Reading this book made me very nervous. Sure, I was familiar with the caricature of the neoconservatives as a bunch of Jewish hawks intent on permanent war, but it was the idea that I might actually be one that got to me. After all, the person considered to be the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, once defined a neoconservative as a liberal who "has been mugged by reality". What liberal has not been mugged by reality? At a time when nice kids are mugged so often that they call it getting "taxed", all liberal thoughts about the causes of crime dissolve. The trajectory from left to right is held to be part of the ageing process. One minute, you are complaining about creaky joints; the next, you no longer believe the things you once did - in fact, you believe the opposite.
We all, I suspect, have a little of the neo-con inside us, which is why we have been so keen to project the idea on to alien cabals. For those who want to understand so that they can condemn a little more, there is no better place to start than this illuminating collection of essays edited by Irwin Stelzer. He takes us on a tour of neoconservative thought, outlining its philosophical roots and its effects on domestic policy. By gathering work by key thinkers such as Robert Kagan, Condoleezza Rice and Michael Gove, Stelzer shows why Jews and Gentiles alike find neoconservatism such an appealing philosophy, and neatly undermines any idea about Zionist conspiracies.
If neo-cons are liberals mugged by reality, reality itself was mugged by 11 September 2001, when their doctrines began to be taken seriously. In the post-traumatic shock that followed, it must have been a great relief to have on hand a group of advisers with a game plan that they had prepared earlier. This, Stelzer argues, was not so much a plot as an effort to persuade the US government "to adopt a view of the world that is radically different from that favoured by the post-cold war foreign policy establishment, but which none the less has roots in earlier American history".
The neoconservative world-view involves a total acceptance of liberal capitalism combined with the notion that the national interest, as Kristol puts it, "is not a geographical term for a great power". The mess of Iraq may have made some neo-cons queasy, but it can't be explained away by old models of empire. What really makes them queasy is the idea of permanent occupation - which real empire entails. The American people are not willing to change their socio- economic order to make that possible. They may believe that they are making the world a better place, but they really do not want to have to pay for it.
Still, the neo-con faith in the desirability of American values is quite as unshakeable as the faith of any jihadist. Typically, the Brits articulate this with even more ardour: Blair claims that the values he wants to promote are not western ones but "the universal values of the human spirit". Yet it is Margaret Thatcher who surfaces as the truest neo-con of all. In Stelzer's collection is a speech from the mid-1980s in which she talks of rogue states, pre-emptive strikes and the need for the "English-speaking peoples of the west" to unite.
Neoconservative thought is persuasive precisely because it presents itself not as ideology but as morality - and, moreover, morality charged with optimism. It is common these days to hear that we are ruled by fear, but what we should grasp is that neoconservatism offers the prospect of a world transformed for the better. Liberals, it seems, have failed on this score. The problem is not just that John Kerry is useless; it is that the left has become so damned pessimistic. The reassertion of American identity is also integral to neoconservatism. Regime change is part of a patriotic utopianism that no longer seeks coexistence with other countries, but their transformation.
The parts of the book I found most interesting, however, were those dealing with domestic policy. The peculiar neo-con position is that balancing budgets is an old-fashioned fetish, and that deficits can free up more money for the welfare state or for defence (you can guess which they prefer). On this point, Stelzer parts company with some of the hard-core neoconservatives by suggesting that deficits do matter, and that they do affect the supply side of the economy.
As you would expect, there is plenty of conservative hostility to the welfare state in evidence, but something less neo and much more palaeo emerges, too: an inclination to return to the Victorian notion of the deserving and undeserving poor, which undoubtedly leads to increased inequality. The left must ask why people vote against their own interests. The answer, surely, is that they dislike the state. Even as the neoconservatives argue for strong government, they denounce intrusive government. This may be contradictory, but it certainly hits the spot of popular resentment.
As Sarah Benton argued in a recent issue of Soundings, the political journal, we no longer have a coherent view of the state, muddling it up with the public sector, failing to understand its particular relationships with business, government and its "clients". This, she wrote, "is overwhelmingly the most important political question for political people".
We are so busy berating the neo-cons' foreign policy that we do not see the inroads they have made into our domestic policy. Unlike so many other conservatives, they speak of the future with hope, vision and optimism. That is one source of their power; the other is disappointment. Never underestimate the rage of a disappointed liberal. That is what we need to fear, both here and abroad. Although this book made me realise that I am not a neo-con, it made me understand why some others are. Scary but vital.
Suzanne Moore is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday
