Light On Dark Water

*-wingers

I started noticing a few years ago that liberals and other opponents of conservatism seemed not to be using the word “conservative” as their preferred epithet for the enemy in the way they once had done. Instead, they seemed to be using the term “right-wing.” The most famous use of the term was Hillary Clinton’s famous assertion that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was seeking her husband’s ruin. I have no data at all on this other than my own observation, but it seems to me that most of my left-of-center acquaintances, and most left-of-center pundits and politicians, use “right-wing,” “right-wing extremist”, “extreme right,” “religious right,” and so forth far more often than they use “conservative.” Somehow these terms convey, and are certainly spoken and written with, a venom not communicated by “conservative.” Similarly, “left-wing” is generally a definite pejorative, while “liberal” is mild, and is the preferred self-description of a certain party, just as “conservative” is the preferred self-description of another party. Part of the pleasure in using a pejorative is that it is resented and preferably denied by its object.

Lately another term has joined “right-wing,” and perhaps even eclipsed it in popularity as a pejorative on the left: “neo-conservative.” This is driving some conservatives crazy, but not for the reason its users might think—not so much because conservatives resent being called neo-conservatives, but because as the term is used by the left it means almost nothing (aside, that is, from being a simple substitute for “evil”) as a description of an ideology. It simply refers to people in, or near, or vocally supportive of, the Bush administration who have been architects or advocates of the war in Iraq.

If "neo-conservative" has any meaning at all now in Pundish (the language spoken by Pundits), it's circular: the Bush administration is run and/or supported by neo-conservatives, therefore neo-conservatives are those who run and/or support the Bush administration. This usage of course is also to the liking of those conservatives (often called “paleo-conservatives”) who oppose the war; it allows them to excommunicate conservatives who support the war.

A lot of words have been expended on the right in mostly wasted attempts to explain exactly what a neo-conservative is, and why this or that administration figure is or is not one. This is a losing battle as far as the public war of words is concerned, although the pursuit of verbal precision is always worthwhile for its own sake. But I think there is a very simple reason why “neo-conservative” has gained such currency on the left: it’s because too many people consider “conservative” to be an accolade.

Here in Alabama we just had an election. Almost literally every candidate described himself or herself as a conservative. Granted, Alabama is perhaps just a smidgen to the right of most of the nation, but it is really not so very different from the other so-called red states, meaning those which went for Bush in the 2000 election. Despite a generation of enlightened insistence that "conservative" equals "bad," a large portion—in many places a definite majority—of the people believe the opposite. For polemical purposes, then, “right-winger” works much better. You can call Hitler a right-winger with at least some plausibility, but it really makes no sense to call him a conservative. (Similarly, you can call Stalin a left-winger, but it makes no sense to call him a liberal.)

"Neo-conservative" serves a similar purpose, with the additional benefit of having vague associations of sneakiness and elitism. It also allows the speaker to imply that he really doesn't have anything against True Conservatives, just the wily neo variety.

There’s a bit of irony in this in that “neo-conservative” properly refers to a handful of ex-liberals who moved rightward in (roughly) the 1970s, and in general what continues to distinguish them from traditional conservatives is precisely that they tend to be more liberal on social and moral questions: quite a few of them, for instance, are quietly “pro-choice” on abortion. Indeed the war itself might, if one were to attempt to apply ideological categories consistently, be seen as a liberal enterprise, an attempt to impose rational and democratic structures upon a region poisoned by a toxic mixture of some of the worst features of both modernity and traditional ways.