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Conservative vs. Neoconservative

Nemo

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A true conservative is for limited government: “That government is best that governs least.” Under the Neoconservatives, there has been the greatest increase in the size of the federal government and expansion of its regulatory power in the history of the nation.

A true conservative is in favor of state’s rights and against the intrusion of the federal government into individual and private affairs. Contrary to this, the Neoconservatives are the first to go running to the federal courts the minute things don’t go their way; and it is they who have enacted legislation in the name of patriotism that represents the most invasive and pervasive intrusion upon our civil rights and individual liberties provided under the Constitution.

A true conservative is for a strong national defense as the first order of the federal government. The Neoconservatives, however, have actually proposed the most drastic reduction of the nation’s armed forces and dismantling of our military bases and installations since the end of the last world war, while wasting tax revenues on phony defense contracts. Indeed, their motto is: Military appropriations are spendable, military personnel are expendable.

A true conservative is for a balanced budget. Under the Neoconservatives, we have gone from surpluses to the largest deficits in our history. The greatest thing that America leads the world in now is the amount of the national debt. It will not be long before the oil companies, that once so dominated our national economy, will be owned by China.

A true conservative is for religious freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution under the Bill of Rights. The Neoconservatives, however, would turn the Constitution upside down and substitute religious dogma for our government of laws. “Jesus is Lord!” they shout. But whose religion will prevail, as history has shown, can only be determined by religious wars, followed by religious persecution. Our founding fathers, whose names the Neoconservatives now take in vain, sought to insure religious freedom through the separation of church and state.

A true conservative is against engaging in foreign entanglements. Our citizens should not be sacrificed on foreign shores but in defense of the nation from attack by our enemies. Nor do the arguments for globalization require that America be engaged in foreign wars. Yet the Neoconservatives have done just that. Worse, they are preemptive wars; wars that are being waged for the sake of private and not the national interests.

A true conservative would “conserve” our natural resources for all the people. The Neoconservative would “reform” conservation to mean exploitation of the nation’s resources for private business interests. Under the stewardship of the Neoconservatives, much of the great wealth of the nation has been squandered.

The Neoconservatives are not conservatives at all - they are exactly the opposite. They share none of the traditional conservative values they purport to represent, and practice none of its principles. They are, in truth, subversives who want to undermine the Constitution and destroy our democratic institutions. They try to hide behind morals and values they do not share. They have nothing to offer but vicious selfishness, rapacious greed and callous meanspiritedness.
 
Well said. I sometimes find myself agreeing with conservatives, but later find myself hating one. It seems the term Neo-Conservative is almost as hated as Liberal.
 
Neocons are liberals. They're also entryists.

From the Godfather of NeoConservatism:

The Neoconservative Persuasion
From the August 25, 2003 issue: What it was, and what it is.
by Irving Kristol

...the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.

...an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives.

Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state... seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his "The Man Versus the State," was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.

The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists.
Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.

And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns. Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal.
No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.

Irving Kristol is author of "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea."
And from William Kristol
"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me... If you read the last few issues of the Weekly Standard, it has much more in common with liberal hawks than traditional conservatives."
From Benador Associates:
What the Heck Is a Neocon?
by Max Boot
Wall Street Journal


The original neocons were a band of liberal intellectuals who rebelled against the Democratic Party's leftward drift on defense issues in the 1970s. At first the neocons clustered around Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, but then they aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism.

So is "neoconservatism" worthless as a political label? Not entirely. In social policy, it stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism.

On economic matters, neocons...embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are.

But it is not really domestic policy that defines neoconservatism. This was a movement founded on foreign policy, and it is still here that neoconservatism carries the greatest meaning...

One group of conservatives believes that we should use armed force only to defend our vital national interests, narrowly defined. They believe that we should remove, or at least disarm, Saddam Hussein, but not occupy Iraq for any substantial period afterward. The idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East they denounce as a mad, hubristic dream likely to backfire with tragic consequences. This view, which goes under the somewhat self-congratulatory moniker of "realism," is championed by foreign-policy mandarins like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and James Baker III.

[Neocons] ...think, however, that "realism" presents far too crabbed a view of American power and responsibility.
 
