The gloomy neocons...

According to Fred Barnes:

The paleocon message is not an electoral winner--unless you believe voters are eager to hear ideas that are gloomy, negative, defeatist, isolationist, nativist, and protectionist.

What is it exactly about the "neocon" message that invokes positive thoughts of prosperity and success in the geopolitical arena?

The neocons tell us that American businesses need cheap labor in the form of illegal immigrants to sustain our supposedly cutting edge economy. They tell us that American companies aren't even interested in government contracts to run port operations, that we should instead opt to pay foreigners to do the work "Americans don't want to do". In fact, the neocons emphasize the legitimacy of the opinion that certain work is beneath that which Americans should expect to be provided.

They tell us stories about international rings of "terrorists" who are plotting nuclear attacks against America with the aid of various governments around the world. The only solution to these threats, they tell us, is to relinquish our civil rights and invest our collective trust in the decision making of a President able to defeat Al Gore and John Kerry by the slimmest of margins. We are to recognize his Constitutional authority to operate outside of the limits of the document which creates his authority in the first place. In the end, we are told that a 50-70 year war fought in every corner of the globe represents optimism while diplomatic non-interventionism represents defeatism.

They tell us that a federal budget with revenues of $2.4 trillion is not enough, that our children's futures must be mortgaged in order to sustain and expand necessary social programs while creating and implementing new ones. We are told that massive foreign debts and trade deficits are necessary in the "new economy" dominated by international corporations whose constituencies consist of small handfuls of powerful stakeholders. Exploding unfunded liabilities on the brink of surpassing the established debt ceiling are optimistic, while fiscally responsibile policies of pay as we go are pessimistic.

They tell us that smaller government is preferrable, but somehow they always manage to justify each proposed expansion of federal scope on some basis or another. A political movement once led by men who believed in individual sovereignty and inalienable liberties has fallen prey to marxists who masquerade their way to power under cover of supporting traditional social values through the appropriate use of government force. Bigger and more powerful government is optimistic if it pretends to advance the social agenda of the religous right, smaller government which protects the rights of all individuals to choose the course of their own lives is pessimistic.

I just don't see the optimism in the neocon platform. Probably because I'm too busy preparing for the coming armageddon that I am told is just around every corner.