Roger’s Rules

September 18th, 2009 2:06 pm

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

I just heard the sad news that Irving Kristol, “the godfather of Neoconservatism,” died today. I will have more to say about this remarkable man elsewhere, but I wanted to take a moment now to register my sorrow at the passing of a friend whom I greatly admired and a man whose intellectual labors did so much to preserve and nurture the vital traditions of American conservatism. Irving was a man of remarkable literary and political judgment. He was also a draught of good cheer. I never saw him without a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He positively radiated benignity.

Editor, essayist, instigator of numberless intellectual initiatives (including The New Criterion, which Irving helped to start), he possessed in a very high degree two complementary gifts. He had an uncanny knack for ferreting out talent in others. He was a superb editor, by which I do not just mean that he was a dab hand at strengthening your prose, but also–a much rarer gift — that he was a dab hand at strengthening your ideas. He instantly saw what was at stake in a controversy or battle of ideas, and he’d quietly, cheerfully help his writers seize that golden core.

That instinct for the pertinent was something his own writing exhibited with unfailing clarity. Most of Irving’s essays were quite short — an exception was a superlative, and lengthy, reflection on Tacitus and nihilism first published in Encounter, the English monthly that Irving edited in the 1950s with Stephen Spender. His favored form, though, was the literary surgical strike. Irving could pack an extraordinary amount in 1200 – 1500 words. Whether the topic was the welfare state, foreign policy, the totalitarian temptation, or the terrible legacy of the 1960s, Irving always articulated exactly what was at stake in the subject under discussion. He was a practical man, consummately attuned to what, for lack of a more elegant term, I will call the “policy implications” of ideas. But he saw with unusual perspicacity that ideas mattered. In a 1973 essay called “On Capitalism and the Democratic Idea,” he put it thus:

For two centuries, the very important people who managed the affairs of this society could not believe in the importance of ideas — until one day they were shocked to discover that their children, having been captured and shaped by certain ideas, were either rebelling against their authority or seceding from their society. The truth is that ideas are all-important. The massive and seemingly solid institutions of any society — the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions — are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions. The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will — perhaps slowly but nevertheless inexorably — twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape.

Well put, is it not? And how often we need to remind ourselves of that weighty moral.

Probably Irving’s most frequently quoted mot concerned neoconservatism, the intellectual-political movement with which he is indelibly identified. “A neo-conservative,” he said, “is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.” That was the great gift Irving gave to his, to our, generation: an unforgettable reminder that ideas mattered because of the realities they nurtured or discouraged. He saw with a kindly but unflinching clarity what mischief the seductive lullabies of utopian fantasy had prepared for its acolytes. His passing is a sad loss not only to conservatives to but also to the nation: those eloquent reminders seem fewer and farther between these days, yet are ever more needful. RIP.

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25 Comments

1. Instapundit » Blog Archive » IRVING KRISTOL HAS DIED. John Podhoretz and Roger Kimball offer thoughts. …:

[...] KRISTOL HAS DIED. John Podhoretz and Roger Kimball offer [...]

Sep 18, 2009 - 2:25 pm 2. Pajamas Media » Irving Kristol, 1920 – 2009:

[...] Read the rest of the story here. [...]

Sep 18, 2009 - 2:38 pm 3. Fred J Harris:

How I miss Encounter. That lovely soft creamy paper it was printed on.
Bless Irving Kristol and his fine (cold) warrior heart.

Sep 18, 2009 - 2:47 pm 4. Ed Wallis:

Prayers to his family.
Best wishes for warmth and togetherness in the New Year.

His book, “Neoconservatism”,
(worth a glance for its delightful wit and insight alone…) is on my shelf…I’ll revisit it this weekend.

Sep 18, 2009 - 3:24 pm 5. Bernard Chapin:

Great man, great son, may you Rest in Peace

Sep 18, 2009 - 3:44 pm 6. David Thomson:

May God bless Irving Kristol. John Podhoretz is kindly allowing everyone the opportunity to read his past articles written for Commentary. Here is the link:

http://tinyurl.com/my2hne

I also found most beneficial Kristol’s 1978 book, Two Cheers for Capitalism. He will be greatly missed.

Sep 18, 2009 - 3:51 pm 7. Tristan Yates:

The Neoconservative Persuasion (by Irving Kristol)
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000%5C000%5C003%5C000tzmlw.asp

Sep 18, 2009 - 4:30 pm 8. Now and Then:

Good riddance. Let the criminal bastard rot in hell.

Sep 18, 2009 - 5:12 pm 9. mezzrow:

N&T – Shame. Really. Shame.

Sep 18, 2009 - 6:02 pm 10. ScotDunlap:

To #8: I hope you roll in hell too! A@@whole!

Sep 18, 2009 - 6:09 pm 11. Dr. Dealgood:

Remarks such as the above and similar ones following the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy are unbecoming and inappropriate to these high holy days. Rather, let us be like the Etruscans and early Romans and honor them with an intellectual Cage Match. Let the (first) Annual Kristol-Kennedy Funeral Games begin:

Many minds may enter, but Roger & Roger determine who prevails. Under the new Presidential candidate rules, grades not disclosed.

