Letters to the Editor
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Why Use "Neo" When Just Plain "Conservative" Will Do?
Great article!
Nevertheless, I am starting to get annoyed with the overuse of this term "neoconservative." Why use "neo" when just plain "conservative" will do?
Excuse me, I grew up in "conservative" Virginia during the "good old days" of Jim Crow segregation when "conservatism" supposedly meant small government and respect for "individual liberty." And I spent most of the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s working as a computer programmer in a Republican "conservative" dominated county in the Hudson Valley of New York. Today, I am living in Southern California and around here the "conservatives" (including the L.A.P.D.) hate Mexican-Americans more than Osama Bin Laden.
Rhetoric aside, in my lifetime politicians and intellectuals who call themselves "conservative" have always behaved exactly like the Bush-Cheney crowd.
Why do so many "progressives" fixate onn this idea that "The Neocons" are the villains in this piece?
My fear is they are a tiny bit apologetic about being one of those "bleeding heart" and "politically correct" liberals and so they reflexively give the "conservatives" a litle wiggle room ("Bush's crowd are 'neoconservatives' not like Our Dear Great Ronald Reagan and that 'idealistic' Barry Goldwater and the 'real conservatives' from the 60s, 70s and 80s").
Please.