Neoconservatives–Not New and Not Conservative–American Empire Interventionists

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The Beatles – Revolution

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

~Thomas Jefferson et al,

The Declaration of Independence

UPDATED

The Truth About Neocons

Many movement conservatives deeply resent being called neoconservatives or neocons.

I consider myself to be a movement conservative that is comfortable in both the traditionalist and libertarian wings of the conservative movement represented by the works of the late Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friederick Hayek.

While I agree with neoconservatives on many occasions and issues, I part company when they advocate preemptive attacks on nations that have not attacked the United States, democracy nation-building, open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, where I agree with Pat Buchanan. I part company with Mr. Buchanan’s views on free trade. I am a free trader.

Neoconservatives are first and foremost big government conservatives, which I regard as the problem, not the solution. I agree with the late President Ronald Reagan:

A Reminder from Ronald Reagan

Should Senator McCain be elected President, which I think he will, and should Senator McCain propose neoconservative policies and programs, I for one will advocate and support the formation of another political party.

I will follow the sage advice of Dick Armey and leave.

Dick Armey discusses big government conservatism

I am tired of being betrayed by Republicans who say one thing to get elected and turn around and do the exact opposite–Presidents George H. Bush and George W. Bush to name two, who I voted for with great expectations and now have very deep regrets for doing so.

Both Presidents increased taxes– the first directly and the second indirectly by massive deficit spending and open borders resulting in dramatic increases in local and state taxes to provide for education, services, medical care, welfare, jails, and prisons for illegal aliens. Not a single Federal department was eliminated such as Education, Agriculture, Energy, Labor, and Commerce for starters. Few spending bills were vetoed, a sheer mockery of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.

Bush Has Doubled National Debt with Deficits

You can say I am a conservative, libertarian, or classical liberal, but please not a neoconservative, and if things are not changed or reformed in Washington, I will not be voting Republican much longer.

Background Articles and Videos

Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s new map for war and peace

The Pentagons New Map – Thomas Barnett lecture

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4689061169761152025

Neoconservatism

“Neoconservatism is a right-wing political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of the social liberalism, moral relativism, and New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, representing a realignment in American politics, and the transition of some liberals to the right of the political spectrum; hence the term, which refers to being ‘new’ conservatives.^[1][2]

The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had “moved to the right”.^[3][4] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.^[5] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by “the notion that liberalism” had failed and “no longer knew what it was talking about.”^[1]

The first major neoconservative to embrace the term and considered its founder is Irving Kristol, an American Jew from an orthodox Jewish family^[6], and father of William Kristol who became the founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. Irving Kristol had been an active supporter of Trotskyism, but wrote of his neoconservative views in the 1979 article “Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed ‘Neoconservative.'”^[3] Kristol’s ideas had been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine.^[7]. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled “The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan’s Foreign Policy”.^[8][9] The Reagan Doctrine was considered anti-Communist and in opposition to Soviet Union global influence and considered central to American foreign policy until the end of the Cold War, shortly before Bill Clinton became president of the United States. Neoconservative influence on American foreign policy later became central with the Bush Doctrine.

Prominent neoconservative periodicals are Commentary and The Weekly Standard. Neoconservatives are associated with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Heritage Foundation, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

Neocons aiding ’08 Republicans

“Most Americans disapprove of the Iraq war and of exporting democracy by force, yet neoconservative proponents of those policies advise the leading Republican presidential hopefuls.

“There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don’t know what to make of,” said Richard V. Allen, former Reagan White House national security adviser.

Advisers to Sen. John McCain of Arizona include Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), while former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s policy team includes Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets advice from Dan Senor, who counseled L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq.

Critics say neoconservatism casts American foreign policy as a new and benevolent form of imperialism, and conflicts with the traditional conservative, who prefers U.S. military power be reserved for defending against direct threats to America‘s vital interests. …”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/aug/06/neocons-aiding-08-republicans/

The Neocons’ Palin Project

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“…In fairness to Palin, on issues like NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, her answers reflect the views of the man who chose her. She has no option at present but to follow the line laid down by Scheunemann.

But make no mistake. Sarah Palin is no neocon. She did not come by her beliefs by studying Leo Strauss. She is a traditionalist whose values are those of family, faith, community and country, not some utopian ideology.

Wasilla, Alaska, is not a natural habitat of neoconservatives.

And her unrehearsed answers to Gibson’s questions reveal her natural conservatism. Asked if she agrees with the Bush Doctrine, Palin asked for clarification. “In what respect, Charlie?”

Gibson: “Do we have the right of an anticipatory self-defense?”

Yes, said Palin, “if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against (the) American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.”

