Well, I took a few days respite from blogging (and my compatriots seem to have done the same...). So now I return with a few things.

Irving Kristol has written a tight, clear, description of what it means to be a neo-conservative. It is interesting that instead of saying it is dead or non-existent, he labels it a re-occuring "persuasion" among intellectuals: economically "liberal," culturally critical, internationally aggressive and "responsible." Kristol is also quick to take shots at the traditionalist elements within conservatism, elements he admits are the majority. For example:

[Neo-conservatism's] 20th-century heroes tend to be TR, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Such Republican and conservative worthies as Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barry Goldwater are politely overlooked. Of course, those worthies are in no way overlooked by a large, probably the largest, segment of the Republican party, with the result that most Republican politicians know nothing and could not care less about neoconservatism.

Yikes. Them's fightin' words. In the search for a usable past, one's choice of heroes is always revealing. TR is a mixed bag, a progressive nationalist, lots of personality, perhaps a bit too much actually -- wasn't it once observed of TR that he wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral? Reminds of one of the obnoxiously omnipresent Bill Clinton rather than G.W. Bush. FDR a conservative? He and Hoover lengthened the Depression by their ill-advised economic policies -- how does FDR's alphabet soup statism and class warfare square with the tax-cutting preferences of the neo-cons? Or are they just looking at WW2? Reagan, here-here! No Coolidge? But remember Reagan putting Coolidge's portrait up in the Cabinet room? Hoover -- I should think the neo-cons would like him, a progressive Republican, statist tendencies, devout internationalist. Eisenhower, ditto: statist internationalist, contra Bob Taft. Goldwater? Would you have a Reagan without a Goldwater?

People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk.

Another shot. Far be it from me to rush to the ramparts for Russell Kirk, as I have criticized him pretty steadily for a few years. But Conservative Mind shares the stage with Up from Liberalism as the most important and influential books in American conservatism. And if you cannot stomach Kirk's Toryism (and even that is a bit forced -- he is a Burkean, after all, and Burke was a Whig), his cultural criticism would warm many a neo-con heart. Further, Kirk's Roots of American Order is a revelation, necessary core reading for every undergraduate.