How Neo Are The Neocons?

by Jonah Goldberg - April 23rd, 2008 - Townhall.com

In the play "Embedded," Tim Robbins' 2003 satire about the Iraq invasion, a thinly veiled Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz shout with Nazi-like gusto, "Hail, Leo Strauss!" and get sexually aroused at the prospect of international conquest. During the post-9/11 age of neo-phobia, when an irrational fear of anything that might be called "neoconservative" gripped the nation, such critiques passed as intelligently nuanced.

Neocons have been attacked as secret Trotskyites, open imperialists and perfidious double agents for Israel. Some think the neocons are something like Jesuits (or perhaps Jewsuits) in the service of their dark anti-pope Strauss, a long-dead, German-Jewish political philosopher who emigrated to the U.S. to escape Hitler.

In a hopeful sign that it's once again safe to discuss the topic sanely, Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment offers a renewed defense of neoconservative foreign policy in the latest issue of World Affairs Journal.

Recent success on the battlefield of Iraq has changed the political dialog in America. The question is whether we can keep the American people involved in this critical dialog long enoungh to see a successful future for our nation?

It is not hopeful that half of all Republicans want us to pull out of Iraq, and are bitter about us going in. They do not want us to lose, as Clinton, Obama, Dean, Pelosi, Reid and the Democrats clearly want us to do. So in that regard they are not in line with the global socialists who have used this issue to smear our national morals. I conintue to try and understand why these Republicans cannot see the need to fight this war against Islamo-fascism on the Iraq front.

My belief is that a major cause of their indifference to Islamo-fscism goals is the incompetence with which George Bush has explained the "war on terror" (as Bush calls it) ever since it started. I personally don't think he has done near as bad a job fighting the war as some think. I also don't think Bush is ready to quit the war, though his imminent retirement from the Presidency makes what to do next a critical question. However his job as President clearly includes leading. At critical times he has not kept the American people adequately informed about who we are fighting and why. He has allowed the vast majority of our people to think of this war as if it is a standard war against another nation. Unfortunately one phase of the current war started out as if it was against the nation of Iraq, even though the only real justification was as a battlefield in the global war against Islamo-fascism. Islamo-fascism is a movement, not a nation. Iraq was an evil nation but its involvement in the global war by Islamic extremists was the determining factor.

This article about neo-conservatives is returning us to the dialog; What are we fighting for? Abraham Lincoln, the founder of our nation, felt it was worth fighting to retain the individual freedom that is the basis of our unique power in the world. America is different and it is a great difference. Lincoln recognized that if we disintegrated into the same sqaubbling regional group of states as had occurred in Europe, that unique quality was certain to be lost. Unity was a key component of the individual freedom that was then, and hopefully remains today, our destiny.

As noted in the Goldberg article, Lincoln and the people he surrounded himself with recognized and revered the unique quality of individual freedom we enjoy and praised the idea that we had a moral right to spread it around the world.

Freedom in America is under attack. It is under attack from three major forces, 1. global socialism (and its internal proponents like moveon.org), 2. Islamo-fascism and 3. Hispanic colonialism (including Mexican Aztlantism along with other envious neigbors from Central and South America). We have a pro-government anti-freedom elite who lead this attack on behalf of these forces.

Ronald Reagan spoke of the problem when he noted "Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business... frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite."

It is the self-anointed elite who see all three of our major enemies; socialists, islamo-fasicsts and illegal aliens, as justified in their assaults on our way of life. Individual freedom is being lost under these assaults. None of these 3 powers in the world appreciate the total interdependence of individual freedom and the economic success of our nation. Unless we Americans recognize and fight for freedom, including the free enterprise system that is integral to this freedom, the unique greatness of America will end.

Many who currently attack America will find to their own sorrow how much they will have lost by ending the basis for our freedoms.