Exactly. The intelligence must be legit and the threat “imminent.” …”

http://townhall.com/Columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/09/16/the_neocons_palin_project?page=2

American Enterprise Institute

“The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. According to the institute its mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate.”^[1] AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy.^[2] More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions.^[3] Former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar, and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a senior fellow.^[4]

AEI is often cited as a right-leaning counterpart to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.^[5][6] In 1998, AEI and Brookings established the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies.^[7] In 2006, the two organizations jointly launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project.^[8]

AEI has connections with the neoconservative movement in American politics.^[9] Irving Kristol, widely regarded as the movement’s founder, is a Senior Fellow at AEI. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

Project for the New American Century

“The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded in early 1997 as “a non-profit educational organization” by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The PNAC’s stated goal is “to promote American global leadership.”^[1] Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that “American leadership is both good for America and good for the world” and support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.”^[2] It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S President George W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration’s development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.^{[3][4] ….”}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Flight of the Neocons
From liberal hawks to “National Greatness” conservatives
Michael C. Moynihan | May 2008 Print Edition

“…To Heilbrunn, the legacy of neoconservatism is one of long-term disaster for the Republican Party, an ideological digression that “quite possibly not only destroyed conservatism as a political force for years to come but also created an Iraq syndrome that tarnishes the idea of intervention for several decades.” This sounds right. The surge has undeniably mitigated the violence in Iraq, but it seems likely that—barring a continued military presence in Iraq for “100 years,” as John McCain posited—the neocons’ nation-building project will be a millstone around the movement’s neck. The Iraq fiasco will also obscure the fact that many of their Cold War–era arguments with the left were prescient. They were right about the ineffectiveness of Great Society welfare programs and about the colossal evil of the communist bloc.

But the failures of the neoconservative approach to both foreign and domestic policy are recognized even by consummate neocon David Frum, partial author of the infamous “axis of evil” State of the Union speech. In his recently released book Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, Frum concedes Heilbrunn’s point that a conservative regeneration is needed after the Bush administration’s big spending and disastrous foreign policy. While Frum is upbeat about conservatism’s prospects, Heilbrunn ends They Knew They Were Right on an ominous note: “These reckless minds…aren’t going away. Quite the contrary.”

Perhaps. But unless Iraq becomes an Arab version of Switzerland in the next decade, I wouldn’t bet on it. …”

http://www.reason.com/news/show/125472.html

John McCain, Neoconservative

“…The neoconservatives, who believe, or pretend to believe, that supposed foes abroad always represent new Hitlers and that wimpy liberals are about to recapitulate the appeasement that English liberals espoused in the 1930s, are constantly searching for a new Churchill. They see Churchill as the last great representative of the Victorian era in contrast to the weaklings that surrounded him. (George W. Bush himself keeps a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office.) For the neocons, McCain, a military hero who has written a number of books and become a politician, eerily resembles Churchill himself. McCain himself has made his admiration for Churchill abundantly apparent in his most recent book, Hard Call, in which he hails the great man’s prescience in warning of Germany’s aggressive intentions in the run-up to both World War I and World War II. But more to the point, McCain represents for the neocons the ultimate synthesis of war hero and politician. And McCain, in turn, has been increasingly drawn to the neocons’ militaristic vision of the U.S. as an empire that can set wrong aright around the globe.The neocons became close to McCain in the 1990s, when they supported American intervention in the Balkans. According to the New Republic’s John Judis, the first sign of neocon influence on McCain came in 1999. McCain delivered a speech at Kansas State University in which he touted “national greatness conservatism,” arguing: “The United States is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history.” He went on to state that the U.S. should have “every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”

http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/john-mccain-neoconservative.html

“If I could choose to have my readers learn one and only one thing from what I write, it would be that America’s problems are not the result of blind, much less inevitable, forces, but are the consequences of deliberate political action by motivated individuals and groups. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of our ongoing immigration crisis. Let’s trace the lines of influence in the open-borders conspiracy, a word I use despite its connotations of grassy knollology because in this case it is factually appropriate. Given who has been pushing mass immigration in America and how open they have been about why they are doing it, it boggles my mind that anyone who considers himself conservative can still support this policy. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/850953/posts

Shamnesty John McCain is back in full force: No, he never “got the message”
By Michelle Malkin

“…And, now, straight from the campaign trail with Arnold “Move Left” Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he “got the message” from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the “comprehensive immigration reform” euphemism is a notable milestone.

Also, you don’t need to guess anymore how he would have voted on the Feinstein/Craig illegal alien farmworker amnesty: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/05/22/shamnesty-john-mccain-is-back-in-full-force-no-he-never-got-the-message/

Translation: McCain’s suck up to La Raza

By Michelle Malkin

”

The other half of the La Raza twins is set to speak today at 12:45 Pacific time. While John McCain’s lips move this afternoon during his speech to the Race’s open-borders lovefest, let me serve as your interpreter:

MCCAIN: My friends, you are right. Those people who killed my shamnesty bill have ill intentions. They are bigots, just like my friend Lindsay Graham told you they were when he spoke before you two years ago. …”

My friends, I don’t want to talk about securing the border any more than you do. But trust me, when the “border” is “secure” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), then we’ll do what we all want to do: Formalize our Sanctuary Nation. Rejoice that illegal aliens are serving in the military. And sanctimoniously demonize and marginalize all those pesky bigots who keep obsessing about immigration enforcement and national security. I’m as committed to peddling sob-story platitudes and whitewashing your ethnic nationalism as you are! (What was that about the 15 things about The Race you should know? Shhhhhhhhhhh!)

Just work with me here, ok? Brother Obama may have marched with you at the Chicago May Day illegal alien parade. But I have a lifetime commitment to Hispandering! And you have showered with me with honors for my open-borders work.

Remember?

They don’t call me La Raza’s voice in Washington for nothing.

Just ask my friend, Juan Hernandez.

