Neoconservatism bears a close resemblance to the ideas behind the French Revolution. The French Jacobins of the late 1700s appointed France the agent of universal principles; the new Jacobins of the late 1900s had similarly selected the United States for the task of transforming the world. Ryn thus warned of the dangers of ideological imperialism. Paleo historian Thomas Woods elaborated on the divergence in the Conservative movement, and the ascent of the Neoconservatives, and their distinguishing features from more traditional Conservatives: The Conservative's traditional sympathy for the American South and its people and heritage, evident in the works of such great American Conservatives as Richard M. Weaver and Russell Kirk, began to disappear ... [T]he Neocons are heavily influenced by Woodrow Wilson, with perhaps a hint of Theodore Roosevelt. ... They believe in an aggressive U.S. presence practically everywhere, and in the spread of democracy around the world, by force if necessary. ... Neoconservatives tend to want more efficient government agencies; Paleoconservatives want fewer government agencies. [Neoconservatives] generally admire President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his heavily interventionist New Deal policies. Neoconservatives have not exactly been known for their budget consciousness, and you won't hear them talking about making any serious inroads into the federal apparatus. In discussing Neoconservatives' distinctive positions on state power, Irving Kristol wrote in 2003: Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on "the road to serfdom." Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable ... People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional Conservatives do not. Though they find much to be critical about, they tend to seek intellectual guidance in the democratic wisdom of de Tocqueville, rather than in the Tory nostalgia of, say, Russell Kirk. What made the Neoconservative movement so potent was the number of influential intellectuals who attained positions of power in the government and media. Paul Gottfried argued that the neocons funded their efforts using funding originally intended to fight the New Deal or the Great Society. Kristol