Funmurphys: the Blog

Guess The Neo-Con

Synchronicity happens. I'm reading a blog post with a quote from a well known person, and then I read an article and bam, you have a Reece's Peanut Butter Cups. Some writer for the Washington Post writes another attack on Neo-cons, which has become short hand for someone a lefty doesn't like (being Jewish doesn't hurt), and so I respond. See if you can guess the well known author of the following quotes.

For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

Sure sounds like a neo-con, nattering on about God and the rights of man.

In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.

Sheesh, he's a supply sider too. Doesn't he know this is trickle down, voodoo economics, the kind that didn't work for Ronald Reagan or GW Bush?

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.

Typical neo-con going on about freedom but not the important stuff like universal healthcare. No doubt he wants the US to go stick its nose in other people's business and force them to be like America.

The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war.

Can't neo-cons get over WWII? That isn't the only war you know. What about the lessons of Vietnam?

My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead -- months in which both our patience and our will will be tested, months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There he goes again, dragging God into it. And what's this guy going on and on about the difficulties for -- where's the exit strategy, where's the clear communication of a plan for total victory? All I hear is somebody who's in over his head, and doesn't know how to get out.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge -- and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do -- for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

More of that imperialist talk about not permitting other countries not being up to our standards. And what's this talk about divided there is little we can do -- sounds like he doesn't value dissent. Although, something sounds familiar - haven't I heard that pay any price, bear any burden talk before? Hmm, I don't recall Wolfie or Perle saying that stuff.

Yep, that neo-con I've quoted here is none other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy -- JFK. Gosh, who knew that he was the father of neo-conservatism foreign policy, not Irving Kristol?

Not only is the tone strikingly like the neo-conservative of today (lending credence to their claim that they didn't leave the Democrats, but the Democrats left them) but a shocker is the committment to do hard things. Today the left is consumed with always taking the easy way on foreign policy. Don't rock the boat. Stability is a greater good than liberty for all.

In place of "support any friend, oppose any foe" we have apply pressure to our friends' butts, apply lips to our enemies' butts.

Bear any burden is replaced with the only fruit worth picking is the low hanging variety.

This is the rhetoric of Democrats and the left before Vietnam. They sound quite different today -- still suffering from a culture of defeatism over 30 years later.

I read the quote on economics at Steve Verdon's and was intrigued enough to follow the link to American Rhetoric where I found a bunch of JFK speeches. Reading them, I'm struck by how much the idealism in them is the same as in GWB (and the famous neo-con movement). Now of course I got to pick the excerpts I wanted, but I don't think I distorted JFKs views. And I'm not arguing that if JFK were alive today he would be considered a neo-con because I have no idea what the intervening 40 years would have done to his thinking; but the JFK who was President was far more like Reagan or GW Bush than any current Democrat (except possibly Lieberman).