1) 35 years ago, Kristol wrote an essay, “The American Revolution — a Revolution or a Rebellion?” Agree or Disagree? Explain. Please keep your answers lengthy.

2) About the same time, Mortimer Adler wrote an essay in the New Yorker magazine that the Gettysburg Address was Lincoln’s Heresy, deviating from the orthodoxy of the American State Papers, that is, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Agree or Disagree? Explain. For extra credit, work in references to Garry Wills book on the Address, with cites and attribuation. Please be verbose.

Grab your pencils or curl your keyboard fingers and improve your grip. Begin!

Sep 18, 2009 - 7:34 pm 12. Now and Then:

Yeah. Shame. Really. I guess the ghost of Ted Kennedy showed up sooner than you expected. Instant Karma slapped you right in the face. Enjoy. By the way, why hasn’t anybody asked for Kennedy’s death certificate? I love slappin down self-righteous hypocritical right wingers. Call it a hobby.

Sep 18, 2009 - 8:30 pm 13. Now and Then:

While you’re in the shame mode, here’s a recent headline from Matt “the egg man” Drudge:

MICHELLE SHOWS OFF ‘BONDAGE BELT’…

Sep 18, 2009 - 8:39 pm 14. mike in tn:

A good man is gone. May G-d bless and keep you.

Sep 18, 2009 - 8:50 pm 15. BrainTrust:

Mr. NandT (#8) evidences again the pathetic, bitter soulless creature that is today’s liberal. What a sad existence.

Mr. Kristol was a good man.

Sep 18, 2009 - 9:55 pm 16. Irving Kristol – The man who put ‘neo’ into conservatism « Zeitung für Schland:

[...] Kimball für Pajamas Media: Probably Irving’s most frequently quoted mot concerned neoconservatism, the [...]

Sep 19, 2009 - 12:59 am 17. mishu:

N&T, criminal? based on what evidence? other than you’re an a$$h@l3.

Sep 19, 2009 - 6:31 am 18. mezzrow:

(sigh)

This display by the creature dubbed Now and Then makes me stop and consider what sort of individual would make a “hobby” of the sort of behavior we see here. Something immediately came to mind. I am reminded of the “Pranknet” individuals credited with a variety of incidents whereby innocent people have been directed to do destructive, dangerous, or disgusting things. Search the Smoking Gun archives under pranknet for a detailed report on what kind of “people” we are referring to here.

Those who treasure the lessons taught by Irving Kristol are secure in the knowledge that each individual is responsible for his own life and the fruits of his living will be seen in the world he leaves behind. A comparison of the fruits of the pranknetters and N&L against the fruits of the life of Irving Kristol and his family and acolytes will give us the clearest gauge of their respective worth as human beings.

Karma indeed.

Sep 19, 2009 - 7:26 am 19. rogerT:

Kristol – a good man? All I know is that the only favourable review of Himmelfarb’s Darwin book that I came across was in Encounter without any mention that Irving was her husband. That really shows character.

Sep 19, 2009 - 7:39 am 20. tanstaafl:

The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will — perhaps slowly but nevertheless inexorably — twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape.

An observation highly relevant to the ongoing battle between individuals who believe in the founding principles of the United States and individuals who want the country to go in another direction, the direction of “transnationalism” where international law supersedes the American Constitution.

Administration legal advisor Harold Koh is one of the most vocal proponents of this kind of new world order. Eric Holder would seem to be on board, and some SC justices, most notably Ginsburg, seem amenable to the idea.

Transnationalists have been working long & hard, relentlessly even, to achieve their end of annulling the US Constitution. Legal arguments about the status of “detainees”, for example, have a much larger context than the facts at hand.

In Irving Kristol’s words “…slowly but nevertheless inexorably”

Recent thoughts from Andrew McCarthy

Sep 19, 2009 - 8:20 am 21. Sherab Zangpo:

We need more trolls on this thread.
They are so horrifying that they will help America to understand which kind of fascism is currently “under construction” for our future.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

RIP and pray for us, I.K. !

Sep 19, 2009 - 8:35 am 22. Rod Johnson:

Rest In Pieces, like the entire failed neoconservative platform whose failure helped give us Zero the Idi0t 0bama.

Sep 19, 2009 - 8:40 am 23. tanstaafl:

Unrecognizable shapes, progressivism as incompatible with the United States Constitution

For the pragmatist, the Constitution and its express limits on democratic energy must be negated lest necessary and positive change be wrongly arrested….this conception of government as necessary to the protection of man’s natural rights…is simply incompatible with progressivism.

The denatured person seen by progressivism requires an unlimited government to deploy the operations and powers necessary to unlock social progress.

Sound familiar ?

The Undoing of American Constitutionalism

Sep 19, 2009 - 9:32 am 24. Robert Schwalbaum:

I just caught a Brian Lamb interview of Kristol from 1995.

Brian lamb is absolutely the most brilliant interviewer anywhere.

It was on BOOKTV

Sep 19, 2009 - 4:20 pm 25. Scott:

Kristol, Fukuyama, intellectual frauds to the core; I’ll put them beside Leo Strauss and his boy scout philosopy.

The above “men” are for those who don’t know what real intellectual work is: Kolakowski, Koestler, Stove, T.C.R Horn.

Sep 22, 2009 - 9:59 am