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Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Murray Rothbard On Neoconservatives




Except for Jack Kemp, who definitely wasn't a Neoconservative but a Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan get big government out of my wallet and bedroom classical Conservative, Murray Rothbard pretty much nails what Neoconservatives are when he called them statists and I would add right-wing statists, in fact, borderline fascists.

Neoconservatives basically represent the neo-right in America.  They say economic freedom is a good thing generally but that low-income people should benefit from it as well.  They are not completely against the safety net. When it comes to things like education and job training and encouraging business's to invest in low-income areas, they are somewhat progressive.

But when it comes to foreign policy they believe America is the sole superpower and should always remain that way at any cost.  They tend to judge military power by the size of the national security budget.  They ignore the the details of capabilities and threats and cannot articulate any specific objectives of military action.  They see America's number one job in the world as the military  promotion of a very general notion of democracy even in places where the people have no experience of it and no knowledge of how to participate in it..

The American religious-right believes that the country has been going downhill morally since the 1960s and that we have too much personal freedom.  They believe that it is time for government to intervene in personal behavior even inside of the home.

When I think of Neoconservatives, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum come to mind pretty quickly.  Representative Bachmann would like to see a much smaller government when it comes to economic policy than Senator Santorum who is a true Neo-Con, across the board.  

 The Heritage Foundation is perhaps the lead organization in Neoconservative thinking

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John F. Kennedy Liberal Democrat

John F. Kennedy Liberal Democrat
Source: U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy in 1960