Featured Neo-Con

In general usage, it has become an all-purpose term of abuse hurled at anyone who believes in the bond between American power and freedom’s progress throughout the world. Anyone who still believes that American power is inextricable from global stability is considered naïve, a "warmonger" and out of touch with "the new reality."

Even if the definition of neocon had not been blurred and muddied in recent years as it has arguably become an all-purpose insult many of us who wore the title "Neoconservative" as a badge of honor in the early part of the new millennium now are more reluctant about it.

Regardless, I am still proud to be called a "Neocon." There are two reasons: The first is that American strength really is the linchpin of a peaceful, economically integrating world. The second is that we know what it looks like when America embraces amoral realpolitik, and it’s not pretty.

The United States is at the heart of a dense web of alliances. We extend formal security guarantees to more than 50 countries. Some see these alliances and guarantees as little more than a burden the U.S. can no longer afford. Yet what they actually do is dampen security competition. They reassure partner countries that they needn’t build up their military to defend themselves against their neighbors, which then reassures their neighbors that they needn’t build up their military. This virtuous cycle is one of the central reasons Western Europe and Japan recovered so quickly after the devastation of World War II, and why globalization has helped ease poverty around the world.

For that reality to continue, however, it is necessary for the U.S. to actually honor those formal security guarantees. One need look only so far as post-Vietnam America, when the liberal Democrats got control of both houses thanks to Nixon's stupidity and criminal activity. They immediately flexed their muscles and defunded the Paris Peace Accords clause that guaranteed complete rearm and supply of the South Vietnamese army, who despite what hysterians -- er, historians -- say, was continuing to win the war the U.S. had already won. Within six months, Saigon fell. When the U.S. fails to live up to its commitments, the world fails in general.

When the U.S. makes a security commitment to another country, that commitment will be met. This in turn means that the U.S. military must have the power and the reach to defend countries far from our borders.

 

For the most part, I tend to agree with TND on this particular point.

OTOH, I'm not so sure that it should always be the policy of the US in every global conflict to act as the world's policeman.

In his farewell address, President Washington warned of the dangers in becoming too involved with entangling alliances with other foreign nations.

Over the last 100 or so years, the US has gotten involved in so many of these entangling alliances that have had the ultimate effect of the loss of many American lives and the squandering of untold millions of dollars.

The reasons given for our entering World War I was "to keep the world safe for democracy" and that this conflict would be the "war to end all wars."

We fought a war in Korea for reasons I have yet to figure out.

The same could probably be said for our involvement in such other conflicts as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Balkans, Libya, etc.

I'm not saying that the US should never be involved in any foreign conflict, but, OTOH, I think that we need to be very careful when it comes to involving our people and monetary assets being used in other countries' conflicts.

 

Pat Buchanan uses the term quite a bit in his book "Where the Right Went Wrong." In it he refers to the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz as neocons. He used it in a pejorative way.

 

Polar opposite of Liberal Democrat Socialists.

We're 17 trillion dollars in debt.

Both extremes require that we just keep on spending money that we don't have.

The inevitable reckoning of these cold hard facts of economics for the U.S. is just around the corner.

 

Do you cherish your monthly 'retirement check from the government'?

I do mine.

 

I guess it depends on the caller. I am an old conservative both in philosophy and age and don't know what neo [new]-con means!

 

Just think what that monthly check would be if you had invested in stock back in the 1930's after FDR sold it to the gullible public!

 

The difference being, the liberals pour money down a black hole of entitlements. The "neocon" philosophy is to invest in the world's future. We can do the latter quite well within a balanced budget. Entitlements do nothing but drain the treasury.

That "monthly retirement check from the government" you enjoy so much is bankrupting the country, not directly because of the concept behind it, but because of the way the "trust fund" that doesn't exist has been raided regularly, without payback or a plan to do so, by the last 30 Congresses.

Any "reckoning" that is just around the corner will be the direct result of the liberal/socialist agenda and this president's refusal to execute the duties of his office faithfully within Constitutional limits, the last straw in a string of congressional and presidential bunglings that have occurred do the long-standing premise that future generations can pay for the entitlements and social programs that accomplish nothing but buying votes for the incumbents of both parties, as long as they can point to favorable "ayes" cast for funding of said programs. The truth is, none of us can truly afford the entitlements in the first place. Ironically, we want attempt to pay for them by not paying for the military strength that we can't afford not to have in place.

 

dCON the neocon weighs in.

