Neoconservatism

Neoconservatism is a political movement that emerged as a rejection of liberalism and the New Left counter-culture of the 1960s. It coalesced in the 1970s and was influential in the Reagan administration, George H. W. Bush administration, and the incumbent George W. Bush administration. It has received so much attention because it represented a realignment in American politics and the defection of "an important and highly articulate group of liberals to the other side." Because the neoconservatives knew liberalism from the inside, they were more effective than previous conservatives at criticizing the failures of liberalism, and one of their first accomplishments was "to make criticism from the right acceptable in the intellectual, artistic, and journalistic circles where conservatives had long been regarded with suspicion."

The term neoconservative was first used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to make clear that a group, many of whom called themselves liberal, was actually a group of newly conservative ex-liberals. The name eventually stuck, both because it was reasonably accurate, and because neoconservatives came to accept that they were, in fact, conservative. The idea that liberalism "no longer knew what it was talking about" became one of the central themes of neoconservatism, and by the 1980s, being considered a conservative was far from an insult.

The etymology of this type of conservatism is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, cofounder of Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958, Norman Podhoretz, and others who described themselves as "neoconservatives" during the Cold War.

Prominent neoconservatives are associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Neoconservative journalists, policy analysts, and politicians, are often dubbed "neocons" by supporters and critics alike; however, in general, the movement's critics use the term more often than their supporters.