My friends.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/14/translation-mccains-suck-up-to-la-raza/

Mexico–United States border

“The international border between Mexico and the United States runs from San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California, in the west to Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, Texas, in the east. It traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. From the Gulf of Mexico it follows the course of the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) to the border crossing at El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua; westward from that binational conurbation it crosses vast tracts of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Desert, the Colorado River Delta, westward to the binational conurbation of San Diego and Tijuana before reaching the Pacific Ocean.

The border’s total length is 3,169 km (1,969 miles), according to figures given by the International Boundary and Water Commission.^[1] It is the most frequently crossed international border in the world, with about 250 million legal crossings every year.^[2]

The nearly 2000 mile (3,138 km or 1,950 miles) international border follows the middle of the Rio Grande — according to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between the two nations, “along the deepest channel” — from its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico a distance of 2,019 km (1,254 miles) to a point just upstream of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. It then follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 858 km (533 miles) to the Colorado River, during which it reaches its highest elevation at the intersection with the Continental Divide. Thence it follows the middle of that river northward a distance of 38 km (24 miles), and then it again follows an alignment westward overland and marked by monuments a distance of 226 km (141 miles) to the Pacific Ocean.

The region along the boundary is characterised by deserts, rugged mountains, abundant sunshine and by two major rivers — the Colorado and the Rio Grande (Río Bravo del Norte) — which provide life-giving waters to the largely arid but fertile lands along the rivers in both countries.

The U.S. states along the border, from west to east, are:

California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.

The Mexican states are:

Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

In the United States, Texas has the longest stretch of the border of any State, while California has the shortest. In Mexico, Chihuahua has the longest border, while Nuevo León has the shortest. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us-mexico-border.jpg

Re: John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez

Who Is Juan Hernandez?

John McCain Defends Amnesty & Open Borders Juan Hernandez

Lou Dobbs – These Candidates Would Say ANYTHING

The Dangers of the “North American Union” by Jerome Corsi

Why Bill Kristol thinks Ron Paul is a “Crackpot”

Charlie Rose – WOLFOWITZ / HOLMES

Paul Wolfowitz speaks at Hudson Institute

Countdown – No Iranian Nukes and Wolfowitz is Back

Paul Wolfowitz speech June 6 2001

 Iraq War Mastermind Speaks Out

Charlie Rose – Sen. Dick Durbin / Douglas Feith / Sen. Ron Wyden

Book TV: Douglas Feith, author of “War and Decision”

Riz Khan – Richard Perle – 18 Mar 08

Charlie Rose – PERL & FRUM

Who is Randy Scheunemann?

Bill Kristol Anthology

Neo-cons War Lobbying To Bomb Iran

NeoConservative Charles Krauthammer discusses U.S. options against Russia

Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 1

Dr. Charles Krauthammer part 2

Krauthammer: What will Obama give to Iran?

Next President 1

Next President 2

Why I love Charles Krauthammer

Bolton and Krauthammer on Russian Expansion past Georgia

Fred Kagan on Jim Lehrer

Fred Kagan Debates Nir Rosen on Iraq Surge (Part 1)

Iraq, the Neocons and the Israel Lobby – John Mearsheimer

Conversations With History: John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt

the Washington Report, Ep.1 with Michael Ledeen (Part 2)

 the Washington Report, Ep.1 with Michael Ledeen (Part 2)

John Bolton – Does Iran Need a “Regime Change?”

Neocon John Bolton Pushes War Against Iran

Norman Podhoretz on Iran

Norman Podhoretz on His New Book

Riz Khan- The Neocons and Iran- 10 Dec 07

Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (1 of 2), 2008

Beyond Iraq: The Challenges Confronting US (2 of 2), 2008

Charlie Rose: March 4, 2003 with Ron Brownstein and Robert Kagan

Why CIA Veterans Are Scared of McCain

“…These critics point especially to the McCain campaign’s top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann’s record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives’ disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, “the military has won,” says one former senior CIA officer. “We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won’t have any real civilian intelligence capability.”

“McCain would be an absolute disaster,” says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. “He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, ‘The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They’ve made their bed and now they have to lay in it.’ I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent.” Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, “With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization.”

McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials “who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency,” the former senior intelligence officer said. “They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don’t want to hear.” …”

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/08/why-cia-veterans-are-scared-of-mccain.html

McCain’s ACU Ratings
By Randall Hoven

“…What this means is that McCain’s ACU ratings since 1998 put him on the liberal side among Republicans. The few Republicans consistently more liberal than McCain would be Chafee (formerly R-RI), Collins (R-ME), Snowe (R-ME) and Specter (R-PA). One could expect senators from northeastern states to be more liberal since their constituencies demand it, but McCain represents the fairly conservative state of Arizona. (Arizona’s other senator, Kyl, has a lifetime rating of 96.9, and half the representatives from there have ratings of 94.7 or higher.)

How much more liberal would McCain vote if his constituency put even the slightest pressure on him in that direction?

On the other hand, Senator Clinton (D-NY) has a lifetime ACU rating of 9 (83rd place) and Senator Obama (D-IL) has a rating of 8 (86th place).

Not much the cheer about here.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/mccains_acu_ratings.html

Whose War?      PDF

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Buchanan accuses ‘McCain’s neocon warmonger’ of treason Stephen C. Webster
“…According to conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, Sen. John McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is a ‘dual loyalist,’ ‘neocon warmonger’ involved in activities that ‘none dare call treason.’

