Late in the game, a neocon finds disillusionment by ANDY DIAZ

It might seem like an elaborate and ironic joke that talk of Marxism and Leninism has recently been bandied about to frame a schism in the neoconservative ranks. But the characterizations are rather appropriate.

The Leninist camp is reluctantly argued by Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, who, in his support of regime change, essentially believes that the world is what America makes of it, and an active intervention from the ''benevolent hegemony'' is necessary to drive nations toward liberal democracy. Francis Fukuyama, in his new book, picks up the Marxist point that he made in his influential and controversial 1989 essay The End of History?, that democracy ``is likely to expand universally in the long run.''