Dean's World

I've vacillated back and forth on this for a while, but Julia Gorin's sold me.

There are certain words I don't like to use casually. One of them is "liberal," since such a perfectly nice word is too often used as either a club (by blowhards like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh) or as a self-important badge by closed minded reactionaries (like Paul Krugman and Janeane Garafalo). I only use "liberal" in its original definition: a person not limited to established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, favoring proposals for reform, and open to new ideas for progress. Such a term could easily apply to many people who lean left or right on a variety of issues, and that's the sense I try to restrict myself to when using it.

Real liberals want to discuss things, search for the truth, and keep an open mind. Maybe that open-mindedness is what disturbs some people on the right, but there are plenty of ideologues on the left with pretensions to liberalism who are no less rigid than their ideological enemies.

A word I use even less often than "liberal," though, is "neocon." I've long recognized that, while it may have had benign origins, it's become the property of sneering-and-smearing bigots now. As Julia Gorin says so well:

Others have gotten in trouble for pointing this out, but let's give up the charade. When a member of the enlightened classes, or Pat Buchanan, makes reference to a "neocon," what he's saying is "yid." That's right, "neoconservative," particularly in its shortened form ["neocon"], when employed by a non-conservative (or by Buchananites) and therefore meant derogatorily, is the modern, albeit more specific, word for "kike" that the left can say--and it has been doing so liberally (no pun intended) ever since American conservatism became yet something else that Jews have managed to benefit from--the conquered, final frontier of that famous Jewish manipulation.

By "neocons," the left means the Jewish subset of neocons. Witness Maureen Dowd's column last year, titled "Neocon Coup at the Department d'Etat": "The neocons have moved on to a vigilante action to occupy diplomacy. The audacious ones have saddled up their pre-emptive steeds and headed off to force a regime change at Foggy Bottom. . . . The president is not always privy to the start of a grandiose neocon scheme. . . . When the neocons want something done, they'll get it done, no matter what Mr. Bush thinks. And they think Mr. Powell has downgraded the top cabinet post into a human resources job, making nicey-nice with the U.N. and assorted bad guys instead of pursuing the neocon blueprint for world domination."

At first, Ms. Dowd's neocon list of last names included only Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, Libby and their "Likudnik friends," but later, as blogger "Silver Surfer" writes on IsraPundit.com, she amended the list to include Cheney, Woolsey and Gingrich. "In Ms. Dowd's view," he writes, "adding a few non-Jewish names to her 'neo-cons' list makes her conspiratorial story-line kosher. But it doesn't. The result is a classical portrait of 'neo-con' (read: Jewish) advisors, who drip poison in the ears of their hapless gentile bosses, while they advance their global plot to subvert true American interests and take over the world--and, as Ms. Dowd is always quick to point out . . . thereby 'advance the strategic goals of Israel.'"

Gorin doesn't even mention the absurdity of hastily attaching the prefix "neo" to lifelong conservatives like Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, James Woolsey, or Donald Rumsfeld, who are no more "neo" in their rock-ribbed conservatism than Phyllis Schlafley. Furthermore, most of the people doing this clumsy retro-fit damn well know it.

Mind you, I'm sure some decent people can use the term "neocon" without meaning it in a sinister, evil, sneering, smearing, bigoted fashion. Just like I fully recognize that someone could refer to an Arab as a "towel head" and simply be a little clueless, be using it as a joke among friends who know they don't mean anything by it. The way to respond to people who use such a term carelessly is to gently remind them that it's most often an epithet used by bigots and that they shouldn't use it too casually 'lest they hurt feelings or be misinterpreted. I would never refer to my doctor, a fine Muslim gentleman of Palestinian descent, in such a way. Neither would I use such a term for our family veteranarian, a gentle, incredibly decent man who literally does wear a turban. I hope none of you would either.

So sure, someone could say "neocon" innocently enough. But let's recognize what it means most of the time: it means "sinister Jew," and is an all-too-reliable marker for conspiracy-minded bigots who are different from the cretins at Stormfront only in their more friendly demeanor and their more sophisticated attitudes.

We should all recognize that these people are also not without their friends, the oblivious and/or self-hating Jews. You know, guys like Al Franken, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher.

By the way, do you remember when Bill Maher was funny? Me neither. But I do remember when Stewart and Franken were. I was younger then, and more shallow. We're all older now, but alas, they're no less shallow.

Anyway, you can read the rest of Ms. Gorin's essay here in the selfish, scheming-Neocon dominated Wall Street Journal.