Neoconservatism is a variant of the political ideology of conservatism which combines features of traditional conservatism with political individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets. Neoconservatism (or new conservatives) is rooted in a group of former liberals, who in the late 1960s, began to oppose many of the policies and principles associated with President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. The term "neoconservative" was initially used in the 1930s to describe American liberals who criticized other liberals who followed a path closer to Soviet communism.

The term "neoconservative" was popularized in the United States in 1973 by Socialist leader Michael Harrington, who used the term to define Daniel Bell, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Irving Kristol, whose ideologies differed from Harrington's.

The "neoconservative" label was embraced by Irving Kristol in his 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'" His ideas have been influential since the 1950s, when he co-founded and edited Encounter magazine. Another source was Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995. By 1982 Podhoretz was calling himself a neoconservative, in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Neoconservative Anguish over Reagan's Foreign Policy". In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about, " according to E. J. Dionne,

Bradley Thompson is an American television producer and writer, best known for episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1996–1999), The Twilight Zone (2002–2003), Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2009-2011) with writing partner David Weddle. They also wrote for the short-lived series Ghost Stories (1997) and The Fearing Mind (2000). Thompson and Weddle are currently writing and producing for the TNT series Falling Skies.

Thompson graduated from the USC School of Cinema, as did writing partner David Weddle, whom he originally met in an acting class. Weddle and Thompson first pitched stories for Deep Space Nine at Paramount Pictures. In 1995, the two joined the writing staff for DS9's final four seasons, crafting 12 episodes. On the series, they worked with producer Ronald D. Moore, who hired them for Battlestar Galactica in 2004.

Together with Weddle, Thompson served as a story editor on the first season of Battlestar Galactica, and they became co-producers in the second season. Their responsibilities as producers increased during the third season, and they achieved supervising producer status for the fourth season. They wrote a total of 15 episodes for BSG.

Irving Kristol (January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As the founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the last half-century; after his death he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century".

Kristol was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of non-observant Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He received his B.A. from the City College of New York in 1940, where he majored in history and was part of a small but vocal Trotskyist anti-Soviet group who eventually became the New York Intellectuals. During World War II, he served in Europe in the 12th Armored Division as a combat infantryman.

Kristol was affiliated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom; he wrote in Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, under the editor Elliot Cohen (not to be confused with Elliot A. Cohen the writer of today's magazine); co-founder (with Stephen Spender) of the British-based Encounter from 1953 to 1958; editor of The Reporter from 1959 to 1960; executive vice-president of the publishing house Basic Books from 1961 to 1969; Henry Luce Professor of Urban Values at New York University from 1969 to 1987; and co-founder and co-editor (first with Daniel Bell and then Nathan Glazer) of The Public Interest from 1965 to 2002. He was the founder and publisher of The National Interest from 1985 to 2002. Following Ramparts' publication of information showing Central Intelligence Agency funding of the Congress, which was widely reported elsewhere, Kristol left in the late 1960s and became affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.

Llewellyn Harrison "Lew" Rockwell, Jr. (born July 1, 1944) is an American libertarian political commentator, activist, proponent of the Austrian School of economics, and chairman/CEO of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Rockwell was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1944. His father was a "Taft Republican", and Rockwell was exposed at a young age to military non-interventionism. He was introduced to the laissez faire thought of the French Liberal and Austrian schools of economics when he received Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson as a gift from a family friend on his twelfth birthday. Later in his youth, Rockwell describes feeling alienated from mainstream conservatism,

"Over time, I became aware that I was not only dissenting from the left but also from the conservative establishment, which was embroiled in the Cold War as a first principle. I grew increasingly skeptical of the official right, especially during the war on Vietnam.... I had been a reluctant Goldwaterite in 1964, but by 1968 I worked briefly for Gene McCarthy."

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American politician who has been the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997, and a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and currently 2012. He is an outspoken critic of American foreign and monetary policies, including the Military–industrial complex and the Federal Reserve, and is known for his libertarian-leaning views, often differing from his own party on certain issues.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a medical officer in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s, delivering more than 4,000 babies. He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010.