Talk:Richard John Neuhaus

NeoCon

RJN is a neocon, not a conservative. He has denounced most of the real conservatives he knew. --HowardJ87 11:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Neoconservatism

I changed the last sentence of the second paragraph because the way it was written made it sound like neoconservatives would never fathom taking part in the Civil Rights movement. This is misleading and biased. Neoconservatives are notable for making human rights a centerpoint of their decision-making.

I have added "conservative" and "controversial" in the first paragraph not as a POV, but as evidenced by the resignations of his editorial board and clashes with Cardinal Avery Dulles in the pages of First Things[1]. Perhaps this information should be included in the article? Perhaps not. For the moment I have just linked it here. -Invincoli 22:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC) [THIS LINK IS BROKEN]

Deletion of "unilateral"

I removed "unilateral" as a qualifier of the Iraq War. The United States formed a broad coalition before invading, and the use of that term is misleading and biased.

Annotation to "The Theocons"

The annotation I provided for "The Theocons" references is brief (three sentences!), valid, relevant, and useful to someone looking for more information on RJN. It answers the questions: What is this book about (and *not* about)? What is the relevance to RJN? (he is the central figure of the book) and, what are the credentials of the author? I note for admirers of RJN that this annotation is not even a criticism of him -- it is merely a *pointer* to a criticism of his religiously-inspired politicial philosophy, a serious published book with many footnote references (and not any kind of scurrilous personal attack, as noted in the annotation). Game, set, match as far as encylopedic principles go. 137.82.188.68 05:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

August 2007

Since the above comment, all mention of Linker's book (ISBN 0385516479) has vanished from the article. User 137.82.188.68 (talk · contribs) recently added The Theocons to the Bibliography. I'm sure it does not belong there; I'm not sure whether it should be mentioned in the article. If it is mentioned, we would need to cover the controversy over it (eg., http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9603).

Here's the text I removed:

The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker, Doubleday 2006. Account of the rise of the "theocons" in which Neuhaus is the central figure; includes biographical information.

Note that we would need to say that the book is controversial and highly critical of RJN, per WP:NPOV etc.

Cheers, CWC 09:16, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Please note I did previously have a longer annotation to this book in which I did say that the book was highly critical of Neuhaus's political commitments -- and who Damon Linker is -- but someone objected to that and removed it. The new annotation is minimal and just gives links to the information on Linker and theo-con for someone to look up if they want to. You are quite wrong; the book reference belongs in the bibliography because it is a public, verifiable source of biographical information on RJN and this biographical information is not controversial or inaccurate. If memory serves -- I read First Things -- RJN did not complain of biographical inaccuracies in his passing mention of this book in his Public Square piece. Of course he didn't agree that he is a danger to American secular democracy. Again, the book is not an attack on Neuhaus's personal character but rather his political philosophy. Someone reading the book can make their own decisions on how well-founded or well-argued the thesis of the book is but removing mention of this valuable (albeit critical) reference to Neuhaus and his work is direct censorship. 137.82.188.68 05:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

RJN criticizing but not identifying

I found this amusing: the opening paragraph of Richard John Neuhaus's "The Public Square" section of the January 2008 edition of First Things is this (my underline emphasis):

I approached Mark Lilla's new book with considerable interest and with the expectation of enountering a fresh way of thinking about perennial problems. The book is The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern World (Knopf). It is true that Lilla gave a glowing endorsement for a recent and rather silly book attacking this magazine and me personally as dangerous proponents of theocracy, but I wasn't going to let that put me off. Lilla and the author of that book go way back and it is not easy to decline a friend's request for a blurb. In any event, I had been reading Lilla over the years and frequently found his arguments suggestive.

So Neuhaus a) wishes to slam The Theo-cons as a "rather silly book" to those who already know of its existence, but he doesn't wish to actually identify the book to help a reader to decide for themself, and b) even though Lilla gave the book a "glowing" endorsement he probably didn't really mean it. 137.82.188.68 (talk) 20:18, 2 February 2008 (UTC)