Can we figure out a timeline for the origin of the neo-cons?

[Wat_Tyler]

The way I see it, proto-neo-cons like Barry Goldwater aside, the origin of the neo-cons sparks from the 1973-74 energy crisis, a crisis that forced most of the western democracies fully into free-market capitalism. This event, concurrent with the rise to prominence of the monetarists around Milton Friedman and, on the other side of the Atlantic the new right forming around Keith Joseph and the Centre for Policy Studies, was the one that let the neo-con genie out of the bottle, giving them the opportunity they needed to hijack our political discourse, particularly in the US and UK.

http://www.cps.org.uk/

That's my half-thought-out thesis, anyway. Care to help me out with this?

[ret5hd]

1. If i wasn't an atheist...

i'd say about the time satan was thrown from the heavens.

if i was superstitious...
i'd say about the time Dracula bled his first victim

but, as i don't believe the above...
i do know that many names familiar to us today were active during the nixon administration, just about the time you are talking about.

[NYC]

2. I think earlier.

Some of these people have been planning for a long time.

[Wat_Tyler]

6. Connections to the Southern Strategy perhaps?

I think, from what I can gather, there was a lot of cross-over connections between the Republicans and the UK Conservatives, particularly between Friedman and Thatcher/Joseph. I wonder how far back beyond 1974 it goes?

[NYC]

11. When was Kennedy assassinated?

?

[Wat_Tyler]

16. November 1963.

[NYC]

20. The neocons were already planning.

Have you read Farewell America by James Hepburn? The entire book is online free:

http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

Read the chapters 9 "Businessmen", 10 "Oilmen", 11 "Texans". You really should read the whole book.

[bettyellen]

3. interesting because i think this is about the time they decided that the

media was too critical of the government, and post-Vietnam, decided to put a fix on that. Seems like a lot the seeds were sown then.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

4. I think

you'd have to ask, how long has the US had people who are wealthy? I think this is all about money. They have it and aren't giving up any. This whole thing (Iraq) is all about making a buck. Well more than A buck :)
They have been with us since the days of the Pharoahs or Romans or whenever we'd care to start looking..............
The War on Terror,Communism, Unions, Abortion,Crime, Racism, Gun Control etc are all so many smoke screens, designed to distract us from the fact 90% of the wealth is controlled by 2% of the people.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

5. Leo Strauss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

[kaitykaity]

9. More on Strauss.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gordon/gordon7.html

As Strauss sees matters, classical and Christian natural law did not impose strict and absolute limits on state power; instead, all is left to the prudential judgment of the wise statesman. From this contention, Rothbard vigorously dissents. "In this reading, Hobbes and Locke are the great villains in the alleged perversion of natural law. To my mind, the ‘perversion’ was a healthy sharpening and development of the concept." In Rothbard’s view, medieval natural law thinkers fully recognized that individuals have rights. Incidentally, the foremost work of contemporary scholarship on this issue, Brian Tierney’s The Idea of Natural Rights, vindicates Rothbard’s side of the dispute.

Strauss’s rejection of individual rights led him to espouse political views that Rothbard found repellent: "We find Strauss . . . praising ‘farsighted’, ‘sober’ British imperialism; we find him discoursing on the ‘good’ Caesarism, on Caesarism as often necessary and not really tyranny, etc... he praises political philosophers for yes, lying to their readers for the sake of the ‘social good’…. I must say that this is an odd position for a supposed moralist to take."

Not only did Rothbard oppose Strauss’s account of natural law; he also found risible the method of textual analysis by which Strauss arrived at his conclusions. Strauss believed that the great political philosophers faced a dilemma. They often held views at odds with prevailing orthodoxy; should they propagate their dissent openly, they faced persecution. In any case, their doctrines were meant for an elite group of disciples, not for an unlearned public unfit to judge them.

What then was to be done? According to Strauss, the philosophers concealed their true opinions through esoteric writing. Seeming contradictions in a text by a great philosopher were not mistakes; they instead signaled the presence of a hidden message.

[Wat_Tyler]

17. Thanks, both.

Strauss certainly seems like a key, first-wave neo-con.

[warrior1]

7. how about

a time line for their end.

[Wat_Tyler]

18. The more we know about them, and where they came from.

The more we can work on the end.

[The Crazy Canadian]

8. Here is a web site to look at.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism_%28United_States%29

Also, look up Irving Kristol, the "godfather" of the neocons.

[OKNancy]

10. I think most people think modern neo-conservatism

started in the 1940's. Most of the people in that moverment were Marxists, who really became disenchanted with the Soviet Union.
Irving Kristol is often mentioned as the primary thinker in that bunch.