Scheunemann’s former employer, Orion Strategies, is a lobbying firm with strong ties to Mikheil Saakashvili’s administration in Georgia.

Since Georgia attempted to retake South Ossetia by force, triggering a sharp, violent rebuke by Russian forces, Sen. McCain has been by far the most strident advocate of US support for the former Soviet state. And his top adviser, says Buchanan, may well be the next Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

“He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man,” he wrote. …”

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Buchanan_accuses_McCains_neocon_warmonger_of_0822.html

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/mar/24/00007/

Among the Neocons      PDF

A foot soldier in the ideological wars relates

By Scott McConnell

“…Two new issues broke apart the 1980s Reaganite conservative consensus. The first was immigration. By the late 1980s, the impact of the 1965 immigration law had begun greatly to accelerate the pace of immigration. Younger readers may not recall the vital role National Review began to play in analyzing that law and the social, environmental, and political consequences it brought about. The battle was joined when John O’Sullivan (NR’s editor since 1988) published in 1992 Peter Brimelow’s explosive “Time to Rethink Immigration,” which quickly became the most debated conservative magazine article of the year. The piece forced the immigration debate into the open within the conservative movement, where it fused with the populist revolt breaking out in California over Proposition 187, an anti-illegal-alien measure. For the next five years, the magazine put what it called “The National Question” in the spotlight, publishing cover stories by Brimelow, Fred Iklé, O’Sullivan, and eventually (as I was won over to the magazine’s position) one by me.

The neoconservatives, to my complete surprise, were not pleased.

In the summer of 1995, Neal Kozodoy gave me a copy of a letter. Written by Irwin Steltzer to the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, it was making its way around the upper echelons of the neocon magazines and think tanks. Steltzer is a Bronx-born economist and Weekly Standard editor who lives part-time in London. While a gifted economic essayist, his most important function is surely as the ideological gendarme for Rupert Murdoch’s American media properties.

Steltzer wrote to Kristol (and the wider world) that he was canceling his subscription to National Review because of its “increasingly offensive positions on such topics as immigration.” He went on then to complain about a piece by Richard Neuhaus on anti-Semitism, which, Steltzer charged, was itself anti-Semitic. He added, apropos of a quote of Kristol’s that appeared in Neuhaus’s article, that he was “always suspicious” of Father Neuhaus’s excerpting, “particularly in an article which contains cunningly placed little adjectives and descriptions.” He concluded with a more general comment about John O’Sullivan’s National Review: “Add to this NR’s applause for the immigration statutes of the 1920’s, designed to keep eastern European Jews out, and you have a not-very-subtle form of anti-Semitism, dressed up as an attack on liberalism.”

Bill Buckley stood by his editor initially, but not for long. Within two years, O’Sullivan was eased out, replaced by the youthful Rich Lowry, who immediately upon assuming his new post fired Peter Brimelow.

In the very early years of the neocon-paleocon skirmish, Russell Kirk, the somewhat fogeyish father of postwar American intellectual conservatism, gave a speech about the neocons at the Heritage Foundation. He generally praised them but added some words of caution. Quoting from a friend’s letter, Kirk said, “It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant from a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation the conservative is a fascist.” I, of course, had heard of neocon campaigns against other conservatives, but the targets were not men I knew or agreed with. But I did know O’Sullivan and Neuhaus, and the Russell Kirk remark that had once seemed overheated became a good deal less so. …”

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2003/apr/21/00007/

Idealism and Its Discontents
Thinking on the neoconservative slur.

Victor Davis Hanson

“…Third, Iraq is not the sole touchstone of neoconservative thought. Many traditional conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, who favor balanced budgets, an end to illegal immigration, and more sober judgment on entitlements, came to the conclusion after September 11 that the many lives of Saddam Hussein had run out. Indeed, one of the ironies of this war is the spectacle of many who called for the removal of Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s now turning on the war, while many who would have never supported such preemption before 9/11 insist on giving the administration full support in the midst of the present fighting.

Fourth, traditional conservatives especially distrust neoconservatives because, well, they are not entirely conservative and confuse the public about the virtues of the hallowed native reluctance to spend blood and treasure abroad for dubiously idealistic purposes. In contrast, progressives dislike them because their promotion of democracy can complicate liberalism, as if it were a fine and noble thing to insist on elections in the former Third World, even if need be through force. And every ideology saves its greatest venom for the perceived apostate: Thus Zell Miller infuriates liberals in the way John McCain or Chuck Hagel does conservatives.

Fifth, the battlefield adjudicates perceptions. Before the Iraqi invasion, neoconservatives took a beating in the acrimonious lead-up to the war about which scenarios were proffered about millions of refugees and thousands of American dead. Yet after the three-week victory, even television hosts were boasting, “We are all neoconservatives now.” Then the messy post-bellum Iraqi reconstruction brought back disdain, while successful elections and a consensual government could well win admiration. For most, ideology or belief matters not nearly as much as impressions of being judged as smart, successful, and “cutting-edge” — a constantly changing and amorphous image that in Washington is predicated on the 24-hour news cycle.

