FiddyTree I collect books . I do a lot of reading and I am always searching for stuff. I can find the relavent information. I want to KNOW who I need to read up on.
Specifically for issues affecting the NEOconservatives, the conservatives and any other ideas that would be associated with its history. Conservative intellectualism, I think is what I want to learn about.
Well, there are a couple of routs I would suggest immediately.
Keeping in mind that we are dealing with individuals who tried to conceptualize just what the "movement" was, and that they seemingly disagree with eachother as to the definition, it is always good to start knocking on some big names of the movement.
I still use many of these resources, time and time again. Even the polemics I know I have to buy at least at some point (I own a few), just in case I need to go anywhere with the historiography of the movement (aka, the study of the study of history of neoconservatism-which has always interested me), even if just as a student, or if some day it will be one of the things I would actually write about in my future (if I go that route or not).
I would suggest Irving Kristol's collection of essays in the 1995 (I believe) work: "Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea". This will give you plenty of starting information about Irving Kristol, his perspective, reflections on a great many issues (sometimes it's just fun to read for his writing style), and reflections on the movement itself. Now, my current mode of thinking is that Irving was no specialist in anything other than social networking and developing some big-picture ideas. He has his opinions, but I think a lot of his work circled around getting people to meet each other, and in his mind, develop an agenda. Did *he* really develop an agenda which was adopted? I'm thinking yes, and no. Irving loved to write about the moral and political duty of the intellectual and academic to lead policy, but there was a bit of an admittance that this was kind of an intellectual's masturbation fantasy. At the same time, policy makers are not necessarily going to get caught up in what an essayist is thinking, because perhaps, who cares, and perhaps the writing offers nothing really applicable.
There are many other thinkers in the movement. Get a hold of their work, and other's analysis of their work.
For secondary sources, I started off a long time ago with John Ehrman's
The Rise of Neoconservatism, which was written with a foreign affairs slant. It chronicled the possible background in Vital Center Liberalism to its perceived success (and thus demise of being 'neo' anything) in the early 1990s. I'm making my way through several other books
Not long ago, I want to say this past fall or summer, National Affairs Inc. opened up their archives to the internet, so that the world can read the famed eventual "neoconservative" policy journal
The Public Interest. I'm digging through them now, particularly focusing on what at least, a few of the usual suspects, thought was the capacity, role, responsibility, and so forth of intellectuals/academics in American social and political life and why they (neocons or eventual neocons) clashed (well, generally speaking anyways) so "violently" (and in this case, this means politically, verbally, or in the written word-not fists and weapons) against the New Left, the Free Speech Movement, and the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s and 1970s.
The documentary film (also comes in an expanded edition in book form)
Arguing the World is a fantastic set-up for examining the world that many of these guys lived in: the world of ideas. This will get you a ethnic/cultural background, an intellectual background, and finally, the establishment of their own political identity.
On the subject of documentary films, I would recommend you see Adam Smith's
Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear if for no other reason than because the new media world (aka, really easy to find on the internet) is using it as the background study of the movement. Now, I have many problems with this documentary (including the montage style he does, which is a reason why it took so long for it to be approved for US sale, due to copyright difficulties), but it may make you dig deeper into the whole thing. People unfortunately take it as fact, when in fact, it's just another series of works following a school of thought in the interpretation of the movement or subsections of the movement. For instance, one problem I have is that even if the wild fantastical theory of the Straussians panned out, the documentarian just rolls with the idea that neoconservatives as a whole are Straussians. Many, or perhaps most, have not in fact read the man, or if they had or read his "students" or "disciples", it doesn't really mean they 1) understood what was being displayed to them 2) buy into it.
There is another documentary supported (but I have never found the complete thing, oddly enough-it's always what seems to be a VHS recording that dies in an inopportune moment) by the BBC: something titled "The War Party". Anyways, it is spending its time focusing on so-called foreign policy neoconservatives at around the build-up to the Iraq War. In particular it highlights the Jewish aspects of the movement. However, it borderlines on obsessiveness towards that aspect. It kind of simplifies/distorts things with the supposed "agenda", how "powerful they are", and of course, who wrote what, when, and for what purpose. It also features editing effects and music to give the viewer the sense that something mysterious, or perhaps even sinister is going on.
I would suggest a word of caution with these documentaries because most documentaries on any given subject play up the importance of even the most mundane activities.
Another avenue I am going through is trying to immerse myself in details of policy-making life in Washington. I started off researching the movement in relation to the conspiracy theories surrounding it (firstly the 9/11 conspiracy theory, then the Straussian conspiracy theory, then the Israeli conspiracy theory), but you know, one real good way to test the validity to these narratives is to try to figure out just how government really works. You know, what are so-and-so's concern in this department, are they too busy to care about what someone from another department says, or if they are completely outside the process....etc. A fun little topic that I want to get into more is the seeming sparing matches between the State Department and the Department of Defense.
I mean, anything to bring out the complexity of politics and governance. That's what I would suggest approaching.
