Sweet Neo Cons

"Today, roughly 70 percent of Americans say they don't believe in the American dream. That loss of faith is like a giant bomb detonated in the middle of our society, robbing us of our central, unifying vision. Absent that shared vision of possibility, people revert to a tribal, us-versus-them morality. If the ghosts of the original neocons have anything to tell us about specific policy choices, it's that we need to do what we can to expand social mobility and restore faith in the American dream."

David Brooks at The Atlantic argues that "[t]he neocons were right."

While Chris Ryan at Tangentially Speaking asks, "Just How Cynical is David Brooks?"

"The Earliest Neoconservative"

"Banfield did not abandon altogether the possibility of policy interventions, although it’s true he thought policymakers' room to maneuver was severely constrained. Likewise, Kristol remarked in his 1985 retrospective that 'the failure (or at least non-success) of so much of social policy in the past twenty years can be exaggerated. Not every program failed and there are a few important ones that represent positive achievements.' Indeed, 'The Public Interest has always emphasized the modestly positive along with the skeptical.' Yet on the right writ large there has been a clear decline from skepticism toward nihilism—toward a belief that policy interventions fail so often and character is so intractable that it is almost never worth it to attempt to solve social problems through policy."

Joshua Tait at The Bulwark recalls political scientist Edward C. Banfield.

And David Klion at The Nation looks at varying definitions of "neoconservatism."