Does anyone else think...

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

...That there's a contradiction in the beliefs of people like the Henry Jackson Democrats and neo-con Democrats during the Cold War? Jackson is one of my favorite Democrats, however I still believe there's a contradiction (to be explained below).

In my mind it doesn't make sense that the Cold War Democrats would support battling of communism abroad, but at the same time offer something somewhat close to it domestically. Your thoughts.

[LBJ Revivalist]

...That there's a contradiction in the beliefs of people like the Henry Jackson Democrats and neo-con Democrats during the Cold War? Jackson is one of my favorite Democrats, however I still believe there's a contradiction (to be explained below).

In my mind it doesn't make sense that the Cold War Democrats would support battling of communism abroad, but at the same time offer something somewhat close to it domestically. Your thoughts.

Maybe because what they were offering wasn't Communism or near it? That is, if you're refering to the Great Society.

[Smash255]

...That there's a contradiction in the beliefs of people like the Henry Jackson Democrats and neo-con Democrats during the Cold War? Jackson is one of my favorite Democrats, however I still believe there's a contradiction (to be explained below).

In my mind it doesn't make sense that the Cold War Democrats would support battling of communism abroad, but at the same time offer something somewhat close to it domestically. Your thoughts.

What was being offered isn't anything remotely close to Communism.   I know the Beck types try to make you think that anything to the left of the government offering a penny to the less fortunate is Communism, but its not.

[LBJ Revivalist]

...That there's a contradiction in the beliefs of people like the Henry Jackson Democrats and neo-con Democrats during the Cold War? Jackson is one of my favorite Democrats, however I still believe there's a contradiction (to be explained below).

In my mind it doesn't make sense that the Cold War Democrats would support battling of communism abroad, but at the same time offer something somewhat close to it domestically. Your thoughts.

What was being offered isn't anything remotely close to Communism.   I know the Beck types try to make you think that anything to the left of the government offering a penny to the less fortunate is Communism, but its not.

This.
Listen to LBJ's tapes one day, or Nixon's. They were very staunch anti-Communists even in private and liked to call the people they disagreed with "Commies" (in private) just as much as Beck does now. There's a tape from '66 or so where LBJ is b*tchin' about the "Commie Preachers" not supporting the Great Society.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Communism was opposed not only to free enterprise but also to all 'bourgeois' individual freedoms of the liberal tradition.  Some liberals and even democratic socialists have opposed the Communists because they recognize this threat, while others have been duped.

[dead0man]

I don't know, a lot of them enjoy restricting freedoms when the freedoms are something they disagree with.  Guns, offensive speech, religious to name a few.

[Franzl]

In my mind it doesn't make sense that the Cold War Democrats would support battling of communism abroad, but at the same time offer something somewhat close to it domestically. Your thoughts.

My thoughts? You don't have any idea what communism is.

[© tweed]

Communism was opposed not only to free enterprise but also to all 'bourgeois' individual freedoms of the liberal tradition.  Some liberals and even democratic socialists have opposed the Communists because they recognize this threat, while others have been duped.

the key idea is that freedom is not defined only through the political sphere but by the social relations of production.

[Torie]

To equate the Dem party in any iteration with being in some neighborhood adjacent to Communism, gets the conversation off on the wrong foot in my opinion. It is just not a helpful label.

[DrScholl]

Not even anywhere close to being a good comparison, as social democratic ideas are not communism. Even lots of anti-communists in Europe held social democratic ideas.

[Хahar 🤔]

You might think that, but you would be wrong.

[seanobr]

To equate the Dem party in any iteration with being in some neighborhood adjacent to Communism, gets the conversation off on the wrong foot in my opinion. It is just not a helpful label.

I would agree with this sentiment.

At the time that neoconservatism became distinguishable as an actual movement in response to the Democratic Party's foreign policy after Vietnam, no Communist state, even those outside of the Soviet sphere of influence such as Albania, had embraced what we would consider the fundamental elements of Western society.  The Soviet Union itself was a repressive, totalitarian regime that significantly curtailed the freedom and rights of its populace to facilitate the Party's absolute control.  Whatever your political ideology, opposing the Eastern bloc because of a belief in civil liberty was not only a perfectly rational position, but effectively the norm here.  The Socialist Party of America was never a supporter of the Soviet system; I believe the Frankfurt Declaration of the Socialist International was very explicit in its objection to the same.  Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a prototypical neoconservative, was a Socialist in college and an otherwise extremely liberal Democrat who turned to Reagan because of his hard line stance on Communism, eventually becoming a nominal Republican at best.  Norman Podhoretz, however, who wrote the "Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy" article in Commentary, has undergone a total transformation and is now openly sympathizing with Sarah Palin's political platform, which is rather incongruous with the historical conception of a neoconservative. 

Of course, when I think of neoconservatism today, I associate it with the idealistic foreign policy of the Project for a New American Century and other similar organizations rather than the domestic liberalism that was a defining characteristic of its original practitioners.  Given that its influence is largely confined to trying to articulate Republican national security strategy, I think the neoconservative future is inseparable from whatever interpretation of conservatism is fashionable at the moment.  Its acolytes will enhance their credibility by advocating for regime change in Iran, Syria and wherever else (see John Bolton casting himself as a Korean expert and exhorting for decisive action against the North), and take solace in the fact that we are generally more amenable to a stronger military than the Democratic Party.  Meanwhile, those who believe that the Republican Party isn't sufficiently conservative on the whole will continue to use the term in a derisive and all-encompassing manner, which normally elicits a smile from me -- because I know not to take anything else they have to contribute seriously.

[Skill and Chance]

I don't know, a lot of them enjoy restricting freedoms when the freedoms are something they disagree with.  Guns, offensive speech, religious to name a few.

Religions that need the government to be their mouthpiece aren't going to be sustainable anyway.