Everything Old Is Neo Again

What is a neoconservative?

From the etymology of the word, it should refer either to someone who has newly become conservative—having been born a little liberal—or to someone who has revised conservatism into something new, without causing it thereby to cease to be conservative. It should, perhaps, refer to a political perspective that takes il Gattopardo’s maxim, “everything must change so that everything can remain the same,” very much to heart and to whatever lengths necessary.

But the Leopard was a member of the old order. The original neoconservatives, though they may have come to appreciate and ultimately defend the old order, came originally from the other side—indeed, from radicalism. Yet the term does not refer to the experience of political conversion; one can, apparently, be born a little neoconservative. (And with Bill Kristol’s children in their twenties, we are on the brink of the third generation of hereditary neoconservatism.) Moreover, many of the original neoconservatives claim to find a high degree of continuity in their own thinking from their earlier liberal or even radical left-wing days.