As a non American, what is a neocon? No abusive answers please.?

Answer 1

Our country has long been divided between traditional "conservatives" and progressive "liberals." There are many differences between the two idealogies. The term "neo-con" refers to NEW conservatives, who seem to be more extreme in their conservatism.

Answer 2

I believe dgroundhog65 has it right, at least according to Wikipedia. Neoconservatives are former liberals who got disillusioned with the Democratic Party and changed sides. Oddly, conservatives are the quickest to point that out, but I don't see why they're proud of that fact, because it explains why neocons embody all of the worst aspects of both parties. As a moderate, I recognize that both parties have their flaws, but by bringing the worst qualities of the extreme left to the extreme right, they've created a new Republican Party that no rational person should support. They try to legislate their holier-than-thou morality and declare war at the drop of a hat like right wingers and they spend more money than left wingers. That's a recipe for disaster, and there are no redeeming qualities to give me a reason to vote for them. Before the neoconservative movement, I didn't have a preference for either party, but now I consider the Democrats to be the lesser of two evils. At least they're honest about their agenda. Neocons say one thing and do the opposite. They say they want smaller government but they make it bigger. They say they want less spending but they spend more. A person has to have a blind spot the size of the whole United States not to notice that.

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Then again, packinrat may be correct in pointing out that Wikipedia is not the most reliable source for the origin of the term. I still maintain that the Wikipedia definition is far more popular with conservatives than it is with liberals, probably because traditional conservatives want to distance themselves from neoconservatives as much as possible, and calling them liberals is their way to do it. Whatever the true origin of the neoconservative movement may be, it represents a major break away from the only values (smaller government and less spending) that ever made the Republican Party worth voting for.

Answer 3

Supposedly the founders were liberals in the 1960's and maybe into the 1970's and at some point became disillusioned with liberalism and became Republicans. Neocon is short for neo-conservative, meaning a new conservative, and presumably different from the other conservatives of the time.

Their hallmark now is an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, backed up with enough conventional military power that no one would dare challenge US supremacy.

Answer 4

The phrase NeoCon started out as a anti Semitic slur against Jews who joined the Republican party.

The left does not like it when people that they consider to be their locked up constituency to have other political ideas. They believe that any Jew who is not a Democrat is a traitor.

They are especially hard on Black Americans who think for themselves and do not go blindly along with their Democratic overseers.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was crucified when during confirmation and continues to be slandered to this day. Condi Rice also faces a lot of heat for being a black republican.

Answer 5

OK, So What Exactly is the Neoconservative Agenda?
The thrust of neoconservatism aims at US military and economic domination the world. Ooop! If you all of a sudden imagine this author wearing a tinfoil hat and being ever watchful for black helicopters, please withhold judgement until you've read to the end of this page and check enough of the cited links to be convinced this is not a page of fiction.

A short and unintimidating summary of the neoconservative agenda can be found in an excerpt from the website of the American Interprise Institute, a Washington think-tank that advises the Pentagon (Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynn Cheney currently sits on AEI's Board of Directors):

"Influential neoconservatives, including Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, have been arguing for years in favor of an assertive U.S. strategy in the post-Cold War world. In 1997, they and other like-minded intellectuals organized the Project for the New American Century, which urged then-President Clinton to confront Iraq. "America was being too timid, too weak, and too unassertive in the post-Cold War world," Kristol argues. "American leadership was key to, not only world stability, but any hope for spreading democracy and freedom around the world."

Hartcher says, "This [war] is about the neoconservative view, the idealistic view, the Wilsonian view, that the world would be a better place if only America can make it that way." The neoconservatives advocate a paradigm shift in which the United States spreads American values by asserting American power-by force, if necessary."
SOURCE: http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.16723/news_detail.asp

The name the movement gives this US empire, "Pax Americana" is taken from the name for the British Empire ("Pax Britannia") - which was taken from "Pax Romana", the name for the Roman Empire. They used to refer to their invisioned future as a "beneficent hegemony". These are nice soft sounding phrases, but after examining their policy papers, editorials and letters, one sees that it's just a dressed up way of saying "American World Empire". Actually, they include space too, as they want to "pave the way for the creation of a new military service - U.S. Space Forces - with the mission of space control." (Rebuilding America's Defenses, page 12.)


dgroundhog65 Wikipedia is wrong. It is writen by liberals they simply lie. Yahoo answers has asked us to quit quoting Wikibull as fact please comply.

