"Con" is short for conservative and "neo" is short for, um, conservative?

Camille Paglia, the liberal feminist liberal feminists love to hate, resumed her former Salon column not too long ago. Paglia’s style and wit reminds me of a fireworks display – brilliant, colorful sparks flying every which way all at once. It suits her well and I’m happy her unique voice is back.

Cohabiting Salon’s virtual digs these days is Glenn Greenwald, whom my friend and former co-blogger Mona much admires but whose pre-Salon blogging I admit to not having much read. His column yesterday, however, reminds me of the indefatigable Paglia, with salvos flying hither and yon over his contention that neoconservatives hold themselves or their compatriots personally above the law much as they have been accused of contending that the state in its war against terrorism must not be constrained by the law of the land. (The latter criticism, I hasten to add, is all too valid.)

Greenwald writes:

[N]eoconservatives automatically and reflexively defend any neoconservative accused of wrongdoing, before any facts are even known. They insist that they have done no wrong, that the real guilty parties are the accusers, and that even where they have done wrong, they should not be punished.

It’s a very, very busy piece of writing and it would take a very long time to give each accusation due deference. I don’t plan to do that here, nor do I mean to contend that there is nothing at all to Greenwald’s concern. Still, where he sees a seemingly vast pattern if not a downright conspiracy among those he calls neoconservatives of both the official and pundit variety and the latter's varied reactions to charges leveled against some of the former, I’m afraid I see little more than politics as usual and nothing uniquely neoconservative or even generally conservative about it at all.

Here’s the quick version of Greenwald’s thesis: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Conrad Black, Paul Wolfowitz, and several AIPAC officials (with Eliot Abrams thrown in for good measure) have variously been accused, tried or convicted of various wrongdoings, some criminal, some ‘merely’ ethical, at least so far. They, in turn, have been defended “with virtual unanimity” by the “neoconservative” likes of pundits working for FOX News, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic . (Why doesn’t the Weekly Standard make the list? Bill Kristol, a writer who's so Neo that Morpheus probably thinks he's The One, gets mentioned but not his most quintessentially neoconservative platform. What gives?)

First, let’s note that there is a very wide spectrum of wrongdoing involved here. From charges of espionage (the AIPAC case) to the Libby conviction for his statements made in the investigation of the idiotic Plame debacle to the comparatively trivial case of Wolfowitz’s personal / professional conflicts of interest at the World Bank. So, at minimum, this is a very apples and oranges sort of list of wrongful behavior. Okay, apples and oranges are still both fruits; but I'd say selling secrets to foreign governments counts as more egregious conduct than juicing your girlfriend’s salary, wouldn’t you?

For that matter, yeah, I think Libby was a small potatoes fall guy in the Plame affair and should get a pardon, too. Does that make me a neoconservative? I hope the hell not. (Also, just for the record, I don’t really give a rodent’s hindquarters how Wolfowitz’s main squeeze, um, earned her raise at the World Bank -- which I, too, would like to see go bye-bye -- or how much U.N. coffers swag Kofi Annan managed to throw his son’s way, either.)

Greenwald writes, by the way, that Libby was “convicted by an obviously conscientious and unanimous jury.” Yeah, well, you need unanimity for any conviction last time I checked, and it isn’t as though the jury was entirely comfortable in doing its “conscientious” duty under the circumstances, either. I think for good reason. Apparently he disagrees.

But here’s really my basic gripe. Greenwald is simply painting with too broad a brush, or at least it seems so to me, when he rattles off all these various and admittedly conservative defenders of these various current and former administration officials and labels all such writers as neoconservatives. Thusly used, does “neo” do any work at all? Is Jonah Goldberg really a neoconservative? I think the fact would come as news to him (though that isn't to say he might not agree with some neoconservatives about some things some of the time.) Does it matter at all that what he actually wrote about Black was “to the extent I understand the charges, I am all in favor of defending Conrad Black” (my emphasis) and that even that sounds to me like a throw-away line in the context of criticism of a Tina Brown column? Is the entire editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal really comprised now exclusively not only of conservatives but of neoconservatives? Golly! No wonder Rupert Murdoch wants to pay a premium for it.

Look, conservatives, “neo” or otherwise, rising to the defense, sometimes inappropriately, of their fellow conservatives charged with wrongdoing is nothing new in politics, nor is such behavior unique to the right side of the political spectrum. It’s business as usual. Many of the writers Greenwald accuses of unprincipled defense of the likes of Wolfowitz or Libby do indeed qualify under the “neo” rubric, and I probably even agree with him about some of his examples.

But whether everything they or other "mere" conservatives write in such defense stems from the motives Greenwald ascribes to them seems to me a very different sort of thing. It is, after all, possible to do the right thing for the right reason, e.g., write against the onslaught of also dubious and biased liberal media criticism of such persons, even if one is a neoconservative, isn’t it? Or has "neoconservative" simply become a secular catch-all synonym for Satan and his evil minions in some quarters?

I gotta say, this sort of scatter-shot patterning is a lot more fun when Paglia is doing it.

POSTSCRIPT: Greenwald's piece in Salon today, urging Democrats to amend the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and restore habeas corpus is right on the money. I'd only add it would be nice to see more Republicans join in that effort, too. As always, I call 'em as I see 'em.