Ross Douthat does a good job of picking out neoconservatism's distinguishing factors from the more anodyne moral claims that the ideology's advocates like to state in public. For instance, it's fairly banal to say that "the spread of democracy offers an important, peaceful way to weaken our foe and reduce the need for force." This may or may not be true (the spread of democracy to Palestine, and the subsequent election of Hamas, doesn't appear to have much pleased the neoconservatives), but so far as it relates to the use of force, that depends not on the spread of democracy, but on how you're spreading democracy and how you decide when to use force. As a general point, though, I wrote an article awhile back lamenting the values-laden language that laces foreign policy rhetoric. Public voices on both sides, for instance, would agree with the neocon principle that "Our struggle is moral, against an evil enemy who revels in the destruction of innocents." But to speak of foreign policy in such Manichean terms enables those who offer a similarly stark, forceful solution. And that's what you see in the neoconservative essay Douthat cites: An attempt to use the broadly appealing values language to undergird the movement's more militaristic impulses. --Ezra Klein
