Irving Kristol, the man who put the con into conservatism
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal's hagiographic editorial limns the life and times of the late Irving Kristol, longstanding contributor to the Journal's editorial page. ("Irving Kristol. The man who put neo into conservativism.")
Some excerpts:
Perhaps the greatest gift of the gifted Irving Kristol, who died yesterday at 89, was prescience. This does not mean predicting the future. Prescience, a more useful gift, is seeing the direction in which the future is headed.
In his early years, Kristol saw that the Marxism which fascinated him and many others at mid-century had no future, and he embraced the ideals of the West, holding them tight for a lifetime. Later as a Democrat, he saw that many of the social welfare policies of the 1960s would fail, and so he undertook a long, unsparing critique of his own party's most cherished ideas. Later still, as a Republican, Kristol realized that his party's economic ideas were moribund, and he turned his energies to leading the pro-growth, "supply-side" revolution that culminated in the historic Reagan Presidency.
Irving Kristol is most often credited with leading the movement in American politics that came to be called neoconservatism. Begun in the 1970s, it may be counted as a testament to its enduring strength that as recently as the administration of George W. Bush, critics were bursting blood vessels screaming, again, that the government had fallen into the hands of "the neocons." Nothing more made Irving break into his familiar wide smile than the intensity of his opposition. . .
The Kristol critique helped shape the basis for many opposition ideas to the modern political left, in both domestic and foreign policy. . .
To the extent that American politics today consists of two sides—one insisting that the state guide the country forward, the other that the private economy drive the country forward—it is in large part Irving Kristol and his thinkers who defined the order of battle.
Where the next turn in history lies is beside the point. Irving Kristol's life and career are a compass for anyone who wants to know how ideas and honest inquiry can shape American politics.
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You have to wonder, is it arrogance or stupidity impelling the author of this editorial to compose a soppy-eyed paean to an ideology discredited by its consequences at every turn? The signature trait of neocons is their ability to remain impervious to the reality of their folly. They seem afflicted by a terminal inability to connect the dots.
Supply-side tax cuts followed by tidal waves of red ink? No connection.
Unbridled laissez faire and ‘perpetual prosperity’ monetary policies followed by the worst financial meltdown and recession since the Great Depression? Who, moi?
Invasion of the Middle East followed by quagmires of insurgency? What, me worry?
Too bad all that prescience is for naught. Regrettably, the binnacle housing Kristol’s compass lacks the corrective magnets needed to make it point to true north. It would be more accurate to say Kristol put the con in conservatism.
The telling myopia of the piece, however, lies in the author’s inability to synthesize the false dichotomy between the state guiding and the private sector driving the country forward. Try a sports analogy. The state writes the rulebook and fields the umpires, the private sector plays the game. Simple. However, it works only if the rules are sound and the players abide by them. In the world of the neocons, the players blindfold the umpires and make up the rules as they go along.