Lionel Nation - Stop Using Neocon As A Universal Pejorative
Aired: 2022-10-15
Duration: 13:21


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[00:01:31]  I don't fit in.
[00:01:33]  I've never fit in.
[00:01:34]  I don't have any political ideology that will have me.
[00:01:39]  Nobody likes me.
[00:01:41]  And I wouldn't have it any other way.
[00:01:44]  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.
[00:02:00]  I hate labels.
[00:02:01]  I hate them.
[00:02:03]  Because as soon as you label something, then you spend your time arguing whether you really are deserving of that label.

=== Label Wars (11:14) ===

[00:02:12]  And the people who claim that label will argue with you and say, no, no, no, that's not it.
[00:02:17]  And the people who use the label pejoratively will say, oh, no, no, yes, it is.
[00:02:23]  And then you spend more time arguing whether you are or are not in that label.
[00:02:27]  I have gotten into some of the most brutal arguments with people as to the definition of what country music is.
[00:02:36]  Now, you may think that's pretty obvious, but oh, no, no, no.
[00:02:39]  I one time made the suggestion that Johnny Cash is not country.
[00:02:43]  And you would have thought, well, that's the thing.
[00:02:49]  You would have thought they didn't.
[00:02:52]  Whenever we talk about war, whatever war is, noble war, bad war, negative war, war, military operations, bellicose, whatever.
[00:03:08]  Invariably, somebody will call someone a neocon, a neoconservative.
[00:03:16]  And the word has become tantamount to war profiteer, ghoul, whatever.
[00:03:26]  For reasons I don't know.
[00:03:31]  But it's stuck.
[00:03:33]  And it's shorthand.
[00:03:35]  It's a way liberal...
[00:03:36]  And conservative, and woke, and MAGA, and all of these phrases are interposed and interjected into our political conversation, and they mean nothing.
[00:03:53]  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.
[00:04:10]  I didn't even know where he started.
[00:04:12]  And he didn't either.
[00:04:13]  He said, what the hell was I?
[00:04:14]  Anyway, and that's where we are.
[00:04:16]  Now, the word neoconservative is one of my favorites because neo changes things.
[00:04:23]  Neoliberal is not what you think.
[00:04:25]  Neoconservative is not what you think.
[00:04:27]  The derivation, the etymology, the history from Leo Strauss and the University of Chicago to Irving Kristol.
[00:04:34]  And the social definition of such versus the Washington or political version of it?
[00:04:42]  Lapsed Trotskyites?
[00:04:44]  Do you mean Scoop Jackson Democrats?
[00:04:48]  Liberals?
[00:04:49]  Fallen liberals?
[00:04:50]  Liberals whose only objection to Vietnam is that we didn't finish the job?
[00:04:58]  That's a liberal?
[00:05:00]  Those are neocons.
[00:05:01]  And they're always arguing.
[00:05:03]  And then there are people who suggest that maybe there's an anti-Semitic catch to it.
[00:05:10]  That there is...
[00:05:12]  And I'll let you research that because that's a whole other...
[00:05:16]  That really complicates matters.
[00:05:19]  But the idea of...
[00:05:22]  We saw it with PNAC and the Iraq War.
[00:05:26]  America using its moral and military authority to make a...
[00:05:34]  To spread our sense of liberty, our appreciation for liberty, our sentience around the world to protect and defend democracy.
[00:05:55]  I mean, it sounds rather highfalutin, but this was the argument.
[00:05:59]  Within that particular group of people, that particular little vanguard diagram, then we get into these other people, these war profiteers.
[00:06:08]  And then there are others who are called neocons as a synonym for bellicose.
[00:06:17]  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.
[00:06:30]  Nobody uses the term neocon positively.
[00:06:36]  Recently, on a television show, Fox, Mr. Carlson referred to AOC as a neocon.
[00:06:45]  Now, wait a minute.
[00:06:47]  Now, hold it.
[00:06:49]  I cannot speak for her, but I would go to the mat.
[00:06:56]  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.
[00:07:19]  That does not make you a neo-conservative.
[00:07:24]  There's many, many reasons for it.
[00:07:26]  That very well could involve nothing more than being a native expansionist.
[00:07:32]  Somebody who is into a Russian containment.
[00:07:36]  Kind of an anti-Meersheimer, an anti-Kennett, an anti-Kissinger.
[00:07:40]  There are many, many other labels I can use that would involve somebody supporting our steadfast, supportive Zelensky, ostensibly.
[00:07:53]  That has nothing to do with Straussian neoconservatism, or Irving Kristol, or whoever, or Scoop Jackson, or Moynihan, or Dick Cheney.
[00:08:04]  No, no, no.
[00:08:06]  In the calculus of people who are necessarily involved in supporting various military actions, sure, there are war profiteers, to be sure, interventionists, pugilists.
[00:08:22]  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.
[00:08:48]  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.
[00:09:15]  It's a fascinating Argument.
[00:09:19]  And it reminds us, before you use terms, which may be shorthand for you, maybe you might say conservative.
[00:09:32]  I don't know if that word...
[00:09:38]  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.
[00:09:49]  But the lesson is thus.
[00:09:53]  Number one.
[00:09:56]  Eschew or eschew.
[00:09:59]  Labels.
[00:10:00]  Get rid of them.
[00:10:02]  Don't use them.
[00:10:03]  Explain what somebody's doing.
[00:10:05]  Explain what somebody's thinking or not thinking.
[00:10:08]  Why they're right or wrong or incorrect based upon your assessment of the facts, not the label that is used.
[00:10:15]  Number two, understand that a label or a particular appellation or some kind of political taxonomy over time varies greatly.
[00:10:24]  I don't know if we can talk about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as a liberal, as a progressive, as a lefty.
[00:10:36]  Or now, the word woke, which is thrown around to denote kind of insane progressiveness.
[00:10:50]  I don't know.
[00:10:51]  It's never used positively.
[00:10:53]  Nobody ever says, oh, congratulations.
[00:10:55]  It's always the same way that, you know, MAGA is not used.
[00:11:01]  Well, maybe it is by some.
[00:11:03]  We're into this name-calling, this pejorative foisting reflex, which we have to get away from.
[00:11:14]  Let me also tell you some of my friends who...
[00:11:16]  This is where I lose both sides.
[00:11:20]  Number one, if you dismiss AOC as being dim-witted, if you just join the crowd...
[00:11:28]  Of the right who laugh and say, oh, you're missing the point.
[00:11:35]  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.
[00:11:49]  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.
[00:12:00]  They are not left.
[00:12:01]  They are not progressive.
[00:12:02]  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.
[00:12:17]  I would venture to say it is almost a a political, dare I say, a political neoplasm.
[00:12:25]  Without making reference to any kind of cancer connotation, but a new organism that is alien to the ecosystem called American politics.
[00:12:38]  I'm going to leave it right there before I get, you know, enwrapped in my own etymological gobbledygook.
[00:12:49]  And let me just remind you the following.
[00:12:54]  It would mean a lot to me if you simply liked this video.
[00:12:59]  That particular algorithm means more than you can imagine.
[00:13:02]  Number two, it would mean even more to me if you were to subscribe to this channel.
[00:13:06]  Recognizing the fact that I am not what you think I am.
[00:13:11]  And I am what you think I am not.
[00:13:17]  Whatever that means.
[00:13:19]  And now, I would be further honored.