Tradition

Neoconservatism

Overview

Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement that combines features of traditional political and social conservatism with individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets along with the assertive promotion of democracy and national interest, including through military means.

It began in the United States during the 1970s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the Democratic Party along with the growing New Left and 1960s counterculture.

Many adherents of neoconservatism became politically influential during Republican presidential administrations from the 1960s to the 2000s, peaking in influence during the presidency of George W. Bush, when they played a major role in promoting and planning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Prominent neoconservatives in the Bush administration included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Paul Bremer, and Douglas Feith.

Although U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had not self-identified as neoconservatives, they worked closely alongside neoconservative officials in designing key aspects of the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially in their support for Israel, promotion of American influence in the Arab world and launching the war on terror. The Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies were heavily influenced by major ideologues affiliated with neoconservatism, such as Bernard Lewis, Lulu Schwartz, Richard and Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and Robert Kagan.

Critics of neoconservatism have used the term to describe foreign policy war hawks who support aggressive militarism or neocolonialism. Historically speaking, the term neoconservative refers to a group of Trotskyist academics from New York who moved from the anti-Stalinist left to conservatism during the 1960s and 1970s. The movement had its intellectual roots in the magazine Commentary, edited by Norman Podhoretz, after they spoke out against the moral relativism of the New Left, and in that way helped define the movement.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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This is done two ways. First, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time actually in view, which is called CONTEMPLATION. 2. Memory. The other way of retention is, the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
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Since established political forms were tied up with other institutions, especially ecclesiastical, and with a solid body of tradition and inherited belief, the revolt also extended to the latter. Thus it happened that the intellectual terms in which the movement expressed itself had a negative import even when they seemed to be positive. Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
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But when either the father died, and left his next heir, for want of age, wisdom, courage, or any other qualities, less fit for rule; or where several families met, and consented to continue together; there, it is not to be doubted, but they used their natural freedom, to set up him, whom they judged the ablest, and most likely, to rule well over them. Conformable hereunto we find the people of America, who (living…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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Neoconservatism

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