The Term may have been coined by liberals dut the people it refers so will define what they are not spermipedia.
Wikipedia is intelectual masturbation.

Answer 6

Neo-Conservative, or 'new conservative'.

What will come as a surprise to many neocon bashers, the neocon movement actually has it's roots from liberals who became frustrated with the liberal movement .

One of the key neocon beliefs is that proactive steps need to be taken against rogue nations for the greater saftey of the world - this is the driving force behind the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Husseins rule.

EDIT: OMG there is a lot of BS answers here. No, it isn't a 'more extreme' form of conservatism. No, it isn't a slur for a Jewish Republican.

From Wikipedia:

Neoconservatism is a political movement that emerged as a rejection of liberalism and the New Left counter-culture of the 1960s. It coalesced in the 1970s and was influential in the Reagan administration, George H. W. Bush administration, and the George W. Bush administration. It represented a realignment in American politics and the defection of "an important and highly articulate group of liberals to the other side."[1] Because the neoconservatives knew liberalism from the inside, they were effective at criticizing the failures of liberalism, and one of their accomplishments was "to make criticism from the right acceptable in the intellectual, artistic, and journalistic circles where conservatives had long been regarded with suspicion."[1]

The term neoconservative was first used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to make clear that a group, many of whom called themselves liberal, was actually a group of newly conservative ex-liberals. The name eventually stuck, both because it was reasonably accurate, and because neoconservatives came to accept that they were, in fact, conservative.[2] The idea that liberalism "no longer knew what it was talking about" became one of the central themes of neoconservatism,[3] and by the 1980s, being considered a conservative was far from an insult.[2]

The etymology of this type of conservatism is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, cofounder of Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958,[4] Norman Podhoretz,[5] and others who described themselves as "neoconservatives" during the Cold War.

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

Neoconservative journalists, policy analysts, and politicians, are often dubbed "neocons" by supporters and critics alike; however, in general, the movement's critics use the term more often than their supporters.[6][7]

Answer 7

The founder of the neocons (neo conservatives) was Irving Kristol http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1253
His son William Kristol is a regular commentator on Iraq and Iran for FOX News channel. http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1254

The neocons believe that might is right and the more might you have the more right you are. This means drawing up plans for control of the worlds oil reserves which are to be taken by force if necessary and helping Israel to attack socialist governments in the middle east.
http://www.pnac.info/
http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/neo-conservatism/pnac.html
PNAC began to enter the public consciousness when journalist Neil Mackay wrote about the September 2000 report in the September 15th, 2002 edition of the Sunday Herald. According to the article, the report sparked outrage from British Labour MP Tom Dalyell:

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.

'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'

The Sunday Herald article highlighted the following goals from the 2000 report, which it termed an "American grand strategy" and "blueprint of world domination":

The U.S. must take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The U.S. must "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as a "core mission"
The U.S. forces are "the cavalry on the new American frontier"
The report builds upon the 1992 draft document "Defense Planning Guidance," which claimed that the U.S. must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role"
Permanent U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power
Increasing military pressure on China: "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia" which will lead to "American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China"
"the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US"
The report contains ambivalent language toward bioterrorism and genetic warfare: "New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool"
Development of "world-wide command-and-control system" to contain dangerous regimes of North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Iran.
Some of PNAC's members and associates have been implicated in conflict of interest scandals involving the ways that they profit from the wars and military spending that they promote. For more information, see Who Profits From War? .

Answer 8

People on this forum use the term to mean any conservative that is in favor of the war. It has been used in the past to refer to the Jewish advisers of President Bush who some liberals claim use some sort of Zionist agenda to propel us into war. It actually has specific meanings but here it is usually just derogatory with no meaning beyond that.

Answer 9

Any patriot who loves America and is unafraid defend our borders, combat Jihadis, and reject moral relativism.

Any American who holds these principles is now referred to as a "con".

Answer 10

Another word for ignorant.