Neoconservative writers have castigated opponents of US military involvement in Libya as isolationists.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Jacksonian Foreign Policy Option

For lack of a better name, it is what historian Walter Russell Mead has referred to as Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US. As Mead noted in a 1999 article in The National Interest titled "The Jacksonian Tradition, " the most popular and enduring US model for foreign policy is far more flexible than either the isolationist or the neoconservative model.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Jacksonian Foreign Policy Option

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US is a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America's role as the leader of the free world.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: The Jacksonian Foreign Policy Option