[punpirate]

12. I would say...

... it was earlier than that, by a bit. In this country, most of the now-prominent neo-con hawks were under the tutelage of Strauss at the University of Chicago and Henry "Scoop" Jackson in Congress, at least in the early-to-mid-Sixties.

What I think truly gave the neo-cons focus was the so-called "Powell Manifesto," written in 1971. This was a call for an all-out propaganda campaign by the right wing to "preserve the American way of life." From that point on, money from far-right wealthy individuals started pouring into think tanks, PR outlets and conservative political campaigns.

Some of that conservative money came out of a vengeance for the perceived belittling of Nixon in Congress, but for the most part, it was seen as a long-term program of conservatives to obtain political and social dominance.

Though some of these people were professed Democrats (Richard Perle, hilariously, says he still a registered Democrat), the loss of the Vietnam war really unhinged them--they'd always believed in raw American power, and when that power was thwarted in Vietnam, they ran to Reagan and the conservatives in droves, and through Reagan, got to rub elbows with the money people and institute policies that have been with us ever since.

Cheers.

[applegrove]

13. Neocons writings in 1965 said that to gain power they needed

a prissy, naive, patrician with black & white thinking who they could easily control. (Prissy makes them happy rule makers ... no matter how unhappy it makes others... the same as Hitler's autocrats...some people like George Bush just get off on telling others what the 'rules' and and forcing others to comply. I think this last thing is related to sadism and bad potty training & anality).

That was how they could get the presidency and have a puppet. They never believed that they could get a plurality of votes any other way - obviously. They had to inhabit a rigid rich guy.

[Jose Diablo]

14. Oh, I think we can much farther back than 73-74

http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/USA/ShaysReb.CP.html

For Shay's rebellion.

The ideas of the neocons probably go way, way back. Greed, avarice, it's part of human nature.

The struggle is very old. They have the upper hand now. But something about what they do has a very short half-life. The screw will turn.

I am reminded of a statue of 2 men, very muscular wrestling. Each has a death hold on the other. They cannot get away nor can either win. I think Rodin was the artist, it is his style. I cannot remember the name of the sculpture, but it reminds me of the struggle, and its age. It's truly ageless, because the fight by and large is not 'out there' it is within us all. What we see out there are those that have failed with that internal struggle. It is easy to hate them, I myself do sometimes, but really they should be pitied. They will lose, they always do.

[starroute]

15. In some ways back to the 1930's

Try googling on a guy named Stefan Possony. He's sometimes called a proto-Neocon and often described as the intellectual father of Star Wars. He was a refugee from Hitler who came to the US around 1939, and was very active in a whole range of anti-Communist activities from the 1950's on.

One significant thing about the Neocons is that they or their mentors tend to be European, or to come out of the European intellectual tradition, which is distinctly different from American conservatism. Certainly even a lot of the Republicans don't feel comfortable with them.

[Silverhair]

19. Goldwater wasn't a proto-neo-con, he was an old fashioned conservative.

Love him or hate him, he knew what he believed and stood up for his principles. I can always admire that in a person, even as I may disagree with some of the principles.

[Wilms]

21. Kick n/t

[SoCalDem]

22. The free-wheeling 60's.. They were the "squares"

:(

No one wanted to sleep with them, and apparently they got pissed off.. We have all been screwed many times over by them through the years.. I guess they got the last laught after all

[adwon]

23. I'll tell you the name of the first

Whittaker Chambers. Ex-Stalinist turned radical Republican. Sound familiar?

Goldwater was a thorough individualist. I wouldn't tar him with this brush.

Oh the free-market capitalism thing. See, here's an idea I've read which struck true. Michael Lind, in Up From Conservatism, suggested that neo-conservatives were drawn to extremes. He cited the fact that many prominent neo-cons shifted from left-wing radicalism to right-wing radicalism without missing a beat. He also drew the ironic contrast of pure capitalism and socialism as squabbling fraternal twins. In one government does nothing, in the other it does everything. In neither scenario is there any sense of balance, which is a neo-con trait.

The real problem with neo-conservatives is that they never met a half-baked economic theory they didn't love. These people feel the need to overcompensate for having supported totalitarians in the past. It's ironic that they consider radical conservatism as the moral antithesis of communism. The irony lies in the fact that communists like Lenin found radicals of the right fairly easy to discredit. They must have missed the party meeting where LIBERALISM was identified as the true enemy of 'the revolution.'