Here’s a fascinating interview with top British Neoconservative commentator Douglas Murray.

Edward - You mention in your book that a room full of Neoconservatives would be as likely to argue amongst each other as agree, except for a few basic but important points. What are these fundamental beliefs of “Neoconservatism”?

Douglas Murray - Broadly, neoconservatives would agree on the fact that liberal, democratic values constitute the most desirable end-point of human political striving - that accountability of the government to the people is not a luxury but something to be fought for. Much of this we would share with contemporary liberals. What differentiates the neocon from the modern-day liberal is the unanimously-held neoconservative belief that force can be used for the good, and that force should be used, where appropriate, to stand up for liberal-democratic values. Many conservatives agree with the occasional necessity of the use of force, but don’t agree with neoconservatives on using force to carry out regime-change or intervene in situations where a government is abusing its people. So neoconservatives stand at a curious place in the middle of the political debate – not to the far-sides of it as is often alleged, but rather in the middle, making common cause with lots of people for often differing reasons. The term ‘muscular-liberals’ has a slightly embarrassing and self-aggrandizing quality, but it might sum up the tendency best if we agree on using the term ‘liberal’ in the classical sense.

UPDATE at 2/1/09 7:31:43 pm:

LGF reader “HelloDare” contacted Douglas Murray in 2007 about the European neofascists so beloved of our former friends at Jihad Watch and other “anti-jihad” blogs, and received this reply:

From: douglas.murray@[deleted]
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:31:37 +0000
To: HelloDare
Subject: Re: The danger of white supremacists being involved in the anti-jihadi movement.

I absolutely agree. And thank you for this. It is vital to have nothing to do with parties like the Vlaams Belang, the Swedish Democrats and their ilk. To his great credit, Fortuyn understood this, and distanced himself at all opportunities. But we have to keep people alert about it. Recently such groups have been been posing as great friends of Israel. This has fooled a number of people, not least some of those who attended the Brussels conference.

Many thanks for being in touch.

Best -
Douglas