Matters Of Opinion

The “N” Word

This past primary cycle there were a lot of words and insults thrown around, including the ever insulting slur…neoconservative. What? What did you expect me to write? Racist.

But seriously. On all of the Facebook pages and posts on different sites (mostly conservative sites) the word “neoconservative” is thrown around like it’s a bad word or something! Yes, I consider myself partly neoconservative. Yes, I’m a “hawk” as opposed to a “dove”. And yes, I think it is of the utmost importance (both for win-ability and for safety of our country) that the Repbulican party remains “neoconservative friendly”.

Many libertarians on this site (depending on where you are reading this, I cross-post to several sites) will pigeon hole neoconservatives as “war mongers”, even through this is not the case at all. Neo-conservatism means, literally, a “new conservative”. If there is anybody reading this that at one point considered himself or herself a liberal and was brought over from the dark side, then you are guilty of being a “new”, or “neo”, conservative.

There is an excellent book that can be found at the library called “The Neoconservative Manifesto”, which is a collection of papers and documents by Kristol, Thatcher, Rice, and many others, which outlines both the main points of neoconservatism and the mistakes that the Bush administration made with what was a half-hearted attempt at spreading democracy. In fact, many of the authors in the book were dissapointed with Bush and Cheney, because the duo didn’t follow the structure that neoconservatives laid out for such a plan yet kept with the neoconservative tag, therefore giving neoconservatism a much more…negative vibe than what it deserved.

I have no problem with the ever growing reality that America MUST continue to be the worlds super power and has to help protect our liberties as well as other smaller countries. That’s a part of the burden of being the greatest country in the world.

Part of what I’ve seen has been that libertarians will use the neocon tag with…well…pretty much any Republican that isn’t Ron Paul or a Paul supporter, and I’ve seen a lot of arguments where libertarians don’t like being associated with the 9/11 “truthers” or having their ideas unfairly criticezed (their words). Well, I’d just like to point something out. While Bush was in office, instead of constructive criticism, many libertarians decided rather to side with liberals on the issues of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and called neocons “dangerous”, “war mongers”, etc. So now that some neocons (or even more hawkish conservatives) object to libertarian policies or ideas and say that the policies are “dangerous”, or “isolationist”, or “crazy”, or “stupid”, or “childish”, or…well…you get the point, so many libertarians feel like they are being picked on. If you can’t take the criticism, don’t dish it out.

I encourage anybody who will jump on the “neocons are dangerous power hungry war mongers” band wagon to first read through the papers and drafts of many that have taken neoconservative ideas and applied them through theory and practice, and who have critiqued foreign policy and have even laid some of the ground work for this great nation’s standing army today, before making that ultimate decision to be so negative towards libertarians. I know what one of the first comments will be: But Travis! Be fair! Read some libertarian literature! I have and, even though I find so many of Ron Paul’s ideas so absurd, I will continue to at least hear out the libertarian arguments (even those that are dangerous, or crazy, or isolationist, or…)