Transition Into Neoconservatism
Perle is a self-described neoconservative, like several around Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson, as he told Ben J. Wattenberg in an interview specifically about him becoming a neoconservative.
| “ | Ben Wattenberg: Now, Scoop was surrounded by people who then and certainly now are called neoconservatives. It’s become a fashionable word now thanks to you and your colleagues because you’re all categorized that way. How did that come into your life, that whole school of thought?
Richard Perle: Well, I think the term has something to do with the sense that those of us who are now called neo-conservatives were at one time liberals, and in this… Ben Wattenberg: Irving Kristol said a neoconservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. Richard Perle: Right. And I think that’s a fair description, and I suppose all of us were liberal at one time. I was liberal in high school and a little bit into college. But reality and rigor are important tonics, and if you got into the world of international affairs and you looked with some rigor at what was going on in the world, it was really hard to be liberal and naïve. |
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Perle's book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror which he coauthored with fellow neoconservative David Frum in 2004 criticizes American bureaucracy, civil service, and law. The book suggests that we as Americans must “overhaul the institutions of our government to ready them for a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy” including the FBI, CIA, armed forces, and State Department. The book is also used as a defense of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and outlines important neoconservative ideas, including ways to abandon all Israeli-Palestinian peace processes, invade Syria, and implement strict US domestic surveillance with biometric identity cards and public vigilance to hinder potential terrorist immigrant or terrorist sympathizer threats. Perle and Frum conclude: “For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause … There is no middle way for Americans: it is victory or holocaust.” These ideas are foundational elements of neoconservatism.
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Famous quotes containing the word transition:
“Some of the taverns on this road, which were particularly dirty, were plainly in a transition state from the camp to the house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)