Finally, radical foreign-policy changes always upset the status quo and beg for conspiratorial exegesis. After 1948, the Cold Warriors were felt to have appropriated the Democratic party from the Henry Wallace wing, and they suffered abuse both from the naïve Left who saw them as veritable McCarthyites, and from the isolationist Right who did not want to continue the sacrifices of internationalism endlessly on into the postwar peace. …”

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200501210758.asp

The Neoconservative Cabal

Joshua Muravchik

“…Who makes up this potent faction? Within the administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is usually identified as the key actor, together with Richard Perle, a member and until recently the chairman of the Defense Advisory Board. A handful of other high-level Bush appointees are often named as adherents of the neocon faith, including Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, National Security Council staff member Elliott Abrams, and Vice Presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI, where I work), the Weekly Standard magazine, and William Kristol’s Project for a New American Century–all three rent offices in the same building–are often described as constituting the movement’s Washington command center. And then, of course, there is this magazine, crucible of so much neoconservative thought.

The history of neoconservatism is less sensational than its current usage implies. The term came into currency in the mid-1970’s as an anathema–pronounced, by upholders of leftist orthodoxy, against a group of intellectuals, centered mostly in Commentary and the quarterly Public Interest, who then still thought of themselves as liberals but were at odds with the dominant thinking of the Left. One part of this group consisted of writers about domestic policy–Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James Q. Wilson, Nathan Glazer–who had developed misgivings about the programs of the New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The other main contingent focused on foreign policy, and especially on the decline of America’s position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union in the wake of the Vietnam war. The names here included, among others, Podhoretz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Eugene V. Rostow. Although, at first, most of these people resisted the label neoconservative, eventually almost all of them acquiesced in it. …”

“…On September 11, we learned in the most dreadful way that terrorists would not be appeased by our diffidence; quite the contrary. We saw–they themselves told us–that they intended to go on murdering us in ever larger numbers as long as they could. A sharp change of course was required, and the neoconservatives, who had been warning for years that terror must not be appeased, stood vindicated–much as, more grandly, Churchill was vindicated by Hitler’s depredations after Munich.

Not only did the neocons have an analysis of what had gone wrong in American policy, they also stood ready with proposals for what to do now: to wage war on the terror groups and to seek to end or transform governments that supported them, especially those possessing the means to furnish terrorists with the wherewithal to kill even more Americans than on September 11. Neocons also offered a long-term strategy for making the Middle East less of a hotbed of terrorism: implanting democracy in the region and thereby helping to foment a less violent approach to politics.

No neoconservative was elevated in office after September 11, as Churchill had been to prime minister after the collapse of the Munich agreement, but policies espoused by neoconservatives were embraced by the Bush administration. Was this because Bush learned them from the likes of Wolfowitz and Perle? Or did he and his top advisers–none of them known as a neocon–reach similar conclusions on their own? We may have to await the President’s memoirs to learn the answer to that narrow question, but every American has reason to be grateful for the result.

If these policies should fail, for whatever reason–including a recurrence of national faint-heartedness–then neoconservative ideas will no doubt be discredited. But this matters hardly at all compared with what we will have lost. For, if they fail, either we will then be at the mercy of ever more murderous terrorism or we will have to seek alternative methods of coping with it–methods that are likely to involve a much more painful and frightening course of action than the admittedly daunting one that still lies before us.

If, however, the policies succeed, then the world will have been delivered from an awful scourge, and there will be credit enough to go around–some of it, one trusts, even for the lately much demonized neoconservatives. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/991206/posts

Notice: U.S. WMD Retaliation Doctrine Has Changed

By Michelle Malkin

“…There’s a very important catch in the Weekly Standard by spy-dude Elbridge Colby, who notes a crucial change in our plans to respond to terrorist use of WMD’s. We’ve long held that states which assist in WMD terror would be held accountable. But February 8, we expanded our potential retribution schedule:

Instead of merely threatening that states that support terror attacks will be held responsible–already a staple of U.S. policy–Hadley goes further, threatening non-state actors who “enabl[e]” terrorists to strike with WMD. This careful choice of words would seem to expand our retaliatory standard to encompass complicity and perhaps even negligence. Not only states, but groups and individuals as well, should now be on notice that they will be held accountable for participation in, support for, complicity in, or even negligence in the face of WMD strikes against the United States or its allies. This strategy makes a great deal of sense; catastrophic terrorism is a threat that both justifies and requires a more exacting standard of behavior.

Individuals? Whoever could they mean?

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/10/notice-us-wmd-retaliation-doctrine-has-changed/

Charlie Rose – Georgia/Russia Conflict

Power Play

The nature of nations, like people, never changes. Today’s political realists say economics rather than military might has become the guiding principle of countries, but the conflict in Georgia shows otherwise, argues Robert Kagan.

By ROBERT KAGAN

“…Where are the realists? When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it ought to have been their moment. Here was Vladimir Putin, a cold-eyed realist if ever there was one, taking advantage of a favorable opportunity to shift the European balance of power in his favor — a 21st century Frederick the Great or Bismarck, launching a small but decisive war on a weaker neighbor while a surprised and dumbfounded world looked on helplessly. Here was a man and a nation pursuing “interest defined as power,” to use the famous phrase of Hans Morgenthau, acting in obedience to what Mr. Morgenthau called the “objective law” of international power politics. Yet where are Mr. Morgenthau’s disciples to remind us that Russia’s latest military action is neither extraordinary nor unexpected nor aberrant but entirely normal and natural, that it is but a harbinger of what is yet to come because the behavior of nations, like human nature, is unchanging?

