I think what you say is a good elaboration, that the neo view seems in part to want to achieve the spread of democracy through a robust MI complex.

What really puzzles me when I see it is the regular plural usage such as in “tenets” of neoconservatism. When neoconservatism is discussed (largely by left-leaning critics) it seems to be talked about in such a way as to suggest that it’s a broad-reaching and comprehensive overarching philosophy. But really, it seems to me that all of the objections boil down to concern with an interventionist/preemptive foreign policy.

And as my initial point tried to make clear, interventionist/preemptive foreign policy doesn’t really, in my view, have any particular connection to conservatism, either philosophically, or historically, prior to the last decade or two. Usually the prefix neo- is supposed to indicate something like an homage of sorts, right? Where’s that part? Not challenging you, just sort of wondering, expressing my puzzlement.

I’m not a conservative, but I do like it when people use words that make sense. So I wonder when a progressive complains about neoconservatism whether that progressive is doing anything more than trying to get away with petulantly complaining that employing an interventionist/preemptive foreign policy is a bad idea when a conservative does it.

So there’s something to look for if and when Obama fails to sufficiently diverge from current foreign policies to please progressives. [Which I have always expected, BTW]. Seems to me that progressive Obama supporters will split into 2 camps. The ones who defend Obama’s choices because he’s not viewed as a conservative, and the ones who become alienated from Obama because he doesn’t do what they thought he said he would do. This will be a neat split between the partisans and the ideologues, I guess.

Anyways, I admit my suggestion above is overly simplistic (this being the problem whenever you try to boil a political philosophy down to just a few words). Perhaps a better (though still terribly simplistic) description would be a belief in the essential good of a robust, active national defense infrastructure as a means of advancing American interests and democracy abroad.

Either way, the point is that, whatever I may think its faults, neoconservatism is ultimately highly concerned with taking an intellectually honest approach to how well the agencies we use to advance American democracy are functioning. It does not have the vested interest of the dogmatists in defending interrogation policies and the intelligence that led to the Iraq War.

And without a doubt, the basic tenets of neo-conservatism, with its emphasis on the spread of democracy as an end unto itself, are tenets with which I profoundly disagree.

What, in your view, are the other tenets of neoconservatism, in addition to the notion that spreading democracy is intrinsically worthwhile? I need to know this so that I can distinguish “neoconservatives” from, let’s say, John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. All of who thought spreading democracy was intrinsically worthwhile, and none of whom have ever, to my knowledge, been called neo-conservatives.