The ‘neocon’ GOP really is neoconservative in its principles these days. The Washington Times has a fairly decent article on Ron Paul and how his supporters have been shunned by the Republican party. Dr. Paul had this to say on the difference in philosophy between his supporters and the neocons:
“We don’t agree with them,” he says. “We agree with the Old Right, and they’re the New Right, which is ‘The Wrong,’ [because] the New Right has morphed into neoconservative.”
And it’s true. The neoconservatives are not related to the Old Right in any fashion. They are simply Trotskyites, former Leftists, who look up to great fathers of neoconservatism like Leo Strauss and Irving Kristol. These people are defenders of the welfare-warfare state–their small government talk is used only to win over votes.
Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard writes in his blog today:
…but let me just say to Ron Paul supporters everywhere, and on behalf of the New Right (by which I assume Paul means the Jew Right), get lost.
There should be plenty of room for the Paulnuts in Obama’s big tent. If Rev. Wright isn’t exactly a 9/11 Truther, at least he’s breathed new life into the Pearl Harbor Truther movement. Imagine a newsletter coauthored by the Reverend and Lew Rockwell–now that’s racial harmony.
No, Goldfarb, the Obama big tent isn’t big enough to contain me. Obama appears less corrupt than your favorite candidate (John McCain) and Hillary Clinton, but he does not share my views on government and freedom, and I refuse to support him fully. The reason is because I believe in principle, which you have managed to convince most conservatives to abandon for the sake of expediency. In each election you tell conservatives to vote for the “lesser of two evils”, yet in each election we find a less and less conservative candidate to vote for.
The Old Right is experiencing a revitalization that will make neoconservatives like Michael Goldfarb and Bill Kristol cower in fear. Their power and influence will be lost as freedom regains ground over the next few years.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul
I’ve been calling them neo-Trotskyites for a while now. It’s honest, accurate and denies them the favorable spin they acquire through the abrogation of the term “conservative”.
Obama is right about one thing when he says “words matter”. It really started in the 70’s, when, out of frustration with the actualk impact of some of the more fantasy-based proprosals from the Left, conservatives began demonizing the term “liberal”. (It was easier than the intellectual pick-and-shovel work of showing fantasy for what it was. Americans like fantasy. No matter how much we state otherwise, as a people, we still believe in the Free Lunch.)
That’s how we wound up with a society where a majority of people express liberal opinions on most specific issues while generally descibing themselves as conservative. The distortion of the definition of “liberal” gave us a blowback in the form of an equally distorted definition of “conservative”.
At this point, neither term has a very useful definition with regard to politics. Both obfuscate more than they illuminate.
That’s why I’ve abandoned the Right/Left, Liberal/Conservative construct. I’ve moved to a Reality/Fantasy spectrum. I’ve come to the conclusion that any philosophical differences between liberalism and conservatism are irrelevant, what matters is where you stand on the Reality/Fantasy spectrum. Am I to believe that a “conservative” politician who supports an aggressive war of choice to “liberate” an artificial country that will likely never be a nation, paid for by credit from Asian central banks is less a threat to my liberty than a “liberal” politician who thinks all our social ills can be cured in a matter of months with high-rise housing projects?
I’ll take a “liberal” with a solid grasp of reality over a “conservative” on the wrong side of the Looking Glass any day.
“Jew Right”? Debating a person, like Goldfarb, who is unable to resist playing the banal “anti-semite” card whenever possible is futile.