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Oct. 15, 2022 - Lionel Nation
13:21
Stop Using Neocon As A Universal Pejorative

AOC may be a lot of things but when popular FNC hosts refers to her as a neocon, that makes no sense.

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I don't fit in.
I've never fit in.
I don't have any political ideology that will have me.
Nobody likes me.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
And the thing that I mostly eschew, as people pronounce it, for reasons I shan't ever understand, the reason for that is very, very simple.
I hate labels.
I hate them.
Because as soon as you label something, then you spend your time arguing whether you really are deserving of that label.
And the people who claim that label will argue with you and say, no, no, no, that's not it.
And the people who use the label pejoratively will say, oh, no, no, yes, it is.
And then you spend more time arguing whether you are or are not in that label.
I have gotten into some of the most brutal arguments with people as to the definition of what country music is.
Now, you may think that's pretty obvious, but oh, no, no, no.
I one time made the suggestion that Johnny Cash is not country.
And you would have thought, well, that's the thing.
You would have thought they didn't.
Whenever we talk about war, whatever war is, noble war, bad war, negative war, war, military operations, bellicose, whatever.
Invariably, somebody will call someone a neocon, a neoconservative.
And the word has become tantamount to war profiteer, ghoul, whatever.
For reasons I don't know.
But it's stuck.
And it's shorthand.
It's a way liberal...
And conservative, and woke, and MAGA, and all of these phrases are interposed and interjected into our political conversation, and they mean nothing.
I asked somebody the other day, he started up, he says, well, you know, I'm a conservative, well, I'm not, I'm not, you know, MAGA, or new MAGA, or multi-MAGA, or whatever it was, and He was defining himself out of the definition five minutes into the conversation.
I didn't even know where he started.
And he didn't either.
He said, what the hell was I?
Anyway, and that's where we are.
Now, the word neoconservative is one of my favorites because neo changes things.
Neoliberal is not what you think.
Neoconservative is not what you think.
The derivation, the etymology, the history from Leo Strauss and the University of Chicago to Irving Kristol.
And the social definition of such versus the Washington or political version of it?
Lapsed Trotskyites?
Do you mean Scoop Jackson Democrats?
Liberals?
Fallen liberals?
Liberals whose only objection to Vietnam is that we didn't finish the job?
That's a liberal?
Those are neocons.
And they're always arguing.
And then there are people who suggest that maybe there's an anti-Semitic catch to it.
That there is...
And I'll let you research that because that's a whole other...
That really complicates matters.
But the idea of...
We saw it with PNAC and the Iraq War.
America using its moral and military authority to make a...
To spread our sense of liberty, our appreciation for liberty, our sentience around the world to protect and defend democracy.
I mean, it sounds rather highfalutin, but this was the argument.
Within that particular group of people, that particular little vanguard diagram, then we get into these other people, these war profiteers.
And then there are others who are called neocons as a synonym for bellicose.
And by the way, I don't think that one who advocates military action is necessarily deranged or demented, which is the underlying Theme of this.
Nobody uses the term neocon positively.
Recently, on a television show, Fox, Mr. Carlson referred to AOC as a neocon.
Now, wait a minute.
Now, hold it.
I cannot speak for her, but I would go to the mat.
By suggesting and arguing with anybody who thinks that she is the typification of neo-conservatives merely because she might have supported military supplies, armaments, materiel, supporting Mr. Zelensky in Ukraine.
That does not make you a neo-conservative.
There's many, many reasons for it.
That very well could involve nothing more than being a native expansionist.
Somebody who is into a Russian containment.
Kind of an anti-Meersheimer, an anti-Kennett, an anti-Kissinger.
There are many, many other labels I can use that would involve somebody supporting our steadfast, supportive Zelensky, ostensibly.
That has nothing to do with Straussian neoconservatism, or Irving Kristol, or whoever, or Scoop Jackson, or Moynihan, or Dick Cheney.
No, no, no.
In the calculus of people who are necessarily involved in supporting various military actions, sure, there are war profiteers, to be sure, interventionists, pugilists.
Crazy people, sound people, bought and sold people, and ordinarily passive individuals who think nothing more than trying to quell a particular activity that they think is problematic or injurious to humanity or whatever.
I have enclosed this particular great article from the Brookings Institute regarding Irving Kristol, one of the founders and fathers of neoconservatism, and his son Bill Kristol, who was, I guess, the scion, the dauphin of that.
It's a fascinating Argument.
And it reminds us, before you use terms, which may be shorthand for you, maybe you might say conservative.
I don't know if that word...
It has necessarily the same connotation and connection that it did during the Reagan years or through the Barry Goldwater years or what have you.
But the lesson is thus.
Number one.
Eschew or eschew.
Labels.
Get rid of them.
Don't use them.
Explain what somebody's doing.
Explain what somebody's thinking or not thinking.
Why they're right or wrong or incorrect based upon your assessment of the facts, not the label that is used.
Number two, understand that a label or a particular appellation or some kind of political taxonomy over time varies greatly.
I don't know if we can talk about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as a liberal, as a progressive, as a lefty.
Or now, the word woke, which is thrown around to denote kind of insane progressiveness.
I don't know.
It's never used positively.
Nobody ever says, oh, congratulations.
It's always the same way that, you know, MAGA is not used.
Well, maybe it is by some.
We're into this name-calling, this pejorative foisting reflex, which we have to get away from.
Let me also tell you some of my friends who...
This is where I lose both sides.
Number one, if you dismiss AOC as being dim-witted, if you just join the crowd...
Of the right who laugh and say, oh, you're missing the point.
You do not understand or recognize her political lethality, not necessarily to the right, whatever that is, but to the entrenched historical heritage left, which I will talk about later on.
What argue, what my friends on the, that would be my friends on the right who don't like what I say, my friends on the left, Or what you identify as the left don't like is what I'm saying.
They are not left.
They are not progressive.
The current iteration of politics that exists in my humble opinion is not classically leftist, classically liberal, classically I don't know what the word is.
I would venture to say it is almost a a political, dare I say, a political neoplasm.
Without making reference to any kind of cancer connotation, but a new organism that is alien to the ecosystem called American politics.
I'm going to leave it right there before I get, you know, enwrapped in my own etymological gobbledygook.
And let me just remind you the following.
It would mean a lot to me if you simply liked this video.
That particular algorithm means more than you can imagine.
Number two, it would mean even more to me if you were to subscribe to this channel.
Recognizing the fact that I am not what you think I am.
And I am what you think I am not.
Whatever that means.
And now, I would be further honored.
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