Neocons are an altogether strange phenomenon. Neocons aren't conservative or liberal, so much as they're opportunistic authoritarians. In the 1960s, when they w

Neocons are an altogether strange phenomenon. Neocons aren't conservative or liberal, so much as they're opportunistic authoritarians. In the 1960s, when they were young and believed the Left stood a decent chance of overthrowing the US government, they were communists. They weren't the same people as the hippies or civil rights activists; they were the ones mobbing and beating up returned veterans in San Francisco. In the 1980s and '90s, when their generation and the conservative movement were firmly in power, they swung from the authoritarian left to the authoritarian right, which really aren't very far apart.