The term ‘Neoconservative’ was originally used as a criticism against liberals that had politically ‘moved to the right’. Video below.
Neoconservatism is a political philosophy that emerged in the United States from the rejection of social liberalism and the New Left counterculture of the 1960s. It influenced the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and the George W. Bush presidential administrations, representing a realignment in American politics, and the defection of a certain segment of liberals to the right side of the political spectrum. Neoconservatism emphasizes foreign policy as paramount responsibility of government, seeing the need for the U.S. acting as the world’s sole superpower as indispensable to establishing and maintaining global order.
As a term, neoconservative first was used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to identify a group of people (who described themselves as liberals) as newly stimulated conservative ex-liberals. The idea that liberalism “no longer knew what it was talking about” is neoconservatism’s central theme.
The development of this conservatism is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, co-founder of Encounter magazine, and of its editor (1953–58), Norman Podhoretz, and others who described themselves as “neoconservatives” during the Cold War.
Prominent neoconservatives are associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).