frankj1 wrote:so THAT'S why the cons became progressive...
I couldn't follow RayR's trail
You guys are really not very astute politically or historically.
You assume that anything associated with the word "conservative" means right wing conservatism, or direct opposition to left wing progressivism. Nothing can be further from the truth. You are not likely to learn anything about this on the boob tube news channels. They're main purpose is to keep up the illusion of the false dichotomy of Democrat vs. Republican, right vs. left, conservatism vs. progressivism. They know most of their viewers have a hard time with the complexities of understanding anything more than 2 points of view.
Yes ladies and gentleman, conservatives can in fact be progressives.
The "neoconservative" faction is the perfect modern day example. Their most visible virulent sect today is the Never Trumpers.
Neoconservatism has no tradition with the old right, paleoconservatism, classical liberalism or libertarianism.
Neoconservatism has it's roots in the left and it has always been their goal to co-opt the Republican Party for their own use, with much success I would say. As an old article from Human Events in the 90's said in attacking the now defunct neocon bible, the Weekly Standard and its editor William Kristol, neoconservatism is a “sort of . . . Trojan Horse . . . , a vehicle for moving the [Republican] party leftward.”
As the late Irving Kristol, the "godfather of neoconservatism" wrote in his article in "The Neoconservative Persuasion" in 2003, neoconservatism has "its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s".
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-neoconservative-persuasion
Part of the disillusionment was although Democrats led the way in foreign interventions and war making in the 20th Century, it wasn't violently nationalistic and bloodthirsty enough for the founders of this new neoconconservative persuasion.
Tracing it even further back, this more recent article from last year in the The New Republic, accurately says "Neoconservatism was born in New York—specifically, at the City College of New York in the 1930s where Trotskyist-inclined students ate together in the cafeteria’s “Alcove I.” (Self-styled Stalinists claimed “Alcove II.”) “Arguing the world,” they opposed totalitarians abroad and isolationists at home. They remained liberal or even leftist during World War II, when some like Kristol served in Europe, and in the postwar period."
https://newrepublic.com/article/153450/enduring-power-neoconservatism
And as Lew Rockwell wrote about the neoconservatives:
"Their policies are no longer openly socialist; indeed, they promote a government-controlled capitalism, instead. But their belief in global empire, perpetual war, the police state, central banking, total surveillance, and an omnipotent executive has never changed. Now, however, thanks to them, that’s called Republican conservatism."
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/lew-rockwell/the-neocon-menace/
