Did I mention that I like Suzanne Fields?

I think I did. She's a good writer. And in her column today she explores a few of the edgier things happening around the term "neocon," shorthand for neoconservative. But what convinced me to pick her out of the crowd this morning was her mere mention of the great, and I mean great, Father Richard John Neuhaus. Perhaps too Catholic for many readers, certainly too religious for liberals, Neuhaus is in my opinion the brightest thinker in America for the last two decades, at least. He covers all the bases, and the journal he edits, First Things, is the most important and provocative periodical being published today, by far.

About what neocons represent, Fields writes:

Economist magazine defines neocons with the back of the hand, describing them as "a small cabal of intellectuals - 'conservative ideologues' . . . scornful . . . of idealistic multilateralism." European critics blame them for messianic zeal, imperial designs and the war in Iraq, and a lack of a realistic assessment of where democracy can actually flourish.

But a cabal they are not, nor are they conspirators. In "The Neocon Reader," edited by Irwin Stelzer, a sense of what's "old" about the "neos" comes clear, as various writers trace the roots of political thinkers as different as John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Columnist David Brooks exaggerates only a little when he says, "If you ever read a sentence that starts with 'neocons believe,' there is a 99.4 per cent chance everything else in that sentence will be untrue."

There's a whiff of Jew-baiting in some of the criticism of neoconservatives, too. Many neocons are Jewish, but many are not. Similar criticism was leveled against FDR when many Jews made up his brain trust and his New Deal was derided as the "Jew Deal." Some neocons are Catholics, others are evangelical Protestants. When Bill Bennett, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus and theologian Michael Novak go to the synagogue, it's not to read the Torah. They're going there to make a speech.