Today’s “realists,” who we’re told are locked in some titanic struggle with “neoconservatives” on issues ranging from Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to China and North Korea, would be almost unrecognizable to their forebears. Rather than talk about power, they talk about the United Nations, world opinion and international law. They propose vast new international conferences, a la Woodrow Wilson, to solve intractable, decades-old problems. They argue that the United States should negotiate with adversaries not because America is strong but because it is weak. Power is no answer to the vast majority of the challenges we face, they insist, and, indeed, is counterproductive because it undermines the possibility of international consensus. …”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122005366593885103.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The Neoconservative Persuasion

Irving Kristol

“…Neoconservatism is the first variant of American conservatism in the past century that is in the “American grain.” It is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Its 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism. Nevertheless, they cannot be blind to the fact that neoconservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make the very idea of political conservatism more acceptable to a majority of American voters. Nor has it passed official notice that it is the neoconservative public policies, not the traditional Republican ones, that result in popular Republican presidencies One of these policies, most visible and controversial, is cutting tax rates in order to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neocons, and it was not the particularities of tax cuts that interested them, but rather the steady focus on economic growth. Neocons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the last two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option among political thinkers. In earlier times, democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the “have-nots” and the “haves” engaged in a perpetual and utterly destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability. The cost of this emphasis on economic growth has been an attitude toward public finance that is far less risk averse than is the case among more traditional conservatives. Neocons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but it is in the nature of democracy–because it seems to be in the nature of human nature–that political demagogy will frequently result in economic recklessness, so that one sometimes must shoulder budgetary deficits as the cost (temporary, one hopes) of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neoconservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will, in time, become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.

This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on “the road to serfdom.” Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that the 19th-century idea, so neatly propounded by Herbert Spencer in his “The Man Versus the State,” was a historical eccentricity. People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today’s America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.

But it is only to a degree that neocons are comfortable in modern America. The steady decline in our democratic culture, sinking to new levels of vulgarity, does unite neocons with traditional conservatives–though not with those libertarian conservatives who are conservative in economics but unmindful of the culture. The upshot is a quite unexpected alliance between neocons, who include a fair proportion of secular intellectuals, and religious traditionalists. They are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state, the regulation of pornography, and the like, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention. And since the Republican party now has a substantial base among the religious, this gives neocons a certain influence and even power. Because religious conservatism is so feeble in Europe, the neoconservative potential there is correspondingly weak.

AND THEN, of course, there is foreign policy, the area of American politics where neoconservatism has recently been the focus of media attention. This is surprising since there is no set of neoconservative beliefs concerning foreign policy, only a set of attitudes derived from historical experience. (The favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs, thanks to professors Leo Strauss of Chicago and Donald Kagan of Yale, is Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War.) These attitudes can be summarized in the following “theses” (as a Marxist would say): First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies. This is not as easy as it sounds, as the history of the Cold War revealed. The number of intelligent men who could not count the Soviet Union as an enemy, even though this was its own self-definition, was absolutely astonishing. …”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1141481/posts

The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species

by Kirk, Russell

“…Selfish and Uninstructed. I offer you two specimens of the rejection of the Neoconservatives that I encounter nowadays in many quarters. My first extract is from a letter recently received from a very distinguished historian in Pennsylvania. “I have burned my bridges with most (not all) of the Konservatives, and especially with the neo- conservatives, who are selfish and uninstructed radicals and progressives, wishing to pour cement all over the country and make the world safe for democracy, well beyond the dreams of Wilson,” he writes to me. “A feeling for the land, for its conservation, and for the strong modesty of a traditional patriotism (as distinct from nationalism) none of them has.”

My second instance of the spreading distaste for Neoconservatives comes from a well-known literary scholar. “I would not be at all surprised to see the Neo-Cons jump ship if Dukakis is elected; they would be perfectly capable of making an accommodation with the socialist wing of the Democratic Party,” he tells me …… It is significant that when the Neo-Cons wish to damn any conservative who has appealed for a grant to a conservative foundation, they tell the officers of the foundation that the conservative is a fascist…. I believe that the chief enemy of American conservatism has not been the Marxists, nor even the socialist liberals in the Democratic Party, but the Neo-Conservatives, who have sabotaged the movement from within and exploited it for their own selfish purposes.”

Simple Old Label. Now the strictures of the gentlemen I have quoted cannot well apply to some of the better known people called Neoconservatives; for there are among that group high-minded men and women of principle. Our difficulty here is very like that I encountered when I lectured, a few months ago, on the Libertarians: the appellation Neoconservative, like the appellation Libertarian, is so widely employed, and so variously, as to seem to include people of radically opposed views. What is a Neoconservative, really? Is he, as Harrington and Steinfels saw him, a liberal who opportunistically has turned his coat? Is he primarily a seeker after power and the main chance? Or is he a man who has new ideas about the defense of the Permanent Things? For my part, I wish that certain so-called Neoconservatives whose views and lives I approve, like certain libertarians for whom I have a fellow feeling, would content themselves, as do I, with the simple old label Conservative.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL178.cfm

