It's difficult to know what a person's point is when the person doesn't say what his point is. But anyhow I got interested in the article duckman cites and choose to report what I found out:
THE FIRST ARTICLE DUCKMAN CITES:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/joelmowbray/2003/05/27/170051.html
This article criticizes an article in the strongly conservative Business Week magazine for claiming that neoconservatives were strongly advocates of invading Iraq. Hmmm. Surely you don't believe that, do you? It says nothing at all about the left, or about liberals or about Democrats.
From this article:
'Neocon': Slang for 'Jew'?
In an article titled "Where do the neocons go from here?" Richard Dunham attempts to explain to a lay audience what a neocon is and where the "movement" is headed.
"May 27, 2003
by Joel Mowbray
"Hitting at what may be a new low in the "neocon" code-word game, Business Week magazine recently ran a "news" story that practically screamed "Jew"--without saying the word at all.
"But in the current era, there seems to be a strong tendency to use neocon as a label for someone who strongly supported the war in Iraq or to describe someone who is, well, Jewish. Mr. Dunham's Business Week piece at first only seems to be doing the former. Using neocon interchangeably with "superhawk," he further writes, "The close-knit intellectuals who make up the neoconservative movement have been called extremists, warmongers, American imperialists -- and even a Zionist cabal." Eschewing the traditional news reporting practice of countering criticism with praise, Mr. Dunham allows those shockingly harsh adjectives to go unchallenged.
"To anyone who has taken the time to fully understand the worldview of so-called "neocons" like Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Perle, however, the word superhawk is silly."
THE SECOND ARTICLE DUCKMAN CITES:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/joelmowbray/2003/05/27/170051.html
The subtitle of this article is "Don't call me a "neocon" unless you are a friend." The article doesn't say where the author got the power to impose that rule on people.
It does, however, make clear what it required of us:
"So let's go over the rules: Just because we call ourselves "neocons," it doesn't mean you can. Of course, if you're right-leaning and don't intend the word disparagingly, you get a pass. Just know that unless you're aware that "neoconservative" also includes last names like Bennett, Kirkpatrick, Sowell, Kemp and Ashcroft, when you refer to someone as a neocon, you're saying "Jew." We might suggest reverting to previous, less codey expressions such as "Jewish conservative" or "Republican Jew"--especially since not every right-leaning Jew is neo. But not to worry: We neocons, Republican Jews, Jewish conservatives and Jews for Bush won't take offense, since we don't want American Christians to feel even more paranoid than they already do (particularly during "holiday" season)."
It is a little hard to decipher what the author requires of us, but apparently if you know that there are non-Jewish neocons it's okay to call a neocon a neocon.
About the Maureen Dowd article, which is wrongly cited as naming only Jewish neocons:
The article is mainly a complaint about the way President Bush treated Colin Powell.
Here is the part naming the neocons:
"In The Post, nearly all of the names of those who could move up if Mr. Powell moves out are Iraq hawks: Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and Newt Gingrich were mentioned as candidates for secretary of state; Wolfie, Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby and Condi deputy Steve Hadley, who may be radioactive after the uranium mistake, were mentioned for national security chief."
The Christian Science Monitor, another conservative magazine, has an article at http://search.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html entitled Neocon 101, describing what it considers neocon to mean. Strangely, the only mention of Jews is a comment that the original conservative movement was started by a group of, dare I say the word?, Jews.
Here is the article:
Neocon 101
Some basic questions answered.
What do neoconservatives believe?
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power ? forcefully if necessary ? to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster.
Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security.
What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs?
The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world.
Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans.
What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?
Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored d
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