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QUESTION:Just what the heck does neocon mean?
Well, I did the research.
It turns out that NeoCon is a registered trademark of Merchandise Mart
properties for organizing and conducting trade fairs for the contract interior
furnishings industry. It was first used in 1968.
It's also a registered trademark of Euclid Hitachi Heavy Equipment Corporation
for vehicle ride struts, first used in 1989.
Johnson and Johnson registered it in 1979 for oral contraceptives and canceled
it in 1987.
So the winner is: Neocon is either a trade show for office furniture or a
shock absorber for heavy equipment.
In popular political literature of the US, the earliest reference I've found so
far to Neo-conservatives is in a 1996 article in the New American that refers
to former liberals of the 1960s that were opposed to communism and alarmed at
the morally permissive nature of the evolving counterculture and defended the
legitimacy of traditional morals. In this context, a neocon is a left-leaning
conservative, one who desires to move conservative values more toward the left
into a more centrist view.
Irving Kristol is probably the first author to actually use the term in a
substantial or meaningful way.
Since a great many of the "neo-conservative" movement were/are Jewish, neocon
has also become a code word for "Jews." As there is always a segment of the
population who like to believe that the world is run by shadowy figures and
secret conspiracy and a sub-segment who wants to believe it is the Jews pulling
the strings, neocon lets them code-word this superstition without garnering the
anti-Semitic reputation that comes with laying blame for all the world's ills
upon "the Jews" or a "Jewish conspiracy." Oddly enough, the label was applied
by leftist Jews who were appalled when some of their own strayed from the fold.
A very recent trend is to simply toss the word around as a general derogatory
term for anyone who isn't against GW Bush.
ANSWER: "NOS" is a registered trademark of Nitrous Oxide Systems,
a manufacturer of high-performance racing equipment.
(As long as we're discussing trademarks. Come to think of
it, the portholes on the side of a Buick are officially called
"Cruiserline Ventiports." I kid you not.)
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