I thought neocons were supposed to be the tough guys? Why would they be afraid of anything.
I agree that a lot of the threats in the world are exaggerated and I don't think in my everyday life I "live in fear," as FDR put it: "There's nothing to fear but fear itself."
I actually was reading a psychologist's opinion on why people are conservative, and tend to think it makes a lot of sense:
"What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis:
conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world. "
I think indeed some people have a predisposition to "the way things are," to hierarchy, war, and so on as the natural state of things.
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
That certainly would explain why people throughout history have supported things such as unmitigated capitalism, fascism, monarchism, and so on, such as American Libertarians, conservatives, etc.
I believe there is such thing as destructive and constructive impulses. Some people are predispositioned to support constructive forces (art, knowledge, good will), others have a disposition (either from nature or by politics or religion or whatever) to be destructive (obsessed with possessions that cannot be shared, etc.). You could be a destructive liberal (i.e. like a communist trying to force equality) or you could be a constructive conservative. No examples of the latter.
