The neoconservatives led us into one of the great blunders of American history. The Iraq War still looms large over American politics, even as it’s been largely memory-holed. The election of Barack Obama was, in part, a reaction to the excesses and militarism of the George W. Bush administration. The rise of Donald Trump was, in part, a reaction to Obama. Trump, even if he wasn’t initially, became a vocal opponent of the Iraq War and rendered the neoconservative faction of the Republican Party irrelevant.

Instead of proclaiming a commitment to supporting democracy abroad, Trump was the first American president to show little, if any, interest in the values that had long defined the American project. He promoted a much narrower conception of American interests, focused on immigration restrictions, transactional economic gains and letting our authoritarian allies be as authoritarian as they wanted to be. This was “America first.”

In a recent essay in the Atlantic, David Brooks argues that the original neocons — well before the Iraq War discredited them — had important insights about domestic politics. Witnessing the rise of secularism and decline of public morality in the 1960s and 70s, they wanted to “put virtue at the center of their public-policy thinking; they were not afraid to be moralistic.”

But that moral impulse also had — and still has — relevance for America’s global role and leadership. I hesitate to say this. Neoconservatism of this sort is dead, and for good reason. It failed. At the same time, when I look at the current crop of Republican leaders and their apparent disregard for American ideals and Christian morality, I can’t help but look with some nostalgia at the Republicans of old.

Follow Trump’s second term

Last week, referring to “mainstream Muslims,” Trump ally Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida) said “I don’t know how you make peace with those who seek your destruction. I think you destroy them first.” After the terrorist attack in Australia that took the lives of 15 people during a Hanukkah celebration, Fine doubled down, calling for “deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible. Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.” Not to be outdone,........

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