Consider the following. Once upon a time, back in the 1970s and 1980s, "neoconservatives" referred to a group of liberal intellectuals and Democratic Party activists who increasingly found themselves parting ways with where the rest of the their party seemed to be headed on race and domestic policy. Like most liberal intellectuals and Democratic Party stalwarts, they were mostly if not exclusively Jewish and Catholic, e.g., Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard John Neuhaus. Their foreign policy views were anti-communist, but this was not their defining trait. Neither did their faiths and ethnic backgrounds define them, although these were significant descriptors.

Most of the original neocons are still alive, but now "neoconservative" refers instead to an almost completely distinct group of people. They have no known body of views on domestic policy, and are defined by two features. One is support for Israel's right wing. The other is being Jewish.

After all, who is a neocon, to judge by what's written in the papers, the magazines, and on the web? The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan? If you saw most of the obits, you'll recall that it didn't come up. Neuhaus? The smart set calls him a "theocon" these days. Zalmay Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz's soul mate? No. Dick Cheney? No. Condi Rice? No. Don Rumsfeld? He's well to the right of Wolfowitz on Palestine, but no! Richard Armitage? He signed the same 1998 get-Saddam paper that Wolfowitz did, but no, sorry. Bill Bennett? Nope. Laurent Murawiec? Not that I've seen, and he's a total lunatic. Mr. "Rogue State Rollback" himself, Sen. John McCain? Sorry, no. Gen. Jay Garner? Not yet. Dick Cheney? No. "Scooter" Libby? No, he doesn't come up often at all. George Bush? Not him - indeed, he's frequently not credited with having thoughts of his own. Richard Perle? Ah - here we go. Yes. Douglas Feith? Yes. Paul Wolfowitz? Yes. Elliot Abrams? Yes. Bill Kristol? You bet.

One of these days, someone will have to trace how the label slid from one group to another. Probably by way of the Kristol lineage. At any rate, it's fair to say that the word has now become pretty stark code language for "Zionist Jewish imperialist cabal member" with the emphasis on "Jewish," since fairly prominent non-Jewish individuals with the same sorts of foreign policy views but a different sort of lineage, such as George W. Bush, never get placed in this category.

There are a few writers who have been very careful when invoking the "neocons" to describe a set of views rather than a set of Jews, by including Khalilzad and Libby and so on. But even then, they never let the label rise any higher in the Bush Administration's hierarchy than the level of Deputy Secretary, basically because that's where Paul Wolfowitz is stationed. The idea, after all, is to describe a cabal, rather than a legitimate or mainstream point of view.

Even this fancy dancing is the exception. From most writers' pens, the distinction is totally arbitrary. It lies somewhere between an ethnic slur and a McCarthyite smear. Indeed, there are two very simple reasons that "A Clean Break" has gotten more play in recent discussions than much more high-profile or widely read (but mostly now forgotten) Clinton-era position papers on overthrowing Saddam: in distinction to the other papers (which much more faithfully describe the current Administration's policy, I might add) every single author of "A Clean Break" was Jewish, and it was addressed to an Israeli leader rather than an American. It's also on the web.

If anyone disagrees, can they explain what "neocon" is actually supposed to mean these days?

Clearly, we are better off without this pernicious label.