Those of you who read the famous issue of Esquire on Neo-Conservatism may fear for my life, for I am about to defy the Godfather. If I am shortly found at the bottom of the Potomac with ten bound volumes of The Public Interest around my neck—and only Two Cheers for Capitalism—you will know who did it. Lesser men have drowned merely from reading that sort of stuff. Nonetheless, I flatter myself I will survive. Having pored over every issue of The Public Interest from cover to cover for some 12 years, having swum through the smarms of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and having even penetrated the deepest thickets of Daniel Bell—I believe I have toughened myself enough to escape the coruscating cage of Irving Kristol and tell my shocking story to the world: how a once obedient and respectful liberal Republican from the Ripon Society could pass through the elegant labyrinth of Neo-Conservatism and end up a captive of the “politics of resentment and hate,” “single-issue fanaticism,” and “know-nothing fundamentalism.”
Lest my attack on Neo-Conservatism be judged an act of arrant ingratitude, let me begin by granting my great debt to Neo-Conservative thinkers—or Neo-Cons, if I may coin the term. I can pay them no higher tribute than to say that I owe to them my conversion to real conservatism.
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