writer, but what he is referring to here is not the neocon wing of the party. In any case, if Sullivan is getting this wrong it seems to me that the term must be in real trouble.

Really briefly, the term Neo-Con refers to new conservatives, or conservatives new to the American movement. They define themselves as conservatives because of principled foreign policy that they feel will result in a better world, while the Democratic party is seen as weak, relativistic, and indecisive. In this way, they can come close to liberal internationalists, in that they want to spread democracy and free markets, which are supposed to reduce strife long term and foster peace and prosperity. The darker side to the NeoCon mindset, though, is that in experience this movement has tended to place a greater priority on vanquishing enemies than fostering institution-building - Fascists bad, Communists bad, ethnic strife pretty bad, Muslim extremism bad. Some feel that this darker tendency shows that they are stifled by a dualistic worldview, while supporters simply feel that this is how you get things done - by relentlessly pressuring those who would deny you your way of life.

In terms of history, these people were until fairly recently Democrats. They loooooved JFK, who was actually more hawkish against the Communists than Eisenhower. Moreover, remember that many prominent Republicans had advocated for neutrality in WWII, while FDR manipulated the country like hell to get lend-lease and the convoy-protection approved prior to Pearl Harbour. The NeoCons felt that after Kennedy, however, the Democrats and Republicans switched sides on foreign policy, and that with Vietnam the centre-left split and turned inward-looking, while the Communist menace remained just as strong as before. Amongst other demographic changes, you can find here the moment that the Democrats ceded electoral supremacy to the Republicans - being the peace party when you lose a war is bad karma. Throw in Carter's weakness, and Reagan's belligerence looked really, really appealing to these former Democrats.

It's also worth mentioning that these NeoCons can get along with many centrist Democrats, despite their being "really conservative" according to Jack Layton. When Bill Clinton bombed Serbia over Kosovo, Bill Kristol's NeoConWeekly Standard ran a series of laudatory editorials. This infuriated the right, and cost him subscriptions, but it fit with the NeoCon priority on a principled approach to foreign policy. Similarly, you could tell during the 2008 election campaign that John McCain (who is more of an old-school realist shot through with NeoCon stripes) felt very comfortable with Hillary Clinton's approach to foreign policy, but couldn't stand Barack Obama's seeming weakness on security issues.

So this leads us to today, which is that when people use the term "neocon," how often do they refer to the above? Not very likely in the states, and almost never here in Canada.

It's interesting actually, in that I tried to find an instance of a Canadian neocon, and I can't really find one. The Harper Tories often talk in their vocabulary - of good and bad coming before national interest, but they frankly don't seem that committed to it. Yes, they are committed to Afghanistan, but it always seemed more about sucking up to the Americans than about true conviction about the international system. Moreover, the Tory-Israel stuff goes even further along this road , but it seems equal parts useless blather (nobody in the Middle East cares about Lawrence Cannon's opinions on Israel) and craven calculation to me. That's probably unfair, I know, but without a real sense that the Tories have thought this through (and given that they've never released a comprehensive FP platform,) I just don't know why they do the things they do beyond that they see certain things as right.

I guess my point is that the Canadian experience is one where Foreign Policy is irrelevant to domestic politics, so the NeoCon contingent doesn't per se exist. Instead, we use it to demonize groups, from Harrisites (golfers from North Bay who care about small government have nothing to do with former Trotskyite New York NeoCons), to Harper (but never about Foreign Policy, where it might mean something.) Sullivan is doing this too, and here he seems to be referring to the exact part of the GOP that isn't NeoCon in the least - the NeoCons are all about government, and they ask for sacrifice instead of self-interest all the time.