Responding to Fukuyama’s obituary of neoconservatism, Joseph Knippenberg completely misses the point and says this:

So it’s not neo-conservatism properly understood that Fukuyama rejects, just its caricature.

Um…no. He really does reject neoconservatism as it exists today. He might describe what Kristol et al. have done to neoconservatism as a caricature or oversimplification of what was somewhat more complex in the past, but he really does reject neoconservatism and contemporary neocons. Honest. He says so right here, just above the quote Knippenberg cites:

In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States.

Maybe I’ve missed something, but usually when someone compares a movement to the Bolsheviks it isn’t often meant as a compliment. Not even on The New York Times op-ed page. He calls the neoconservatism of Kristol and Kagan a “farce” in its present state. He not only rejects what it has come to represent, or what people associate with it, though he does that, too, but the “body of thought” itself. That’s a pretty serious rejection. It would be akin to my saying that I reject the permanent things and eternal verities–it would mean that I am really rejecting them and abandoning the convictions I had previously held. Fukuyama has given up on neoconservatism because he clearly finds it riddled with problems, errors and mistakes (his solutions and answers are not those I would give, but many of his criticisms happen to be fairly powerful). No doubt about it–Fukuyama has jumped ship and is headed off to the shores of post-neocon transnationalist interventionism.

Update: By the way, what in the world is the “spiritual element” of democracy promotion?