The New Antiwar Populism

The neocons are in a panic over it

by Justin Raimondo, October 04, 2010

"The War Party is running scared – and with good reason. Writing in the Washington Post, neocons Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly are in a panic that the rising “tea party” movement, which upended the Republican establishment at the polls, is about to abandon “the defense of freedom” in faraway Afghanistan in favor of rescuing what’s left of our freedom closer to home.....

Lieberman wound up a pariah in his own party. The neocons, too, are fast approaching pariah status. Oh, they try to mount an argument in favor of the political utility of warmongering, albeit without much success. Pletka and Donnelly cite a rather biased-sounding Gallup poll, which asked respondents whether “national defense is stronger than it needs to be.” Isn’t it just like a “big government conservative” to equate throwing money at a government program with “strength”? A more accurate reading of the public mood was taken by the Pew polling organization, which noted, in 2009, that “for the first time in more than 40 years of polling, a plurality (49%) says the United States should ‘mind its own business internationally’ and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”

This is the majority opinion in America, and it is high time both conservatives and progressives noted it – and took action. Against the Vandenbergian faux-“conservatives,” and the Vandenbergian fake-“progressives,” there is an opening for anti-interventionists of both the left and the right to challenge the Washington establishment and bring America home.....