Sunday, June 13, 2010
‘The skeptical conscience of liberalism’
It may have taken a Frenchman to explain the evolution of neoconservativism to Americans. … Justin Vaïsse’s division of the movement into three distinct stages seems to make sense. Hub Blog came of age, for lack of other words, during the overlap period between stages II and III, when Reagan Democrats still had clout in both parties. It was an exciting time. But neoconservativism descended into a strange mix of hyper-hack partisanship and hawk dogma after the Cold War, throwing in a little faux populism when convenient. It's a wing of the Republican party now, not a movement.
It may have taken a Frenchman to explain the evolution of neoconservativism to Americans. … Justin Vaïsse’s division of the movement into three distinct stages seems to make sense. Hub Blog came of age, for lack of other words, during the overlap period between stages II and III, when Reagan Democrats still had clout in both parties. It was an exciting time. But neoconservativism descended into a strange mix of hyper-hack partisanship and hawk dogma after the Cold War, throwing in a little faux populism when convenient. It's a wing of the Republican party now, not a movement.
