Book review: Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea
Neoconservatism is one of the most influential ideological paradigms in the modern age. Incredibly, this book (Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea) is the first thorough critique of this position, from the perspective of the party of freedom.
It is written by Bradley Thompson, a professor of politics who once sympathized with the neoconservative outlook until he discovered its implications for freedom. Here he reveals how the outlook actually longs for dictatorship and distrusts freedom and the free market.
He first establishes the fact that neoconservatism is more than a clique but rather is a real theory of politics. He then explores its roots and suppositions, with a particular focus on its suppositions concerning freedom and the free market.
He then proceeds to utterly crush its distrust of human liberty and show how its adoration of power and rule by the elites wars against the natural formation of a civilization of freedom.
What is particularly surprising here, as well as deeply effective, is how Thompson provides a rigorous and thorough critique that is not from the left-socialist point of view but rather from the “right”: the standard here is the liberal tradition. This makes his work more effective than any that has ever been written.
You will learn from this book and come to see why the libertarians never signed up with the neoconservative agenda in either domestic or foreign policy. More than any book written on the topic, this book provides the intellectual ammunition to combat this threat to freedom from the right.
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