Jonah — I don’t think it’s fair to say that a neoconservative is simply a former liberal (and that’s not how to interpret the prefix “neo” either, but I’ll let the word mavens go after that part). The term was coined by Michael Harrington to apply to a particualr set of liberal intellectuals that appeared to be turning right just as the New Left was emerging. It was an effort to write these intellectuals out of the respectable left. Harrington did not apply the term to other generations of liberals or leftists who had turned right, however. If he had, the term would apply to much of NR’s founding generation, many of whom had been men of the Left (including Frank Meyer and Whitaker Chambers, among others). By the same token, “neoliberals” are not liberals who used to be conservative. Rather the term was used to define a new generation of liberals that had a slightly different perspective than the prior generation of liberals, just as the “neoconservatives” had a slightly different take on conservative principles than their predecessors.