Nemo said:
A true conservative is for religious freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution under the Bill of Rights. The Neoconservatives, however, would turn the Constitution upside down and substitute religious dogma for our government of laws. “Jesus is Lord!” they shout. But whose religion will prevail, as history has shown, can only be determined by religious wars, followed by religious persecution. Our founding fathers, whose names the Neoconservatives now take in vain, sought to insure religious freedom through the separation of church and state.
I think this is merely window dressing on the neocons part to garner the support of the so-called "Religious Right." I don't think that the neocons actually give a hoot.
Nemo said:
A true conservative is against engaging in foreign entanglements. Our citizens should not be sacrificed on foreign shores but in defense of the nation from attack by our enemies. Nor do the arguments for globalization require that America be engaged in foreign wars. Yet the Neoconservatives have done just that. Worse, they are preemptive wars; wars that are being waged for the sake of private and not the national interests.
Iraq is a preventive war, not a pre-emptive one.

The difference between preventive war and pre-emptive war is a wide one that's been well blurred recently. The invasion of Iraq was preventive, not pre-emptive. Now pre-emption has become newspeak for preventive.

If Iraq had been an imminent threat to the US then the war was not an agressive war. It is part of a long sanctioned tradition of "preemption "Upon detecting evidence that an opponent is about to attack, one beats the opponent to the punch and attacks first to blunt the impending strike."

As we all know, "For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack."

The case can be made that the need to "adapt the concept of imminent threat" as laid out in the National Security Strategy Chapter V, led to the actual adaptation the "concept of imminent threat," in the national security strategy of the USA to include the threat presented by "rogue states and terrorists" and thus a change in what qualifies as preemption.

If Iraq was not an imminent threat to the US then the war was an example of a "preventive war". Preventive war is based on the concept that war is inevitable and that it is better to fight now while the costs are low rather than later when the costs are high. It is a deliberate decision to begin a war."

Pre-emptive strikes need no justification. They've been recognized as legit for centuries. Invading Iraq was preventive, not pre-emptive.

fwiw:
The PR campaign to sell the invasion of Iraq as pre-emption is yet another example of deceit on th epart of Team Bush.

Many people don't cleave to Rush Limbaugh's 'rectification of names' the same way I do lest I fall victim to the insidiousness of newspeak. Newspeak is designed to prevent the possibility of crimethink.

RUSH Limbaugh:
"If we don't use the correct words, we live public lies. If we live public lies, the political system is a sham. When the political system is a sham, civil order and refinement deteriorate. When civil order and refinement deteriorate, injustice multiplies. As injustice multiplies, eventually the electorate is paralyzed by public lawlessness. So the Sage takes for granted that he use the appropriate words, and follow through on his promises with the appropriate deeds. The Sage must simply never speak lies​
Or, as Confucius says, "Words mean things."

[insert humor smilie here]
 
A preventive war is like a preventive abortion - neither can be justified but by the dehumanization and death of its victims. To wage war without justification - to attack a nation's peoples without provocation - is dishonorable, for its victory brings not honor, but disgrace. Such nationalistic ambitions cannot be cloaked in the mantle of world leadership, for it is the naked aggression for world dominion; which, as in the case of the Third Reich, will lead rapidly to our nation's destruction.
 
Nemo said:
A preventive war is like a preventive abortion - neither can be justified but by the dehumanization and death of its victims. To wage war without justification - to attack a nation's peoples without provocation - is dishonorable, for its victory brings not honor, but disgrace. Such nationalistic ambitions cannot be cloaked in the mantle of world leadership, for it is the naked aggression for world dominion; which, as in the case of the Third Reich, will lead rapidly to our nation's destruction.


Funny you mention the "Third Reich" but fail to mention the same genocide that was taking place in Iraq. The Kurds, like the Jews, needed to be saved from a brutal dictator, if the violence that proceeds this bothers you, turn off your television, and let the brave men and women do the hard work for you.;)
 
Deegan said:
Funny you mention the "Third Reich" but fail to mention the same genocide that was taking place in Iraq.
The peculiarity of omitting Hitler comparisons depends entirely upon some factual inaccuracies.

