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The Neocon slur

Posted 44 weeks 5 days ago by Ben

The Wall Street Journal has a compelling review of Jacob Heilbrunn's new book on neoconservatism, They Knew They Were Right. Bottom line: Heilbrunn's "indictment... is so broad as to invite the sort of ridicule that Mr. Heilbrunn intends for the neoconservatives themselves."

Now, I haven't read the book, but after reading the Journal piece I certainly plan to add it to my ever-growing pile. (Joel and I are supposed to be reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir/polemic, Infidel, but I confess that I've been distracted by other things.)

What interests me about Heilbrunn, who is a very smart man, is how his book might feed the average liberal's blinkered view of the right. I don't mean that as a cheap shot. When I was an editorial writer at The Press-Enterprise, I lost count of the number of letters to the editor we got from readers outraged about the neocon conspiracy to destroy the country, take over the world, enslave everyone, you name it. "Neocon" has become a catch-all slur for any and all conservatives. I always got a chuckle from those letters, but I also had to remind myself that the writers were serious. And seriously uninformed.

If the Journal's reviewer, Benjamin Balint, is right, then Heilbrunn's book certainly doesn't help to clarify matters. "The neoconservative mentality is, then, for Mr. Heilbrunn, 'ineluctably Jewish.' Or is it? At times, it appears in his account to be something less well defined -- akin to a kind of disease that might strike anyone. ... As it turns out, neoconservatism is not even confined to our historical moment. ...As neoconservatives have always existed, they will always exist. They 'will not disappear,' Mr. Heilbrunn laments. 'An elite caste, they will simply regroup.'"

So, we're all neocons now?

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Thoughts

What's a neocon?

Submitted on January 12th, 2008 by Monkey RobbL

I haven't (and almost certainly won't) read the book either, but it seems that a lot of those who define neoconservatism broadly tend to lump in almost anyone who displays what Voegelin called the gnostic impulse. Specifically, those who see our present time in history as a transcendent metaphysical struggle between good and evil, believe they are on the "right" side of that struggle, and believe that victory in that struggle can in some way be brought about by the use of force.

Again, without reading the book I don't know how Heilbrunn comes to describe the "movement" as "ineluctably Jewish," but I don't believe the "Jewish factors" enter into the mix through some sort of conspiracy. Rather, through a combination of early promoters of "neoconservative ideas" who happened to be Jewish (e.g. Leo Strauss, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz) and the tendency of a lot of dispensationalist evangelicals to gravitate toward the movement many of its manifestations have developed what might be called a "pro-Israeli flavor." Unfortunately, this becomes very difficult to discuss without emotion from all sides clouding the debate.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of using the word "gnostic" in place of "neocon" either. That's the problem with both taxonomy itself and the labels we choose, particularly when describing social and/or political phenomena. Just like other labels (e.g. liberal, conservative, libertarian, christian) we are all likely to struggle to avoid talking past each other when we use the word neocon.

So, we're all neocons now?

Submitted on January 10th, 2008 by Jim Lakely

Well, I suppose Heilbrunn's wandering definition of "neocon" -- that seems to encompass even war-mongering Gentiles like myself -- is preferable to it simply being a publicly acceptable code word for slurring Jews as scheming, unpatriotic, power-hungry madmen.

Progress, of a sort.