Customer Reviews

The Neoconservatives

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Once upon a time the term "neo-conservative" was applied to people like Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, Edward C. Banfield, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Robert Solow, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Michael Novak. It's hard to associate this group with the likes of Richard Perle and David Frum, authors of *An End to Evil*; whereas the latter string together a parody of pop bromides, the former had impressive intellectual credentials.

Steinfels uses a definition of neo-conservatives that is now fairly out of date. Partly this is because what began as little more than a genre of political thought in the 1950's was not yet unified by thinktank politics. He does not mention the philosopher Leo Strauss once, although there is something of a legend that neo-conservatives are apostles of him; nor is Albert Wohlstetter. That's because the neo-conservatives were not openly linked with military planners or philosophers like Harlan Ullman or Robert Kagan.

Also surprising is the relative dearth of former Trotskyists like Max Shachtman or Jeane Kirkpatrick; neither is discussed. Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer are, but only in a "how about that?" sort of way, or without comment. This is possibly a good thing, since Strauss' extremely odious philosophy is not terribly necessary for understanding the gist of the neo-conservative outlook. They are certainly compatible, but since neo-conservative polemics is more a slosh of literary cant than a coherent philosophy anyway, this is not as important as it appears to some.

Steinfel's efforts at civil, even courtly, critique pay off handsomely; he patiently dissects the pastiche of logical nihilism that is Kristol's rhetoric, wades through the least revolting corners of Moynihan's career, and dismantles the intellectual pretensions of the neoconservatives. But this is a case where the ambiguity of the term is disruptive to communication; he cannot know who will eventual define what the neocoserveratives ARE, and this is terribly frustrating.