Whats with the terms neo-con and liberal?

Why do people refer to some of our nations as conservatives as neo-cons when they have been around for so long? The agenda is nothing new, its just like the leftys bein called liberal. I mean there have always been people with these views so why is there need for these new terms.(which both can be used in a derogetory manner from my understanding)

[edit on 12/7/2005 by ludaChris]

Neocons are more activist and interventionist in world affairs, and believe the U.S. military should be used to help spread democracy and tend to focus less on conservative social issues, while plain old conservatives (paleocons) tend to be more isolationist in their world view and push the conservative social agenda much harder (Pat Buchanan is a good example).

Lefties/liberals are interchangable, they haven't changed any. The thing that's changed is the party structures in the U.S. The Democrats have lost their conservative southern element and much of the middle to the Republican Party, making it a far more left-wing party.

[edit on 12/7/2005 by djohnsto77]

I call it the "SAME BS" on both sides to control the public. You?

WAKE UP !!
There is no such thing as conservatives or liberals. Both terms are used out of sheer lazyness and the inablity to deal with facts.
What is a conservative?
And for that matter is Liberal?
Answer a farce the terms have no meaning anymore thats if they ever had meaning in the first place.

[edit on 9-12-2005 by xpert11]

Originally posted by ludaChris
Why do people refer to some of our nations as conservatives as neo-cons when they have been around for so long?

?
Because they haven't.

Neo conservatives technically or at least originally were people who had been on the left for a long while, but then became conservative. Not ala dennis miller or what happens with most people as they get older and thus more invested in the system, but an actual specific group was the 'neo-conservatives'.

I think part of what caused the change was concern over the status of israel, with lots of people on the left starting to dump israel in favour of socialist groups amoung the arabs.

When people talk about Cheney or Rummsfeld being neo-conservatives, you're right, it doesn't make a lot of sense. The general idea is that conservatives are isolationists, amoung other things, and that these guys represent interventionists amoung the conservatives. The 'Bush Doctrine' is apparently something that Cheney was calling for a long time ago, the readiness to have pre-emptive/preventative war with nations that were a building threat. It wasn't 'neo-conservative' then tho it was just 'extreme' or 'radical republican'.

THe usage of the term 'liberal' is even more confusing. Normally when someone calls another person a liberal they mean that they are someone who supports a greatly expanded government intrusion into the private sphere, centrally regulated-planned economies, massive extension of the welfare-state, and generally it means something like 'socialist'. There are parties in the US that use the term in their name, like the Liberal Party, for example.
But in reality 'liberal' used to mean someone that recognized the existence of human liberties and rights, and who felt that economy should not be the domain of government, and that the government should be resitricted and the people should have the means of power. This is why the united states can be said to be one of the most liberal nations out there. A Liberal Programme (in the historical sense), gives the people control of their guns, takes a hands-off approach to the economy, doesn't provide a public dole nor much in the way of public works, etc. This is where the root for 'libertarian' comes from.
Also, in the historical sense, conservatives are merely people who recognize that the authority of the government rests on the constitution of the state, and that that constitution shouldn't be changed and that indeed the entire system shouldn't be changed. Thus there really weren't any conservatives in the earlier history of the US, and the term is probably better thought of as refering to european conservatives, who'd back the monarchies and the parliaments over radicalism. Radicalism being of course the desire to destroy the state and rebuild a new one, and this is often opposed to Reactionaryism, where the desire is to change the state and system from with in response to external pressures (rather than start anew).

But generally its not liberal and neoconservative that people talk about. Its Liberal!!!!11! or NEOCON!!!. IE, insults and labels, not actual real descriptions.

While i was reading your post I was reminded of the history that I was taught in school and I seem to recall that originally the party that became the republicans was deemed liberal whilst the future dems were conservative. Now I dont recall which was which the torys or the whips so if you could help me out with this I thank you. Does any of this sound right?

One thing I believe was left out of the neo con label was a rabid support for Israel. Many of the neo-con are in fact Jewish but many more are not. All, however stongly support Israel. Which could perhaps explain some of our footprint in the Middle East. As long as we are there any major attack on Israel is less likely.

Longhaircowboy:

The first two political parties in America formed during the Washington administration. They were called the Federalists (John Adams' and Alexander Hamilton's party) and the Democratic Republicans (Thomas Jefferson's party). Washington himself belonged to neither and tried to steer a middle course. The Federalists were advocates of strong central government and commerce; the DRs were advocates of weak central government, states' rights, and an agrarian economy.

It's an irony of history that while the Federalist Party itself died early, its philosophy prevailed. By 1824 the party was essentially dead. About that time the DRs changed their name to the Democratic Party, which it is still called. From 1824 to 1860, another opposition party, the Whigs, championed commercial economic interests against the agrarian interests, particularly Southern planters, favored by the Democrats.

The Whigs went into disarray over the issue of slavery, as indeed did the whole country. Unable to come to an agreement on the issue, they ceased to be an effective party in the 1850s. A number of other parties arose, only one of which, the Republicans, was solidly anti-slavery. The Republicans, of course, are still with us.

