Comments on: The Times In Denial

By: Neoconservatism was more fun under Irving than Bill

Neoconservatism was more fun under Irving than Bill — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:27:40 +0000

[...] reconcile said social democracy with Reaganism. And this was his vision from the beginning, as I’ve explained elsewhere: Having said all that, there is still a great deal of truth in the FP article. Irving [...]

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:54:08 +0000

Mr Ross is right, the SDUSA has always been militarist, just shifting around its enemies. It (and let us remember this is the main body of the old Socialist Party of America, which came around to a Scoop Jackson position, not the people always around Scoop Jackson) also became moderate on economics and insane on foreign policy a few years after Schactmanite-Trotskyists took it over.

By: Jack Ross

Jack Ross — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:32:28 +0000

Obviously, Kristol felt he could admit it all in light of what Bush wrought, but I do believe this was the truth – neoconservatism is nothing if not intellectual dishonesty.

I have great sympathy for the folks like Moynihan and Nathan Glazer, both of whom fundamentally objected to neocon foreign policy, but the foreign policy was there from the beginning, ironically enough brought to the fore by the folks around Scoop Jackson who continued to call themselves Social Democrats USA.

By: AL

AL — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:07:25 +0000

The “Weekly Standard” article is a find, but most of what what “The Public Interest” published in its early years involved domestic policy and cultural/social questions. In that 2006 article, Kristol was looking back in light of what “neoconservatism” became and giving his thinking a Bush-era coloring, but in the 1960s, his concern was more that New York just wasn’t working, and the rest of the country looked likely to follow the city’s trajectory.

When we talk about those first-generation neocons, it would be wise to remember the mess and malaise of the 1970s. Looking at that first generation in its own context, they aren’t as horrible as people who associate neoconservatism with Cheney and Bush believe. Originally the focus wasn’t on empire or foreign policy, but on what the early neocons saw as the failure of the Great Society. Whether they were right or wrong about LBJ’s policies, their ideas were bound to find an audience in the troubled Ford-Carter era.