"Neocon!"

Words have power. Those on the Left side of the political spectrum know this, for decades the world liberal was hurled at them as if it was an insult. Occassionally other appellations, from Communist to atheist to abortionist, popped up. Many on the Left objected to these definitions, an acknowledgement of the need for regulation is not tatamount to Communism, an espousal of a high wall of separation between church & state is not equivalent to atheism and finally, acceptance of the right of a woman to choose whether to have an abortion or not is not the same as performing the act.

The Right's demonization and mischaracterization of the Left has had two primary consequences. First, it has resulted in a string of tactical victories over the past two generations. Second, I believe it is fueled the degeneration of society-wide discourse and engagement. Words are the currency we use to communicate, and their short term debasement tends to have long term bitter yields.

That is why I am deeply disturbed by a trend I have noticed on the Left: to use the term neocon promiscuously as one of generalized opprobrium. Neocon seems now to be a catchall for the boogey-monsters of the Right. This flies in the face of fact of the reality that neoconservatives are a narrow group of intellectuals whose political position is noticeably distinct from other factions on the Right. There is a tendency among humans to simply condense those who stand in opposition from you into one group or faction. Tactically this may be wise, but in the interests of communication, dialogue and discourse it simply throws up a cloud of ignorance that obstructs genuine information exchange.
 

I knew that something was wrong when I saw the immigration restriction site VDARE characterized as "neocon" by the SPLC. You see, VDARE publishes several writers who excoriate neoconservatives. They have taken to calling National Review the "Goldberg Review" (after Jonah Goldberg), a swipe at the neocon (and concomitantly Jewish) ascendency at the magazine in recent years. VDARE has also published the anti-Semitic thinker Kevin MacDonald, whose beat is in large part "the Jewish Question." I also knew something was afoot when a very liberal neighbor of mine complained about the "neocons" at her workplace. I had discussed the situation with her enough to know that her objection was their subtle promotion of their evangelical Christian faith in the workplace, so her use of the term "neocon" seemed a bit off. A few days ago I read a Max Boot piece where he observed that The New York Times labelled a "Politically Incorrect" history book written from an isolationist, pro-Confederate and mildly racialist angle as "neocon."

These are all symptoms of a diease, and that disease is the debasement of language, terminology and the confounding of various elements of the Right. It is a reflection, in my mind of shortsightedness and an inability to take the long view, because the long view is premeated by the reality that we are all citizens of the same nation, and so to some extent in the same boat. That implies that we have to communicate and engage each other, and also practicipate in political coalitions. A condensation of the term "neocon" as being coterminus with the Right does nothing to foster these aims, rather, it offends both neocons and non-neocons on the Right and makes it clear that their political opponents take no interest in the detail or nuance of their position.

Before I proceed further, I want to stipulate that I am not a neoconservative. My own politics are mildly Rightish-libertarian (socially liberal, fiscally conservative, see my politican position here), but I tend to dissent from the neocons on a host of points, and frankly, I am not so sure that neocons are "conservatives" at all, but on this issue I will cede ground to societal consensus that puts them on the Right. My objection is to the abuses of language, and, a concern that practical alliances may be prevented because of inevitable misunderstandings and misperceptions based on the aforementioned abuses.

The very term neocon should highlight the reality that the term connotes a special sect or faction on the Right, for neocons are an arriviste gaggle. The older generation of neocons began on the Left, with many even being Trotksyites (according to Irving Kristol). Sometime around 1970 they began to become disillusioned with what they perceived were the excesses of the Great Society and the social decay being engendered by full bore liberalism. By the 1980s they shifted to the Right, though a substantial minority like late Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Ben Wattenberg remained Democrats.

But the neocon shift to the Right was not simply a reflection of their own ideological migration, they changed the center of gravity in the Right itself. The neocons, former Cold War liberals, brought an acceptance of the New Deal (Truman and FDR remain heroes in their constellation of greats) and an intolerance of racialism. Both these specific issues highlight a reality of current neocons: on economic and social issues they are relatively moderate, sometimes even liberal.

It is true that neocons were instrumental in laying the intellectual groundwork for the rollback of the welfare state, but remember that many of the reforms in the Great Society projects were enacted during the Clinton adminstration! Alas, the neocons are no fans of laissez faire, and Irving Kristol has even referred to libertarians as amoral "pagans." The neocon position is a realistic acceptance of the active hand of government, so it makes sense that recently it has morphed into a "National Greatness" movement which endorses government for patriotic nationalistic ends.

On social issues many of the older neocons were repulsed by what they saw as the excesses of the 1960s. Nevertheless, the newer generation seem rather open to gay marriage, some, like David Brooks seem to assume that it is a fait accompli, and they tend not to talk in heated tones about issues like abortion or pornography. From where I stand, it seems that both the Left and the Right have won the culture wars, the Left substantively, the Right rhetorically. We are a God-fearing nation which also produces a great deal of the world's pornography, we acknowledge that marriage is sacred, but also have very high divorce rates, and so on. The neocons seem relatively secure with this arrangement, the factions on the Right who are not as happy with this pleasant hypocrisy are driven by evangelical Christian religious fervor, something that is relatively alien to the neocons. Neocon conservatism on social issues like abortion, gay marriage or stem cell research seems more driven by a circumstantial prudence, rather than a principled objection to change it is more a pragmatic demand for a slower pace.

It is on the issue of foreign policy that it seems that the neocon boogey-man really earns his frights. There is little I want to say here, because I am suspicious of Empire myself. That being said, the conflation of "neocon" with the "Right" tends to ignore the reality that a substantial number of conservatives oppose Empire as well. By using terms like neocon to denigrate non-neocons, it closes off avenues of alliance, just as associating neocons with segregationists and creationists tends to turn them off on any collaboration with reforming the welfare state or promoting racial equality (the implication of course is that on the Right "anti-Imperial" rheotric and talking points tend to issue from quarters that are not particularly happy with the New Deal or the results of the Civil Rights Movement, you can't have the best of all worlds).

My personal feelings about the neocons are mixed. I am aghast at their naked Imperial aspirations, though I tend to not be wholly unsympathetic to their realist concerns when it comes to international terror and chaos. I am not totally at peace with their sanguine attitude toward big government, but I am in such a small minority of Americans that I have made my own separate peace with the reality of the Leviathan. But, on making racism unacceptable on the Right I think the neocons have done a lot of good (though that has come at the price of a somewhat excessive use of the anti-Semitic slur against those who disagree with them, but all good things have a price).

All I am asking is that people be careful about how they label others, because those labels have power to alter dynamics of possible future alliances or coalitions. Human beings are a collection of expressed discrete bits of DNA, and they are also a collection of disparate and only partly covarying ideas. Insults hurled without thought in one context can nullify a possible partnership in another. Several disagreemants do not imply a chasm across the full spectrum of possibilities. Other human beings are as three dimensional as you or I, textured and dripping with unexplored nuance. In a lesser fashion the same applies to political ideologies, but all too often the reality of this is only acknowledged for one's own place on the field of ideology (for oneself I suspect any given individual could string together 3-6 modifiers to express the particularity of their position, for those on the "other side" one modifier seems to do).