A Concord of Visions

How the neoconservative right adopted the worst errors of the left

Julian Sanchez

“…A final symptom of the unconstrained vision—and the focus of Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed—is the tendency (in Sowell’s account invariably the tendency of liberals) to focus on the intentions of policies rather than their effects, so that a “poverty relief program” is so called whether or not it actually manages to relieve poverty, and a “Terrorist Surveillance Program” can retain the title even if the vast majority of the people whose conversations are swept up by it have nothing to do with terrorism. “Compassionate conservatism”—in addition to suggesting by implication that conservatism simpliciter lacked compassion—makes a sentiment or an attitude, rather than the specific policy mechanisms it seeks to employ, definitive of the philosophy. As a corollary to this focus on intention, opposition to the particular means employed by elites is viewed as opposition to their ends: Where once progressives tarred Great Society skeptics as callous brutes unconcerned with the plight of the poor, conservative pundits now routinely cast opposition to the Iraq war and other components of the War on Terror as prosecuted by the president as a sign of sympathy for tyrants or terrorists.

None of this is to say that all good flows from the politics of the constrained vision and all ills from the unconstrained view. For my taste—and that of most libertarians, I suspect—Sowell’s constrained vision in its purer forms is probably a shade too constrained, too ready to assume that old customs continue to serve their traditional functions under changed circumstances. But it is the worst features of the unconstrained vision—its hubris, its pretense to omnicompetence—that have taken hold of the right. And if there is wisdom in each of the two perspectives, it should be worrying that, for all the other differences between the major parties, between progressives and conservatives, in this one fundamental way the political landscape increasingly offers only half the picture—different refractions of the same unconstrained vision. With the waning of the constrained perspective’s tempering influence, we’re left with a political vision that’s dangerously double.”

http://www.reason.com/news/show/117049.html

No moderate, no realist, McCain the neocon

Ron Paul revolution against empire and draft

Pat Buchanan vs Neo-Cons

Pat Buchanan on John McCain’s warmongering nature

Pat Buchanan:”McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi”

Anne Norton Defines Neocons

Israel, Iran and the New Neocons

Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 1 of 2

Newshour: “Neo-Cons Pushing for War with Iran” – Pt 2 of 2

1. The Neocons – Ideology and Fantasy (Part 1 of 14)

2. The Neocons – Rumsfeld’s Imaginary War (2/14)

3. The Neocons – Birth of Islamic Extremists

4. The Neocons – Recruiting Christians / Concept of Terror

5. The Neocons – CIA’s $1Billion Backs Future Terrorists

6. The Neocons – Ignored Warning of Terrorists

7. Then Neocons – Destruction of the Republican Party

8. The Neocons – Clinton’s Blowjob / Extremist Rampage

9. The Neocons – “There’s No Al-Qaeda Organization”

10. The Neocons – “We’re Gonna Find Those Evil Doers”

11. The Neocons – Hunt for Osama / The Disney Terrorists

12. The Neocons – Godzilla was a Terrorist Mentor

13. The Neocons – Dirty Bomb / Precautionary Principle

14. The Neocons – Fear is the Only Agenda

Leo Strauss

“Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-born Jewish-American political philosopher who specialized in the study of classical political philosophy. He spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Since his death, he has come to be regarded as one of the intellectual fathers of neoconservatism in the United States. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol

“Irving Kristol (born January 22, 1920, Brooklyn, New York City, New York) is considered the founder of American neoconservatism. He is married to conservative author and emerita professor Gertrude Himmelfarb and is the father of William Kristol.

Kristol was born into an orthodox Jewish family. However, he maintains that belief had nothing to do with his family’s observance.^[1] He earned his B.A. in History from the City College of New York in 1940, where he was an active Trotskyist. Before graduating, he met Gertrude Himmelfarb at a Trotskyist meeting, and they married on January 18, 1942.^[2] He wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940.^[3] From 1941 to 1944, he served as staff sergeant in the armored infantry in Europe in World War II. After the war, he was stationed in Marseilles for a year.^[4]

He was the managing editor of Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, co-founder of the British-based Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958 when he handed over the reins to his friend and City College classmate Melvin J. Lasky^[5], editor of the Reporter from 1959 to 1960, executive vice-president of Basic Books from 1961 to 1969, and professor of social thought at the New York University Graduate School of Business from 1969 to 1988. Since 1988, he has been John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has used these positions and publications to animate the neo-conservative movement, arguing for low taxes, a well-funded and internationally active military, conservative social policy, and a minimalist interpretation of First Amendment rights. For example, he once stated that “I don’t think the advocacy of homosexuality really falls under the First Amendment any more than the advocacy or publication of pornography does.”^[6]

Kristol is the founder of the politics and culture journal The Public Interest and the foreign affairs journal The National Interest. He was co-editor of The Public Interest (first with Daniel Bell, then with Nathan Glazer) from its founding in 1965 until 2002 and publisher of The National Interest from its founding in 1985 until 2001.

He is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 1988, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1972, a member of the Wall Street Journal Board of Contributors since 1972, and president of National Affairs, Inc.

