Dennis H. Wrong
THE RISE AND FALL
(?)
OF
NEOCONSERVATISM
The term "neoconservative" is a very recent journalistic
invention. Whatever its merits or demerits, there is no question that it
denotes an identifiable group of political intellectuals controlling
several influential journals and well-connected with certain publish–
ing houses, foundations, and a few professional politicians. When
some of its members protest the label, the ancient rejoinder, "if you
can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen," inevitably springs to one's
lips . Yet, if one is aware of the origins of most of the leadirlg
neoconservatives in the special New York City milieu of postthirties
radicalism and high-brow sensibility epitomized by
Partisan Review,
one automatically winces at the glib stereotyping of the media and is
moved to insist on the individualities of the different members of the
group, especially if one has known and often respected, even admired,
some of them for decades. Bell is not Kristol is not Glazer is not
Podhoretz is certainly not Moynihan and so on.
But these very names, linked together in so many common
enterprises, rekindle the awareness of a collective identity. One then
reflects that when a group of intellectuals becomes widely recognized as
a coherent circle, it is almost always a sign that their disintegration is
imminent, that Hegel's Owl of Minerva has spread her wings, that
their historical moment has passed, and their message been banalized
and absorbed into the routine discourse of politics and journalism.
One must challenge therefore the hyperbole of the subtitle of Peter
Steinfels's thoughtful study of the neoconservatives:
The Men Who Are
Changing America's Politics.·
It
seems far more probable that Ameri–
can politics will change the men rather than the other way around and
that Steinfels's book will prove to be their epitaph as a distinct group
rather than , as he hopes, the beginnings of a new, high level debate on
·Peter Steinfels,
The Neoconservatives: The Men Who are Changing America's Politics
(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979).
