Works for me. That was an amusing essay, Tom.

"neocon" wasn't always synonymous with "boogerhead", and if it's "lost" it's meaning, then it used to have one that can be recovered. The term first came to my attention shortly after 9/11, in reports surfacing that members of a conservative think tank named PNAC were shopping around their 1993 manifesto, and were jazzed that it was suddenly gaining ready acceptance. The term "neoconservatives" was used pretty neutrally then to describe the cabalgroup, and was strongly tied to PNAC and the PNAC founders who soon came to dominate Bush Admin war and foreign policy: Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie, Perle, plus an entourage including Scooter et al.

Given the Bush Admin's attempt to implement neocon doctrine, "neoconservative" as an ideology rather than a person can be defined by example e.g. The Bush Doctrine and Bush's strategy in Iraq, as well as by reference to pnac.org.

BTW: 'Are you really going to try and sell me the idea that "authoritarian executive" was a concept that only showed up in the U.S. in the 80s?'...oh lord, I was going to dispute you, until I read my actual post:

and I'd define neoconservatism as the combination of the doctrine of an authoritarian executive that became popular in the 80s

Damn, meant to say "unitary executive", which is the formal legal argument that was developed in the '80s that the Executive Branch is a monolithic unit in which the President's word is law, and that individual parts of it can't sue the others, i.e., behave independently of the will of the President. Sorry. Is that more palatable?