Who needs Wikipedia when you have a blog? A reader writes:
I’m a professor of American history at Catholic University. We met outside the Danish Embassy and chatted briefly about my book on Whittaker Chambers and Lionel Trilling; and your book on conservatism. It was a pleasure meeting you, and here’s a small service I can render to your blog. The earliest reference to the word neo-conservative, of those that I know, is from Partisan Review, July-August 1943, v. X. no. 4, coined by none other than Dwight MacDonald in an essay titled "The Future of Democratic Values."
It is an essay against pro-war intellectuals and those turning away from progressivism, of which MacDonald seems himself to be a questionable enthusiast:
"The neo-conservatives of our time… reject the propositions on materialism, Human Nature, and Progress."
One example is Jacques Barzun, a "modern obscurantist." He is a new type, the conservative liberal "attempting to combine progressive values and reactionary concepts" (like Mosca, Michels, Pareto and Burnham).
A bit pedantic, I know, but there it is for the record, though quite possibly not the earliest use of the word.
1943. Anyone beat that? If not, let’s place on the record that Dwight MacDonald coined the term.
The Dish 