Blame It on Neo
Don’t call me a “neocon” unless you are a friend.
BY JULIA GORIN
Last week Pat Buchanan appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” and liberal host Jon Stewart bonded with his paleoconservative guest over their mutual opposition to the liberation of Iraq. Mr. Stewart smiled and nodded while Mr. Buchanan derided “neoconservatives” four times in the course of the six-minute interview. In his efforts to promote his and his guest’s common agenda, Mr. Stewart didn’t ask Mr. Buchanan what he meant by “neoconservatives.” It was clear that the Jewish Mr. Stewart didn’t realize that Mr. Buchanan was using what has become an epithet for “Jews”–an epithet employed most often by the left.
One big culprit has been Air America. Tune in to the proudly liberal radio network, and you’ll hear actress-turned-activist Janeane Garofalo and other hosts frequently blast the “influence” of the “neocons” on the Bush Administration, then go on to name names such as Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams and Libby. Not a single gentile name makes the list, so it’s the Jewish influence to which the network takes particular exception.
Others have gotten in trouble for pointing this out, but let’s give up the charade. When a member of the enlightened classes, or Pat Buchanan, makes reference to a “neocon,” what he’s saying is “yid.” That’s right, “neoconservative,” particularly in its shortened form, when employed by a nonconservative (or by Buchananites) and therefore meant derogatorily, is the modern, albeit more specific, word for “kike” that the left can say–and it has been doing so liberally (no pun intended) ever since American conservatism became yet something else that Jews have managed to benefit from–the conquered, final frontier of that famous Jewish manipulation.
By “neocons,” the left means the Jewish subset of neocons. [MB: Please read that again. What the?] Witness Maureen Dowd’s column last year, titled “Neocon Coup at the Department d’Etat”: “The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy. The audacious ones have saddled up their pre-emptive steeds and headed off to force a regime change at Foggy Bottom. . . . The president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme. . . . When the neocons want something done, they’ll get it done, no matter what Mr. Bush thinks. And they think Mr. Powell has downgraded the top cabinet post into a human resources job, making nicey-nice with the U.N. and assorted bad guys instead of pursuing the neocon blueprint for world domination.”
At first, Ms. Dowd’s neocon list of last names included only Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, Libby and their “Likudnik friends,” but later, as blogger “Silver Surfer” writes on IsraPundit.com, she amended the list to include Cheney, Woolsey and Gingrich. “In Ms. Dowd’s view,” he writes, “adding a few non-Jewish names to her ‘neo-cons’ list makes her conspiratorial story-line kosher. But it doesn’t. The result is a classical portrait of ‘neo-con’ (read: Jewish) advisors, who drip poison in the ears of their hapless gentile bosses, while they advance their global plot to subvert true American interests and take over the world–and, as Ms. Dowd is always quick to point out . . . thereby ‘advance the strategic goals of Israel.’ ”
For a while, I couldn’t tell whether the word was a euphemism or a slur, but from the resentful tone with which it was being employed by certain contingents (“pushy neocons” is another popular one), I could discern that the term’s usage was undergoing a transition. After all, ethnic slurs can start out as euphemisms (meant to avoid identifying anyone blatantly by nationality) before evolving into derogations. “Colored” was a way to avoid the N-word, but today it doesn’t go over very well itself. And a century ago Jews jokingly called one another by their Ellis Island designation “keikle” (Yiddish for “circle”)–until the joke was co-opted by those hostile to Jews.
As a new staple of mainstream American vocabulary, “neoconservative” warrants a reminder of the term’s beginnings, before it became chic newspeak. It originally referred to a movement of largely Jewish liberals who gave leftism an honest and protracted effort, who dutifully reviled every Republican president through Eisenhower, who did their time in inner cities, and who gave peace and social engineering a chance, until the real-world consequences of their good will forced them to acknowledge that what they were doing wasn’t working but in fact backfiring. At which point, these men (e.g., Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol) underwent a midlife epiphany and became conservative after the 1960s.
Today the word applies to anyone who undergoes such a transformation, Jewish or not. True, neoconservatives are not the same breed of conservative that made up the Republican Party of Barry Goldwater. The difference is the neoconservatives’ more interventionist foreign policy as opposed to vintage conservatism’s isolationism.
With today’s “post-9/11 omigod I think I may be Republican” Democrats, what we have in effect are neo-neoconservatives. Many of the Jews in this group might be more accurately described as Bush Democrats, but they’ve opted for the cachet of the label and call themselves neocons. But when Al Franken and other determinedly left-wing Jews use the term, they don’t mean it nicely, embarrassed as they are by their politically wayward fellow tribesmen.
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).
As for our imperviously left-leaning fellow tribesmen, let them figure out for themselves how to handle their non-Jewish co-ideologists who say “neocon” angrily and freely in mixed company.
Yes, poor Richard Perle and Dick Cheney (oops, Douglas Feith) drinking at their segregated water fountains, “doing their time in inner cities” – why, my tears run down like waters, and my self-righteousness like a mighty stream.
A stinking tub of sh*t, that, and anyone who has ever abetted such foolishness should be embarrassed. At least Ms. Gorin calls herself a comedian, though she’s no Lenny Bruce.
