Gerard Baker reads the funeral rites for neocondom, but adds a caveat:
In the end, the rise and fall of neoconservatism in government may prove not unlike that of its predecessor in the obscure ideology-turned-official-policy stakes, monetarism. Monetarism was discredited as policy because, while it offered the correct analysis, it failed as policy. I suspect the same will be said for the much derided, little-lamented neoconservatism.
He’s talking about foreign affairs, of course. But It’s worth recalling that neoconservatism has an honorable tradition in domestic policy. Who has done more to change our thinking about crime and policing, for instance, than James Q. Wilson? (As far as I recall, he was opposed to the Iraq war.) Neocons thought long and hard about civic culture, and to some extent their ideas have become part of the mainstream. Thanks to what has happened in Baghdad, all that is likely to be forgotten.
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