GET READY FOR THE NEO-NEOCONSERVATIVES:

For Daniel Patrick Moynihan, it was the racism charges that broke the camel’s back. His famous 1965 report on the pathologies of black culture landed him in a hornet’s nest. “I was not a bigot,” he wrote later, “but the good guys were calling me a racist, while here was this fellow Buckley saying these thoughtful things. Glazer and I began to notice that we were getting treated in National Review with a much higher level of intellectual honesty.”

Moynihan was just one of many erstwhile-liberals who was startled to find a rare bastion of sanity in National Review. That trickle of refugees from liberalism would prove critical to getting William Buckley’s fledgling conservative movement off the ground. Having once regarded themselves as liberals, many neoconservatives had managed to attain influential mainstream positions that traditionalists of Russell Kirk’s persuasion would likely have found difficult. They were invaluable for raising the movement’s profile. At the same time, their experience and background made them savvy to policy. They would lay the groundwork for conservative policy developments over the next several decades.

As today’s conservative movement braces for four years under a corrupt, autocratic president, we should note this silver lining: As in Moynihan’s time, liberalism is in terrible shape. Present-day progressivism enjoys a cultural dominance that is somewhat reminiscent of 1960s liberalism. Despite that, the Left is demoralized, paranoid, and intellectually exhausted. Despite legions of high-profile supporters, the Democrats seem unable to win the loyalty of the most anti-traditional generation in American history.

The time is ripe for recruiting a new crop of ex-liberals. Who’s ready to get mugged by reality?

Of course, the mugging may not be enough to return some completely to reality – as William F. Buckley said after Moynihan died in 2003 at age 76, the Cassandra-esque New York Democrat “always said the right thing and always voted the wrong way.”

But why do I need to “get ready for the Neo-Neocons,” when I’ve known the original Neo-Neocon for over a decade?