After the midterm wipeout, divisive blame-gaming erupted on the Right. One particularly bitter divide was over supposed “neocon” interventionism and the Iran war.
But who are—or were—the neocons, and what is neoconservatism?
The word, clearly, means “new conservatives.”
It was first used to characterize former liberals and Democrats in the 1970s who were turned off by their erstwhile party’s soft-on-crime domestic policies and especially by its cheery notion that we no longer needed to fear Soviet communism. They were even more appalled by Jimmy Carter’s paralytic reaction to Iran’s hostage-taking.
In reaction, a number of public intellectuals and officials—such as Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, James Q. Wilson, Bill Bennett, and Jeane Kirkpatrick—began supporting Ronald Reagan’s “we win, and they lose” approach to the Cold War and the military buildup needed to restore deterrence.
The neoconservative movement’s post-Cold War agenda was set in 1997 with the creation of the ill-fated, interventionist Project for the New American Century.
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