 

Thank you. :thumbsup:

 

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Neocon

See number 5

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neoconservative

As one of only a handful of Republicans to oppose the Iraq War, Republican Congressman Jimmy Duncan said in 2003: “It is a traditional conservative position not to want the United States to be the policeman of the world.” At the time Duncan’s party strongly disagreed with him.

But this is because most Republicans didn’t think of the Iraq War as “policing the world” but as a legitimate matter of national defense. We now know that it had absolutely nothing to do with America’s defense and we’re still bogged down needlessly in another nation’s civil war.

But this has always been the neocon ruse—if neoconservatives can convince others that fighting some war, somewhere is for America’s actual defense, they will always make this argument and stretch any logic necessary to do so. Whether or not it is true is less important than its effectiveness. But their arguments are only a means to an end. Neoconservatives rarely show any reflection—much less regret—for foreign policy mistakes because for them there are no foreign policy mistakes. America’s wars are valid by their own volition. America’s “mission” is its missions. Writes Max Boot: “Why should America take on the thankless task of policing the globe… As long as evil exists, someone will have to protect peaceful people from predators.”

Needless to say, perpetual war to rid the world of evil is about as far as one can get from traditional conservatism but it was also the mantra of Bush’s Republican Party. Boot now snidely asks the current GOP if they want to be known as the “anti-military, weak-on-defense, pro-dictator party” due to their opposition to the Libyan intervention. This argument might sound strange yet familiar to Republicans—it was exactly what they said about Democrats who opposed the Iraq War. John McCain now calls Republicans who oppose the Libyan War “isolationist.” The Senator’s use of that term is as illogical as it is illustrative—in that his bizarre definition is identical to what most of his fellow Republicans believed just a few short years ago.

Read More At: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/whats-a-neoconservative/

 

You are so full of it, it ain't even funny. You don't even know what you're talking about, but put on like you do as usual. The 'fund' I draw from is the same system that congress draws from. Unlike Social security, they passed a law decades ago that forbade it ever being touched with their grubby little hands.

 

:thumbs:

5. neocon

1. Small group of politicians coming from as early as the Ford administration up to the Bush II administration.
2. Have a fake pretense about believing in smaller government. In reality believe in big spending and tax cuts for their wealthy political and business friends, hence deficit spending.
3. They fake being social conservatives, although true social conservatives believe they really care about social issues. Neocons distract the public by acting like they really care about social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning. Meanwhile they are busy conducting wars and stifling your freedom.
4. Believe in costly wars and creating boogeymen to try and make you think only they can keep you safe while they restrict your freedoms to "protect you". This is their signature issue, to help keep them in power.
5. Actually despise any types of small government advocates, Barry Goldwater, traditional live and let live conservative, and libertarians.

George Bush I and II, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, are all a bunch of neocons.

 

In that case, you'd be considered a vested beneficiary. Why don't you try writing to the fund's administrators and asking for a full accounting of fund management. See how far that gets you.

PS: If you actually do this, I'm not responsible for the handcuffs, U.S. Marshalls and steamy interrogation room that is in your future.

 

As far as the small group of Baptist Board neocons go* they have shown themselves to be CINOS (conservatives in name only) by revealing their true hateful paranoid big government authoritarian nature on this board in their own posts of which there is a great number to choose from.


Note:* There are approx only 1/2 dozen of these fake conservatives here that continually try to make us believe they are the majority by "ganging up" on anyone who disagrees with their all war all the time everywhere demonize, isolate. sanction, divide, destabilize and kill and kill and kill some more "foreign policy" pursuits with such arrogance and contempt for any but their own skewed opinions it's a wonder they haven't choked on their own poison they spray around this board on a daily basis.

They believe they rule the roost because only a few of us will stand up to them. It's time for the silent majority to speak up and put them in their place so we can all have honest and open discussions without having to be ganged up on and insulted by people who have shown their self proclaimed "credibility" to be nothing more than some small puffed up figment of their own imaginations.

C'mon people it's time to act like adults and take this board back! Their snears and jeers won't kill you, look at me I'm usually the focus of all their little childish attacks and I'm still here.

They've already destroyed our liberties and taken our country to the edge of bankruptcy and the brink of destruction by their headstrong and foolhardy "strike first allow no questions later" philosophy. Let's not let them finish it off with more of their foolishness.

They're all bark and no bite. :smilewinkgrin:

 

Neo-Cons are usually against big government, until they're for it. Their views on the constitution, and the support of the Patriot Act, war on Terror, and "protection of marriage are seriously at odds with each other.

 

As Pastor Larry would say, "they lack consistency".

 

Protecting marriage in no way expands government in any way.

 

Let's suppose I give you that one, which I don't but…….anyway….

What about the other two ?