It’s about a half-hour read… but it is so worth it. Robert Kagan at World Affairs Journal
First, he defines the term:
when employed fairly neutrally to describe a foreign policy worldview, as Packer does, neoconservatism usually has a recognizable meaning. It connotes a potent moralism and idealism in world affairs, a belief in America’s exceptional role as a promoter of the principles of liberty and democracy, a belief in the preservation of American primacy and in the exercise of power, including military power, as a tool for defending and advancing moralistic and idealistic causes, as well as a suspicion of international institutions and a tendency toward unilateralism.
Next, he cites it’s rich history in American History:
“Is America a weakling to shrink from the world work of the great world-powers?” Theodore Roosevelt asked when he accepted the vice-presidential nomination in 1900. And he roared the answer: “The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks in the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.” This young, muscular America was “the just man armed,” and when World War I came, Roosevelt and others of his generation regarded it as America’s second great moral crusade. The Civil War had been the first. “As our fathers fought with slavery and crushed it, in order that it not seize and crush them,” Roosevelt declared, “so we are called on to fight new forces.” Henry Cabot Lodge called World War I “the last great struggle of democracy and freedom against autocracy and militarism.” Woodrow Wilson, in his message to Congress in 1917, used language that would make George W. Bush’s speechwriters blush: “The right is more precious than peace,” he proclaimed, “and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts,” for “democracy” and against “selfish and autocratic power.” The day had finally come when America was “privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness.”
He then shows how it’s doctrines have won some of the hardest battles of our time:
Indeed, there was scarcely a moment in the Cold War when true realists were not appalled by the direction the United States was taking. What could a realist make of Kennedy’s promise to “pay any price, bear any burden,” or Jimmy Carter’s human rights policies, or Ronald Reagan’s self-righteous moralizing about the “evil empire”? The Cold War, contrary to today’s reconstructed mythology, was not waged coolly and methodically by calibrating realists or sweetly and idealistically by institution-builders, but aggressively and stubbornly by passionate, fearful, and intensely ideological men absolutely convinced that American power and principles alone were the world’s salvation—a self-righteous conviction that drove both realist and left-leaning critics to distraction. Only the conservatives suspended their criticism in what was for them first, last, and only a war against Communism.
The whole piece is like this… stop what you are doing and READ IT NOW!