On the issue of slavery, we would definitely say that the GOP at that time was progressive while the Democrats were conservative. On other issues, it's rather difficult to say. The Republicans were the party of industry and commerce, while the Democrats were the party of the landowning, planting elite, hence the stances on slavery. That means the Republicans represented capitalists. But there were stirrings of labor interest in some of Lincoln's rhetoric, and later on, Theodore Roosevelt became certainly a very liberal president. (But then, he was not exactly popular with the party's leaders, however much he was with the people.)

It's all dependent on which issues we choose to focus on. But overall, I'd say yes, the Pubs started as a progressive or liberal party, challenging the entrenched, conservative Democrats.

See here for a large over view of the United State's political system and a history of it.

The idea of a Political Party was something hated by most of the Founding Fathers, as they could see the problems this caused in Europe and the fact it just became a system of control by one group and not the people which is what they desired to see.

The term Liberal is now used to explain people who support the ideas pushed forward by New Left Realism to do with crime.

Neo-Con is a term used to describe the New Conservative Agenda which has began to take over since the 1980's with the influx of New Right Realism.

Over the last decade, New Right and Left Realism moved away from just being about crime and also began to look at foreighn policy, the economy and many other things.

This is where you gain the term Left/Liberal and Right/Neo-Con, even though the Liberals no longer represent what the word was intended to mean and neither do the conservatives.

This article is also interesting and worth a read.

Basically, it is just a term used to describe two School's of Thought in Sociology although many people do not understand where it came from. Right Realism was started by the likes of Charles Murrey, who blamed everything on the Welfare System and Blacks. Many of the views which the Neo-Conservative's and the Republican Party hold are based on this man who was primarily a bigot. In fact at one point saying he didn't need to check the statistics in the U.K. because everyone knew black people were responsible for crime.

Originally posted by Nygdan
THe usage of the term 'liberal' is even more confusing. Normally when someone calls another person a liberal they mean that they are someone who supports a greatly expanded government intrusion into the private sphere, centrally regulated-planned economies, massive extension of the welfare-state, and generally it means something like 'socialist'. There are parties in the US that use the term in their name, like the Liberal Party, for example.

But in reality 'liberal' used to mean someone that recognized the existence of human liberties and rights, and who felt that economy should not be the domain of government, and that the government should be resitricted and the people should have the means of power.

This is a Libertarian perspective. (Note the capital L.) It's not quite correct, in my opinion, because the size and power of government, so central a concern to Libertarians, was not the main focus for classical liberals any more than it is for modern ones. The main focus, rather, was on human freedom, and that meant the freedom of ordinary people from oppression by the rich, powerful and (in those days) often titled.

True, liberals often did (and still do) oppose oppressive state power. You will find that liberals are against the renewal of the Patriot Act, for example, and against Bush's imprisoning citizens without trial or charges by calling them "enemy combattants," and against similar erosion or disregarding of the Bill of Rights. In the days of the classical liberals that Libertarians (wrongly, IMO) take as their predecessors, governments tended to be more oppressive than they are today, and so opposition to government was more a liberal focus. But that opposition occurred because the governments were oppressive and served the interests of the rich, powerful, and often titled elite, not because they were strong.

You mentioned the idea that the economy should not be the domain of government. There is actually only one classical liberal thinker who voiced any idea of this kind, and that is Adam Smith. But Smith was writing at a time when government involvement in the economy usually meant the establishment and protection of monopolies held by the titled nobility. His advocacy of laissez-faire must be taken in that context. Given some of the other sentiments he expressed in his writing, I very much doubt that he would be against government involvement in the economy when it was done to protect the rights of workers, consumers, or the environment against the interests of the rich and powerful (if no longer titled).

There are two types of power, political power and personal power. Political power is the ability to influence law and government policy. Personal power is the ability to make someone else serve you. Political power at its strongest, i.e. with the state in the hands of a dictator or monarch, is clearly the greatest potential danger to liberty. But personal power is by far the greatest COMMON danger. Dictators are rare, and all liberal democracies have strong protections against them. Many of the economic laws and regulations to which Libertarians object are directed at restraining personal power, especially the power of employers over their employees. Thus, they are measures aimed at expanding or protecting liberty -- and are rightly called liberal.

The terms Neo-Conservative and liberals have the extremist conotations attached to them. So the media can paint a fanatical base to whichever party they choose.

Neocons have been around a long time.. at least since the Wilson presidency.. the thing is, up until the fall of the New Right after Reagan they were considered interventionist liberals, and were mostly Democrats. A lot of people are called neocons who aren't, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush. These guys are conservatives of varying types who share a lot of ground with the neocons of today, but were either without intellectual pedigree (such as Bush) or came from more traditional conservative schools of thought, such as Rumsfeld and Cheney. For proper examples of neocons, you need to look at people like Perle, Wolfowitz, and the Kristols. Neocons generally share some common tenants:

1. Moral absolutism.
2. A belief in the acceptability and desirability of the use of American force to promote certain values.
3. A belief that military force is the prime determinant of international relations.
4. A focus on the middle east.
5. Disdain for multilateralism.

Check out:
en.wikipedia.org...

Also, the book "America Alone" contains excellent background and critique, by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke.

As for liberal, it means different things in different countries and contexts.


[edit on 19-12-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 19-12-2005 by koji_K]

[edit on 19-12-2005 by koji_K]