NEOCONSERVATIVES DEMAND THAT CONSERVATIVES FOLLOW LIBERAL ORDERS | 2003-12-27
The Kristol family rules the respectable right.
Kristol, Senior made his name and fame as a liberal back when that was the thing to be. He was in the very bowels of the liberal establishment. Then Kristol Senior saw that liberalism was becoming unpopular, so he started a movement.
He called this movement from the bowels of liberalism Neo-Conservatism. It consists of people who say that liberalism was The Only True Faith until on or about January 1, 1970. On or about that date liberalism suddenly and inexplicably did every horrible thing that conservatives had said all along that liberal policies would lead to.
The National Review types rejoiced madly when neoconservatives joined them. Here were former Big Names at Harvard and New York liberal circles who were willing to sit and have lunch with the conservatives they had before regarded as Irish peasants. Not only that, these Big Names were willing to WRITE for them!
Respectable conservatives were delirious. And who knew better how to be respectable conservatives than neoconservatives who had been (and, they tell us, still are) leftists? So the top spokesmen of the respectable right today are the "neos." The "Neos" rule the White House today and even the liberals cite neoconservatives, not conservatives, as the group that got America into the Iraq War.
But while the neos are leading America into their war abroad, their attention has gotten off the one that counts, the war here at home. Kristol Junior has now heeded the liberal commands.
Recently Kristol the Younger wrote an editorial in which he asked for "civility in our political debate." It was all getting mean, he said. Kristol says that liberals are justified in being upset at the outrageous attacks on them from the right.
It is time, said Kristol the Younger, for us to stop laughing at liberals, ridiculing them, and recalling their patterns of treasonousness and hating Americans.
Liberals have called out the big guns, the neoconservatives, to stop the assault. Soon the Buckleys and all the other little respectables will be demanding this "civility."
But the right has tasted blood and it won't be easy to recall the troops.