In a memorable speech delivered at the Heritage Foundation in April 1988 (at which I was present), Russell Kirk declaimed against the neoconservatives as a force hollowing out the conservative movement “from within.” He emphatically rejected the practice of referring to those leftist outsiders as conservatives and urged true conservatives not to have any truck with such interlopers.

Fortunately for the right, Kirk explained, these invaders from the ideological left would not be with us for long. They would soon become an “endangered species” as more and more people on our side would recognize they were not conservatives and indeed were subverting the right.

I suspected even then that Russell was only half right in his judgment about the neoconservatives. Although he was entirely on target in depicting them as interlopers from the left, he wrongly assumed they would soon lose power and fade away into historical insignificance. Just the opposite has happened, as I suggest in my book on the conservative movement. The neoconservatives took over and exploited what had once been far-right foundations. In the process, they made peace with the center-left while isolating the right, and became the main voice of what I’ve dubbed Conservatism, Inc.

Even more importantly, neoconservatives became the major beneficiaries of the Murdoch family fortune and today have at their disposal Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and National Review as media vehicles for advancing their agenda. Neoconservatives are even more powerful today than when Kirk attacked them in 1988; and not even the rise of MAGA and the populist right has changed this fact. The neocons have managed to keep the hated paleoconservatives from being heard or read in any enterprise they control. And though there is a MAGA right, it mostly operates through channels that the neoconservatives continue to gatekeep. (Just ask Tucker Carlson!)

This imbalance of power and influence has caused a certain predictable reaction on the part of the traditional right in addressing those issues that the neoconservatives insist on defining for us. One must be a Con Inc. dummy not to know what these talking points are. Official conservative positions always reflect the neoconservatives’ main ideological concerns and ethnic hates: for example, their over-the-top Zionism, dislike for certain European peoples, like Germans and Russians, and residual Trotskyite democratic universalism.

When I open the New York Post these days, I am met with neocon party lines galore about the Middle East, courtesy of Mark Levin, John Podhoretz, Oren Cass, and other “official conservatives” (who are actually neocons). Israel is fighting for all of us against an evil terrorist state, and we should be grateful for what the IDF is doing specifically for Americans by engaging in this struggle. The Murdoch press, moreover, warns us with monotonous regularity about the hordes of “antisemites” who have openly taken the side of the Palestinians in the Big Apple and other American cities. I could think of greater dangers walking the streets of New York, but let me not digress.

There are times, however, when neocon rhetoric overlaps with the truth. I don’t want to mention the names of all the paleos and strict constitutionalists who suddenly find moderation and rationality in the rule of the Mullahs in Iran. They’ve taken this position while unloading on the Israelis for fighting an enemy that threatened to wipe out their country with a nuclear device. Mind you, these critics have not merely expressed their defensible opposition to getting the U.S. embroiled in another Middle Eastern war, which is the confirmed position of the majority of Trump’s voters. They shed tears for the Iranian government’s leaders, who are made to look like peace-loving victims of Israeli aggression.

I believe this happens because whatever the neocons says engenders a reflexive pushback from our guys. If the hated neocons take a fervently pro-Israel position, then their longtime opponents and the victims of the neocon policy of suppressing the “extreme right” will naturally seize the opposing position.

In my own view as a grizzled anti-neocon warrior, I see no reason why our positions should always be the exact opposite of what the neocons are advocating. Even the obsessions of our enemies can occasionally be correct, as I think they are about Iran and the danger it poses as a terrorist state. Personally, I’m delighted that the Israelis have bombed at least some of the Mullahs’ nuclear installations and I wouldn’t cry if President Trump decides to go after the rest of Iran’s nuclear facilities by dropping a bunker bomb.

There are states that export terror as their reason for being, and if we can help others eliminate the danger they pose without sending American troops to fight, I’m in favor of taking that step. That, of course, is different from trying to inflict on hapless countries whatever poses as “democracy” in the contemporary wokeified, managerialized West. That’s a dumb, arrogant position I totally reject. I also embrace the paleo position that our main concern in the U.S. should be cleaning up the moral and political mess that the left has created for us over the last century.

Still, there are situations where international problems can be solved by a decisive use of force. We know that Hitler might have been overthrown in the 1930s if the U.S. and England had given support to high-placed resistance forces in Germany. If the U.S. had rendered that assistance, the result might have saved the us from being involved in a devastating war, one in which one tyrant was replaced by another brutal one in Eastern and Central Europe, much of Europe was left in ruins, and the Nazis and then the Soviets murdered tens of millions.

Sometimes a proper use of force can forestall other greater problems, like allowing a terrorist state to continue to wreak havoc. Being first and foremost concerned about the restoration of American sanity and material well-being seems to be a proper priority. But that priority should not require us to whitewash international troublemakers or find excuses for their destructive behavior.