First, it wasn't genocide. It was brutal mass murder. There is a difference.

Second, this invasion of Iraq came a decade too late to stop it. It'd already done been over for quite some time by then.

Third, the international terrorist group that helped carry out the atrocities is now all buddy buddy w/ Team Bush. (Disgustingly enough, IIRC, there's been call fomr civilian Pentagon appointees to fund this international terrorist organization of Saddam Hussein's with US taxpayer's money.) So, I don't think we're supposed to somplaining about this lest we stray into crimethink.

Deegan said:
The Kurds, like the Jews, needed to be saved from a brutal dictator...
Well, maybe so. But the saving needed to be done in the early nineties. The Kurds were pretty much just killing each other in the US controlled no-fly zone by the time Team Bush came into office..

Perhaps now you find Nemo's omission of Hitler comparisons less "funnny."
 
Simon W. Moon said:
The peculiarity of omitting Hitler comparisons depends entirely upon some factual inaccuracies.

First, it wasn't genocide. It was brutal mass murder. There is a difference.

Second, this invasion of Iraq came a decade too late to stop it. It'd already done been over for quite some time by then.

Third, the international terrorist group that helped carry out the atrocities is now all buddy buddy w/ Team Bush. (Disgustingly enough, IIRC, there's been call fomr civilian Pentagon appointees to fund this international terrorist organization of Saddam Hussein's with US taxpayer's money.) So, I don't think we're supposed to somplaining about this lest we stray into crimethink.

Well, maybe so. But the saving needed to be done in the early nineties. The Kurds were pretty much just killing each other in the US controlled no-fly zone by the time Team Bush came into office..

Perhaps now you find Nemo's omission of Hitler comparisons less "funnny."


Bush was not president in the early 90's, so I am sorry, but I must be missing your point?


The moral to this story is simple, it's never too late to do the right thing, insert how we positioned the brutal dictators here........:2wave:
 
Deegan said:
Funny you mention the "Third Reich" but fail to mention the same genocide that was taking place in Iraq. The Kurds, like the Jews, needed to be saved from a brutal dictator, if the violence that proceeds this bothers you, turn off your television, and let the brave men and women do the hard work for you.;)

Umm, I hate to tell you this but...those weapons that Saddam Hussein used on the Kurds? Well, we kinda gave him those....yeah. Thought he was the lesser of two evils (the other being Iran). We might have been wrong about that. Maybe.
 
Columbusite said:
Umm, I hate to tell you this but...those weapons that Saddam Hussein used on the Kurds? Well, we kinda gave him those....yeah. Thought he was the lesser of two evils (the other being Iran). We might have been wrong about that. Maybe.
I also like how you didn't give a source! This is sad that I have to give a source for your post.

Did Saddam Gas the Kurds?
By Juan Cole http://hnn.us/articles/1242.html

About Juan Cole http://www.juancole.com/

Like I say in most of my post's, you tell me what you think!
 
Quoted from a post by Simon W Moon-
"First, it wasn't genocide. It was brutal mass murder. There is a difference."

We are talking about the holocaust, correct? I think I am following the post correctly. Genocide (www.dictionary.com):"The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group."
Hitler moved for the destruction of any race not Aryan, or not an ally of the Aryans.
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/hitler_occult.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/genocide/racial_state_04.shtml
http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm

Not one to quibble about semantics, usually, but it seems to me that to compare the holocaust to mass murder is like comparing the NBA playoffs to the highschool championship. Yeah, they are both basketball games, but it pretty much ends there.
 
Datamonkee said:
Quoted from a post by Simon W Moon-
"First, it wasn't genocide. It was brutal mass murder. There is a difference."
We are talking about the holocaust, correct?
No, you are not correct.
Deegan said this,"...the same genocide that was taking place in Iraq."
The Holocaust did not occur in Iraq.
Next question.

Deegan said:
Bush was not president in the early 90's, so I am sorry, but I must be missing your point?
apparently. I said that the people who, in the past, helped carry out the atrocities against the Kurds is now all buddy buddy w/ Team Bush.

See, two different times periods are discussed. The past and the present.

Next question.
 
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