Grant Lee wrote:
>
> Michael,
>
> "New" relative to what? The history of liberal and conservative thought
> since the 18th Century is an inventory of the components of present day
> right wing thought. And anyway, hasn't the term neoconservative been used in
> the US since the 1980s, if not longer?
>
The variety of attitudes towards the term exhibited on this list may be evidence that the term itself was a bad coinage. One speculation on its origins. When first used, it did not represent a "new stage of conservatism" (as Neo-Aristotelianism represents a new view indebted to Aristotle but not necessarily aristotelian) but rather a related group who were new _to_ conservatism (they had been some sort of marxists, and hence when they became conservative, they were neophytes, new recruits, hence neoconservatives).
They were marxists during the high reach of "marxism-leninism" (i.e., marxism as interpreted by either Stalin or Trotsky), and their subsequent coherence may reflect a core of 3d or 4th international thinking that remained when they departed from marxism -- or m-l, whichever).
Incidentally, Justin writes, "Bennett, after disclaiming that he was a Straussian of any stripe, offered a lucid mini-tutorial on justice in Plato's Republic, and gently (perhaps too gently) advised his interlocutors that they were not in full command of their faculties." I have never read Strauss, but this would seem to give substance for my grounds over the last 30+ years for loving the _Republic_ so much. Whitehead remarks that the history of western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, I don't know if that is true or not, but certainly the history of western apologies for oppression (i.e., conservatism) is a series of footnotes to the Republic. There, and to some extent there alone or at least most clearly, we can see fully exposed the face of the enemy.
And this, incidentally, is the grounds for my questioning, over the last few years, the historical accuracy or the political wisdom of using the word fascist to apply to most (and certainly the most serious) contemporary challenges to democracy. Conservatism, reaction, tyranny come in many species, only one of which is fascism, and fascism almsot certainly is _not_ the main danger on the right at the present time. To warn against fascism is to disguise the real dangers.
Charles mistook me a bit in a recent post. He thought I was using rabbits as analogy to political positions. I was using rabbits merely to illustrate the logical categories of genus and species. To argue that Fascism has feature X and the neoconservatives have feature X is not evidence that they are both fascist. Rabbits nurse their young. Lions nurse young. That does not mean that rabbits are lions. Basketballs are spherical. Planets are spherical. That does not mean that basketballs are planets. Fascism is a tyranny, but not all tyrannies are fascist.
Carrol