Why Neoconservatives Are Liberals

My contribution to a debate over at View from the Right (the question under discussion is - Are the 'neoconservatives', who believe that the problem of Islamic extremism can be made to disappear by a two-pronged approach of introducing democracy to the Arab world and assimilating muslims more thoroughly at home, genuine conservatives, or are they really liberals?) :

Interesting discussion. I'd put it a little differently though and say that neoconservatives are conservatives who are deeply liberal in just one key respect.

A fundamental tenet of conservatism is that human nature is deeply flawed, whether that's interpreted in terms of original sin or simply of the biological make-up of man.

Conservatives do not share the naive belief of liberals in the open-ended transformability of man. Political arrangements, institutions, cultural traditions, etc. do indeed mould us to a great extent, but what is moulded into different shapes is always the same old stubborn clay.

It should follow from this insight that a) a civilized society is one in which the shaping forces upon the people are such as curtail the worst of human nature while promoting the potential for good in our natures, b) barbarian societies are those in which the shaping forces do pretty much the inverse, c) some societies involve a mixture: a civilized culture temporarily oppressed by barbaric political organization, or a culture with a civilized tradition which has briefly been abandoned in a spasm of mass ideological madness, etc.

There's no philosophical reason why "mixed" cultures can't be salvaged/put back on track through military intervention (not that it's ever a piece of cake), but a conservative should be wary in the extreme of thinking he can make a blind bit of difference when it comes to backward or barbaric societies, because what requires correction here are the very shaping forces that define those one wishes to change, and people don't readily give up that which defines them.

It is conservative to recognise this.

What makes the neoconservatives "liberal" is that they either won't make discriminatory judgments as to inferior and superior cultures, only to political arrangements, or, insofar as they are willing to make such judgments (e.g. self-described "culturalist" Mark Steyn) they seem to take it as a given that it would be pure bigotry to go one (logical) step further and recognise that the forces which shape a barbarian culture cannot simply be shaken off by placing individuals from that culture into a different cultural context.