Kristol suggests of himself, “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I’m going to end up a neo-that’s all, neo dash nothing.”^[7]

In July 2002, President George W. Bush awarded Kristol the Presidential Medal of Freedom. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Kristol

Russell Kirk

“Russell Kirk (19 October 1918 – 29 April 1994) was an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author known for his influence on 20th century American conservatism. His 1953 book, The Conservative Mind, gave shape to the amorphous post-World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. …”

“…The Conservative Mind

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana^[3], the published version of Kirk’s doctoral dissertation, contributed materially to the 20th century Burke revival. It also drew attention to:

• Conservative statesmen such as John Adams, George Canning, John C. Calhoun, Joseph de Maistre, Benjamin Disraeli, and Arthur Balfour;
• The conservative implications of writings by well-known authors such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, George Gissing, George Santayana, and T. S. Eliot;
• British and American authors such as Fisher Ames, John Randolph of Roanoke, Orestes Brownson, John Henry Newman, Walter Bagehot, Henry James Sumner Maine, William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Edwin Lawrence Godkin, William Hurrell Mallock, Leslie Stephen, Albert Venn Dicey, Paul Elmer More, and Irving Babbitt.

The Portable Conservative Reader (1982), which Kirk edited, contains sample writings by most of the above.

Not everyone agreed with Kirk’s reading of the conservative heritage and tradition. For example, Harry Jaffa (a student of Leo Strauss) wrote: “Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke’s attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy’s attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions.”^[4]

Russello (2004) argues that Kirk adapted what 19th century American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson called “territorial democracy” to articulate a version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the Founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in the particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights.

Principles

Kirk developed six “canons” of conservatism, which Russello (2004) described as follows:

1. A belief in a transcendent order, which Kirk described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the “variety and mystery” of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize “natural” distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription, and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are “unimaginable apart from one another.” [5] and that “all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief.” [6] …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Kirk

Milton Friedman

“…Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912 – died November 16, 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.^[1] A global public followed his restatement of a libertarian political philosophy that insisted on minimizing the role of government in favor of the private sector. As a leader of the Chicago School of economics, based at the University of Chicago, he had a widespread influence in shaping the research agenda of the entire profession. Friedman’s many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos and lectures cover a broad range of topics in microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. The Economist hailed him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it”.^[2]

Originally a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal and advocate of high taxes, in the 1950s his reinterpretation of the Keynesian consumption function challenged the basic keynesian model. In the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy called monetarism. He theorized there existed a “natural rate of unemployment” and he argued the central government could not micromanage the economy because people would realize what the government was doing and shift their behavior to neutralize the impact of policies. He rejected the Phillips Curve and predicted that Keynesian policies would cause “stagflation” (high unemployment and low growth). He argued that a steady expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and warned against efforts by the treasury or central bank to do otherwise.

Influenced by his close friend George Stigler, Friedman opposed government regulation of all sorts, as well as public schooling. Friedman’s political philosophy, which he considered classically liberal and libertarian, stressed the advantages of the marketplace and the disadvantages of government intervention and regulation, strongly influencing the outlook of American conservatives and libertarians. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. His books and essays were widely read and even circulated underground behind the Iron Curtain.^[3][4]

Friedman’s methodological innovations were widely accepted by economists, but his policy prescriptions were highly controversial. Most economists in the 1960s rejected them, but since then they had a growing international influence (especially in the U.S. and Britain), and in the 21st century have gained wide acceptance among many economists. He thus lived to see some of his laissez-faire ideas embraced by the mainstream,^[5] especially during the 1980s. His views of monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation informed the policy of governments around the globe, especially the administrations of Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Brian Mulroney in Canada, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and (after 1989) in Eastern Europe. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Ludwig von Mises

“Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (pronounced [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]) (September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian Economist, philosopher, and a major influence on the modern libertarian movement.

Because of his Jewish origin and his opinions, he had to emigrate to Switzerland and then settled in the USA.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises

Ludwig von Mises Institute

http://mises.org/

Friedrich Hayek

“Friedrich August von Hayek, CH (May 8, 1899 – March 23, 1992) was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought in the mid-20th century. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century.[1] One of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, he also made significant contributions in the fields of jurisprudence and cognitive science. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.”[2] He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991.[3] He is considered to be one of the major forces of change from the dominant interventionist and Keynesian policies of the first part of the 20th century back to towards classical liberalism after the 1980s. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 2 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 3 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 4 of 4)

Charlie Rose – Economist Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Debates Naomi Klein

The Power of Choice – Milton Friedman

INFLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 13, 1976

by MILTON FRIEDMAN

The University of Chicago, Illinois, USA

“…One of my great teachers, Wesley C. Mitchell, impressed on me the basic

reason why scholars have every incentive to pursue a value-free science, whatever

their values and however strongly they may wish to spread and promote

them. In order to recommend a course of action to achieve an objective, we

must first know whether that course of action will in fact promote the objective.

Positive scientific knowledge that enables us to predict the consequences of a

possible course of action is clearly a prerequisite for the normative judgment

whether that course of action is desirable. The Road to Hell is paved with

good intentions, precisely because of the neglect of this rather obvious point.

This point is particularly important in economics. Many countries around

the world are today experiencing socially destructive inflation, abnormally

high unemployment, misuse of economic resources, and, in some cases, the

suppression of human freedom not because evil men deliberately sought to

achieve these results, nor because of differences in values among their citizens,

but because of erroneous judgments about the consequences of government

measures: errors that at least in principle are capable of being corrected by

the progress of positive economic science. …”

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1976/friedman-lecture.pdf

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