If you’re looking for a limousine in Houston, we’re your answer…

I didn’t use those words or anything like them, please note. All talk of
devils and demons is only coming from you; what that reflects of your
personal beliefs and psychology, i would never presume to speculate. I
regard neo-conservatives as intelligent human beings with false beliefs
and mistaken, harmful policies.

> The neo-cons are little more than hawkish conservatives
> and even that wouldn’t qualify as a definition.

I will stand by the idea that there’s quite a bit more going on with them
than “a little more hawkish”. There in fact lies another of the strong
differences that I failed to previously mention — they are what we call
“chicken-hawks” — not one of their leaders ever fought in a war on behalf
of the USA, rather they all dodged that as best they could, as cravenly as
any hippie (but with less moral foundation; at least the hippies oppose
wars ideologically while refusing to fight them). GW Bush & Cheney are
‘Exhibit A’ here. Not one of the prominent Neo-con leaders has a son or
daughter willing to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq — risking life and limb
for your country is just something for ‘the little people’ donchaknow –
military service is for the servant-class. Traditional conservatives
were/are proud to serve, willing to death and injury for what they believe
in, responding when America was attacked; they honored the casualties and
veterans. Neo-cons launch imperial wars-of-choice for ideological reasons
and send only other family’s children to have their limbs blown off in them.
Then they cut veterans benefits. The difference between these two political
stances could not be more stark.

You mention that you “hate the fact that Bush has exploded the budget” –
do you not in any way realize that the exploding deficit is not some kind
of accident but is their deliberate policy?? It’s one of the key neo-
conservatives policies, starting with the Reagan administration. Look it
up — “Deficits don’t matter”. Clinton, a Democrat balanced the federal
budget (a primary traditional-conservative value), and Republican Neo-
conservatives made it their first order of business to reverse that in
early 2001 — an excellent indication of how very much things have changed
in the Washington DC para-reality…..

But you and I clearly disagree on the policies and intentions of what we
are from different points of reference calling ‘neo-conservatives’. So i
will merely agree to disagree with you, and be done with it.

While I would never vote for either, I’d still choose a “neocon,” over some creepy, “paleocon,” Pat Buchanan fanboy anyday.

Again, the neo-cons aim to create a compulsory Protestant state religion? Where did you hear this from? A commie website? Ridiculous.

And the US wants to create an empire? Where are the colonies (and you need more than soldiers to create a colony)?

And world democratic revolution? Where has Bush exported revolution to? Why hasn’t he gone into Sudan or North Korea or a whole host of other non-democtratic states crying out for ‘democratic intervention’? Because the reality is that it’s a nice idea but very impractical for running a powerful country. The US just can’t go running around doing this kind of thing. There are far ‘important’ interests, such as those of business, the need for oil and the need for strategic positioning. That is what is on Bush’s mind, despite his claims about democracy. Even his detractors claim that his talk of democracy is not sincere (I think he is relatively sincere, but he has many other things to consider when it comes to foreign affairs).

Read some other sources of info other than those with an axe to grind. The neo-cons are little more than hawkish conservatives and even that wouldn’t qualify as a definition.

Conservatism comes in a wide variety of ‘flavors’ and to demonise neo-cons is ridiculous, especially since it’s very hard to even pin down what a neo-con is, so to separate a strain of conservatism and call them the devil incarnate is crap.

Oh. I thought his fans just moved to San Diego.

Well, no it isn’t. It’s not an arbitrary term, open to definition by
anyone who decides to use it to mean whatever they want it to mean.
It has a definite meaning in American politics, at least (and on this blog
we are, perhaps, trying to figure out what it means in Korean politics).

> To me, it’s someone who is relatively new to conservatism.

The prefix Neo- used in front of a noun referring to a political ideology
or an artistic or cultural practice is rooted in the Greek “new” but it
does NOT mean a person who is new at doing that thing, as in the word
neophyte. It refers to a new style of that ideology, philosophy, religion,
cultural-practice etc — in the vernacular, “a whole new ball-game”.

For the Korean/Oriental context, check out the history of Neo-Confucianism
for example — that term does not in any way mean a person who has just
recently become a follower of Confucius…. It’s an entirely new style
of Confucianism, radically different from the previous — just as American
Neo-conservativism is a weird radical break from traditional conservative
philosophy and ideology.

I’m actually quite an admirer of the traditional conservative line from
Edmund Burke through many of the founding-fathers of the USA through
Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, JFK and Goldwater. The present-day
neo-conservatives are something entirely different, in the ways that I
outlined above, and yes those are accurate comparisons (although
simplified and cartoonised for blog-response-posting-level, surely).

As I mentioned, many venerable senior traditional conservatives have
vociferously criticized the current neo-conservatives in power for their
reckless radicalism — William F. Buckley Jr. is far from the least.
Examples are found all over the net, from standard news sources and
periodicals– look them up if you please.

> Wikipedia has a good discussion of the term at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_(United_States)

Yes, and that article makes my points exactly; i humbly suggest that you
read the entire thing, not just that one sentence in it modified with “can”
that indicates the possibility of a loose and improper vernacular usage.
If you are going to refer to yourself as a neo-conservative, you should at
least get educated on what that term means… After some study, i think
that you might decide that you are not one at all, but rather more of a
traditional conservative like me — but new to the cause, and unlearned
about it (that’s OK, we’ll welcome you). Then again, of course, maybe
you really are one of those Empire-on-Borrowed-Cash-Dreaming radicals….

That’s American culture - we don’t do those things here. Americans woudl don their little badges with American flag and sing “America the beautiful” on public squares.

Instead, those of us who are his fans often find ourselves disagreeing with the man.
http://www.malaysia-today.net/.....powers.htm

It is still a big bug that Korean politicians need to label themselves as pro-Washington or anti-Washington. There is no need for this label. Koreans should be pro-Korea and not care less what Washington thinks. What Washington thinks should be irrelevant because in the end, that is the democracy principle. That the people have the power, and the people who live on the peninsular. If the people living on the peninsular have no power to dictate their destiny, but that destiny is controlled by Washington, then clearly that is not democracy.

“The West is trying to create governments in Africa and Asia in their image. Their version of democracy is meant only for those educated in their image. Once - and it happened in India - the democracy they prefer brings in a government they do not like, they moan about the death of democracy.”

snow:
> Actually, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney are NOT neo-conservatives!

That assertion would be quite a surprise to anyone who knows much about
this subject — check the wikipedia article quoted just above. They are
leaders of the new generation of neo-conservatives — government-in-power
leaders of course, not the intellectual godfathers by any means. Cheney
and Paul Wolfowitz were founding members of the PNAC, or haven’t you heard
of that? Google it for some education.

> Whereas socialists, communists and other leftists never dream of
> changing the world order?

Well, this gets to precisely the point. The neo-conservatives are the new
version of the Marxists — same radical dreams of Utopia through radical
change, just coming from the opposite point of view, corporation-and-
plutocrat-rule instead of proletariat-rule. Many neo-conservatives are in
fact former Leftist/Marxists — they’re just carrying the same habits of
thought and strategies forward, from the right-wing instead of the left.