So that's what the 'con' stands for!
The news: Afghan and Paki savages are rioting because they don't like Christianity. Their excuse for rioting this time was that an American pastor burned their primitive "holy book".

In a sane time, before Wilsonian-Bushian-Obamian neocons took over our brains, this news item would have been uninteresting. In 1939, American news wouldn't have bothered to report the internal violence of some other country, especially a savage primitive country. And if anyone had bothered to pay attention, their sane response would have been "Good! That's a dozen dead savages who won't be making trouble for civilized people."

Now the internal affairs of savage countries are intensely interesting, and All Responsible Commentators Must Call The American Pastor Crazy.

Let's take this apart.

Why does the rioting of primitive savages IN OTHER GODDAMN COUNTRIES matter so much? I suppose it matters because our soldiers and contractors are deeply involved in those countries, doing a whole lot of something or other, spending a whole lot of money for some unknown purpose, and losing a lot of lives toward unknown goals. The generals don't know what we're doing, the politicians don't know what we're doing, but we apparently have to keep doing it because the contractors will lose profit if we don't. Or some other reason. Nobody knows.

And why do we assume that the savages are fully justified in their actual murder, while the American pastor is Crazy and Murderous and Criminal for symbolically insulting our enemy?

Here's the key to the problem. Neocons have the ego structure of a newborn baby. They do not recognize boundaries or distinctions. All humans are identical, therefore all humans are identical to ME. All nations and all cultures are within MY range of concern. It's not just ALL MINE, it's ALL ME. When foreigners disagree with Betty Friedan, when foreigners think that women should be modest and obedient, THIS MUST BE FIXED. When foreigners disagree that all children should be educated at Harvard, when they think children should work and learn useful trades, THIS MUST BE FIXED. When foreigners think their leaders should serve their own interests instead of the interests of Wall Street, THIS MUST BE FIXED.

The 'con' in neocon stands for Conjoined.

All people and all countries are Conjoined, so anything that disagrees with MY New York Attitudes is deeply important to ME and must undergo medical treatment, because it could spread and infect ME with the cancer of rationality. And that applies not only to foreigners in more distant places, it applies especially to Non-New-York Attitudes within this unfortunate land. Such as Southern Christians.

Needless to say, this conjoined-ness also works in economic realms. For the neocon there's no reason to build things in America, because China and America are equally part of ME. There's no reason to prevent illegal immigration, because America and Mexico are equally part of ME. Poverty and gang war in Detroit? Doesn't matter any more or any less than poverty and gang war in Mexico. It's all one big undivided ME, and the only goal is to maximize MY Swiss Bank Account. Centralize, commoditize, securitize.
  ¶ 5:09 AM